The Chinese Eastern Railway as Infrastructural Heritage: Harbin, Urban Formation, and the Limits of Railway Heritage Evaluation
摘要中东铁路代表了在现有世界遗产评价框架中尚未得到充分识别且具有理论独特性的遗产类型，即“基础设施遗产”。这类遗产的价值主要体现于基础设施在建设与运营过程中推动多族群城市的形成，并由此孕育新的文化形态和制度体系，其意义超越了工程技术与美学品质本身。本文通过分析中东铁路的历史发展及其对哈尔滨独特城市特征的塑造作用，依据 UNESCO 标准（ⅱ）、（ⅳ）和（ⅵ）论证其突出普遍价值（OutstandingUniversal Value , OUV），提出一系列申遗策略，以回应跨境治理、物质遗存完整性不足，以及具有争议的殖民遗产阐释等挑战。本文进一步指出，中东铁路申遗需要推动全球铁路遗产评价理念的更新，将基础设施在文化景观建构和多元城市社会形成中的作用纳入价值评价。在此基础上，本文提出“基础设施遗产”框架，并将其视为中东铁路申遗的一项理论贡献。该框架也可为其他具有类似形成机制的铁路及大型基础设施遗产提供分析工具。
Abstract：This study argues that the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) represents a theoretically distinct heritage type insufficiently recognized within existing World Heritage evaluation frameworks: infrastructural heritage, in which the primary heritage significance resides not in technical achievements or aesthetic qualities but in the cosmopolitan urban societies, cultural formations, and social institutions that the infrastructure generated through its construction and operation. Through close analysis of the CER’ s historical development and its role in generating Harbin’ s distinctive urban character, the study identifies Outstanding Universal Value under UNESCO Criteria (ii), (iv), and (vi), and proposes a serial nomination strategy addressing the challenges of cross-border governance, partial physical integrity, and the interpretation of a colonial heritage with morally contested dimensions. The study further argues that a successful CER nomination would require a conceptual revision of how railway heritage is evaluated globally—shifting from a paradigm centered on engineering innovation to one capable of recognizing infrastructure as a primary agent of cultural-landscape formation and of cosmopolitan social production—and that enacting such a revision is itself part of the nomination’ s contribution: an ‘infrastructural heritage’ framework. This framework has applications well beyond the CER itself.
