≡ Menu

Modern Cities in China

The term “modern city” is often enough to make a traveler cringe, but in China this term is meant to be a good thing.

Jiangyin
Support VBJ’s writing on this blog:

The term “modern city” is often enough to make a traveler cringe, as these words invariably conjure up images of endless strip malls, McDonalds, and department stores. But in China this term is often spoken with excitement by both foreign residents and locals. When someone here says “It’s a modern city,” it’s meant to be a good thing — and oftentimes it is.

I rode my bicycle the 80km from Taizhou to Jiangyin last Thursday. For the most part, I rode on brand new, massive highways that could easily accommodate many times the traffic they were currently handling. Many seemed overtly deficient of traffic: either passenger cars and trucking routes had yet to discover them or they were built in preparation for a future demand that has not yet manifested itself. It was a comfortable, relaxing bike ride to put it mildly: it’s a pleasant surprise when you ride a bicycle between cities anywhere in the world without needing to fight traffic. In the New China, this is more and more becoming the rule as the country adapts to the new demands of modernization.

I’d never heard of Jiangyin before a friend told me that he lived there. I had no preconceptions of the city, no mental images of what to expect. I thought it would be another bumfuck, quasi-rural, cinder block Chinese river town, but what I found was interesting:

Jiangyin was 100% modern — and beautiful.

Jiangyin is not a new city, it’s been around for 2,500 years, but it seems to have been completely rebuilt on the new Chines urban model over the past few decades. There is a feeling of space there: you can look up and see the sky, wave your arms, and move through the streets without competing without against cars or other humans for the right to exist. The skyscrapers rise high there, as they do throughout the world, but they do not close off the sky and leave you with a feeling of claustrophobia. Jiangyin is made up of incredible boulevards, wide streets, big tree studded sidewalks, restaurants serving foods form around the world, bars, international supermarkets, truly awesome parks, places for people to mingle, and perhaps most importantly, a lot of green mixed in with the grey. It is an example of the New China City.

I was only in Jiangyin for a couple of days but it was clear that it’s a pretty decent place to live. What is more interesting is that it’s in no way out of the ordinary, and seems to be a model for what China is creating all along its eastern flank.

The Chinese have shown that they know how to revitalize cities. They seem to have learned from the mistakes of the gung-ho Communist years, when they covered the country in rolling seas of faceless grey concrete buildings, that humans need more than the basic necessities to survive happily. Now that endless grey sea is often mixed with green: parks, trees, plants, and bushes are distributed through the new Chinese cityscape. There are places to sit down and places to walk, the streets are becoming places to promenade and a park is rarely more than a few blocks away.

Jiangyin

Jiangyin, Jiangsu province, China

China is reinventing the city. They are razing the old to the ground, clearing it away, and building new places for their people to live virtually from scratch. They are adapting to the country’s new car culture, weaving nature and city, and are setting a new standard for urban life. It’s as if they’ve collected a massive amount data on what makes a city livable, threw it into a computer, mixed it all together into a virtual model, and then went out and built the output.

Though the results often seem somewhat automated. These New China Cities are excellent places to live but they lack a lot in regards to personality and character. In point, these modern cities all tend to look the same: if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. In fact, if you walk through a modern city in China it tends to repeat itself over and over again. The same stores, the same restaurants, the same banks, the same parks, the same wide avenues over and over again into the distance. These new cities also tend to lack full-fledged epicenters. What is refereed to as the center of one of these cities can be moved in accordance with where the newest and trendiest shopping mall is built. But all this does not seem to be taken as a downside in this culture that errs towards conformity: if something works well once, why not repeat it over and over again to get the same result?

In China, they are creating fantasy cities, and the results are setting a new global standard.

SUPPORT

The only way I can continue my travels and publishing this blog is by generous contributions from readers. If you can, please subscribe for just $5 per month:

NEWSLETTER

If you like what you just read, please sign up for our newsletter!
* indicates required
Filed under: Changing China, China, Globalization, Urbanization

About the Author:

I am the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. I’ve been traveling the world since 1999, through 91 countries. I am the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China and have written for The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. has written 3723 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.

Support VBJ’s writing on this blog:

VBJ is currently in: New York City

3 comments… add one

Leave a Comment

  • Félix September 19, 2012, 8:26 am

    YAY! Jiangyin!!!!!!!!!

    You’re welcome to come back anytime homie.

    Link Reply
  • Félix September 19, 2012, 8:43 am

    YAY! Jiangyin!!!!!!!!!

    You’re welcome to come back anytime homie. I agree with your assessment of modern Chinese cities; some might call them bland and devoid of character, as all buildings and parks look the same, from Kunming to Harbin, Urumqi to Fuzhou, but the attention paid to functionality and space make them truly pleasant places to live in. There might be not as much excitement and surprise as in living with a more organic, unorganized city, but the overall quality of life is much nicer, and that matters more to me than excitement (not that I don’t like excitement, but I can usually create it by myself, no need for a city to take me by the hand!).

    I had the same exact feeling in Changzhou last week-end, thinking that it is pretty much the definition of a “perfect city”… excellent roads (extensive, wide, bicycle-friendly), infrastructure, no traffic jams despite the fact that 5 million people call its urban area home, public transportation (and exclusive lanes), no crime…. it was seriously striking, even after living in modern Chinese cities for a while. One might wonder where the future lies…

    Link Reply
    • Wade Shepard September 19, 2012, 9:19 am

      Excellent man. Looking forward to getting back. I was only in JY a short time, but it seemed like a real nice place to live. Taizhou’s alright too, but they seem to have kept the old city street grid, which leads to many problems when you fill them with cars and buses. I’m finding that I’m liking these New China Cites more and more, though you are definitely right about them looking exactly the same.

      Link Reply