打印

作者

mengbi.li Jing Xie

来源

JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY,Vol.49,Issue4,P.

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

摘要

Abstract COVID-19 calls for a new understanding of urban landscape and associated living. As an emerging topic, lockdown urbanism involves an unpredictable future where lockdown or quarantine may be a come and go new normal for everyday practice, but the topic itself seems to have escaped historical inquiry. This paper attempts to answer why the strict lockdown is suitable for China by revealing a long and complex history of urbanization and its social and administrative organization. The urban fabric is characterized by a system of urban patterns: enclosed communities, the spatial layout and service distribution of the neighborhood, and the formation of the center. It was also animated by daily ritualistic practices, such as the control of time, quotidian lockdown practice (yejin), and individual ties within the enclosed neighborhood. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the deep history of urban form and the order and logic behind lockdown urbanism. Introduction Triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, new urban topics such as lockdown urbanism and quarantine urbanism emerge, which call for a new understanding of urban fabric and associated living that can be different to, and even the opposite of, existing conventions. However, there are no comprehensive studies that discuss lockdown or quarantine urbanism through urban history.1 The notion of “quarantine,” as highlighted in the article “Thinking with Quarantine Urbanism,” is in its most basic form, a separation and containment strategy.2 Rather than discussing the terms such as quarantine and lockdown and their nuanced definitions, this paper focuses on their essential connections with social and spatial governance. In Bratton and Stoppani’s words, lockdown or quarantine refers to a state of urban life that is “of suspension in space (enforced provisional isolation) and an alteration of time (delay, deferral), both detention and detainment.”3 Reflecting the question of why the lockdown and quarantine-like practice is suitable for China today, this study rather unravels a long urban history intertwined with the urban form of enclosed neighborhoods and an extended social and administrative practice of social and spatial governance. This paper argues that through delving into urban history, the lockdown urbanism of each region, as a form of social and spatial governance, as well as a conscious or subconscious habit, can be better understood and rigorously analyzed. As a new topic though, lockdown or quarantine urbanism interestingly can be traced back in the past. In a plague-stricken town in seventeenth-century Europe, for example, the strategy of strict spatial partition played a critical role in preventing contagion. This has been eloquently analyzed by Michel Foucault. To Foucault, enclosed and segmented spaces allowed enhanced surveillance and observation, thereby producing a perfectly governed city.4 The notion of lockdown urbanism also seems to be traceable in urban China in the past. For example, David Bray’s study of the Chinese danwei system frequently cited Foucault’s theory on socio-spatial governance. In particular, Bray believes traditional walled residential compounds are antecedents to the walled danwei and Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon is also applicable to the Chinese context.5 The history of the Chinese enclosed neighborhood has appeared in previous research, but it was usually narrated as a part of the background history concerning what Chinese cities have experienced.6 In current scholarship, due to their different interests, topics on enclosed neighborhoods are less associated with the particular social and administrative organization, or the daily practice of lockdown (yejin), or with lockdown urbanism in a historic context. Tracing urban form, urban life, and social and administrative organization across approximately three thousand years, this study relies on historic sources from drawings, maps, laws, codes, annuals, ritual records, imperial edicts, narratives, and depiction of coetaneous life, in the attempt to illustrate how and why lockdown urbanism can be so effectively implemented in urban China. Dividing and Governing Urban Space in Early China In early China, spatial patterns played a critical role in serving social organization and administration. This was evident in the Western Zhou dynasty (ca. 1046–771 BCE) when rigid spatial division and administration were introduced to govern the urban population. This urban governance system mirrored the military organization of the Western Zhou court.7 The Pre-Qin (before 221 BCE) literature mentioned a land management system named jingtian (井田制, well-field system) adopted by different governments. For example, Guliang zhuan (谷梁傳), one of the three famous commentaries on the Confucian classics Chunqiu (春秋), focusing on the period between 722 BCE and 481 BCE, provides an early record of how the method of the well-field system worked. The well-field system regulated how to allocate human labor and how to implement accountability for agricultural productivity. A square block of land was divided into nine smaller squares (Figure 1). The eight fields on the periphery were allocated to eight families as private fields. The ninth, the center one, was the public field that needed to be farmed collectively by all eight families together. If the private fields could not achieve a good harvest, the local official would be questioned for accountability. If the central shared field experienced a problem with its harvest, the surrounding eight families would share the responsibility.8 Figure 1. A diagram showing the division of land in the jingtian system (drawn by the author). Such spatial division and the administration based on that formed a fundamental unit of the urban pattern, which could be