Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction: Cities Surround the Countryside  1

Part One. Conceiving the Postsocialist City  

1. Designing the Postsocialist City: Urban Planning and Its Discontents  27

2. Theorizing the Postsocialist City: Cultural Politics of Urban Aesthetics  85

Part Two. The City as Subject  

3. Performing the Postsocialist City: Beijing Identity in Art, Film, and Fiction  131

4. Consuming the Postsocialist City: Shanghai Identity in Art, Film, and Fiction  175

Part Three. The Subject in the City  

5. The Melancholic Urban Subject: Black Snow, Private Life, Breathing, and Candy  225

6. Postsocialist Urban Ethics: Modernity and the Morality of Everyday Life  255

Conclusion: Sustainable Chinese Aesthetics  287

Notes  295

Bibliography  331

Index  353

“[T]his book is a strong intervention in our understanding of the key contributors to the urban art scene, and to formations of critique in China’s cities.”—Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, The China Quarterly

“This is an important study of a global issue which applies particularly to China in this period of unprecedented development: how to manage and ‘survive’ in the cities as they expand and modernise.”—Michael Sheringham, Asian Affairs

“[A] timely and valuable study. . . . [It] will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of contemporary Chinese urban culture.”—Andrew Jones, Journal of Asian Studies

“Visser’s study develops a new perspective on critical inquiry and urban culture in the postsocialist period by situating them within the tension between place and space in a rapidly changing urban environment.”—Alexander F. Day, H-Urban, H-Net Reviews

“[I]lluminating and rich in material. . . . Visser’s account of changing urban planning, especially the aesthetics of planning, is fascinating. . . . The book
makes an important contribution to the contemporary cultural studies in China.”—Fulong Wu, Asia Pacific Viewpoint

“In Cities Surround the Countryside, Visser does an excellent job of demonstrating that coordinated analysis of various dimensions of urban experience is a profitable way to read cultural texts. . . . The importance of the collective contribution of this research, though, is a product of the present moment, when Chinese urban development continues at break-neck pace despite pointed questions . . . about the wisdom of moving quite so fast. . . . Chinese artists, writers, and intellectuals will continue to respond to these developments in rich, creative, and perhaps even politically potent ways. Fortunately, we have books like this one to take full account of such creativity and to thoroughly (as much as is possible) contextualize it.”—Paul Manfredi, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

“Robin Visser's book is a fast-paced tour de force through the urban visual field that has exploded in China. . . . The interdisciplinary methodology is innovative and makes the book useful to scholars of urban studies, literary criticism and cultural theory. . . . The major contribution of Visser's book is ultimately her ability to offer an aesthetic perspective that complements the growing historical and sociological studies on urban China.”
—Maurizio Marinelli, The China Journal

“So clear in its aims and expression, [Cities Surround the Countryside] would make a fantastic textbook for undergraduates or provide a more casual reader on China with a fabulous survey of an emerging post-socialist aesthetic. To students of globalisation, it offers an invaluable account of the way that neoliberal economics produces certain modes of subjectivity.” —Darren Jorgensen, Media International Australia

“Visser has given us an invaluable tour of territory that has not previously been charted, certainly not in English. She reminds us that massive urbanization has correspondingly large effects on national culture, and has provided a survey of the ideas of those who are most articulately registering those effects.”—Richard Harris, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

“One of the strengths of Visser’s analysis of urban culture is its ability to situate China’s transformation within imbricated global processes, including the new global imaginaries tethered to urban revolution.... This turn beyond the national is a key element of postsocialist aesthetics. In this context, issues related to global sustainability emerge as key concerns for critics, theorists and practitioners who increasingly recognize the importance of Chinese cities for regional and global futures.”—Joshua Neves, Reviews in Cultural Theory

“Visser’s study distinguishes itself as an ambitious project on a broad range of media and genres, from fiction, film, architecture, and visual art to urban design, with contemporary urban fiction as its focal point.”—Alexander C. Y. Huang, Modern Language Quarterly

