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edited by Joseph W. Esherick. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000. x + 278 pp. US$65.00 (Hardcover). ISBN 0-8248-2148-3
In the past two decades our knowledge and understanding of Chinese cities have been greatly expanded and revised. New frontiers have opened, novel sources have been discovered, and the relations between urban and rural have been re-examined. Remaking the Chinese City , edited by Joseph Esherick, is an excellent addition to this growing body of scholarship dealing with urban history.
An outgrowth of a 1996 conference entitled "Beyond Shanghai: Imagining the City in Republican China," the book is divided into three parts: an introduction, ten chapters on individual Chinese cities, and two concluding commentaries. Esherick's illuminating opening essay, which sets the tone and frames the issues, provides an extremely useful and thoughtful introduction to the two principal themes under investigation: modernity and national identity of Chinese cities during the Republican era. The ten chapters that follow explore Canton (Michael Tsin), Tianjin (Ruth Rogaski and Brett Sheehan), Changchun (David Buck), Chengdu (Kristin Stapleton), Hangzhou (Liping Wang), Beiping (Madeleine Yue Dong), Nanjing (Charles Musgrove), Wuhan (Stephen MacKinnon), and Chongqing (Lee McIsaac). The two concluding essays are by Jeffrey Wasserstrom and David Strand.
Space considerations make it impossible to do justice to the rich and diverse issues addressed in this volume. Instead, this review focuses on a few of its overall strengths and weaknesses. Remaking the Chinese City differs from its predecessors in a number...