duplicated and expanded to form a larger unit. Xiaositu (小司徒, an official in charge of land, households, population, taxation, and civic rituals) explains that nine units (fu) of the land compose one well (jing). Four jing compose one yi. Four yi compose one qiu. Four qiu compose one dian. Four dian compose one xian (county). Four xian compose one du (city). This structure was not only for land administration, since it also served as a framework for managing agricultural productivity and taxation.9 Ranging from the smallest unit of fu to the largest one du, this spatial hierarchy indicated a rigid administrative system consisting of different levels. A similar pattern seems have been applied to urban settlement in the Han dynasty. In Shuowen jiezi (說文解字, an early second-century Chinese dictionary), jing (井) means a neighborhood unit, that is, eight households sharing a water well.10 In this sense, jing suggests a strict administrative order (Figure 2). The early model of land division and administration implies a sense of boundary based on a gridded square pattern and the primacy of a central position. An ideal city pattern stipulated in Kaogong ji (考工記, Records of Examination of Craftsman) was also divided by nine longitudinal and nine latitudinal streets.11 The layout of this ideal city was reflected in the diagram produced by Nie Chongyi (聶崇義, 997 CE–?) (Figure 3).12 Such rigid division (and administration) of a city had a strong influence on the later urban landscape of China. Figure 2. The small seal script of “井” (jing), in Han Dian (漢典, Chinese dictionary), https://www.zdic.net/zd/zx/xz/井 (accessed November 29, 2020). Figure 3. The ritual model of a city produced by Nie Chongyi around 960 CE. Li: An Enclosed Urban Community The physical setting of an urban neighborhood in early China probably can be first understood through the literary term lüli (閭裡).13 The term lüli consists of two characters, lü (閭) and li (裡). Li refers to a neighborhood as a physical and administrative urban unit. Lü means the gate of li,14 suggesting that lüli was most likely an enclosed community in early times. The term lüli appeared in many historical records. For example, in Zhouli (周禮, Rites of Zhou), there is a chapter about how a tianguan zhongzai (天官塚宰, an official title, equivalent to minister) managed the state. One of his responsibilities was dealing with a dispute or lawsuit over lüli. The solution referred to the boundaries defined by the registration and involved checking the documentation with maps.15 There was also a historical account suggesting that li as a neighborhood unit was walled and gated. Shijing (詩經, The She King), from the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BCE), records a young lady’s words to her lover, reminding him not to come over to her neighborhood, because their love affair was strongly opposed by the lady’s family, as the lady told her lover: I pray you, Mr. Zhong, please do not come leaping into my li16. Do not break my willow trees. Do I really care for them? But I fear my parents. You are to be loved, but the words of my parents are also to be feared. But I fear my parents. You, O Zhong, are to be loved, but the words of my parents, are also to be feared. I pray you, Mr. Zhong, please do not come leaping over my wall; do not break my mulberry trees. Do I care for them? But I fear the words of my brothers. You, O Zhong, are to be loved, but the words of my brothers, are also to be feared. I pray you, Mr. Zhong, do not come leaping into my courtyard; Do not break my sandal trees. Do I care for them? But I dread the talk of people. You, O Zhong, are to be loved, but the talk of people, is also to be feared.17 The chapter “Baguan (八觀)” in Guanzi (管子), compiled between the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (770–221 BCE), accentuates the importance of walls, as an enclosure for securing urban communities. The main city wall must be well constructed, the suburban walls impenetrable, the boundaries of li must be secure on all sides, gates kept closed, and residential walls and door locks kept in good repair.18 Zhanguo ce (戰國策, Strategies of the Warring States) is an ancient book containing accounts of political manipulation and warfare during the Warring States period. It records the words of the Wang family’s parents. The mother recalled how much she cared for and worried about her son when he left home. She leaned against the doorframe of the family house and waited for him to return. However, if he went out at night, she would be more worried, so she leaned against the doorframe of the li19 and waited for her son.20 Li here referred to a walled community. The two different doorways in which the mother waited for her son implied different degrees of concern. The account also reveals that the early form of li seemed to be a gated community. The importance of the physical boundary of these enclosed neighborhoods was further enhanced by the legislation. For example, Shuihudi Qin jian (睡虎地秦簡, a law book written on bamboo slips in the Qin dynasty [221–206 BCE] found in Shuihudi) discusses how to define the boundary between courtyards and li. First, it enquires “does the behavior of leaping over the boundary walls of li count as leaping over courtyard walls as well?” Qin jian defines that “If there are two opposite lanes, this should be regarded as leaping over the boundary wall of courtyards. If it is the position where two houses are connected, this is not the boundary of courtyards.” The definition of the behavior of leaping over the boundary wall was important at that time because it was regarded as a type of breaching the law.21 Ernian lüling (二年律令, The Law Issued in the Second Year of Lühou 呂後22) stipulates that leaping over the boundary walls of li breaches laws and will be punished. When the boundary walls are broken and the remaining height is shorter than five chi (尺),23 the crime (crossing the boundary) can be regarded as a minor offense. These detailed regulations appeared in