Beijing Ring Roads and the Poetics of Excess and Ordinariness

Abstract

“The city,” so does Park argue, “shows the good and evil in human nature in excess.” Which inspires him to read the city as a laboratory to study human behaviour. In my chapter I connect the notion of excess to the significance of the ring roads in Beijing. Beijing is an excessive city par excellence, too big, too polluted, too crowded, too ugly, and changing too fast, making one lose his way time and again. The ring roads function as a symbolic device to keep a sense of control over this excess; they help to locate people and places, they function as the highway in the centre, and they create the mental map of the city. How do Beijing citizens relate to the ring roads? And how do art and popular culture help reimagine the ringroads and contain or parody the excessiveness of Beijing?