From the Exotic to the Traditional: The Qilou Buildings in South China’s Urbanization

Abstract

This article examines the historical representation of the arcade building “Qilou” in different periods in Guangzhou, as a way to illuminate the flexibility of borders embodied in people’s understanding of “foreign” and “local” in the process of urbanization in South China. With their signature style of arcades heavily influenced by western architecture, the Qilou buildings emerged in the 1930s and 1940s when émigré merchants returned for business opportunities and settled down in Guangzhou, the political center of the Pearl River Delta in South China. Despite the difficulty in fitting into the socialist ideological mapping of urban space due to their western influence, the Qilou buildings had survived during the Maoist period, but only to be destroyed on a large scale in the 1980s and 1990s in the name of urban development. It is not until recent years that local activists began to fight for the remaining Qilou buildings for the purpose of historical preservation. In this process, the Qilou buildings have been represented as “exotic”, “backward”, “obsolete” and “symbols of local culture” in different periods. Each of these historical narratives legitimized certain claims of access to these buildings and certain urban development projects that shaped the buildings and the surrounding neighborhood. Tracing the changing representation of the Qilou buildings not only provides us a glimpse into the invention of tradition, but also the (re)production of space, during which social relations have been challenged, reshaped and reproduced in different political, ideological and economic contexts in China’s pursuit of urbanization and modernization.