| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Yinong Xu. The Chinese City in Space and Time: The Development of Urban Form in Suzhou. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2000. Pp. x, 361. $47.00.

Chye Kiang Heng. Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 1999. Pp. xviii, 240. $48.00.

People trained in European history tend to think of cities in terms of self-governing, Greek city-states (polis being the root for "politics" and related concepts) and of urban-rural contrasts ("city air breathes free" versus the serfdom that prevailed in the medieval countryside). In China's long history of urbanism, very different symbols have dominated. Rather than standing for local autonomy, the walled (cheng, the most common Chinese word for city, has the root meaning of "wall") city functions most importantly as the center of imperial administration over a defined area. The imperial capital is the apex of a hierarchy of cities, and must be arranged to display the emperor's right to rule; he will receive his officials "facing south" in a throne room oriented properly to the four quarters, to which orientation the streets, walls, gates, and other buildings of the capital will also conform. And, despite its walls, the Chinese city is part of an urban-rural continuum. Urban and rural architectural styles are not sharply contrasted, and every city is the seat of one or (less often) two administrative districts (xian) whose total territory is largely rural. Paul Wheatley, Frederick W. Mote, and Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt have written major interpretations of the Chinese city, and the two books under review are valuable additions to this literature. . . .

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