Urban History in Beijing and Beyond

INTRODUCTION

What is a city in modern China and Korea? Is modern Shanghai a Chinese city or a cosmopolitan space? What makes Beijing a Chinese city? In what sense is it not? Is Seoul a Korean city? It is commonplace to note that modernity and national identity in most states evince complicated dialectical relationships revolving around time and space. Once one considers modern East Asia, however, the cities exhibit even more intricate features than other areas of the globe. In modern East Asia, cities express not just the conflict between time and space, but also the tension between colonialism and nationalism. Moreover, colonial modernity in East Asia is further complicated by the region’s own imperial past. 

The main objective of this seminar is to help the participants, informed by relevant historical sources and urban theories, reconstruct a visible face of urban change over time on their own terms. The evolving meaning of the complex relations between national identities and the sites and structures of select East Asian cities will be explored. Participants will challenge the conventional dictum that “time conquers space.” Each course will also involve a heavy dose of independent exploration of urban sites of the student’s choice.

LOCATION

Beijing (3 weeks):
Students will study the city’s “deep” urban landscape that features multiple layers of municipal reform principles:  From the seventeenth century down to the dawn of the twentieth century, its major function was an imperial ritual center for the nomadic conquest elites from the steppe area in China’s North who had earlier planned the main urban layout. In the first half of the twentieth century, however, its new planners sought to redefine the city as a symbol of “Chinese” culture by putting “Chinese tradition” on display. From the mid-twentieth century onward, the Communist planners sought to project the ideal of “commons” by turning many private spaces into public ones. The students will make site visits to Beijing’s various sections that exhibit the aforementioned features. In addition, the students will make a two-day trip to the neighboring city of Qingdao and compare this German colonial enclave to an imperial Beijing cityscape. They will examine the reports and travelogues that the early Japanese colonial architects and urban planners left after they had visited the city to absorb the most fashionable European architectural style of the time. 

Shanghai (2 weeks):
Students will compare Beijing (and Qingdao) to this new commercial center with international characteristics. The students will examine how Shanghai came to dominate the urban presence on the Chinese national landscape and how, by the 1930s, the city came to wield enormous cultural and economic influence as the Chinese thought about what it meant to be “modern.” The students will explore the layout of the surviving buildings and streets that some former Euro-American trading firms had set up along the commercial-industrial enclaves known as the Bund. 

Harbin/Changchun/Shenyang/Dalian (3 weeks):
Students will compare the four colonial cities in China’s Northeast that Japanese urban planners created along the trunk line of the South Manchurian Railway in the first half of the twentieth century. Japanese colonial architects sought to link these “new” cities to contemporary utopian schemes among the circles of hyper-modernist architects during the Great Depression. Students will relate these cities’ semblance to North American railway cities, utopian towns around the globe, the imperial center (i.e., Beijing) and the treaty ports (e.g., Qingdao and Shanghai) that they will have already studied. 

Seoul (2 weeks):
Students will wrap up their studies by comparing Seoul’s commonalities and peculiarities to Chinese cities. Students will compare the city building principles of pre-Confucian China in ancient times to the hyper-modernist principles that Japanese urban planners attempted to integrate in colonial Seoul in the twentieth century.

FACULTY DIRECTOR

Seungjoo Yoon, Associate Professor of History
Professor Yoon has taught East Asian History at Carleton since 1999 and served as director of the East Asian Studies concentration at Carleton. Born and educated mostly in Seoul, he has also lived in China (Beijing and Wuhan), led Carleton students to East Asian cities (Shanghai, Seoul, Shenyang, Dalian, and Fuzhou) for collaborative research projects, and taught at Seoul National University. He has also worked extensively in select libraries and archives in Beijing, Wuhan, Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagasaki, Changchun, Shenyang, as well as in Seoul. Professor Yoon’s research and teaching interests include the evolving meaning of the “public” and changing patterns of public space in East Asia in its modern times. His current work focuses on the emergence of newspaper companies and press-like activities (e.g., propaganda regimes) in China at the turn of the 20th century. He is eager to share his enthusiasm for various aspects of urban life and local dishes in Beijing (and beyond) with students.
Assistant to the Director – Heekyung Yoon
Program Assistant – Claire Du, Class of 2008