“[T]his book is a strong intervention in our understanding of the key contributors to the urban art scene, and to formations of critique in China’s cities.”—Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, The China Quarterly

“This is an important study of a global issue which applies particularly to China in this period of unprecedented development: how to manage and ‘survive’ in the cities as they expand and modernise.”—Michael Sheringham, Asian Affairs

“[A] timely and valuable study. . . . [It] will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of contemporary Chinese urban culture.”—Andrew Jones, Journal of Asian Studies

“Visser’s study develops a new perspective on critical inquiry and urban culture in the postsocialist period by situating them within the tension between place and space in a rapidly changing urban environment.”—Alexander F. Day, H-Urban, H-Net Reviews

“[I]lluminating and rich in material. . . . Visser’s account of changing urban planning, especially the aesthetics of planning, is fascinating. . . . The book
makes an important contribution to the contemporary cultural studies in China.”—Fulong Wu, Asia Pacific Viewpoint

“In Cities Surround the Countryside, Visser does an excellent job of demonstrating that coordinated analysis of various dimensions of urban experience is a profitable way to read cultural texts. . . . The importance of the collective contribution of this research, though, is a product of the present moment, when Chinese urban development continues at break-neck pace despite pointed questions . . . about the wisdom of moving quite so fast. . . . Chinese artists, writers, and intellectuals will continue to respond to these developments in rich, creative, and perhaps even politically potent ways. Fortunately, we have books like this one to take full account of such creativity and to thoroughly (as much as is possible) contextualize it.”—Paul Manfredi, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

“Robin Visser's book is a fast-paced tour de force through the urban visual field that has exploded in China. . . . The interdisciplinary methodology is innovative and makes the book useful to scholars of urban studies, literary criticism and cultural theory. . . . The major contribution of Visser's book is ultimately her ability to offer an aesthetic perspective that complements the growing historical and sociological studies on urban China.”
—Maurizio Marinelli, The China Journal

“So clear in its aims and expression, [Cities Surround the Countryside] would make a fantastic textbook for undergraduates or provide a more casual reader on China with a fabulous survey of an emerging post-socialist aesthetic. To students of globalisation, it offers an invaluable account of the way that neoliberal economics produces certain modes of subjectivity.” —Darren Jorgensen, Media International Australia

“Visser has given us an invaluable tour of territory that has not previously been charted, certainly not in English. She reminds us that massive urbanization has correspondingly large effects on national culture, and has provided a survey of the ideas of those who are most articulately registering those effects.”—Richard Harris, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

“One of the strengths of Visser’s analysis of urban culture is its ability to situate China’s transformation within imbricated global processes, including the new global imaginaries tethered to urban revolution.... This turn beyond the national is a key element of postsocialist aesthetics. In this context, issues related to global sustainability emerge as key concerns for critics, theorists and practitioners who increasingly recognize the importance of Chinese cities for regional and global futures.”—Joshua Neves, Reviews in Cultural Theory

“Visser’s study distinguishes itself as an ambitious project on a broad range of media and genres, from fiction, film, architecture, and visual art to urban design, with contemporary urban fiction as its focal point.”—Alexander C. Y. Huang, Modern Language Quarterly

“Cities Surround the Countryside is about everything important in contemporary China. In sensitive critical readings of everything from buildings and squares to artworks and short stories, from the literature of urbanism to the media of advertising, Robin Visser traces the emergence of a new urban self-consciousness. With its thorough scholarship and deft approach to text analysis, the book goes beyond the humanities to be a major contribution to Asian studies and urban studies, anthropology and history.”—Judith Farquhar, author of Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China

“Cities Surround the Countryside is a truly exceptional book. Robin Visser has identified crucial issues that are nothing short of constitutive of urbanization and its reflections in the intellectual and cultural life of contemporary China. In addition, she deals with an impressive amount of material from various disciplines and media, much of which is little-known in English-language scholarship.”—Maghiel van Crevel, author of Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money

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