A Study On The Historical Form Of Hangzhou In The Late Qing Dynasty

The study of Hangzhou’s historical morphology in late imperial China was based on the recently published map called Zhejiang Sheng-yuan Cheng-xiang map(浙江省垣城厢图)who was in a large-scale and still had many problems to be studied on,because the National Library of China had deeply stored it up for over 100 years before its recent revelation.From the view of historical cartography and urban morphology,the study carried out a detailed study of the map’s basic form including map directions and feature performance.And then we got the preliminary examination that the map was created between 1877 and 1879 by using the cadastral categories from 1874 to 1875 under the auspices of Qizhao Mei who was the head of Zhejiang province.Moreover,the series of map whose ancestry was between Zhejiang Sheng-yuan Fang-xiang map(浙江省垣坊巷全图)and Zhejiang capital’s map(浙江省城图),was published by Zhejiang official bookstore in 1881 or 1882and stopped its selling activity before the war of resistance against Japan.Secondly,the study referenced the classical method from Kaoru Umehara’s China’s modern urban and culture(中国近世之都市�'�文化),and used Hangzhou First Du’s map(杭州市第一都图)as the base map to complete the mission of the urban space form factors’classification,statistics and recovery in Zhejiang Sheng-yuan Cheng-xiang map(浙江省垣城厢图).During the process,we found that except the deficiency of Qi-xia-ying and the imbalance in some areas,there were still many mistake like the simple elements of lake,the mislabeled elements of faith,the deficient elements of residents,which are closely related to the"hollow"phenomenon(three large open space).Finally,based on the self-making compilation of Hangzhou Fu-zhi in Qing dynasty(清代杭州府志资料汇编),the study did the recovery of Zhejiang Sheng-yuan Fang-xiang map(浙江省垣坊巷全图)which created during the years of Xian-feng in the same way.After that,we hackled and compared with the aforementioned four urban space form factors in the early years of Guangxu including city wall’s configuration,surface transport,faith elements and government agencies,which arrived at the following conclusions:(1)In the late imperial China,the city wall of Hangzhou didn’t suffer too much damage during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement.(2)In the early years of Guangxu,the surface transport of Hangzhou inherited the prewar pattern----"two vertical and three horizontal"and"three rivers side by side".In addition,besides digging Xin-kai horizontal River(新开横河)which linked up with three rivers after the war. there was also existed the phenomenon which is consisted of the small streets’ sharp reduction in the fringe of the city and their sustained growth along the main road in the heart of the city.(3) The temples in the post-war reconstruction all carried on the prewar situation as before, while a lot of ancestral halls were widely built to commemorate the heroes who died in the suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement.(4) Numbers of government agencies had temporary relocation in the early years of Guangxu.It can be seen that the destruction and influence of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement,did not seem to create the opportunity to make Hangzhou get rid of the traditional cities’stagnational trajectory.On the contrary,after the war and the disaster,Hangzhou was again and for the last time back to the origin of history.And not until the signing of Treaty of Shimonoseki(马关条约)in 1895 did it really open up its urban modernization process.