The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas 019976560X, 9780199765607

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[UNTITLED]   The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature Online Publication Date: Oct 2013

(p. iv)

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[UNTITLED] Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–976560–7 1. Motion pictures—China. 2. Motion pictures—Taiwan. 3. Motion pictures—Hong Kong. I. Rojas, Carlos, 1970- II. Chow, Eileen Cheng-yin. PN1993.5.C4O94 2013 791.430951—dc 232012038351 ISBN 978–0–19–976560–7 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Contributors

Contributors   The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature Online Publication Date: Oct 2013

(p. xi)

Contributors

Michael Berry is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the Univer­ sity of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Columbia University Press, 2005), A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2008), Jia Zhangke’s “The Hometown Trilogy” (British Film Institute and Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and Memories of Shadows and Light: In Dialogue with the Cine­ matic World of Hou Hsiao-hsien (INK, 2012). He is also the translator of several nov­ els, including The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (with Susan Chan Egan) (Columbia Uni­ versity Press, 2008), To Live (Anchor, 2004), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (Columbia University Press, 2002, Anchor, 2004, Faber and Faber, 2004), and Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up (Columbia University Press, 2000).

Yomi Braester is Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. His publications include Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford Universi­ ty Press, 2003), Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract (Duke University Press, 2010), and Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia (coedited with James Tweedie; Hong Kong University Press, 2010).

Pheng Cheah is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1999. He has published extensively on the theory and practice of cosmopolitanism. He is the author of Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (Columbia University Press, 2003) and Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights

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Contributors (Harvard University Press, 2006). He has coedited Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feel­ ing Beyond the Nation (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson (Routledge, 2003), and Derrida and the Time of the Political (Duke University Press, 2009). He is completing a book on theories of the world and world literature in an age of financial globalization, and a related book on globalization and the three Chinas as seen from the perspectives of the indepen­ dent cinema of Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming-Liang, and Fruit Chan.

Jianhua Chen received PhD degrees in Chinese Literature from Fudan University and Harvard University and is currently Professor at the Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His recent publications include the articles “World Revolution Knocking at the Heavenly Gate: Kang Youwei and His Use of Geming in 1898” and “An Archaeology of Repressed Popularity: Zhou Shoujuan, Mao Dun, (p. xii) and Their 1920s Literary Polemics,” and the books in Chinese: Revo­ lution and Form: Mao Dun’s Early Fiction and the Formation of Literary Modernity and From Revolution to the Republic: Literary, Cinematic, and Cultural Transforma­ tions in Late Qing and the Republican Period. He has also published poetry and es­ says.

Rey Chow is Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature at Duke University and the au­ thor, most recently, of Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture (Duke University Press, 2012). The Rey Chow Reader, ed. Paul Bowman, was published by Columbia University Press in 2010. Chow’s scholarly writings have appeared in ten languages.

Eileen Cheng-yin Chow is Visiting Associate Professor of Chinese and Japanese Cul­ tural Studies at Duke University. She is also Assistant Director of the Cheng Shewo Institute for Chinese Journalism in Taipei, Taiwan. Her research and teaching include all manner of serialized narratives, press practices and publics, popular culture (ani­ me, fandoms, and media technologies), as well as the origins, formations, and articu­ lations of Chinatowns around the world—which is also the subject of her current book project, Chinatown States of Mind. With Carlos Rojas, she is the co-translator of Yu Hua’s two-volume novel Brothers (Pantheon, 2009) and the co-editor of Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon (Routledge, 2009). In her non-academic days she has worked as a “foreign expert,” book designer, fudge chef, interpreter, party photographer, film subtitler, and lowly PA on set for Warner Broth­ ers and Beijing Film Studios.

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Contributors

Darrell William Davis is Honorary Associate Professor in Visual Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is the author of Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film (1996), coauthor of Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island (2005) and East Asian Screen Industries (2008), and coeditor of Cine­ ma: Taiwan: Politics, Popularity and State of the Arts (2007).

Michael Eng is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University, where he teaches courses in aesthetics and philosophy and film. He has published on Jean-Luc Godard’s TVideo work in relationship to Deleuze’s Cinema and on the film/video in­ stallation work of the artists Renée Green, Maryam Jafri, and Knut Åsdam. He has an essay on the racial organization of knowledge in The Matrix appearing in the volume Race, Philosophy, and Film (Routledge 2013), and he is currently preparing a manu­ script titled “The Sense of the Image: The Metaphysical Imaginary in Cinema, Archi­ tecture, and Philosophy.”

Poshek Fu is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Zijiang Professor of Humanities at the East China Normal University. His English books include Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: Politics of Chinese Cinemas (2003) and Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual Choices in Occupied Shang­ hai, 1937–1945 (1993), both of which have been translated into Chinese.

Kristine Harris is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at the State Uni­ versity of New York at New Paltz and has also served twice as Visiting Associate Pro­ fessor in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Her recent writing on Chinese (p. xiii) film and cultural history appears in Opera Quarterly (Spring–Sum­ mer 2010), edited by Judith Zeitlin and Paola Iovene; The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s, edited by Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco (University of Michigan Press, 2011); History in Images: Pictures and Public Space in Modern China, edited by Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh (University of California Berkeley Institute for East Asian Studies, 2012); and Gender and Chinese Cinema: New Interventions, edited by Mary Ann Doane and Lingzhen Wang (Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2013).

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Contributors Tsung-yi Michelle Huang is Associate Professor of Geography at National Taiwan University. She is the author of Walking between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai (2004) and Articulating New Cultural Identities: Self-Writing of East Asian Global City-Regions (in Chinese) (2008).

Jie Li is a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in East Asian Humanities at the Princeton Soci­ ety of Fellows in Liberal Arts and begins an appointment as Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard in Fall 2013. Her articles on film have appeared or are forthcoming in the journals Public Culture, Modern Chinese Lit­ erature and Culture, China Perspectives, Jump Cut, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and positions: east asia cultures critique. Her current book projects are Utopian Ruins: A Memory Museum of the Maoist Era and Cinematic Manchuria: A Transnational Histo­ ry. She has also made documentary films in China and Cameroon.

Song Hwee Lim is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contem­ porary Chinese Cinemas (2006) and coeditor of Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film (2006) and The Chinese Cinema Book (2011). The found­ ing editor of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, his new book, Tsai Ming-liang and a Cin­ ema of Slowness, will be published in 2014 by the University of Hawai‘i Press.

Kwai-Cheung Lo is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing and Director of Creative and Professional Writing Program at Hong Kong Baptist Uni­ versity and is the author of Excess and Masculinity in Asian Cultural Productions (SUNY, 2010) and Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong (University of Illinois Press, 2005). Currently he is working on a book manuscript on ethnic minority cinema in China.

Jason McGrath is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Lit­ eratures at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he also serves on the graduate faculty of Moving Image Studies. He is the author of Postsocialist Moderni­ ty: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age, and his essays on Chinese film have appeared in journals such as Modern Chinese Literature and Cul­ ture and Opera Quarterly as well as anthologies including Chinese Films in Focus, The Urban Generation, The Chinese Cinema Book, and China’s Literary and Cultural

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Contributors Scenes at the Turn of the 21st Century. His current projects include an anthology of translated Chinese writings on (p. xiv) film and a book manuscript entitled “Inscribing the Real: Realism and Convention in Chinese Film from the Silent Era to the Digital Age.”

Sean Metzger is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Cali­ fornia, Los Angeles School of Theater, Film, and Television. He has coedited three vol­ umes: with Gina Masequesmay, Embodying Asian/American Sexualities (Lexington Books, 2009); with Olivia Khoo, Time Signatures: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures (Intellect, 2009); and, with Michaeline Crichlow, a special is­ sue on “Race, Space, Place: the Making and Unmaking of Freedoms in the Atlantic World” (Cultural Dynamics, November 2009). He is completing a book currently called “Chinese Looks: The Sino/American Interface and the Skein of Race,” which in­ vestigates Chineseness, fashion, film, gender, migration, and performance through four objects—the queue, the qipao, the Mao suit, and the tuxedo—during the long twentieth century.

Laikwan Pang teaches cultural studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her books include Creativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellec­ tual Property Rights Offenses (Duke University Press, 2012), The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), and Cultural Control and Globalization in Asia: Copyright, Piracy, and Cinema (Routledge, 2006). She is currently working on a new research related to the tensions and mutual conditioning between politics and aesthetics of China’s Cultural Revolution.

Ying Qian is a postdoctoral fellow at the Australian Center for China in the World, Australian National University. She has a PhD from the Department of East Asian Lan­ guages and Civilizations, Harvard University, specializing in Chinese cultural history and film studies. She has published on Chinese independent documentary cinema and is working on a book manuscript on newsreel and documentary cinema of China’s Mao era.

Andy Rodekohr is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Wake Forest University. He completed his doctoral dissertation at

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Contributors Harvard University on the figure of the crowd in modern Chinese literature and visual culture in 2012.

Carlos Rojas is Associate Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University, and his research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, nationalism, and diaspora studies. He is the author of The Great Wall: A Cultural History (Harvard University Press, 2010) and The Naked Gaze: Reflections on Chinese Modernity (Harvard University Asia Center, 2008). He is the coeditor, with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, of Rethinking Chi­ nese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon (Routledge, 2009) and, with David Der-wei Wang, of Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History (Duke University Press, 2007). He is also the translator of Yan Lianke’s novel Lenin’s Kisses (Grove, 2012) and the cotranslator, again with Eileen Chow, of Yu Hua’s two-volume novel Brothers (Pantheon, 2009).

(p. xv)

Louisa Schein teaches anthropology and women’s and gender studies at Rut­

gers University, New Brunswick. She is author of Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 2000), coeditor with Tim Oakes of Translocal China: Linkages, Identities and the Reimagining of Space (Routledge, 2006) and coeditor with Purnima Mankekar of Media, Erotics and Transnational Asia (Duke University Press, 2013). Her articles have appeared in Jour­ nal of Asian Studies, positions, Cultural Anthropology, Social Text, Modern China, and American Quarterly and she is currently completing a book on Hmong transnational media, “Rewind to Home: Hmong Media and Gendered Diaspora.” With Peter O’Neill, she directed the documentary Better Places: Hmong of Providence a Generation Later (2012) and is working with filmmaker Va-Megn Thoj on a documentary on Hmong worlds of health and healing. She has been involved most recently in antiracist ac­ tivism and publishing around the Eastwood film Gran Torino in collaboration with lead actor Bee Vang.

Stephen Teo is Associate Professor in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Teo is a leading schol­ ar of Hong Kong cinema and is now focusing on Chinese and other Asian cinemas in his research. He is the author of Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (British Film Institute, 1997), Wong Kar-wai (BFI, 2005), King Hu’s “A Touch of Zen” (Hong Kong University Press, 2007), Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Ac­ tion Film (Hong Kong University Press, 2007), and Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The

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Contributors Wuxia Tradition (Edinburgh University Press, 2009). His new book is The Asian Cine­ ma Experience: Styles, Spaces, Theory, published by Routledge.

James Tweedie is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Washington. His essays have appeared in Cinema Journal, Cultur­ al Critique, Public Culture, Screen, SubStance, and other journals, edited volumes, and anthologies, and he coedited Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Net­ works in East Asia (with Yomi Braester; Hong Kong University Press, 2010). His book on global new wave cinemas is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Paola Voci is Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago. Her research focuses on Chinese cinemas and, in particular, documentary videomaking. Her work appears in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Screening the Past, Senses of Cinema, and Bianco e Nero and in several edited collections of essays. She is the author of China on Video (Routledge, 2010), a book that analyzes movies made and viewed on smaller screens (i.e., the DV camera, the computer monitor—and, within it, the Internet win­ dow—and the cell phone display).

Ban Wang is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies at Stanford University and the Yangtze River Professor at East China Normal University. He is currently chairperson of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. His major publica­ tions include The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth Cen­ tury China (Stanford University Press, 1997), Illuminations from the Past (Stanford University Press, 2004), and (p. xvi) History and Memory (in Chinese, Oxford Universi­ ty Press, 2004). He coedited Trauma and Cinema (Hong Kong University Press, 2004), The Image of China in the American Classroom (Nanjing University Press, 2005), Chi­ na and New Left Visions (Lexington 2012), and Debating Socialist Legacy in China (forthcoming, Palgrave). He edited Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution (Brill, 2010). He was a research fellow with the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2000 and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 2007.

David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor in Chinese Literature, Har­ vard University. His specialties are modern and contemporary Chinese Literature, late Qing fiction, and comparative literary theory. Wang’s English books include Fic­

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Contributors tional Realism in 20th Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen (1992), Finde-siè cle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911 (1997), and The Monster That Is History: Violence, History, and Fictional Writing in 20th Cen­ tury China (2004).

Eugene Wang is Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard Univer­ sity. He received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 and the Academic Achievement Award from Japan in recognition of his book Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (2005). He is the art history associate editor of the Ency­ clopedia of Buddhism. His extensive publications, ranging from ancient to contempo­ rary Chinese art and visual culture, have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Art History, Critical Inquiry, and elsewhere.

Yiman Wang is Assistant Professor of Film and Digital Media at University of Califor­ nia, Santa Cruz. Her book on cross-Pacific film remakes, Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood, is forthcoming in March 2013. She has published in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film Quarterly, Cam­ era Obscura, Journal of Film and Video, Literature/Film Quarterly, positions: east asia cultures critique, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Chinese Films in Focus (Chris Berry, ed., 2003, 2008), Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s (Patrice Petro, ed., 2010), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (Chris Berry, Lü Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel, eds., 2010), Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Ur­ ban Networks in East Asia (Yomi Braester and James Tweedie, eds., 2010), and En­ gendering Cinema: Chinese Women Filmmakers Inside and Outside China (Lingzhen Wang, ed., 2011).

Zhiwei Xiao is Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Mar­ cos, with research interest in Chinese film and popular culture; major publications in­ clude Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (coauthored with Yingjin Zhang, Routledge, 1999) and journal articles and book chapters on Chinese film.

Gary Xu is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He also holds a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the Institute of Arts and Humanities of Shanghai Jiaotong University. A native of Nanjing, he earned a doctorate from Columbia University

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Contributors (2002) and has wide-ranging interests in Chinese art, film, literature, and psycho­ analysis. (p. xvii) His monographs include Looking Awry: The Unconscious in Contem­ porary Chinese Art (2012), The Cross-Cultural Žižek Reader (2011), Sinascape: Con­ temporary Chinese Cinema (2007), and Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Culture (2007). He has also published numerous articles on art, film, and literature, and has curated several high-profile art exhibitions in China and Singapore.

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh is Professor and Head of the Cinema-TV Program and Director of the Centre for Media and Communication Research at Hong Kong Baptist Universi­ ty. Her major publications include Rethinking the Chinese Film Industry: New Meth­ ods, New Histories (in Chinese, Beijing University Press, 2011), East Asian Screen In­ dustries (with Darrell Davis, British Film Institute, 2008), Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island (with Darrell Davis, Columbia University Press, 2005), Chinese-Lan­ guage Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (with Sheldon Lu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005, Choice’s 2005 outstanding academic title), and Phantom of the Music: Song Narration and Chinese-Language Cinema (in Chinese, Yuan-liou, 2000). Her cur­ rent research projects include China’s film marketization, Chinese wenyi pictures, and the early film industry.

Audrey Yue is Senior Lecturer in Screen and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her recent publications include Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile (2010) and Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures (2012). She is completing an Australian Research Council–funded project on transnational large screens, and early publications from this project appear in Global Media Convergence and Cultural Transformation: Emerging Social Patterns and Characteristics (2011) and Urban Screens Reader (2009).

Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego and Visiting Chair Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University. His English books include The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (1996), En­ cyclopedia of Chinese Film (1998), China in a Polycentric World (1998), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai (1999), Screening China (2002), Chinese National Cinema (2004), From Underground to Independent (2006), Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (2010), Chinese Film Stars (2010), and A Companion to Chinese Cinema (Blackwell, 2012).

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Contributors Ying Zhu is Professor and Chair of Department of Media Culture at the City Universi­ ty of New York, College of Staten Island. The recipient of fellowships from the Nation­ al Endowment for the Humanities and from the American Council of Learned Soci­ eties, she is the author or editor of eight books, including Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television, and coproducer of current affairs documentary films, Google vs China and China: From Cartier to Confucius.

(p. xviii)

(p. xix)

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation

Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapo­ lation   Carlos Rojas The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0001

Abstract and Keywords The magic of cinema stems from the imagined space that opens up between images, rather than from any of the individual constituent images. This is evident in the art of ex­ trapolation, wherein the appearance of movement is produced from an array of still im­ ages. To create a semblance of movement, a constellation of static elements ranging from discrete images to individual pixels are used. This book explores the art of extrapolation in Chinese cinema and uses the notion of family resemblances to validate popular as­ sumptions about what is considered to be a Chinese film. To this end, it examines a wide range of canonical films, focusing on their history, form, and structure: Ren Qingtai’s (1905), Zhang Shichuan’s (1931), Fei Mu’s (1948), and Ang Lee’s (2000). Keywords: extrapolation, Chinese cinema, films, Ren Qingtai, Dingjun Mountain, Zhang Shichuan, The Songstress Red Peony, Fei Mu, Eternal Regret, Ang Lee

Cinema is the art of extrapolation—the production of the appearance of movement from an array of still images. While this process is most obvious with the technology of film it­ self, in which this illusory movement is the product of a series of transparencies present­ ed at a rate such that the brain perceives them to be in continuous motion, even nonfilmic technologies of the moving image—ranging from precinematic devices such as the zoetrope, phenakistoscope, and parxinoscope, to what we might call postcinematic media such as video and DV—similarly use a constellation of static elements ranging from dis­ crete images to individual pixels in order to create a semblance of movement. The magic of cinema, therefore, lies not in any of its individual constituent images, but rather in the imagined space that opens up between them. A comparable process of conceptual extrapolation, meanwhile, undergirds our under­ standing of the field of cinema itself. Any body of cinematic production—from a single director’s oeuvre to an entire genre—comprises a set of works, people, and institutions that are perceived as being linked to one another in a salient manner. Like the illusory movement that stitches together a succession of individual film frames into a moving pic­ ture, however, the networks of connections viewed as holding a field together are not in­ Page 1 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation trinsic to the field itself, but rather are essentially projected onto it by outside observers. The field of Chinese cinema, accordingly, is grounded not on the individual works them­ selves, but rather on the extrapolated networks within which those works are positioned. To be clear, though, the point is not that there are no connections linking the works with­ in a putative field to one another, but rather precisely the opposite—there are simply too many vectors along which we might perceive these relationships. In classifying works into meaningful taxonomies, we could, for instance, use criteria such as the works’ subject, language, length, audience, ideology, historical period, funding sources, political orienta­ tion, or medium of production. These various criteria overlap with and diverge (p. 2) from another in complicated ways and rarely, if ever, map straightforwardly onto the intuitive understanding that we may have of a cultural field. Some of the theoretical stakes inherent in this question of the constitution of a conceptu­ al or cultural field are illustrated in a famous thought experiment proposed by the late philosopher W. V. O. Quine—in which he suggests that we imagine an extraterrestrial an­ thropologist observing an earthling saying the word gavagai while pointing at a rabbit loping across a field. While a terrestrial anthropologist would probably assume that gava­ gai simply means “rabbit,” Quine’s extraterrestrial might very have a very different con­ ceptual mapping of the world, which might lead it to assume that the new term could mean something as seemingly esoteric as “an isolated temporal slice of rabbit” or “undif­ ferentiated rabbit parts.” Quine concludes that the meaning of a term is not deducible from any isolated utterance, but rather is necessarily grounded in a complicated set of as­ sumptions about the epistemological field within which the utterance is made. The mean­ ing of a term, in other words, is determined by its ontological and epistemological ground, together with the matrix of linkages between the term and its lexical environ­ ment. A similar argument could be made about Chinese cinema. If Quine’s hypothetical ex­ traterrestrial were to see an earthling point at a film and call it Chinese cinema, the alien’s inferences about what the term means would necessarily hinge on its intuitions about a variety of underlying issues. To begin with, there is the question of what precisely a cinematic work is in the first place. Does a work retain its identity across all possible media (e.g., if viewed as a film, a video, a laser disc, and so forth)? What if it has been re­ leased in different versions (e.g., for different markets)? Under what circumstances are subtitles, dubbed voices, and other paratextual elements considered to be part of the work, as opposed to mere parasitic supplements? Would the work retain its identity if the original script were to be reperformed and rerecorded by others? How about if the work were to be creatively reinterpreted? Would a film retain its identity if the original print were to be carefully restored? How about if it were to be intentionally altered or defaced? These questions about the status of the film as a discrete work are ones about which there is bound to be considerable disagreement even among people who think they un­ derstand what the term cinema means, much less a hypothetical alien not familiar with these discursive conventions.

