Colonial Island Enclave and Discourses of Urban Modernization in Guangzhou, China

Abstract

This article traces Guangzhou’s urban modernization in the late-Qing and early-Republican eras, with an emphasis on official and public discourses. Focus is placed on interactions between the colonial island enclave of Shamian, separated from the mainland by the Shaji Canal, and the Changdi waterfront that was built on the mainland as a Chinese reaction to the foreign island. Shamian and its Bund exhibited a Western urban modernity that prompted both admiration and anticolonial sentiment in the wider Chinese community. Guangzhou’s government reacted to developments on Shamian by constructing Changdi as a modern waterfront district on the north shore of the Pearl River, opposite Shamian. Discourses of urban modernization evolved and underwent cross-cultural exchange throughout. This article takes an island studies approach to analyze the spatial and discursive coproduction of the geographically restricted nearshore island as a colonial enclave and the vast Chinese mainland city striving for self-determination and urban modernization.