Yu, R.;
(2025)
Forming an in-between place: urbanisation of the Beach Ground, Xiamen (1842–1930).
Architecture_MPS
, 30
(1)
, Article 3. 10.14324/amps.2025v30i1.003.
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Abstract
This article examines the urban modernisation of Xiamen, a city located in the south-east of China, from the 1830s to the 1930s, highlighting the interplay between local initiatives and imperial powers. The Beach Ground was a core area of the Xiamen Bund, located south-west of Xiamen, and played a vital role in the maritime trade. Its planning and governance were closely linked to the establishment of the British concession (1852–1930). Taking the reclamation and embankment construction of the Beach Ground as a starting point, this article analyses how the Beach Ground transformed as an in-between place through unofficial land reclamation (before 1842), British concession planning (1842–1911), sovereignty disputes (1878–1922) and the construction of the Xiamen Bund embankment (1920s–1930s). These four vignettes provide a multi-perspective narrative of Xiamen’s regional development through the political and economic conflicts and resolutions of different stakeholders, as well as its consequences for local society. This reveals the impacts of global exchange on China’s modernisation and affirms the contribution of Indigenous knowledge and local adaptation.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Forming an in-between place: urbanisation of the Beach Ground, Xiamen (1842–1930) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/amps.2025v30i1.003 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/amps.2025v30i1.003 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025, Ruoqi Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | urban modernisation, Indigenous knowledge, global flows, British concession, regional development, port city |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215624 |
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