Sam Vanhee. Politics of White. White in Contemporary Urban China

POLITICS OF WHITE white in contemporary urban china

Ir.-arch. Sam Vanhee

Thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Advanced Master of Human Settlements.

Promotor: Prof. dr. ir.-arch. Hilde Heynen

Academic year 2019 - 2020

POLITICS OF WHITE white in contemporary urban china

Ir.-arch. Sam Vanhee

Thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Advanced Master of Human Settlements.

Promotor: Prof. dr. ir.-arch. Hilde Heynen Assessors: Prof. dr. Ching Lin Pang dr. arch. Min Tang Prof. dr. arch. Kelly Shannon Academic year 2019 - 2020

© Copyright KU Leuven Without written permission of the thesis supervisor and the authors it is forbidden to reproduce or adapt in any form or by any means any part of this publication.

Requests for obtaining the right to reproduce or utilize parts of this publication should be addressed to Faculteit Ingenieurswetenschappen, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1 bus 2200, B-3001 Heverlee, +32-16-321350.

A written permission of the thesis supervisor is also required to use the methods, products, schematics and programs described in this work for industrial or commercial use, and for submitting this publication in scientific contests.

Zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van zowel de promotor als de auteurs is overnemen, kopiëren, gebruiken of realiseren van deze uitgave of gedeelten ervan verboden. Voor aanvragen tot of informatie i.v.m. het overnemen en/of gebruik en/of realisatie van gedeelten uit deze publicatie, wend u tot Faculteit Ingenieurswetenschappen, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1 bus 2200, B-3001 Heverlee, +32-16-321350.

Voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de promotor is eveneens vereist voor het aanwenden van de in deze masterproef beschreven (originele) methoden, producten, schakelingen en programma’s voor industrieel of commercieel nut en voor de inzending van deze publicatie ter deelname aan wetenschappelijke prijzen of wedstrijden.

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT – This research departs from Li Shiqiao’s book Understanding the Chinese City –which reads the predominance plethora of off–white buildings in China as a compromise between white as an index of hygiene and its reference to death and depletion. This reasoning however does not seem to apply to the increasing number of pure white projects, especially interiors, appearing in the architectural press. What might cause this increased use of white? A possible answer is provided by more closely investigating the cultural value of white in the Chinese context, as well as certain spatial-aesthetical notions linked to Chinese traditions.

These insights are combined with an analysis pointing at recent political, social and economic developments. The thesis argues that the increasing prominence of pure white might be seen as a reaction against the “more-is-more” aesthetics of the masses, generated by the need for individual distinction (Bourdieu). The research ends with a discussion on hutong renovations and the Beijing Design Week, and how they might fit in this trend.

Key terms: White – Urban China – Chinese Aesthetics – Li Shiqiao – Hutong

CONTENTS

Figures

vii

Acknowledgements

xii

Introduction

1

Identification: Tracing the Value of White White in Contemporary Chinese Architecture

White in Euro-American Culture: an Overview White in China: An Overview

Confrontation: Between Observation & Theory Spatial-Aesthetical Frameworks in China

Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

A Socio-Economic Perspective

Distinction in 21 -Century China st

Photo Essay: Between Bland & Blank

7 8 20 32

47 48

63 64 74 92

vi Contents

Excursion: Utopia, Heterotopia & White White as a heterotopia

Conclusion

101 102

117

Conclusion

118

Appendix

122

Bibliography

126

FIGURES

FIGURE 1 Beijing Friendship Hotel, No Title, year unknown, digital image, Bei-

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

FIGURE 4 FIGURE 5

FIGURE 6

jing (https://www.booking.com/hotel/cn/beijing-friendship.html: accessed May 3rd 2020). 9 U.S. Embassy China, A screen shows Arabella Kushner, granddaughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, singing in Chinese during a state dinner for him at the Great Hall of the People, 2017, digital picture, Great Hall of the Public, Beijing. https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/zh/day-2president-trump-first-lady-melania-trumps-visit-china-zh/.

10 Right: the division of projects in Zhi Wenjun’s Atlas of Contemporary Architecture. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Tianjin and Zhejiang are the most represented. Left: typologies of the discussed projects. Musea and offices are most represented.

12 The three categories - apart from the typology - that were used to group the projects.

13 Iwan Baan, No Title, 2010, digital picture, Zhujiajiao Museum of Humanities, Zhujiajiao Town, Shanghai. https://www.world-architects.com/es/scenic-architecture-shanghai/project/zhujiajiao-museum-of-humanities-and-arts 14 tvsdesign No Title, 2008, digital picture, Conference room in the Nanjing National Conference & Exhibition Centre in Nanjing. https://www.archdaily.com/265681/nanjing-conference-center-tvsdesign?ad_medium=gallery 14

viii Figures

FIGURE 7 TM Studio, No Title, 2007, digital picture, Suquan Yuan, Suzhou.

FIGURE FIGURE FIGURE FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE FIGURE

FIGURE FIGURE FIGURE

https://www.world-architects.com/de/tm-studio-shanghai/project/suquan-yuan 15 8 IQRemix, No Title, 2013, digital picture, National library of China in Beijing. https://www.flickr.com/photos/iqremix/16359392581/ 15 9 Tiina Rajala, No Title, 2007, digital picture, Terrace of Paimio sanatorium, no URL available.

25 10 Sjoers Hofstra, Seated company and military chapel standing behind, 1934, black and white photograph, Kailahun. https://www.ascleiden.nl 27 11 Raphaël.Transfiguration, 1520, Oil painting, Height: 405 cm Width: 278 cm, Vatican Pinacoteca. https://www.wga.hu/html/r/raphael/5roma/5/10trans.html 30 12 Decorative patterns for the dougong in the Yingzao fashi 营造法式. Li Jie & Zhu Qiqian, Li Mingzhong ying zao fa shi: 36 juan, Tao Xiang: Chuan jing shu she fa xing, Wujin, 1925, vol. 8, ch. 34, plate 18.

33 13 Unknown photographer, Chinese funeral procession on the streets of Portland, 1888, photopgraph, Oregon Historical Society, Photographic Services 1200 SW Park Avenue, Portland. https://content.libraries. wsu.edu/digital/collection/wsuvan1/id/1185/ 36 14 Diagram based on the diagrams in the Vide et Plein of François Cheng. Note that White can be changed into any Yang element, and black into any corresponding Yin element (like the Yin-Ynag symbol Cheng bases these kind of diagrams on).

38 15 Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance , 1980, Handscroll; ink and color on silk, 35.6 × 104.4 cm, Metmuseum New York, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/39668 38 16 Ana Paula Hirama, Beijing Opera, 2012, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.flickr.com/photos/anapaulahrm/6933930382/ 40 17 Yellow roof tiles were, in the Qing Dynasty, reserved for imperial buildings. Gate of Supreme Harmony, Forbidden City, Beijing. Picture by author.

42 18 Atelier Fronti, Villa A and B in Lushi Mountains, 2010, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.fronti.cn/ 51 19 Atelier Fronti, Villa A and B in Lushi Mountains, 2010, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.fronti.cn/ 51 20 Iwan Baan, Poet Residences by Zhang Lei, Shen Kaikang and Zhang Ang, 2008, digital picture, Nanjing, https://iwan.com/portfolio/zhang-

Figures ix

FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE FIGURE FIGURE FIGURE

lei-brick-house/ 54 21 Iwan Baan, Poet Residences by Zhang Lei, Shen Kaikang and Zhang Ang, 2008, digital picture, Nanjing, https://www.chinese-architects.com/ fr/azl-atelier-zhanglei-nanjing/project/brick-house-1 54 22 Benjamin Lipsman, Farnsworth House, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 2011, digital picture, Plano, Illinois. https://www.flickr.com/ photos/blipsman/5923853252/ 55 23 Luca Vasconi, Playing mahjong in the hutong streets, while a fellow hutong-dweller leaves for work in the city, 2014, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.thecrowdedplanet.com/the-last-hutong-beijing/ 57 24 Fang Zhenning, Beijing Hutong Bubble No. 32 by MAD Architects, 2010, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/ mad-architects-hutong-bubble-32-beijing/ 58 25 Shuhe, Beijing Hutong Bubble No. 32 by MAD Architects, 2010, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/madarchitects-hutong-bubble-32-beijing/ 58 26 Open Architecture Office, BEFORE/AFTER , 2017, in Beijing Design Week, Open Architecture Office (Beijing, unpublished, 2019), page 3.

59 27 Example of a building with a Big Roof. Picture by author.

66 28 Olli Salmi, Diplomatic compunds in Beijing, 1974, in A Social History of Maoist China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), page 27. 68 29 paul Dingman/CTBUH, Interior of the entrace hall of the BEA Financial Tower in Shanghai, 2009 ,digital picture, Shanghai. http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/bea-financial-tower/8813 69

FIGURE 30 Unknown, Nianhua of Baby and Dragon, 1980, Poster, Postermuseum.

FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE FIGURE

https://postermuseum.com/collections/100-250/products/nianhua-of-baby-and-dragon 71 31 Construction site in Baitasi area. The structure is completely new.

The erea is well-known for its many renovations and refurbishments, as well as the yearly Beijing Design Week. Pictures by author.

81 32 Vertical wooden member for the roof construction. Every piece is premade and has a name to identify where it should come. Picture by author.

81 33 Lin Zhouxin, No Title, 2014, Drawing, in Architectural Journal (2014), 6, page 20.

83 34 Taobao, No Title, 2020, Screenshot, https://detail.tmall.com/item. htm?spm=a230r.1.14.58.2aef21f92QeZiD&id=612041369820&ns

x Figures =1&abbucket=2 84 FIGURE 35 Iwan Baan, Facade of the Ningbo Historic Museum designed by Amateur Architecture Office, 2008, digital picture, Ningbo, https://iwan.com/ portfolio/wang-shu-ningbo-historic-museum/ 84 FIGURE 36 Iwan Baan, Concrete Slit House by Zhang Lei Architects, 2008, digital picture, Nanjing, https://iwan.com/portfolio/zhang-lei-concretehouse/ (altered version on the right) 86 FIGURE 37 Jeremy San, House and workshop in Guanshuyuan Hutong by Atelier Liu YuYang Architects,2010, digital picture, Beijing. https:// www.archdaily.com/556142/no-18-guan-shu-yuan-hutong-atelierliu-yuyang-architects?ad_medium=gallery (altered version on the right.) 86

FIGURE 38 Left: Jeremy San, House and workshop in Guanshuyuan Hutong by Atelier Liu YuYang Architects,2010, digital picture, Beijing. https:// www.archdaily.com/556142/no-18-guan-shu-yuan-hutong-atelierliu-yuyang-architects?ad_medium=gallery (slightly altered). Right:

by Author. 92

FIGURE 39 Left: Iwan Baan, Concrete Slit House by Zhang Lei Architects, 2008, digital

picture, Nanjing, https://iwan.com/portfolio/zhang-lei-concretehouse/ (slightly altered version). Right: by Author.

94 FIGURE 40 Left: Wang Ning, QianShi, 2019, digital picture, Beijing, https:// www.archdaily.cn/cn/923887/bei-jing-zhe-die-yuan-jian-zhuying?ad_source=myarchdaily&ad_medium=bookmark-show&ad_ content=current-user (slightly altered). Right: by Author. 96

FIGURE 41 Left: Wang Ning, Zoulang, 2019, digital picture, Beijing, https://

FIGURE FIGURE

FIGURE

FIGURE

www.archdaily.cn/cn/923887/bei-jing-zhe-die-yuan-jian-zhuying?ad_source=myarchdaily&ad_medium=bookmark-show&ad_ content=current-user (slightly altered). Right: by Author.

98 42 F lags are hung all over the Baitasi neighbourhood. It gives the surrounding a touristic feeling, almost like an attraction. Picture by author. 105 43 Sun Haiting, Renovated courtyard house by Wonder Architects, 2017, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/wonder-architects-hutong-beijing-02-12-2018/ 110 44 The book shop in the area of the Qianmen. On the outside, the materials are left bare, on the inside, wood is contrasted with sharp white walls. Pictures by author.

111 45 Peoples Architecture Office, Plug-in Hutong House, 2016, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/peo-

Figures xi ples-architecture-office-plugin-house-beijing-hutong-mrs-fan-china-12-05-2016/ FIGURE 46 The interior of the weekend school designed by ZAO/Standardarchitecture. The space is very lively and freely used. After hours, parents gather in the alley in front of the school, waiting for their children. People talk, children play. Picture by author.

FIGURE 47 Top: Su Shengliang, Micro Yuan’er by ZAO/Standardarchitecture, 2013, digital picture, Beijing, http://www.standardarchitecture.cn/ v2news/7299. Bottom: picture in 2019. All houses seem abandoned, and a homeless man is sitting on the left. He made a home out of this locked-out renovation. He owns matress, bottles of coke and canned beer. There was a slight sent of urine. Picture taken by author.

112

113

115

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I want to thank my supervisor, Prof. dr ir.-arch. Hilde Heynen, for accepting me as a thesis student. I enjoyed the many discussions and admired her critical mindset and vast knowledge. Every time again, I was amazed by the many books and authors she knew and advised me to read. It is thanks to her that I learned so much about performing research. I also very much appreciated that she took all the time needed to help me make this thesis better. Needless to say that, without her, this thesis would not have been possible.

Secondly, I want to thank the whole team of NG-Lab – and especially Nicolas Godelet, Aya Godelet, Li Minghao, Zhuang Yongwen, Gauthier Ralet and Luigi Minciarelli – for making the six months internship in Beijing as educative and curious as it was. They provided me with invaluable insights into Chinese architectural practices, the Chinese language and the profession of the architect. I believe the internship in Beijing had a direct influence on the quality of this thesis; a solid background to relate to.

Thirdly, I am incredibly grateful for Hanlin Li’s patience, selflessness and inexhaustible support. Without his courage to allow me to follow my dreams (twice already), I would never have succeeded. He keeps amazing me in every aspect, even after four and a half years.

Lastly, I want to express my most sincere gratitude towards my parents, Mariann Baert and Philippe Vanhee, for raising me and supporting me throughout

Acknowledgements xiii

my life and allowing me to go abroad. I am convinced that their competence as parents – and as people in general – paved the foundations for me to build upon.

INTRODUCTION

“While white is the state of depletion, red is the state of full vitality. For this reason, red is used to celebrate life in its sanguine prosperity (weddings) while white is used to mark the depletion of life (funerals); ... The Western construction of whiteness, however, perhaps first centered on its quality of potentiality rather than depletion; whiteness seems to present maximum potential in its purity (weddings), while blackness, one could argue, indicates its exhaustion (funerals).� (Li 2014, 121) The spark that ignited the thought process behind this thesis is the book of Li Shiqiao, titled Understanding the Chinese City. Li reads the Chinese city in different ways (e.g. as a place of abundance, as a space of care and a space of danger).

Most striking is the chapter on antisepsis. Therein, Li states that the Chinese city is an endroit of high density; of people in close proximity (ibid., 119). The materiality of the urban tissue of the Chinese city has been impacted by the need to limit the spreading of virusses and diseases: surface textures and colour schemes have adapted to the contemporary urban environment, and with that, there has emerged a new urban Chinese aesthetics, as Li argues (ibid.).

In the same chapter, Li expands on the colour of white. On the one hand, white is a colour on which one believed to be able to see the traces of disease or poisonous air – according to the now obsolete theory of the miasma (ibid., 123). Flor-

2 Introduction

ence Nightingale based her analysis of hospitals and their need for ventilation on this theory. It was believed that bright surfaces allowed one to detect dirty or disease-bearing air, and hence, could react by increasing the ventilation to evacuate these fumes. In that sense, white was – and to a certain extent still is – a reporter of safety or danger (ibid., 124). On the other hand, Li Shiqiao also poses that white is, specifically in Chinese culture, the colour of the depletion of life. If the Chinese city is an environment that tightly controls the viral and bacterial spreading, Li uncovers an impasse: using bright white might contribute to the need for antisepsis in an urban environment, but at the same time there is the cultural pejorative of white as depletion (ibid., 125).

As Li proposes, many buildings in Hong Kong – and extendable to urban Mainland China – have chosen the middle ground: off-white (ibid., 125). Indeed, it seems very considerable and enlightening. His argument puts the plethora of beige and off-white architecture in urban China into a critical perspective. Although the explanation might be very reasonable and, by extension, even be true, some doubts surfaced. It seems that, for at least a part, Li’s discussion of white rules out some kinds of projects. What with the multitudes of contemporary urban architectures that are white? If one takes a look at the influential Architectural Journal (建筑学报 jian4zhu2xue2bao4), it could be argued that white interiors are turning into a rule more than being a marginal exception on the discourse.

There is the Dachang National Palace in Hebei (Architectural Journal 2016, issue 11), the Ruichang Petro-Chemical North office building in Henan (Architectural Journal 2014, issue 6) and the Liberal Arts Building on the Nanjing University campus (Architectural Journal 2013, issue 8). Naturally, there are many more examples in other issues, magazines, journals and online architectural platforms. It seems questionable that all of these projects are either purely antiseptic or mere exceptions to the rule. The research question can be posed as follows: Is white becoming increasingly present in urban Chinese architecture and, if so, what might cause this increased use of white, despite its apparent negative connotation?

The thesis starts with the observation that there seems to be a particular paradigm shift, or at least a recently emerging architectural practice, that slips out of Li’s definition.

The first chapter expands on the observation itself, and explains why and where

Introduction 3

Li’s account leaves out certain architectural developments from the last twenty years. Additionally, the posed observation – namely that white is indeed becoming more predominant in recent architectural discourse in urban China – has to be tested. For this, we will use the Atlas of Contemporary Chinese Architecture compiled by Zhi Wenjun – chief editor of the famous Time + Architecture Magazine (时代建筑 杂志 shi2dai4jian4zhu2za2zhi4) and professor at Tongji University in Shanghai – and Dai Chun. All of the projects they discuss – there are 246 of them, spread over Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao – are built in the last twenty years. A close reading and analysis will reaffirm the observation at the start of this thesis.

Chapter Two and Three provide an overview of white in Euro-American and Chinese culture respectively. The idea to involve Euro-American sources is to express that the development of white architecture in urban China is not necessarily ascribable to the Modernist Movement or the International Style. A comparative reading is hence not the goal of these two chapters. Rather, they may both show a similar historical, modernising impuls as a reaction against diseases, but with a different outcome and with different (cultural) implications. Chapter Three is a more extensive overview than Chapter Two, since the focus is still to understand what white is in China.

Chapter Four is a in-depth analysis of what effect white can have on certain essential spatial-aesthetic notions in urban China. These notions are borrowed from other Chinese authors and include ‘clutter aesthetics’ (David Wang), ‘scarcity’ (Duanfang Lu) and the ‘fertility principle’ (Li Shiqiao). The idea is that, by discussing these notions, we can come to an understanding of the possible adaptability and compatibility of white. Additionally, we could discover where white seems to clash the most. Those points of friction will be further focussed on in the following chapters.

Chapter Five provides an overview of the developments in the twentieth century in China, addressing the different attitudes towards decoration and architectural style. The description is concerned with the social, economic and political background. The belief is that spatial-aesthetic notions are influenced by the social, economic and political climate. The chapter ends by observing some macro-developments that become visible.

4 Introduction

In Chapter Six, the macro-observations are further developed using Cai Yi, Kommonen and Bourdieu’s writings. The lead that I will follow here is the dynamics of social distinction. Pierre Bourdieu’s book called La Distinction will help us to do so. Cai Yi will be important to allow us to use Bourdieu, since we have to admit that using a French source to explain developments in China cannot happen without justification. The chapter continues by interpolating our observations and the macro-developments from Chapter Five. The goal is to find if there is a plausible explanation for the emergence of white architecture in the twentieth century.

The chapter ends with a synthetic scheme that formulates a possible answer to the main question of the thesis.

Chapter Seven is a photo essay that aims to show the visual relationship between orchestrated photography of contemporary white architecture and calligraphy. It visually develops some of the elements discussed in Chapter Six. The pictures presented are pictures from projects discussed in the Atlas of Zhi and Chun, or from projects in hutong neighbourhood. The contrast of the pictures is elevated, and the pictures are depicted in gray tones. The idea is to show that such architectural pictures of white projects are calligraphically readable: movement, texture, shadow and emptiness all are visually important elements. Although calligraphy is much more than only that, the essay should show, without words, that white in architecture turns into blandness on paper: between bland and blank.

