Der grüne Beitrag zum Gesamtkunstwerk Nantong

The problems of China’s ongoing rapid urbanization encourage the search for other potential options. Within this context the biography and the work of Zhang Jian (1895-1926) a prominent official-scholar, a conservative political and social reformer and entrepreneur – together with his main field of activity, the city of Nantong in the Yangtze River Delta – in recent decades became the subject of intensive historical research. This work intends to close a gap of this research, examining the role of Zhang Jian as a pioneer for modern urban greening in China. From the viewpoint of urban history and the history of urban design it is of interest whether modern urban greening in Chinese cities is just one facet of the transfer of concepts and methods of urban planning from earlier industrialized societies to China. This question implies the assumption that the rich green heritage of China’s cities was irrelevant for Chinas urban modernization and just dissipated at the end of the empire without consequences. The second question is how to support conservation efforts by developing a GIS based Historical Information System, taking the green heritage of Nantong as an example. The work includes • A detailed state of research. • A summary of Zhang Jian’s biography, highlighting his affinity for green issues, followed by an overview of the natural setting of Nantong: Fluvial and coastal dynamics in the Yangtze estuary as a source of instability. • The urban history as documented in historical maps. These indicate perceptions of nature and society different from Western understanding. • the empirical evidence of Zhang Jian’s green involvement: His objects of green design are identified, analyzed and reproduced in maps of four different scales: the museum, science and education center (SE of old town), the five parks (SW); temples converted into green schools, greening of Tangzha industrial site, highways as tree-lined avenues; reforestation of Langshan-Hills, green aspects of coastal land reclamation. • The ideas behind these green designs. Zhang Jian resorted to concepts of Daoist, Confucian and Buddhist origin, simultaneously remaining open to Western models. Other contemporary concepts of urban greening show that Zhang Jian and Nantong should not be understood as a singular reform effort at the turning point between imperial and republican China. • The transformation of the „model city“ after 1926 resulting from war, revolution and modernization as well as the beginnings of conservation and the discovery, that the legacy of Zhang Jian deserves conservative action. The paper concludes with a proposal to preserve the relics of the industrially dominated cultural landscape of the early 20th century as an integrated unit in the sense of a Gesamtkunstwerk.