Description
Book SynopsisExplores the cultural significance of the explosive growth of Chinas cities during the past three decades through interpretations of Chinese fiction, cinema, visual art, architecture, and urban design.
Trade Review“[T]his book is a strong intervention in our understanding of the key contributors to the urban art scene, and to formations of critique in China’s cities.” - Stephanie Hemelryk Donald,
The China Quarterly“This is an important study of a global issue which applies particularly to China in this period of unprecedented development: how to manage and ‘survive’ in the cities as they expand and modernise.” - Michael Sheringham,
Asian Affairs“[A] timely and valuable study. . . . [It] will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of contemporary Chinese urban culture.” - Andrew Jones,
Journal of Asian Studies“Visser’s study develops a new perspective on critical inquiry and urban culture in the postsocialist period by situating them within the tension between place and space in a rapidly changing urban environment.” - Alexander F. Day, H-Urban,
H-Net Reviews“[I]lluminating and rich in material. . . . Visser’s account of changing urban planning, especially the aesthetics of planning, is fascinating. . . . The book
makes an important contribution to the contemporary cultural studies in China.” - Fulong Wu,
Asia Pacific Viewpoint“
Cities Surround the Countryside is a truly exceptional book. Robin Visser has identified crucial issues that are nothing short of constitutive of urbanization and its reflections in the intellectual and cultural life of contemporary China. In addition, she deals with an impressive amount of material from various disciplines and media, much of which is little-known in English-language scholarship.”—
Maghiel van Crevel, author of
Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money“
Cities Surround the Countryside is about everything important in contemporary China. In sensitive critical readings of everything from buildings and squares to artworks and short stories, from the literature of urbanism to the media of advertising, Robin Visser traces the emergence of a new urban self-consciousness. With its thorough scholarship and deft approach to text analysis, the book goes beyond the humanities to be a major contribution to Asian studies and urban studies, anthropology and history.”—
Judith Farquhar, author of
Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China“[A] timely and valuable study. . . . [It] will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of contemporary Chinese urban culture.” -- Andrew Jones * Journal of Asian Studies *
“[I]lluminating and rich in material. . . . Visser’s account of changing urban planning, especially the aesthetics of planning, is fascinating. . . . The book makes an important contribution to the contemporary cultural studies in China.” -- Fulong Wu * Asia Pacific Viewpoint *
“[T]his book is a strong intervention in our understanding of the key contributors to the urban art scene, and to formations of critique in China’s cities.” -- Stephanie Hemelryk Donald * The China Quarterly *
“This is an important study of a global issue which applies particularly to China in this period of unprecedented development: how to manage and ‘survive’ in the cities as they expand and modernise.” -- Michael Sheringham * Asian Affairs *
“Visser’s study develops a new perspective on critical inquiry and urban culture in the postsocialist period by situating them within the tension between place and space in a rapidly changing urban environment.” -- Alexander F. Day H-Urban * H-Net Reviews *
“For a brilliant discussion of artistic insubordination in reaction to urban modernity in literature, performance and art, I keenly recommend Robin Visser’s
Cities Surround the Countryside.” -- Michael Sorkin * The Nation *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Cities Surround the Countryside 1
Part One. Conceiving the Postsocialist City
1. Designing the Postsocialist City: Urban Planning and Its Discontents 27
2. Theorizing the Postsocialist City: Cultural Politics of Urban Aesthetics 85
Part Two. The City as Subject
3. Performing the Postsocialist City: Beijing Identity in Art, Film, and Fiction 131
4. Consuming the Postsocialist City: Shanghai Identity in Art, Film, and Fiction 175
Part Three. The Subject in the City
5. The Melancholic Urban Subject:
Black Snow,
Private Life,
Breathing, and
Candy 225
6. Postsocialist Urban Ethics: Modernity and the Morality of Everyday Life 255
Conclusion: Sustainable Chinese Aesthetics 287
Notes 295
Bibliography 331
Index 353
