Page 42 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

The Afterlives of a Ruin 27
one fixed as original event, the other malleable and open to new meanings—that
makes sites of memory themselves contingent and changeable, and hence, historical.
These general observations about sites of memory are no less the case in a socialist
than in a capitalist economic order; no less pertinent to a “single party” than to a
“democratic” political structure. For purposes here, the key arena of expression
and contention is the modern nation. Who gets to define the nation and under what
conditions? How is the nation’s past of conflict and violence to be recalled and
represented? What is the relation between a particular site of memory and the nation?
How are present and future generations to be convinced that the preservation of such
sites contribute to the reproduction of the nation? In an age of global neoliberal
homogenization, and historically unprecedented levels of mass consumption and
mass advertising, these are not minor issues.
With these questions and observations in mind, let me return now to the Yuan -
mingyuan. The destruction of the gardens and the pillaging of its remains for building
materials had left the linguistic sign Yuanmingyuan with only a crumbling and
disappearing material referent. Yet the sign, being a sign, could be appropriated for
other use. It entered into a series with other signs, now identified by Chinese na tion -
alists, as a signifier, beginning with the first Opium War in 1839, of the humiliations
of the Chinese people—not Manchu emperors—by the Western powers. By the 1920s,
national humiliation had been institutionalized as a collective malaise represented
and redressed through a succession of memorial days throughout the year. Public
institutions such as schools and government offices recognized up to 24 such days
annually. Occurring two and occasionally three times a month from January through
November, National Humiliation Days included the dates of signing of the “unequal
treaties,” the dates Chinese territory was leased to foreigners, the dates of protest
rallies in which demonstrators were killed (e.g., the May 30th Incident in Shanghai),
and of course, the dates of the second Opium War and the Treaty of Tianjin when
the Yuanmingyuan was looted and destroyed. 6
As sites of memory, humiliation days provided a foundation upon which to build
a new Chinese national consciousness. The new historical subject, the national citizen,
whether an individual or a collectivity, would be a strong, pure, self-sacrificing anti-
imperialist who would rise above historical shame and reclaim China’s sovereign
rights. In the 1950s, this larger than life figure would become the model of the new
man and woman who would build socialism in China.
National humiliation and its resulting anti-imperialism played a constitutive role
in the Chinese Communists’ construction of a new China. The People’s Republic was
established on a unity forged through liberation (jiefang) from the humiliations of
imperialism and of the feudal past. Few of the national humiliation days seem to
have continued into the PRC era, however. They were replaced by positive holidays
marking triumphs and sacrifices on the road to revolution. Nevertheless, a strong
anti-imperialist strain of Communist thought, built upon remembrance and tran -
scendence of the century of humiliation, was clearly common place in public art,
school books, radio, film, and later television.
At the same time, however, while remembrance was encouraged through these
mediums, the condition of the Yuanmingyuan itself seems to have been ignored or
forgotten. Recall my earlier reference to the fact that it was not until the 1980s that
a small history museum was opened. When I first visited in 1987, the large structures
still evident at the end of the nineteenth century were completely gone—only randomly