Building culture in early Qing Yangzhou / Tobie Meyer-Fong.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meyer-Fong, Tobie S. (Tobie Sarah)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Yangzhou (Jiangsu Sheng, China)--Civilization.

Yangzhou (Jiangsu Sheng, China).

China--Civilization--1644-1912.

China.

Civilization.

Physical Description:

xv, 281 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2003.

Summary:

This book explores cultural change in a Chinese city following the Manchu conquest of 1644. The city of Yangzhou, at the intersection of the Grand Canal and the Yangzi river, is best known as the site of human and physical devastation during the conquest and as a vibrant commercial center during the eighteenth century. The book focuses on the period between the conquest and the city's commercial florescence--a moment in which Yangzhou was a center of literary culture that was consciously conceived as transregional and transdynastic. The book shows how Yangzhou's elite used physical sites as markers in the reconstruction of the city, and as vehicles consolidating power and prestige. Gradually, however, the gestures and sites of the postconquest elite were appropriated by the city's increasingly powerful salt merchants and incorporated into a court-oriented culture centered at Beijing.

Contents:

1. Rebuilding Yangzhou 1

2. Personality and Meaning: Red Bridge 25

3. Anthologies, Monuments, and the Invented Past: The Tower of Literary Selection 75

4. Re-Creation and Recreation: Pingshan Hall 128

5. The Triumph of Spectacle: Tianning Temple 165.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [253]-268) and index.

ISBN:

0804744858

OCLC:

51046778