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation Some of these sorts of questions are explored in Olivier Assayas’s 1996 film Irma Vep, in which a fictional French film director recruits the Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung 張曼 玉 (playing herself) to remake the classic French silent film serial Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, dir., 1915–1916). The fictional project quickly spirals out of control, however, and Assayas’s film concludes with his fictional director screening not the remake of Les Vampires that he had originally proposed to produce, but rather a deliberately defaced print of the original silent film. Irma Vep, therefore, presents three distinct repetitions of portions of Feuillade’s film: it rescreens select scenes from the French classic, it intro­ duces contemporary reenactments of the earlier work, and it concludes with a screening of a vandalized print of the original film. Many viewers would probably regard the “straight” rescreenings as an unproblematic extension of the historical film, (p. 3) and the contemporary restagings as fundamentally new creations. The final screening of the de­ faced print appears to be positioned on the knife-edge between these extremes—resem­ bling both an act of extreme fidelity to the original work and a violent rupture from the historical continuity associated with that work. Part of the reason why the fictional director’s attempted remake of Les Vampires is chal­ lenged within Assayas’s film is because his crew object, on apparently nationalistic grounds, to the director’s determination to cast the ethnically Chinese Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung—whom he adores for her work in a series of popular Hong Kong action films—in the lead role of the French classic. While this implicit reflection on the protec­ tionist, perhaps even xenophobic, tendencies of the French film industry may be read as a critical commentary on France’s role in having spearheaded the European Union’s 1989 “Television without Frontiers” directive—which stipulated that a majority of a European nation’s television entertainment broadcast time should be reserved for works of Euro­ pean origin—Assayas’s film could also be seen as a reflection on similar anxieties about the status of Hong Kong cinema on the eve of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese control in 1997. Maggie Cheung’s prominent position in the French work serves as a reminder that France’s concerns about the autonomy and identity of French cinema in the shadow of global Hollywood mirrors contemporary Hong Kong’s concerns about the future of Hong Kong cinema (and culture) in the shadow of Mainland China. As a multilingual and multiethnic territory that had long been functionally autonomous from Mainland China, meanwhile, Hong Kong is associated with a distinctive cinematic tradition that defies easy categorization as to whether it is “Chinese” or not—and by ex­ tension a focus on Hong Kong also implicitly dramatizes some of the taxonomical tensions inherent in the concept of Chinese cinema itself. In particular, the adjective Chinese in the (English-language) phrase Chinese cinema is semantically ambiguous and may be under­ stood in either linguistic, ethnic, cultural, political, or territorial terms. Although these various understandings frequently overlap with one another, there are also many situa­ tions in which they diverge. A work may, for instance, originate from China but be in a language other than Chinese, just as it may be from outside China yet still feature Chi­ nese dialogue. It may feature ethnically Chinese actors in a diasporic setting, or it may present ethnic minorities or foreigners in a Chinese setting. It may receive funding from China (or Hong Kong or Taiwan) but be set in the West, just as it may be set in China but Page 3 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation receive all of its financing from abroad. While it is certainly possible to posit certain crite­ ria for determining whether a work is “Chinese” (such as whether a majority of its dia­ logue is in a dialect of Chinese), the result is unlikely to precisely match our intuitions about the term and its corresponding cultural field. In this volume, accordingly, we do not attempt to specify any necessary and sufficient cri­ terion (or criteria) for determining what constitutes Chinese cinema, and instead treat the field as shaped by a fluid constellation of partially overlapping attributes—or what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls “family resemblances.” We use this notion of family resem­ blances to reaffirm popular intuitions regarding what is considered to be a Chinese film, while at the same time interrogating our assumptions about the meaning of the concept (p. 4) itself. Part of the appeal of Wittgenstein’s notion is that it suggests that a category like Chinese cinema may be seen not as a static and singular entity, but rather as a dy­ namic field that is continually transforming and reconstituting itself. Rather than delimit­ ing our field of inquiry to a narrow focus on either cinematic works from Mainland China, works that feature primarily Chinese-language dialogue, works by ethnically Chinese di­ rectors, or on works with substantial funding from China or Greater China, we instead treat Chinese cinema as a category with fuzzy boundaries that are continually evolving and being renegotiated. To this end, in the following chapters we examine a wide range of works, including many that are frequently regarded as paradigmatic examples of the field—such as Ren Qingtai’s 任慶泰 Dingjun Mountain (定軍山, 1905), regarded as the first Chinese film; Zhang Shichuan’s 張石川 The Songstress Red Peony (歌女紅牡丹, 1931), the first Chinese sound film; Fei Mu’s 費穆 Eternal Regret (生死恨, 1948), Chinese cinema’s first color film; and Ang Lee’s 李安 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍, 2000), the highest-grossing for­ eign-language film in U.S. box-office history. Even as these canonical films provide models against which other works may be compared, however, many of them are also positioned at crucial junctures in the development of Chinese cinema—marking, for instance, the de­ velopment of color cinema, the introduction of sound, and even the birth of Chinese cine­ ma itself. These iconic works, therefore, serve as an important reminder of the field’s in­ herent dynamism and continual capacity for reinvention. We also, however, discuss many works that occupy a more marginal position within the field as currently conceived, including films such as the 1943 Manchurian musical My Nightingale, which featured a mostly Russian cast and was filmed mostly in Russian; Yengtha Her’s 2005 film Overseas Romances, which was produced collaboratively by a Hmong-American man and a Miao woman from China and which circulated primarily in the Chinese diaspora; Harald Swat’s 2010 version of The Karate Kid, which was filmed in China but featured an international cast and received mostly foreign funding; together with the Shanghai-based blogger and amateur filmmaker Btr’s digital short Night is the Tender, which was disseminated over the Internet and was designed to be viewed on computers, cell phones, and other handheld devices. These latter sorts of works help de­

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation familiarize conventional assumptions about the field of Chinese cinema, while pointing to alternate directions that the field might have taken, or might yet take. Our attempts to interrogate the category of Chinese cinema are also reflected in the structure of this study itself. The volume is divided into three parts, each of which adopts a very different approach to the field. Part I looks at historical periodizations, Part II examines categories that share formal characteristics, and Part III looks at various struc­ tural elements involved in the production, distribution, and reception of the works them­ selves. While there will inevitably be a certain degree of overlap between these disparate approaches (it is, for instance, difficult to discuss formal considerations without also con­ sidering the underlying structural elements that grant the works their recognizable form in the first place), the idea is that each grouping foregrounds a distinct set of entry points into the field. We make no claim here to comprehensiveness. Neither the volume as a whole, its three main parts, nor any of its individual chapters pretends to present an encyclopedic overview of its corresponding topic. Instead, our objective is to present a set of innovative analyses—the equivalent of an array of still images from which the reader may extrapo­ late new ways of viewing the fields and subfields into which they coalesce. We seek not to (p. 5)

present a unified vision of the field of Chinese cinema, but rather to explore the interpre­ tive spaces that open up between different conceptions of what form the field might take. It is here, we contend, that we may find the key to a richer understanding not only of a singular “Chinese cinema,” but more importantly of an eclectic body of mutually overlap­ ping Chinese cinemas.

History At the origin of Chinese cinema we find not a film, but rather a still image—a 1905 photo­ graph of opera star Tan Xinpei 譚鑫培 in full costume performing scenes from the Beijing opera Dingjun Mountain (see fig. 1.1). The photograph was taken at the Fengtai Photogra­ phy Studio in Beijing, as Tan was being filmed by studio owner Ren Qingtai (also known by his style name, Ren Jingfeng 任景豐) and his assistant Liu Zhonglun 劉仲倫. The result­ ing three-reel, half-hour work (of which the only print was destroyed in a fire in the 1940s) is regarded as the first Chinese film. While questions have been raised regarding this received account of Ren Qingtai’s 1905 filming of Dingjun Mountain,1 even if we were to stipulate to the general reliability of the narrative itself, it would remain an open question what exactly it means to describe Dingjun Mountain as the marking the birth of Chinese cinema. To begin with, if we follow current practice and understand cinema as including not merely film but also a broader range of technologies of the moving image, the history of “cinema” in China would likely antedate Dingjun Mountain by several centuries. The fourth century CE historical text Record of the Western Capital (西京雜記), for instance, contains a description of how the Western Han craftsman Ding Huan 丁緩 (active in the first century BCE)2 developed an optical device consisting of a circular band with images of birds and animals positioned Page 5 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation around a lamp such that the heat from the lamp would create convection currents caus­ ing the band to rotate, thereby making the bird and animal images appear to “move quite naturally” (though it is unclear whether this is a reference to illusory motion of the indi­ vidual images, or to the actual movement of the images through space). Historian of sci­ ence Joseph Needham has proposed that this device (together with later “trotting horse lamps” [走馬燈]) may have been an early zoetrope—a technology that, when it was (re)invented in Europe in the 1830s, became an important predecessor for the develop­ ment of film in the 1890s.3

Figure 1.1 Photograph of Tan Xinpei performing the Beijing opera Dingjun Mountain, reportedly taken during Ren Qingtai’s 1905 filming of the work by the same title

Even if we were to understand the term cinema more narrowly, as referring only to actual filmic technologies, it would still be unclear in what precise sense Ren Qingtai’s 1905 work might be considered to be the “first Chinese film.” Dingjun Mountain, for instance, (p. 6) was certainly not the first film to be screened in China. As early as August 11, 1896, several Lumière shorts were shown in Shanghai just a year after they first debuted in Paris, and these sorts of events became so popular that in 1904 a British envoy was invit­ ed to contribute some film footage for the empress dowager Cixi’s seventieth-birthday celebration in the Forbidden City (the projector notoriously caught on fire during the per­ formance, leading to a short-lived ban on screenings in the imperial palace). Dingjun Mountain was also not the first film to include Chinese content. In the winter of 1900– 1901, for instance, James Williamson filmed a documentary entitled Attack on a Chinese Mission, which features re-creations of scenes from China’s ongoing Boxer Rebellion. Pro­ duced in Britain, with British actors playing the parts of both the Chinese and the Euro­ peans involved in the conflict, this work was followed by a series of similar reenactments. Dingjun Mountain wasn’t even the first film produced in China, either. As early as 1901, the British filmmaker Joseph Rosenthal traveled to China, where he recorded at least one Page 6 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation short film of a Shanghai street scene. Nor was Dingjun Mountain the first cinematic work produced in China by a Chinese, given that we can reasonably assume that Ren Qingtai and Liu Zhonglun must have made other recordings in preparation for their historic halfhour session with Tan Xinpei, one of the leading Beijing opera performers of the time. We might, therefore, describe Dingjun Mountain as the first complete film produced in China by Chinese filmmakers and featuring Chinese content. Even this more precise formulation, however, leaves ambiguous what exactly is meant by the terms China and Chinese, not to mention what constitutes a “complete” work to begin with. In 1905, what is now Mainland China was still ruled by the (ethnically Manchu) Qing dynasty, Hong Kong was a British colony, and Taiwan had recently come under Japanese control. Even today, the Chinese nation is officially composed of not only Mainland China but also Hong Kong (currently a quasi-autonomous “special administrative region” within the People’s Republic of China) and Taiwan (a functionally autonomous nation-like entity that still claims sovereignty over the entirety of Mainland China, and vice versa), and each of these three regions is regarded as having its own distinctive cinema. In light of this contempo­ rary tripartite division of “China” and its respective cinematic traditions, it is fitting that Romance of Three Kingdoms (三國演藝)—the classic Ming dynasty novel of which the Bei­ (p. 7)

jing opera version of Dingjun Mountain was itself an adaptation—was set in a similar peri­ od of political disunity following the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 CE, whereupon “China” fractured into three competing kingdoms. Rather than seeing Dingjun Mountain as marking an unambiguous point of origin for Chi­ nese cinema as a singular and unitary tradition, we might instead regard the popular fas­ cination with this 1905 work as a symptom of a collective desire for identifiable historical origins. Indeed, of the myriad rubrics available for categorizing Chinese cinematic works, historical taxonomies are perhaps the most common. We intuitively group Chinese cine­ ma into different “generations” or roughly decadelong periods, on the assumption that contemporary sociopolitical factors and patterns of mutual influence play a critical role in shaping the cinematic output of any particular period. Each of the chapters in Part I takes as its starting point a different historical period, from the early twentieth century to the contemporary moment—though this emphasis on historicity is inevitably inseparable from political and geographic considerations, and consequently we don’t trace a singular his­ torical movement but rather several overlapping ones. In general, our objective in this section is not simply to reaffirm existing historical categories, but rather to present a new perspective on familiar periodizations while at the same time suggesting new ones. The first three chapters focus on the first decades of the twentieth century, or what is of­ ten regarded as the “golden age” of Chinese cinema. First, Jianhua Chen examines the origins of China’s film industry in the 1920s, and particularly the influence of iconic American director D. W. Griffith and his favorite leading actress, Lillian Gish. Chen points to the irony that China’s nascent film industry emerged out of a dialogue with American works that themselves arose against the backdrop of a political and cultural context quite distant from that of early twentieth-century China. Kristine Harris then turns to the 1930s, and specifically Bu Wancang’s 卜萬蒼1931 silent film Love and Duty (戀愛與義務). Page 7 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation Taking as her entry point the film’s uncanny use of legendary actress Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 to play a double role of both a mother and the adult version of the daughter whom she was forced to abandon when she was still a young girl, Harris examines the film’s compli­ cated relationship to its own figurative “mother”—a novel by (p. 8) the Polish-born author S. Horose, known in Chinese as Madame Hua Luo Chen 華羅琛夫人. Harris places particu­ lar emphasis on a key moment of (mis)recognition late in the film, when the now-elderly mother, working as a seamstress, is hired to make a dress for her now-adult daughter (who believes her mother to be dead). The scene culminates in a poignant close-up of the mother’s face as she leans close to her daughter, who remains blithely unaware of her identity. In the third chapter, David Der-wei Wang develops an analysis of two 1948 films by legendary director Fei Mu—the widely acclaimed Spring in a Small Town (小城之春) and the opera film Eternal Regret. Wang argues that these two works—of which the first is widely regarded as one of the best Chinese films ever made and the second, the first col­ or picture in Chinese cinema, is often viewed as an intriguing failure—illustrate Fei Mu’s attempts to draw on a combination of new technologies and traditional representational practices to explore what Wang describes as “the fate of modern Chinese visual subjectiv­ ity.” A concern that runs through all three of these chapters, therefore, involves the ways in which early Chinese cinema was shaped by a productive tension with other national traditions and representational practices. The following three chapters turn to the midcentury period, looking specifically at bodies of films that complicate conventional assumptions about what it means for a work to be considered “Chinese” in the first place. Jie Li examines a set of 1930s and 1940s films from the Japanese puppet state of Manchuria, arguing that these works reflect the com­ plicated nationalistic strategies of the period. Noting that Beijing has declined to make most of these Manchurian films available for viewing or study, Li speculates that this de­ cision may be precisely because the films illustrate all too clearly the sorts of imbrica­ tions of cinema and nationalism on which the political imaginary of the PRC itself is grounded. In the following chapter, Yomi Braester turns to the early years of the People’s Republic, arguing that film criticism during this period was grounded on a form of cinephilia emphasizing the creation of interpretative communities to discuss and appreci­ ate cinematic works. Despite the popular perception of Maoist era cultural production as being highly insular and ideologically driven, Braester illustrates how, at least during the mid-1950s Hundred Flowers campaign, several state-sponsored cinema journals were openly looking abroad in their discussions of film, to the point that even a prominent state-affiliated journal with a title like Chinese Cinema was publishing numerous articles on French cinema and theories of cinephilia. Finally, Poshek Fu considers how Hong Kong’s film industry attempted to negotiate its relationship with Mainland China’s cultur­ al, political, and economic influence during the midcentury period. Drawing on a rich body of newly discovered archives and other materials, Fu demonstrates how shifting market conditions and configurations of human capital during this period helped drive the direction of Hong Kong cinema. All three of these chapters, therefore, examine how contestations of national identity—both in Mainland China and along its periphery—are refracted through the cinematic field. Page 8 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation The next two chapters consider some of the directions that Chinese cinema has taken in contemporary Hong Kong and Taiwan. First, Tsung-yi Michelle Huang looks at how sever­ al recent Hong Kong films use female characters to comment allegorically on Hong Kong’s relationship with Mainland China during the post-Handover period. Huang (p. 9) argues that precisely at a moment when the number of Hong Kong–mainland coproduc­ tions were growing rapidly, many of these same films began using a focus on Mainland Chinese women (ranging from wealthy professionals to undocumented immigrants) to critically comment on the implications for Hong Kong’s mainland-orientated practices and tendencies. Next, Song Hwee Lim considers the dramatic disjunction between the rela­ tively small size of Taiwan’s film industry and the remarkable international acclaim that Taiwan New Cinema has received. Through a detailed analysis of the conditions of the production, distribution, and reception of contemporary Taiwan cinema, Lim argues that Taiwan New Cinema—and cinematic new waves in general—presents us with not only “another kind of cinema,” but also “another way of looking at cinema” and its relationship to the nation. The final two chapters in this part turn to the broader question of the relationship be­ tween Chinese and global cinema. First, Michael Berry examines the increasingly compli­ cated interpenetration of China’s film industry with that of global Hollywood. He argues that this convergence of China and Hollywood assumes many forms—ranging from Chi­ nese remakes of Hollywood films to foreign financial investment in Chinese productions— with the result being a wide-ranging, and ongoing, reassessment of conventional assump­ tions regarding what constitutes “Chinese cinema.” Finally, Pheng Cheah considers an in­ verse set of questions about the relationship between Chinese and “global cinema,” argu­ ing that Jia Zhangke’s 賈樟柯 2006 film about the Three Gorges Dam relocations, Still Life (三峡好人), may be seen as an example of global cinema insofar as it attempts to present the world with an image of China (e.g., displaced migrant workers) that the government has attempted to keep from view. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s concept of the “world picture”—which posits that the act of conceiving the world as a virtual picture implies a gesture of epistemological mastery over that which it contains—Cheah argues that Jia’s film underscores a paradox wherein global cinema’s attempts to represent and “give voice” to marginalized peoples may, by reducing the world to the status of a figurative “picture,” be unwittingly reinforcing the very conditions of global inequality that have contributed to that marginalization in the first place. Contending that Still Life manages to sidestep the reductive consequences inherent in Heidegger’s logic of the “world pic­ ture,” Cheah proposes that the film instead presents a vision of the world as shaped by forces of contingency, in which “radical chance is that which lets a new world come amid the ruined one made by globalization.” We may apply a similar logic to the historical origins of Chinese cinema itself. The iconic 1905 photograph of Tan Xinpei performing scenes from Dingjun Mountain, for instance, functions as a potent emblem of the various historical contingencies—such as the fire that later destroyed the only existing print of the film, from which the photograph is derived— that have helped shape our contemporary understanding and perception of the field as a whole. A comparable point may be made about several of the specific historical narratives Page 9 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation discussed here. Bu Wancang’s Love and Duty, for instance, was long feared lost and was not rediscovered until 1994, while most of the Manchurian films produced in the 1930s and 1940s are now effectively inaccessible in China. Given the inherent fragility of the filmic medium, combined with the political and social turmoil that engulfed China (p. 10) throughout much of the twentieth century, our view of Chinese film history is necessarily shaped by a myriad of historical contingencies. The Tan Xinpei photograph, accordingly, stands as a powerful reminder that a different configuration of these constituencies would likely have generated an alternative view of Chinese cinema’s past, while also hav­ ing consequential ramifications for the directions it might yet take in the future.

