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UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Opening Up the Northwest: Reimagining Xi'an and the Modern Chinese Frontier Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/87z489hj Author Tai, Jeremy Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ OPENING UP THE NORTHWEST: REIMAGINING XI’AN AND THE MODERN CHINESE FRONTIER A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY by Jeremy Tai June 2015 The Dissertation of Jeremy Tai is approved: _________________________________ Professor Gail Hershatter, chair _________________________________ Professor Emily Honig _________________________________ Professor Noriko Aso _____________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Jeremy Tai 2015 CONTENTS List of Figures……………………………………………………………………..…iv Abstract………………………………………………………………………………vi Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………viii Introduction…………………………………………………………………………....1 Chapter 1: The Origins of the Northwest Question in China……………………...…16 Chapter 2: The Geography of National Defense……………………………………..72 Chapter 3: Everyday Life in 1930s Xi’an………………………...………………...107 Chapter 4: The Garden City and the Eyesores of Xi’an……………………………158 Chapter 5: Xi’an as a Producer City……………………………………………..…219 Epilogue…………………………………………………………………………….262 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..…276 iii List of Figures Map 1. Locating the Northwest……………………………………………………...27 Image 1. Comparing the Southeast and the Northwest………………………………41 Image 2. “Sending off Feng Yong and Lin Pengxia to the Northwest”…………..…60 Image 3. Lin Pengxia………………………………………………………………...63 Image 4. “Elm trees in Shaanxi stripped bare by disaster victims to allay hunger”...……………………………………………………………………..74 Image 5. Soldiers building dikes to prevent the recurrent floods threatening Tienshui, Kansu………………………………………………………………………...75 Image 6. San Yuan Bridge…………………………………………………………...75 Map 2. Railways in Republican China……………………………………………..108 Image 7. “Famine in Northwestern China”…………………………………………110 Image 8. Nanyuanmen following the macadamization of roads……………………115 Map 3. Republican Xi’an…………………………………………………………...117 Image 9. Afanggong Advertisements in Northwest Cultural Daily………………...126 Image 10. Photographs of the Zhou and Yellow Emperor’s tombs………………...181 Image 11. Zhang Puquan performing rites at Huangling on behalf of the central government…………………………………………………………………182 Image 12. Three Magnets…………………………………………………………..187 Image 13. “Howard’s ideal of a garden city”.............……………………………...191 Image 14. Learning from Hao Jianxiu……………………………………………...235 iv Image 15. “One Soviet advisor assisting with installations at the Xi’an No. 2 Power Plant”..……………………………………………………………………...238 Image 16. “Power Plant inherited from the Guomindang” and “The outer appearance of the Xi’an No. 2 Power Plant after expansion”……………………...240-241 Image 17. “Farewell comrades”…………………………………………………….258 v ABSTRACT Opening Up the Northwest: Reimagining Xi’an and the Modern Chinese Frontier Jeremy Tai This study examines how different ideological regimes in modern China have all responded to crises, whether economic, territorial, or spiritual, by extending state power and accumulation strategies into the northwestern corner of the country. Histories of modern China have typically turned to eastern centers of state and colonial power, especially Beijing and Shanghai, for an index of economic development and modernity. Yet, Northwest China, a seemingly remote backwater, has figured prominently in political economy over the long twentieth century. The dissertation demonstrates how economic planning in China was born not in the People’s Republic, but during the Great Depression when the Northwest became the first of a series of focal regions created to transfer capital and population from the coast. “Opening Up the Northwest” was followed by three campaigns launched in the name of correcting regional inequality in the People’s Republic of China: the First Five Year Plan (1953-1957), the Third Front (1964-1980), and, most recently, “Open Up the West” (2000-present). The dissertation contributes a cultural and historical perspective to conversations among geographers and political scientists about the growing importance of regional economies as subnational scales of territorial organization. Through a panorama of state campaigns in the Northwest representing fascist, communist, and neoliberal ideologies, this work shows how Chinese leaders vi have garnered national support by constructing fantasies that speak to the cultural and environmental particularities of the region. State-builders have often inspired a nation to head to the Northwest by likening