Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T19:47:56.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Postmodern” Space in the Heart of Beijing: From the National Theater to the Palace Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

John Zaixin Zhang
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I would like to draw on Wai Chee Dimock's notion of “deep time” as “denationalized space” to situate the present study in the context of postmodernism and globalization (“Time” 760). Dimock argues that “literary space and time are conditional and elastic; their distances can vary, can lengthen or contract, depending on who is reading and what is being read” (“Planet” 174) and that “the continuum of historical life does not grant the privilege of autonomy to any spatial locale” or “to any temporal segment”: “periodization, in this sense, is no more than a fiction” (“Time” 757). Within this constellation of ideas, the “postmodern” space in the heart of Beijing stretches back to ancient China as much as it reaches forward to contemporary thought. In this sense, “postmodern” space, as a quotation (of other quoted spaces), is both postmodern and antipost-modern, postmodern in the sense that the past has collapsed into the present and antipostmodern in the sense that postmodernism is as postmodern as it is ancient, so that it loses its foothold in contemporaneity and its need for periodization. In the pages that follow, I will discuss the “postmodern” space manifested in the National Theater of China and the Palace Museum (also known as the Forbidden City) in terms of a blurred spatial dichotomy of inside and outside.

Type
Correspondents at large BEIJING
Information
PMLA , Volume 122 , Issue 1: Special Topics Cities , January 2007 , pp. 256 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. Empire of Signs. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill, 1982.Google Scholar
“Beijing chengshi zongti guihua (2004 nian–2020 nian)” [General Plan of the Beijing Municipality (2004–20)]. Beijingshi guihua weiyuanhui [Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning]. 2004. 8 Dec. 2006 <http://www.bjghw.gov.cn/ztgh>..>Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. 1994. London: Routledge Classic, 2004.Google Scholar
Broudehoux, Anne-Marie. The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing. New York: Routledge, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.Google Scholar
Chung yung. Ta hsüeh 21–55.Google Scholar
Ci hai [Encyclopedia of Words]. 4 vols. Shanghai: Shanghai Cishu, 2002.Google Scholar
Crawford, Margaret. “The World in a Shopping Mall.” Variations on a Theme Park. Ed. Sorkin, Michael. New York: Hill, 1992. 3–30.Google Scholar
Digital Palace Museum. 16 Nov. 2006 <http://www.dpm.org.cn>..>Google Scholar
Dimock, Wai Chee. “Deep Time: American Literature and World History.” American Literary History 13 (2001): 755–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dimock, Wai Chee. “Literature for the Planet.” Gunn, Globalizing 173–88.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon, 1978.Google Scholar
Fung, Yu-lan. The Period of the Philosophers (from the Beginnings to circa 100 B.C.). Trans. Derk Bodde. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1952. Vol. 1 of A History of Chinese Philosophy.Google Scholar
Gunn, Giles. “Globalizing Literary Studies.” Introduction. Gunn, Globalizing 16–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunn, Giles. coordinator. Globalizing Literary Studies. Spec. issue of PMLA 116.1 (2001): 1–272.Google Scholar
Han, Fei. Han Feizi: Basic Writings. Trans. Burton Watson. New York: Columbia UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. 1990. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Globalization and Political Strategy.” New Left Review 4 (2000): 49–68.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Kahn, Joseph. “A Glass Bubble That's Bringing Beijing to a Boil.” New York Times 15 June 2004: A1.Google Scholar
Le, Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. Trans. Frederich Etchells. 1960. New York: Praeger, 1970.Google Scholar
Li, Jing. “Argument Hits New Pitch at Opera House.” China Daily 13 Apr. 2005: 5.Google Scholar
Liu, Jinghua. “Time for Chinese Architects to Come Out of the ‘Eggshell.‘” China Daily 29 June 2004: 13.Google Scholar
Meyer, Jeffrey F. The Dragon of Tiananmen: Beijing as a Sacred City. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1991.Google Scholar
“Oils Depict Life of Forbidden City.” People's Daily Online 22 Sept. 2004. 15 Nov. 2006 <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200409/22/eng20040922_157920.html>..' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=“Oils+Depict+Life+of+Forbidden+City.”+People's+Daily+Online+22+Sept.+2004.+15+Nov.+2006+.>Google Scholar
Mark, O'Neill. “To Build or Not to Build.” South China Morning Post [Hong Kong] 21 Sept. 2000: 17.Google Scholar
“Outrage.” Architectural Review Dec. 1999: 27.Google Scholar
Plaks, Andrew. Notes. Ta hsüeh 57–106.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Elisabeth. “Beijing Picks Frenchman's Plan for Theater Complex.” New York Times 7 Sept. 1999: E1.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Benjamin I. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Sit, Victor F. S. Beijing: The Nature and Planning of a Chinese Capital City. Chichester: Wiley, 1995.Google Scholar
Spence, Jonathan D. Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture. New York: Norton, 1992.Google Scholar
Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. New York: Norton, 1990.Google Scholar
Ta hsüeh and Chung yung (The Highest Order of Cultivation and On the Practice of the Mean). Trans. Plaks, Andrew. London: Penguin, 2003.Google Scholar
Tang, Bo. “Gulao hongqiang jiande dajuyuan” [The National Grand Theater between Ancient Red Walls]. Sanlian shenghuo zhoukan [Sanlian Life Weekly] 30 Aug. 2000: 64–67.Google Scholar
Wang, Ning. “Globalizing Chinese Literature: Toward a Rewriting of Contemporary Chinese Literary Culture.” Journal of Contemporary China 13.38 (2004): 53–68.Google Scholar
Willetts, William. Chinese Art. New York: Braziller, 1958.Google Scholar
Wright, Arthur F. “The Cosmology of the Chinese City.” The City in Late Imperial China. Ed. Skinner, G. William. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1977. 33–73.Google Scholar
Wu, Hung. Headnote on Zhang Hongtu's Untitled: Big Red Door. Wu, Wang, and Feng 154.Google Scholar
Wu, Hung. Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005.Google Scholar
Wu, Hung, Huangsheng, Wang, and Boyi, Feng, eds. The First Guangzhou Triennial—Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art, 1990–2000. Guangzhou: Guangdong Museum of Art; Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2002.Google Scholar
Wu, Liangyong. Jianzhu, chengshi, renju huanjing [Architecture, City, and the Built Environment]. Shijiazhuang: Heibei Jiaoyu, 2003.Google Scholar
Xinzhong, Yao. Preface. Ta hsüeh vii –xxi.Google Scholar
Yin, Hong and Chen, Hang. “Guojia dajuyuan kandian” [Distinctive Features of the National Grand Theater]. Ren-min ribao [People's Daily] 17 Dec. 2003, overseas ed.: 8.Google Scholar
Yu, Zhuoyun. Palaces of the Forbidden City. Trans. Ng Mau-Sang, Chan Sinwai, and Puwen Lee. New York: Viking, 1984.Google Scholar
Zhang, Hongtu. Untitled: Big Red Door. 1992. Guy and Myriam Ullens Collection, Antwerp. Wu, Wang, and Feng 155.Google Scholar
Zhang, Longxi. Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative Study of China. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Zhu, Jianfei. Chinese Spatial Strategies: Imperial Beijing, 1420–1911. London: Routledge, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zukin, Sharon. The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.Google Scholar