early China and to some extent reveal that the physical setting of urban fabric played a critical role in assisting social and administrative organization. Apart from being a spatial concept for a particular form of enclosed neighborhood, lüli was also an administrative unit that constituted the social structure. The Rites of Zhou defines that “five families is one bi. Five bi is lü.”24 More detailed explanations elucidate the interrelationship between spatial management and administrative organization. “Lü is the door of li. The ritual of the Zhou rules that twenty-five families live together to form a li.”25 Living together was not only for a spatial connection but was also for cultivating social ties. The civil servants were advised to adopt this administrative system to group the residents, and more importantly, the residents needed to establish bonds through mutual support in day-to-day life: “Making five families into one bi and helping them to support and protect each other; letting five bi form one lü and helping them to trust and care for each other.”26 The rules went on to provide specific duties for the officials regarding how they could help the members of a neighborhood to support and trust each other. “Ask them to help each other if there is a funeral.” More broadly, “if there is a disaster, ask them to succor each other”; “lead them to treat people from other communities politely as valuable guests.”27 The Yejin System Other than cultivating spatial and interpersonal ties, it should be noted that a social practice called yejin (夜禁, lockdown during nights) resembling today’s practice of quarantine lockdown during the pandemic of COVID-19 took place too. The difference is that the historical practice yejin was on a daily basis and the duration was a full night. Regarding the duration, the yejin practice resembles a curfew, a practice in Medieval Europe. Derived from Old French, the term curfew was introduced to England by William the Conqueror.28 Later in the early twentieth century during World War I, a formal curfew order was issued by the British Board of Trade. The order was to save fuel during wartime. Therefore, the order was mainly about extinguishing “lighting, heating and power” rather than being a strict lockdown. The initial introduction of yejin was probably for fire safety and security. Buildings were mainly built with timber in the past, so fire protection was vital for a city. An official position entitled gongzheng (宮正, imperial justice and rectification) was responsible for multiple duties. One of the duties was “using a type of wooden clapper to produce a sound designed to remind people of being cautious of any fire and candle, especially in spring and winter.”29 Spring and winter are dry seasons. The convention of making a sound with the wooden clapper and calling “the dry season, mind of fire and candle” overnight continued to the most recent Qing dynasty.30 Another official position titled zhanggu (掌固, steadiness and stability control) had two duties which show the interaction between urban form and administrative practice. One duty of zhanggu was to take care of city walls, moats, and other security-related structures. Another duty was to conduct patrols and inspections consisting of three rounds of patrol during daylight hours and three overnight. During the night rounds, zhanggu should call out the prohibition rules to remind people of their obligations.31 In terms of how the yejin was practiced, there was a comprehensive system developed for restricting activities during that time. The early practice of yejin lockdown can be traced to the Zhou dynasty. The historical record shows that particular officials were appointed to this social practice, with a clear division of work and duty. For providing guidance for the start and end of yejin, Siwu (司寤, manager of waking up, implying the manager of the day and night) performed the duty of recording the time according to astrology. Furthermore, there were patrols and night-watcher officials ensuring people did not travel outside during nighttime or before the dawn.32 Other than a fully coerced lockdown, the yejin practice seems to be a part of ritual or etiquette in ancient China. Recorded in Liji (禮記, Book of Rites), Confucius (551–479 BCE) recalled that he learned a lesson from Laozi (aka Lao Tzu, ca. 571–471 BCE), who explained the rite to Confucius. When the feudal prince travels to have an audience with the King (the heavenly son), he travels when he can see the sun. At sundown he halts and presents his offerings (to the spirit of the way). When a dafu (大夫, Great officer), is on a mission, he travels while he can see the sun, and at sundown he halts. Now a bier does not set forth in the early morning, nor does it rest anywhere at night; but those who travel by starlight are only criminals and those who are hastening to the funeral rites of a parent.33 Accordingly, a series of pertinent policies were applied to enhance the practice of yejin, including appointing officials who were specifically in charge of keys and gates, making regulations on how to manage the keys and the times of opening and shutting down gates, and introducing drums and a watchman’s clapper to notify the time and urge residents to stay home.34 The Prevalence of Lifang It was in the Northern Wei (386–534 CE) that the method of dividing urban settlements into rectangular blocks and enclosing them as gated communities reached a peak and continued in the succeeding dynasties.35 Enclosed communities were not only employed as a principal pattern for urban settlements, but also served as the primary administrative units for social governance. This approach was known as the lifang (residential wards) system. The term, lifang (裡坊), consisted of two characters, li (裡) and fang (坊). As elaborated earlier, li referred to a gated community with multiple households. The transformation of the meaning of the second character, fang, as illustrated below, literally enhanced the function and