Chapter Eight serves as an excursion. It is an application and extension of Chapter Six. The reason why this chapter is important is to further open up a debate on the topic of white in Chinese urbanism and architecture, while simultaneously applying the build-up argument to a particular context. This context will be the hutong neighbourhoods in Beijing. Being very polemic and critical at once, these poor and dilapidated neighbourhoods have become a place of prolific architectural renovation and fashionable design. Strikingly, white is a recurring theme in many of the projects. The argument put on the table concerns white as a heterotopia (as defined by Michel Foucault). However, the chapter also provides a possible extension that goes beyond white as a mere colour.

Introduction 5

Notes on the Romanisation of Chinese characters For some of the Chinese terms, the characters will be provided in simplified Chinese, conform to the official writing system of the People’s Republic of China (hereafter PRC). The English translation is always given first, followed by the simplified Chinese version and the romanisation between brackets. The romanisation accords with the Pinyin system. A number from 1 to 4 succeeds every syllable, which represents the tone of that syllable. Although consistency is essential, romanised names of Chinese people are chosen by people themselves, as well as the order of given name and surname. This work respects the personal choice for a particular order and romanisation. Hence, some romanised names may not be written according to Pinyin. Only in the bibliography and the appendix are the surnames and given names consistently positioned, to allow for an alphabetical list.

Notes on word use In order to avoid a generic comparison between supposedly monolithic and static entities (‘the West’ versus ‘the East’), we will abstain from specific terms. First of all, Euro-American culture is used as a more accurate term than the ‘West’.

Secondly, the term ‘traditional’ is overused and inaccurate. Although ‘tradition’ is used to describe a premodern situation or habit, it carries the connotation of primitiveness. As Hilde Heynen describes very aptly in her Architecture and Modernity: a critique, one of the three basic meanings of the term ‘modern’ is “an opposition to the old” (Heynen 1999, 9). It suggests a specific context that is, in essence, different and discontinuous with a primitive past. Moreover, the term suggests a habit that has taken form for an extended period, embodying justifying authority: traditions have survived the test of time, and cannot be subject to questioning (Knapp 2004, 15). To avoid any of the complications mentioned above, let us use the term ‘premodern’.‘Courtyard’ is another such term. In compliance with Knapp’s comment about the popular but wrong translation of 天井 (tian1jing3) into ‘courtyard’ (Knapp 2005, 20), in this thesis ‘sky well’ will serve as the correct translation.

PART I

Identification: Tracing the Value of White

1

WHITE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ARCHITECTURE

This first chapter starts with the work of Li Shiqiao, namely Understanding the Chinese City, in which he provides theoretical tools and notions to understand and read the Chinese city. The chapter in his book that sparked the thought process of this thesis, is the chapter about antisepsis, as mentioned before. Therein he makes an argument about the use of white – or rather the abstaining from it – in urban Chinese cities. White, as Li argues, is first of all a visual agent that renders dirt and diseases visible (Li 2014, 124). He bases his position on the writings of Florence Nightingale who discussed the miasma theory and ventilation in hospitals. The miasma theory claimes that poisonous fumes would leave staines on bright (white) surfaces, and hence one could see where extra ventilation was necessary to evacuate poisonous air (idib., 123). As Li sees it, the importance and predominance of white in antisepsis is a latent consequence of the impact of this theory (also related to a modernising impuls, as we will argue later on). He continues by explaining that a contradiction arises between white as an antiseptic agent, and white in the Chinese cultural context: white has the connotation of death and depletion (ibid., 121). Hence, he comes up with a very credible argument that would explain the provenance of off-white (a kind of light beige, close to white but not as bleached) surfaces in the Chinese urban landscape: off-white is to be read as a compromise between antisepsis and culture (ibid., 125).

White in Contemporary Chinese Architecture 9

Contemporary Chinese architecture: an observation Li’s argument is very thoroughly explained and seems applicable on the Chinese urban tissue in general; as it is built. My observations throughout my experience as an architecture student and Engineer-Architect in China – more specifically in Shanghai and Beijing, respectively – seems to form an addition to that, based on how urban architecture is published.

First, many buildings – think of fancy restaurants, hotels and government buildings – are indeed off-white or non-white, certainly the interior. One might go even further by posing that many interiors are not only off-white, but often display a rich variety of materials: different kinds of natural stone, exquisitely shiny lacquered wood, gold-coloured metals or expensive textiles. Just think of the interiors of the (refurbished) Beijing Friendship Hotel and the (refurbished) Great Hall of the People (see Figure 1 and 2 respectively).

Second, if one takes a look at the contemporary architecture that is produced in urban China – certainly the high-culture architecture talked about in Chinese

Figure 1

Beijing Friendship Hotel, No Title, year unknown, digital image, Beijing

(https://www.booking.com/hotel/cn/beijing-friendship.html: accessed May 3rd 2020).

10 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

Figure 2

U.S. Embassy China, A screen shows Arabella Kushner, granddaughter of U.S.

President Donald Trump, singing in Chinese during a state dinner for him at the Great Hall of the People, 2017, digital picture, Great Hall of the Public, Beijing. https://china.usembassy-china. org.cn/zh/day-2-president-trump-first-lady-melania-trumps-visit-china-zh/.

journals like the Architecturel Journal (建筑学报 jian4zhu2xue2bao4) or Time + Architecture Magazine (时代建筑杂志 shi2dai4jian4zhu2za2zhi4) – one would quickly notice that white interiors are not much of an exception anymore. In order to see if white has indeed entered the architectural practice in such a way that it is more than an exception, let us make an in-depth analysis of the Atlas of Contemporary Chinese Architecture by Zhi Wenjun. The reason for choosing this atlas is twofold.

Firstly, Zhi Wenjun is chief editor at Time + Architecture Magazine – a potent Chinese Magazine first published in the 1980s. Since we need a condensed selection of architectural and urban projects to keep the analysis concise, choosing the atlas he composed might be a good choice. Secondly, because the selection covers Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao, the projects discussed in the atlas are most likely high-end projects. If, then, a substantial amount of the selected works is predominantly white, it might be possible to argue that white has entered in the discource of prestegious architecture. The findings might form an expansion of Li’s account: a view on built urban architecture and published urban architecture.

White in Contemporary Chinese Architecture 11

The atlas The Atlas of Contemporary Chinese Architecture – edited by Zhi Wenjun and Dai Chun – has been composed in 2014 and covers 246 projects built between 2003 and 2012. The projects are categorised according to their geographical location, and should give – according to Zhi – a concise but representative idea of the fastpaced architectural developments in the 21st century that are happening all over China (Zhi 2014, 8). Zhi and Chun chose to focus on specific, economically flourishing areas: the Beijing-Tianjin axis, the Yangzi River Delta and the Pearl River Delta are the three regions that are most represented (see Figure 3). They argue that the cultural, economic and geographical advantages of these regions solidify the quality of the contemporary Chinese architecture located in them. Their selection represents ‘the height of contemporary Chinese architectural development’ (ibid., 9), with both foreign and local architecture offices, contemporary architecture and historically sensible projects (ibid., 9). We will focus mainly on the projects in Mainland China and Hong Kong, since Li Shiqiao’s book also covers that area. Nevertheless, the atlas is analysed as a whole. Using the atlas as a representative work also means one needs to be aware that the atlas is not a complete representation, and is in fact a very small piece of the developments happening in the area that is covered, a fact also pointed out by the editors of the atlas.

What follows is an explanation of the method used to categorise, as well as an explanation of the different variables used to do so. The projects are categorised according to colour palette, origins of the architects, the visual relation with premodernity and typology. The chapter ends with some remarks on the selection, findings and further implications.

Variables To allow for a deeper understanding of the selection of the atlas, all projects are categorised according to five variables: location, interior colour palette, the nationality of the designers or the design team(s), typology and the visual reference to premodernity. Because the atlas covers an expansive area, it is essential to allocate them to a specific region. The possible labels are taken over from the categorisa-

12 Identification: Tracing the Value of White Region Beijing Tianjin Hebei Shanxi Inner Mongolia Liaoning Jilin Shanghai Jiangsu Zhejiang Anhui Shandong Fujian Taiwan Hunan Hubei Henan Guangdong Hainan Hong Kong Macau Chongqing Sichuan Guangxi Tibet Yunnan Ningxia Shaanxi Total

Figure 3

Number of Projects 44 14 7 2 6 6 1 31 24 15 4 4 3 9 4 4 3 22 1 9 1 5 5 4 3 4 1 10 246

Typology Sports Centre Art Centre Office Urban Project Museum Bar Restaurant Hotel Commercial Centre Cultural Centre House Residential Complex Exhibition Centre Artist Residence Club House Train Station Airport City Hall Town Hall Education Centre School Entertainment Centre Library Pavilion Community Centre Multifunctional Space Kindergarten Factory Tourist Centre Terminal

Number of Projects 11 14 34 10 46 2 1 21 8 3 8 10 12 5 5 4 1 3 2 1 13 9 6 2 3 3 2 1 4 1

Right: the division of projects in Zhi Wenjun’s Atlas of Contemporary Archi-

tecture. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Tianjin and Zhejiang are the most represented. Left: typologies of the discussed projects. Musea and offices are most represented.

tion of Zhi Wenjun: for projects in Mainland China, the projects are combined per province, while for the projects outside of Mainland China are referred to by either ‘Taiwan’, ‘Hong Kong’ or ‘Macao’.

Secondly, the interior colour palette is crucial, since this thesis intends to analyse its relation to other factors. There are four possible values for this variable: ‘white’, ‘tectonic’, ‘rich’ and ‘inconclusive’. The first value refers to predominantly white projects. Projects of which only elements like the bathroom, kitchen or ceiling are white do not count. This is to avoid wrong correlations: many projects can have a

White in Contemporary Chinese Architecture 13 Palette of Colour and Materials Amount of Projects White 98 Rich Materials 72 Tectonics 44 In-Between 32 Origin Chinese Foreign Mixed

Amount of Projects 149 74 22

Link with Tradition Yes No

Amount of projects 41 205

Figure 4

The three categories - apart from the typology - that were used to group

the projects.

white kitchen or bathroom – because of the need for antisepsis – while otherwise showing traits of another category. It serves to filter out the use of white as merely functional. Only when the whitewash extends beyond these places is the project considered white (Figure 5). ‘Tectonic’ refers to projects that are using rough materials like bare concrete, bamboo, unpainted wood and stone. Most critical-regionalist projects belong to this label, but not all ‘tectonic’ projects are critical.

Tectonics is considered as a specific category because some of the most influential contemporary projects are specifically sensitive towards tectonics (Figure 7). The oeuvre of Amateur Architecture Studio by Wang Shu is exemplary (see Figure 35 on page 84). Often do these projects inventively relate to premodern construction methods and materials. Hence, giving these projects their own label allows for more precise rendering of the relationship between colour palette and premodern traits. Thirdly, there is the value ‘rich’. All interiors that have a rigorous interior with apparently expensive materials and warm colour palette belong to this value (Figure 6). The reason why this value is included, is because the chapter started with the observation that many projects are indeed off-white, or more radically stated, rich in their application of materials. To see if that observation is feasable, it is important to give these projects their own value. Remeber, the assumption here was that the more prestigious buildings – be they governmental institutions

14 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

Figure 5

Iwan Baan, No Title, 2010, digital picture, Zhujiajiao Museum of Hu-

manities, Zhujiajiao Town, Shanghai. https://www.world-architects.com/es/scenic-architecture-shanghai/project/zhujiajiao-museum-of-humanities-and-arts

Figure 6

tvsdesign No Title, 2008, digital picture, Conference room in the Nan-

jing National Conference & Exhibition Centre in Nanjing. https://www.archdaily. com/265681/nanjing-conference-center-tvsdesign?ad_medium=gallery

White in Contemporary Chinese Architecture 15

Figure 7

TM Studio, No Title, 2007, digital picture, Suquan Yuan, Suzhou.

https://www.world-architects.com/de/tm-studio-shanghai/project/suquan-yuan

Figure 8

IQRemix, No Title, 2013, digital picture, National library of China in

Beijing. https://www.flickr.com/photos/iqremix/16359392581/

16 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

or expensive hotels – are often clad in rigorous materials (on the inside). Lastly, there is the ‘inconclusive’ value. These projects are no clear example of any of the other three values (Figure 8). This is to allow for variation: we cannot pose that all projects are either white or its opposite.

The third variable is the nationality of the designers, with three possible values. Some Western architectural firms are quite successful in China, so we want to give them a specific value: ‘foreign’. Subsequently, we use ‘Chinese’ for teams that are predominantly Chinese. One or two foreign individuals are allowed, on the condition that all other members are Chinese. Only when there are multiple individuals from both labels combined, do we call it ‘mixed’. Hence, if there is one foreign company and several Chinese architects working on the project, it is a mixed project. For international firms (who operate both inside and outside Mainland China), the country of origin is used: an American firm with a Chinese filial is still considered ‘foreign’.

For the fourth parameter, there are the most diverging values. Whenever the typology is explicitly mentioned in the name, that typology was used. Other typologies were researched on different platforms. Only when specific typologies seemed to overlap, were they merged into one (e.g. ‘exhibition hall’ and ‘memorial hall’ become ‘exhibition hall’). However, the ‘artist residence’ and ‘house’ are not merged, because, for the artist residence, there often is a workshop attached to the house. Crucial is to limit the number of typologies to allow for comparison, while also being aware of the differences between typologies.

Next, the variable ‘visual reference to premodernity’ can either be ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Only obvious references (renovations, premodern structures, motifs or architectural forms) are labeled as ‘yes’. If we would consider immaterial and conceptual references to premodernity – like feng shui principles or the idea of the sky well on a much larger scale – as ‘yes’, than, arguably, any project could pose as related to premodernity. To find a more critical and better division, we stick to obvious, formal references.

Lastly, it has to be remarked that this categorisation leads to loss in diversity.

Some large buildings can have both very rich and very white rooms. In that case, the most prominent rooms were considered, or the building was catalogued as ‘inconclusive’.

White in Contemporary Chinese Architecture 17

Findings Let us first concentrate on the typologies. If we consider the typology related to the arts and exhibitions – Museum, Artist Residence, Exhibition Centre and Art Centre – we see that 77 projects fall under this category. Of those 77 projects, 46 are categorised as ‘white’. It means that 60% of art-related projects are white. This is quite significant. As we will see later on, white appears to be the ultimate colour for spaces for international art. This might be an explanation why white is quite predominant in art-related typologies.

If we take a look at the (single-family) houses – both ‘artist residence’ and ‘house’ – we see that a total of 10 houses are catalogued as ‘white’. That is 77% of all houses. Without the ‘artist residence’ it makes up 75% of the houses. The high percentage is remarkable, yet on should take into account that onle 13 houses are presented in the atlas.

Another item worth mentioning is the projects that have a visual link with premodernity. There are 41 of them. Of those 41, only 8 of them are musea and exhibition centres. 7 of them are hotels, and also 7 of them are houses (either ‘artist residence’ or ‘house’). If we put these numbers in proportion to the number of projects per typology, we see that 14% of musea and exhibition centres, one-third of hotels and 63% of houses are considered as ‘visual reference to premodernity’.

Interestingly, the houses are more consistently relating to premodernity than musea, exhibitions or hotels. When the ‘artist residence’ is combined with the ‘house’, 63% of them have distinct premodern ties. If we take only the houses that are both white and have a premodern character, it equals 50% of the houses. For the artist residences, we never see a combination of white and premodern character.

(Again, we have to take into account that the houses are not very well represented).

What is sure, is that all single-family houses selected in his book are only for the very rich: owning a renovated sky well house in, for example, Central Beijing is for many a luxury they cannot afford.

Also, we must consider the fact that Zhi’s selection is a selection of the more significant projects (in terms of fame, prestige and scale): of architecture with a big ‘A’. There are 72 projects that showcase abundant application of expensive materials. Relatedly, there are 98 projects that are distinctly white. So if it is plausible

18 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

that an abundant application of rich materials may be a part of the high culture of Chinese architecture, it could also be argued that this book of big architecture includes white projects as a new vocabulary. Hence, white interiors may have the potency to express prestige as well.

White as a prestigious colour?

Since the observation I made earlier in this chapter – namely that white has become more prominent in urban Chinese architecture (or the during the last two decennia) – seems to stroke with what we see in Zhi’s atlas, there might be some truth to it. One might wonder, however, why there is a difference between what Li argues – namely that white is often avoided in the Chinese urban, built environment (mainly because of the negative connotation of white as death and depleation) – and the publication of architecture in a similar context. This is what this research intends to discover.

In order to find what mechanisms might be behind the apparent rise of white urban architecture in China, one must understand how white is positioned inside the cultural background. The next two chapters provide an overview of white in Euro-American and Chinese culture. By juxtaposing them, they may both show a similar historical modernising impuls as a reaction against, for example, diseases, but with a different outcome and with different (cultural) implications. It might help one to understand a potential underlying impetus.

White in Contemporary Chinese Architecture 19

2

WHITE IN EURO-AMERICAN CULTURE: AN OVERVIEW

“Architecture can only be modern inasmuch as it is white ... the whole moral, ethical, functional and even technical superiority of architecture is seen to hang on the whiteness of its surfaces.” (Le Corbusier 1925) This chapter shows the debate about white rather than solve the issue of what the value of white is in Euro-American culture (if there is any solution at all); it is showing the different points of view and the multiplicity.

The thought process in this chapter starts by wondering why exactly white has become the dominator in Euro-American culture. In what follows, accounts about white shall pass by from different branches: from architecture to racism.

A misunderstanding?

The white wall has the ambivalent advantage of explicit presence and complete invisibility (Davidts 2001, 1). What seems to be the basis of the ongoing misunderstandings about white is the anomalous coincidence of both ends of a spectrum.

When it is a bold statement, how can it be serene? If it is simple, how can it be complicated? Descriptions like ‘neutral’, ‘pure’, ‘silent’, ‘plain’, ‘blank’, ‘ground’, ‘essential’ and ‘stark’ are nothing but generic and uncritical (Wigley 1996). Such terms only consider one part of the spectrum. To understand why, Mark Wigley’s White Walls, Designer Dresses serves as a crucial source. White Walls, Designer Dresses

White in Euro-American Culture: An Overview 21

tackles the meaning of white primarily in modernist architecture, based on the writings of Le Corbusier.

In the first pages, Wigley rightly comments on the blind spot many architecture critics have turned onto the subject: since Le Corbusier published his L’art décorative d’aujourd’hui in 1925 – out of which the quote at the beginning of this chapter is taken – little groundbreaking research has come forth. Once white made its entree, it succeeded in staying under the radar, to the point that it has become omnipresent (ibid.). The danger consists in the fact that white thus became not only omnipresent, but also taken for granted.

Apart from critiquing the plethora of generic descriptions of the effects of white, Wigley continues by explicitly posing what might be the unique power of white, and hence, what might explain why white is dominant yet never questioned: “White is a judge: put on it anything of bad taste – it hits you in the eye. It is rather an x-ray of beauty. A court of assise in permanent session.” (ibid.)

He goes even further and postulates that white is in itself an eye, namely “the eye of the truth” (ibid.). Anything of bad taste will sound the alarm when being put on a white background. It distracts the attention of the aesthetic gaze towards other objects in its vicinity and renders them more precise. Additionally, white is neither silent nor neutral: for the modern(ist) architect, it speaks volume (ibid.). The bluntness clean, bleached surfaces can have also makes it – though superficially – powerful and tempting. Visually very dominant, it gives a certain allure to the architecture it secretly encapsulates.

However, this is quite contradictory to what Bernard Tschumi has to say on the matter. Tschumi identifies in an essay he wrote in 1976 – called Architecture and Transgression – the fundamental paradox of architecture and design as opposition and inconsistency between the theoretical discourse on architecture and the practical, material reality of the built project (Heynen et al. 2001, 492). The architectural theoretician promulgates the rules of architecture while ignoring possible violations of those rules (ibid., 492). The obsession, Tschumi says, lays in the wording of the rule, not in the definition of transgressions, as Hilde Heynen, André Loeckx and Lieven De Cauter put it. Applied to white, one could argue that the rule of the white wall lays in its apparent purity and cleanliness. Subsequently,

22 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

transgressing the rule – if one thinks of mathematical logic – means we leave the wall white, and assume the result is different (i.e. unpure, unclean). What else can undo a white wall of its seeming purity, except stains, cracks and decay? In that sense, the transgression of white might lay in traces of life. Only the bleached surface is like the white bones of a dead person. Hence, transgressing the rule of white is seen by Tschumi as positive and even sensual: it is a sign of life.

Wigley notes that Le Corbusier links the whiteness of a wall to ethical superiority. Tschumi’s argument exactly concentrates on the opposite. Interestingly, Tschumi puts the bright white wall in a different light: white as clean versus white as sterile. One could question: where is the line between cleanliness and sterility?

Whatever the answer might be, it should be clear that there is a certain duality about white in the Euro-American architectural discourse.

