Pieter Bruegel and Chinese Urbanism
One of the epiphany moments of Chinese urbanism that I have ever had was a rather unexpected encounter with Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525?â1569) inside a shopping mall in Hefei, in eastern China . This happened in a restaurant which had amber color artificial granite walls fitted with gilded strips and a semi-closed turquoise veranda, as well as other Europeanesque ornaments. Reproductions of several pieces by the Nederlandisch arts master adorned its exterior and interior. The Harvesters was hanging between the pillars on the outside wall, while a section of the Hunters in the Snow was put up behind a round table, typically Chinese, in a dining chamber.
Granted, kitsch reproductions of masterpiece arts for decorative purpose are widely practiced. What is significant is that Bruegelâs paintings embodied one of the earliest urban perspectives on the countryside, i.e. the non-urban. The sixteenth century was a time of changing geographical vistas. Cities in northwestern Europe developed from an earlier stage of urban revival, a phenomenon better known as part of the Pirenne Thesis,1 into full-fledged prosperity (Verhulst 1999). Thanks to the opening of global trade , Antwerp, where Bruegel became a master in painting, was the beacon of urbanism (Silver 1996; Porras 2011a, b). Instead of religious themes or portraits of the aristocrats, Bruegel chose to paint rural landscapes, village scenes, and peasant lives, which won him the nickname âthe Peasant Bruegelâ. Yet, it is beyond doubt that he was painting for the well-to-do bourgeois clienteles.
Modern critics have lately begun to recognize the impact of the social milieu on the enigmatic rural-themed works of Bruegel. According to Porras, âThe peasant (âŠ) was a living embodiment of Renaissance Europeâs own cultural pastâ (Porras 2011a:11). In the face of unprecedented changes in practically every aspects of life, and urbanization in the Low Countries in particular, the peasants and their way of life were in decline. Referring to Ethan M. Kavaler, Zagorin pointed out that âBruegel was aware (âŠ) of the emergence of new values of practicality, social mobility, pursuit of profit, and individual interest, which were replacing an ethos concerned for stability and the common goodâ (Zagorin 2003:94). Rather than being satirical, condescending, or moralizing, Bruegel was empathetic and even somewhat nostalgic toward the quickly dissolving rural world. Indeed, the humanism in Bruegelâs works had been compared to that of William Shakespeareâs (Lewis 1973).
Without further adrift, it is worth noting that historians of China could observe certain resemblances in socio-spatial transformations between China and Europe. Lucien Bianco once noted that âthe Chinese peasant movements in the first half of the twentieth century recall in many aspects those of past centuries in France, but much more often those of the seventeenth, even of the sixteenth, than of the nineteenth centuryâ (Bianco 2009:190). While this may remind one of the âtime lagâ notion in post-colonial studies, Bianco is by no means a post-colonialist. His feeling derived from his senses as a prominent China scholar. He was able to see the jacquerie in Chinese peasant revolts, and vice versa. On the other hand, Maoism , according to him, was to certain classical Marxists and progressive minds âan ill-concealed taste for conservative values such as attachment to the land and parochialism and even a certain obscurantist fascination for these valuesâ (Bianco 2001:46). While this criticism on Maoism is open to debate, it is a plain fact that China under Mao Zedong remained a predominantly agrarian nation.
Chinaâs urbanization has finally gained momentum in the post-Mao era. Urban residents accounted for less than 20% of the population back in the late 1970s. By the 2010s, however, more than half of the Chinese people have made cities and towns their abode. Dwarfed by mega-cities, cities of as much as five million population could only be categorized as âmedium-size citiesâ. The abovementioned restaurant where the Bruegel paintings were to be found was located in a new town built upon the land which was fertile rice paddies only a few years back. Now tens of thousands of urbanites are making daily uses of that shopping mall. It is this kind of âemerging citiesâ that contemporary urban China scholars have dedicated much effort to make sense of (see Friedmann 2005; Wu 2007; Logan 2008; to name but a few). Notably, Wu Fulong had been able to observe a âNew Urbanism â in these cities, not in reference to the late style of urban design, but rather ârefers back to Louis Wirthâs classic study of the nature of the city: âurbanism as a way of life,â to see how a new way of life is under formation in Chinaâ (Wu 2007:23).
