Abstract
This chapter examines the political ideology of the grid plan through a historical case study of imperial Beijing. In its centric and symmetrical layout, Beijing is the symbolic embodiment of Confucian ideas of a sacred emperor residing at the center of the universe, coordinating the ways of “heaven” with that of humans on earth. Beijing clearly inherited a classical grid model formulated in the Han dynasty, which prescribed a grand, centric, Confucian order. The author argues in this chapter that the grid layout of Beijing was based upon the adoption of neo-Confucian ideas of imperial rule developed in the Song and the early Ming dynasties. This is reflected in a reinforced emphasis on the need to combine wangdao (sage rulership) and badao (powerful rulership) in the consolidation of a symbolic layout of urban imperial space.
This chapter is a revised version of Zhu, J. (2004). “City Plan as Ideology.” In J. Zhu, Chinese Spatial Strategies: Imperial Beijing, 1420–1911 (pp. 28–44). London: RoutledgeCurzon. Copyright © 2004 by Jianfei Zhu. Reproduced with permission of Taylor & Francis Group.
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Notes
- 1.
Obviously this is not a historical but an ideological approach to the text. The question we are asking here is not the origin of the text (in the mist of the antiquity and controversies) but the theoretical work it offered at a time of cultural and ideological construction, and its impact on subsequent dynasties. Wright (1977) clearly indicated and explored this approach.
- 2.
- 3.
A recent discussion on this issue can be found in Guo (1996). While Guo is skeptical of the dominant impact of this model in real practice, He (1985) maintains that there had indeed been major influences of the model in terms of specific and geometric arrangement. For recent research that has also placed importance on this model, see Steinhardt (1990).
- 4.
The paramount importance of the sacrifices to “Ancestors” and “Land and Grain” since antiquity (Zhou dynasty, c. 11th-third century BCE), the profound symbolic meaning of left and right, as well as East and West, being associated with the two gods, and the adjacency of the sites to the palace which facilitated an easier implementation in construction, seem to be some of the major reasons behind this consistent application of the classical prescription.
- 5.
I am suggesting here that despite the numerous interpretations of Beijing’s symbolism, this overall disposition, in relation to Zhou Li and Han cosmological Confucianism, represented the essential ideas of its symbolic universe. The five agencies (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), four seasons and directions (blue dragon/East, red phoenix/South, white tiger/West, black turtle/North), three groups of stars (the middle of which is for heaven, corresponding to the palace on Earth for the king), two poles (Yin and Yang), elaborated this symbolic universe (rather heterogeneously) and were represented in the positioning, naming, and numerical specifications of major structures of the city and the palace (Jiang 1991). Local mythology (references to the figure Ne Zha) and prescriptions of fengshui (northern flows as negative forces) have also been claimed as influential in determining formal aspects of the city (Meyer 1991).
- 6.
This and the following translations are based on Wright (1977).
- 7.
On the ideology of Chinese planning theory, Wright’s (1977) work remains the most pertinent. His reading of Zhou Li as part of Han Confucian ideology reflects a proper and insightful understanding of pre-Qin theories and Han synthesis in the history of Chinese philosophy. Guo’s (1996) work also offered right intuition on this. Chinese planning theory and city symbolism should be understood in the context of Han Confucianism and subsequent development of imperial ideology. In the following paragraphs, I will expand Wright’s (1977) work and explore the relations between ideology, diagram, and spatial construction.
- 8.
The relationship between the development of Neo-Confucianism and the making of Beijing was insightfully though briefly suggested by Wright (1977). Such a significant relationship, however, is hardly explored in the existing scholarship on Beijing and on Chinese cities.
- 9.
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Zhu, J. (2018). City Plan as Ideology: Reading the Configuration of Beijing in Ming-Qing China. In: Rose-Redwood, R., Bigon, L. (eds) Gridded Worlds: An Urban Anthology . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76490-0_7
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