The nation's concrete heart: Architecture, planning, and ritual in Nanjing, 1927--1937 (China)

This dissertation is about how the “model capital” at Nanjing became a symbol of Chinese nationhood during the Nationalist era from 1927 to 1937. To do so it describes the political sources of the capital's establishment in 1928, the ideological discourse used to try to legitimize Nanjing as a new capital, the scientific methodology used to plan the city, the aesthetic experiments used to construct it, the reinvention of traditions used to make official spaces seem sacred, and the ways that people actually experienced life in the city. By looking at the various layers of meaning assigned to the city of Nanjing over these years, a better understanding of what it meant to be a modern Chinese capital emerges.; In short, this dissertation is about the construction of the symbolic legitimacy of a capital city. It is the contention of this dissertation that “legitimacy” is the product of conflict, not unanimity. A symbol gains its power not from being free from conflict, but from convincing people that a higher truth exists above the fray. By the end of Nationalist era, Nanjing had become the legitimate capital of China, not because it had magically united the masses of China under the charisma of the late Sun Yatsen. Instead, the city only really became a symbol of Chinese unity because strife among those who cared for the values of Chinese nationalism that the capital represented remained constant throughout the “Nanjing Decade.” As long as people believed that it was important to struggle over the particular meanings and goals of nationhood in Nanjing, then the capital succeeded in embodying the imagined nation that transcended the struggles.