Form In addition to the Tan Xinpei photograph discussed above, there is also another sense in which a vision of Ren Qingtai’s 1905 film remains available today. In 2000, the New York– based filmmaker Ann Hu 胡安 made her directorial debut with the feature film Shadow Magic (西洋鏡), which presents a fictionalized restaging of the circumstances surrounding the production of Ren’s film, together with re-creations of clips from the original work. The result is a contemporary production that uses a combination of Chinese and foreign funding to re-create a seminal moment from the very beginning of Chinese film history. Ann Hu’s film presents Liu Zhonglun4—whose biological father in the film wears glasses with thick lenses (see fig. 1.2)—torn between three surrogate father figures: Ren Qingtai, who owns the photography studio where Liu works; an amateur British filmmaker named Raymond, who is in Beijing screening his films and for whom Liu begins to moonlight; and Tan Xinpei, with whose daughter Liu becomes romantically involved over the course of the film. Liu’s attempts to calibrate his relationship with these different father figures allegorically rehearses his concurrent efforts to negotiate his relationship with the visual paradigms they each represent (i.e., photography, cinema, and Beijing opera), suggesting that Liu is struggling to negotiate his position not only between different representational forms and practices, but also between distinct modes of seeing the world and his position in it.

Figure 1.2 The father of Liu Zhonglun’s character in Ann Hu’s Shadow Magic (2000)

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation While Part I is structured around historical periodizations, Part II focuses on cine­ matic taxonomies based on formal affinities. The latter include not only conventional cine­ matic genres like opera film and martial-arts film, but also categories of works whose for­ mal characteristics are directly influenced by their specific medium of production. Works conceived and produced for television, cell phone screens, or the independent film festi­ val circuit, for instance, tend to have recognizable features that distinguish them from each other as well as from 35 mm feature films produced primarily for theatrical release. While some of these formal categories flourished at specific historical moments, others have persisted throughout much or all of the history of Chinese cinema, and consequently this part’s focus on formal affinities offers a different perspective on the historicity of Chi­ nese cinema than that generated by the sorts of period-based analyses found in Part I. (p. 11)

The opening pair of chapters in this second part examine categories of works that are the product of a synergistic interrelationship between cinema and other representational me­ dia. Stephen Teo begins by noting that Chinese opera film, despite having hitherto re­ ceived comparatively little attention in the West, has actually been of critical importance within the history of Chinese cinema. He argues that Chinese opera film has consistently provided a testing ground for many key technological advances within Chinese cinema— including the introduction of color and synchronized sound, not to mention the develop­ ment of cinema itself—and furthermore the genre literally stages some of the central ten­ sions between foreign and indigenous cultural practice located at the heart of convention­ al visions of Chinese cinema itself. Teo contends that, unlike other genres—which fre­ quently needed to be granted Chinese characteristics, or be “sinified,” in order to thrive in China—opera film was instead already too sinified, and it was precisely this intensely sinitic quality that helps to explain both the popularity of the opera film, in its heyday, and its subsequent marginalization. Next, Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh considers a category of work known in Chinese as wenyi pian (文藝片), or “wenyi pictures.” Derived from a term that lit­ erally means “arts and letters,” the phrase wenyi pian originally referred to films that had been adapted from literary works (particularly ones of Western origin), and carried con­ notations of progressive worldliness. Yeh not only presents a “short history” of this dis­ tinctively Chinese genre, she also surveys some of the historical treatments of the genre, including attempts to subsume the wenyi picture under the familiar Western category of melodrama. Both opera film and wenyi film, therefore, are paradigmatically Chinese cate­ gories whose fate is inextricably linked with that of the Western genres with which they are in dialogue. The next two chapters examine cinematic categories that foreground overtly political con­ siderations. First, Ban Wang looks at the genre of the revolutionary war film, focusing on a pair of Chinese works dealing with the Korean War. In contrast to Shanggan Ridge (上甘 岭, 1956), which he suggests is a more conventional revolutionary war film that stresses physical combat and national pride, Wang argues that Heroic Sons and Daughters (英雄兒 女)—released in 1964, several years after the war had already concluded—obeys a rather different logic, using an emphasis on personal narrative and transnational kinship ties to promote a vision of third-world internationalism. Gary Xu (p. 12) then turns to a subcate­ gory of what we might call “Maoist film,” and specifically cinema from the latter half of Page 11 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). While films from this period are frequently dis­ counted on account of their overtly propagandistic nature, Xu instead proposes a more nuanced understanding of this political logic, arguing that some works encourage a non­ coercive emotional identification with their protagonists by deploying a quality of what he calls “affective edification.” In his analysis of the 1974 film Bright Sunny Sky (艶陽天), for instance, Xu notes how the work uses a thematics of kinship love as a stand-in for roman­ tic love, which in turn is itself a stand-in for the emotional bonds underlying “the imag­ ined big revolutionary family of collectivism.” Like Ban Wang, therefore, Xu demonstrates how some examples of highly politicized genres like those of the revolutionary war film and the Cultural Revolution film use a thematics of kinship attachments as a screen against which to explore some of the national and transnational implications of the gen­ res themselves. The following two chapters turn to a pair of cinematic categories that revolve around an interest in issues of corporeality and desire. Michael Eng examines the genre of the kung fu action film, which came to prominence in Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution period. Taking as his starting point the genre’s repetitive and formulaic treatment of vengeance against the backdrop of the male body, Eng argues that this repetitiveness may be seen as a symptom of Hong Kong’s unresolved legacy of colonial modernity and its attendant sense of racial melancholia. Next, Sean Metzger considers the category of queer cinema, or films characterized by a focus on homoerotic topics and themes, though Metzger’s interest here lies not so much in the actual contents of the works in question as in the transnational networks through which the works are distributed. He argues that this category of queer cinema has destabilizing implications for the presumptive national frameworks within which the works in question are assumed to be positioned. While Ban Wang and Gary Xu look at how a thematics of kinship underlies the ostensibly political fo­ cus of some war and Cultural Revolution films, therefore, Eng and Metzger instead exam­ ine the political and ideological implications of categories of works defined by their atten­ tion to corporeal and sexual issues. The next pair of chapters consider two other politically inflected categories of works that, like Metzger’s queer cinema, are shaped by their networks of distribution. Yingjin Zhang examines the politics of contemporary independent documentaries. Drawing on Edward Soja’s concept of Thirdspace to identify a region between what Manuel Castells calls a “space of flows” and a “space of places,” Zhang considers the translocal dimension of post-1980s Chinese documentaries, suggesting that this translocality provides a bridge between the specificity of places and broader networks of distribution and consumption. Ying Zhu then surveys recent trends in Mainland Chinese historical tele-dramas, arguing that these multiepisode, made-for-television movies offer a sensitive barometer of shifting political attitudes within contemporary China. Zhu focuses on the emergence of what she dubs “officialdom dramas”—which cynically present a vision of official corruption as per­ vasive and inevitable. Though mutually opposed in ideological terms, therefore, Chinese tele-dramas and independent documentaries both closely track the interface between offi­ cial and popular attitudes on sociopolitical topics. Page 12 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation The final two chapters in this part look at categories of works informed by their use of specific representational media. Audrey Yue examines the comparatively new phe­ nomenon of large-screen productions in China. While the most widely viewed of these productions is almost certainly Zhang Yimou’s 張藝謀 opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympics—which featured thousands of live actors performing on and around the world’s largest (147m by 22m) scrolling LED display and was viewed by a global audi­ ence estimated at around two billion—Yue focuses primarily on Zhang’s Impression Series (2004–2010), which consisted of five government-commissioned outdoor performances that all incorporate large-screen projections. Noting that these latter works have earned more than five times as much as the total U.S. box-office gross of Zhang’s six most-suc­ cessful feature films combined, Yue explains how these large-screen productions have “produced new modes of spectatorships, structures of media convergence, and practices of social inclusion.” Paola Voci then turns to the inverse phenomenon of small-screen cine­ ma, or short works that circulate over the Internet and are typically viewed on a comput­ er or mobile device, arguing that this nascent phenomenon encourages a more active and engaged form of cinematic spectatorship whereby viewers are encouraged to actively ma­ nipulate and redistribute the works they watch. Voci argues, however, that this sort of in­ (p. 13)

teractivity is not unique to small-screen cinema; instead it illustrates some of the unreal­ ized possibilities implicit in mainstream cinema. Although the large- and small-screen technologies that Yue and Voci discuss here are both relatively new, the distinctive quali­ ties of large-screen and small-screen cinemas that they explore in their respective chap­ ters are not unique to these specific media but rather offer a glimpse of alternate poten­ tialities that were always already present within Chinese cinema as a whole.

Figure 1.3 Liu Zhonglun’s character, with the new camera lens obtained from his father

Some of these alternate visions of cinematic spectatorship are hinted at near the end of Ann Hu’s Shadow Magic, when Liu Zhonglun’s father learns that his son needs a new lens for his film projector and resolves to help him acquire one by exchanging one of the lens­ es from his own eyeglasses (see fig. 1.3). With the newly fixed projector, Liu then pro­ ceeds to screen a short film for his community. Significantly, this final sequence of (p. 14) Ann Hu’s movie features a screening not of Tan Xinpei performing Dingjun Mountain (the work that is the ostensible focus of the movie as a whole), but rather of footage Liu had shot of his own Beijing neighbors. The spectators in this final sequence therefore see themselves on screen, suggesting that the new projector lens helps resolve not only Liu’s Page 13 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation relationship to his various father figures, but also his neighbors’ perception of themselves. Read allegorically, this scene implies that Liu Zhonglun’s struggle to choose between different father figures has ramifications for his position within competing repre­ sentational practices, as well as for the ways in which his future audiences will come to perceive their own position within the world.

Structure In 2006, six years after the release of Ann Hu’s Shadow Magic, China-based director An Zhanjun 安戰軍 released his own cinematic re-creation of the events leading up to the pro­ duction of Ren Qingtai’s 1905 film. Entitled Dingjun Mountain and produced as part of the centenary celebration of the birth of Chinese cinema, An Zhanjun’s film rehearses the same basic narrative depicted in Shadow Magic, though from a different perspective.

Figure 1.4 Ren Qingtai filming himself in An Zhanjun’s Dingjun Mountain (2006)

In An Zhanjun’s film, for instance, Ren Qingtai’s character plays a more prominent role than he does in Ann Hu’s version, actively canvassing Tan Xinpei to convince him to per­ form for the camera. At one point, Ren even films himself dressed up in Tan’s Dingjun Mountain performance costume (see fig. 1.4)—and this portrayal of a filmmaker acting in his own film while his desired actor observes as a spectator speaks not so much to the historical status of the original recording of Dingjun Mountain as to the processes (p. 15) of production, distribution, and reception within which the original film was positioned. Not only do we see Tan Xinpei and others watching a short film that Ren Qingtai pro­ duced in preparation for filming Dingjun Mountain, we also find here an implicit commen­ tary on the institutional processes by which a work is deemed to be “complete” in the first place (insofar as the former recording is presented as a mere rehearsal subsequently forgotten by history, while the latter is presented as an iconic film whose legend would outlive even the physical print itself). This scene, in other words, underscores not only the historicity of the original Dingjun Mountain production and its status as an opera film, but

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation also the array of structural elements involved in the work’s production, distribution, and reception. Cinema consists not merely of individual films, but also of the broader cinematic appara­ tus within which they are positioned—including the technical and institutional elements underlying the works themselves, together with the matrix of beliefs and assumptions that help shape how works are both produced and received. While Parts I and II of this volume are structured around historical and formal taxonomies, Part III takes as its start­ ing point various structural elements involved in cinema’s production, distribution, and reception. In particular, in this part we examine some of the technical, conventional, and institutional factors that inform how works are produced, circulated, and consumed. The opening three chapters in this part focus on key elements of cinematic production: acting, directing, and the sound track. First, Jason McGrath compares the acting tech­ niques associated with early cinema with those found in traditional Chinese opera. Mc­ Grath argues that the dramatic contrast between stage and film acting conventions re­ flects a tension between the emphasis on abstract semiosis within Chinese opera and cinema’s comparatively greater reliance on direct mimesis. He notes that while this em­ phasis on mimetic performance is partially grounded in film-specific techniques such as that of the close-up, it must also be viewed within the context of a broader early twenti­ eth-century interest in realism across a wide range of media, including stage perfor­ mance. Next, James Tweedie returns to the question, discussed from a different perspec­ tive by Song Hwee Lim, of the distinctiveness and consequences of Taiwan’s New Cinema movement, focusing on the movement’s notorious emphasis on the figure of the directori­ al auteur. Building on a close reading of Edward Yang’s 楊德昌 1985 film Taipei Story (青梅 竹馬), Tweedie returns to the early auteur theory of François Truffaut to argue that an auteur’s cinematic vision is, somewhat counterintuitively, most clearly visible in a film’s mise-en-scène—and in Edward Yang’s works this mise-en-scène specifically reflects the director’s architectural vision of a modern, and increasingly cosmopolitan, Taiwan. Final­ ly, Darrell William Davis considers the role of music in film. Noting that cinema consists not only of images but also of sound (even before synched sound technology was popular­ ized in the 1930s, film screenings were often accompanied by live musical accompani­ ment), Davis argues that the relationship between sound and image in cinema may be de­ scribed as a “marriage of convenience,” wherein some films aspire to an integration of music and narrative, while others contain songs that may function independently of the visual narrative. The following two chapters turn to some of the institutional settings within which Chinese films have been released and distributed. First, Zhiwei Xiao examines practices of regulation and censorship as they pertain to the early decades of Chinese cinema—fo­ cusing on how rules designed for theatrical and operatic performances were adopted and modified for cinematic screenings. While discussions of Maoist-era and post-Mao PRC cin­ ema frequently stress issues of political censorship, Xiao demonstrates how regulatory regimes during the early twentieth century were driven more by practical and institution­ al considerations than by explicitly political ones. Laikwan Pang then turns to Chinese (p. 16)

