https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3697-833X
![Sample our Urban Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110826/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Urban-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
A transnational flow of capital exchange during the 19th and early 20th centuries brought planning ideas and modernity into China. Since European countries and America used violence to place China into a colonial world and its forms of power-knowledge, the existing works too often focus on the impact of the ‘west’, treating the Chinese as passive recipients who responded to ‘western’ transnational planning ideas, while neglecting the transnational flow of Intra-Asia. By exploring the formation of urbanism in Hebei New Area in Tianjin, this article reveals that the Chinese did not allow themselves to be dictated to by the planning ideas emanating from the west. Instead, they both sought the most suitable ideas based on their local situations and actively imported planning ideas from the east – Japan. The authorities in Tianjin sent officials to Japan to draw upon Japanese industrial and commercial planning models to set up their own organizational framework, urban built environments, and operational management. Consequently, they incorporated planning ideas from the ‘east’ to re-organize the daily life of the masses and modernize their city. These ideas were juxtaposed with ideas from the ‘west’ to shape the urbanism of Tianjin.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Hein, “Japanese Cities”; Reiff and Ethington, “Introduction”; Sandoval-Strausz and Kwak, Making Cities Global.
2 Jørgensen, “Nineteenth-Century.”
3 Coomans, “East Meets West.”
4 Lau, “Adaptive Modern and Speculative Urbanism.”
5 Wong, “The Planning Connection.”
6 Teng, Fairbank, China’s Response.
7 Cohen, Discovering History in China, 9.
8 Esherick, “Harvard on China.”
9 Hein, “Port Cities,” 824.
10 Gipouloux, The Asian Mediterranean, 88; Takeshi, International Relations, 10.
11 Gipouloux, The Asian Mediterranean, 74.
12 Denison, Architecture and the Landscape.
13 Bastid and Bailey, Educational Reform in Early Twentieth-century China; Liu, “Studies on Yuan Shikai’s Thoughts”; Mackinnon, Power and Politics; Watanabe, “Yuan Shikai and the New Policies of Beiyang”; Zhang, “Yuan Shikai and the Significance of His Troop Training”.
14 Fu, “Microcosm of Modern Chinese Cities”; Xu, “Politics, Space and Urban Change”; Sun, “The First Modern Park in Tianjin Chinese Concession”; Aoki and Xu, “Quanye Huichang in Late Qing Tianjin”.
15 Rasmussen, Tientsin, 34.
16 Zhang, Notes, 26.
17 Yuan, “Acknowledgement,” 621.
18 Ibid.
19 “The Collected Records,” 71.
20 Ibid.; Yuan, “Acknowledgement,” 621; Zhang, “Yuan Shikai and Tianjin’s Early Pursuit of Modernity,” 20–6.
21 Zhou, Compilation of Zhou Xuexi’s Biographies, 278.
22 Yuan, “Acknowledgement,” 621.
23 Bureau of Industry, “Bureau of Industry Issues 4 Articles,” 1.
24 Yuan, “Tianjin Railway Station,” 839.
25 “Construct New Roads,” 4.
26 Reynolds, China, 18–9.
27 Zhang, China’s Only Hope, 93.
28 Yano, “Confindential Letter,” 14.
29 Reynolds, China, 19.
30 Zhang, “Japan,” 462.
31 Zhou, “Diary,” 89–122.
32 Ibid., 100.
33 Ibid., 123.
34 Ibid., 87.
35 Tominaga, The Modernization of Japan and Social Change, 38–9.
36 Ohno, The History of Japanese Economic Development, 168.
37 Zhou, “Diary,” 87.
38 Zhou, The Autochronology, 25.
39 Zhou, “Bureau of Industry Re-Collates the Regulations and Rules,” 3.
40 Zhou, “Silver Bureau Director, Zhou, Proposal to Found an Education Bureau,” 7.
41 Zhou, “Bureau of Industry Re-Collates the Regulations and Rules,” 3.
42 Ibid.
43 Zhou, “The Director of the Bureau of Industry,” 8.
44 Beiyang Silver Bureau, “Beiyang Silver Bureau,” 12.
45 Bureau of Industry, “Bureau of Industry Proposal to Found the Education Exhibition Hall,” 15.
46 Zhou, Supplementary Biography, 13.
47 Yuan, “Settle down at Tianjin Haifanggongsuo,” 622.
48 “Construct New Roads,” 4; South Section of General Police Station, “New Detailed Map of Tianjin”.
49 Zhou, “Diary,” 90.
50 Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan, 25–30.
51 “Recording thirteen articles,” 4.
52 “General Records of the Commerical Museum,” 1.
53 Ibid.
54 Zhang, “The Settler Urban Landscape,” 55–6; “The Elites,” 35; Zhou, “Bureau of Industry Re-Collates the Regulations and Rules,” 3.
55 Hatsuda, “Study on Architecture,” 128.
56 “General Records of the Commerical Museum,” 1.
57 Zhou, Supplementary Biography, 17–8, 20–1.
58 Ono, “Spatial Design,” 27–8.
59 Zhou, “Diary,” 100.
60 “General Records of the Commerical Museum,” 1–2.
61 Osaka City Planning Bureau Research Department Administrative Research Division. 80 Years of Municipal Administration, 37.
62 Chen, “Report of Deputy County Governor,” 19.
63 Ibid., 23–6.
64 Bureau of Industry, “Regulation of Kao Gongchang,” 7–9.
65 Bureau of Industry, “Regulations of Zhili Advanced Industry School,” 11.
66 Bureau of Industry, “Bureau of Industry Proposal to Issue the Regulations of Education Exhibition Hall,” 12.
67 Bureau of Industry, “Bureau of Industry Sends Engineers to Japan,” 28.
68 Yuan, “Sending Officials to Travel Abroad,” 1161.
69 Bureau of Industry, “Bureau of Industry Signs Contract with Maeda Makoto,” 30–1.
70 Bureau of Industry, “Trial Regulations of Kao Gongchang,” 3.
71 Bureau of Industry, “Yuan Shikai Renews Translator,” 26; “Yuan Shikai Signs Contract with the Vice General Engineer of the Education Bureau,” 29; “Industrial Institute Hires New Engineers,” 4–5.
72 Bureau of Industry, “The Buraus of Industries Signs Contract with Denn,” 35–6.
73 Bureau of Industry, “Regulation of Kao Gongchang”, 9.
74 Ibid.
75 Bureau of Industry, “Visiting and Ticket Regulations of the Plantation,” 7.
76 Zhou, “Silver Bureau Director, Zhou, Proposal to Found an Education Bureau,” 7.
77 Wang, “Taotai of Tianjin,” 3.
78 Zhou, Supplementary Biography, 18.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Yichi Zhang
Dr Yichi Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo. Trained as a landscape architect, conservator and garden historian, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow (2019) at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Yale University) and research fellow (2015) in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University. He was awarded of both the 13th Annual Mavis Batey Essay Prize, 2017 (the Garden Trust, the UK) and the Annual Awards for Post-Doctoral Scholars, 2017 (Geographical Society of New South Wales, Australia). His research interests include transnational architecture production, urban geography, modern Chinese urban and garden history, the history of British settlements in China, and conservation of historical garden and heritage sites.