Abstract

In David Frisby's work on cityscapes of modernity, he asserts the theme of twentieth century European sociology, that the modern is an urban phenomenon, and that the landscape of modernity is therefore a cityscape.
In this essay I suggest that, while the urbanisation of China is indeed the big story of China's physical infrastructure, nonetheless the slow burn of development has been having an impact on the Chinese landscape, rural and urban, for a very long time. The struggle for beauty and pragmatism is acknowledged in films about the poor, and manifested through the class aspirations of the rich. It is the signs of struggle that articulate the Chinese landscape as a work of destruction and reconstruction in constant progress.