The Hundred-Headed Dragon: Surveying the New Chinese Landscape
Thomas J. Campanella

In the last twenty years, the People's Republic of China has undergone a process of socioeconomic transformation as convulsive and as complete as the revolution led by Mao Zedong half a century ago. In many ways, the changes of the Deng Xiaoping era have had an even more profound impact on the daily lives of the Chinese people. Since the "Open Door" reforms of the early 1980s, the Chinese economy has grown faster than any in history, lifting individual income and creating one of the most spirited, entrepreneurial marketplaces in the world.

Economic growth in the post-Mao era also unleashed forces that have radically transformed the nation's built environment, leaving behind a patchwork of post-modern spaces and landscapes, many of which are profoundly ironic given the context of a nation which was the vehemently socialist only a generation ago. More than 50 golf courses have been built in Guangdong province alone, and scores of theme parks vie for the booming domestic tourism trade. In Beijing, whole districts of ancient courtyard housing have been bulldozed for megamalls and office towers, while just north of the city a park named "Old Beijing Mini Landscape" promises to return visitors the "long lost dreams" of their past. Within its gates the entire historic center of the capital has been lovingly recreated, even as the real thing is razed.

Just as the "Open Door" has reconnected China to the global economy, it has also hastened the import of foreign—predominately American--artifacts and environments. On the outskirts of nearly every major city, sprawling gated communities have been built, complete with split-level single-family homes, lawns, and twin-bay garages. The private automobile has become one of the definitive status symbols of the New China, and the manifold environments associated with the motoring life have made a strong appearance. On the east side of Beijing, sedans and sport-utility vehicles crowd the Maple-Leaf Drive-In on a Saturday night. Paved with the recycled stones of Tiananmen Square, it is China's first drive-in movie theater (a nearby entrepreneur rents cars to those would-be motorists lacking wheels of their own).

Highway construction has become something of a national pastime, and even sections of the Great Wall have fallen to make way for new roads. A six-lane "super expressway" now stretches the length of the Pearl River Delta. Modeled on the New Jersey Turnpike, the road has triggered so much urban development that in satellite photographs it resembles a mighty dragon sprawled across the land. Massive regional shopping malls are planned for its interchanges, and near the Shenzhen exit "big box" retail outlet Sam's Club has become a popular shopping destination.

Combined with the wholesale demolition and redevelopment of older cities, these new spaces and landscapes constitute the most visible legacy of China's "second revolution." They are also among the least understood aspects of contemporary Chinese culture, particularly in the West. While there have been numerous books written about socioeconomic and political changes in the post-Mao era, few have concentrated on the epic transformations of China's physical fabric.

The proposed paper will survey the changing Chinese built environment, examining a representative selection of the landscapes and spaces that have appeared in the wake of economic liberalization. Based on my research for the forthcoming book The Hundred-Headed Dragon: Dispatches from the New Chinese Landscape, the paper will serve as an introduction to one of the most fascinating, rapidly-changing regions of the world today.

Thomas J. Campanella is an urbanist, writer, and independent scholar. He holds a PhD in urban studies and city planning from MIT, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1999. Tom is a Contributing Writer at WIRED magazine, and the author of the forthcoming books Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (Yale University Press) and Cities from the Sky (Princeton Architectural Press). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.