Town and Country in China: Identity and Perception (review)

In 1977 G. William Skinner published his eight-hundred-odd-page volume The City in Late Imperial China, which provided an intensive look at the unique aspects of China's cities. The last decade has seen increased multidisciplinary interest in space, place, and mapping in Asia and elsewhere. Town and Country in China derives its impetus from the confluence of such research streams. Additional inspiration or foil comes from Max Weber's theorizing about the rise of the city in Europe. Ultimately, this new book demonstrates that the relationship between town and country differs both from that in the West and from China's past. "Past" here, or what several authors refer to as "traditional" China, means the China of the Ming and Qing periods.¹ In support of David Faure and Tao Tao Liu's view that a significant distinction between urban and rural life arose only in the twentieth century, Town and Country in China offers ten accounts of particular moments that have constructed or disregarded this bifurcation.

The book's title, Town and Country in China, might appear to slight the topic of cities, but actually it demonstrates the editors' view that within the threefold division of city, town, and country, the most important difference is that between town and country. Although all terms have changed their meanings over time, town (zhen), city (cheng), and country (xiang) have been used for some time. (Henrietta Harrison, on pp. 88-89, discusses terminology; other terms include provincial capital [sheng], county town [yi, cheng, and xian], sub-county town [xiang], and village [li]). Although the units are largely nesting entities, size is not the sole distinguishing feature. Also figured in are features such as administrative presence.

The book is divided, according to the introduction, into two unnamed parts: chapters 1 through 4 treat the Ming and Qing view of town and country (p. 3), and chapters 5 through 10 present various aspects of the transition to the current view ("city-as-centre," p. 6).

Daria Berg ("Marvelling at the Wonders of the Metropolis: Perceptions of Seventeenth-Century Chinese Cities in the Novel Xianshi yinyuan zhuan") examines views of cities through the novel Xianshi yinyuan zhuan (The tale of marriage destinies that will bring society to its senses), showing which aspects of both cities and towns were marveled at by observers, when "market towns developed into commercial and cultural centers" (pp. 21-22).

Zhao Shiyu ("Town and Country Representation as Seen in Temple Fairs") demonstrates continuity in the ways that temple fairs are treated in both town and country during the Ming and Qing. Although there are "power and economic differences" between them (p. 53), it is "necessary to acknowledge the marked cultural unity" (p. 53); "the cultural boundary between the cities and the villages was not definitive" (p. 51).

David Faure's very subtle chapter ("What Weber Did Not Know: Towns and Economic Development in Ming and Qing China") takes up Max Weber's idea of the city as the location for the rise of capitalism because of governmental control (in Europe). In contrast to Europe, in Ming China local groups were in control, yet power structures in towns were fairly uniform throughout the empire. Lineages struggled for control over temples; as "upstart" lineages vied for power, single-surname villages worshipping at ancestral halls were replaced, in many places, by multi-surname settlements (including all towns) with a temple at the center (p. 75). They used forms acceptable to the government, but "[i]n reality, the Ming state absorbed society into it by recognizing many established local practices" (p. 77). Faure shows that there was no necessary overlap between centers of commerce and administrative centers in the Ming, and that struggles between lineages to control local temples in the Pearl River delta and in Zhejiang proves the existence of local autonomy.

Henrietta Harrison ("Village Identity in Rural North China: A Sense of...