A dual identity White is a double agent of sorts. Davidts discribed this dual identity as an advantage: white is here, very present and bright, yet it is not, a neutralising background that takes over the material specificity of a wall (Davidts 2001, 3): “Ze doet aan de ene kant de formalistische kwaliteiten van abstracte schilder- en beeldhouwkunst tot hun recht komen, en gedraagt zich aan de andere kant als een neutrale context voor die kunst.” (ibid., 1) One might almost say white behaves. It performs. It is a very present layer of white, yet acts as neutrality: puritan disguised as pure (Wigley 1996).

White and antisepsis Let us return to Li Shiqiao. The point he makes in the chapter of antisepsis is, as stated before, based on the miasma theory – a theory supposing that poisonous gasses and diseases leave traces on white surfaces – as well as on the germ theory – a theory that poses the surface texture is crucial and, to avoid germs from penetrating a surface, it has to be shiny and smooth (Li 2014, 127). In that sense, he does not limit the discussion to white, but extends it to surface textures. Li goes on

White in Euro-American Culture: An Overview 23

by posing the new constraints put onto urban Chinese architecture has been so fundamental (like the outbreaks of Sars in 2002 and 2003), it has become part of the new urban aesthetics: reflecting glass, shiny facade claddings and glossy floors (ibid., 129). This has indeed become predominant.

In a similar line, Beatriz Colomina – in her book titled X-Ray Architecture – discusses the canon of modernist architecture, seen through a different lens. According to her, the machine-like aesthetics and pure, minimal – and whitewashed – interiors are to be understood as a way to put germs and diseases in check, more specifically those of tuberculosis (Colomina 2019). In other words, the use of iron, steel, concrete, glass and above all, unadorned and smooth surfaces can be read as resulting from controlling diseases: “The symptoms, if not the principles, of modern architecture seem to have been taken straight out of a medical text on the disease. A year before the German microbiologist Robert Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus in 1882, a standard medical book gave the cause of the disease as, among other things, lack of exercise, sedentary indoor life, defective ventilation, deficiency of light, and depressing emotions. It took a long time for these notions to lose credibility. Tuberculosis was thought to be a “wet” disease produced by damp cities. In an uncanny echo of Vitruvius, the TB patient was thought to need a new environment to dry out the inside of their bodies. Modern architects offered health by providing exactly such a change of environment. Nineteenth-century architecture was demonized as unhealthy, and sun, light, ventilation, exercise, roof terraces, hygiene, and whiteness were offered as means to prevent, if not cure, tuberculosis.” (ibid., 16) Illnesses seem to relate to a covered darkness; only white, sun, light and clean air can bring it out and eliminate it (ibid.). Perhaps it is not surprising that Le Corbusier stated that white architecture is as a sign of technical and moral superiority: it seemed to be the only way to purify the body. Just think of Alvar Aalto’s Sanatorium, or indeed, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. The association of white as pure is not far away.

Striking is the fact that Colomina does not refer to the miasma theory. Either way, the point is that white has a vital role to play in antisepsis and controlling of disease, which greatly influenced modernist architecture. Important to note, however, is the difference between what Li is describing – namely shiny surfaces that

24 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

are off-white – and what Colomina is arguing. Although both accounts initiated from a medical point of view, it seems the architecture they analyse adapted very differently to bacterial and viral threats. Also, modernist architecture was in essence anti-urban, while Li’s account is exactly concentrating on the urban.

In any way, it is vital to understand that in Euro-American society, there is a certain obsession with visibility, clarity and exposing (certainly when it functions to trace the sources of disease and infection, that are seen as a covered darkness).

It seems that this very reasonable way of facilitating hygiene is not as general as it might seem. Junichiro Tanizaki denounces in his In Praise of Shadows the Euro-American obsession of exposing elements that ought not to be exposed, unveiling objects that should remain obscure: the beauty lies in the obscurity (Tanizaki 1977). He demonstrates this by using the example of a woman and a toilet: “A beautiful woman, no matter how lovely her skin, would be considered indecent were she to show her bare buttocks or feet in the presence of others; and how very crude and tasteless to expose the toilet to such excessive illumination. The cleanliness of what can be seen only calls up the more clearly thoughts of what cannot be seen.” (Tanizaki 1977, 5) So, Tanizaki shows that the relation between white and antisepsis – with the miasma theory at its base – is not as universal as might seem. Even though Tanizaki is specifically talking about the Japanese context, there is also some truth to it for China: as we will discuss in the next chapter, important notions such as propensity and potentiality (in, for example, Chinese landscape painting) can only exist when there is no clear definition (Jullien 1993; Cheng 1979), when blandness thrives.

Clearcut definitions kill any possible interpretation. Obscurity is more meaningful than (over)exposure.

The critique of Tanizaki might, in that sense, be a symptome of an immanent modernisation impetus, present in both Euro-American and Chinese (or even Asian) culture, that is not entirely compatible with local culture. Li’s remark – namely that bright white is often avoided for cultural reasons – might show a comparable struggle with a modernising impetus, partially driven by the need for exposure and visibility of diseases. Relatedly, Duanfang Lu discusses the reality of multiple modernities in the chapter Entangled Modernities, part of the book The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory editted by Hilde Heynen, Creig C. Crysler and

White in Euro-American Culture: An Overview 25

Stephen Cairns: “The recognition of other modernities has to be posited at the level of epistemology in order to imagine an open globality based not on asymmetry and dominance but on connectivity and dialogue on equal basis. It is important (…) to recognize the legitimacies of different knowledges.” (Lu 2012, 241) It seems that Tanizaki’s argument about shadow and obscurity, might be a different onlook onto modernity: not a whitewashed and exposed one, but an introvert one. The adaption to a modernisation impuls results in different kinds of modernity. He even explicitly wonders how it would be if Asia would have come up with a native modernising impetus (of which antisepsis is a crucial aspect, since modernisation entails an increased standard of life).

The white settler

Figure 9

Tiina Rajala, No Title, 2007, digital picture, Terrace of Paimio sanato-

rium, no URL available.

26 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

Another element that might prove crucial in the discussion on white, is colonialism and its attached racism. Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and Fields’ Architecture in Black both serve as the basis for this part. It is not an attempt to give a complete account of colonialism or racism. Black Skin, White Masks – written by Franz Fanon – provides a thorough study of black people in colonised areas, with a specific focus on the formation of identity. This book is seen as the base for postcolonial studies (Vukovich 2013, 5), since it gives a clear image of the impact of colonial submission on the psychological well-being of black people. As a complement, Architecture in Black focusses on the black subject, often and consciously left out of the architectural and aesthetical discourse. Both Fields and Fanon provide a crucial rendering of the black subject, very opposite to what Kant has to say on the topic: “The Negroes are born white apart from their genitals and a ring around the navel, which are black. During the first months of life, the black colour spreads out from these parts over the whole body.” (Kant 1997, 57) Albeit racist, Kant is still a monogenist (Fields 2015). Whiteness not necessarily means skin tone, but is a transcendence of skin colour: “Kant was committed to race for its potential to anchor his larger understanding of human diversity and destiny, and reserved a special place for whites beyond race. In a manner paralleled by his characterizations of the German national character and one of his accounts of moral autonomy, Kant argues that Whites are a superior race but they are the predemption and redemption of race; Kant’s invention of race was attended by the simultaneous invention of “whiteness” as an escape from it.” (ibid.).

In other words, whiteness remained, according to Kant, the symbol of an absolute, superior state. Moreover, one should understand white as devoid of race: white is not necessarily a skin colour, but rather an absence of colour. A similar disdain for the black subject to that of Kant can be found in the writings of Hegel (ibid.). According to Fields, Hegel describes the Egyptians – who are originally black – and poses their artefacts as ‘primitive and dumb’: “Recalling Hegel’s comments regarding “Egypt”—the archetype for “whatever is dark”— and related works of art, we are reminded that “. . . the Egyptians, amongst the peoples

White in Euro-American Culture: An Overview 27

Figure 10

Sjoers Hofstra, Seated company and military chapel standing behind, 1934,

black and white photograph, Kailahun. https://www.ascleiden.nl

hitherto mentioned, are the properly artistic people. But their works remain mysterious and dumb, mute and motionless . . . [The] pyramids amaze us by their colossal proportions and mass, while at the same time their individual forms and shapes engross our whole interest by themselves because they have been erected as symbols for purely universal meanings” (Hegel (aesthetics), 1975: 644). These qualities, ... specifically relate to Hegel’s fixation on Egypt as a black race.” (ibid.)

The point is that in influential works such as those of Kant and Hegel, there is a self-fulfilling mechanism of ‘proof ’ to denounce black and uplift white (ibid.). We can find the same uplifting of white – even in the eyes of certain black people – in the writings of Fanon: “I am white: that is to say that I possess beauty and virtue, which has never been black. I am the colour of the daylight... I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo.” (Fanon 1951, 45)

28 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

Whiteness is once more not just skin colour. It is a sign that one is beautiful and kind. In Martinique, some women hope for a ‘white salvation’: “It is in fact customary in Martinique to dream of a form of salvation that consists of magically turning white.” (ibid., 44) The point Fanon is making is that in a segregated society, even when a black person is allowed and accepted in a higher social (and white) class, the stigma created by the white coloniser remains. One still identifies as different from white people (ibid.). The schism between white and black, coloniser and colonised, only seems to continue in the clothes of the settler: distinguishable from the African subject, the white coloniser is not just a white man but also dressed in white. As if to stress the stark contrast between the ruler and ruled. Although white clothing can have a functional purpose – to keep the clothes from absorbing the heat of the sun – it is plausible to argue in favour of differentiation. First of all, white clothes are visible from far away. They easily reflect the sunrays. It could be a strategy to remain visible throughout the colonised areas, so the coloniser seems all the more omnipresent (in many colonies in Africa, like the Belgian colony of Congo, there were not enough colonisers to monitor every part of the colony at all times, so certain mechanisms of random control were implemented to compensate. (De Meulder 1996)). Secondly, it could reaffirm the different position of the coloniser.

In that sense, white could have been a superior colour because it used to express superiority in colonial times. Lastly, before the invention of the washing machine, keeping white clothes impeccable was a challenge. Only people with enough money could pay someone else to wash those clothes for them (Wigley 1996).

Aesthetics of light White, reflection and light are also pivotal in catholicism: the bride’s dress, the chasuble of the priest during liturgical solemnities of Easter (ressurection of Christ) and Christmass (birth of Christ) or the depiction of Christ’s robes after ressurection (see Figure 11). Edgard De Bruyne, a Belgian Professor, wrote quite extensively on the history of aesthetics in Europe. One of the books he wrote,

White in Euro-American Culture: An Overview 29

called De Geschiedenis van de aesthetics: De Middeleeuwen, expands on different theories developed during the Middle Ages in catholic circles. He discusses several viewpoints and contrasts them. At a certain point, he focusses on the aspect of light in aesthetics: “Onderscheid wordt er gemaakt tussen het zien als gewaarwording van het licht en de kleur – en het zien als synthetische waarneming of “comprehensio” van een voorwerp. In het eerste geval volstaat het zintuig, in het andere komen de associatie, het geheugen en een soort oordeel tussen.” (De Bruyne 1951, 320) Thus, there is a crucial difference between seeing colour and interpreting it.

Seeing white only requires us to have a vision. Seeing white as pure or superior is in se a judgement. The same is true for light and reflection: they are not good or evil per se, but one might see it as such. An example of a framework that is developed along the same lines, is the aesthetics of light, accompanied by the philosophy of light. It essentially claims that the visible light, which touches all animals, people and material substances, is for our senses the most beautiful equation to God (ibid.). Furthermore, the more luminous a substance is, the more beautiful and spiritual it becomes (ibid., 341).

The reason why not everything is white in catholicism – if white would be the superior colour, why not apply it to all? – might lay in the fact that luminosity is more prominently present in the design of light, tall and elegant structures. It is not only white that shines. Also, luminosity is not only a visual trait: the right proportions in combination with the correct light can also make a building luminous (ibid., 337). One could say it is vaguely related to the remark of Fanon, in which white is not necessarily a skin colour, but a certain kind of trait that stems from the uprighteousness of an individual. Similarly, a proportionate, proper building could be luminous without being whitewashed.

Concluding remark It is clear that white does not have one definition. Where Le Corbusier argues that moral superiority is dependent on the clean whitewash in architecture, Tschumi exactly poses the opposite: traces of life are much more interesting than

30 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

Figure 11

RaphaĂŤl.Transfiguration, 1520, Oil painting, Height: 405 cm Width: 278

cm, Vatican Pinacoteca. https://www.wga.hu/html/r/raphael/5roma/5/10trans.html

White in Euro-American Culture: An Overview 31

bleached surfaces. White has an antiseptic purpose, but can also serve as a religious symbol of purity and virginity. Something Wigley is, on his turn, very sceptical about. Interesting is that white emerges as a manifestation of a modernisation impetus, searching for exposure, cleanliness and elimination of obscurity and disease.

3

WHITE IN CHINA: AN OVERVIEW

“Le Vide vise la plénitude. C’est lui en effet qui permet à toutes choses “pleines” d’atteindre leur vraie plénitude.” (Cheng 1979, 56) In this chapter, we will discuss both white, its relation to other colours and the difference with emptiness. The hope is that at the end of this chapter, we have an idea of the applications and value of white in China. We do not need Euro-American culture to investigate China. However, to pinpoint where the status of the colour-par-excellence changes with changing cultural environments, it could be enlightening for both the Euro-American and Chinese contexts. Also, it is important to involve the Euro-American modernisation impetus to understand how it differs or equates to the Chinese context. As mentioned before, this chapter serves as an introduction to the discourse of white in Mainland China and Hong Kong.

It should not be read or understood as a full account.

Feng Shui: the Five Processes Much nonsense has been sold about feng shui (Aylward 2007, XIII). By definition, it is the art of positioning, impacted by both geomancy and astrology and synthesised by Aylward as ‘the art of scheduling and positioning’ (ibid. 17). It is the presupposition that one’s good fortune can increase or decrease through the positioning of, for example, a palace, a front door or furniture (Lip 1995, 68). Spe-

White in China: An Overview 33

cific rules defined by both astrology and geomancy predict which constellations for specific individuals are more favourable and auspicious than others. Elements like colours, materials, landscape, time, date of birth and orientation are all part of this framework (ibid.). It constitutes part of the object-oriented Chinese metaphysics (Wang 2017; Lip 1995): “The practice of kanyu started in the West Han dynasty (third century BC). It was believed that the earth, being a living thing, had qi 气 (energy of life). How much qi a site has depended on its topography and its surrounding physical conditions. An undulating site

Figure 12

Decorative patterns for the dougong in the Yingzao fashi 营造法式.

Li Jie & Zhu Qiqian, Li Mingzhong ying zao fa shi: 36 juan, Tao Xiang: Chuan jing shu she fa xing, Wujin, 1925, vol. 8, ch. 34, plate 18.

34 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

with revitalising qi or shengqi 生气 is good for those who dwell on it. On the other hand, a site with little shengqi or with siqi 死气 (harmful energy) would affect an undesirable influence on the dwellers.” (Lip 1995, 62) Colours, seasons, senses, orientations and tastes are each divided according to the Five Elements 五行 (wu3xing2). The Five Elements are wood, fire, water, earth and metal. The according colours are green/blue, red, black, yellow and white respectively (ibid.). The basis of the system is that between these five elements – be they materials, colours or orientations – are two kinds of relations: productive and eliminative. Metal produces water, produces wood, produces fire, produces earth, produces metal. Similarly, metal destroys wood, destroys earth, destroys water, destroys fire, destroys metal (ibid.). One could repeat this for colours as well.

Feng shui concerns nature and materials. Although red and yellow are often the dominant colours in premodern buildings, some accounts describe white roof colours (Guo et al. 2010) or the importance of white detailing in the dougong 斗 拱 (dou3gong3): “A distinctive pattern for brackets, Huangtu shuashi 黃皐岬飾, was painted in three colours—yellow ochre, cinnabar red and clay white. Basically, yellow was applied to the front elevation of a whole bracketing set and then white was applied on the lateral sides and edge of each of bracketing unit. Red was only applied to the middle key projecting units on their front elevations. Together, in the painting of traditional Chinese carpentry, this combination gives yellow as the primary colour, white as the boundary and red as the dominant.” (Chiu et al. 2014, 291) In other words, white has its clear and delineated role in the ensemble, as has every other colour.

White in Mandarin Chinese Many researchers have performed studies on the basic colour terms in Mandarin Chinese. It is so profoundly studied because there are significant discrepancies between the perception and labelling of colour by Chinese people (Gao et al., 2014). The first – and controversial – study on this topic by Berlin and Kay in 1969

White in China: An Overview 35

certainly sparked the debate (ibid.). According to the definition posed by Berlin and Kay, a basic colour term has the following four characteristics: “(i) its meaning cannot be predicted from its parts; (ii) its meaning is not included in that of another term; (iii) it is not specific to a narrow class of objects; and (iv) it must be psychologically salient for the users.” (Sun et al. 2018, 1) While subsequent studies are a reaction and correction of the study of Berlin and Kay, the findings vary greatly. What can be remembered, is that in any of the studies, white was always one of the basic terms in Mandarin Chinese, and its use between study participants turned out to be consistent (Gao et al. 2014). Misunderstandings in colour names are, therefore, practically inexistent (ibid., Sun et al.

2018).

The Chinese translation of the basic colour term white is 白色 (bai2se4) or 白(bai2). According to Pleco – one of the most extensive and commonly used Chinese translation dictionaries – there are six different usages for adjectives, two usages for adverbs and three for nouns. For the adjectives, the first category translates as ‘white’ 白 (bai2) as opposite to black 黑 (hei1). The translation is similar to how one uses the adjective in English. It could describe anything with white colour. Furthermore, it can also modify someone’s complexion – 白 (bai2) translated as ‘fair’ or ‘pale’. Secondly, it could mean ‘clear’. Exemplary for this is 大白 (da4bai2). It serves to express that something is fully revealed. Thirdly, it means ‘blank’, ‘pure’ or ‘plain’. Again, similarly to English, one could use it to describe a blank sheet of paper. Fourthly, it could mean ‘anti-revolutionary’. 白军 (bai2jun1) means ‘white army’ or ‘anti-revolutionary soldiers’. Next, 白(bai2) could mean ‘wrongly written’ or ‘mispronounced’. The adjective often modifies 字 (zi4) as in 念白子 (nian4bai2zi4). Lastly, it can modify things 事 (shi4) as in 白事 (bai2shi4), meaning ‘funeral’.

When used as an adverb, 白 (bai2) can be translated as ‘free of charge’ or ‘in vain’. When used as a noun, it could refer to a dialect, a dialogue in opera or a surname. In addition to Pleco’s results, there is are two terms that need mentioning. First is ‘leaving blank’ 留白 (liu4bai2) and ‘starting from scratch’ 白手起家 (bai2shou3qi3jia1). Whereas the former is similar to the third meaning of 白(bai2) as an adjective and will be discussed in detail later in this chapter, the latter is cu-

36 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

Figure 13

Unknown photographer, Chinese funeral procession on the streets of Portland,

1888, photopgraph, Oregon Historical Society, Photographic Services 1200 SW Park Avenue, Portland. https://content.libraries.wsu.edu/digital/collection/wsuvan1/id/1185/

rious with regards to language. 白手 (bai2shou3) literally translated means ‘white hand(s)’. The third character 起 (qi3) indicated a rising, a change from lower to higher, or a start of an action. ‘White hands’ seems to refer to a lesser state, where one has nothing. However, we need to remain aware that literal translations in themselves are not sufficient by themselves.

Interestingly, ‘funeral’ – if literally translated from Chinese – is ‘white things’. It was – and in certain places in Mainland China, it still is – the colour of mourning.

Funerals were in white; the mourners dressed in white (Kommonen 2011, 372).

Relatedly, white is the colour of depletion (Li 2014, 121). Li Shiqiao states that such connotations are the main reason why off-white surfaces are much more common: a compromise between antiseptic and cultural requirements (ibid., 125).

However, Kommonen argues that white may be the colour of funerals and death (see the white hearse in Figure 5), but it also stresses a new start of a new life (Kommonen 2011, 372).

