Abstract

The city is a facilitator for the construction of stories, images, and ideas of the Other with the purpose of using these concepts to strengthen ideas about the Self. This chapter takes a closer look at the construction of images of the Self and the Other in the West (here used to refer to Western Europe) and China through the exchange of ideas about urban design and urban living. Historically, ideas and concepts about urban planning and architectural design have always influenced cities across different cultures. When urban aesthetics generated by the Other infiltrate a city that is familiar to the ‘Self’, what happens to ‘Self’-identity? We examine the practice of importing traditional European urban aesthetics to Shanghai and the practice of feng shui (风水, ‘geomancy’) in urban living in the West, and discover that a central theme in the travel of both of these ideas is their strong counter-Western narrative. Feng shui in the West stimulates a rejection of Western thinking about urban space and ideas about humans and their environment, instead advocating principles based on traditional Chinese philosophies. Shanghai, on the other hand, is not so much rejecting European ways of living in a city (indeed, it advocates a form based on borrowing from European characteristics), but rather renouncing European power and establishing Shanghai—or China as pars pro toto—as a prominent player on the world stage. In this chapter, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of how imageries of the West and of China reflect and shape the relationships between the two.

Keywords: travel of ideas, spatial concepts, environmental design, Orientalism, China