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation film policy during the first three years of the People’s Republic—between 1949 and 1952, when China’s film industry was fully nationalized. Like Yomi Braester in Part I and Gary Xu in Part II, Pang challenges a simplistic vision of Maoist-era cinema as being narrowly ideological and instead argues that in the early 1950s films representing a wide variety of orientations and perspectives were not only permitted but even encouraged. In particular, China’s film industry during this transitional period reflected the tensions between Beijing’s attempts to actively shape cultural production and the continued influence of the nation’s still largely autonomous film production companies. The next three chapters consider ways in which films depict different kinds of social col­ lectives. Rey Chow examines the position of “woman” in a wide range of Chinese-lan­ guage films from the early twentieth century to the present, Louisa Schein considers the role of ethnographic elements in a variety of contemporary works from feature films to documentaries to privately produced videos, and Andy Rodekohr looks at how the figure of the “crowd” has been mobilized in works from the early twentieth century to the present. Even as each of these chapters grapples with the question of how films attempt to represent an amorphous social collective (i.e., “woman,” “ethnic minorities,” and “the crowd”), they simultaneously underscore the role of cinema in helping to shape and rede­ fine popular understandings of these categories themselves. One of the concerns that all three chapters share involves the relationship between a politics of representation, on one hand, and an ethics of self-presentation and self-perception, on the other. The next pair of chapters examines cinema’s position at the interstices between different national traditions and representational media. First, Kwai-Cheung Lo returns to the is­ sue of transnational coproductions that Poshek Fu touches on in his chapter in Part I. Lo examines midcentury cinematic production within the context of the competing discours­ es of “Asia(nism),” arguing that the evanescent ideal of Asia provides a figurative screen against which a complex network of regional and political antagonisms and alliances is played out. Next, Eugene Wang considers the relationship between cinema and other rep­ resentational media, including painting and photography, during the post–Cultural Revo­ lution period. While many discussions of 1980s Chinese films tend to emphasize the in­ creasingly cinematic quality of these works (which was made possible by shifts in cine­ matic training and funding following the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution), Wang ar­ gues that many of the formal innovations associated with this period were actually devel­ oped at the interstices of cinema and other media such as painting and the graphic novel. Both Lo and Wang, therefore, approach “Chinese (p. 17) cinema” by focusing, somewhat counterintuitively, on works that diverge from conventional assumptions of what is “Chi­ nese” or “cinematic” in the first place. The following two chapters explore different forms of cinematic repetition. Ying Qian ex­ amines different approaches to documentary filmmaking, and particularly the relation­ ship between documentaries that incorporate actual historical footage and others that in­ stead feature reenactments of historical events. Focusing on the 1950 Sino-Soviet copro­ duction Victory of the Chinese People (中國人民的勝利) (which is regarded as the Chinese Communist Party’s first color documentary) and the 1949 documentary film Million He­ Page 16 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation roes Crossing the Yangtze (百萬雄獅下江南), Qian compares how both works present the same historical event (the Battle of Liaoshen, from China’s recently concluded civil war)— with the former relying entirely on reenactments and the latter using documentary footage of the actual battle. Qian then reflects more generally on the assumptions about realism and reality embedded within the genre of the documentary, together with how Victory helped lay the groundwork for the cinematic practice, in the early decades of the PRC, of what was referred to as “documenting the future.” Next, Yiman Wang turns to a parallel phenomenon wherein films restage not historical events but rather other films. In particular, Wang considers the increasingly popular practice of remaking Hollywood films as Chinese-language productions, which she views in the context of a Chinese pursuit of the Hollywood-inspired dapian (大片), or blockbuster. Wang argues that the resulting emergence of a cinema with “Chinese elements” further underscores the free-floating na­ ture of the qualifier Chinese, as it functions here not in a linguistic or geopolitical sense but rather as a product of the global circulation of culture and capital. The parallel phenomena Qian and Wang describe in their respective essays come togeth­ er in An Zhanjun’s 2006 Dingjun Mountain, which is both an unwitting remake of Ann Hu’s 2000 film Shadow Magic5 and a reenactment of the historical circumstances sur­ rounding Ren Qingtai’s 1905 filming of Dingjun Mountain. These twin processes of repeti­ tion and reenactment are foregrounded particularly clearly in the sequence in which Tan Xinpei watches a short recording of Ren Qingtai playing Tan’s own title role from the opera Dingjun Mountain—in which we see Ren Qingtai performing opera scenes for which Tan Xinpei is himself famous, in hopes of convincing Tan to act out the same scenes for the camera. The operatic work derives its identity from a process of constant repetition— with each individual performance building off of the work’s prior performative history. In this scene from An Zhanjun’s film, meanwhile, we find the Ren Qingtai character restag­ ing a scene from the famous Beijing opera, precisely in order to convince Tan Xinpei to translate his own title role into a different medium, which he ultimately does in one of the final sequences of the film (see fig. 1.5). Each act of citation and repetition, therefore, reaffirms the authority of the earlier work or tradition while at the same time creating a space for potential change and innovation—just as each intervention within the field of Chinese cinema similarly reaffirms the field’s perceived status and authority while simul­ taneously setting the stage for its inevitable transformation.

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation

Figure 1.5 A screening of a film screening in An Zhanjun’s Dingjun Mountain

One of the ironic twists in An Zhanjun’s film, meanwhile, is that the actor who plays Tan Xinpei is actually the historical Tan Xinpei’s own grandson, Tan Yuanshou 譚元壽. (p. 18) A member of a multigenerational line of opera performers, Tan Yuanshou is presented here as “representing” his grandfather in two discrete senses of the term—simultaneously playing the part of his grandfather (and of the Beijing opera characters on which his grandfather’s reputation was grounded) while also literally standing in for his famous an­ cestor. The 2006 film’s depiction of Tan Xinpei agreeing to perform (for Ren Qingtai’s camera) the Dingjun Mountain role for which he is now famous, therefore, directly mir­ rors his grandson Tan Yuanshou’s subsequent decision to perform (for An Zhanjun’s cam­ era) the role of the grandfather on whom his family’s fame is partially grounded. Like the poignant scene of acute (mis)recognition in Love and Duty, in which Ruan Lingyu plays a double role of both a mother reencountering long-lost daughter and the daughter who fails to recognize her own mother, this scene in Dingjun Mountain presents a startling mo­ ment of intergenerational desire and identification. The result is a decidedly queer mo­ ment in which the (diegetic) opera performer’s desire to performatively enact the figure he sees on screen comes full circle with the (real life) actor’s decision to performatively enact the role of his own grandfather (see fig. 1.6).

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation

Figure 1.6 Tan Yuanshou performing the role of his grandfather Tan Xinpei in An Zhanjun’s Dingjun Mountain

There is a similar scene of interfamilial desire and projective identification near the end of Tsai Ming-liang’s 蔡明亮 1997 film The River (河流), in which a father and son unwitting­ ly have sex with one another in a dark bathhouse—each initially believing the other to be a stranger. In the final chapter of this volume, I use a detailed reading of this notorious scene to reexamine some of the implications of the concept of suture—or the process by which a viewer figuratively sutures him- or herself into a cinematic text by identifying with an embedded gaze within the work itself. I argue that the scene stages a crisis of recognition that simultaneously underscores and undermines one of the dominant specta­ torial logics of cinema itself. That is to say, the scene illustrates not only the urge for hu­ man connection that underlies cinematic spectators’ attempts to figuratively (p. 19) insert themselves into the diegetic space of a film, but also the necessary possibility that this process of projective identification may fail. I conclude, however, that the film presents this perspectival failure as something productive and enabling, insofar as it opens up new and more complicated spaces of identification and self-understanding. If cinema is understood as the art of extrapolation, we may by extension regard suture as a model for the process of bridging the gap not only between spectator and a specific work, but also between individual observers and a broader cinematic field. It is precisely because we feel a desire to relate in some way to a perceived body of work that we ulti­ mately affirm, or reaffirm, the extrapolative logic that undergirds the field’s status as a coherent cultural body. In the case of Chinese cinema, the extrapolative logic that knits the cinematic field together is a product of an array of fluid and contingent processes that are cloaked in a sheen of necessity. By interrogating these various processes, we not only derive a better understanding of the constitution of the field as currently conceived, we may also catch a glimpse of some of the alternate directions that it might once have taken or may yet take. Or, to put this another way, by underscoring some of the uncanny and even incestuous dynamics generated when the field’s incommensurate vectors of desire and identification come into tension with one another, we may productively reassess and

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation reimagine some of the “family resemblances” on which our current vision of the field of Chinese cinemas is tacitly grounded.

Works Cited Gao Qiao 高橋 and An Zhanjun 安戰軍. “Dingjun Shan: 100 nian laihui” 《定軍山》 100 年來 回 [Dingjun Mountain: Back and forth over a century]. Dazhong dianying 大眾電影 [Popular cinema] 24 (2005) http://www.51dh.net/magazine/html/286/286195.htm. Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilization in China. Vol. 4, Physics and Physical Technol­ ogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.

Notes: (1.) For more on the doubts about the reliability of the claim that Dingjun Mountain was China’s first film, see the discussion in Voci’s chapter in this volume. (2.) According to Xijing zaji (西京雜記) [Record of the Western capital], Ding Huan lived at the end of the Western Han. Many contemporary English-language sources, however, fol­ low Joseph Needham, who incorrectly states that Ding Huan was active around 180 CE (which is more than a century and a half after the fall of the Western Han). See Needham Joseph, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 4, Physics and Physical Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 123–124. (3.) Needham, Physics and Physical Technology, 123–124. (4.) All of the characters in the film appear under names that are slightly different from those of the historical figures on whom they are based. For the sake of convenience, here and below I use the names of the historical figures in discussing the fictionalized charac­ ters whom they inspired. (5.) An Zhanjun was aware of the existence of Ann Hu’s film although, somewhat oddly, he appears not to have watched the work itself (in an interview, for instance, he incorrect­ ly claims that Hu’s film focuses not on the making of Dingjun Mountain but on the initial introduction of film into China in 1901). See Gao Qiao 高橋 and An Zhanjun 安戰軍, “Dingjun Shan: 100 nian laihui” 《定軍山》 100 年來回 [Dingjun Mountain: Back and forth over a century], Dazhong dianying 大眾電影 [Popular cinema] 24 (2005). http://www. 51dh.net/magazine/html/286/286195.htm.

Carlos Rojas

Carlos Rojas is Associate Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University, and his research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, nationalism and diaspora studies. He is the author of The Great Wall: A Cultural History (Harvard University Press, 2010) and The Naked Gaze: Reflections on Chinese Modernity (Harvard University Asia Center, 2008). He is the co-editor, with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, of Rethinking Page 20 of 21

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Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon (Routledge: 2009) and, with David Der-wei Wang, of Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History (Duke University Press, 2007). He is also the translator of Yan Lianke’s novel Lenin’s Kisses, and the co-translator, again with Eileen Chow, of Yu Hua’s two-volume novel, Brothers (Pan­ theon, 2009).

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai

D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai   Jianhua Chen The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0002

Abstract and Keywords This chapter argues that the development of the Chinese film industry is inseparable from the success of D. W. Griffith and Lillian Gish in early 1920s China. Touched by the magnif­ icent cinematography of The Birth of a Nation and Lillian Gish’s tragic performance in Way Down East, critics came to recognize cinema as a complex art as well as a powerful medium for mass education and therefore urgently called for the birth of national film. An investigation of advertisements and commentaries in newspapers and popular magazines reveals how issues of race and gender in Griffith’s work were translated into formal terms mediated by local politics and cultural tradition. The cinematic narration of “imagined communities” is enhanced by interactive responses between movie theaters, films, news­ papers, and magazines, ramified with cosmopolitan, nationalist, and metropolitan percep­ tion and discourses. Moreover, the sensational reception of Lillian Gish in China is char­ acterized by deep layers of sentimental ethos, articulating women’s social mobility of the time. Keywords: D. W. Griffith, Lillian Gish, Way Down East, Difficult Couple, An Orphan Rescues his Grandfather

When D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920) premiered in the Shanghai Theater on May 22, 1922, an advertisement for the film appeared on the front page of Shenbao 申報, one of the largest newspapers in Shanghai. “Way Down East,” it trumpeted, “was directed by Griffith, the king of the globally known film industry, who spent ten months making this eleven-reel and 12,000-foot movie at the cost of 800,000 U.S. dollars. On the night of its premiere in a grand theater on 44th Street in New York, celebrities and young ladies flocked to watch it, despite tickets that cost ten dollars a seat.”1 Both the film’s advertis­ ing rhetoric and its enthusiastic reception were unprecedented, and when the work re­ turned to the same theater in October, another front-page advertisement announced: “The world’s most famous and most sensational movie returns!” Over the next several months, reports from Beijing and Tianjin noted that Griffith’s film had been enthusiasti­ cally received there as well.

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai Way Down East was a pivotal work not only for Griffith and for Hollywood, but also for China. In fact, no Hollywood director exerted more influence than Griffith on Chinese cin­ ema in the silent era. At the same time, however, Griffith also epitomized the ups and downs of Hollywood in China. After 1949, his name virtually disappeared from canonical histories of Chinese cinema,2 and even Jay Leyda, in his pioneering history of Chinese cin­ ema, Electric Shadows, praised Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919) for its favorable por­ trayal of the “Yellow Man,” only to lament that he had “seen no reference to this film be­ ing shown in China.”3 In fact, from May 1922 to July 1924, at least nine of Griffith’s works were screened in Shanghai, including Way Down East, Broken Blossoms, Intolerance (1916), The Birth of a Nation (1915), and Orphans of the Storm (1921), each of which aroused considerable excitement (see Appendix 1.1 at the end of this chapter for a list of these works). Beginning in the 1990s, Chinese film historians began to reappraise Griffith’s contribution to early Chinese cinema, though their (p. 24) information about his film exhibitions in China was based on Zheng Junli’s 鄭君里 1936 history of Chinese cine­ ma, in which the first screening of Way Down East is erroneously dated to the spring of 1924, which was actually after the Chinese debuts of most of Griffith’s films.4 Around the time Griffith rose to fame, the Chinese film industry began to flourish follow­ ing the successes of the nation’s first three feature-length films, Yan Ruisheng (閻瑞生, 1921), The Sea Oath (海誓, 1922), and Red Beauty and the Skeleton (紅粉骷髏, 1922). What did the coincidence mean? By recuperating Griffith’s glamour in the early 1920s, this chapter argues that Griffith signified the dominance of Hollywood, to which Chinese cine­ ma was itself paradoxically indebted. Griffith’s films played an enormous role in helping shape early Chinese cinema, far beyond merely influencing the genre of the “love film” (愛情片), as scholars have generally held.5 Actually, along with the hegemony of clas­ sical Hollywood cinema, Griffith’s fame in China grew into a myth that provided, in Miri­ am Hansen’s terms, “a sensory-reflexive horizon for the experience of modernization and modernity,” along with a kind of “vernacular modernism, as a cultural counterpart and re­ sponse to technological, economic, and social modernity.”6 By contextualizing this myth, this chapter will discuss a set of related “local” issues, such as the intellectual acceptance of cinema as a superior art form and a dynamic medium for national education, the rise of the film audience and critical film discourse, together with the early 1920s Shanghai film industry’s competition with and appropriation of Hollywood. The urban landscape rami­ fied into nationalist, cosmopolitan, and metropolitan trends, driven by the new momen­ tum of film enterprise. Not the least spectacular among them was the feminist mobiliza­ tion toward publicness, indebted not only to Griffith but to Lillian Gish, the leading ac­ tress in many of Griffith’s films.

Griffith and Accepting Film as Art It is well accepted that Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation helped make the feature film a crowning genre in Hollywood studios, and that his masterpieces marked the beginning of cinema’s transition from mere entertainment to high art. Likewise, Griffith also played a decisive role in Chinese acceptance of cinema as a noble art. Film arrived in China as ear­ Page 2 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai ly as 1896 and, as suggested by the neologism yingxi 影戲 (literally, “shadowplay”), it was initially viewed as merely a folk amusement. Film scholars correctly attribute the slow de­ velopment of Chinese cinema to an initial shortage of capital and technology, yet little at­ tention has been paid to the specific intellectual climate that likely played an even greater role in shaping the growth of the industry. This might be clearer if we compare the conditions under which Japanese cinema developed. In 1896, motion pictures also ar­ rived in Japan, where—owing to Japan’s aspirations for Western civilization and capitalist growth in the Meiji period—a nascent film industry developed quickly, as exemplified by the publication of the film magazine Katsudô shashinkai (p. 25) (活動寫真界) in 1909, the es­ tablishment of Nikkatsu (日活) Studios in 1912, and the emergence of the “pure film” movement before 1920.7 In the Chinese context, following the conclusion of the SinoJapanese War in 1894, intellectuals began to embrace Western civilization, but most of them were devoted to pursuing national salvation by means of reform or revolution, and their elite bias against this imported visual novelty was inherited by the May Fourth Movement. Even after the Chinese film industry had begun to flourish in the early 1920s, some moralists still rejected cinema as a pernicious medium. The Difficult Couple (難夫難妻), a four-reel feature film made by Zhang Shichuan 張石川 and Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋 in 1913, is recognized as a gem of early Chinese cinema. The film looked trendy at the time, but as Du Yun-chih 杜雲之 has pointed out, The Difficult Couple and other works produced by the Asia Film Company “could not be shown in the better movie theaters where Western movies were released. They could only be screened as extra entertainments after the ‘civilized dramas’ (wenming xi 文明戲) had concluded.”8 Indeed, given that at the time foreign-run, Western-style movie theaters in Shanghai were screening dramas like The Last Days of Pompeii (1913), Three Musketeers (1914), Quo Vadis? (1912), and Antony and Cleopatra (1908),9 a film like The Difficult Couple could hardly compete. Moreover, Zheng Zhengqiu, when invited by the Asia Film Company to make films, claimed that he knew nothing about filmmaking, and instead was more com­ mitted to directing “civilized dramas.” It is likely, therefore, that The Difficult Couple was used to promote a “new drama,” as seen from advertisements announcing that “for the first time the Chinese stage performance has been filmed.”10 And, in fact, that year Zheng Zhengqiu’s new drama movement had great success, carrying with it his agenda to re­ form family and society. At the time, cinema was undergoing what Miriam Hansen has described as a “paradig­ matic shift from early to classical cinema,”11 and this shift was reflected in a column that Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑 wrote for the newspaper Shenbao 申報 between 1919 and 1920. In this column, entitled “Discourse on Cinematography” (影戲話), Zhou commented on dozens of the Western films he had watched over the preceding decade, combining his personal viewing experiences with information gleaned from American film magazines.12 Despite his praise of the genres of comedy and detective serials for their popular appeal, Zhou nevertheless reserved judgment on them. It was Griffith’s work, however, that led Zhou to heartily embrace cinema. After watching Intolerance and Hearts of the World (1918), Zhou enthusiastically praised the works’ advanced technology, visual effects, and, most importantly, lyrical style and moral theme that distinguished them from Chaplin’s Page 3 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai comedies, which sought mainly to entertain their audience.13 Zhou witnessed film’s devel­ opment from nickelodeon shorts to feature films, from multinational products to Holly­ wood domination, and from the idea of cinema as vulgar entertainment to a complicated and sophisticated art form. In the second decade of the century, a number of essays on motion pictures in Eastern Miscellany (東方雜志) and other periodicals had introduced Chinese readers to recent cin­ ematic innovations and developments in the West. These pieces were mostly translated from foreign sources and sometimes also featured brief comments on their (p. 26) educa­ tional function in a modern society. Yet none of these essays could compare with Zhou’s “Discourse on Cinematography” in terms of the latter’s aesthetic observation of early world cinema combined with its local vision in cosmopolitan context. By using the term yingxi to translate cinematography, the acceptance of cinema was modernized. This hy­ brid notion of yingxi invoked discursive explorations among film theorists in later years. Furthermore, building on Liang Qichao’s 梁啟超 famous turn-of-the-century call for a “lit­ erary revolution,” Zhou argued that “not only fiction but film is a major key for mass en­ lightenment.”14

