Beijing: Lost in Translation?Presentation prepared for

International Conference onChina’s Urban Land and Housing in the 21st Century

Centre for China Urban and Regional StudiesHong Kong Baptist University

December 13th – 15th, 2007

by Eric J. Heikkila, ProfessorUSC School of Policy, Planning, and Development& Chinese University of Hong Kong (AY 2007-08)

An exploration of three premises

1. Material urban form constitutes a formal but implicit language through which cultural expression is manifest

2. Beijing’s hutongs are a language form intrinsically expressive of traditional Chinese culture

3. As hutongs are replaced by more modernistic urban forms, an important part of Chinese culture is, quite literally, lost in translation

First premise:

Material urban form constitutes a formal but implicit language through which cultural expression is manifest

1. The linguistics of urban form

a. From semiotics to semantics

b. Alexander: Pattern language

c. Hillier: Space syntax

d. Chomsky: Psychology of language

e. Bierwisch: Language and space

f. Stiny: Shape grammar

g. Constructing spatial sentences

From semiotics to semantics

Urban semiotics

The city as a discourse

Walking as rhetoric

Urban semiotics

Semiotics (“semiosis”) as a “sequence of interpretants – interpretants being a collective, public observable product laid down in the course of cultural processes, even though one does not presume the existence of a mind that admits of, uses, or develops them

Umberto Eco

“The city is a discourse ...

... and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, wandering through it, by looking at it.”

Roland Barthes

Pedestrian speech acts

“The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered ... a rhetoric of walking ... the long poem of walking manipulates spatial organizations”

Michel de Certeau

Patterns as nodes in a graph

Patterns may be identified with nodes in a graph, and the graph is connected by edges of different lengths ... A pattern is an encapsulation of forces; a general solution to a problem. The "language" combines the nodes together into an organizational framework.

Nikos Salingaros (2000), after Christopher Alexander et al (1977)

lower level patternscombine to formhigher level patterns

Generative grammar

Generative grammar is the explicit theory proposed to account for linguistic competence

Intrinsic to this theory is a model of the process by which language competence is acquired

Generative grammer describes the transformations by which linguistical competence at a “deep structure” is manifest at the “surface structure” of language.

The deep structure of a language accords with its internal representation

-- Chomsky, 1979

“I-space”

How are spatial concepts accomodated within a linguistical framework?

Bierwisch (1999) postulates an I-space corresponding to Chomsky’s I-language

“I-space is accomodated by semantic form in terms of primitives interpreted by strictly spatial concepts”

Shape grammar

“In a shape grammar, the shapes in the set S and the symbols in the set L provide the building blocks for the definition of shape rules in the set R and the initial shape I … shapes generated using the shape grammar are also built up in terms of these primitive elements”

-- George Stiny (1980), Introduction to shape and shape grammars, E&P:B

Semantic primitives

“It may be reasonable to suppose that at least traditional notions like ‘agent of action’, ‘instrument’, ‘goal’, ‘source’, and so on, are part of universal semantics; then such notions would be available for semantic representation”

-- Chomsky (1978, p.141)

Constructing “Spatial Sentences”Example from Kyoto: Borrowed view

object

subject

adjectives

adverbverb

(“Shakkei”)

Revisiting the first premise:

Material urban form constitutes a formal but implicit language through which cultural expression is manifest

While by no means conclusive, the preceding analysis appears to provide sufficient grounds for proceeding on the basis of a conditional acceptance of the first premise

Second premise:

Beijing’s hutongs constitute a language form that is intrinsically expressive of traditional Chinese culture

The old city of Beijing is characterized by a bewildering yet intimate labyrinth of a myriad hutong (alleyways) and traditional siheyuan (courtyards) housing

Beijing’s hutongs

This traditional configuration defines “us” and “them” with progressive levels of intimacy as one penetrates inner courtyards

Semantic progression

There are intriguing parallels between the construction of Chinese written language and basic courtyard structures

In both cases, simple structures (“patterns”) can be combined to form higher order structures

“wei” – the Chinese radical meaning“to surround”

from WuLiangyong(fig. 5.11)

Simple progressions of semantic complexity

“borders” “field”“to surround”

“selfish/cocoon” “coil”

“small”

“silk”

“tired”

Inspired by McNaughton (1979)

Simple housing complex

Courtyard housing follows a similar semantic progression, with complex expressions of form being assembled from simple components

Figure 5.12from WuLiangyong

Self-replicating fractal structures

The basic interlocking form of enclosures and delimiters replicates itself with fractal-like regularity from the smallest scale (individual rooms) to the largest scale (the city)

Courtyard structure of Old BeijingFigure 1.2 from Wu Liangyong

Resulting hierarchy of urban spaces

City walls

adapted from Wu Liangyong(1999, figure 5.7)

Main roads

Hutong

Outer walls

Bldg walls

Partitions

Furniture

Room

Building

Courtyards

Block

City

Sub-blockenclosures

anddelimiters

Revisiting the second premise:

Beijing’s hutongs constitute a communicative form that is intrinsically expressive of traditional Chinese culture

Third premise:

As hutongs are replaced by more modernistic urban forms, an important part of Chinese culture is, quite literally, lost in translation

The new Beijing

Contemporary Beijing is not being redeveloped so much as it is being replaced

Traditional hutong neighborhoods have disappeared with astonishing speed, and the remaining neighborhoods are increasingly isolated and seemingly out-of-place

China’s new ideology: “2-0-0-8” Modernistic structures and supporting urban forms are

flaunted as “proof” of China’s newfound status as an economic powerhouse

Chinese modernity

This phenomenon of urban form is appropriately viewed in the context of a much wider discussion about the nature of Chinese modernity

Fashion plates circa 1935from Leo Ou-Fan Lee, Shanghai Modern

Linking architectural patterns to social patterns

Traditional architectural patterns combine with social patterns to form higher-order pattern

Modernistic architecture as an anti-pattern

-- Salingaros (2000)

3d. Counter-arguments

de Certeau revisited “Chineseness” Imposed quaintness Structure and agency

de Certeau revisited

For Michel de Certeau, it is the use of a language rather than merely its form that constitutes culture

He uses as his “theoretical model the construction of individual sentences with an established vocabulary and syntax ... the act of speaking (with all the enunciative strategies that implies) is not reducible to a knowledge of the language”

More generally, we should not under-estimate human ingenuity nor over-estimate the deterministic qualities of over-arching (linguistical) systems

“Chineseness”

Likewise, contemporary studies of overseas Chinese suggest that “Chineseness” is as robust and multifaceted as it is elusive

Yeh Wen-Hsin (2000) speaks of “a culturally defined Chinese universe with negotiated boundaries, in which the attributes of “Chineseness” are not culturally predetermined and immutable, but are the products of an ongoing historical process

From this perspective it may be both trite and misleading to associate some essential quality of “Chineseness” with the physical form of an architectural artifact

Imposed quaintness

A related pitfall is that of scholars (especially those from the West) admonishing Chinese to forego the perks of modernization in order to retain the quaintness of traditional practices

The essence of such a message is one of cultural imperialism in the sense articulated by Edward Said

What is gained by the linguistic argument?

In the absence of a linguistic model, one is left with the replacement of one surface structure (in the sense articulated by Chomsky) by another surface structure

It is only with a linguistic model that one can explicitly posit that something important is said in a source language

From this perspective, questions of translatability follow immediately, naturally, and inevitably