Throughout Nanjing's history, writers have claimed that its spectacular
landscape of mountains and rivers imbued the city with "royal qi,"
making it a place of great political significance. City of Virtues
examines the ways a series of visionaries, drawing on past glories of
the city, projected their ideologies onto Nanjing as they constructed
buildings, performed rituals, and reworked the literary heritage of the
city. More than an urban history of Nanjing from the late 18th century
until 1911 -- encompassing the Opium War, the Taiping occupation of the
city, the rebuilding of the city by Zeng Guofan, and attempts to
establish it as the capital of the Republic of China -- this study shows
how utopian visions of the cosmos shaped Nanjing's path through the
turbulent 19th century.