The Griffith Phenomenon and Commercial War Beginning around 1922, amid a rapid growth in film audiences, film companies, and movie theaters, film discourses began to come to the fore, and within a few years they had established a ground on which Chinese cinema might compete with Hollywood. There emerged several types of film discourse related to a variety of newspapers and maga­ zines, each with its own goals and readership. Shenbao, for instance, took the lead in opening dedicated film sections that reflected how cinema was rapidly progressing as a modern art medium, as a highly competitive business, and as a new form of consumer cul­ ture. Other columns included a monthly report on box-office returns of Shanghai movie houses, film reviews, news from local and American film companies, and discussions of world cinema. Such a fascination with cinema, and particularly Hollywood, was under­ standable, as the Chinese audience felt that it needed to make up for what it had missed over the preceding decade. This embrace of Hollywood echoed an expression of cosmopolitanism articulated by Deng Guang 鄧廣 in his 1925 introduction to Motion Picture World (影戲世界), in which he argues that, as a “universal language,” cinema carries with it “cosmopolitanism” (世界主) aimed at “an ideal harmonious world.”15 However, it would be naive to ignore the local concerns implicit in this cosmopolitan perspective. In fact, Chinese cinema had no choice but to compete with Hollywood, given that it could hardly progress unless its audience was firm­ ly secured. In this respect, keeping Hollywood in check was no less important than sup­ porting the Chinese film business. As revealed by the reviews of Chinese movies, a com­ plex psychology had developed, in that most viewers judged Chinese films by the stan­ dards of Hollywood, and even when apologizing for local cinema’s shortcomings, they nevertheless applauded it precisely because it was homemade and still in an embryonic Page 4 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai stage. In the competition under the shadow of Hollywood, reflected by the market, Chi­ nese film benefited from patriotic support. Even as Hollywood was establishing its market hegemony, Chinese filmmakers were by no means reluctant to jump into the fray. Advertisements for Chinese films were (p. 27) re­ plete with patriotic sentiment, as exemplified by one on March 14, 1923, for the educa­ tional film New Nanjing (新南京). The advertisement covered half a page, larger than those for foreign films, with the headline, “Chinese-Managed Hujiang Movie Theater.” In April, two large advertisements appeared for the French Theatre and the New Helen The­ atre, respectively, boasting that they screened Chinese movies. Sometimes there would appear an advertisement for a Chinese movie that was larger than usual, with an urgent call: “Chinese should see their own movies!” Behind this patriotic excitement was a re­ markable increase in Chinese audiences and investment. New theaters opened in the Zhabei district, where Chinese films were screened more cheaply, to cater to dense popu­ lations from lower economic strata. Not only were China’s first three long features re­ peatedly screened, comic shorts by the Asia Film Company from the previous decade were circulated with cheery advertisements. Amid this feverish interest in Hollywood, Griffith became an idol, an inexhaustibly inspira­ tional source and indisputable standard for both foreign and Chinese movies. In 1924, for instance, the director Cheng Bugao 程步高 published a lengthy essay entitled “The History of D. W. Griffith’s Success” (葛禮斐斯成功史) in Movie Magazine (電影雜志), which began by noting that “Griffith is recognized as the foremost film director in the world. As a senior among film directors, no one can compare with him, except for the famous Rex Ingram….Since the release of Way Down East, Griffith has become a household name in Shanghai, and his directing mastery is widely acclaimed.”16 In 1926, the dramatist Tian Han 田漢 noted that Griffith used “literary methods,” such as fragmentary pictures, psy­ chological description, close-ups, juxtaposed images, together with fade-ins and fadeouts, and concluded that, thanks to Griffith’s innovations, “cinema has made great progress.”17 When The Birth of a Nation was first screened in Shanghai in June 1923, it aroused a great sensation. Reviews of the film in newspapers applauded it for its magnificent war settings, spectacular cinematic techniques, virtuosic performances, and humanistic reve­ lation. For refined viewers, this film invited a new perspective on Griffith. Whereas Way Down East was impressive for its romantic and tragic forces, The Birth of a Nation added epic and heroic dimensions. The epic-lyric mode was regarded as Griffith’s signature style, and further expected by Chinese audiences. For example, when The Girl Who Stayed at Home was screened in Shanghai, its title was translated as Ouzhan fengliu shi 歐戰風流史, or literally “a romantic history of the European war.” The Birth of a Nation aroused considerable patriotism among Chinese audiences. This was expressed by Chen Xiaodie 陳小蝶, a popular writer, who found that Griffith’s Hearts of the World conveyed antiwar sentiments much as Du Fu’s 杜甫 poetry reflected the so­ ciopolitical chaos associated with the Tang dynasty, and The Birth of a Nation was Page 5 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai charged with heroic patriotism similar to Lu You’s 陸游 poems from the Song dynasty.18 Even as traditional Chinese classics were used to redeem and elevate Griffith’s cinema, the myth of Griffith was simultaneously being encoded with Chinese ethical and aestheti­ cal values. It is well known that in America The Birth of a Nation caused a racial scandal that would mark Griffith for the rest of his career, but in China the film’s reception was (p. 28) rather different. Chinese viewers were so excited by the work’s patriotic passion that not only did they ignore its racism, they even celebrated it. Linking the film to China in turmoil, a critic commented: “This movie should wake Chinese people up.” Lamenting that China was under the control of world powers, the author praised the Klan for igniting patriotism in the United States by which freedom was rescued from the hands of blacks.19 Griffith’s reputation in China, therefore, actually benefited from the reception of The Birth of a Nation, and he became even more adored following the release of Broken Blos­ soms. The latter work tells a sad story in London, where a young Chinese immigrant falls in love with an English girl abused by her father. As if seeking to redeem himself from the controversy following The Birth of a Nation, in Broken Blossoms Griffith depicted not only the father but all of the Westerners as brutal and vicious, in contrast to the good-hearted Yellow Man. The screening of Broken Blossoms in Shanghai also incited a racial contro­ versy, as it had in the United States, though with more complicated implications. Broken Blossoms premiered at the Carlton Theater on February 19, 1923. It was original­ ly scheduled for a five-day run, but was abruptly pulled on the fourth day and replaced by another Hollywood movie. Although no official reason was given for the disruption, it was said that the authority of the foreign settlement had ordered that the show be stopped, on account of the protests from foreign audience members who were furious at the blasphe­ mous images of the Westerners in the film. And it was said that afterward the film went to Hong Kong and was also banned there.20 The figure of the Yellow Man was also a focal point of the controversy. As Gina Marchetti points out, in the West Broken Blossoms was viewed through the lens of the “yellow per­ il,” by using the “fantasy of rape and the possibility of lynching to reaffirm the boundaries of a white-defined, patriarchal, Anglo-American culture.”21 In 1920s Shanghai, however, the Chinese who watched Broken Blossoms were surprised by the humane portrayal of the Yellow Man, which stood in stark contrast to what they had observed in other Ameri­ can films, in which Chinese were depicted as being dirty, shameless, and stupid. An anonymous reviewer remarks, “I saw the imported films in which our people are mostly depicted as bandits, thieves, or criminals. It [Griffith’s film] made me so happy, since in it their love is portrayed as noble and pure.”22 Another reviewer, Rui Kaizhi 芮愷之, de­ scribes how he watched the show on the first day and was excited by the scene in which the brutal father is killed by the Chinese man, but by the evening show this scene had been cut, and three days later the screenings were halted altogether.23 Later, the same critic reflected, “After watching Broken Blossoms, I developed an even greater admiration for Griffith’s noble idea and [Lillian] Gish’s performance. The reason I admire Griffith is Page 6 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai that he has a large heart and dares to practice what he believes. Most Americans despise the Chinese, but Griffith elevates and praises them while depicting Englishmen and Americans as evil and ugly….His insights and moral judgment are far beyond his contem­ poraries in the spheres of filmmaking and the law.”24 Even as Griffith was being praised, urgent protests were being raised in China against the racism in other American films. On May 16, 1923, for instance, Shenbao printed several photos from Sidney Franklin’s 1922 film East Is West (東即西), which de­ picted ferocious and disgusting-looking Chinese gangsters, with the comment, “This is a shame for our nation. The bizarre costumes and the heroine’s acting simply made the for­ eign audiences laugh.” However, the author’s anger was also directed at the Japanese: “In this kind of film, most Chinese characters were played by Japanese actors, who not only represented them in a distorted manner, they also intentionally depicted them with ugly, disgusting manners.” 25 Nearly two weeks later, another photograph showed Japan­ ese actors with a caption that read: “Films in which the Japanese play Chinese people in an ugly manner.”26 Rather than blaming Hollywood or asking why Japanese actors were used, the anonymous author instead condemned the Japanese actors for demonizing the Chinese “national identity” (國體) by wearing Manchu costumes and writing Chinese char­ (p. 29)

acters in a shabby fashion.

Lillian Gish and the Gender Problem Way Down East is generally regarded by American film historians as a second-rate film, yet it meant more than any of Griffith’s other films in terms of its impact on China’s devel­ oping film industry, on the genre of “family drama,” and on China’s stardom culture, as well as for the way it articulated Chinese reality related to the issues of love, marriage, domesticity, and women’s social mobility. This tragic story struck a chord for Chinese au­ diences, for whom the actress Lillian Gish displayed “tragic” power, with a social signifi­ cation worthy of close observation. In his 1919 comments on Hearts of the World, Zhou Shoujuan remarked on Lillian Gish, though at the time she was still so obscure that the first advertisement of Way Down East described her character only as a “pitiful girl,” without even mentioning her by name. She nevertheless rose to fame overnight, and in the week following the first Chinese screening of Way Down East, an advertisement in Shenbao for a forthcoming issue of Mo­ tion Picture Review asked: “Who appears in Way Down East? It is she! Who is she? She is the girl named Lillian Gish. Her beautiful appearance and gestures have been made by the copperplate and printed in our magazine.”27 Of course, movie stars typically drew more attention than film directors, and there is a sense in which Griffith’s popularity relied heavily on that of Gish. Interestingly, at the same time she was viewed differently in America. Gish does not appear, for instance, in the lists of top male and female actors published in 1924 by the American journals Photo­ play and Film Daily.28 In 1925, the Chinese magazine Motion Picture World was inaugu­ rated with a special issue dedicated to Lillian Gish, and in the introduction the author, Li Page 7 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai Huailin 李懷麟, noted that “movie actors are enlighteners of human beings, social teach­ ers, cultural vanguards, and advocates of cosmopolitanism,” and singled (p. 30) out Lillian Gish as “a great artist of American cinema, also a great gifted movie star in the world.”29 Most of the other articles in this special issue discussed Gish’s talent, acting career, and artistic achievements. According to Lin Shuyu 林漱玉, the reason for selecting Gish out of hundreds of Hollywood stars was that she could do the same things they could, but they all lacked her gifted talent for tragic performance.30 When film companies emerged in China in the early 1920s, they faced the difficulty of re­ cruiting actresses. They targeted women who were not only good looking but also well educated. But for these women, the road to becoming a movie star was blocked by social bias and familial opposition at a time when urban society aspired to Western civilization yet remained restrained by patriarchal order and traditional values. Under these circum­ stances, print media’s saturation with Hollywood stars helped to promote not only the ca­ reers of Chinese actresses but also broader goals of women’s social mobility. In 1923, for instance, the film section of Shenbao featured countless accounts of Hollywood stars, in­ cluding nearly a hundred photos and detailed descriptions of how much they earned and how much they spent on summer vacations, cars, clothes, and cosmetics. There were also stories about actresses, such as the autobiography of Mary Pickford and the biography of Norma Talmadge that were both serialized in the film section. Despite their humble ori­ gins, both women reached stardom by virtue of their talents. They were envied by Chi­ nese women, not only for their free social activities but also, and more importantly, for their colorful lifestyle. By contrast, the newspaper emphasized Lillian Gish’s higher pro­ file as she talked about her acting theory and experiences. Such an ardent display of Hol­ lywood star culture was intended to encourage an analogous Chinese stardom, while the local strategy of competition was actively enforced. For instance, between April and July 1923, amid the relentless coverage of American child actor Jackie Coogan, there emerged a campaign for his Chinese counterpart, Dan Erchun 但二春, who appeared in Revival of an Old Well (古井重波記) and An Abandoned Child (棄兒), and was praised as a “child prodi­ gy” and a “little star.” The emphasis on Lillian Gish’s rare talent for tragic acting had nuanced implications in this historical context. Her artistic and career successes certainly inspired Chinese women in search for free choice and social mobility, yet just as Laura Mulvey criticized classic Hollywood movies for representing women as the objects of a male voyeuristic gaze,31 Gish’s girlish image in films satisfied a male fetishistic desire, as her virginal inno­ cence, delicate beauty, and fragile manner were appreciated through a lens of classical Chinese poetics. Anna in Way Down East, for instance, accepts her misfortune and abuse with incredible endurance and finally wins a moral victory, positioning her as the sort of prototypical “good wife and virtuous mother” (賢妻良母) who frequently appears in Chi­ nese “family dramas.” After directing The Difficult Couple in 1919, Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu collab­ orated again on An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather (孤兒救祖記), released by Star Motion Picture Company in December 1923,32 which enjoyed unprecedented box-office success Page 8 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai and critical acclaim. Zhang and Zheng pursued a picture of cultural localization, in which the players wore Chinese costumes and spoke in a Chinese manner, yet contemporary critics easily discerned the influence of Griffith’s Way Down East. One reviewer (p. 31) ob­ served, “The episode of driving the widow out of her home was borrowed from that of res­ cuing Anna on the ice-floe,”33 while another declared that the film “was plotted with deep signification, and a tedious life was injected with humor. These were similar to Way Down East, though in different approaches.”34 A third remarked, “This film is a family tragedy. Amid grievances humor was inserted and brought the audience a relief. Griffith had used this method in his Way Down East and Orphans of the Storm in order to comfort the re­ sentful audience. In this respect, the Star Company was a good learner.”35 Categorized as a “family tragedy,” An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather focuses primarily on Yu Weiyu, the widow. After her husband dies in an accident, her father-in-law adopts his nephew as his heir and drives the pregnant and newly widowed Weiyu from their home on account of a rumor about her infidelity. Weiyu subsequently gives birth to a son and endures countless hardships in raising him. Ten years later, as the nephew is plotting to murder his adoptive father to gain control over the family wealth, Weiyu’s son returns to rescue his grandfather. The grandfather apologizes to his daughter-in-law, and the fam­ ily reunites. An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather was characterized by an ambiguous gender politics, in which the type of tragic woman was incarnated in a model of “virtuous woman” as a re­ sult of her cultural localization. Unlike Anna in Way Down East, Weiyu is confined to the space of the boudoir, and her extraordinary endurance is empowered by Confucian ethi­ cal values. As a widow, she is submissive to the patriarchal order but is eventually re­ warded for her virtue, investing the money she receives from her father-in-law to build a school. As shown in the ending, when Weiyu uses the family wealth granted by her fatherin-law to build a school, the film proposes that a combination of morality and education may provide a solution for society’s problems. In this way, the figure of the virtuous wid­ ow is granted a larger significance. As film historians have pointed out, classical Hollywood cinema was rooted in the bour­ geois domestic drama, and Griffith, in adapting Dickens’s novels, shared many of his nine­ teenth-century Victorian values.36 It was no accident, therefore, that Way Down East was “mid-Victorian in plot” and adapted from an “antique stage melodrama.”37 This feature sheds light on the gender politics behind An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather in the con­ text of urban development in 1920s Shanghai. Weiyu represented a new domestic subject, a self-assertive woman who was economically independent and taking responsibility for educating the younger generation. Similarly, the grandfather’s apology to Weiyu suggests an internal adjustment of patriarchal structure in the modern period. The movie was charged with a bourgeois conservative strategy to stabilize the “nuclear family” in the context of a new urban culture and as a way to respond to the radical trend of women’s emancipation.

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai Weiyu was played by Wang Hanlun 王漢倫, who grew up in a wealthy family and graduated from St. Mary Girl’s School. After An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather turned out to be a big hit, Wang proved herself deserving of the title of “the leading Chinese actress for tragedy.” If, according to a recent scholarly appraisal, Zheng Zhengqiu was a “Chinese Griffith” for making An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather a perfect melodrama for early Chinese cinema,38 then we may similarly see Wang Hanlun as a “Chinese Lillian (p. 32) Gish.” But, as mentioned above, there was a split between Gish’s theatrical self and her real identity, and if Wang Hanlun’s characters were modeled on Gish’s, the Chinese ac­ tress appears to have taken inspiration from Gish’s real-life identity. After An Orphan Res­ cues His Grandfather, Wang continued to play tragic women in a series of movies, not on­ ly because of her recognizable acting but also, it was said, because her bound feet ren­ dered her unfit to play the role of a modern girl. Yet this condition did not prevent Wang from being a “new woman” in reality. Before joining the film circle, she married a bureau­ crat in a northern province, but when she discovered his debauchery she left him and re­ turned to Shanghai to work as a professional actress. When Wang’s family opposed her film career, she cut off relations with them and even changed her surname from Peng to Wang.39 When dissatisfied with her low salary, she left the Star Company and joined an­ other company, and in 1926 she launched a new film company under her own given name, Hanlun.40

Conclusion By contextualizing the relation between Griffith and Chinese cinema in early 1920s Shanghai, this chapter has examined early Chinese film discourses and practices through the lens of cosmopolitan, anticolonial, nationalist, and metropolitan ideologies, with which the myth of Griffith and Lillian Gish was intricately entangled. In semicolonial Shanghai, the racial responses to The Birth of a Nation were so closely imbricated with people of color that they presented a unique spectacle in globally spreading the “vernacu­ lar modernism” of Hollywood cinema. A related issue involves a shift in cinema audience, as seen in the fact that, when The Birth of a Nation was shown in the Carlton Theater, the audience was half Chinese and half foreign.41 One critic reported that, unlike earlier comedies or detective serials, Griffith’s films were viewed primarily by “high society.”42 Examining the Griffith legend inevitably leads us to question the concept of “Chinese na­ tional cinema,” which has generally been treated in terms of political struggles on behalf of nation-building in twentieth-century China.43 In fact, none of the “influence” was neu­ trally exerted, but instead was always charged with the receiver’s emotions or ideologies. The emergence of Chinese cinema can hardly be separated from Hollywood, as Andrew Higson points out with respect to European cinemas. As he asserts, for many years Holly­ wood had been “an integral and naturalized part of the national culture, or the popular imagination, of most countries in which cinema is an established entertainment form.”44 The ideologies of cosmopolitanism, anticolonialism, and nationalism orchestrated by cine­ matic and print media revealed the public space of women associated with scenarios of everyday modernity in the urban landscapes. Lillian Gish’s significance can be under­ Page 10 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai stood not only in terms of her gender, but also insofar as she provided a “sensory-reflex­ ive horizon” in which subtle emotions and lyric tradition played significant roles.