White in China: An Overview 37

White and blandness I paint and I de-paint (Jullien 2003, 150). According to François Jullien, in Chinese literati landscape painting, the emptiness in between the strokes (i.e. 留 白 (liu4bai2)) of ink is just as essential as the strokes themselves. The emptiness is not a neutral background but complements the ink (Cheng 1979; Jullien 2003). It allows the full to become abundant (Cheng 1979, 56). In that sense, blandness is a positive trait. For the painter, it is the ability to make more with less. The literati painter – who was often calligrapher and poet as well – defined with his brush both the empty and the full (Jullien 2003). For the contemplator, it is the capability to understand the unseasoned, the insipidness, the quality of the base (of life) (Jullien 1991). One could say it is not about being able to discern one wine from the other, but about tasting the difference of water: as tasteless and colourless as it might seem, water still has colour and still has taste. Only the most receptive person can distinguish them. Blandness, says Jullien, leads to perceptiveness (Jullien 2003). He ultimately compares the aesthetics of blandness to the wind: the wind is but visible in the effect it creates. The wind kindles the aesthetic manifestation; it is diffuse and animate (ibid., 74). This is quite similar to Tanizaki’s praise of obscurity, discussed earlier.

The importance of blank space lays in the fact that it is itself defined by the black, and at the same time induces the black as lively: the bamboo can only seem to grow when it appears sufficiently light and thin (not in form, but in character) (Rowley 1959, 41). So, empty space generates a dynamic constellation that enables potentiality. Only the bland, empty and indefinite can grow in potentiality without being limited by formal characteristics (Jullien 2003). We find the same arguments in Vide et Plein by François Cheng: “Le Vide vise la plénitude. C’est lui en effet qui permet à toutes choses “pleines” d’atteindre leur vraie plénitude.” (Cheng 1979, 56) “On distingue, à l’intérieur de l’encre noire, six espèces differentes (considérées comme des couleurs indépendantes): sèche, diluée, blanche, mouillée, concentrée, noire.” (ibid., 90)

38 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

Figure 14

Diagram based on the diagrams in the Vide et Plein of François Cheng.

Note that White can be changed into any Yang element, and black into any corresponding Yin element (like the Yin-Ynag symbol Cheng bases these kind of diagrams on).

Figure 15

Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance , 1980, Handscroll; ink and color on silk,

35.6 Ă— 104.4 cm, Metmuseum New York, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/ search/39668

White in China: An Overview 39

“Ce qu’on appelle “Sans-Encre” n’est pas tout à fait dénué d’encre ; c’est un prolongement de “sêche-diluée”. Tandis que “sêche-diluée” reste encore marquée par le plein, “Sans-Encre” est totalement vide.” (ibid. 91) “Le Vide qu’incarne l’Encre diluée représente le processus qui va de l’Avoir au Rien: tandis que le Plein incarné par l’Encre concentrée marque les traces et les formes. Dans la peinture comme l’univers, le Vide est la “vêture” du Yang et le Plein le coeur du Yin.” (ibid., 91) So, emptiness is in continuous relation with fulness. It is the increasingly diluted ink that connects to both the black and the empty. Interestingly, one of the six techniques to invoke emptiness is by using white. In that sense, black does not necessarily lead to fulness, nor does white ultimately induce emptiness: they both work together, changing from dark to light in one continuous spectre. It is precisely this interplay that makes up the emptiness important in blandness. As Cheng remarks, it does not mean that le Vide is neutral; on the contrary (ibid.).

To conclude, blank is not white per se, nor vice versa. White can help to induce emptiness but is far away from it. Analogously, some Buddhist emptinesses, it seems, are less empty than others (Redfield 2011, 96).

Fair complexion and theatre As mentioned before, one of the meanings of 白 (bai2) can be used to describe skin tone, namely ‘pale’ or ‘fair-complected’. There are two aspects worth mentioning: the beauty ideal of light skin and the use of white face paint and masks in Chinese theatre.

In contemporary urban China, light skin is generally more desirable than tanned skin. Since Chinese climate and skin biology allows for quick and intense tanning – combined with the fact that farmers often have darker skin because of daily work under the sunlight – skin tone might imply that one has the money and education to abstain from harsh labour outside (Yau 1994). Hence, a fairer complexion is generally more desirable: it represents a social class (ibid.).

Secondly, there are white masks and face makeup for Chinese theatres. In many

40 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

Figure 16

Ana Paula Hirama, Beijing Opera, 2012, digital picture, Beijing. https://

www.flickr.com/photos/anapaulahrm/6933930382/

plays, the villain’s face is white. However, also a fair and beautiful lady’s face would be white (or at least pale), to represent her grace and beauty (ibid.). So a white or pale skin tone does not automatically mean good or bad. Colour meanings change through time and context. Admittedly, the addition of rosy undertones might make the pale face of the lady in Figure 16 more vibrant (remember Tschumi’s idea of transgressing white as vitality).

Politics of colour In imperial China, when one dynasty succeeded another, the official ethnonym and colour would be shifted (Gao 2012, 238). In premodern Chinese society, every social class – be it the high-ranking official or the servant of the imperial court – had guidelines on where what colours were appropriate (Kommonen 2011, 371).

Although European nobility had a similar custom – only they could wear certain fabrics and certain colours, like purple or blue – it is quite different for architecture.

European architectural discourse never really discussed the political use of colour

White in China: An Overview 41

in architecture, according to an overview published in Color Research & Application by Jose Luis Caivano (Caivano 2006). For China, architectural prescriptions found in the Yingzao Fashi 营造法式 (ying2zao4fa3shi4), a 12th-century building manual compiled during the Song Dynasty, are just one example of how colour was indeed politically appropriated and regulated in architecture (Guo 1998). It suggests that colour application in architecture not only accorded to feng shui – as discussed previously – but also to the social order. Also, the colours of garments were subject to social rules: a Qing Dynasty emperor would be dressed, on certain formal occasions, in the imperial colour, which was yellow at the time (Gao 2012).

Only the emperor had the privilege to dress in the imperial colours. High court officials would, then, wear colours like grey or blue (Kommonen 2011, 371). Jingyi Gao writes about the change of imperial colours: “In Chinese civilisation, an official colour ... is a lawful or conventional colour of the sovereign flag and/or formal dress. It is not necessarily identical to the national colour, because there are many nations in China. Protocols of the official colours were as important as protocols of the official ethnonyms, capitals and languages. In Chinese history ... when a new regime was established, the official ethnonym and colour were more often shifted than the other protocols. For example, the official spoken language variety of the Chinese sovereignty has been the same Beijing dialect of the Yan regional lect of the Chinese language since the Qing Empire(1644~1912); the capital of the Chinese sovereignty has been the same Beijing since the Yuan Empire(1276~1368) [excluding the periods of the early Ming Empire (1368~1421) and the reformed Republic of China (1928~1949), when the capital was Nanjing]. The picture of Chinese official colours is more complicated than the common notion “Red China”.” (Gao 2012, 237) Thus, colours changed more frequently than other protocols (ibid., 238). Professor Gao also researched the specific official colour of many Chinese dynasties and empires. Curiously, white recurs multiple times: “The white colour has been the official colour in the PaoXi Empire (ca.60000 ~ ca.3000 BCE, not included in the 5000-year-long Chinese history) (including some tones of yellow), some phases of the XuanYuan Empire (ca.2400 ~ ca.2300 and ca.2150~ca.2050 BCE), the Shang Empire (ca.1600 ~ ca.1050 BCE), and the Yuan Empire

42 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

(1276 ~1368) [also the Tangut Xia Empire(1038 ~1227) and the Jin/Kim Empire(1115~1234) out of the de jure sovereign line]. The white colour dominated about 840 years out of the 5000-year-long Chinese history. At present, most Old Asian nations, which are not traditionally agricultural, e.g. Japanese, Korean, Manchu, Mongolian, Qiang, Tibetan and Bai nations, have white as their national colour. This custom might be originally inherited from the PaoXi Empire. The original reason for the white colour preference should be that the white-yellow milk was the most important sustenance for these people.� (Gao 2012, 274) It is important to stress that, according to Gao, there were only three basic colour categories: white yellow, black-grue yellow and red yellow. Yellow did not have a separate category, so it is not surprising that white ‘with some tones of yellow’ was still categorized as white (ibid., 263). Also, Gao suggests that white was deemed auspicious by nomad people because nomads live from the produce of their stock (e.g. milk). Consequently, white became too (ibid., 263).

As the imperial rulers appropriated colour, so were their associations. In that

Figure 17

Yellow roof tiles were, in the Qing Dynasty, reserved for imperial build-

ings. Gate of Supreme Harmony, Forbidden City, Beijing. Picture by author.

White in China: An Overview 43

sense did colours – and arguably to a certain extent still do – possess a differentiating power. Subsequently, they might have earned political power. The appropriation and domination of the state over colour use made it a political tool: “In the time of the emperors, they controlled the colour, and the common people were not allowed to use the royal colour. When the emperor wore yellow, the second level was only allowed to use purple, white or blue; the people could only wear grey. During the Cultural Revolution people used grey and blue.” (Kommonen 2011, 371) In her text about contemporary Chinese colours, Kirsi Kommonen points in the direction of the politics of colour in Chinese society.

White and colour in contemporary society Before directing our focus towards architecture once more, we must consider the fact that colour can change with changing society. Although the use of premodern colours tends to be consistent up until the present (ibid., 370), we cannot hope to arrive at a valuable conclusion if we do not take recent developments into account: “First, the findings from the empirical study suggest consistency in the way in which “traditional” Chinese colours are seen; second, a rather unanimous proposition on which factors affect contemporary change; and third, a less distinct view on what the future may hold.” (ibid., 369) Because of the interest of foreign businesses in Chinese investments, many studies have shown how foreigner businessmen – and businesswomen – should communicate, discuss and operate in the Chinese business context. A section of these studies has focussed on the colour use and meaning, both in business and marketing environments. Exemplary are studies that investigate which colours to use in order to increase sales in China. An a priori condition for these studies is that colour has a direct influence on customers emotions, impressions and behaviour (ibid., 380). The go-to colour choice for an easy-selling good is red and gold. The colours traditionally stand for prosperity and happiness. However, the overuse of these colours can create a dull and inconsiderate effect (Hayden 2013).

44 Identification: Tracing the Value of White

The reason that we started this chapter with the Five Processes, is because they – according to Kommonen – have an impact on contemporary society: “In effect, the present empirical study suggests an interesting connection between the theory of Wu Xing and contemporary colour culture residing in the issues of power and control.”

(Kommonen 2011, 371) Most intriguingly, Kommonen circumscribes the change of colours in some fundamental societal changes. The most substantial changes are, first, the transition from a self-protective society to a self-expressive one and, second, the transition from a group-oriented society to an individual-oriented one (ibid.). Both changes are interrelated. They refer to the fact that, in history, one used to do what one’s position in a group prescribed, in order to protect one’s integrity. One had to accord to specific rules of behaviour that would show one’s respect to an older person or one’s boss (ibid.). Applying these rules – based on the Confucian framework of ethics and ritual – would ensure one is not insulting, and consequently, does not get insulted (and thus not losing face). In a more individualistic society like today, group integrity is less critical, and self-expression starts to predominate (however, the business context may be less impacted by these changes). If colours are essential concerning meaning and emotion, then they have become a vehicle of self-expression. Wearing bright colours or using different colours to paint one’s interior is not the exception anymore: “In five to ten years, the younger generation will become the mainstream of the Chinese consumer market. More attention should be put on their choices. They want to show their personality, to be different, more colourful. They seem to like shining, bright, strong contrastive colours. In their home, they may paint one wall green, one wall yellow, and one wall red.” (ibid., 376) Additionally, leisure is a very positive effect related to colour: colours can seem leisurely (ibid., 376). They are more transparent and lighter than traditional colours.

When it comes to relating to globalisation, there are, according to Kommonen, two common side-effects of globalisation that are relevant here; homogenisation

White in China: An Overview 45

and hybridisation: “In effect, the present study finds that three prevailing approaches to globalization theory are simultaneously relevant in the contemporary context of the Chinese market: In some aspects, conforming to the theory of homogenization, Chinese culture is becoming “Westernized” (Gong et al., 2004; McEwen et al., 2006). As far as colour meanings are concerned, this development has led to Chinese designers adopting Western colour theories such as those used in colour psychology. However, in many cases, “Western” is given new, culturally more appropriate meanings in Chinese contexts, which is in line with hybridization theory (Eckhardt and Houston, 2001 on McDonald’s, and Venkatraman and Nelson, 2008 on Starbucks).” (Kommonen 2011, 368)

Concluding Remark To conclude, white – in certain contexts and regions in China – might have a significantly negative (funeral, depletion, villain) connotation or positive (a new beginning, clarity, fair complexion) connotation. A possible explanation of why many buildings in Mainland China and Hong Kong abstain from using bright white could be because there is a higher potential to interpret white as unfavourable. The fact that there is überhaupt an impasse between cultural aspects and elements of modernity, might lay in the common impetus of modernisation: Colomina describes the Modernist Movement as a reaction against the spreading of Tuberculosis, while Li uses Nightingale and the Sars outbreaks in 2002 and 2003 to show the need for containing diseases. Off-white and shiny surfaces might be a different outcome than in the Euro-American context, but from a similar impuls.

In any case, generalising the different aspects of white over the whole of Mainland China (as a monolithic entity) would not be wise. Chinese tastes can change from region to region (think about the typically white architecture of Jiangsu Province), and there is a vast difference between rural and urban areas (ibid., 374). One definition is, hence, not possible.

PART II

Confrontation: Between Observation & Theory

4

SPATIAL-AESTHETICAL FRAMEWORKS IN CHINA

“It depends on your point of view. And there are many points of view. The angle of totality does not favour propositionally fixed terms; therefore it does not demand arrangements of things tidied up, just so, in a geometrised world.” (Wang 2017, 69) If one now accepts that white is gaining ground in high-culture architecture in urban China, as we said in Chapter One, one might wonder what the exact consequences are. Yes, Li pointed to the fact that white is the colour of death and depletion (Li 2014, 121), but white appears to be a lot more than that. To understand what the impact might be in urban architecture, let us start from the descriptions of white given in the previous chapter and apply it to specific spatial-aesthetic notions. The notions used are described by other authors, so one avoids using irrelevant or unimportant notions. A good place to start would be – once more – with Li Shiqiao’s Understanding the Chinese City. In the first part of the book, he reads the Chinese city as a locus of quantity control. The reason for doing that, he explains, is because premodern Chinese metaphysical systems are often numerical schemes, of which the most famous one might be the Five Elements. He continues by posing that the Chinese city is a place of competing numerical schemes: at some points, different schemes could contradict one another. Does our understanding of white – built up in the previous chapter – stroke with the notion of abundance in Chi-

Spatial-Aesthetical Frameworks in China 49

nese cities, as recorded by Li? More explicitly, he refers to ‘more is more’, a saying he ascribes to the fertility principle: on the one hand, less leads to more, and on the other more can lead to more. (ibid., 9). Since Li states that white has the connotation of death and depletion (ibid., 121), perhaps we might better understand how it has become like that, by examining the influence it has on the fertility principle.

I suggest this to be a relevant notion to discuss.

As it seems that quantity is essential to Chinese metaphysics and the spatial-aesthetical aspect of cities, we might consider a second author: Duanfang Lu. In her book Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949-2006 she aptly describes the notion of scarcity as one that has been politicised by Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the Maoist Era (1949–1976). It appears that scarcity – as an inevitable part of fast-paced industrialisation in socalled Third World countries – was turned from an element that shows a lack of recourses, to a driving motor to improve one’s own situation (Lu 2006, 10). Since white is the colour of depletion – a lack or scarcity of life – it might help us to understand what the relationship is between white and scarcity. This is another notion interesting to discuss.

Lastly, in a book by David Wang called A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future, there appears a third relevant notion. While explaining the socio-spatial structure of a Chinese city – a gradient of spaces rather than a stark contrast between public and private (Li 2014, Wang 2017) – he mentions the term ‘an aesthetics of clutter’ (Wang 2017, 66). Without wanting to be pejorative, he claims that this is a result of the socio-spatial structure of a city: there are certain places – by Li Shiqiao specifically labelled as jianghu (江湖 jiang1hu2) – that escape precise definition. These places are often places of programmatic congestion, as well as places of accumulation: be it either trash or stuff that belongs to one of the neighbouring houses (Li 2014). So in a sense, clutter aesthetics is linked to both spatial and quantitative aspects.

This chapter, then, focusses on concepts that have some link to quantity, since quantity is – according to Li Shiqiao – one of the basic (and continuous) drivers of city-making in China (ibid.). In what follows, scarcity, the fertility principle and clutter aesthetics will be discussed and confronted with our findings in the previous chapter.

50 Confrontation: Between Observation & Theory

Scarcity In her Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949-2006, Duanfang Lu describes scarcity not as a lack, but as a powerful wand, able to impact human agency (Lu 2006, 8). She gives many examples, among which the cutbacks on the ornamentation of buildings (e.g. Liang Sicheng’s big roofs (Rowe and Kuan 2002)). The Third World Modernism – a catching-up manoeuvre to fill in the supposed developmental gap between third world countries and the first world – automatically entails the obstacle of scarcity (Lu 2006, 6). For Mainland China, as Lu puts it, the lack of enough material supplies was politicised, externalised and used as a motor (ibid.). The Chinese people were called upon to help themselves.

China changed from a state of being less to a state of being lacking (ibid., 10). In other words, a not-yet situation replaced an inferior position. The idea of almost being there is a compelling drive.

White, being the colour of depletion, seems relatable to the notion of scarcity.

As Heynen, Loeckx and De Cauter accurately describe Tschumi’s idea of architecture and transgression, rules are necessary to speak of transgression (Heynen et al., 2001). Tschumi talks about transgressing the rule, which could, in this case, be ‘white as pure’. Transgressing it, might mean staining it. Staining it, may make it more lively, and hence, less sterile. In that sense, one could speak of a palimpsest of stains: dirt is recorded on the surface, and at a certain point, it gets too dirty. In other words, the white wall records human activity like a piece of rubbing paper does. A bright, clean white wall can, therefore, appear lifeless. It does not mean that one should immediately scratch or stain a white wall. The point is that a freshly painted white wall could be a sign of scarcity: a surface not yet claimed by the dweller – a sign of scarcity of life.

Too much white surfaces can, however, be overwhelming, like in the Lushi Mountain Villas shown in Figure 18 and 19. As if living in the interior would be harmful and leave too many stains at once (surprisingly, there are no pictures of the kitchen, which is essential in home-making (Verschaffel 2010)). Similarly, if one spills a glass of apple juice on a carpet, one needs to clean it up and wash the carpet. However, spilling numerous small particles of juice on the same carpet, but this time spread over a long period, need not necessarily be cleaned up.

Spatial-Aesthetical Frameworks in China 51

Figure 18

Atelier Fronti, Villa A and B in Lushi Mountains, 2010, digital picture, Bei-

jing. https://www.fronti.cn/

Figure 19

Atelier Fronti, Villa A and B in Lushi Mountains, 2010, digital picture, Bei-

jing. https://www.fronti.cn/

52 Confrontation: Between Observation & Theory

When life stains as charcoal on paper, it might be a too direct intrusion. Hence, the dweller could feel limited by how he or she can behave inside the house: they would need to protect the house from oneself. It is as living behind a shop window of a furniture shop: one cannot appropriate the space. And appropriating or – as John Habraken calls it in his Supports – taking possession of a house is essential in constructing a home (Habraken, 1972). In a white interior, every appropriation means a possible risk of harming the room. The intolerance for taking possession of space results in a lack of life. We could speak of an interior that is sterile or depleted. In that sense, Tschumi’s account strokes well with our findings on white in China. However, Tschumi is still talking about transgressing a rule, which means that the rule is still white as appropriately scarce and pure. In China, it might be an inhibiting scarcity (rather than a motivating one, as in Chairman Mao’s case).

Fertility principle We go back to Li Shiqiao. He defines the fertility principle as follows: “In the Chinese order of things, abundance seems to be grounded in what may be described as the fertility principle: fertility is the ultimate source of unlimited additional quantities.”

(Li 2014, 7) Hence, fertility – and its related principle – should be understood as the cause of abundance; it is also highly desirable (ibid.). In the same line and as an extension to the principle of scarcity, Li translates the Chinese city as a site of overlapping, contradicting and rivalling quantity-related schemes (ibid.). Indeed, both historical accounts and contemporary trends approve this. If one looks at the table of content of Aylward’s The Imperial Guide to Feng Shui & Chinese Astrology: The Only Authentic Translation from the Original Chinese, there are the Five Processes, the Eight Trigrams, Numeration of the former Heaven Arrangement of the Trigrams, the Ten Stems, the Four Sequences, the Six Zodiac Divisions, the Twenty-Eight Lunar Lodges, The Sixty-Four Hexagrams, the Six Harmonies, the Five Hidden Rats, the Five Hidden Tigers and the Twelve Branches. Many more facts can prove the point. Li writes about quality control in Chinese cities:

Spatial-Aesthetical Frameworks in China 53

“Most Chinese cities develop along the spectrum of quantities, with the Forbidden City and Hong Kong as its extremities.” (ibid., 16) The Forbidden City is the most regulated and strictly controlled environment; Hong Kong is a region of maximum quantities as a result of the free market (ibid.). In this spectrum of quantities, the fertility principle has a double edge.

