Between Heaven and Modernity : Reconstructing Suzhou, 1895-1937 / Peter J. Carroll.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carroll, Peter J., Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (344 p.) : 7 figures, 19 illustrations, 1 map

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Combining social, political, and cultural history, this book examines the contestation over space, history, and power in the late Qing and Republican-era reconstruction of the ancient capital of Suzhou as a modern city. Located fifty miles west of Shanghai, Suzhou has been celebrated throughout Asia as a cynosure of Chinese urbanity and economic plenty for a thousand years. With the city's 1895 opening as a treaty port, businessmen and state officials began to draw on Western urban planning in order to bolster Chinese political and economic power against Japanese encroachment. As a result, both Suzhou as a whole and individual components of the cityscape developed new significance according to a calculus of commerce and nationalism. Japanese monks and travelers, Chinese officials, local people, and others competed to claim Suzhou’s streets, state institutions, historic monuments, and temples, and thereby to define the course of Suzhou’s and greater China’s modernity.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Figures

Acknowledgments

Historical Eras and Abbreviations

Introduction

Part One: Roads to Modernity

1 Industry and Vice along the Horse-Road

2 Arteries and Veins to Nourish the Urban Body

Part II In “Tradition’s” Temple, the Prefectural Confucian Temple

3 Renovating the Structures of Academic Ritual and Learning

4 The Building of Modern Chinese Culture

Part Three: Preserving National Essence

5 A Tocsin Sounds at Hanshan Temple

6 Revaluing National Treasures in the Urban Landscape

Conclusion and Epilogue: Preservation and Indus

Reference matter

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)

ISBN:

1-5036-2579-6

OCLC:

1294424338