FROM ENCLOSURE TO NECESSITY: THE FUNCTIONSOF PUBLIC PARKS IN THE INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT OF SHANGHAI, 1842-1943

摘要

Both a prominent modern landscape and a new idea in Chinese garden history, public parks in China are an outgrowth of the establishment of foreign concessions in the mid-nineteenth century. However, the existing scholarship too often oversimplifies these parks as mere replicas of European parks, neglecting the particular presence of these designed landscapes, as well as the transplanted individuals who shaped them. By examining the public parks in the Shanghai International Settlement from 1842 to 1943, this paper points out that although the introduction of a public park in Shanghai was initially to seize land, as the International Settlement developed and administrators came to value the interest of settlers, the concepts of 'health', 'sport' andthe 'care of children' were translated and adopted into the design and use of the parks - until, finally, the parks became a necessity within the city. This paper explores how the public parks in the concessions evolved various designs, roles and uses, and how they became established in the symbolic structure and physical lives of the residents during the semi-colonial period of modern China, which in turn can be used for comparative analysis with colonial modernity in Asia and beyond.