the form of the enclosed community system. In ancient Chinese, fang (坊) was equal to fang (防), meaning prevent, protect, conserve, or guard. The early meanings can be traced among the well-known literature, including Liji and Zhanguo ce.36 These meanings indicate that the lifang system was introduced initially for security purposes. This purpose was further confirmed by the prestigious Song dynasty (960–1270 CE) scholar, Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130–1200 CE) who noted that: The officially built streets are all built with walls. Residents live behind the walls. Each fang (residential ward) has gates. Residents need to come in and out through these gates. It is very safe to be living in the residential ward.37 A subsequent meaning of fang (坊) denotes a walled area equivalent to a homophone character, fang (方 square).38 The original meaning of fang (方), to Sarah Allan, was a square, because the graphic fang (方) is made up of two elements: a man “人” and a tool “工,” likely representing a carpenter holding a tool used for making squares (Figure 4).39 This is confirmed by David Pankenier who also believes the basic meaning of fang is square.40 Such definition denotes a square to be the morphology of lifang. Figure 4. The oracle bone inscriptions of “fang,” Handian 漢典 (accessed November 20, 2020). Cities built with the system of lifang were arrayed by enclosed communities (aka wards in English translation) resembling a chessboard with square patterns. For example, a grand project of building a capital city was launched by the founding emperor of the Sui dynasty (581–618 CE), Emperor Wen. As a result, Luoyang was built in a chessboard pattern and consisted of 103 rectangular enclosed communities, encompassing two different categories of fang (or ward): the big ones contained 400 to 500 households, while the small ones comprised 60 to 70 households. There were also internal streets within the enclosed community (or the residential ward). Luoyang city as a whole had five sections. The Northwest section was devoted to the palace city while the other four sections all consisted of residential wards. The Northeast section was the home of the social elites. Although the Southwest section did not contain as many top bureaucrats as the Northeast quarter, it accommodated several social elites. As the smallest section with only fourteen wards, the section South of the River accommodated imperial magicians, diviners, and an institute for Sutra Translation. The Southeast section was the largest in area and was the last to be developed in Luoyang. Most of the comparatively lower social classes lived in this area.41 According to the rule of the Tang dynasty, one leader would be appointed for each enclosed neighborhood. In remote regions where there was a small population with very low density, the number of neighborhood leaders may vary depending on the context. The neighborhood leader was in charge of “household registration, productivity, criminal control and service supervision.”42 Another important duty for the leader of lifang was “taking care of the key of the enclosed neighborhood.”43 An imperial discourse about the duties and administrative level of neighborhood leaders occurred during the reign of Emperor Xuanwu of Northern Wei (483–515 CE). Yin Zhenchen (尹甄琛) from Henan province submitted a report which said that the administration of lifang was chaotic. The reason was that the neighborhood leader was classified as a low-level government official, so it was difficult to recruit quality candidates to the position. However, this position involved a large workload and accountability for multiple areas. Eventually, the emperor issued an imperial edict with two measures, including promoting the administrative level of the neighborhood leader and refining the recruitment of this position.44 The quadrangular layouts of cities and urban wards continued and thrived in the Tang dynasty (618–906 CE). The city was enclosed by walls on its four sides and each side had three gates. The capital city Chang’an was divided into rectangular enclosed wards. The planning principles seemed to have followed the ideal capital city recorded in Kaogong ji. Inside, the city was divided by orthogonal grids into multiple enclosed communities, also known as residential wards or, simply, wards. Aligning with the palace city zone, there were four columns of wards built in nine rows. The four columns represented the four seasons (Figure 5). The nine rows echoed the ideal model of wangcheng jiukui (王城九逵, Nine pathways of the imperial city).45 Figure 5. Schematic plan of Tang Chang’an (author’s drawing, 2016). Since a plethora of communities (lifang) were enclosed by walls with gates, the streets were delimited by the perimeter walls of lifang rather than by buildings. There were eleven longitudinal north-south streets and fourteen latitudinal east-west streets, dividing the city into about 110 blocks of enclosed communities that accommodated one million citizens approximately. The prominent Tang poet Bai Juyi (白居易) recorded that there were “hundreds of houses, thousands of houses—like a chessboard and evoked an image of fields. The twelve streets like a field planted with rows of cabbage.”46 Chang’an zhi (長安志, Record of Chang’an, first published in 1076) depicted that “the chessboard-like layout is arrayed with streets as straight as lines. This splendid view is unprecedented among previous capital cities.”47 According to Chang’an zhi, there were three typical layouts of the enclosed communities (Figure 6) consisting of two residential wards and one market ward. They were expressly defined by a walled enclosure, with gates on the periphery. The market ward, for example, was subdivided by the internal streets into a grid of three by three cells which included the market areas and administration institutes. According to the text and diagrams offered by Song Minqiu (宋敏求) in 1077 CE, the four sides of the market ward were left to arrange the merchants’ accommodation.48 Figure 6. Diagrams and annotations of the three typical enclosed communities recorded in Chang’an zhi, upper volume, p. 8. According to archeology and literature, each enclosed community had its own name, and in many cases, the enclosed communities were subdivided by a pair of crossroads, connecting four gates on the periphery (Figure 7). The size of the residential wards varies. The smallest ones were 350 by 300 paces and the largest ones reached 650 by 400 paces. Along with the booming of urban commerce generally, many business premises emerged in the residential wards although in the two markets, residential spaces were also developed.49 Figure 7. Diagrams of the enclosed communities or wards in Tang Chang’an, recorded in the stone stele carved under the supervision of Lü Dafang (1027 –1097 CE) (reproduced from Shanxi sheng wenwu guanli weiyuanhui 陝西省文物管理委員會 [The Committee of Heritage Management of Shanxi Province], “Tang Chang’an cheng diji chubu tance 唐長安城地基初步探測 [A Pilot Investigation on the Foundations of Tang Chang’an],” Acta Archaeologica Sinica, no. 3 (1958). Figure 3 in the Appendix). Urban Administration System Beyond physical form, the management of these enclosed communities resembled the actions of a literal quarantine. There were both spatial and temporal constraints. For example, a yejin policy was enacted in the Tang dynasty which ruled that the enclosed communities, including the whole city, markets, residential areas, and palace compounds, should shut the gates at specific times every day. Wandering around the streets at night was not allowed. Furthermore, the term fanye (犯夜, delinquency of the night rule) was developed especially to define the behavior of breaching the rule of lockdown from dusk until dawn.50 Legal cases in relation to the practice of yejin were evident in the literature. For example, Tanglü shuyi (唐律疏議, The Tang Code with Commentaries) ruled that disobeying the night lockdown would be punished by twenty strokes of the cane but if there was an acceptable reason, the punishment could be waived. Acceptable reasons included urgent affairs, marriage, funerals, and sickness.51 There was a special case mentioned in much of the contemporaneous literature, such as Jinshu (晉書, Book of the Jin Dynasty), Shishuo xinyu (世說新語, A New Account of Tales of the World), and Quan Tangwen (全唐文, A Compilation of Tang Articles). In this case, a citizen breached the lockdown practice and walked outside during the night. He was caught by an official. When this citizen was asked why he breached the yejin, he explained that he did not notice the time, as he was concentrating on studying in his teacher’s home. The judgment of this case was that a government official should not punish a student like this one and this citizen was not only exempt from punishment, but also escorted by an official back home.52 In addition to the regulations underpinning this quarantine-like policy, there were temporal and spatial strategies on how to implement them in everyday practice. In particular, this policy was enhanced through two modes of administration. One involved time control and the other was the accessibility of various gates. Following the principle of “shut down at dusk and open up at dawn,” Tang liudian (唐六典, Administrative Code of the Tang Dynasty) provides detailed rules for recording the time and handling mistakes.53 There were various officials involved in time control. One of their important jobs was to ensure the precision of timing so that the drum could be beaten at dusk and the bell could be tolled at dawn accurately.54 An early policy shows that the notice for lockdown and opening up was first sent by officials riding horses, calling out the appropriate action. This approach turned out to have some drawbacks, such as citizens not hearing the calls clearly. During the Zhenguan period (reigned by the Tang Emperor Taizong), this policy was changed upon the proposal of Ma Zhou (馬周, 601–648 CE) by installing drums on multiple streets. The detailed regulations also had to consider how to ensure people outside the city could come back in time, as the gates would be fully shut down after four hundred drum beats.55 Other related guidelines included how to obtain an exemption pass, where to obtain the pass in an emergency, and how to keep the exemption certificate visible for the patrols.56 All of these resemble today’s lockdown actions during the pandemic of COVID-19. The difference is that the former was a practice applying to daily routines while the latter is an emergency policy. Compensation for the daily lockdown practice was also available. There was a policy for celebrating holidays by lifting the yejin and introducing night events. A typical festival was Yuanxiao (元宵, Lantern Festival). Similar to today’s White Night festivals in Melbourne and Russia, celebratory activities were carried out throughout the nights. The Prime Minister of the Tang dynasty, Su Weidao (蘇味道, 648–705 CE) composed a poem especially to present the joyous atmosphere of this festival when the yejin was lifted. This poem won Su the position of champion in a poetry contest. Su described the numerous colorful lanterns hanging around as if the trees were on fire with silver blooms. The streets were full of bustle and hustle, animated by music and songs. Ladies who wore delicate makeup sang while they were walking. In particular, as Su emphasized in the poem, the iron locks would remain unlocked that night.57 The Transformation of li Evident in the literature in the form of paintings and books, capital cities in the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE) witnessed a comparatively open urban landscape. Scholarly reviews of the transformation of the enclosed communities in Song times are, however, divergent. One view, held by many, indicates that the lifang system (building a city based on enclosed communities) collapsed.58 Recently, another view notes that the enclosure continued in other forms, that is, the walls built