First of all, less leads to abundance (ibid.). Chinese literati often and repeatedly cohere to this part of the principle: a painting only has few elements. Too much will blur the effect of blandness (Jullien 1991).

Secondly, it also means more is more (Li 2014, 6): abundance portrayed abundantly. Li mentions the Chinese nianhua as a typical case. Nianhua are Chinese New Year’s posters often portraying little boys – the symbol of fertility (ibid.) – in bright and contrasting colours. It is a direct and accessible manifestation of the fertility principle (ibid.). Hence, the more one has, the more fruitful (or fertile in some cases) one is. Abundance means success. However, in Euro-American culture, Chinese nianhua or an abundance of objects or decorations could be labelled as kitsch (because of their apparent excessiveness instead of appropriate proportions (ibid.). As a small remark, the roccocco with its horror vacui might be an obvious exception to that statement). According to Li Shiqiao, European taste always related to the abstaining and denouncing of following primitive instincts: having a lot means being incapable of controlling the natural tendency to have a lot. Having less and slimming down are signs of control over natural drifts (ibid., 20). In Europe, there is a point of ‘just right’ (ibid.). In Mainland China, that would not be the case: more is more, and extreme quantities are desirable.

If, then, white is the colour of having little (e.g. 白手起家 (bai2shou3qi3jia1), to start from scratch) or of scarcity, does it not clash with the fertility principle? Even though there are two sides of the principle (‘less leads to more’ and ‘more is more’), white appears to counteract them both.

First of all, it is tempting to equate ‘less leads to abundance’ with the statement of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s ‘less is more’. And indeed, it seems that the minimalist designs in Europe and North-America were inspired by Chan aesthetics (Zen in Japanese). Both relate to the idea of reducing to the essential, eliminate all that does not contribute to the constellation (be it a painting or a building). How-

54 Confrontation: Between Observation & Theory

Figure 20

Iwan Baan, Poet Residences by Zhang Lei, Shen Kaikang and Zhang Ang, 2008,

digital picture, Nanjing, https://iwan.com/portfolio/zhang-lei-brick-house/

Figure 21

Iwan Baan, Poet Residences by Zhang Lei, Shen Kaikang and Zhang Ang, 2008,

digital picture, Nanjing, https://www.chinese-architects.com/fr/azl-atelier-zhanglei-nanjing/project/brick-house-1

Spatial-Aesthetical Frameworks in China 55

ever, a closer reading of literati paintings uncovers a crucial discrepancy between Mies’ statement and Li’s description. George Rowley provides such a close reading: his book Principles of Chinese Painting analyses the art of painting by discussing multiple pairs of opposites (e.g. spirit and matter, divine and human, idealism and naturalism, among many more). One pair is ‘mood and emotions’, where he states: “Keep everything quiet; never shout but whisper your emotions.” (Rowley 1959, 17) A Chinese landscape painting is no statement, but a result and expression of a mood (ibid.; Jullien 2003). Its power lays in the quietude and suggestiveness. Only by vague suggestions and implicit expression of a mood can a painting – and its emptiness – speak (Jullien 1991). Very different, then, is Mies’s statement of ‘less is more’. The white and minimalist Farnsworth House is neither silent nor suggestive: the glass facade fully exposes the interior, which allows for a clear image of what happens inside. In Figure 22, one can even see right through it. Also, the interior is a statement rather than silence. The same goes for the Poet Residences

by Zhang Lei, Shen Kaikang and Zhang Ang (Figure 20 and 21). Remember Wigley saying that for the modernist architect, white speaks volume. Although meant metaphorically, it seems unlikely that a building is both a bold statement and qui-

Figure 22

Benjamin Lipsman, Farnsworth House, designed by Ludwig Mies van

der Rohe, 2011, digital picture, Plano, Illinois. https://www.flickr.com/photos/blipsman/5923853252/

56 Confrontation: Between Observation & Theory

etly suggestive. Despite the fact that minimalism may come from Chan aesthetics, it seems that along the way to Euro-American culture the essence changed. It is perhaps herein that lies the true duality of white in Europe and North-America: seemingly quiet but bold in essence.

Secondly, white records everything in front of it (Wigley 1996). If more leads to more and abundance is the ultimate desire (Li 2014), white records the abundance. Following Wigley’s remarks about the ability of white to uncover anything of bad taste, we could translate this ‘bad taste’ using Li’s definition of Euro-American taste: good taste is abstaining from the natural desire to want more; bad taste is, hence, the opposite. It is abundance as too much. With both authors combined, one could conclude that white not necessarily uncovers bad taste, but records abundance as undesirable. Coming back to the notion of ‘more is more’, we might agree that white’s intense focus on abundance as such conflicts with the fertility principle. More cannot be more, because more might eventually become too much if highlighted by white. And indeed, in Figure 19, almost no furniture is present. The same is true for the Poet Residences (Figure 20 and 21).

Clutter aesthetics Without wanting to be pejorative, David Wang identifies what he calls clutter aesthetics. Clutter refers not to garbage, but to a state of affairs teeming with activity; activities that might seem – to a foreigner’s eye – as out of place or not obviously related (Wang 2017, 66). Furthermore, it is an automated side-effect of the correlative world view of Chinese society (ibid., 69). David Wang mentions several specific elements that promote clutter aesthetics: “One challenge in reading Chinese philosophy is managing the need to grasp the totality as a coherent system. ... the tension between fixity and fluidity is ongoing. Nothing is permanently fixed, as it were, by Cartesian coordinates.” (ibid., 66) “But in reading Chinese Philosophy in general, one never gets the sense of a monolithic, quantitatively (in the sense of measurable) stable universe. The stability is at best qualitative. This qualitative framework allows for wiggle room, which is to say it allows for

Spatial-Aesthetical Frameworks in China 57

clutter. For instance ... it is not clear how the values of the Confucian family structure ... extend beyond the family unit.” (ibid., 66) “Aside from Confucian Protocols, there is the Daoist penchant of letting things be.” (ibid., 67) Wang suggests that the correlative view accommodates clutter in the empirical surface of things. Related to the clutter is the absolute outside space, which Li calls 江湖 (jiang1hu2). Literally, it translates as ‘rivers and lakes’, but its real meaning is ‘the outside world’, according to Pleco. More precisely, it is the space that seems to belong to no one; A commonplace of sorts. Where both Wang and Li seem to overlap, is the fact that Chinese space division is not the same as in Euro-American culture: space has many gradients, and goes from very intimate to very exposed.

The intimate space is that of the house, the exposed or outer space is that of jianghu (Li 2014). Related to Confucianism, every gradient of space is a framework

Figure 23

Luca Vasconi, Playing mahjong in the hutong streets, while a fellow hutong-dweller

leaves for work in the city, 2014, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.thecrowdedplanet.com/ the-last-hutong-beijing/

58 Confrontation: Between Observation & Theory

Figure 24

Fang Zhenning, Beijing Hutong Bubble No. 32 by MAD Architects, 2010, dig-

ital picture, Beijing. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/mad-architects-hutongbubble-32-beijing/

Figure 25

Shuhe, Beijing Hutong Bubble No. 32 by MAD Architects, 2010, digital pic-

ture, Beijing. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/mad-architects-hutong-bubble32-beijing/

Spatial-Aesthetical Frameworks in China 59

to which certain behavioural codes apply. Li compares it with language: 家 (jia1) means ‘house’, but has a much more general meaning. A family is 家庭 (jia1ting2), a country is 国家 (guo3jia1) and 儒家 (ru2jia1) is the Confucian School. The point is that 家 (jia1) not only describes a social unit, but it is in fact the basis of Chinese metaphysics (ibid.; Wang 2017, 29). The curious thing about 江湖 (jiang1hu2) is exactly the fact that it is the space outside the system of frameworks. Hence, there is no particular code of conduct, nor rules on what is appropriate and what is not (Wang 2017, 66). Subsequently, it becomes a place of lively congestion: people playing chess in pyjamas while someone else washes vegetables or goes to work (like in Figure 21). Relatedly, clutter aesthetics often arise in such spaces.

Again, how does this relate to white? It is crucial to take into account that – as rightfully explained by Wang – the Chinese correlative view has since the modernisation of Mainland China partially been replaces by the positivist view (ibid.).

The positivist world view is one in which there is a clear distinction between the

Figure 26

Open Architecture Office, BEFORE/AFTER , 2017, in Beijing Design

Week, Open Architecture Office (Beijing, unpublished, 2019), page 3.

60 Confrontation: Between Observation & Theory

observer (individual) and the observed (universe). In that sense, a white wall – that records everything in front of it, clutter included – might shift the eye to a positivist one (or white might at least mark that shift). The white invites contemplation of objects near it – that is why a plethora of musea and art spaces are white on the inside. Put differently, the clutter, when put in front of a white decor, plausibly becomes visible as undesirable: imagine one lives in a shaggy room (in an alley in, for example Figure 23) next to the house in Figure 24, wouldn’t one’s house look less nice? Or even, does the contrast with the clean white house not degrade the surrounding houses as cluttery?

If we extrapolate the effect, we could say that white walls may lead to urban sanitation (which shows similarities with the anti-urban need for sanitation adopted by the Modernist Movement). If clutter, which is in se not bad, becomes undesirable clutter, surrounding houses could be treated similarly. Undesirable clutter has to be removed. Dirty or chaotic facades of equally messy houses – like the ones in some of Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoods – can be seen as urban clutter: OPEN Architecture Office has witnessed and documented this trend. In their BEFORE/AFTER project, they photographed before-and-after situations of drastic changes in the Fangjia Hutong between April and September 2017 (Figure 26).

These ‘rectifications’ and cleaning up (or even: cleaning out) of these neighbourhoods are likely an effect of the positivist turn, with white – clean and scarce – as a powerful agency.

Spatial-Aesthetical Frameworks in China 61

PART III

Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

5

A SOCIO-ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

“The villagers were quick to realize that more money can be made from rent than from farming. Shortly after the zone was created, villagers received allowance to build up to three stories on plots for their own homes. Instead, farmers began to build as high as they could without elevators, usually eight or nine stories, with open concrete shells for shops on the first floor, often initially reserving one floor for themselves and renting the rest out to migrants.” (Wong et al. 2017, 145) This part serves to provide an understanding of the major events that happened during the 20th century in China. It might help us to contextualise Chapter Four.

On the basis of this part lays the belief that aesthetical aspects are influenced by other factors outside the field of architecture, urbanism or art. Social, political and economic developments all have the potential to morph spatial-aesthetical notions. In what follows, a brief overview of the twentieth century is provided, with specific attention for the attitude towards ornament and architectural style.

A historical overview: the outlines After the humiliating Opium Wars in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the subsequent fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, China became – for a short time – a republic (Rowe and Kuan 2002; Zhu 2013; Cody et al. 2011).

Modernising China was a necessity: the British, French and American modernised

A Socio-Economic Perspective 65

armies could easily overpower a premodern, fuedal state. Since then, a cultural and political movement was on the rise: the Self-strengthening Movement (自强运动 zi4qiang2yun4dong4) (Rowe and Kuan 2002, 7). The movement embodied the drive to push Chinese society in the modern era. In order to do so, essence (体 ti3) and utility (用 yong4) represented the two opposite end of a spectrum (ibid.). First, to modernise means to increase production and technology and, thus, one should focus on the utilitarian aspect of things. Secondly, modernisation brings a modern lifestyle. How can China become modernised while staying distinctly Chinese – whatever that may be? Peter Rowe and Seng Kuan have put out the implications of this split, and reread the historical processes through the lens of essence and utility.

Based on the book of Rowe and Kuan, titled Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China, we discern five periods: the Pre-Opium War Period (ancient history – 1840), the Foreign Influence Period (1840 – 1927), the Post-Sun Era (1927 – 1949), the Maoist Era (1949 – 1978) and the Reform Era (from 1978 onwards). We will use this rough subdivision as a basis to sketch the recent history and its relation to architecture in China. The idea of this chapter is to serve as a historical contextualisation of to allow for a better understanding of Chapter Six, which is focussed on the 21st century.

The Post-Sun Era Sun Zhongshan – also known as Sun Yat-Sen – was a revolutionary politician who became the first Grand President of the Republic of China (ROC). Notwithstanding the fact that the republican period extends from 1911 – the fall of the Qing Dynasty – to 1949 with the founding of a socialist state lead by Chairman Mao, the republican period has two very distinct parts: during the reign of Sun and after the death of Sun. The Post-Sun Era was far more tumultuous and wartorn than the Sun Era (ibid.). His death lead to a power vacuum: nobody knew what to do with his body, nor were there any prescriptions on how to bury him.

There were two influencial figures that had enough power to succeed Sun. Jiang Jieshi, knows as Chiang Kai Shek, eventually succeeded as head of the nationalist government in 1928. (Cody et al. 2011). This is the main reason why, when dis-

66 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

cerning five periods in recent Chinese history, the Republican Era is less relevant than the death of Sun Zhongshan in 1925 (ibid.; Cody et al. 2011).

What characterised this period is the urge for national identity that was both modern and Chinese (Rowe and Kuan 2002; Zhu 2013; Cody et al. 2011). Also, for the first time in history, Chinese students – who went to the USA to study, among many subjects, architecture – came back from the USA (Cody et al. 2011; Zhu 2013). These Chinese architects were the first generation of Chinese architects. They were – in contrast to premodern craftsmen and builders – trained to design architecture. Other than the premodern structures, architecture – as the Euro-American definition goes – is subject to conceptualisation and theoretisation

Figure 27

Example of a building with a Big Roof. Picture by author.

A Socio-Economic Perspective 67

(Wang 2017). Wang rightfully states that premodern Chinese buildings are not architecture in the strict sense of the word: they are appreciated for their craftsmanship and complexity of assemblage (ibid.).

One of the first generation of Chinese architects was Liang Sicheng. His studies on premodern Chinese structures created the onset of Chinese architectural history (Liang 1984). As a historian as well as an architect, he designed the Obelisk on the Tiananmen Square, as well as some many other major projects. Characterising for the Post-Sun period is the use of the Big Roofs: Chinese roofs put as hats on top of a modern looking building. In the Maoist Era, these projects were a sign of waste of state resources (Lu 2006; Rowe and Kuan 2002). However, the big roofs are a manifestation of a need for modern construction with Chinese identity.

Concerning the architectural practice, the first generation of Chinese architects as well as foreign firms were allowed to open a private architecture office in China (Cody et al. 2011; Rowe and Kuan 2002). As a comparison: in the Period of Foreign Influence (1840 – 1927), almost all architectural constructions were made by foreigners. The Bund in Shanghai is exemplary. These foreign firms had different ways of coping with Chinese modernisation: some of them bluntly ignored local culture and saw it as an opportunity to build Neo-Renaissance buildings like the Post Office in Shanghai designed by Stewardson & Spence, while others tried to mediate with existing building practices, like Murphy and Hussey (Rowe and Kuan 2002).

The Maoist Era After the victory of the communists over the nationalists, the PRC was founded, with Chairman Mao as its leader. Remarkably was the thorough modernisation under Mao. During the 1950s, a new typology had to reorganise a new state, driven to modernise itself and its people. The work-unit ( 单位 dan1wei4) became the overall living and working typology in the bigger cities: Beijing was completely replanned to fit this new urban system of cells (Lu 2006; Bonino and De Pieri 2015).

The work unit was usually a walled area with workspaces – often factories – with living quarters, shops and entertainment. The idea is that the majority of Chinese urban dwellers was assigned to one of the work units. The unit not only had to

68 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

Figure 28

Olli Salmi, Diplomatic compunds in Beijing, 1974, in A Social History of

Maoist China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), page 27.

provide job security, social security, health care and retirement funds but was also a mediator in between the central government and its people (Lu 2006; Bonino and De Pieri 2015). The resources were, according to the socialist ideas, collected from the producing part of the different danwei, and redistributed according to the needs of every unit. In that sense, the urban tissue under Mao was highly hierarchical, divided into cells that consume and produce.

One might have heard about the bad living conditions and the amount of living area per capita (from 4,75m2 in 1949 to 3,68m2 in 1965 (Lu 2006)). However, Maoist China succeeded in boosting the Chinese economy and providing health care, retirement funds and job security to the majority of urban dwellers (ibid.). As an expert in China studies, Vukovich pleads, in that respect, for a better understanding of Maoist China, since the Euro-American conception is all too interested in magnifying the famine as a result of the Great Leap Forward, or the destructive character of the Cultural Revolution (Vukovich 2013).

A Socio-Economic Perspective 69

When it comes to the urban planning and architectural production discourse, all was centralised. Private practices were dismantled, and the planning authority belonged only to the central government. Due to the politicisation of scarcity – meaning that every danwei had to make do with the minimal sources provided by the state – many work units started to hoard construction materials and constructed informal buildings of their own (Lu 2006). Hence, city planners had little power over urban planning in practice. In a similar fashion, architects’ influence on construction palpably decreased. The Big Roofs of the 1920s and 30s were wasting much-needed materials. There was not much time to muse about architecture, either (Wang 2017).

People’s lives pivoted around the work-unit: everything was provided for inside the walls of the unit, and transport of people in between units was limited. The unit became a community; and the community a boost of the group identity (Lu 2006; Bonino and De Pieri 2015). Everything was shared – living rooms in the fac-

Figure 29

paul Dingman/CTBUH, Interior of the entrace hall of the BEA Financial

Tower in Shanghai, 2009 ,digital picture, Shanghai. http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/ building/bea-financial-tower/8813

70 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

tories, kitchens in the dormitories, sanitary provisions and even rooms. This means that no personal accumulation of goods was possible, nor was it necessary: the danwei provided almost all services one would need in one’s life: from pregnancy leave to household help, to retirement funds.

In contrast to the previous era, scarcity was omnipresent – in planning, architectural production, food and liveable space – and resources were strictly controlled by the central government (Lu 2006).

The Reform Era From the death of Chairman Mao, and the succession of Deng Xiaoping as the new leader, China became increasingly open to global trade. With the installation of five Special Economic Zones – Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, Xiamen and Hainan (Wong et al. 2017) – the rest of Mainland China soon followed suit. The Special Economic Zones were an economic and political experiment, where the government stepped aside from business affairs. The process of an institution of a market economy – as opposed to a centrally controlled plan economy – started in the Reform Era. Chinese people were able to accumulate private capital, and private firms were once more allowed (Xue 2006). Among them are the private architectural businesses that, from the start, had to compete with the highly influential and big-scale design institutes owned by the government. It was only from 2002 onwards that many young architects aspired to set up their own design business (ibid., 161) This allowed for a much wider range of projects – both private and public – with increased competition and higher stakes.

The urban tissue built during the Maoist Era cannot and was not erased at once: while some danwei were completely dismantled over the years, others still exist today (Lu 2006; Bonino and De Pieri 2015). Beijing No.2 Thermal Power Plant was an electricity and water heating factory in Beijing, built in 1977. Because of the gradual relocation of heavy industry to the outskirts of Beijing, the powerplant was partially shut down: only 200 of the 860 workers could keep their job (Bonino and De Pieri 2015, 151) Because of the started dismantling after the Reform (more specifically, in the 1990s and early 2000s), one did not need to work in a danwei to live there anymore. Some units were even abandoned by the state

A Socio-Economic Perspective 71

Figure 30

Unknown, Nianhua of Baby and Dragon, 1980, Poster, Postermuseum.

https://postermuseum.com/collections/100-250/products/nianhua-of-baby-and-dragon

72 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

or its factory (Lu 2006; Bonino and De Pieri 2015). Consequently, the group dynamics – which were intimately intertwined with the life within the work unit community – dissolved (Zhao 2007). Strangers – and immigrating peasants – came in and group identity was disturbed. The Reform Era unwillingly resulted in an increasing individuality and proliferation of private businesses: all people trying to find their own success in the new market economy.

Our brief reading of the Reform Era seems to accord to what Kommonen talks about: from the We-generation to the Me-generation (Kommonen 2011, 373).

However, the societal switch did not happen overnight: as Bourdieu states, it is hard to change habits once one has changed position in the social layers of society (Bourdieu 1979, 336). It means, when a self-made man earns enough money to consider himself rich, he will not so easily lose the tendency to save money rather than spend it. Money is not a fulfilling condition for identifying with a different social class (ibid.). It could almost take a lifetime before one learns how to spend money without feeling guilty (ibid.). Relatedly, when the dismantling of the danwei started, the group dynamics might not have disappeared instantly. However, they were severely influenced. Only the Chinese people born in a society were collective resources, and danwei community bonds are fading away, will manifest the self-expression and individualism marked by the Reform. In other words, there might be a latency period after which one starts to clearly see the mentality-changes that resulted from the reformed society.