Since mid-1990s, urban studies scholars tend to brand the current era as âtransitionalâ, even though the actual meaning of the tag is notoriously ill-defined. Somehow âtransitionâ evokes the imaginary of a linear process, albeit very brief, in-between more established epochs. If present-day Chinese cities are breeding a new type of urbanism, one may rightfully question this urbanism about its quality and novelty. It is from this point of view that the encounter between Pieter Bruegel and the Chinese city is immensely inspiring. It is not too difficult to discern some similarities in the experience of urbanization between the two worlds that are separated not only by the massive Eurasian continent, but also by a few centuriesâ time. As power entangles with capital, fast urbanization brings with it confusion and disorientation. But it is also the high time for the revelation of being urban.
How Relevant Is Historical Geography
In a recent paper, Liu Weidong, a prominent Chinese geographer, expressed his concern over the crisis of the discipline. If research outputs continue to be âconfined to libraries and academic publicationsâ, and âare appreciated only by the members of small academic communitiesâ (Liu 2014:161), human geographers will be failing to secure their position in relationship with society, industry, and the state. Liu stressed that in utilitarian China, practical usefulness is the lifeline of human geography. To illustrate his view, he referred to urbanization and points out that while it âhas become a central element of the Chinese governmentâs decision-making, and a central area of state interventionâ, geographers however âare not much involved as they should doâ, and they âare still far away from a clear understanding of urbanization that can be translated into practiceâ (ibid. 164).
To be fair, Liuâs view is not unusual. Nicholas Phelps and Mark Tewdwr-Jones had also observed the âdisciplinary insecuritiesâ of geographers concerning their fieldâs âposition near the foot of the academic food-chainâ (Phelps and Tewdwr-Jones 2008:567). This situation is only exacerbated by the âdisciplinary snobberyâ between geography and planning , leaving the practitioners of both fields regretfully distanced from each other. But the deep-rooted reason of the divide lies in the fact that the âpostmodern sensibilitiesâ of present-day geographers âare in direct contradiction to the modus operandi of the corporate state apparatus it might seek to influenceâ (ibid. 577, original italic). Planners, on the other hand, have no alternative but working in collaboration with stakeholders, and from time to time yield to the interests of its clients. This difference might help to explain the low involvement of geographers, and historical geographers in particular, in urban development .
Yet, there are reasons rooted even deeper than that. Back in 1979, when Chinaâs urban boom was at its embryonic stage, historical geographers had already voiced their concern. One of the leading scholars, Hou Renzhi, pointed out that âas a branch of modern geography, historical geography must tackle issues such as the origin of the city, the evolution of the city site, urban functions, as well as the formation of urban morphologyâ (Hou 1979:327). On the potentials of urban historical geography , he argued that âThoroughly revealed law and trait [of urban development ] is both the primary study object of urban historical geography , and the essential knowledge [prerequisite] for urban reconstruction. Therefore, this is a field of study that should never be overlooked in urban planning â (ibid. 315). Trained in Britain, Hou was exemplary of the role a historical geographer could play with his own decades-long career dedicated to the study of Beijing . He showed that, for the part of historical geographer, there is not a lack of interest to engage the city. In the ensuring decades, however, historical geographers in general have very little impact on Chinaâs great urban transformation. This paradox may be called âHou Renzhiâs Dilemmaâ.
Seeing from the supply end of urban knowledge, tertiary education for urban planner in China is mostly conducted in either architecture schools (Tongji, Tsinghua, etc.) or former geography schools (Nanjing, Peking, etc.) of the respective universities. Since late 1980s, many of the geography schools or departments were reshuffled and renamed in line with vocational orientations. Utilitarian critics would argue that historical geographers, who by the nature of their discipline, have to undergo lengthy period of training in archival studies and live at a âslowâ pace. They lack the practical know-how to be useful in a âfastâ time of drastic urbanization and social change.
Indeed, it is the demand end that dictates the well-being of a discipline. After the taxation reform in 1994, local governments in China were given more power to develop. In fact, they were also forced to do so in order to secure their fiscal viability. This has led to the so-called 'urban entrepreneurialism', and the local government is a key stakeholder in urban development . Chinese cities functioned as âthe countryâs engine of economic growthâ (Wu 2007:3). Growth, or âGDPismâ as the colloquial language has it, is not just the outcome of development but rather being prioritized as the goal that has to be achieved. The role of urban...