Bartlett Research Conversations: Zijiao Li

A hybrid Teams link is available – please contact Emmy Thittanond, g.thittanond@ucl.ac.uk, to request access to the link by midday, Tuesday 21 January 2025.

Racing Towards Modernity: The Role of Chinese Racecourses in Shaping Urbanism, Culture, and Identity since 1842

Speaker: Zijiao Li
UCL Supervisor: Prof Peg Rawes and Prof Iain Borden

Abstract

This thesis examines the contested 180-year history of Chinese racecourses, which are now undergoing significant changes, and their role in shaping Chinese urbanism, culture, and identity across late imperial, republican, and socialist China.

Introducing the concept of Chinese racecourse urbanism, it investigates six case-study cities–Shanghai, Wuhan, Qingdao, Harbin, Hohhot, and Guangzhou–categorising racecourses as central, experimental, and peripheral. The study provides a comprehensive historical and urban analysis of Chinese racecourses and their implications for the future of China’s horse industry. It reinterprets Chinese architectural and urban historiography according to the lenses of modernisation, commodification, and urbanisation. This interdisciplinary project intersects architectural and urban history, sports and leisure studies and animal-human relationships. Addressing the unique Chinese case fills the gap in global horseracing history and challenges dominant narratives of colonialism and globalisation shaped by Western perspectives.

About The Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Research Conversations seminars comprise work-in-progress and upgrade presentations by students undertaking the Architectural Design MPhil/PhD and Architectural and Urban History and Theory MPhil/PhD. All current UCL staff and students are welcome to attend.

Held regularly throughout the academic year, the seminars are attended by the Programme Directors, Professor Sophia Psarra, Dr Tania Sengupta and Dr Nina Vollenbröker; PhD Coordinators, Dr Stamatis Zografos and Dr Stelios Giamarelos; and other PhD supervisors.

Image: Former Hsinking Racecourse, Zijiao Li, 2024

Description: The ruins of Changchun Racecourse Grandstand