Because of the collectivisation of recourses and the inability to produce one’s capital, it is likely that people tended to see success in abundance: the not-yet connotation of scarcity makes one dream of what comes after. It is dreaming of abundance, of earning enough money to buy a nice home (Shao 2013). In that sense, the people born in the 60s and 70s may like abundance displayed in abundance. The flashy nianhua is just one of many examples of Chinese decorations that express the ‘more is more’ attitude, described by Li Shiqiao (Li 2014, 9).

Concluding remark There seems to be a certain theme that presents itself: one era appears to be a reaction to the previous one: increased influence from abroad might lead to the

A Socio-Economic Perspective 73

question what national identity means, and using a rigorous architectural style to construct that national identity might have lead to the later condemnation of the ornament as wasteful. Of course, this might be the reason why these eras were defined in the first place. Also, it is likely that other elements are involved.

If one takes a look at the bigger picture provided by this chapter, it appears to be plausible to accept that some macro-trends are indeed visible. As the desire for abundance is once more fulfillable since the Reform Era (contrasted to the scarcity during the Maoist Era), might the abstaining from that abundance be the following trend? Or even, what if ‘more is more’ becomes obsolete? Might white, then, be a possible alternative? The next chapter will attempt to provide a plausible answer.

6

DISTINCTION IN 21STCENTURY CHINA

“Toutes les pratiques culturelles ... et les préférences en matière de littérature, de peinture ou de musique, sont étroitement liées au niveau d’instruction ... et secondairement à l’origine sociale.” (Bourdieu 1979, I) What floats on the surface in Chapter Five is the seeming reactive macro-relationship between consecutive periods. Remarkable is the contrast between the Maoist and Reform Era. One could read privatised abundance made possible since the Reform Era as a measure of success – Qin Shao describes that showing off one’s new home has become a fad, and even an obsession, in contemporary urban society (Shao 2013, 91). Could we, by extension, pose that private abundance is a way to differentiate oneself from others, since it might read as a product of one’s own success (in an increasingly individualised society)?

The question is one of distinction: if one’s neighbour succeeded to erect a booming business in the reformed market economy, and subsequently earned much money to buy a more expensive house, would one not feel one’s ex-neighbour’s fortune is distinct from one’s own? It seems that in an increasingly individualised society, distinction between individuals – to prove and show one’s worth as an individual in society – becomes ever crucial. In an apparent classless society, remnants of class become all the more potent: instead of being distinct by birth, one has to prove one’s class. This is what Pierre Bourdieu – a French sociologist – discusses in

Distinction in 21st-Century China 75

his work of La Distinction, where he analyses the relationship between social class, level of education and taste. However, before we can use a French source to read developments happening in China, we have to make sure Bourdieu’s work is compatible with a Chinese context. A possible link might be a chapter written by Cai Yi in the book Asian Thought and Culture, edited by Gene Blocker and Zhu Liyuan.

What Cai Yi poses is that there is a distinction between natural beauty and social beauty. Natural beauty is common and does not depend on social circumstances (Zhu et al. 1995). By contrast, social beauty is not universal and highly related to social class: “These cases are obviously influenced by our social life. If in daily life one did not come into contact with such scenery and natural landscape, one could not be able to think of or understand the beauty of the brilliance of mountains and streams, and the luxuriance of flowers and trees.” (ibid., 77) In other words, one might not be able to understand the beauty of a landscape painting if one has not contemplated a comparable landscape before. If we put this argument next to Bourdieu, their arguments seem quite parallel. Namely, they both accept beauty as (partially) influenced by social class, and that taste is a result of one’s class. Where Bourdieu goes further, is in the fact that he explicitly describes distinction as an important social drive: one wants to be able to appreciate the beauty of a natural landscape. Even though this desire to climb the social ladder might not necessarily be applicable to premodern China, that desire might be sparked in the increasingly individualised society since the 1980s.

Admittedly, using primarily Chinese sources would be preferable. However, since Bourdieu’s account is very thorough, a combination of Bourdieu’s, Cai Yi’s and Kommonen’s writings might prove effective as well.

Distinction Distinction is about identification with a class and that identification happens through taste (Bourdieu 1979). Assuming class manifests itself indirectly through behaviour and a feeling for what is appropriate (i.e. taste), Bourdieu investigates which parameter is most decisive: one’s education or one’s social origin. What is

76 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

of interest to us, is the friction between what one likes, which layer of society one is a member of and what one aspires: “Le goût classe, et classe celui qui classe: les sujets sociaux se distinguent par les distinctions qu’ils opèrent, entre le beau et le laid, le distingué et le vulgaire, et où s’exprime ou se traduit leur position dan les classements objectifs.” (ibid., VI) Our background and education not only influence what we like and what we do not like, but it also poses possible desires (ibid.). So, if we want to climb the ‘social ladder’ we also want to like what the people in the desirable layer like. Interestingly, wanting to change class also entails a desire already.

Members that identify with a higher societal layer need to identify against something else. As one of the three factors for identification, Frantz Fanon states that identity can only arise where there is an otherness (Fanon 1951). Within a homogeneous group of people, one does not identify against someone else based on similarities. Identification is stressing similarities by demarcating differences (ibid.).

Identity can, therefore, only exist together with distinction.

Bourdieu notices a connection between cultural consumption and elementary consumption: “L’antithèse entre la qualité et la quantité, la grande bouffe et les petits plats, la substance et la forme ou les formes, recouvre l’opposition, liée à des distances inégales à la nécessité entre le goût de nécessité, qui porte vers les nourritures à la fois les plus nourrissantes et les plus économiques, et le goût de liberté – ou de luxe – qui, par opposition de franc-manger populaire, porte à déplacer l’accent de la matière vers la manière ... par une partie de stylisation qui demande à la forme et aux formes une dénégation de la fonction.” (Bourdieu 1979, VII) Hence, the higher the social layer in which one lives, the less one is dependant on the necessity to consume: the farmer needs to eat and work to stay alive and to do what he or she does, the writer ‘only’ needs books, a pen and his mind. However, a writer cannot live from consuming a pen or a book like a farmer lives from his or her crops or cattle. Of course, the very idea that one can stay alive while abstaining from necessary production is a luxury. Bourdieu calls it ‘the inequal

Distinction in 21st-Century China 77

distance to necessity.’

Li Shiqiao writes about Euro-American taste as centred around abstaining from, and disgusted by, a natural tendency towards – to use a pejorative word – greed. According to the Oxford Dictionary, greed is an intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food. Hence, greed is a desire for basic, alimentary consumption. It strokes well with Bourdieu’s notice that people of high taste – with often self-imposed rules about taste – abstain from greed, and thus from alimentary-focussed consumption.

Urban peasants To understand whether Bourdieu is in line with Chinese society (or at least with urban China), we should first have a look at the dichotomy between urbanite and peasant. During the Maoist era, farmers were highest in social rank, merchants lowest (Zhao 2007; Lu 2006). As described by many, China was – and to some extent, still is – highly dependent on agricultural produce.

Nowadays, due to the opening up and the introduction of the market economy, cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Shenzhen have become concentrations of capital (Wong et al. 2017). Urbanites started to have modern and increased living standards, with more access to education. Modernisation was regrettably not for all: people who resided in rural areas or the outskirts of a major city like Shanghai did not have the same access to education. The registration system – the hukou system – prevents mass mobilisation and rural exodus (Shao 2013; Wong et al. 2017). However, because of the hukou system, peasants did not have the same opportunities, which in turn meant they could not get the better-paid jobs in the city (Shao 2013; Wong et al. 2017). Shao Qin gives in her Shanghai Gone a very personal and touching account of some of the people being expelled from their homes to make room for new developments. One of the stories she tells is the one of a mother that came from a rural area outside of Shanghai and came to live in a tiny apartment with her family in an attempt to improve their livelihoods. Essentially, people with low-income – which are often immigrated peasants – often have no choice but to take the left-over, low paying jobs (Shao 2013). The mother in Shao Qin’s book needs to work all day, every day, in order to provide

78 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

enough money to live from. Automatically, her needs and desires are intertwined: she wants to have enough money not to worry or to rent a bigger apartment (ibid.).

Hence, the distance to necessity – in Bourdieu’s words – is minimal.

There is a trend for urbanites to discriminate incoming peasants (ibid.; Wong et al. 2017). Is it not similar, then, to what Bourdieu says about the high class not surviving on what he or she produces, while the poor farmer cannot but stick to the bare necessities of life? Since urbanites often work in service industries and shops, their activities are freed of hard, physical labour. In other words, their distance towards necessity has increased. They transcend the human as an animal in survival mode; the farmers embody it. Kommonen writes: “You cannot understand China by focusing on cities like Shanghai; that is not the real China. Most of the people are still farmers, and many of them cherish traditional values.

They use more colourful items than urban Chinese.” (Kommonen 2011, 374) Curiously, there is a difference in colour use between peasants and urbanites.

Although Chinese taste also entails a certain distance towards necessity – one could mention the literati in premodern times – it does not mean that the fertility principle is automatically out of the picture. Having more than one needs – especially luxury goods and decorations – can also be a sign of luxury.

As a small note, Kommonen argues that urban areas like Shanghai and Tianjin are not the real China. Even though I agree on the remark that in urban areas premodern habits and tastes are less prevalent, I disagree on the use of the wording ‘real China’. Isn’t ‘real China’s’ future an urban future, since more than half of the population lives in cities?

From We to Me If we think of distinction, we should also think of distinctive groups. Kommonen observed how the generations before the opening up of China more often refer to ‘we’, while people born after the 80’s use ‘I’ (ibid., 373). In other words, contemporary Chinese society is increasingly individualising. Where before, most people worked and lived inside their work units – the 单位 (dan1wei4) – today, this kind of group bonds are less intense. After the opening up, many ‘outsiders’ came

Distinction in 21st-Century China 79

living in work units where they did not belong before. Society became, partially because of that less big-grained (with the work unit being one possible kind of big grains). Hence, taste becomes more personal, and colours are used to express oneself (ibid.). Instead of being born or raised in a group with a specific identity in which one must learn to fit, now it more or less comes to the individual to determine that identity. Kommonen writes: “Chinese people use colour to reflect what they dream for, their dream society, their ideal self. Our ideal society now is American and European style. China opens up. In a way, to follow the international trend is to fulfil a dream.” (ibid., 375) Notice that part of the dream is to find the ideal self. According to her, it may not be surprising that some young Chinese have rediscovered premodern writings in order to find out who they are: “Our young generation wants to find our roots; we notice that foreigners know more about Chinese history and culture than we do. We do American and European things but also want to find our Chinese roots. It is popular to read Chinese history, read the writings of Confucius.” (ibid., 373) So, personal identification becomes all the more prudent once one is not part of a specific, closed group with a specific way of life. It gets tougher to discover one’s own identity. Expressing emotions and taste through flashy colours might be a way to secure it.

The need for distinction is so basal, it seeps into every layer of society and in every part of social life. It seems we cannot think urban China without it.

The proliferating private practice Since the architecture discourse during the socialist era was somewhat overshadowed by the city planners or inhibited by the government who tightly controlled resources (Lu 2006), the majority (84,66%) of Chinese construction between the opening up and 2001 has been performed by government-owned design institutes (Xue 2006, 157). The system of private practices came to a halt in the ‘50s and came back to a slow start in the ‘80s and ‘90s (Rowe and Kuan 2002; Xue

80 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

2006; Zhu 2013). It is only after 2002 – with a reported increase of requests to start a private firm from graduates from, for example, the East China University of Technology – that it appeared the private practice formula was more appealing to designers and architects (Xue 2006, 161). The government had since the late 90s experimented by allowing some privately-owned construction companies (ibid.). Since then, a steady proliferation of private practices started. Private firms – mostly managed by foreign-educated Chinese architects – became true competitors for the decreasing number of state-owned institutes (ibid.). An additional drive in causing proliferation might be the increasing demand from private clients for private projects.

The by now proliferated private practices did not completely eradicate the government-owned institutes. They have become each other’s competitor. Consequently, to attract clients, projects and much-needed money, private practices had to find new ways to stand out. One might read the need for standing out as a need for distinction. The question arises how a private firm distinguishes itself from the mass of mediocre offices.

In order to distinguish oneself as better, showing off is important. Not just by talking, but by showing. The plethora of international architectural journals, fora and websites allow for a big arena with a big audience. In a market economy, a business will most likely be able to stay alive when there is a thought-out marketing strategy. It is showing one’s qualities to an audience who has little time to waste on understanding every project to its roots. Hence, easy consumable visuals may be very potent, telling and direct: they instantly attract, can tell a story, and most importantly, can sell the name of the architectural firm. In an increasingly visual society, likeable images attract the big and uninterested audience.

Typically, these easy consumable visuals are immaculate, neat and empty. The simpler the picture, the faster one can understand it. Crowdy places do not communicate efficiently, nor does clutter make it readable. In that sense, images are often a euphemism of the actual project. Many interiors are very minimal, undone of traces of daily life. Designers not only design for their client; they also exploit their own work for the sake of future work. Does the image not become a project and the project an image?

As Kommonen has pointed out, one of the consequences of individualisation is

Distinction in 21st-Century China 81

Figure 31

Construction site in Baitasi area. The structure is completely new. The

erea is well-known for its many renovations and refurbishments, as well as the yearly Beijing Design Week. Pictures by author.

Figure 32

Vertical wooden member for the roof construction. Every piece is pre-

made and has a name to identify where it should come. Picture by author.

82 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

the fact that younger Chinese people rediscovered their roots and past. The young Chinese not only had to figure out a personal identity, but the young architect might benefit from a private practice identity as well.

Contemporary Literati?

What Kommonen suggests is that the ‘younger Chinese generations’ have rediscovered premodern culture (Kommonen 2011, 373). The rediscovery of premodern heritage is visible in many branches: in the assignments of students in Chinese architecture schools (see Figure 33, in which students had to make a painting of a building based on literati landscape paintings, published in the Architectural Journal in 2014), in fashion (see Figure 34) and in the proliferating refurbishments of hutongs in Beijing (see Figure 31, 32 and Chapter Eight).

One architect that might be considered as one of the leading figures that call for awareness of heritage and the preservation of premodern culture is Wang Shu and his Amateur Architecture Studio. The private architectural studio, founded in 1998, has become famous for its tactile work and sensitivity towards premodern use of material and construction techniques. Their most famous work – the Ningbo Historic Museum – is a museum of which the facade is constructed of the rubble that came from the (premodern) village that was destroyed to make way for the museum (see Figure35). Also, the name of the studio refers to premodernity: ‘amateur’ actually refers to the master builder, to the craftsmanship required to make a post-and-beam structure. Their work might, in a sense, be emblematic for this sensibility towards premodernity. As mentioned before, a possible effect of the rediscovery of the old is the plethora of refurbishments in Beijing hutong neighbourhoods. We will explain this more in-depth in Chapter Eight.

Another possible effect of the rediscovery of premodern artefacts and culture can be observed in the architectural picture. In David Wang’s A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future, Wang talks about the calligraphic lilt: “In this totalized world, traditional architecture exemplifies a transference of the organicism of calligraphy to the aesthetic quality of buildings. The curvilinear lilt of the roof is perhaps where this similarity is most noticeable; but the entire body of a traditional structure reads comfortably because it reads calligraphically.” (Wang 2017, 143)

Distinction in 21st-Century China 83

Figure 33

Lin Zhouxin, No Title, 2014, Drawing, in Architectural Journal (2014),

6, page 20.

Even though Wang is talking about the architectural form itself, Knapp goes further and registers a close link between architectural form and paper. Pathways are like brush strokes; the land is the paper; the pond the inkpot (Knapp 1998). In addition, some theses have written about architecture and calligraphy, showing the interest of academics and students in the topic.

Chapter Seven is a series of calligraphic versions of architectural pictures in the form of a photo essay. Notice how the white walls of the buildings becomes empty

84 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

Figure 34

Taobao, No Title, 2020, Screenshot, https://detail.tmall.com/item.ht-

m?spm=a230r.1.14.58.2aef21f92QeZiD&id=612041369820&ns=1&abbucket=2

Figure 35

Iwan Baan, Facade of the Ningbo Historic Museum designed by Amateur Ar-

chitecture Office, 2008, digital picture, Ningbo, https://iwan.com/portfolio/wang-shu-ningbo-historic-museum/

Distinction in 21st-Century China 85

on paper. To render the transition from blanc to blank, the contrasts of the pictures are changed somewhat. Afterwards, the darkest elements, the materials that have a specific texture and possible circulation space are all put into a calligraphic constellation. The dryness of the ink, as well as the quickness of the strokes all translate the architectural movement and textures into calligraphy.

A possible explanation why it is exactly in the architectural picture that this calligraphic effect is visible might be the need for distinction: competing architectural practices need to show and sell their projects in order to attract enough developers. Pictures are a fast medium in an increasingly growing arena of architectural journals, magazines and fora. A clean and clearly structured picture might attract the gaze of the contemplator more: the emptier the room depicted, the easier to read it. Also, the emptier the room, the more there is room to play with emptiness and fulness. The white on the picture becomes empty on paper: it reminds of the points about calligraphy discussed by François Cheng (see Chapter 3). The architecture almost seems to consider that it will be read on paper. So, then, maybe calligraphy might indeed be compatible with architectural imaging. Exploiting literati traditions (like calligraphy) can also convey a sense of good taste, as well as portraying the architecture office as very knowledgeable about premodern culture and philosophy.

Towards a conclusion: a palimpsest reading What is interesting about China in the twenty-first century is the upcoming differences between the early-Reform generation and the young generation born in the 80s and 90s. One starts to see the profound impact of the Reform on Chinese urbanites. So too do we see a change in aesthetics. It is this change in aesthetics that the thesis is searching for: a politics of white. Based on the literature, we can come up with a synthesis of this chapter and Chapter Five, with five points that are relevant for this study. These points constitute the base of the scheme at the end of this chapter.

First of all – as mentioned before – we have a steep increase in private practices in Chinese architectural discourse. Their proliferation induces competition. There is a need for distinction. As we have seen, white can be a powerful tool to get even

86 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

Figure 36

Iwan Baan, Concrete Slit House by Zhang Lei Architects, 2008, digital picture,

Nanjing, https://iwan.com/portfolio/zhang-lei-concrete-house/ (altered version on the right)

Figure 37

Jeremy San, House and workshop in Guanshuyuan Hutong by Atelier

Liu YuYang Architects,2010, digital picture, Beijing. https://www.archdaily.com/556142/ no-18-guan-shu-yuan-hutong-atelier-liu-yuyang-architects?ad_medium=gallery (altered version on the right.)

Distinction in 21st-Century China 87

more powerful images that sell the architecture office.

Secondly, there is an increase in average wage throughout the years. Where people did not receive a monetary salary in Maoist China, from the Reform Period onwards, the wage increased. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the average annual salary increased from a little over 10000 RMB to 82000 RMB between 2000 and 2020 (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2019). As opposed to the average salary, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is a number indicating the inflation of costs for a specific basket of consumer goods, recently stabilised at about 100% to 105% (ibid.). This means that inflation of consumer goods has not been affected largely. Combining the average salary and the CPI, there is a significant increase in the consumption potential: people earn more and goods do not get much more expensive. This means that consumption goods are generally available to most urbanites in China since the twenty-first century. Needless to say, the Reform created a noticeable divide between the lucky few – the nouveaux-riches that exploited the Reform successfully – and the poor, who did not have the opportunity or education to increase their livelihoods. The average increase in salary does, in that sense, not apply to all.

A third important element is the founding of online market platforms such as Taobao. The most popular and influential online market place was founded in 2003 and provides all kinds of goods: from clothes to food, from memberships of journals to fridges. With an inter-regional transport network that made it capable of connecting the producing-cities like Wenzhou, to the consumer-cities like Shanghai or Beijing, a parcel from Taobao can be delivered from Shenzhen to Beijing in less than two days. In other words, Taobao and the like have made abundance available at low cost and lightning speeds. With everyone – or at least the majority of the urbanites – being able to buy any clutter one wants, doesn’t the ‘more is more’ aspect of the fertility principle become obsolete? If the nouveaux-riches, who commonly have a business that is part of the tight logistical network of China, have a need for self-expression, how can that expression be different from other Chinese?