this region to “virgin land” in the American West or reminding their audiences of past glory along the ancient Silk Road. Beyond the gaze of state authorities, my work delves into complex experiences inflected by gender, class, and ethnicity in the regional center of Xi’an. A closer look at these historical moments reveals the realities of underdevelopment, the dispossession of ethnic minorities and agricultural communities, orphans forcibly recruited for settler colonialism, traditional virtues imposed on “Modern Girls,” the criminalization of refugees and migrants, and accelerated environmental degradation. This work contributes to the growing literature on everyday life in China, using the local histories of Xi’an and its environs to show how the material instantiations of modernity always fall short of the desires they engender no matter where they take place. vii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I must express my deepest gratitude to my advisors Gail Hershatter and Emily Honig for their continuous support, dedication, and grace during my graduate school career. In 2008, Gail challenged me to “leave the frozen climes of [New York City]” and “take the Pacific leap.” After making the unthinkable cross-country move, I quickly became enchanted by the redwoods and beaches in Santa Cruz, and found a vibrant intellectual community working in cultural studies. I will forever be grateful to Gail and Emily, who I had long admired as gender historians, for training that made me attentive to sources and good writing. In particular, I will never forget Gail loading her research methods students into her Toyota Siena minivan to head to the Chinese collections at Stanford and Berkeley, not to mention the care she took each time she wielded her infamous red pen, which has now taken digital form. Through their examples, I also learned the important life lesson of how to be intellectually generous and, in the process, I found a world of teaching and learning opportunities. I have also had the great pleasure of learning from Noriko Aso, Alan Christy, and Minghui Hu, the other East Asia faculty members in the History Department. Along with Gail and Emily, Noriko has been an outstanding mentor, providing me with invaluable guidance and insights on all of my writing ever since I first took classes with her. I also want to thank Jon Beecher, Dana Frank, Matt O’Hara, Buch Sharp, and Mark Traugott for their patience as I pursued interests in intellectual viii history, history from below, gender, race, colonialism, and capitalism outside of my field in their seminars. Alice Yang deserves special mention for her marvelous direction of our MA writing seminar, which allowed me to first start thinking about this project. Outside of the department, I also had the great fortune of taking courses on Marxism, post-colonialism, feminism, aesthetics, and urban studies with Gopal Balakrishnan, Angela Davis, Wlad Godzich, Donna Hunter, Daniela Sandler, Vanita Seth, Dick Terdiman, and Megan Thomas. I continue to be inspired by the intellectual audacity that I discovered in my readings and discussions with all of these professors. This dissertation would not have been possible without generous funding that supported two years of research in China and Taiwan, namely, a Fulbright research grant from the Institute of International Education, a graduate fellowship from the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program, and a research grant from the Center for Chinese Studies at the National Central Library in Taipei. In addition, summer funding from the UCSC Institute for Humanities Research and the History Department was crucial when I was developing my dissertation prospectus. A Chancellor’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship funded me while I was writing up this year. In Xi’an, I would like to thank Shi Hongshuai at Shaanxi Normal University for helping me gain access to the local archives. I am incredibly grateful to the staff at the Xi’an Municipal Archives for their assistance retrieving materials and for their patience as I subjected them to countless hours in front of the photocopying machine. The many friends and colleagues that I met in Santa Cruz, Xi’an, and Taipei have provided an indispensable network of support. I have learned so much from ix years of conversation with Nellie Chu, who has been my co-conspirator ever since I visited as a prospective student, as well as Ana Candela, Erin Gray, Amy Lee, and Dustin Wright – all of whom brilliantly mix their wisdom, knowledge, and political convictions with a sense of humor. Fang Yu Hu has been a constant source of cheer and encouragement ever since we started our program. I was also glad to