Heritagisation by imagery: the significance of ancient Chinese architecture in <i>Peking the Beautiful</i> , 1927

This article examines the photographic volume "Peking the Beautiful" (1927) by Herbert Clarence White as a formative intervention in the global heritagisation of Chinese architecture. Produced amid rising cross-cultural interest and Republican China’s emerging preservationist ethos, the work combines photography and text to construct a proto-heritage discourse across six dimensions: historical, artistic, scientific, social, cultural, and environmental. By employing qualitative analysis of images and texts, alongside a typological approach for quantitative analysis, this article situates Peking the Beautiful as an image-text assemblage that rearticulated architectural significance through transnational visual regimes. It argues that White, though not an architectural expert but a missionary and good photographer, functioned as a cultural mediator, advancing early twentieth-century frameworks of architectural significance and authenticity through visual documentation, textual annotation, and wide networks. In doing so, Peking the Beautiful contributed to the reframing of Chinese architecture within a global heritage consciousness.