From A 'Foreign' Qingdao to A 'Chinese' Qingdao: The Cultural-Politics of A City's Image
| Autor: | 蔡易軒 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2012 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 100 This thesis focuses on the changing meanings of the colonial heritage in the city of Qingdao, China. Qingdao originally developed as a city under Germany colonization from 1988. Germany occupied Qingdao for 17 years, until 1914 when Japan took over and colonized this city for a total of 13 years. Because of this historical background, the old town area of Qingdao was left with a significant presence of western style architectures built by the Germans and the Japanese. In the wake of China’s economic reform and opening (gaige kaifang) in the 1980s, Qingdao, like many other Chinese cities, faced the pressure of the urban modernization. During the period from 1990 to 2000, the Qingdao municipal government decided to move the administration to eastern part of the city, which made the old town area loses its status as an economic and administrative center. In responds to this decline, and in hopes of improving the situation, the city government attempted to revitalize the area by making the colonial architecture a part of the city image. To do so, they initiated umbers of “projects” to transform the meanings of colonial architecture from a genetic “edifice” to become a celebrated part of city’s “heritage”. This was not a simple transformation, but instead was a process which reinterpreted local and national history, and redefines the way in which the city government promoted a new façade of urban life. As part of the vision of transforming the city’s colonial heritage, the city government declared that modernization would lead citizens and the area to a better life, but instead, the revitalization actually intensified class differences. Drawing from my ethnographic fieldwork, I would argue that the redefinition “project” is in fact a strategy to strengthen the patriotic nationalism and to consolidate the power of control under the guise of urban modernization. By analyzing the urban reform project in the context of post-Mao china, I suggest the process put forth by the Qingdao government was essentially a response to neo-liberalism. Specifically, in improving the economy of the old town area, the citizens were marginalized. This is an example of the making local culture engineered and delivered by local government and driven by national ideology, in contrast to a process that reflected with the vision of the citizens. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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