Prologue to Frontier Modernity: Zhangjiakou (Kalgan) as a Gateway City for the Modern Western Expeditions in China

Abstract

The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed an age of expedition frenzy that had spread east as the Western explorers diverted their interest in Central Asia across the continent to Chinese Xinjiang, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia. To facilitate the planning and logistics of their expedition activities, Western explorers selected specific cities situated on the Chinese northern and western frontiers that were geographically suited to their needs and interests, as well as to serve as their temporary basecamps throughout the expedition period. Kalgan, the name by which the city of Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province is most known to Westerners, is a city with close to 2,000 years of history as a frontier trade zone since the Eastern Han Dynasty, emerged from these expedition activities as an embodiment of full-fledged urban modernity in the early 20th century. Railroads, postal services, telegram lines, banking systems, and customs were all established as necessary infrastructures, turning this historical frontier city into a practical “pivot” from which the expedition operations were managed, relayed, and communicated with the explorers’ respective home nations. Through photos, writings, and other types of housekeeping documents (i.e., cheques, telegrams, and balance sheets), this paper aims to examine the cultural memory of Kalgan against the modern Western expedition activities that had directly, or indirectly, stimulated the modernization of a frontier city, one that had historically been a gateway city where the Chinese heartland meets the outside world.