Beijing Record: A Physical History of Planning Modern Beijing by Wang Jun (review)

Beijing Record is the most detailed analysis to date of the transformation of Beijing’s urban form after the Communist Revolution. Wang Jun expertly weaves together a political history of the debates surrounding planning decisions in the 1950s and 1960s with a biography of Liang Sicheng, probably China’s most important twentieth-century architect. He places this narrative within the context of both the wider history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and international trends. His sources include archival documents and interviews, and the latter in particular allow the motivations of those involved to be explored to a depth that is rare in histories of this period. Small wonder then, that since this book’s first publication in Chinese in 2003, it has been reprinted numerous times and won several awards. Its author is a Xinhua journalist who campaigns for cultural preservation in Beijing and around the country.¹ This means that, at times, the narrative may seem a little polemical or sentimental. While some readers might find the style unwieldy, this is more the fault of the translator than the author. Nevertheless, this book will reward anyone interested in Beijing, the history of planning in China, or simply the early days of the PRC.

Beijing Record begins with the recent destruction of several historical buildings, one of which played host to Sun Yatsen in 1912, and this introduces the tensions between preservation and development in contemporary China, as well as the problems rapid urban expansion can cause. Wang Jun uses these issues to highlight the foresight of Liang Sicheng, whose plans for Beijing in the 1950s were never implemented, to the detriment of the city as a whole. Despite the architect’s failures, he is central to the history of planning in the city, and in returning to the Republican period, the book begins to intertwine history and biography. Thus, we learn that Liang studied at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to China and eventually founding Qinghua University’s Department of Architecture. Other people central to the development of Beijing include Chen Zhanxiang, an urban planner who studied in the United Kingdom, who was to become one of Liang’s closest colleagues. This background also connects Beijing to the history of planning around the world. Particularly interesting are Japanese plans for the city drawn up in 1938, which envisaged preserving the ancient center and building new administrative areas in the suburbs (pp. 53–59). It is somewhat ironic that an invading power should seek to preserve historical Beijing intact, while the Communist government that was about to replace it seemed determined on its destruction.

The debate over whether to redevelop the ancient heart of Beijing or create a new administrative area for the government forms the subject of chapters 3 and 4. They describe the proposal for urban development drawn up by Liang and Chen and chart the reasons it failed to be implemented. Although their ideas were at odds with the advice of Soviet planners, some Chinese architects, and Mao himself, Wang Jun paints Liang Sicheng as a heroic figure, working to preserve as much of ancient Beijing as possible. He was certainly not dogmatic in his beliefs, but his position brought him into contact and conflict with political figures and entrenched ideas on the nature of socialist construction. Wang Jun reprints a letter from Liang to Zhou Enlai, describing how other Chinese architects criticized the proposal, and notes that Liang’s critique of Soviet advisors was also seen as counter to the “leaning to one side” policy then informing foreign relations (pp. 126–131). The failure of initial plans for redeveloping Beijing not only cost the city dearly, but also had serious ramifications for Liang himself. As the narrative moves into the mid-1950s, architecture and urban planning are interwoven ever more closely with the political history of the era.

Liang’s contribution to Chinese urban...