The dialectics of seeing Chinese urban modernity: A study of rickshaws in Beijing and Shanghai

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the historical dynamics of Chinese urban modernity through the antinomies thus generated with a focus on rickshaws, which as a popular modern technology of urban transportation and a popular image of modern literature expressed them. The thesis consists of five chapters. In the first chapter, Benjamin's views on art and cultural history are examined. Benjamin's practice of cultural history opposes linear, progressive narratives based upon the temporal scheme of homogeneous empty space and aims to disrupt the sense of historical continuum through a shock effect produced in a reconstructed context in which historical fragments are juxtaposed by the technique of literary montage. In the second chapter, a theoretical approach towards examining cities is developed. Three senses of invisibility are distinguished: the cultural imagination embodied in the material morphology of the urban landscape, the counterpart of comparison in the background of the city under focus, and the historical background of the present existence of the city. In the third chapter, the concept of urban modernity in the context of Chinese history is discussed and the relevant transformations of Beijing and Shanghai are comparatively examined. Finally, rickshaws as the material embodiments and cultural expressions of the antinomies of Chinese urban modernity are analysed. Three antinomies are examined in detail: Modernity and archaicity, nativity and foreignness, sanctity and profanity. The fifth chapter concludes the thesis.