Stephanie Donald

Modern social order is premised on a shared conception of and obedience to a set of defined temporal systems. Time is therefore a powerful tool with which to layer, classify and police the nature of social order. This article explores the relationship between temporality and the social in China’s capital, Beijing. The article draws on observations of Chinese film of the 1990s, the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2011, and the Chaoyang district beautification campaign, to identify how temporal structures and symbols are traded and manipulated in the pursuit of political rectification and harmony. The article is based on an extended review of Michael Dutton’s recent book, Beijing Time, and refers its new observations to the examples and premises in that book, which are in turn informed by Dutton’s other work on policing and street life in China.

This chapter discusses the slow burn of development which has impacted the Chinese landscape for a long time, despite the country’s urbanization. Although China’s modernization has been underway for the last 150 years, the country’s current global visibility has been mistaken for a sudden eruption of modernity. China has been through a variety of struggles, and the struggle between beauty and pragmatism is portrayed in films about the poor and manifested through the class aspirations of the new rich. In this regard, the landscaping of China is mostly a narrative of continuous and traumatic pressure inflicted by the people on the motherland. These signs of struggle are, therefore, what articulate the Chinese landscape as a work of destruction and reconstruction in constant progress.