A fourth process worth mentioning is the fluctuation between abolishing and re-invigorating the value of ornament. In the Post-Sun Era (or Pre-Maoist Era, if one likes), the Big Roofs and typical Chinese ornaments that adorned quite mod-

88 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

ern building complexes provided an experimental basis for modernising and remaining Chinese. In the Maoist Era, government officials discarded the Big Roofs and all other non-essential ornaments as wasteful (Lu 2006; Rowe and Kuan 2002): the Architectural Journal (建筑学报jian4zhu2xue2bao4) was heavily criticised in 1954 for focussing on the Big Roof projects that wanted to establish a Chinese identity. In the Reform Era, abundance was once more possible, be it albeit for the lucky few: rich materials and warm colours expressed the status of a building. In that sense, Li Shiqiao’s comment on the limited amount of white architecture is indeed correct: it seems that the majority of the more prestigious building developments during the Reform Era were indeed off-white, showcasing the richness of materials: marble, lacquered wood and shiny gold-like metals. However, the 21st century is marked by an increasing number of minimalist projects, often with white walls. Ornaments may return obsolete. Many successful young architecture firms have oeuvres that are either critical regionalist or profoundly white.

As a fifth important element, we need to acknowledge the proliferating architectural and design-related journals and magazines. Before 1984, Architectural Journal ( 建筑学报jian4zhu2xue2bao4) was the only journal available on the subject. After 1984, popular journals like the Time + Architecture Magazine (时代建筑 shi2dai4jian4zhu2) popped up. Interesting to notice is the fact that the younger magazines focus more on either tectonic or white architecture. The proliferation of magazines, and the online architectural platforms, allow for architects to sell themselves.

Lastly, because of the invasive urban redevelopment strategy used since the Reform – combined with the increased sensibility of the public towards national heritage as a consequence of rediscovering one’s roots in an individualistic society, combined with the start of Chinese architectural history by Liang Sicheng – architects and urban planners alike have expressed their concern about the demolition of premodern structures and neighbourhoods. The commodification of the housing market allows to see buildings as interchangeable, hence highly increasing land prices, followed by inevitable gentrification. Gentrification then, becomes a motor once more in increasing land prices, completing the vicious circle. The point is that the remaining premodern structures are highly valuable, not only because of the value of the land they occupy, but also for cultural reasons. Preservation has therefore gained recent importance. This debate lays at the core of heritage

Distinction in 21st-Century China 89

studies and is certainly not new. As a dubious example, the annual Beijing Design Week is a manifestation of the selection of Beijing as international city of design

by UNESCO. The event, with its first edition in 2009, aims to repurpose urban tissue by design, among other bullet points. We will come back to this in Chapter Eight.

90 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

Distinction in 21st-Century China 91

7

PHOTO ESSAY: BETWEEN BLAND & BLANK

Figure 38

Photo Essay 93

94 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

Figure 39

96 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

Figure 40

Photo Essay 97

98 Distinction: Towards a New Ideal?

Figure 41

Photo Essay 99

PART IV

Excursion: Utopia, Heterotopia & White

8

WHITE AS A HETEROTOPIA

“First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.” (Foucault 1986, 3) While this thesis is not yet over, we should profit from the opportunity to contemplate our findings. As a means to do so, this chapter elaborates on the effect of a political power of white: if one distinguishes oneself from others, the others are distinguished all the like. In other words, when white acquires the power to differentiate, it ignites gentrification. Distinguishing oneself infects the surrounding like a disease affects a body. Others that are put in contrast to this new – nicer looking – entity will find the drive to part the sinking ship and – out of self-defence – join the gentrification movement. Once an area has been gentrified, gentrification induces itself: higher prices mean prestige and vice versa. However, what if the hubs of differentiation and gentrification – possibly white projects – are so differentiated from their surroundings, that they lose all tie to it? What if a disease starts to kill the body it is inhabiting?

Beijing is currently such a battlefield. The premodern neighbourhoods in the centre of Beijing – hutongs (胡同 hu2tong2) – are faced by demolition since the

White as a Heterotopia 103

twentieth century, and are now increasingly infected by gentrification. The dynamics at play are roughly as follows.

Since the opening up, the dichotomy between rural and urban only got worse.

People started to move into the city, increasing the demand for housing opportunities. With Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoods located in the heart of Beijing – mainly inside the Second Ring Road – they occupy valuable land. Combined with their low-rise typology – generally one storey, but now some people added a second floor – there is a major potential financial gain if developers destroy those neighbourhoods in favour of well-located, expensive apartment complexes. Additionally, the premodern sky well housing typologies are generally in bad conditions: because of the focus on production instead of on housing provision (Lu 2006) – think of the small living area per capita in Maoist China – tenants were forces to flock together and share a former one-family dwelling. Consequently, throughout the years, the state of these houses deteriorated and unhygienic situations made them a thorn in the eye for a city as big as Beijing. Destroying these neighbourhoods not only provided financial gain for developers, it also solves the sanitation problems, since some of these houses do not have running water or proper sewage. This was generally the practice for decades.

Since the onset of the 21st century, many young Chinese architects opened their own practices. These Chinese architects – raised during the Reform Era – have started to express their concerns about losing national heritage (like Wang Shu or Zhang Ke, head of the ZAO/standardarchitecture office whose projects will be discussed later on). It is not surprising that exactly this generation starts to raise awareness on the topic since they are the first generation of architects raised in the opened-up China with a stronger need for individual identification. As we have discussed before, the Me-Generation – a term lend from Kommonen – found its way back to Chinese classics and history: they have an urge to understand their roots in order to construct an individual identity (Kommonen 2011, 373). Hutong neighbourhoods are, after all, part of Chinese history, and identity is subsequently based on the history of a country one comes from.

104 Excursion: Utopia, Heterotopia & White

The Beijing Design Week The awareness increased, and demolitions in favour of high-profit urban developments have decreased somewhat. Beijing’s nomination as international design capital may have influenced this sudden course change. Since 2009, there is an annual Beijing Design Week (hereafter called BJDW) in autumn. During this week, some major hutong neighbourhoods are set up as a parcours with different stops.

Every stop is a renovated courtyard house – either designed specifically for the BJDW or for a private developer – or a polished interior of a house. White walls are an integral part of these designs. The idea is not only to raise awareness of the cultural value of these neighbourhoods but also to conduct research by design and propose ways to improve living conditions and save them from demolition – a most interesting and honourable goal.

However, some remarks are necessary. First of all, however nice the designs may look, they are a form of gentrification: showing that the neighbourhoods are newly-discovered gems make them highly wanted, but also more pricy. Hence, people living in dilapidated conditions in these areas experienced increased rents and sometimes even evictions (during my internship in Beijing from April to September 2019, a colleague of mine was evicted from his hutong residence). The renovations have to be made somewhere, which means someone will have to move out in order to clean the place up and make it part of the BJDW parcours.

Secondly, the question remains what happens after the BJDW. Do people use those new spaces, or are they locked only to be used next year? After first-hand experience, it seems that some of the projects are inaccessible (even though on the internet, they often are common spaces, like bars or weekend schools). There is a notice that states the compound is closed, a padlock on the front door or when ringing the doorbell, nobody answers or opens the door. Furthermore, it seems that these locked courtyards often have not been maintained for quite a while: a dirty courtyard or a weather-stained address number. Also, residents seem not to know anything about what is happening behind the walls of renovated dwellings.

Thirdly, because of the many banners on the streets in the neighbourhoods during the BJDW, the neighbourhood feels more like an amusement park than as a residential area (Figure 37). To the public, the renovations are more interesting

White as a Heterotopia 105

Figure 42

Flags are hung all over the Baitasi neighbourhood. It gives the surround-

ing a touristic feeling, almost like an attraction. Picture by author.

than the people living nearby those renovations. It creates selective blindness towards the real effect of the projects: by putting the spotlight on the few renovated houses, the real situation becomes a bit player. Hence, the BJDW highlights the design as such, on its own, and stresses its supposedly ‘intrinsic quality’. If every year, new projects pop up – or at least, that is how it looks because before these renovations there were very real people in that very same place – the dichotomy aggravates. Hence, gentrification triumphs. And in this case, with gentrification comes heterotopia.

Foucault’s heterotopia The definition provided by Foucault goes as follows: “There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places – places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society – which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real

106 Excursion: Utopia, Heterotopia & White

sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.� (Foucault 1986, 4) In other words, heterotopias are outside places; places not opposite to utopias, but only opposite in their effect. According to Michel Agier, heterotopias have a mirroring effect: because of their outsideness, they automatically delineate the insides (Agier 2019). In order to speak of a heterotopia, Foucault formulates six principles of heterotopias.

Firstly, Foucault states that there is no single culture that fails to construct heterotopic places (Foucault 1986). They are an integral part of society, culture and space.

Secondly, heterotopias can have a multitude of functions in society (ibid.). Every heterotopia has its own place. Also, similar heterotopies in different cultures can have one function or another. Foucault mentions the cemetery as a heterotopic place: its function changed from a central space in urban fabric – where people were buried and importance was put on the afterlife rather than the dead body itself – to a spot far away from daily life, where people focus on the way of treating a dead body: if there is no afterlife, the dead body is the only proof of our existence (ibid.). Hence, cemeteries change. So heterotopias have the potential to alter.

The third principle states that a heterotopic place juxtaposes in a single real space, several spaces and sites that are in themselves incompatible (ibid.). A theatre or a garden is a good example given by Foucault: they represent the world in a mini-version, yet the world is in itself not reducible to a garden. A Chinese literati garden combines rocks, water and vegetation into one ensemble, yet rock formations, lakes and vegetation are never combined in nature in a similar fashion.

Fourth, heterotopies are heterosynchronies. They are spaces layered with time.

Musea and libraries are a good example: they store knowledge and artefacts from different periods into one building (ibid.).

The fifth principle remarks that heterotopias are spaces of opening and closure: they are both isolated yet penetrable. They are not freely accessible. Either one

White as a Heterotopia 107

has no choice but to enter, or one has to subject oneself to certain rites and purifications (ibid.).

The sixth principle goes as follows: “The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains. This function unfolds between two extreme poles. Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory (perhaps that is the role that was played by those famous brothels of which we are now deprived). Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill-constructed, and jumbled.” (ibid., 8) In what follows, we will try to read Beijing’s hutongs – and more precisely, the renovated houses, which are often white inside – as initiators of a heterotopic urban fabric.

Heterotopic projects In order to be sure we do not make a common mistake of applying the label to any specific urban space, it is crucial to check all principles. When we can argue that every principle is present, we can argue that there possibly is a heterotopic allure about the renovated courtyards. To avoid naming everything a heterotopia, I follow Lieven De Cauter’s comment that it is crucial to stay close to the reading of Foucault.

The first two principles are more statements than conditions: every culture has at least some kind of heterotopia, and heterotopias can change through time and culture (ibid.). It needs no explanation that in our case, this is no question of right or wrong. We can indeed say that Beijing is home to certain heterotopias, and those heterotopias can change with changing society.

The third principle is somewhat more demanding: a heterotopia is a collection of incompatible spaces (ibid.). We could pose that the BJDW juxtaposes both the shop window and intimate living space. The exposition space collides, overlaps and annihilates living space: people have to move out in order to make room for an exhibition. The exhibition, in that sense, is taking place in someone’s house – a

108 Excursion: Utopia, Heterotopia & White

place of very high and intimate care exposed to the absolute outside. Anyone can pop in to contemplate the exposition and renovation. As mentioned before, one cannot live in a shop window. The home and the shop window are juxtaposed, yet completely incompatible. As Li Shiqiao remarks: the bars in front of people’s windows are not only against robbers – though some windows are clearly out of the reach of any thief with a ladder – but also mark a specific phenomenon of absolute safety. Where Euro-American houses – certainly in the Modernist Movement – have many windows, Chinese houses tend to be more closed. Adding a definition by Bart Verschaffel: a house is a mediation between an absolute inside – Hestia – and an absolute outside – Hermes (Verschaffel 2010). Windows and doors are the thresholds of a house, and constitute the relationship between the two extremes (ibid.). A Euro-American house is, in other words, a mediation between outside and inside. Li Shiqiao thus remarks that – different than in Europe and North-America – the house is a space of absolute insideness (Li 2014; Wang 2017).

Hence, converting a house into exhibition space – or several houses – constitutes a blunt rebellion against the logic of a house. What makes it worse, is the fact that any trace of homeliness is erased: for the visitor, it seems like a nice, renovated gem in the middle of a dilapidated neighbourhood. White might produce the effect of showing, rendering clear for a contemplator’s eye. It might undo the house of its homeliness. The heterotopia created by it is perhaps only visible for the (former) residents.

The fourth principle accounts that heterotopias are bundles of timeframes (Foucault 1986). Can we not read the renovations in hutong neighbourhoods as contemporary versions of older, adjacent houses? It seems that in the renovated project, by designing it and reinstating its former glory – whatever that may be – the designer invents a contemporary sibling of the hutong sky well dwelling. The archetype dwelling never existed in that fashion, so it is a new version (and its newness is expressed in the whiteness). Yet, it has a local and formal tie to the surrounding houses, which are mostly old, chaotic, and deprived of modern comfort.

We could say that those projects both combine the premodern and modern timeframe into one, as well as creating a new reference point: by renovating a dwelling in the dense tissue – and all the rest of the houses not – the older, original houses are degraded as old, out of fashion and marginal. However, let us not forget that

White as a Heterotopia 109

the renovations are in themselves newer and invented versions of what the old tissue actually is. It does not mean that any renovation is automatically a heterotopia. The important fact that not all are renovated, and the older structures are in the vicinity of the new, makes a stark contrast between new and old: as if one only renovates a part of a church. The non-renovated part automatically becomes different. In a similar sense, heterotopia is induced in hutong neighbourhoods.

The question remains if the renovations or the older houses are the heterotopia.

Principle five is crucial. The opening and closure, which makes them both penetrable and isolated, are maybe the most noticeable effect. As mentioned before, many of the renovated projects are closed most of the time. The front door locked with a padlock, access is extremely limited. For the rich developer or owner, it shows that only the rich few can afford to renovate a complete compound and lock it – or open it – as desired. For the visitor of the BJDW, it means that one only has the chance to enter during a specific time of year. For the local community, it is a permanent blackened eye: before the renovation, they may have frequently visited their neighbours, while afterwards, the area is out of bounds. For the tourists – who stay in many of the renovated ‘courtyard hotels’ in the area – it means paying a high price to gain access to these out-of-bound spaces: prices can exceed 200 EUR per night per person. Again, an extravagance many cannot afford. In total, for the community, the out-of-bound places increase every year: they may not lose their home to demolition, but they lose it to renovation. Formally, the difference between the two is smaller, yet the heterotopia only increases by those means: erasing all traces of existence makes it invisible to most. Leaving it partially intact keeps the wound open (which does not mean that demolishing is the best choice).

The sixth principle tells us that heterotopias are either illusionary places that make the outside world even more illusionary, or other real spaces that are perfect, meticulous or well-arranged. It seems that the latter is applicable. Cleaning up (or cleaning out), redesigning and putting it ‘back’ into a perfect state, it represents the rest of the dwellings in the neighbourhood as they should have been: clean, neat and both contemporary and premodern. Hence, it projects the surrounding buildings as messy, undesirable and ill.

To conclude, we could indeed say that these projects induce heterotopic spaces.

However, due to the different people involved in the storyline, the heterotopic

110 Excursion: Utopia, Heterotopia & White

Figure 43

Sun Haiting, Renovated courtyard house by Wonder Architects, 2017, digital pic-

ture, Beijing. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/wonder-architects-hutong-beijing-02-12-2018/

space alters: for the owner of a renovated dwelling it means the neighbourhood is a heterotopia because it is a kind of opposite to his or her own dwelling.; for the tourist the neighbourhood is a heterotopia, because one does not feel part of the community, only when entering in a renovated exhibition pavilion does one feel on his or her place; for the dweller the projects are heterotopias, since the projects are almost all year long inaccessible or closed.

Utopian walls How does heterotopia in hutong dwellings relate to what has been said about white in Chapter Four? We discussed the collision and parallels between white and spatial-aesthetic notions – namely scarcity, the fertility principle and clutter aesthetics.

White as a Heterotopia 111

Figure 44

The book shop in the area of the Qianmen. On the outside, the ma-

terials are left bare, on the inside, wood is contrasted with sharp white walls. Pictures by author.

When it comes to the fertility principle, we could focus on the stark contrast between the clean interiors as portrayed during the BJDW or in architectural journals. The idea that more leads to more is obsolete when put on a white surface.

Since white registers everything in front, it attacks everything of bad taste (Wigley 1996) – that is to say, which is too different from it. Where people in the hutong neighbourhoods dream of a life of wealth and plenty – and thus of abundance – the renovation explicitly abstains from it. It is a bold irregularity in the tissue of chaos and poverty. It is empty, yet very expensive. By expressing the contrast between rich and poor, between here and there, it delineates an area of exception.

The rule inside is: more is less (and less is more, like Mies’ statement). This is automatically linked to the idea of scarcity: white demarcates a space of desired scarcity in a place where people desire for abundance. It transgresses every rule there is. And a new rule is apparent: only the rich can desire less.

112 Excursion: Utopia, Heterotopia & White

Figure 45

Peoples Architecture Office, Plug-in Hutong House, 2016, digital picture,

Beijing. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/peoples-architecture-office-pluginhouse-beijing-hutong-mrs-fan-china-12-05-2016/

Then there was clutter aesthetics. Since these projects often are subject to outside eyes – the tourist, the visitor, the developer and the architect – the neighbourhood is turned into a theatre. Clutter is not just as it is – objects in abundance stored everywhere – but it becomes a prop in a theatre the dwellers do not want to participate in. It is the theatre of slum porn: a tourists’ or amateur photographers’ obsession with the chaotic and ‘charming’ life in the hutongs, just like the ‘charming’ surroundings of the white house in Figure 45. One can only be fascinated by life in those dilapidated houses if one is not part of life in one of those. Only an

White as a Heterotopia 113

Figure 46

The interior of the weekend school designed by ZAO/Standardarchi-

tecture. The space is very lively and freely used. After hours, parents gather in the alley in front of the school, waiting for their children. People talk, children play. Picture by author.

outsider can enjoy the theatre. In a heterotopia, clutter may mark the border. The dichotomy reads as a presence or absence of clutter. In other words, the white, renovated project displays the clutter as a prop. It needs the clutter, yet puts the garbage bin next door: white records everything in front and clutter too near to it would destroy the image (and would thus reduce the heterotopic effect).

Finally, it has to be said that the BJDW only aggravates the effect. The heterotopia is reinforced because of the collision between living and exhibiting. To use Verschaffel’s and Li’s words, the house is an intimate space of high care (Verschaffel 2010; Li 2014). Similarly, the exhibition space is also a space of a certain degree of care. However, for one it is an intimate space related to intimate care, while for the other it is an exposed space, cared for only visually. While the intimate care in one’s home is private, important and essential to claim a space as home, the other care is in favour of the outside: care is only taken inasmuch as it contributes to the outside contemplator. In that sense, keeping a wall nice and clean is not out of a personal necessity to care for one’s own environment, but to please someone else.

A white wall becomes a frame, a picture, a viewing box. It cannot allow intense

114 Excursion: Utopia, Heterotopia & White

use, since the project will most likely be used as an exhibition space the next year.

In other words, it inhibits life in favour of care.

Some projects have been abandoned by the owners. An example is another courtyard by ZAO/Standardarchitecture in Figure 47 (different from the one in Figure 46). Although the project is less white than others, it still shows the disruptive power of these renovations, of which most are clean, white interiors. In that sense, we could expand the meaning of white as cleaned up, out of life. The projects by ZAO/Standardarchitecture might not be white, but the one shown in Figure 47 was clearly abandoned, cleaned up and out of life. The point is that these characteristics, which are often ascribed to and induced by white, are killing and sanitising urban neighbourhoods.

To conclude, heterotopia in Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoods is induced by the intrusion of (visual) utopias only for the lucky few. Some utopias – like the renovated weekend school by ZAO/Standardarchitecture (Figure 41) – seem to work, and perhaps lose their status of utopia in favour of a vibrant relationship with the local community. However, it seems that such projects are rare, and most are closed after renovation or exhibition. In contrast to the individual, locked-away (visual) utopian renovations, Mao’s utopia of a labour society where everyone’s living standards increased, is far removed from the BJDW. The elan of the Modernist Movement – and shared with the modernisation efforts during the Maoist Era – was to create better living conditions for all: a search for an inclusive utopia. The very selective and overdone beautification of hutong residences does not include the neighbourhood (ironically, the statement on the map of the 2019 BJDW was ‘Map of neighbourhood warming initiatives’). It does exactly the opposite.