Appendix 1.1 Screenings of Griffith’s Movies in Shanghai, 1923–24 (p. 33)

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai Date

Title

In Chinese

Movie Theater

Feb. 19– 23, 1922

The Greatest Question

Zuida zhi wenti (最大之問題) The biggest ques­ tion

Shanghai Theater 上海大戲院

May 22– 29, 1922

Way Down East

Laihun (賴婚) Cheated marriage

Shanghai Theater

Oct. 16– 23, 1922

Way Down East

Laihun (賴婚)

Shanghai Theater

Feb. 19– 21, 1923

Broken Blos­ soms

Canhua lei (殘花淚) Tears of Broken

Carlton Theater 卡爾登影戲院

Blossoms June 25– 30, 1923

The Birth of a Nation

Chongjian guang­ ming

Carlton Theater

(重見光明) The restoration of brightness Aug. 9; 15–19,

The Girl Who Stayed at

Ouzhan fengliu shi (歐戰風流史)

Shenjiang Theater

1923

Home

A romantic history of the European war

申江大戲院

Oct. 1–7,

Orphans of the

Luanshi guchu

Carlton

1923

Storm

(亂世孤雛) Orphans in a turbu­ lent world

Theater

Oct. 1–4

Fatal Marriage

Buxing zhi hunyin (不幸之婚姻) Unfortunate mar­ riage

Shenjiang Theater

Oct. 18– 23, 1923

Intolerance

Zhuanzhi du (專制毒)

Shanghai Theater

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai The evil of dictator­ ship Nov. 2–8, 1923

Intolerance

Zhuanzhi du (專制毒)

Shenjiang Theater

Nov. 9–18

Way Down East

Laihun (賴婚)

Shenjiang Theater

Dec. 26–29

Love Flower

Xiaonü chenzhou (孝女沉舟) A pious daughter in a sinking boat

Carlton Theater

Feb. 10–17

Way Down East

Laihun (賴婚)

Shenjiang Theater

Feb. 18–24

Way Down East

Laihun (賴婚)

Hujiang Theater 滬江影戲院

April 1–7

Orphans of the Storm

Luanshi guchu (亂世孤雛)

Shanghai Theater

Works Cited Altman, Rick. “Dickens, Griffith, and Film Theory Today.” Silent Film. Ed. Richard Abel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. 145–162. Chen Jianhua 陳建華 Cong geming dao gonghe: Qingmo zhi Minguo shiqi wenxue, diany­ ing he wenhua de zhuanxing 從革命到共和–清末至民國時期文學、電影和文化的轉型 [From revo­ lution to the Republic: The transformation of literature, film, and culture in the late Qing and Republican period]. Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2009. Chen Xiaodie 陳小蝶 “Yingxi chuyan” 影戲芻言 [A brief note on shadowplay]. Banyue 半月 [Half-moon journal] 3.1 (Sept. 1923): 10–11. (p. 37)

Cheng Bugao 程步高. “Gelifeisi chenggong shi” 葛禮斐斯成功史 [The history of D. W. Griffith’s success]. Dianying zazhi 電影雜誌 [Movie magazine] 1.1 (May 1924): nos. 1–7, 1925: no. 9. Reprinted in Zhongguo zaoqi dianying huakan 中國早期電影畫刊 [Selected peri­ odicals of early Chinese cinema]. Eds. Jiang Yasha 姜亞沙 and Chen Zhanqi 陳湛綺. Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian suowei fuzhi zhongxin, 2004. vol. 1, 331–334, 429–431, 524– 526, 607–608, 723–724; vol. 2, 89–90, 195–196, 420.

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai Cheng Bugao. Yingtan yijiu 影壇憶舊 [Reminiscences of the film circle]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1983. Cheng Jihua 程季華 Li Shaobai 李少白 and Xing Zuwen 邢祖文 Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi 中國電影發展史 [The historical development of Chinese cinema]. Beijing: Zhongguo diany­ ing chubanshe, 1963. Deng Guang 鄧廣 “Fakan ci” 發刊詞 [Remarks on the inaugural issue]. Dianying shijie 電影 世界 [Motion picture world] 1925: no. 1, 1–2. Du Yun-chih 杜雲之 Zhongguo dianying shi 中國電影史 [History of Chinese film]. Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1972. Fu Xiaohong 付曉紅 and Wang Zhen 王真 “Laihun yu Zhongguo zaoqi aiqing pian” 《賴婚》 與中國早期愛情片 [Way Down East and the early Chinese love film]. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 342 (Jan. 2012): 138–143. Gerow, Aaron. Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulation of Cinema, Nation, and Specta­ torship, 1895–1925. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. “Guan Ka’erdun zhi Canhua lei ji” 觀卡爾登之殘花淚記 [An account of watching Broken Blos­ soms in the Carlton Theater]. Shenbao申報, February 21, 1923, 21. Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Hansen, Miriam. “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism.” Film Quarterly 54 (Fall 2005): 10–22. Higson, Andrew. “The Concept of National Cinema.” Screen 30.4 (Autumn 1989): 36–47. Hu, Jubin. Projecting a Nation: Chinese National Cinema before 1949. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Jun Ping 君平 “San da mingxing heyan zhi jiapian” 三大明星合演之佳片 [A beautiful film joined by three great stars]. Shenbao 申報, October 1, 1923, 18. Koszarski, Richard. An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Picture, 1915– 1928. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990. Leyda, Jay. Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China. Cam­ bridge: MIT Press, 1971. Li Shaobai 李少白 “Zhuchiren daoyan” 主持人導言 [The host’s introduction]. Dangdai diany­ ing 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 119 (Mar. 2004): 16. [Li] Huailin [李] 懷麟. “Lilin zhuanhao yuanqi” 麗琳專號緣起 [Introduction to the special is­ sue on Lillian Gish]. Dianying shijie 電影世界 [Motion picture world] 1925: no. 1, 7–9.

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊彬 Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國無聲電影史 [A history of Chinese silent cinema]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996. Li Tao 李濤 “Ting Tian Han jun yanjiang hou” 聽田漢君演講后 [After listening to Mr. Tian Han’s lecture]. Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent cinema]. Ed. Zhongguo dianying ziliaoguan 中國電影資料館 (China film documents bureau) Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996. 498–499. [Lin] Shuyu [林] 漱玉. “Wo zhi Lilin guan” 我之麗琳觀 [My view of Lillian Gish]. Di­ anying shijie 電影世界 [Motion picture world] 1925: no. 1, 6. (p. 38)

Marchetti, Gina. Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Meyer, Richard J. “The Films of David Wark Griffith: The Development of Themes and Techniques in Forty-two of His Films.” Focus on D. W. Griffith. Ed. Harry M. Geduld. En­ glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 109–128. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminism and Film Theory. Ed. Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 57–68. Qicheng 器成. “Gu’er jiuzu ji zhi xinping” 孤兒救祖記之新評 [New comments on An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather]. Shenbao 申報, January 7, 1924, 17. Qin Xiqing 秦喜清 Oumei dianying yu Zhongguo zaoqi dianying 歐美電影與中國早期電影 [European and American cinema and early Chinese cinema]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2008. [Rui] Kaizhi [芮] 愷之. “Dianying zatan” 電影雜談 [Miscellaneous remarks on motion pic­ tures]. Shenbao 申報, May 19, 1923, 18. [Rui] Kaizhi [芮] 愷之. “Tan yu suo guan you Lilin Ganxu zhi yingju” 談余所觀有麗琳甘許之影 劇 [On the Lillian Gish movies I have seen]. Dianying shijie 電影世界 [Motion picture world] 1925: no. 1, 23–28. Sansan 三三. “Yu Naishen tan Gelifeisi zhi qi pian” 與乃神談葛禮菲斯之七片 [A conversation with Naishen on seven movies by Griffith]. Dianying zazhi 電影雜誌 [Movie magazine] 1.1 (May 1924): nos. 1–4; 1.2 (June 1924): nos. 1–3. Reprinted in Zhongguo zaoqi dianying huakan 中國早期電影畫刊 [Selected periodicals of early Chinese cinema]. Vol. 1, 317–320; 402–404. Standish, Isolde. A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film. New York: Continuum, 2005. Wang, Ban. Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai Wang Hanlun 王漢倫 Wo ru dianyingjie zhi shimo 我入电影界之始末 [The beginning and end of my film career]. Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent cinema]. Ed. Zhongguo dianying ziliaoguan 中國電影資料館 (China film documents bureau). Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996. 357. Yamamoto Kikuo 山本喜久男 Nihon eiga ni okeru gaikaku eiga no eikyo: hikaku eigashi kenkyu 日本映画におけゐ外国映画の影响: 比较映画史研究 [Japanese cinema and the influences of foreign cinemas: A comparative study of film history]. Tokyo: Waseda daigaku shuppan­ shu, 1983. Yan Kailei 閻凱蕾 Mingxing he ta de shidai: Minguo dianying shi xintan 明星和他的時代: 民國 電影史新探 [A movie star and his time: A new exploration of the cinema in the Republican period]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2010. Zhang Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zheng Junli 鄭君里 Xiandai Zhongguo dianying shilue 現代中國電影史略 [A brief history of Chinese cinema]. Shanghai: Liangyou tushu gongsi, 1936. In Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent cinema]. Ed. Zhongguo dianying ziliaoguan. Beijing: Zhong­ guo dianying chubanshe, 1996. 1385–1432. Zhizhong 志中. “Guanying Chongjian guangming hou zhi yishu” 觀映重見光明後之憶述 [A re­ flection after watching of The Birth of a Nation]. Shenbao申報, July 3, 1923, 17. [Zhou] Shoujuan [周]瘦鵑. “Hedeng yingxiong” 何等英雄 [How heroes are made]. Youxi za­ zhi 遊戲雜誌 [Entertainment magazine] 1914: no. 9, 27–44.

Notes: (1.) Shenbao 申報, May 22, 1922, 1. (2.) See, for instance, Cheng Jihua 程季華, Li Shaobai 李少白, and Xing Zuwen 邢祖文, Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi 中國電影發展史 [The historical development of Chinese cine­ ma] (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1963). (3.) Jay Leyda, Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 32. (4.) See Zheng Junli 鄭君里, “Xiandai Zhongguo dianying shilüe” 現代中國電影史略 [A brief history of Chinese cinema], in Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent cinema], ed. Zhongguo dianying ziliaoguan 中國電影資料館 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996), 1398. Several recently published scholarly works adopted Zheng’s in­ correct dating of Way Down East. See, for instance, Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊彬 Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國無聲電影史 [A history of Chinese silent cinema] (Bei­ jing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996), 148; and Qin Xiqing 秦喜清, Oumei dianying yu

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai Zhongguo zaoqi dianying 歐美電影與中國早期電影 [European and American cinema and ear­ ly Chinese cinema] (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2008), 2–3. (5.) See Fu Xiaohong 付曉紅 and Wang Zhen 王真, “Laihun yu Zhongguo zaoqi aiqingpi­ an” 《賴婚》與中國早期愛情片 [Way Down East and the early Chinese love film], Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 342 (Jan. 2012): 138–143. (6.) Miriam Bratu Hansen, “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism,” Film Quarterly 54 (Fall 2005): 10–11. Also see Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 1–41. (7.) See Aaron Gerow, Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulation of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895–1925 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 67; and Isolde Standish, A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film (New York: Continuum, 2005), 34–35. See also Yamamoto Kikuo 山本喜久男, Nihon eiga ni okeru gaikaku eiga no eikyo: hikaku eigashi kenkyu 日本映画におけゐ外国映画の影响: 比较映画史研究 [Japanese cinema and the influences of foreign cinemas: A comparative study of film his­ tory] (Tokyo: Waseda daigaku shuppanshu, 1983), 3–33. (8.) Du Yun-chih 杜雲之, Zhongguo dianying shi 中國電影史 [History of Chinese film] (Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1972), vol. 1, 11. (9.) See the ads in the North-China Daily News for The Last Days of Pompeii (March 3, 1914), 4; The Three Musketeers (April 14, 1914), 4; Quo Vadis? and Antony and Cleopatra (August 9, 1914), 4. (10.) Shenbao, September 29, 1913, 12. (11.) Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 16. (12.) For a detailed analysis of “Discourse on Cinematography,” see Jianhua Chen 陳建華, “Zhongguo dianying piping de xianqu: Zhou Shoujuan’s Yingxi hua dujie” 中國電影批評的先 驅—周瘦鵑《影戲話》讀解 [The vanguard of Chinese film criticism: A reading of Zhou Shoujuan’s “Discourse on Cinematography”], in Cong geming dao gonghe: Qingmo zhi Minguo shiqi wenxue, dianying he wenhua de zhuanxing 從革命到共和–清末至民國時期文學、 電影和文化的轉型 [From revolution to the Republic: The transformation of literature, film, and culture in the late Qing and Republican period] (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2009), 205–236. (13.) [Zhou] Shoujuan [周]瘦鵑, “Yingxi hua” 影戲話 [Discourse on cinematography], Shen­ bao, January 20, 1920, 13. (14.) [Zhou] Shoujuan, “Discourse on Cinematography,” Shenbao, June 20, 1919, 15. (15.) Deng Guang 鄧廣, “Fakan ci” 發刊詞 [Remarks on the inaugural issue], Dianying shijie 電影世界 [Motion picture world] 1925: no. 1, 1–2. Page 17 of 20

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai (16.) Cheng Bugao 程步高, “Gelifeisi chenggong shi” 葛禮斐斯成功史 [The history of D. W. Griffith’s success], Dianying zazhi 電影雜誌 [Movie magazine] 1924: nos. 1–7; 1925: no. 9. Reprinted In Zhongguo zaoqi dianying huakan 中國早期電影畫刊 [Selected periodicals of early Chinese cinema]. Eds. Jiang Yasha 姜亞沙 and Chen Zhanqi 陳湛綺. Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian suowei zhongxin, 2004. vol. 1, 331-334, 429–431, 524–526, 607–608, 723–724; vol. 2, 89–90, 195–196, 420. (17.) Li Tao 李濤, “Ting Tian Han jun yanjiang hou” 聽田漢君演講后 [After listening to Mr. Tian Han’s lecture], in Zhongguo dianying ziliaoguan, ed., Chinese Silent Cinema, 498– 499. (18.) Chen Xiaodie 陳小蝶, “Yingxi chuyan” 影戲芻言 [A brief note on shadowplay], Banyue 半月 [Half-moon journal] 3.1 (Sept. 1923): 10–11. (19.) Zhizhong 志中, “Guanying Chongjian guangming hou zhi yishu” 觀映重見光明後之憶述 [A reflection after watching of The Birth of a Nation], Shenbao, July 3, 1923, 17. (20.) Sansan 三三, “Yu Naishen tan Geleifeisi zhi qi pian” 與乃神談葛雷菲斯之七片 [A conver­ sation with Naishen on seven movies by Griffith], Dianying zazhi 電影雜誌 [Movie maga­ zine] 1 (May 1924): 1–4. Reprinted in Selected Periodicals of Early Chinese Cinema, vol. 1: 317–320. (21.) Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strate­ gies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 10. (22.) “Guan Ka’erdun zhi Canhua lei ji” 觀卡爾登之殘花淚記 [An account of watching Broken Blossoms in the Carlton Theater], Shenbao, February 21, 1923, 21. (23.) [Rui] Kaizhi [芮]愷之, “Dianying zatan” 電影雜談 [Miscellaneous remarks on motion pictures], Shenbao, May 19, 1923, 18. The author’s full name, Rui Kaizhi 芮愷之, appeared in the list of the editorial board members in the first issue of Motion Picture World in 1925. (24.) [Rui] Kaizhi, “Tan yu suo guan you Lilin Ganxu zhi yingju” 談余所觀有麗琳甘許之影劇 [On the Lillian Gish movies that I have seen], Motion Picture World 1925: no. 1, 28. (25.) See the captions to four stills from East Is West, in Shenbao, May 16, 1923, 17. (26.) “Riren miaoyan woguo minsu chouzhuang zhi yingxi” 日人描演我國民俗丑狀之影戲 [The films in which the Japanese play Chinese people in an ugly manner], Shenbao, May 28, 1923, 18. (27.) Shenbao, May 29, 1922, 19. (28.) Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Picture, 1915– 1928 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990), 22.

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai (29.) [Li] Huailin [李]懷麟, “Lilin zhuanhao yuanqi” 麗琳專號緣起 [Introduction to the special issue on Lillian Gish], Motion Picture World 1925: no. 1, 8–9. The author’s full name, Li Huailin 李懷麟, appeared in the tenth issue of Movie Magazine as newly appointed chief editor, and also on the editorial board for the first issue of Motion Picture World. (30.) [Lin] Shuyu [林] 漱玉, “Wo zhi Lilin guan” 我之麗琳觀 [My view of Lillian Gish], Motion Picture World 1925: no. 1, 6. The author’s full name, Lin Shuyu 林漱玉, was listed in the editorial board for the journal’s first issue. (31.) Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Feminism and Film Theo­ ry, ed. Constance Penley (New York: Routledge, 1988), 57–68. (32.) A special panel was organized to pay homage to Zheng Zhengqiu and the Star Mo­ tion Picture Company, in which many discussions focused on An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather. See Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 119 (March 2004): 16–41; 120 (May 2004): 44–55. (33.) Bofen 伯奮, “Gu’er jiuzu ji zhi xinping” 孤兒救祖記之新評 [New comments on An Or­ phan Rescues His Grandfather], Shenbao, December 24, 1923, 17. (34.) Qicheng 器成, “Gu’er jiuzu ji zhi xinping” 孤兒救祖記之新評 [New comments on An Or­ phan Rescues His Grandfather], Shenbao, January 7, 1924, 17. (35.) Shuangqiu 爽秋, “Ping Gu’er jiuzu ji yingpian” 評孤兒救祖記影片 [Comments on the film An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather], Xinwen bao 新聞報 [Daily news], December 24, 1923, sec. 5, 1. (36.) Gina Marchetti, Romance and “Yellow Peril”, 11. Also Rick Altman, “Dickens, Grif­ fith, and Film Theory Today,” in Silent Film, ed. Richard Abel (New Brunswick, NJ: Rut­ gers University Press, 1996), 145–162. (37.) Richard Meyer, “The Films of David Wark Griffith,” in Focus on D. W. Griffith, ed. Harry M. Geduld (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), 122. (38.) See Li Shaobai 李少白, “Zhuchiren daoyan” 主持人導言 [The host’s introduction], Con­ temporary Cinema 119 (March 2004): 16. (39.) See Wang Hanlun 王漢倫, Wo ru dianyingjie zhi shimo 我入電影界之始末 [The beginning and end of my film career], in Zhongguo dianying ziliaoguan, Chinese Silent Cinema, 357. (40.) See Yan Kailei 閻凱蕾, Mingxing he ta de shidai: Minguo dianying shi xintan 明星和他 的時代: 民國電影史新探 [A movie star and his time: A new exploration of the cinema in the Republican period] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2010), 32–34. (41.) Zhizhong 志中, “Guanying Chongjian guangming hou zhi yishu” 觀映重見光明後之憶述 [A reflection after watching The Birth of a Nation], Shenbao, July 3, 1923, 17.

