The Cultural Memory And Lived Experience Of Urban Space

The thesis mainly employs the method of phenomenology to research thedescriptions of the city space and living places in literary works. Meanwhile, it alsopays much attention on the literature reflection over the people’s culture memory andliving experience. City, created by human beings for their producing and living, is ahuge, complex, delicate and material space that has been sending waves of humanbeings’ wisdom, emotion and aesthetic inclination. Inevitably, human living experiencesand culture memories are melted in the development of a city. As a result, thoseexperiences and memories recorded the times trace, saw the stream of history andformed the internal meaning of the unban culture.On the basis of The Deserted City and Jia Pingwa’s other unban novels like Whitenight, The door of Earth, Gao Xing, this thesis analyzes the description of thearchitectural space in Xi Jing City the relationships between the images of charactersand architectures, and the relations between the plot and the space, etc. What’s more,from the point of “urban-life-space” view, the thesis tries to analyze the expressionsupon one’s environmental experiences and environmental senses, explore the structureand genius loci of the material, spiritual and social space in the city, and clarify thecultural connotations of the architecture in Jia Pingwa’s four urban novels.Represented by The Deserted City，the four books told a series of stories occurringin Xi Jing City, which vividly shows us an image of traditional city built on the basis ofthousand-year agricultural civilization. Under the largest and fastest urbanization since the beginning of time, the stories in those books portray several historical fragments inthe times of transition, which also express the deep mourning for the decay of thetraditional city, the confusion on the modern city and the serious thinking for the futureof the new city. Meanwhile, the description about the inner personal spaces as well asthe external space in Xi Jing City lies in the four novels, for examples, the homesteadsof major characters have been pictured carefully. Xi Jing City in the novels is fictional,but in which all the landscapes can be found its prototypes in Xi’an. Therefore, the fournovels are the literal models of Xi’an under the urbanization during the transition times.Urban development first is a long-term physical environment construction process;at the same time, it is also a long cultural accumulation process. Old city, like Xi’an, inthe nearly two or three decades of rapid changes, crossing and overlapping becomemore obvious in space and culture from the past to the present. It seems to be a “dualcity” spliced by wood, bricks and soil in ancient agricultural civilization and the steeland cement in modern industrial civilization. The Deserted City and White Nightmainly describe the decay of the old city; but The Door of Earth and GaoXing manifestthe expansion of the new town and the process of heterogeneous group. Therefore, thesefour urban novels exactly show the splicing process of the “dual city” for the twenty orthirty years in a literature way.Urban transformation has been constantly changing people’s city memory, whichincludes not only the visible changes to urban landscape and space, but also makesinvisible great changes to urban culture in the metamorphosis stage between the oldtimes and new times. In The Deserted City, the city is a pile of cement; in White Night,Xi Jing City is like a stranded ship; in The Door of Earth, the city is just like a largepiece of cobweb which inweaves the urban village suffering the last struggle and pains;and in GaoXing, Xi’an makes rural migrant workers hopeful but confused. The DesertedCity and White Night, these two books focus on the “uprooting” impact brought by thenew urban culture to the old agriculture civilization. While The Door of Earth andGaoXing stress on seeking how the rural culture uprooted by city could keep a footholdagain. Moreover, both of the two books take efforts to explore the city “ideal image”construction. Such as in The Door of Earth, that images of “Urban Resort” and “ShenHeyuan” is precisely what the author’s wishes and specific description to ideal city. Therefore, these four urban novels, represented by The Deserted City, make theintangible historical evolution of urban culture more clear and concrete.Analyzing urban culture is able to highlight city identity and spirit, and then designthe future city space and image.With the characteristics of integrity, vagueness and abstraction, culture seemsunable to produce realistic power on concrete things and events directly, but makes adifference through human intermediary conduction system. Similarly, the influence ofarchitecture culture to the urban planners is indirect, so it couldn’t be directlytransformed into operable renderings. This influence is mainly embodied in the conceptand mode of thinking and direct effects need complex process of internalizingtransformation and demonstration. The mutual-linking complex relationship existsbetween urban architecture and other element such as culture, society, economy andtechnology. And urban culture can be regarded as an order hidden behind the complexrelationship. With the city development strategy from denotative expansion toconnotation promotion, the core content of urban planning also will usher in a newupgrading transformation. Urban planning will not only concern about residentspsychological recognition, but also pay more attention to the city spirit, system, customsand social background. In order to seize the order in the mess and keep characteristicsof the cities, for constructing the city “the ideal image”, and building poetic living space,it is particularly important to grasp and use the function of urban culture when exploringurban planning idea and methods.