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FOCUS ON
The Architectural Heritage of TianjinIt is in the bricks and mortar of places, in the plans of urban designers, colonizers, reformers, industrialists and developers that heritage as history finds literal and concrete expression. It is also through the re-ordering of the physical evidence of the past that history itself is rewritten. Such is certainly the case with Tianjin (Tientsin) 天津. The former foreign concession areas of this northern Chinese city are the focus of this issue of China Heritage Quarterly. Our Guest Editor, the historian Maurizio Marinelli, assembles here a group of Chinese and international scholars who share overlapping interests in the history and legacy of Tianjin. Their essays in the Features section of this issue discuss from various perspectives the contested remains of the old city, as well as the continuing clash between preservation (including its bastard progeny ‘restoration’) and development. The dilemmas local activists face are familiar both from other cities and from other climes, and the writers and scholars we hear from here provide another important account of the broader tribulations of heritage in China today. Our ANU colleagues Duncan Campbell and John Minford also contribute generously to this issue—Duncan through translation work and a review of Vera Schwarcz’s fascinating account of the Garden of the Singing Crane 鳴鶴園 at Peking University; John Minford by offering his Old Concessionaire’s musings on the lost Tientsin of the early 1980s. In New Scholarship we are also publishing the latest translated excerpt from the Manchu Bannerman Lincing’s 麟慶 Tracks in the Snow (Hongxue yinyuan tuji 鴻雪姻緣圖記). Tianjin, ‘the Ford of Heaven’, was so named by the Ming Yongle 永樂 Emperor in the early fifteenth century, and in Articles we are fortunate to present a new work by the historian Michael Szonyi on that long-defunct dynasty. In his essay the author discusses the symptoms of ‘Ming fever’ 明熱, a contagion that has swept through Chinese mass culture in recent years. In this section we also offer the editor’s ruminations on the unfulfilled promise of China and the early 2010 contretemps involving the Internet. In previous issues we have discussed the changing, and challenged, heritage of the Chinese capital, Beijing. Here we focus on Tianjin. Following the opening of the World Expo in May 2010, our June issue will concentrate on the other famous Chinese port city of Shanghai. Although the September 2010 issue will take as its theme Matteo Ricci, who died this year four centuries ago, we will also be returning to Tianjin. October marks the 150th anniversary of the Anglo-French destruction of the Garden of Perfect Brightness 圓明園, an incident of abiding interest to this journal, and one of continued importance to students of Chinese history, diplomacy and identity politics. We note that Tianjin featured prominently in the failed negotiations between the Qing court and the foreign powers during the late 1850s (reflected in the tribulations surrounding the odious Tientsin Treaty); it also played a role in the devastating invasion of 1860 and the subsequent vandalism in Beijing. The North China Campaign, as those who persecuted the invasion of the imperial heartland called it, along with the desolation it wrought both physically and politically on the Qing empire, will be marked with hue and cry in China this coming October. On the eve of those commemorations we will offer our own reflections on that plangent history, and contemporary evocations of it. We are profoundly indebted to Jude Shanahan for her support, design work and contributions to China Heritage Quarterly over its first five years (2005-2009). Starting with this March 2010 issue, Daniel Sanderson is designing and maintaining the site. We have also changed the feature image of the journal, replacing the Hua Biao at Peking University that adorned our pages throughout the commemorative year 2009 with a view of the teahouse at Yu Yuan 豫園 in Shanghai, with the prospect of Pudong 浦東 in the smog-haze distance. As ever we are grateful to Lois Conner for her permission both to use and to tint her extraordinary work. —Geremie R. Barmé, Editor |
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