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FOCUS ON
Wangfu, the Princely Mansions of BeijingThis issue of China Heritage Quarterly takes as its focus the Princely Mansions of Beijing. In 2003, the Ministry of Culture announced that the mansion of Prince Gong near Qianhai and Houhai (also known as Shichahai) in Beijing, the garden of which was already a popular tourist destination, would be renovated and reopened on the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the Prince Gong Mansion Museum (Gong Wangfu Bowuguan, also to be known as the Princely Mansion Musuem), an institution that will reflect the history and cultural impact of the numerous princely mansions in the former capital of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). On the eve of the 2008 Olympic year, we are featuring articles on Prince Gong's mansion and its attached garden, as well as discussing the fate of Prince Chun's mansion nearby. We also conisder the history and heritage of another one of the city's fallen princely residences, that of Dorgon, Prince Rui. We will return to the theme of Princely Mansions in Issue 14 (June 2008), the focus of which will be 'Beijing, the Invisible City'. In the Articles section of this issue Bruce Doar writes about the former residence of the writer and official Ji Xiaolan, and Kelly Layton who is working on a cultural history of dust in Beijing discusses the transformation of Qianmen. In this same section we also reproduce a 1961 lecture by the noted translator David Hawkes on Chinese Studies, one that relates to our own work in promoting 'New Sinology'. In New Scholarship we introduce the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, an active and enterprising NGO based in Beijing that is undertaking work to preserve oral histories of old Beijing and its transformations. We also have a report on a November 2007 conference on the noted guohua artist Li Keran by Claire Roberts and a review of a book on reading Chinese fiction by John Minford that underscores a new dimension of our work, that related to the heritage of China's written culture. In conclusion, we introduce a new book by Geremie R. Barmé on the Forbidden City produced under the aegis of the China Heritage Project. The next issue of China Heritage Quarterly, Issue 13 (March 2008), will be guest edited by John Minford and Claire Roberts. It will take as its focus the zhai (齋), or the scholar's studio. |
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