ABSTRACT
At the official ceremony on September 2, 1997 to celebrate the restoration of St. Sophia Cathedral, an ornate Byzantine-style cathedral completed by the Russians in 1932, Mayor Wang Guangdao underlined the cultural and economic benefits expected from the project: “The restoration of St. Sophia Cathedral inspired the people in Harbin, raised the level of our culture, let the whole of China and foreign friends know Harbin, and opened a way for faster economic development” (Haerbinshi jianzhu weiyuanhui, 1997: 40). The restoration of St. Sophia was the culmination of the Harbin municipal government’s attempt to turn the city’s colonial-era structures into tourist attractions by restoring and granting them landmark status. These restored structures are said to signify civilization (wenming) and culture (wenhua), words used repeatedly by local officials, whose policy revolved around the discourse of wenming (civilization). Billboards in the streets of Harbin proudly state: “We build architectural civilization—Harbin Municipal Government Urban Planning Bureau.” Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China, is, like many other northeastern cities in the rustbelt, struggling with a high unemployment rate and the resulting social unrest, and trying to reposition itself in the global economy. “Now, the property/capital (zichan) of St. Sophia Cathedral belongs to Harbin,” proudly declared the mayor in his speech (Haerbinshi jianzhu weiyuanhui, 1997: 40). As if to fully realize the dual meaning of the Chinese term zichan, which refers to property and capital, the wenming discourse allows the city government to turn its early twentieth-century architectural inheritance into capital.