to “wrap” communities were transformed to other forms of enclosure. The process of transformation was so long and gradual that some of the physical ramifications, as disguised forms of enclosure (e.g., iron fences, shops), could easily be ignored or missed.59 In fact, the fully walled and gated communities had been challenged from time to time over the ages. The counter forces can be traced to the early time of the lifang system. For example, in the Sui dynasty, the Suishu (隋書, Book of the Sui dynasty) records the political achievement of an official, Linghu Xi (令狐熙, 539–602 CE), who had enhanced the administration’s control of the delinquency of opening doors from residential wards directly onto the street for the purpose of running a business.60 In the Tang dynasty (618–906 CE), there was a law focusing on cases of street encroachment which ruled that it would be punished by caning.61 Tang Huiyao (唐會要, Institution History of the Tang Dynasty) clearly ruled that it was not allowed to destroy the walls to encroach on the street and that delinquency would be punished. Any illegal structure or the unpermitted extension of a building would be demolished.62 Imperial documents recorded that There are cases of people from various backgrounds breaching the rule. They constructed buildings that encroached on the streets. It is necessary to ban this behavior, but it is also hard to judge case by case. Therefore, only the cases that are with an imperial exemption are allowed.63 Street encroachment was essentially driven by the growing urban economy and population and the punishment for street encroachment changed from demolition and bodily torture to taxation. During the Chongning years (1102–1106 CE) of Emperor Huizong’s reign in the Song dynasty, a particular category of charge for street encroachment entitled qinjie fanglang qian (侵街房廊錢, the fee for buildings or structure encroaching on streets) was introduced.64 The boundaries that used to be consolidated by walls and gates could be expressed in different forms. The gates of urban wards, for example, played a critical role in the practice of lockdown and evolved to archways as an enhanced symbol of a boundary to demarcate the limits of a community. Many archways were also erected to mark the entries of streets during the Song dynasty.65 The archways were often carved with the names of the walled communities along the lintel. Compared with the rigid enclosure formed by continuous walls (with gates) earlier, the demarcation of urban communities in the Song dynasty was less strict. Although some fragments of the peripheral walls for enclosing the wards were demolished to give access to the main streets, complete demolition was unlikely. The walls formed a part of the courtyard houses, particularly those which were located along the periphery of the enclosed communities.66 Although the walled enclosure was less salient in Song cities, the quarantine-like way of managing the city was maintained. The yejin was practiced regularly and there were clear statutory rules regulating urban life. For example, Song xingtong (宋刑統, The Code of the Song Dynasty) has a specific section on how to manage the lockdown.67 Songshi (宋史, History of the Song Dynasty) elaborates how an official, Zhang Guan, handled a case of breaching the yejin.68 Zhang was of very good character, but he was thought to be too lenient from time to time. He proposed that people who made salt without the government’s permission should be exempt from harsh punishment. On another occasion, Zhang caught a person who breached the yejin, but Zhang merely asked the person if anyone else saw him. Zhang’s behavior spread among the populace and was seen as the human side of an official. Lockdown practice for urban management can be traced in the succeeding dynasties and was maintained until the last dynasty, the Qing (1644–1912 CE). For example, in the Yuan (1279–1368 CE), Ming (1368–1644 CE), and Qing dynasties, there were rules for the timing of lockdown and how to deal with behavior that breached the rules.69 In some areas during the Yuan Dynasty, there was a ban on lighting after a certain time at night.70 The use of li and fang to demarcate communities and entitling neighborhood areas was maintained and still can be traced in the last dynasty, that is, the Qing dynasty. In the Ming dynasty, districts of Beijing were demarcated into fang communities. There were thirty-six fang communities and each of them had its own name. For example, the central part included Nanxun fang (南熏坊), Chengqing fang (澄清坊), Renshou feng (澄清坊), and Mingzhao fang (明照坊).71 In the Qing dynasty, according to the schematic map of Guangzhou city, the community names were maintained and their boundaries kept enclosed. At the entries, there were gates or archways. As shown on the map, there are communities like Yisheng li (一聖裡), Longteng li (龍騰裡), and Deren li (德仁裡) in the inner east, and Qiyun li (起雲裡), Jinshi li (進士裡), and Huilong li (回龍裡) in the west.72 The Emergence of Danwei The basic unit of enclosed community seems to have both deep roots and longevity in Chinese urban history. After the imperial era, it reappeared in the form of danwei (單位), which is usually translated as a work-unit compound or enclosed compound.73 As both a built form and a social structure, the danwei dominated urban China during the socialist period.74 This form of enclosed community was influenced by the Soviet and Paris ideas of urban planning at that time.75 The danwei is an “enclosed, multifunctional, and self-sufficient entity.”76 It is “the most basic collective unit in the Chinese political and social order.”77 This multifunctional community integrated functions like workplace, housing, dining, grocery, and entertainment into a cooperative enterprise or an institute within an enclosed area, forming a self-sufficient entity. Outsiders who were neither the employee nor the family members of the employee were excluded from the danwei. Usually, visitors needed permission and/or