From traditional flower fair to “degenerate temple” to modern exposition: The local politics and spatial improvement of Qingyang Palace in Chengdu (1906–1937)

Abstract

Prior to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, arguments for transforming cities’ traditional saihui (賽會, ‘religious processions’) into modern expositions frequently appeared in newspapers, and in 1906, the inland city of Chengdu took the lead in putting this into practice. Unlike expositions in other cities, which were either held at factories or in parks, or put on exhibitions at newly constructed venues, the Chengdu Industrial Exposition was reborn from the Qingyang Palace (青羊宫 Qingyang gong) Flower Fair, which had a long-standing history. Officials began holding industrial expositions at the former site of the Qingyang Palace Flower Fair during the period of the New Policy of the late Qing Dynasty, to revitalize industry and commerce and furthermore in the hopes of achieving the objectives of transforming folk customs and improving society. During the Republican period, the Sichuanese government was controlled by warlords, and the industrial exposition was suspended and reinstated several times, but due to the inertia of folk tradition, the flower fairs were consistently held as they had been before. As a space for temporary public exhibitions in the early modern era, the Qingyang Palace Industrial Exposition not only became a field for the exhibition of and chess games between different wills to power due to the concentration of the city’s principal capital forces and agents of power, but furthermore became a focal point for social relationships due to attracting social commentary and a high degree of attention from the media through widespread participation by merchants. From the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic, in the course of officials holding industrial expositions at and promoting the spatial improvement of Qingyang Palace and Erxian Temple, the pulsation of early modern trends of thought, treachery in local politics, the deep roots of traditional customs, and multilateral chess games between social forces surged, engraving the difficult process of the modern metamorphosis, reshaping and growth of a traditional inland city.