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This book explores five cases of monument and public commemorative space related to World War II (WWII) in contemporary China (Mainland), Hong Kong and Taiwan, all of which were built either prior to or right after the end of the War and their physical existence still remains. Through the study on the monuments, the project illustrates past and ongoing controversies and contestations over Chinese nation, sovereignty, modernism and identity. Despite their historical affinities, the three societies in question, namely, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, vary in their own ways of telling, remembering and forgetting WWII. These divergences are not only rooted in their different political circumstances and social experiences, but also in their current competitions, confrontations and integrations. This book will be of great interest to historians, sinologists and analysts of new Asian nationalism.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Between Iconic Image and (Artificial) Ruins: Shanghai Sihang Warehouse and WWII Memory in China.- Chapter 3: (Forgotten)Landscape of War Memories and Public Space in (Post)colonial City: Hong Kong's Cenotaph and beyond.- Chapter 4: Imagining Imaginarium: National Revolutionary Martyrs' Shrine in Taipei.- Chapter 5: The Monument that became A Public Toilet: the New 1st Army Cemetery in Guangzhou.- Chapter 6: Renaming Monument, Rewriting History: Chongqing's War Victory Stele/Liberation Stele.- Chapter 7: Conclusion: Visuality against Visuality-The Right to Look in East Asia and WWII Monuments in Greater China.
About the author
PAN Lu received her PhD from Comparative Literature, The University of Hong Kong. Pan did her research as visiting fellow in Berlin Technical University, Harvard Yenching Institute, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and Taipei National University of the Arts. She teaches Chinese Culture as an assistant professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Pan is author of two monographs:
In-Visible Palimpsest: Memory, Space and Modernity in Berlin and Shanghai (Bern: Peter Lang, 2016) and
Aestheticizing Public Space: Street Visual Politics in East Asian Cities (Bristol: Intellect, 2015).