registered their information with the gate guard. The danwei can be described as a hybrid of the physical urban form of an enclosed neighborhood and a comprehensive social and administrative organization. Different from the unified definition of the scale in early systems of the enclosed neighborhood, the danwei was strongly related to each enterprise or institute. Its scale was also decided by the size of the enterprise or institute, for example, a school, a factory, or a hospital. However, the danwei was more comprehensive and complex than a workplace because it encompassed nearly every aspect of employees’ life and work. “Each factory, bureau, school, and institute was, of course a danwei and, thus, much more than merely a place of work, study or research; each constituted a distinct unit of social, economic, and political organization.”78 However, since the 1980s, corporations or institutes no longer took care of all aspects of their employees’ lives and the provision of services within the danwei enclosed area declined. Also, a job would no longer be a guarantee of a permanent position with redundancy and short-term contracts forming a new norm. As a result, the danwei became “empty shells” and faded out of Chinese urban history.79 Gated Communities in Modern China Along with the decline of danwei, another form of enclosed community emerged from the 1990s, usually translated as gated community. “This type of neighborhood, also called a ‘sealed residential quarter’ (xiaoqu), refers to a basic residential development unit of 2000-3000 households.”80 The urban population drastically increased in this period due to rapid urbanization. On the other hand, between the late 1980s and early 1990s, signs of potential turmoil led to a political conclusion: what China needed urgently was a safe and stable environment.81 As for accommodating a large number of people after danwei, the xiaoqu attracted attention and became one of the major housing forms ensuring safety and stability. In the early 1990s, various policies supporting the building of iron fences or walls were introduced to protect and manage urban communities. However, the gated community received controversial comments. Before the pandemic, the drawbacks of gated communities were widely recognized.82 In the same vein, the Chinese gated community was criticized. They appeared as enclaves in cities and were built to mimic a town in Californian, in northern European or in the Mediterranean region to create a happy image of life in the West.83 Gated communities with homologized amenities are criticized for encouraging a segregated society. Moreover, the streets outside the continuous walls of gated communities often lack vitality.84 Finally, in February 2016, the State Council of China issued guidelines urging that residential communities should no longer be built in the form of a gated community and existing gated communities needed to open up gradually by removing physical walls. However, this policy has not been implemented well, with gated communities prevailing in current real-estate developments. An online survey shows that 75.9 percent of 10,471 voters object to the action of opening gated communities, with the legitimacy of opening them suspected.85 It is noted that the pertinent legal system is not comprehensive enough to support this new policy, especially lacking regulations on how to compensate property owners already settled in gated communities and who have to demolish their communities’ enclosures.86 Moreover, problems such as issues with transportation have emerged and attracted wide academic attention.87 Although in general, the gated community has weaknesses, it seems to have been an integrated part of China’s urban fabric. In certain circumstances, gated communities have a clear boundary demarcating the inside and outside clearly and working effectively in preventing contagion. In the early twenty-first century, China was attacked by the outbreak of the 2002–2004 SARS and gated communities became the frontier for confronting this public health challenge. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the critical role played by enclosed neighborhoods with access control stands out. Reflections from different regions show that making use of access control and temperature checks at the entrance were important during the pandemic (Figure 8).88 Later, these lessons were also highlighted by representatives from different regions when they shared their experience from recent practice.89 Following these reflections, detailed rules were introduced to enhance the prevention of the virus. As a result, these new rules underscored the importance of access restrictions to each community and careful control of delivery services, temperature monitoring at the entrance and regular disinfection of facilities.90 Figure 8. The access control points for enclosed communities in Kunming (photos by the author, 2020). Residents indicated that they felt safer and more comfortable in taking a walk or bringing children out to play within the area of the gated community when access was controlled and when people’s temperature was monitored at the community entrance. On March 19, 2020, an official notification was enacted in Wuhan for the adjustment of the control measures. For access controlled residential communities which had kept a record of seven days’ zero cases, residents were allowed to go out freely inside the community, and shops inside the community could start running their business again.91 With this notification, residents in these communities clearly knew where the boundaries were and could enjoy a back-to-normal life within the community early. Later on, the same strategy was adopted by other regions.92 When the overall situation improved, the lockdown could be relaxed for the entire area of the community rather than being restricted to individual apartment buildings. An enclosed community is somewhat self-sufficient, as it typically contains facilities and amenities like