La Couronne de l'Orient

Aurélie Névot (1)

1 CCJ - Chine, Corée, Japon

While China integrates Western values, it is creating a subtle shift between exogenous concepts and the re-appropriation of the latter—in dealing for the most part with so-called universal themes—with regard to its own symbolical system. To be more precise, it is new Confucianism” that prevails today in the country’s system of governance. This is based on the idea that Far Eastern values should be taken in consideration again in contemporary societies without however discrediting Western ones, in keeping with the circle of influence of globalisation. China has revised and exploited these values; it has reinterpreted its so-called “classical” school of thought—and the symbolism associated with it—in order to adapt itself to the present time and to conceive its contemporary society from an international perspective. In this way it anticipates the future, by taking over “old-fashioned things” that were condemned under Mao Zedong’s regime. Any kind of element referring to “ancient time” was indeed proscribed during the Cultural Revolution (1965-1969)—the effects of which lasted at least until the death of “the Great Helmsman” in 1976. The aim was then to make a clean break with the past. The historical events of the second half of the twentieth century in fact left a gaping cultural hole, a real stigma that Hu Jintao’s government, following on from Jiang Zemin’s, attempted to remove—and the government under Xi Jinping is following in his predecessors’ footsteps. Due to this lack of logic in its own historical and cultural continuity, due to the total breakdown of its social structures that offended its national identity, Chinese society now regards its localities, objects, monuments, ancient artefacts and concepts as reflexive items that mirror its history and culture. It uses them to ensure the permanence of its symbolic order. It would seem important today to consider them afresh in order to bestow meaning on the historical and cultural continuity of the country that has been deeply affected since the nineteenth century by the arrival of Western settlers on the eastern side of the Empire (in Shanghai in particular). The Confucian State was conceived to ensure the Empire’s prosperity, stability and security after it had been weakened at that period in time. It is not so much the conservation of Chinese cultural heritage that prevails as its enhancement and its harmonization with government ideology, a process which goes hand in hand with its transformation. China reinvents, redeems, rebuilds by grafting significations on the relevant items in line with State Orthodoxy. Through this patrimonial undertaking, time gaps are “filled in” and a new order is affirmed. This book sets out to analyse this semantic shift from an ancient set of symbols to a set of symbols that are re-examined using the present as a yardstick. The building commonly known as “The Crown of the East” is representative of the “re-interpretative” ideology associating modernity and antiquity and more to the point, it encrypts the neo-Confucian vision of the contemporary world. This crown was built for the World Fair which took place in Shanghai from 1st May to 31st October 2010. It was then officially named “the Pavilion of the Chinese Nation”. Built to last, it opened its doors on several occasions in 2011, after this grand “high mass”, until its final transformation in 2012 into the “China Art Palace”. Inaugurated on the day of the 63rd birthday of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, 1st October 2012, this “Palace” now hosts part of the collection of contemporary art previously housed in the Shanghai Art Museum, and recounts the history and the evolution of modern art in China. In keeping with the 2010 World Expo slogan: “better city, better life”, each exhibiting country had to imagine the city of the future, deeply anchored in an ecological challenge of nature conservation and energy-giving auto-sufficiency. Although this challenge is not original, the link established between Man and his environment, as well as Man’s perception of his environment, needs to be questioned. Even though ecology now seems to be a universal preoccupation, it is not so for the perception of Nature. During “Shanghai 2010”, China revealed how it perceives the “universal” and the link between humankind and the world by presenting its ancestral concepts for the whole world to see. Far from betraying its own culture in this international context, it has on the contrary given Shanghai special status: a haven where the centre of the new world, an expression that has to be understood here in the Chinese sense of the term which refers to its symbolism, to its cosmo-ontology, can be safeguarded through the Crown of the East. Indeed, symbolically, the “city on the sea” has been raised to the rank of “universal capital” thanks to the Chinese Pavilion. In The Crown of the East (2014), the fundamental characteristics of the Crown of the East are analyzed: firstly, facing southwards and associated with the sky, the construction is supported by four pillars standing on a building located under the Chinese Pavilion: the Chinese Provinces Pavilion which is symbolically associated with the Earth. Secondly, its structure is made up of 56 corbels—each symbolizing a Chinese nationality—whose forces mutually balance and ensure the stability of the whole monument. Furthermore, the platform situated at the top of the building recalls the ancient Bright Hall through which the emperor had to travel to set the universe in order—what is more, the building makes reference to the unification of China by the first emperor with its seal scripts. Moving in time to the cycles of the cosmos—the 24 solar periods—, it also indicates the four cardinal points. Moreover, it is adorned with “Chinese Red”, a “unified-compound” created especially for the Crown which diffuses, in a subliminal manner, the ideology of New Confucianism. Besides, the Crown of the East overlooks the garden named “Purity and Calm on the new nine continents”—invoking mythical territories and the Chinese ecosystems. An exhibition ran from 2010 to 2011 inside the Crown. The theme was “Oriental prints” which evoked the industrial and economic growth of Chinese society, as well as its future ideological orientations. This exhibition showed the basis of Chinese utopia by presenting a revisited memory which questions head-on the evocation of history in China and the strategy of handing down a political message. The Crown of the East is said to “incarnate” (tixian 体现) a “project” (sheji 设计) which is the pinnacle of Chinese perceptions.

Mots clés: architecture; World Expo 2010; musées; muséographie; cosmologie; universalisme; nationalisme; Shanghai; Chine

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Architecture, aménagement de l'espace

Aurélie Névot. La Couronne de l'Orient : Le centre du monde à Shanghai. Editions du CNRS, 2014. ⟨hal-02440158⟩