Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Reign Dates of the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Introduction: An Age of Utopian Visions

1. The Qianlong Emperor's Tours of the Imperial City, 1751-84

2. Literati Politics in the Early Nineteenth Century

3. Wang Shiduo's Flight from the New Jerusalem, 1853-64

4. Zeng Guofan's Construction of a Ritual Center, 1864-72

5. Chen Zuolin Reassembles the Poetic City, 1872-1912

Conclusion: Elements of Utopia

Abbreviations Used in the Notes

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Promotional Information

The book makes an important contribution ... and fits nicely into a growing body of recent scholarship that is reevaluating nineteenth-century China in general and mid-century rebellions in particular. -- Steven B. Miles, author of The Sea of Learning: Mobility and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Guangzhou This is good work, well executed, and the product of years of skilled research. It connects to several areas of recent interest in the field: urban history, the Taiping civil war, political culture, and the relationship between literary landscape and other geographies. -- Tobie Meyer-Fong, author of What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in Nineteenth-Century China

About the Author

Chuck Wooldridge is assistant professor of history at Lehman College, City University of New York, and codirector of the Modern China Seminar, Columbia University.

Reviews

"Skillfully demonstrates how different political movements altered the cityscape — both physically and semantically — to project their utopian visions. . . . A carefully crafted work." - Carl Kilcourse (China Quarterly) "The publication of City of Virtues is doubly welcome: valuable on its own merits, the book contributes significantly to two vital bodies of historiography on modern China. . . . All interested in Qing and Republican history and urban studies will enjoy and profit from reading Wooldridge's stimulating, smart book." - Peter J. Carroll (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies) "[A] thoughtful book linking urban history to the ritual and literary representation of space, while also contributing to scholarship on the Taiping civil war and nineteenth-century elites." (Journal of Asian Studies)