gardens, playgrounds, gyms, restaurants, grocery stores, and barbers. Daily life is also sustained by online shopping, and virtually everything can be delivered to the gate of a community. Many enclosed communities, especially large ones, have stations for temporary storage that are set up by express companies. As the amount of delivery for large communities is enormous and the access to enclosed neighborhoods for couriers is controlled, a storage station saved the couriers’ time in waiting for receivers to collect parcels.93 Because of the pandemic, there appears to be an increasing interest in managing communities as an enclosed neighborhood.94 However, it requires an in-depth analysis to reconcile the community opening up while emphasizing the city as a homogenous body for order, especially during an emergency. Discussion and Conclusion From an urban historical perspective, there are three major reasons why strict lockdown and quarantine-like practice is suitable for China. The first is the entangled relation between urban administration and associated urban fabric. A traditional city is clearly marked by its walled enclosures, often with its center being the administrative compound, and divided into many walled wards, each with an administrative officer. Political power is defined by spatial domain, and in turn, spatial pattern reinforces the efficacy of governance. This tradition is well embedded in the current administrative system of a city in China. A contemporary city is divided into many districts. A district consists of many street-centered administrative offices, each in charge of many property management bodies which are the basic administrative units. They reside in either gated communities or large commercial complexes. In a sense, political power is bonded with the physical domain. The social and physical arrangements are interpenetrative and would mutually enhance each other. As presented above, the establishment of the physical pattern was always associated with the implementation of administrative regulation. On the other hand, field administration would be effectively achieved through the physical layout. These suggest a complementary relation between the social and spatial domains. This study suggests that in the early stages of neighborhood enclosure and yejin practice, the intersection of social and physical arrangements was mainly bolstered by cosmology, ritual, agricultural productivity, and spatial division. As the governance system became more sophisticated, both social and physical arrangements developed with increasing complexity, including administrative organization, taxation, infrastructure arrangements, and mutual support in the neighborhood. In more recent history, the enclosed neighborhood served as an urban form for carrying out a politically ideal model and then moved on to a more loosely organized form of urban living. When the government decreed that the modern gated communities be opened up, the administrative model of the enclosed neighborhood, consciously or unconsciously, served as a solution with a long tradition to quickly reach every basic unit of a city. The second factor is the long tradition of building cities with enclosed communities and the deep-rooted frame that it left for Chinese urban patterns and everyday urban life. During different eras, each upsurge of building enclosed communities may have had different triggers but building enclosed communities seem to be an enduring theme. In this regard, it is not surprising to see that the Chinese demonstrated a remarkable degree of tolerance in the current lockdown and quarantine-like practice, and it can be easily implemented in urban China due to its long urban history with enclosed communities and compartmentalized living. The third factor is a long-lasting custom of practicing lockdown in urban life and the support provided by the advanced IT infrastructure in China, in the form of complete online communications, services, and delivery systems. This transcends the physical obstacles of gated communities. On one hand, traditionally, festivals and entertainment were often taking place in an unconstrained manner at nighttime. Today, all daily life needs, including education, entertainment, shopping, and communication can be obtained through various online apps. On the other hand, traditionally, an urban governance system was sustained by a comprehensive practice of timing, enclosure, surveillance, and judgment to perform lockdown as an everyday ritual. Correspondingly, cities with their tangible pattern and built form indicate discipline and power. Today, there emerges another kind of surveillance, that is, digital governance. Not only most personal information but also each movement of a person is readily recorded by his/her smartphone which is constantly under the authority’s surveillance. This is indeed “a perfectly governed city” that even Michel Foucault could not have imagined at the time he wrote his grand theory of spatial governance. But the consequence is similar, as in order to achieve a perfectly disciplined society, individual freedom must be sacrificed. It is in such a special situation in China that historical, political, physical, social, administrative, and digital forces have worked effectively together, assuring lockdown practices without significantly impairing the quality of living. This paper is expected to invite discussions on what we can learn from the urban history of a particular region and culture, and how we can have a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages associated with certain settlement patterns, instead of having a biased view of one against another. Acknowledgments We would like to thank the review team for their constructive comments as well as the editorial support by John Blair. During the early stage of this paper, we benefit from discussions with Jie Chen and the VU Historians Group led by Dianne Hall and Robert Pascoe. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.