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D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai (42.) Bofen 伯奮, “Guan Chongjian guangming hou zhi yijian” 觀重見光明後之意見 [My opin­ ion after watching The Birth of a Nation], Shenbao, June 28, 1923, sec. 5. (43.) For example, Jubin Hu characterizes Chinese cinema in the 1920s as a form of “com­ mercial nationalism,” emphasizing the emergence of native film industry in this decade. Yet his notion of nationalism is primarily related to a “Chinese political struggle” to en­ gage the cinema with “projecting a nation.” See Hu Jubin, Projecting a Nation: Chinese National Cinema before 1949 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003). (44.) Andrew Higson, “The Concept of National Cinema,” Screen 30.4 (Autumn 1989): 39.

Jianhua Chen

Jianhua Chen received PhD degrees in Chinese Literature from Fudan University and Harvard University, and is currently Professor at the Division of Humanities, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His recent publications include the articles “World Revolution Knocking at the Heavenly Gate: Kang Youwei and His Use of Geming in 1898” and “An Archaeology of Repressed Popularity: Zhou Shoujuan, Mao Dun, and Their 1920s Literary Polemics,” and the books in Chinese: Revolution and Form: Mao Dun’s Early Fiction and the Formation of Literary Modernity and From Revolution to the Republic: Literary, Cinematic and Cultural Transformations in Late Qing and Republican Period. He has also published poetry and essays.

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty

Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty   Kristine Harris The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0003

Abstract and Keywords The double-length feature Love and Duty, among the earliest extant films from 1930s Shanghai, dramatized some of modern China’s most controversial social issues, including the “woman question,” the “marriage question,” and the “suicide question,” together with the changing role of the individual and family. Spotlighting Ruan Lingyu, cast in two roles as a mother and her daughter, this ambitious 1931 production from Lianhua Studios was thought lost during wartime through the 1990s and long relegated to the margins of film history. This chapter offers an in-depth study of this important silent film melodrama, de­ tailing its cosmopolitan origins in a popular novel by Madame Hua Luo Chen (S. Horose), exploring the adaptation process undertaken by Luo Mingyou, Li Minwei, Zhu Shilin, and Bu Wancang, and analyzing the film’s stylistic qualities, thematic concerns, and influen­ tial legacy, with special attention to the performances by Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan, who would become leading stars of the decade. Keywords: Love and Duty (Lian’ai yu yiwu), Ruan Lingyu, stars, Hua Luo Chen / S. Horose, Lianhua, Luo Mingyou, Zhu Shilin, Jin Yan, women, melodrama

Ruan Lingyu and Ruan Lingyu in Love and Duty. The Film Magazine (影戲雜誌)

This was the enigmatic caption to a publicity still for the new 1931 silent motion picture Love and Duty (戀愛與義務) featuring the twenty-one-year-old actress performing two roles: a frail elderly seamstress in an old-fashioned jacket shirt, taking the measurements of a radiant young woman in Western dress.1 A climactic moment in the film, the splitscreen shot presented Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 as Yang Naifan, an aging mother meeting faceto-face the grown daughter she last saw as a child, Huang Guanying, also played by Ruan Lingyu (see fig. 2.1).

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty Through the personal story of Yang Naifan, Love and Duty powerfully staged the larger contradictions circulating through tradition and modernity. The melodrama tracks Naifan’s life from her carefree youth in a leafy residential neighborhood of Shanghai, through her experience as a wife, mother, lover, and widow, to her tragic death. At the outset, the teenage schoolgirl Naifan is spotted by a dashing student, Li Zuyi, and the two fall in love. But Naifan’s father has already arranged for her to marry a different man, Huang Daren. Disillusioned yet dutiful, Naifan becomes Daren’s wife, living in a well-ap­ pointed Western-style house and becoming mother of two children, Guanying and Guanx­ iong. Yet Daren dallies with other women, and Naifan is miserable. Only when she meets Zuyi again by chance a few years later does her passion for life return. When Zuyi propos­ es that they elope, she agrees, though much to her distress, Zuyi insists they leave the children behind. The couple eventually attains some happiness, living a simple life in an­ other part of town and having a child of their own. But as gossip about the scandal spreads through the city, Zuyi gets fired and has trouble finding work. Impoverished, he succumbs to consumption, and Naifan considers joining him in death. Love and Duty could easily have ended with Naifan’s suicide at this point—but instead, she resolves to live on and raise her infant daughter, Ping’er.

Figure 2.1 Ruan Lingyu and Ruan Lingyu in Love and Duty. Publicity still in Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine], April 1931, 41

Grappling with the competing forces of personal desire and familial obligations, the figure of Yang Naifan embodied the dualities of the era, including the duality of the film’s title and its split structure. The story restarts fifteen years later. Now older, Naifan lives frugally and takes in piecework to pay for the girl’s education. She secretly remem­ bers her other children but never discloses her past life to Ping’er. The affectionate girl does well in school and is popular among her classmates. Daren, meanwhile, now regrets having neglected Naifan. He becomes an attentive single father and respected advocate for social reform. The two children, having been shielded from the truth about their (p. 40)

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty mother’s abandonment, believe she died long ago. When a tailoring job brings Naifan back to the family she abandoned years earlier, a reunion seems imminent—yet they no longer recognize her. Naifan leaves without revealing her identity and returns to Ping’er. The girl has recently met a boy through her friends, but her dreams of love and marriage are shattered when his parents learn of Ping’er’s background. Naifan, consumed with sadness and shame, finally takes her own life, leaving behind two letters for Ping’er and Daren that explain all and ask their forgiveness. Daren accepts her request that he care for the girl alongside their two children, and as he tells them the truth, they kneel in rev­ erence and grief before a youthful portrait of their mother Yang Naifan. Ruan Lingyu’s star aura—doubled in the roles of both mother and daughter—was central to the power of the film. The talented young actress had already appeared in a dozen silent pictures, but it was Love and Duty that magnified her image and catapulted her to stardom. Presenting a woman who is expected to be one kind of person while she struggles to be another, a woman who tries following her instincts only to be crushed by broader social expectations, Love and Duty was a blueprint for the complex issues and tragic roles that Ruan would eventually play out in her most celebrated films, The God­ dess (神女, 1933) and The New Woman (新女性, 1935), and in her own public career and (p. 41)

private life. Though the actress’s soaring career in silent cinema was cut short by suicide in 1935, her iconic performances have persisted more than a century after her birth, and today, on global screens, Ruan Lingyu surpasses even Hu Die 胡蝶 as the most memorable star of 1930s Chinese cinema.2 As one of the earliest extant feature films of the 1930s, Love and Duty epitomized many of the qualities and aspirations that shaped Chinese cinema of the decade: it was cosmopoli­ tan in its style and sources, yet equally concerned with exploring what it means to be modern and Chinese. The film was produced by the new Lianhua (聯華) Film Studios, founded the previous year, in November 1929, as a merger of several companies. Among the dozen or so Chinese production companies operating in the 1930s, Lianhua fast be­ came one of the three largest, alongside the more established Mingxing (明星) and Tianyi (天一) studios. Even as these studios looked to other film industries for models, especially Hollywood, the stated goals of Lianhua founders Luo Mingyou 羅明佑 and Li Minwei 黎民偉 (shared by their competitors at Mingxing) were to raise the standard of domestic produc­ tions, match the quality of foreign imports dominating China’s market, and reach new au­ diences overseas.3 They patriotically promoted China’s film industry and developed a prominent star system, while also emphasizing the aesthetic qualities of cinema. Perform­ ers like Ruan Lingyu and her costar Jin Yan 金焰 were publicized as talented artists and role models for the public, and production values were elevated through substantial in­ vestment in set design, location shoots, innovative photography, and, gradually, sound film production. As an epic-length melodrama that was originally more than three hours long, Love and Duty helped establish Lianhua’s reputation for producing serious films about contemporary issues and social themes, especially modern melodramas and urban stories, which became leading genres in Chinese cinema of the 1930s and 1940s. This made Love and Duty an important milestone in the early careers of director Bu Wancang Page 3 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty 卜萬蒼, screenwriter Zhu Shilin 朱石麟, and cinematographer Huang Shaofen 黃紹芬, who developed into major auteurs of twentieth-century Chinese cinema. Shot in Shanghai—still a semicolonial treaty port at the time and one of China’s major centers for international commerce, new technologies, and media—Love and Duty put the cosmopolitanism of the city on display, even as it also invoked the rising nationalism of the era. The film was made in the city’s French Concession and included bilingual interti­ tles in Chinese and English. Its narrative echoed literature, drama, and films from the West, as well as recent productions made in China. Indeed, the story for Love and Duty came from a 1920s novel of the same title by a Polish-born, French-educated writer (p. 42) living in China, credited under the names S. Rosen Hoa and Madame Hua Luo Chen 華羅琛夫人. Advance publicity for Love and Duty foregrounded this international source material, even as it heralded the company’s patriotic sentiments with the slogan “Opposing foreign cultural and economic invasion / Promoting the beauty of our nation and people.”4 The film itself was not overtly ideological but integrated details that alluded to the need for national self-strengthening and international cooperation. Ambitious 1930s film studios like Lianhua were galvanized by a sense of patriotism, spurred on by political movements seeking to unify and empower the new Republic of China. As the newly centralized national government along with various localities issued censorship regulations and statutes aimed at safeguarding national dignity, promoting social morali­ ty, and eliminating superstition and feudalistic ideology, film studios negotiated this grow­ ing role of politics in the media and mobilized national sentiment through their produc­ tions. Thus, Love and Duty was promoted as “a creative work that realistically depicts the nation and culture” and “a harbinger that unites film and art,” “unveiling the sense of love and duty between the two sexes, and playing out the grievances of women.”5 Love and Duty is an important and influential film in the history of Chinese cinema, yet it has only received nominal attention, largely because the film was lost for decades amid the ravages of war and revolution. Even since the rediscovery of a print in 1994, Love and Duty has circulated only in film festivals. In the interim, other films from the 1930s, such as Daybreak (天明, 1933), Crossroads (十字街頭, 1937), and Street Angel (馬路天使, 1937), came to be widely available in commercial DVD release and seen as representative clas­ sics of the era, especially for historians tracing the roots of China’s left-wing cinema movement. Yet Love and Duty offers fresh insight into the sources and complexity of 1930s film culture. Viewing the film alongside the original novel, we find a penetrating social drama that confronted controversial issues in the early decades of postimperial China—the “marriage question,” the “suicide question,” the “woman question,” and the role of individuals and the family in modern China—setting the tone for many later Lian­ hua productions such as Maternal Radiance (母性之光, 1933) and Song of China (天倫, 1935). Moreover, by revisiting Love and Duty as one of the earliest extant films featuring Ruan Lingyu, we can better understand the trajectory of the actress’s performance style and the making of a star.

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty

Love and Duty: The Backstory The idea of making a film based on Love and Duty actually originated in the winter of 1923, some years before Lianhua was even founded. The studio’s founder, Luo Mingyou, was then in his early twenties and had recently opened a cinema, the Zhenguang (真光), which would become Beijing’s largest Chinese-managed movie house. He was fascinated by literature, having pursued graduate studies at Peking University during the May Fourth Movement, so when he received a copy of the story Love and Duty from (p. 43) Hua Nangui 華南圭—a talented civil engineer and the author’s husband—Luo Mingyou read it with great interest.6 The author, styled Madame Hua Luo Chen, or simply Luo Chen, had met Hua Nangui while they were studying abroad in Paris.7 She was originally from Poland, he from Wuxi. Her formal studies at the Sorbonne were in the sciences, but her true passion was for lit­ erature and languages: she spoke French, Russian, German, English, and even Esperan­ to. The eclectic couple moved to China in 1910–1911, where they witnessed the fall of China’s last imperial dynasty and the birth of the new Republic. They circulated among the liberal intellectual elite and foreign community, raising two children in a house of their own design that blended Western construction and amenities with Chinese tiled roofs, moon gates, and a rockery garden in a courtyard along a classic hutong lane of Bei­ jing. There she would become a prolific author of novels about Chinese society, writing in English and French under various pennames, including Ho Ro-Se, Horose, S. Horose, and S. Rosen Hoa, and also publishing in Chinese under sinicized versions of those names, in­ cluding Madame Hua Luo Chen, Madame Luo Chen, Ms. Luo Chen 羅琛女士, or simply Lu Cun 露存.8 These amalgams kaleidoscopically reflected multiple facets of the author’s life: her Jewish roots in eastern Europe, where it was common to adopt a local surname or in­ vent entirely new names; her new life in China and marriage to Hua; and her public pro­ fessional identity as an internationalist writer in both China and France. Although her work was published in Europe under the name S. Horose, for the purposes of discussing Love and Duty in China, this chapter will refer to the author as Luo Chen 羅琛—the name by which she was best known to her Chinese readership. Love and Duty was written in 1921 and came out in early 1923 as eight installments in The Story World (小說世界), the new weekly literary magazine from the Commercial Press, Shanghai’s largest multilingual publisher at the time. At a time when women writers and literature in translation were all the rage, the series garnered special attention with its byline, “Ms. Luo Chen,” and a preface penned in December 1921 by the eminent chancel­ lor of Peking University, Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, introducing the author’s European back­ ground and the many languages she spoke. The story was well received: readers selected it in the magazine’s competition to choose the best pieces of the year for republication in a series of bound volumes from the Commercial Press. Thus the same text of Love and Duty came out in book form in June 1924, followed two years later by a slightly longer English-language version of the novel.9 Each edition sold well and went through multiple printings. Page 5 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty Luo Chen’s public persona embodied the dual qualities of cosmopolitanism and national­ ism that were celebrated during China’s May Fourth Movement and the broader New Culture Movement of the mid-1910s through the 1920s. Readers admired the fresh in­ sights into Chinese society that the author offered owing to her background in other cul­ tures and her marriage to a Chinese man; they also commented on her social contribu­ tions and love for her adopted homeland.10 Cai Yuanpei noted that Luo Chen had already lived in China for a long time with her husband and dedicated herself to philanthropic causes, “especially novels that would help benefit society, such as Love and (p. 44) Duty.”11 Hu Jichen 胡寄塵, an editor of The Story World and a prolific writer himself, wrote that Luo Chen viewed “China as her second ancestral land” and that “her warm love for her sec­ ond country is no less than our love for our first country.”12 And the notable feminist ZhuHu Binxia 朱胡彬夏, who helped advance education for women in China, commented that Luo Chen “sees our country as her mother country, cares deeply for our people’s suffer­ ings, and is equal to our people.”13 The author herself was deeply committed to advanc­ ing China’s interests and later explained that she sought to illustrate through her fiction the many changes that she had witnessed in Chinese society over the two decades since 1911, including the gradual movement toward equality between men and women.14 Thematically and stylistically, Love and Duty resonated with multiple literary trends of the second and third decades of the century, which helps explain its broad appeal. On the one hand, the narrative engaged the complex, often competing concerns of intellectuals in­ volved in China’s New Culture Movement: questioning Confucian patriarchy, redefining the role of the individual in society, exploring the potential of love and sentiment, promot­ ing education and equal rights for women, and advocating national strength for China. On the other hand, Love and Duty also echoed themes circulating through popular culture at the time. The story’s focus on a woman torn between her romantic yearnings and Confu­ cian obligations, and committing suicide to be reunited with her dead lover, evoked fa­ mous romances of the classic “scholar-beauty” genre, and attracted readers of contempo­ rary popular fiction by “Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies” writers like Bao Tianxiao 包天笑, Xu Zhenya 徐枕亞, and Zhang Henshui 張恨水. When Luo Mingyou read the novel Love and Duty in 1923, he was greatly moved by the way it depicted, as he put it, the “moribund state of the Chinese family system” and “the conflicting sentiments of love and duty experienced by the two sexes.”15 Just a few days later, Luo Chen contacted him, asking if the story might be adapted for the screen, and Luo Mingyou found this idea appealing. But, as he later recalled, his feeling was that China’s film industry was not yet sufficiently developed for the project. It was only in the spring of 1930, a few months after Luo Mingyou and Li Minwei decided to unite forces as a new company called Lianhua, that the concept of filming the novel resurfaced. At the time, Li was working in Beijing on their first two feature film collaborations, Spring Dream in the Old Capital (故都春夢, 1930) and Wild Flower (野草閒花, 1930). As the two men discussed their next possible projects for Lianhua, Li suggested Love and Duty. Luo Mingyou was stunned at this suggestion, as he remembered reading the novel seven years earlier and had long wished to adapt it to film.16 Page 6 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty The idea was now a timely one. By 1930, the novel had gained broader name recognition among urban audiences—the Commercial Press had already issued three impressions of the English version and four of the Chinese version. Urban readers, both male and fe­ male, were becoming avid filmgoers. Imported novels, plays, and motion pictures with similar plots and themes—romantic love, socially determined marriage arrangements, maternal duty, upward and downward class mobility—were doing well in China at the time. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House had been staged repeatedly in Beijing and Shanghai, (p. 45) and the 1927 Hollywood rendition of Anna Karenina, simply titled Love, was playing in Shanghai that very February of 1930. Luo Mingyou dug out the book and reread it. By the summer, he had negotiated film rights with Luo Chen, and he decided upon the cast and crew over the following months.17 Li Minwei was put in charge of managing the production, Zhu Shilin was hired to write the screenplay, and Bu Wancang would film it. For the lead roles of Yang Naifan and Li Zuyi, Love and Duty would reprise the magnetic pairing of Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan, who had gained some acclaim for their romantic personae suffusing the film Wild Flower, released in fall 1930.18 Luo Mingyou also hired Luo Chen as a consultant.19 Since the fourth impression of Love and Duty had already sold out, a fifth impression was planned, but Luo Chen instead renegotiated with the Commercial Press to produce an up­ dated and expanded edition for eventual publication after the film’s release.20 At the same time, she worked on a French version, which was later published in Paris under the more cinematic and enigmatic title La symphonie des ombres chinoises—A Symphony of Chinese Shadowplay.21 Adapting the novel to a screenplay was a formidable process. This was one of Zhu Shilin’s first feature-length screenplays, but he had a decade of related experience that proved useful. Zhu had been translating foreign film playbills into Chinese for Luo Mingyou’s Zhenguang Cinema in the 1920s and ran the editorial and translation department for Luo Mingyou’s expanding network of movie theaters across North China.22 In 1930, when Lianhua was just starting up, Zhu collaborated with Luo Mingyou on the script for Spring Dream in the Old Capital. As Zhu began working on the Love and Duty screenplay, Luo Chen provided him with an expanded manuscript that was five or six times the length of the original novel.23 This he condensed into a shorter treatment and adapted into a screenplay.24 The transnational source of the narrative was foregrounded in Lianhua’s publicity and the bilingual opening credits of the film itself. Articles commented on the author’s European background, and the very first credits in the film announced, in Chi­ nese, English, and French: “戀愛與義務 Love and Duty / 華羅琛夫人原著 Adapted from Mme. S. Rosen Hoa’s novel La Symphonie des Ombres.” Released in spring 1931, Love and Duty played in major cities including Shanghai, Nan­ jing, and Tianjin under the familiar Minxin 民新 credit as well as the new Lianhua brand.25 Minxin, also known as “China Sun,” already had strong a reputation for lavishly designed, sensitively researched films in the 1920s, including Chinese classical subject films like The Romance of the Western Chamber (西厢記, 1927) as well as contemporary social dra­ mas. Lianhua’s publicity drew special attention to the stars’ moving performances in Love Page 7 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty and Duty, especially Ruan Lingyu’s, and reviewers embraced the excellent acting and im­ pressive production values. One viewer asserted that the film’s quality easily matched that of foreign films, with sets and costumes that established a new standard for Chinese film production. This viewer praised, in particular, the fine accuracy of the actors’ emo­ tions and expressions.26 Love and Duty stands out as a relatively long film melodrama. The studio tantalized the public with the promise of additional scenes beyond the original story that was already well known: according to an advance promotional article by screenwriter Zhu (p. 46) Shilin, his script drew on plenty of new material from a recently “expanded manuscript” by the author.27 The film was originally released as a fifteen reeler, at a time when most Chinese feature films averaged nine to ten reels.28 Indeed, it’s likely that the film was reedited: not long afterward, the length was listed as fifteen reels. The extant print is two reels shorter, possibly due to further editing: some scenes described in Zhu Shilin’s origi­ nal treatment do not appear in the extant film. Yet the remaining narrative is entirely co­ herent, and the thirteen-reel film we see today is still quite long, running two and a half to three hours at silent film projection speeds.29 All told, Love and Duty was a project of epic proportions for Lianhua. After years of incubation, Luo Mingyou was proud that this elaborate undertaking had finally come together. As he concluded when the film came out in spring 1931, “The riper the melon, the sweeter the fruit!”30

