The Neighborhood

"This book is a centuries-spanning account of Xita, a neighborhood located in Shenyang, the largest city in Northeast China. By telling its story over four centuries, Nianshen Song shows how it has encapsulated China's metamorphosis from a Eurasian empire to a post-industrial consumerist society. He further charts the complex urbanization process through which Xita developed, and he also vividly illustrates the profound extent to which it has been shaped by multiethnic communities, including Tibetan, Manchu, Mongol, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, and Korean populations. Song begins his story with the establishment of Mukden/Shenyang as a Tibetan Buddhist center, focusing on the lives of the lamas who staffed its temples, exploring their relationships with the state and decline after the collapse of the Qing. Song then takes us to 1928 and the assassination of a Chinese warlord, through which he explores the history of the rival railway systems that crossed Xita and propelled the modernization of Shenyang. Next, he explores the era of Japanese colonization, examining the tourism industry as a critical element in Imperial Japan's ideological project, before turning to the experiences of ethnic Koreans and showing how Xita became a pillar of the Korean-Chinese community. He concludes by reflecting on the neighborhood's latest incarnation as an entertainment quarter by foreign and domestic capital. As Song shows in this micro-global history, much is contained in-and unlocked by-the history of Xita and its transformations"-- Provided by publisher.

Nianshen Song is professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, China. He is the author of Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881-1919.