Renewing, Remapping and Redefining Guangzhou, 1910s-1930s

The modernization of traditional Chinese cities was generated by various causes and took different paths. Generally speaking, however, three kinds of changes were commonly experienced. They are, first, functional change -- that is, the renewal of urban infrastructures, such as road system, sewage system, and other urban public facilities, in order to accommodate the traditional city to modern conditions; second, layout change -- that is, the remapping of the urban space based on modern theories of urban planning; third, conceptual change -- that is, the redefinition of urban spaces with new ideology. This paper is going to investigate these three changes that happened in Guangzhou between the late 1910s and the early 1930s, a crucial period of its modern transformation.

Current studies on Guangzhou take the city’s modernization as a result of modern China’s political changes and physical development. Although this kind of observation is genuine perceived from a macroscopic level, it overlooks the specific role that the municipal authority, the decision-maker or the “mind of the city,” played in the city’s modernization, and how its will is embodied in the city’s spatial and formal transformation. This paper investigates Guangzhou’s functional, layout and conceptual changes accompanied by its economic growth, the development of urban planning, the quest of Chinese nationalism, and the internecine struggles inside the Guomingdang (KMT) during this period. It argues that the spatial and formal transformation of Guangzhou was a result of China’s big political changes and physical modernization, and also reflected the specific “will” of the Guangzhou municipal authority and the Guangdong KMT it represented. This “will” includes such aspects as to facilitated the economic development of the city physically, and the construction of the national identity culturally; to follow the United State as the political model; to disseminate KMT ideology in urban public sphere; and to legitimate the Guangdong KMT as Sun Yat-sen’s orthodox successor in the party’s factional struggles against the Nanjing KMT.

Right after the establishment of the Republic of China, the newly established Guangdong government began to renew the urban infrastructures of its central city Guangzhou by tearing down city walls, constructing ring roads, straightening and widening streets and improving the sewage system, etc. This urban functional change demonstrated what J. Esherick called “the triumph of a new discourse of economic development over old concerns for security, and a shift from controlling to facilitating the movement of goods and people.” (Joseph Esherick, ed., Remaking the Chinese City, Honolulu, 2000. p. 7) In the 1920s, Mayor Sun Ke (Sun Fo), son of Sun Yat-sen and an American-trained municipal expert, invited the American architect Henry K. Murphy to plan Guangzhou modeling after, as the author believes, the Washington DC. The idea of urban planning was inherited by Sun’s successors who continued remapping the urban space according to the zoning theory of modern city planning. While the city plan aimed to reorganize and redistribute the resources of urban space, a series of monuments, monumental architecture built after the 1911 Revolution, such as the 72 martyrs’ grave, the new civic hall, and especially the Sun Yat-sen Monument and Memorial, gave the city a revolutionary flavor. These ideological symbols of the KMT thus redefined Guangzhou urban space. Moreover, being the most eminent landmark in the city, the Monument, which was built as the evidence of the KMT’s acceptance of Sun Yat-sen’s final will and testament, and the Memorial, which was decorated with Sun’s relief, final testament and other words, became the spatial and symbolic link between the deceased party leader and the Guangdong KMT.