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Building Up Modernity?: The Changing Spatial Representations of State Power in a Chinese Socialist “Model Community”1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

WING CHUNG HO
WING CHUNG HO*
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong
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Abstract

This essay looked into how a group of residents in a Chinese community negotiated with the ideological tropes inscribed in the spatial, which aimed to build up state–people trust on the future course of national development. Under investigation was a slum-turned-socialist-model community called “Cucumber Lane” in two historical junctures in which its spatial settings were radically reorganized. It was argued that the two spatial reorganizations exemplified two major state-led projects of modernity, each of which entailed a specific representation of space that ideologically adumbrated a specific course of national development. It was found that while the residents welcomed the project of modernity launched in the 1960s with enthusiasm, they received the other in the 1990s largely with apathy, and even with mistrust and disbelief.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 6 , November 2008 , pp. 1137 - 1171
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

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16 65.4% of the elderly residents were female. As to the residents aged from 15 to 59, 52.2% were female. In Shanghai as a whole, the elderly population was nearly 18% in 2000.

17 The only sizable resident movement in the past few decades was the demolition of the ‘outermost layer’ of the community around 1995–96.

18 Cucumber Lane had four gates: two facing south (the Number One Gate and the Number Two Gate), one west (the Number Three Gate), and one north (the Number Four Gate). The Number One Gate where the three Chinese words ‘fan’, ‘gua’ and ‘nong’ (Cucumber Lane) were inscribed on the wall beside the gate was generally regarded as the front gate (See Figure 2).

19 The Historical Gazette recorded that the ‘eighteen huts’ were accorded the status of ‘cultural objects’ on 7 December 1977, and put under the special protection of the municipal authorities. OSHG, Zhabei qu zhi, p. 1293.

20 It was common in Cucumber Lane for different families to share a kitchen and toilets. The principles guiding the number of rooms to which each family was entitled were complicated and had been changed from time to time. For example, in the 1960s, the criteria included the number of family members, the amount of rent that each family could afford and the political background of the residents. Since the initiation of the reform era in 1978, the main criterion used by the work units had been the size of the accommodation entitled to each family as part of their labor benefits. But, in reality, it was common to see each of the three rooms allocated to three different families; or two rooms allocated to one family, with the other room to another family. It was rare for one family to occupy all three rooms.

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22 A couple of residents said that the only one who could afford electricity was the local chieftain, Tang Guoruo. He lived in the only two-story house in Cucumber Lane at that time. However, other informants could not further confirm this claim.

23 The ‘hole of a culvert’ meant, as confirmed from the residents, the opening of the gundilong, inside which people needed to bend their body.

24 OSHG, Zhabei qu zhi, p. 1290. Although the Gazette suggested that the verse had arisen from the populace, the residents did not seem to know it. However, they generally agreed that what was described in the verse reflected their real past lives.

25 Ibid.

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27 Across the 1950s, many huts were demolished. In 1963 just before the renovation started, 63.0% of all accommodations were cottages. OSHG, Zhabei qu zhi, p. 1290.

28 Ibid.

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31 The article was entitled, ‘Welcome New Households Moving into New Homes’. Memories faded. No one today exactly remembered the gongs and drums. But they could clearly confirm the feelings of excitement about being the first to move into the flats.

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35 Scott (1998) was particularly critical of the ‘authoritarian high modernists’ who constructed heroic visions through space in the state attempts of ‘high modernism’, who held abiding desire to render human and social environments ‘legible’, e.g., the ‘scientific’ forestry in Germany and the villagization in Tanzania. Scott argued that these projects intended to improve human condition failed because the ‘authoritarian high modernists’ destructed practical, local knowledge ‘metis’ and replaced it by a few standardized formulas legible only from the center.

36 It is interesting to note that during my archival research, a report published in Jiefang Daily in 1964 was identified stating that keeping the 18 gundilong was the idea of the residents, not the state. The article stated that

In response to the decision of the residents [of Cucumber Lane], the authority concerned has decided to keep several huts and cottages after the reconstruction of Cucumber Lane is complete. These huts and cottages will be used as ‘teaching materials’ [jiao cai] in conducting ‘class education’ to the younger generations.

But the old residents rejected this almost outright. One old resident noted: ‘How could the residents have the power to make such a decision!? It must be decided by someone at the top of the hierarchy’!

37 It is suggested to refer to R. Madsen, Morality and Power in a Chinese Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), for an insightful discussion of the interaction between the traditional Confucian ideology and the modern socialist tenets in a Chinese village.

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64 Ibid., p. 41.

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68 Wang and Murie put even further as to raise that with the rapid growth of the private sector in providing residential housing, it became highly questionable as how far people, even for the state employees, still identified their best interests with the state. Wang, Y. & Murie, A., ‘The Process of Commercialisation of Urban Housing in China’, Urban Studies, 33:6(June) (2000), pp. 971–989CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 W. C. Ho, see no. 38.