White as a Heterotopia 115

Figure 47

Top: Su Shengliang, Micro Yuan’er by ZAO/Standardarchitecture, 2013, dig-

ital picture, Beijing, http://www.standardarchitecture.cn/v2news/7299. Bottom: picture of the state of the compound in September 2019. All houses seem abandoned, and a homeless man was able to get in (sitting on the left). He made a home out of this locked-out renovation. He owns matress, bottles of coke and canned beer. There was a slight sent of urine. Picture taken by author.

PART V

Conclusion

9

CONCLUSION

Throughout this thesis, different aspects of white came to the front: white as death and depletion, white as bright and clean, and white as sanitation or cleaning out. The thought-process started with a critique on Li Shiqiao - namely that he overlooks a part of the architectural practices in China - and developed more through the Atlas of Contemporary Chinese Architecture. Zhi’s selection is minimal: it only shows the high-culture architecture and does not really focus on the complete spectre of projects. Of course, it is a selection. We cannot expect a full range of projects in only one atlas. The observation posed at the beginning, namely that white has become increasingly important in big-A architecture, seems to hold throughout the discussion: we might read it as a consequence of socio-economic factors that result in a reaction against, for example, the fertility principle. Abstaining from it might be a way for the nouveaux-riches to distinguish themselves from the masses.

The selection of notions in Chapter Four had to be restricted and was made by keeping close to the character of Chinese cities as a mixture of competing numerical schemes. What appeared to be crucial is the reductive quality of white: it records everything in front of it and renders everything more clear. It seems that, in that aspect, Wigley’s description of white may also apply to Chinese architecture.

Kommonen’s paper on colour use in contemporary China was also very valuable, since it clearly goes along with Li Shiqiao’s remarks, and puts them in a

Conclusion 119

broader context (of identity, colour and clothing). She noted that many Chinese, born after the Reform Era, have developed a particular interest in bright colours - both in fashion and in interior design. Her account seems to suggest that for the Chinese middle class, a full white interior is uncommon. Hence, we need to acknowledge the fact that the findings in this thesis may not apply to everything. It is still not completely clear why, in some apartment buildings - like the one in which I lived for six months - white is also used. Those apartment blocks do not seem to become elitist by white itself.

Hence, one should not believe that this thesis has uncovered every reason why white can be used. The matter is also very complex: it is a combination of culture, personal preferences, recent socio-economic developments, and other aspects not necessarily mentioned in this thesis.

What we can conclude, however, is the fact that white has become more prominent in the ‘big-A’ architecture since the Reform Era. That observation seems to fit in the political, social and economic developments from the 20th century.

Bourdieu’s La Distinction - backed with Cai Yi’s division between social and natural beauty - may serve as a plausible explanation of why white has become much more prominent in the last twenty years. But, indeed, it may not be able to explain each and every application of white. We could say that the interiors of prestigious projects might become more increasingly white, but not necessarily vice versa: if an interior is white, it does not de facto become elitist. Middle-class apartments might be painted white on the inside, yet do not necessarily look prestigious.

The last chapter was a sort of excursion on the topic. It expanded our argument to the context of the hutong neighbourhoods in Beijing, and also went beyond white itself. The idea is to show that not only white itself can be a sign of sterility, but also that a certain type of ‘cleaning’ projects (and how they are portrayed) namely the nicely renovated houses - share these toxic characteristics of white. In that sense, we should not think only of white projects, but also of projects that go along the same lines. The point of the last chapter is not to state that where white is, so is death and depletion. It is rather uncovering a trend that might be aggravated or even be ignited by the proliferation of white projects.

The spreading of architectural images is, in that sense, crucial. The fast media that often shows utopian pictures of an impossibly neat interior spread, gain at-

120 Conclusion

tention, and may have become a tool to distinguish one private practice from the other.

White has become a powerful agent to work with emptiness, blandness and neo-literati ways of portraying architecture in a calligraphic style. Also non-white projects, like the project of ZAO/Standardarchitecture, use the clean imagery. It may, then, be a surrogate effect of white: the cleanliness is more important than anything else and can reach a similar effect (in real life) as white can do in pictures.

It might be an adaptation of the effects of white.

Therefore, the thesis should be read as an analysis of white, but one that is actually more interested in the effects and implications on the architectural practice, rather than the aesthetical aspect alone. Posing that white is an automatic factor of sterility is perhaps too fast of a conclusion. It is rather to show that, because of white, and the accompanying need for distinction - which in turn plausibly results in abstaining from abundance - emptiness has returned in the architectural discourse. White might be the visual actor behind it; the tendency to abstain from abundance reaches beyond the mere colour.

Lastly, this thesis also wants to open up a debate: it is clear that many more elements can be researched and added. By trying to answer the research question of this thesis, new ones surfaced. The whole analysis on white should at least show that there are far more impulses in China itself that allow for a return to white. It culminates in a politics of white.

Conclusion 121

APPENDIX

Most referenced authors in this thesis David Wang is Professor of Architecture at the Washington State University. His book A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future is based on his teachings in comparative studies in Chinese and European philosophy.

Duanfang Lu is Professor at the School of Architecture from the University of Sydney. Her research is mainly concerned with contemporary architectural theory and history, modern architecture and urban planning in China, and critical theories on space and society.

Franรงois Cheng is a French-Chinese academic, calligrapher, author and poet.

He got his education at the University of Nanjing. One of his most famous books is Vide et Plein.

Franรงois Jullien is a French philosopher and orientalist. His writings on comparative studies between Greco-European and Chinese philosophy have been cited by both European and Chinese academics. Most importantly, his work contributes to a mutual understanding of Chinese and European art and philosophy.

Hilde Heynen is Professor of Architectural theory at the Katholic University of Leuven. She also serves as head of the Leuvens Centrum Ruimte en Samenleving.

Appendix 123

Her speciality is architectural theory and modern architecture. Architecture & Modernity: a Critique is one of her most famous works. Among many of the PhD’s she promoted, there are several concerning modern Chinese architecture.

Jianfai Zhu is Professor of East Asian Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape in Newcastle University. He has delivered more than 100 guest lectures worldwide. One of his famous books is Chinese Spatial Strategies Imperial Beijing 1420-1911 (Routledge, 2004).

Kirsi Kommonen is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Aalto University and Helsinki University. Her research pivots around colour use, with a special focus on China.

Mark Wigley was the Dean of the Graduate’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Colombia between 2004 and 2014. He is the author of several books and publications, and curated the MoMa-exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture together with Philip Johnson (1988). His field of interest is mainly architectural history, art history and architectural theory.

Peter Rowe was the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1992 to 2004. He was – outside of Harvard University – also Director of multiple programs in several universities.

Pierre Bourdieu was a French Sociologist and socialist intellectual. His magnum opus La Distinction documents and researches the influence of education and social background on taste.

Seng Kuan is a lecturer in Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture in Harvard University. He is an architectural historian whose research investigates modern architecture in Japan.

Shiqiao Li is a Professor teaching in the School of Architecture, University of Virginia. His research is focussed on Asian architecture and architectural history.

Next to Understanding the Chinese City, his most famous book is titled Power and Virtue (2007).

124 Appendix

Wenjun Zhi is Professor at the Tongji University in Shanghai. He is also the chief editor of the famous Time+Architecture Magazine. His Atlas of Contemporary Urban China is a representative selection of the rapid urban and architectural development in China between 2003 and 2014.

Appendix 125

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS & ARTICLES: Agier, Michel. 2019. “Camps, Encampments, and Occupations: From the Heterotopia to the Urban Subject.” Ethnos 84 (1): 14–26.

Andreas, Joel. 2008. “Changing Colours in China.” New Left Review, no. 54: 123–42.

Antariksa. 2002. “Study on the Phylosophy and Architecture of zen buddhism in Japan: On Syncretism Religion and Monastery Arrangement Plan.” Dimensi Teknik Arsitektur 30 (1): 54–60. http://puslit.petra.ac.id/journals/architecture/.

Antariksa. 2001. “Space in Japanese Zen Buddhist Architecture.” Dimensi Teknik Arsitektur 29 (1): 75–84. http://puslit.petra.ac.id/journals/architecture/.

Aylward, Thomas F. 2007. The Imperial Guide to Feng Shui & Chinese Astrology: The Only Authentic Translation from the Original Chinese. Watkins.

Bonino, Michele, and Filippo De Pieri. 2015. Beijing Danwei. Jovis.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. La Distinction: Critique Sociale Du Jugement. Les Editions De Minuit.

Caivano, José Luis. 2006. “Research on Color in Architecture and Environmental Design: Brief History, Current Developments, and Possible Future.” Color Research and Application 31 (4): 350–63.

Cheng, François. 1979. Vide et Plein. Paris: Seuil.

China Daily. 2010. “Red and Yellow : The Mystery of Tibetan Buddhism Architecture.” In , 1–3.

Chinadaily.

Chiu, Chen Yu, Peter Myers, and Philip Goad. 2014. “Chinese Colours and the Sydney Opera House (1956-1966): Jørn Utzon’s Reinterpretation of Traditional Chinese Architecture.”

Journal of Design History 27 (3): 278–96.

Cody, Jeffrey W., Nancy S. Steinhardt, and Tony Atkin. 2011. Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-

Bibliography 127 Arts. University of Hawaii Press.

Colomina, Beatriz. 2019. X-Ray Architecture. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers.

Cui, Kai. 2013. Chinese Contemporary Architecture. Design Media Publishing Ltd. Davidts, Wouter. 2001. “Messy Minimalism Voorbij De.” De Witte Raaf 16 (93): 1–5.

De Bruyne, Edgar. 1951. Geschiedenis van de Aesthetica: De Middeleeuwen. Antwerpen: Standaard-Boekhandel.

Meulder, Bruno De. 1996. De Kampen van Congo: Arbeid, Kapitaal En Rasveredeling in de Koloniale Planning. Antwerpen: Meulenhoff/Kritak.

Dehaene, Michiel, and Lieven De Cauter. 2008. Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society. Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society. New York: Routledge.

Erickson, Britta. 2001. The Art of Xu Bing: Words Without Meaning, Meaning Without Words.

University of Washington Press.

Fanon, Frantz. 1951. Black Skin, White Masks. Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press.

Fields, Darell Wayne. 2015. Architecture in Black Theory, Space and Appearance. Bloomsbury Academic.

Foucault, Michel. 1986. “Des Espace Autres - Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.”

Diacritics 16 (1): 22–27.

Frampton, Kenneth. 2007. “Modern Architecture: A Critical History.” London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Fu, Xinian. 2017. Traditional Chinese Architecture: Twelve Essays. Edited by Nancy S. Steinhardt and Alexandra Harrer. Woodstock: Princeton University Press.

Gao, Jingyi. 2012. “Official Colours of Chinese Regimes: A Panchronic Philological Study with Historical Accounts of China.” Trames 16 (3): 237–85.

Gao, Jingyi, and Urmas Sutrop. 2014. “The Basic Color Terms of Mandarin Chinese: A TheoryDriven Experimental Study.” Studies in Language 38 (2): 335–59.

Gou, Aiping, and Jiangbo Wang. 2010. “The Development of Roof Color in Ancient China.”

Color Research and Application 35 (4): 246–66.

Gunde, Richard. 2002. Culture and Customs of China. Greenwood Press.

Guo, Qinghua. 1998. “Yingzao Fashi : Twelfh- Century Chinese Building Manual.” Architectural History 41: 1–13.

Guo, Qinghua. 2005. Chinese Architecture and Planning. Edited by Nora Krehl-von Mühlendahl.

Choice Reviews Online. Axel Menge. London: Daehan Printing and Publishing Co. Guo, Qinghua, and Yuyu Chang. 2016. The Weiwu at Dafuzhen. Menges.

Habraken, John N. 1972. Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing. Edited by Jonathan Teicher.

UK: Urban International Press.

Hayden, Jeffrey. 2013. “All That Glitters.” Finance and Development 50 (3): 1.

128 Bibliography Heynen, Hilde. 1999. Architecture and Modernity: A Critique. London: MIT Press.

Heynen, Hilde, André Loeckx, Lieven De Cauter, and Karnia Van Herck. 2001. “Bernard Tschumi: Architectuur En Transgressie.” In Dat Is Architectuur: Sleutelteksten Uit de Twintigste Eeuw, 491–96. Nai010.

Hu-Sterk, Florence. 2004. La Beauté Autrement: Introduction à l’Esthétique Chinoise. Paris: Editions You Feng Libraire & Editeur.

Janicot, Eric. 2007. L’esthétique Moderne Chinoise: L’épreuve de l’Occident. Paris: Editions You Feng Libraire & Editeur.

Jiang, Feng, Su Lu, Xiang Yao, Xiaodong Yue, and Wing tung Au. 2014. “Up or down? How Culture and Color Affect Judgments.” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 27 (3): 226–34.

Jullien, François. 1993. Eloge de La Fadeur. Le Livre de Poche.

Jullien, François. 2003. La Grande Image n’a Pas de Forme. Seuil.

Jullien, François. 1992. La Propension Des Choses. Seuil.

Jullien, François. 2003. La Valeur Allusive. Quadrige / PUF. Jullien, François. 2011. Cette Étrange Idée Du Beau. Chantier I. Le Livre de Poche.

Jullien, François. 1995. Le Détour et l’accès. Seuil.

Keung, Alice. 1999. “Calligraphy Architecture Callitecture.” Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Knapp, Ronald. 2005. Chinese Houses: The Architectural Heritage of a Nation. Tuttle Publishing.

Knapp, Ronald. 1998. “Chinese Villages as Didactic Texts.” In Wen Hsin Yeh, Ed. Landscape, Culture and Power in Chinese Society, 110–28. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California.

Kommonen, Kirsi. 2011. “Narratives on Chinese Colour Culture in Business Contexts: The Yin Yang Wu Xing of Chinese Values.” Cross Cultural Management 18 (3): 366–83.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Edited by Catherine Porter. La Découverte.

Le Corbusier. 1925. L’art Décoratif d’aujourd’hui. Paris: FLC/ADAGP. Leaf, Michael, Mary Ann O’Donnell, and Winnie Wong. 2017. Learning from Shenzhen. Cities.

Vol. 13. London: University of Chicago Press.

Ledderose, Lothar. 2001. Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton University Press.

Lee, Gregory. 2007. “Sinopolis: ‘Chineseness’ and the Modern Chinese City.” In The Idea of the City, 1–16. Lyon.

Li, Chenyang. 2013. The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony. Routledge.

Li, Hai Feng, Xiao Mei Li, and Bu Xin Han. 2018. “Zhongxian Lin: Founder of Color Psychology in China.” Protein and Cell 9 (7): 593–95.

Li, Na. 2015. “An Interpretation of the Chinese Architectural Design Elements in Qing Dynasty’s Costumes,” no. Icadce: 311–14.

Bibliography 129 Li, Shiqiao. 2014. Understanding the Chinese City. SAGE Publications Ltd. Li, Wendan. 2009. Chinese Writing and Calligraphy. Chinese Writing and Calligraphy.

Li, Xiangning, Danfeng Li, and Jiawei Jiang. 2018. Made in Shanghai. Tongji University Press Co., Ltd. Liang Sicheng. 1984. A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture. Edited by Wilma Fairbanks.

MIT Press.

Lip, Evelyn. 1995. Feng Shui - Environments of Power: A Study of Chinese Architecture. Wiley.

Lu, Duanfang. 2006. Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949-2005.

Routledge.

Lu, Duanfang. 2012. “Entangled Modernities.” In The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory, edited by Hilde Heynen, Greig C. Crysler, and Stephen Cairns, 231–246. London: Sage.

Lü, Wenqiu, and Shuhua Wang. n.d. 北京四合院建築.

Majewski, Miroslaw, and Jiyan Wang. 2009. “A Journey through Chinese Windows and Doors-an Introduction to Chinese Mathematical Art.” Proceedings of the Fourteenth Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics, no. 3: 17–21.

Mohen Design international. 2010. Contemplating a New Chinese Style. Loft.

Ning, Ding, and Catherine Bone. 1995. “Concerning the Use of Colour in China.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 35 (2): 160–64.

Perrault, Claude. 1993. Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients. Edited by Julia Bloomfield, Kurt W. Forster, and Thomas F. Reese. The Getty Center.

Prosser, Lee. 2019. “The Great Pagoda at Kew: Colour and Technical Innovation in Chinoiserie Architecture.” Architectural History 62: 69–88.

Redfield, James Adam. 2011. “Being Time: Zen, Modernity, the Contemporary.” Diogenes 58 (4): 88–103.

Rodrigo, Concha. 2017. “Top 10 Architecture and Purity of White.” More With Less. 2017.

Rowe, Peter, and Seng Kuan. 2002. Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China. MIT Press Ltd. Rowley, George. 1959. Principles of Chinese Painting. Princeton University Press.

Shao, Qin. 2013. Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Shin, Hyun Bang, and Yimin Zhao. 2018. “Urbanism as a State Project.” Chinese Urbanism, no.

May: 30–46.

Stroeken, Koen. 2013. De Ondeelbare Mens. Garant.

Su, Bo. 2014. “Traditional Feng Shui Architecture as an Inspiration for the Development of Green Buildings.” EJournal of Public Affairs 3 (2).

Sun, Vincent C., and Chien Chung Chen. 2018. “Basic Color Categories and Mandarin Chinese

130 Bibliography Color Terms.” PLoS ONE 13 (11).

Tanizaki, Jun’ichiro. 1977. In Praise of Shadows. Stony Creek: Leete’s Island Books, Inc. Briessen, Fritz Van. 1999. The Way of the Brush. Tuttle Publishing.

Vandenabeele, Bart. 2015. The Sublime in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy. Palgrave.

Verschaffel, Bart. 2010. Van Hermes En Hestia. Gent: A&S/Books.

Verschaffel, Bart. n.d. “On the Aesthetic Gaze, Beauty, and the Two Sources of Ugliness.”

Vukovich, Daniel F. 2013. China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the P.R.C. London: Routledge.

Wang, David. 2016. A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture. New York: Routledge.

Wang, Xiaoguang, and Fei Qi. 2017. “The Inspiration of Chinese Traditional Architectural Color to the Modern Design under the Background of ‘Chinese Dream’ - Analysis of the Application of Romantic Thinking in Chinese Traditional Architectural Color” 123 (Icesame): 240–43.

Wang, Ying. 2018. “The Specter of Style.” KU Leuven.

Wigley, Mark. 1996. White Walls, Designer Dresses The Fashioning of Modern Architecture. MIT Press Ltd. Wu, Yin, Jingyi Lu, Eric van Dijk, Hong Li, and Simone Schnall. 2018. “The Color Red Is Implicitly Associated with Social Status in the United Kingdom and China.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (OCT): 1–8.

Xing, Xue, Wen Gu, and Xiaogang Liu. 2018. “Apparel Color Preferences for Different Regions in China: The Connection to Personal Values.” Color Research and Application 43 (3): 423–35.

Xue, Charlie Q. L. 2006. Building A Revolution: Chinese Architecture Since 1980. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Xue, Charlie Q.L. 2016. Hong Kong Architecture 1945-2015: From Colonial to Global.

Singapore: Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.

Yau, Victoria. 1994. “Use of Colour in China.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 34 (2): 151–62.

Yuanhui, Hu. 2017. “颜色符号‘所指’在藏英文化中的共性探析 ———以白色为 例.” Journal of Sichuan 26 (5): 49–51.

Zhang, Zhe, Guangfa Qie, Cheng Wang, Shasha Jiang, Xi Li, and Mingxia Li. 2017. “Relationship between Forest Color Characteristics and Scenic Beauty: Case Study Analyzing Pictures of Mountainous Forests at Sloped Positions in Jiuzhai Valley, China.” Forests 8 (3): 1–19.

Zhao, Chunlan. 2007. “Socio-Spatial Transformation in Mao’s China: Settlement Planning and Dwelling Architecture (1950s-1970s).” KU Leuven.

Zheng, Liling, Ping Huang, Xiao Zhong, Tianfeng Li, and Lei Mo. 2017. “Color Adaptation Induced from Linguistic Description of Color.” PLoS ONE 12 (3): 1–18.

Zhi, Wenjun. 2014. Atlas of Contemporary Chinese Architecture. Design Media Publishing Ltd.

Bibliography 131 Zhu, Jianfei. 2013. Architecture of Modern China: A Historical Critique. Routledge.

Zhu, Liyuan, and Gene Blocker. 1995. Asian Thought an Culture: Contemporary Chinese Aesthetics. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. Zhu, Qi. 2008. “Shi in Chinese Architecture: The Efficacity of Chinese Doors.” Virginia Polytechnic Institute. 徐向安. 2017. “初探日本人喜爱白色的原因.” 大众文艺, no. 1: 241. 黄诗婷. 2010. “白 色 的 告 别 ———从色彩学角度分析《伊豆的舞女》的悲剧性” 文 教资料, 23–24.