Book Review

Asia

Michael Tsin. Nation, Governance, and Modernity in China: Canton, 1900–1927. (Studies of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University.) Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1999. Pp. 276. $45.00.

These two books on provincial capitals in China—one in the south and the other in the southwest—are answers to the recent call in modern Chinese history for studies of cities that, in Joseph W. Esherick's words, lie "beyond Shanghai" (Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900–1950 [2000]). Both can be read as an analytical "biography" of a city; they are the first histories of this sort published in English on the cities in question.	1
Kristin Stapleton's book starts with a sketch of Chengdu as a key provincial capital in the Chinese interior in the late imperial period and follows with an exposition of the city's modernization programs in the decades after 1895, which forms the core of the book. Chengdu's modern fate unfolded through three main stages. First, the city's modernization programs started as a local response to the nationwide "New Policy" reform movement in the late Qing. The primary goal of the reform was to bring modern urban administration and management to the city and hence "civilize" it. This was an experimental stage, yet it was "operated amid considerable public sentiment in favor of institutional and cultural change" (p. 117) and proved to be the most effective and fruitful time of the reform. In the second stage, the city was the hub of the railroad protection movement, which eventually became the fuse that ignited the revolution of 1911. In the third stage, the reform suffered a setback in the aftermath of the revolution, yet it revived in the movement to reconstitute the city's administration during the 1920s, with an infusion of new vigor but also a reawakening to the legacy of the late Qing reform.	2
Stapleton emphasizes the long-lasting influence of the New Policy movement, which echoes the field's general consensus on its impact (see, for example, Douglas Reynolds's work on the "Xinzheng revolution"). Her contribution is that she provides a detailed account of what happened at the local level and convincingly shows the continuity of the Qing reform agenda as it extended into the republican era. She guides the reader to witness the birth of modern urban institutions such as the police force, chamber of commerce, and self-government councils, as well as to observe local leaders who, despite their different motives and approaches, as a group personified the reform. Her accounts of the reformists Zhou Shanpei and Yang Sen are drafted with such care and sensitivity that readers may well feel the passion, vision, and frustration of the two men in their mission of "civilizing Chengdu."	3
A merit of the book is that, from its narrative based primarily on political episodes, a broader social history of the city emerges. Stapleton shows us, among other things, how urban planning and public projects such as street widening and paving fit into the late Qing reform agenda, how policing and neighborhood organizations affected the lives of the subalterns in the city such as street headmen, beggars, and prostitutes, and how secret societies such as the Gelaohui played their role in local politics. Subjects like these have been touched upon in recent scholarship on Chinese urban and social history, yet our knowledge of grass-roots society remains, by and large, uneven and sketchy. This work advances our understanding of the social roots of urban reform in a heretofore little explored interior provincial city.	. . .