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FOCUS ON
The Heritage of Beijing WaterGuest Editor: Dai QingOur Guest Editor Dai Qing, the Beijing-based writer, historical investigative journalist and water activist, focuses on the aqueous heritage of China's capital city. Reflecting on the well-springs of the Olympic year and the bountiful supply of water during 2008, Dai Qing discusses the diminishing heritage of a resource that sustained the ancient city in the past, shaped much of its life, and determines its future. The Editorial features a map of Beijing Waterways and an important study, 'Beijing's Water Crisis, 1949-2008'. Both are in dowloadable PDF format. In this issue, we are supported by colleagues from Probe International (www.probeinternational.org), an independent think-tank and environmental protection group with which Dai Qing has worked closely over the years. We are particularly grateful to Patricia Adams, Executive Director of Probe, for permission to carry a selection of oral history interviews conducted by Wang Jian on the heritage of Beijing water. These accounts, which form the main body of Features in this issue, offer a plangent perspective on the city's vanishing heritage, they also add a dimension to earlier work that has appeared in China Heritage Quarterly on the Forbidden City, the Grand Canal and the Garden of Perfect Brightness. Two of these oral histories ('The Lost Rivers of the Forbidden City' and 'Vanishing Hai Dian') include interactive maps which, like the map of Beijing Waterways, were designed by Rachel Tennenhouse of Probe. In Articles we present a study of lesser-known Ming-dynasty imperial tombs by Eric Danielson. We also continue to pursue our interest in Princely Mansions and Invisible Beijing (see our earlier Issues 12 & 14 respectively) with the publication of the first part of an essay on the Hidden Mansion of Beijing by Sang Ye and the editor, which includes rare aerial photographs of the old city of Beijing. In New Scholarship, Claire Roberts introduces an important collection of Chinese art at the National Gallery in Prague and we have a review of May Holdsworth's compelling account of the rebuilding of the Garden of Established Happiness (Jianfu Gong) in the Forbidden City. We also present 'Chinese Visions: a Provocation' written by Gloria Davies, the editor and Timothy Cheek. An essay produced to frame a conference in August 2007, this 'Provocation'—in fact, an intellectual invitation—can be seen as being the basis for an ongoing conversation with Chinese academics and intellectuals regarding the various heritages of Chinese thought and how they may engagement with global discussions about the shared fate of humanity. This essay is a further addition to our articulation of New Sinology. As was the case for Issue 14 of China Heritage Quarterly (June 2008, 'Beijing, the Invisible City'), this issue is produced under the aegis of Geremie R. Barmé's 'Beijing as Spectacle' project which is supported by an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship and The Australian National University. Other issues of China Heritage Quarterly related to the 'Beijing as Spectacle' project are: 'Yuanming Yuan, The Garden of Perfect Brightness' (Issue 8, December 2006) and 'Wangfu, the Princely Mansions of Beijing' (Issue 12, December 2007). |
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