Dialogue Between Machines and Water: A Brief Study of Relationship BetweenShip Machinery Industrial and Wuchow City's Modernization

<p>Wuchow is a small city of east Kwangsi Province, located at the confluence of the West River and the Kwei-kiang River. It is an important traditional riverine trade node in South China. In 1897, after the signing of the Special Article of the Burmese Frontier Convention between China and the United Kingdom, Wuchow became an inland treaty port. Over the next 30 years, it gradually developed an industrial system and played an important role in national capitalist self-strengthening movement, earning it the reputation as the "birthplace of Kwangsi's industry." After the founding of the PRC, Wuchow further expanded its production capacity on the basis of its modern industry. During the Great Leap Forward and the Third Front Construction, it gradually formed a heavy industry system represented by shipbuilding, and a series of unique urban landscapes emerged around this system. However, due to the continued sluggishness of the urban economy and the rampant development of commercial real estate, Wuchow's industrial landscape has rapidly shrunk over the past two decades. A large number of industrial heritage sites have been neglected, gradually deteriorating and even disappearing, resulting in a huge gap in the city's memory. </p><p></p><p>This study takes international theories and charters on industrial heritage as its core reference, with the modernization process of South China (1897–1978) as its historical context. And it selects the urban area of Wuchow as its research site, couple industrial archaeology method, chronicle analysis and ,geographic information integration aims to present a picture of the water and industrialization process of small cities in South China, and to review their value from a conservation perspective, aiming to reveal how the formation of Wuchow's shipbuilding and machinery industrial cluster responded to historical trends, flood cycles, and socio-economic imperatives, this study seeks to reconstruct the materialized urban landscape of the riverside industrial corridor as a defining feature of the city's modernization.</p>