In the last decades, the scholarship on issues of national and cultural identity of China has been constantly on the rise. This edited volume aims at addressing these issues by applying Pierre Nora’s approach of places of memory (lieux de mémoire) to the Chinese context.

The volume assembles a number of articles that focus on the most significant places of memory in modern and contemporary China, ranging from Qin Shihuang’s Terracotta Warriors to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The genesis and nature of these places are discussed in detail by combining approaches of both cultural and historical sciences. In addition, issues of cultural memory and politics are addressed in order to question the ideological construction of these places.

Marc Andre Matten (Ph.D. 2007, University of Bonn, Germany) is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Chinese History at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He has published extensively on the issues of Chinese nationalism and national identity, including The Borders of Being Chinese – On the Creation of National Identity in 20th century China (German, Harrassowitz, 2009).