The Aura of the Star As focal points in Love and Duty, Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan were crucial to the film’s suc­ cess. Ruan’s performance as Yang Naifan resonated with roles she had played over the previous four years and firmly established the actress as a major star of the 1930s. Ruan, the daughter of a housemaid, had been raised in Shanghai and first met the director Bu Wancang in 1926 when, as a sixteen-year-old, she went for an initial screen test at Mingx­ ing Studios. For his family drama A Couple in Name Only (挂名的夫妻, 1927), Bu cast her in the lead as Shi Miaowen, a young woman pressed into an arranged marriage against her will. At Mingxing, Dazhonghua baihe 大中華百合, Minxin, and Lianhua studios, Ruan Lingyu would appear in more than a dozen other productions—many of them dramatic “society films” (社會片) with contemporary settings, some ending in suicide—before being selected for Love and Duty. The variety of characters Ruan had played in these films, in­ cluding romantic socialite, courtesan, impoverished girl, and spurned lover, prepared the actress for her multiple roles in Love and Duty. Jin Yan, the same age as Ruan Lingyu, had lived in Shanghai most of his life and been act­ ing on stage and screen since 1928. Originally born in Seoul and named Kim Duk-run, he was the son of a founding member of the underground Korean independence movement opposing Japanese rule. For his first credited film role in Minxin’s The Romantic Swords­ man (風流劍客, 1929), the nineteen-year-old actor took up his father’s revolutionary code name, Jin Yan, literally “Golden Flame,” consolidating his heroic star persona. A year lat­ er, the same company cast him in Wild Flower alongside Ruan, and the pair performed a Page 8 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty duet for the film that was released simultaneously as a popular gramophone record.31 He even had an urbane screen name in English, Raymond King—which conveniently dove­ tailed with the “Movie King” title that fans would eventually bestow on him in 1933. In­ deed, as Chinese actors were often compared with Hollywood stars in terms of their act­ ing styles and role types, Jin Yan came to be hailed as a John Gilbert figure to Ruan Lingyu’s Greta Garbo. These various facets of Jin’s star persona would inflect his role as Li Zuyi in Love and Duty, shaping his career for decades to come. Love and Duty and Lianhua’s publicity for it showcased the star persona, aura, and virtuosity of the lead actors. Some of this was accomplished by making significant changes from the original novel to give the main protagonists greater prominence and more admirable qualities in the film narrative. In Luo Chen’s novel, the natal families of Naifan and Zuyi had received considerable attention, yet in the extant film the parents are reduced to marginal figures. Likewise, where the original novel depicts Zuyi as a weak, even reckless, dreamer, the film makes him out to be more romantic, sympathetic, complex, and conflicted. These qualities would have made the film version of Love and Duty more appealing and intriguing to urban youth of the early 1930s, the main target au­ dience for Lianhua’s films. (p. 47)

The intertitles for this silent film are eloquent, yet sparing; much of the expressivity de­ rives from the screen presence of the lead actors, accentuated by Huang Shaofen’s skill­ ful cinematography. Early on, when Li Zuyi first spots Yang Naifan walking to school and decides to follow her, extensive tracking shots of Jin Yan and Ruan Lingyu convey a mag­ netic charge between them. Ruan Lingyu, as Naifan, strides forward toward the camera in an airy schoolgirl’s uniform, while Jin Yan, as the young Li Zuyi in his Western suit, is visible in the same frame just a few feet behind (see fig. 2.2). The shot bears a sense of danger as Zuyi briskly pursues the unaware Naifan. A second shot from behind the two fatefully binds them together. A set of medium tracking shots alongside each of them completes the scene, which is then repeated multiple times as Zuyi begins following Naifan daily. She, in turn, starts to notice him and returns the gaze. The tracking shots establish an unspoken yet powerful attraction between the two characters, while also lav­ ishing attention on the stars.

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty

Figure 2.2 Li Zuyi pursues Yang Naifan

Close-ups on the performers, often in extreme soft focus and radiant lighting, were used to similar effect. The actors’ facial expressions convey the inner psyche of the (p. 48) pro­ tagonists, especially at poignant moments for the characters, as when Naifan reacts with shock to her father’s declaration that he’s arranged a marriage for her to take place with­ in the month, or when, as a young mother, she realizes her little boy might have drowned in a pond while she sat nearby lost in melancholy (see fig. 2.3). At times, the focus is so soft and the lighting so bright that some viewers felt it was exaggerated.32 Even so, the visual excess accomplished two things at once: heightening the emotional excess at the core of melodrama while simultaneously foregrounding the star presence. Such soft-focus shots would become a hallmark of Ruan Lingyu’s subsequent films with Lianhua. Dream sequences and special effects played out the young protagonists’ romantic desires and their psychological angst. Notably, after Zuyi embarks on an illicit affair with the married Naifan, the film devotes a full five minutes to Zuyi’s solitary fantasies of saving Naifan from her husband Daren. He reads a romantic pulp novel and imagines himself the hero of the story. This launches a short film-within-the-film in which a swashbuckling swordsman, played by Jin Yan, comes to the rescue of a helpless girl, played by Ruan Lingyu. The scene is shot on a rocky shoreline, where the girl struggles to escape from a pirate, played by the same actor playing Daren. The swordsman duels the villain, van­ quishes him, and wins the girl’s love. The scene was shot in a style reminiscent of earlier Chinese silent films of the 1920s, which themselves often emulated swashbuckler films imported from the United States. It would have looked distinctly different, even retro­ grade, to 1931 filmgoers. As such, the unlikely scenario almost seems to turn a mocking eye on the male protagonist’s grandiosity, as he imagines himself imitating imaginary he­ roes without pausing to consider the consequences. The narrative excess effectively high­ lighted the dashing figure of Jin Yan; it also offered an interlude of martial-arts-style ac­ tion within the larger melodrama and imbued this section of the film with a period scene that captured the romantic idealism of May Fourth–era youth culture from the previous decade.

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty

Figure 2.3 Naifan learns of her arranged marriage (p. 49)

Special effects in the following scene call attention to the male protagonist’s deter­

mination and lingering anxieties. As if empowered by the heroic novel, Zuyi visits Naifan and impulsively gives her an ultimatum: if she does not elope with him that night, he will not go on living. When she finally agrees and begins packing, Zuyi insists she leave the children behind with Daren, causing Naifan great distress. At this moment, he catches a glimpse of a nearby framed photograph depicting Naifan, Daren, and their children eerily being torn apart, then reverting to its original state. The stop-motion animated shot ap­ pears to visualize on screen Zuyi’s wavering conscience; then, in another set of special ef­ fects, we see his heroic intentions return. On either side of Zuyi’s face, two small images appear superimposed in small vignettes: one, the novel he was reading earlier; the other, himself as the valiant swordsman. Zuyi drags Naifan from her sleeping children, she faints, and he carries her off to a car waiting outside. After their escape the couple sees a glimmer of happiness, even starting a new family, but the gossip haunts them, frustrating Zuyi’s heroic dreams. This new downward turn in the couple’s situation contrasts starkly with the earlier fantasy scene and its romantic consummation, heightening the narrative tension.

Figure 2.4 Zuyi with Naifan’s reaction in mirror

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty At key moments, distinctive shots call attention to the actress. Take, for example, a scene that occurs after their elopement and decline, as Zuyi recounts to Naifan his fruitless day of searching for work. The figure of Zuyi fills the shot, yet our focus is pulled elsewhere in the frame, to a small mirror standing on the table beside him (see fig. 2.4). There, for a brief moment, we see Naifan’s face reacting to his dire news, her complex mobile expres­ sion vacillating between hope, concern, and anxiety. Miniaturized and contained within the framed mirror, Naifan’s quest for fulfillment and romantic freedom now appears to be threatened by a new kind of confinement: economic constraints. The strangeness of the shot has a distancing effect, yet it also simultaneously draws us into the illusion. Our at­ tention shifts to the moving portrait of Ruan Lingyu in the mirror, (p. 50) and we become aware of the artifice of the shot—even as we remain absorbed in Naifan’s emotional reac­ tion as performed by Ruan. This momentary preternatural image augurs a turning point for Naifan. Though Zuyi does find work, the job is so exhausting that he quickly succumbs to consumption, leaving Naifan with their newborn child. Where once Naifan was “more at home outside her home” as a carefree schoolgirl and eventually left behind an arranged marriage and bourgeois domesticity, her failed elopement now gives way to selfeffacing single motherhood.

Figure 2.5 Naifan recalls her abandoned children

Most of the screen time in Love and Duty is dedicated to Ruan Lingyu, who appears in nearly every scene, especially after Zuyi’s death. As Naifan stands before his grave, visual effects spotlight the actress, playing out Naifan’s distress and her fears for the future. Wearing a white mourning headband, she faces the camera, cradling the infant in her arms and sobbing. The medium shot of Naifan is soon surrounded by ghostly images of her former husband and her first two children, each appearing as multiple exposures in the same frame (see fig. 2.5). Compressed between these reminders of her past, Naifan’s facial expressions intensify, moving between grief, regret, and desperation. The young widow stands at Zuyi’s grave trying to imagine her future, dramatized in three short cut­ away scenes. In the first, Naifan returns to the children and Huang Daren, only to be slapped and sent away. In the second, she returns to her father for help, but he and his concubines condemn Naifan as an “unchaste creature” whose elopement has caused a so­ cial scandal. In the third, she considers suicide. Standing on a bridge, the young woman Page 12 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty is surrounded by its steel beams, as if imprisoned by them, and gathers up her resolve. She begins to climb over the tall railing—but as she looks down into the river, an image of her sobbing infant dissolves into view, shimmering on the water’s surface. The eerie ap­ parition underscores Naifan’s emotional trauma and foreshadows her suicide later in the film. In horror, despair, and resignation, Naifan steps back down. This last (p. 51) imag­ ined scene fades away, leaving Naifan standing in the cemetery clinging to her child and vowing that she will work to raise Ping’er to adulthood. At this point we are well into the film, and the three imagined scenes could be read as potential endings—yet all of them are forestalled by Naifan’s decision to live.

Double Ruan As the double-length film restarts and the film narrative jumps forward fifteen years, Ru­ an Lingyu undergoes a dramatic metamorphosis. Yang Naifan has withered from an ele­ gant, vibrant young woman into an impoverished, aging widow. Living in greatly reduced circumstances, she now takes in piecework as a seamstress. Hunched over a sewing ma­ chine in a spartan room, Naifan not only looks radically different—with graying hair, wrin­ kled features, reading glasses, and a missing front tooth—but she also has the frail pos­ ture and tentative gestures of a broken woman struggling to survive. Indeed, from most angles, Ruan Lingyu is virtually unrecognizable when she plays the older Naifan (see. fig. 2.6).

Figure 2.6 The older Naifan, now a seamstress

Yet this “unrecognizability” is precisely what drew attention to the star. Where the younger Naifan matched up seamlessly with Ruan Lingyu’s star image, fitting into the ac­ cumulation of role types Ruan had played up through 1930, the older Naifan went against the grain of that star persona. The actress’s ability to embody a single character in two contrasting stages of life and circumstances, and to create the illusion of aging so thor­ oughly, was itself noticeable and thrilling. Viewers writing about the film at the time uni­

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty versally acclaimed Ruan Lingyu’s virtuosity in the role of Naifan, (p. 52) particularly her ability to convincingly portray an older woman so wholly different from herself.33 In this last third of the film, Love and Duty magnified the star power of Ruan Lingyu and her ability to play both ends of the drama by simultaneously presenting the actress in an­ other role, as the daughter Naifan had abandoned years earlier, Huang Guanying. The way this new character is introduced in the narrative mirrors the way the actress herself appeared in the media: we first see the teenage Guanying pictured in the pages of a newspaper, gleaming with the same smile seen in so many star portraits of Ruan Lingyu circulating in the 1920s. Now the same age as Naifan was at the beginning of the film, the girl looks identical to Naifan in her younger years. The mature Naifan comes across this photograph of her daughter and one of her son, alongside the newspaper’s announce­ ment of an upcoming charity performance benefiting the poor, to be sponsored by Huang Daren. Naifan gazes lovingly at these small images of her children, and she clips the pho­ tographs from the paper. As she presses them to her face, it’s as if the layers of simulacra begin to merge. Ruan Lingyu’s virtuosity in playing multiple roles was foregrounded in a climactic scene of Love and Duty, when the older Naifan is sent by the dressmaker’s shop on a house call to the Huang Daren residence to tailor costumes for the children’s upcoming stage show. Naifan’s occupation as a seamstress is an important detail in the film and a significant change from the 1920s novel. As originally rendered by Luo Chen, Naifan supports her­ self by making artificial flowers for weddings and remains at best a distant observer of the family she had abandoned long before. But in the film, Naifan’s tailoring work brings her into physical proximity with her clients. This modification helped the filmmakers justi­ fy a new subplot that would transport Naifan back into her former home and, potentially, a reunion with her family. Cautious and fearful, yet also eager to see her grown children in person, Naifan enters the front parlor of the capacious house that is so familiar to her from the past. She pauses in the background by a portrait of her youthful self, still hanging high on the wall by the mantelpiece where it always was. Evidently, Naifan is still remembered and honored in the household, yet she continues to cower, as if fearful of being exposed, or reluctant to shatter the idealized image. When beckoned by her colleague to take the measurements of Guanying and Guanxiong, her anxiety builds: as a seamstress, her job will bring her in­ to direct contact with her daughter. The viewer’s anxiety likewise builds. Guanying is completely unaware that the mother she believes to be dead is actually alive and present. If Naifan and Guanying were played by two separate actresses, the dramatic irony would already be enough to build tension in the scene. The double casting of Ruan Lingyu as both Naifan and Guanying only augments the sense of apprehension. What will happen when the actress playing both roles enters the same frame? Will the characters them­ selves “recognize” the resemblance?

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty

Figure 2.7 Split-screen shot of Ruan Lingyu as Guanying and as Naifan

Yang Naifan gingerly, nervously raises the tape measure. In a brief split-screen shot, she stretches it across her daughter’s chest. The palindromic shot conjures a sense of danger and uncanny wonder. The innocent, carefree Guanying facing Naifan appears to be a res­ urrection of Naifan’s earlier self, bringing the narrative full circle (see fig. 2.7). At the (p. 53) same time, the distinct lighting and focus on each character contribute to the illu­ sion of two separate people. The shimmering, radiant image of Ruan Lingyu in the role of Naifan’s teenage daughter contrasts starkly with the flat, subdued lighting on the actress playing the older, grayer Naifan. Like the “double-self portraits” (二我圖) that had been popular as novelties among patrons of photography studios since the late nineteenth cen­ tury in Shanghai and elsewhere, there was a deep pathos and irony in this trick shot pre­ senting one individual in two contrasting roles. In fact, just a few years earlier, in 1925, the writer Lu Xun 魯迅 had wryly remarked that while such photographs were often taken as mere amusements, there is a certain peril inherent in pictures where an individual plays the role of both master and slave, popularly called a “picture of me entreating my­ self” (求己圖): that “anyone who is the master can easily become the slave.”34 The effect here is tragic and moving. Even in such proximity and intimacy, with her own portrait on the wall nearby, the servile Naifan is no longer recognized by the children who last saw her fifteen years earlier. She continues to hover, searching for an opportunity to reach out to each of her beloved children, yet pauses and then proceeds with her work, performing the role of hired seamstress and concealing her true identity. When no one seems to be paying attention to her, Naifan pulls the tape measure down her daughter’s back, holding it in place with her face instead of her hand in a momentary gesture of af­ fection, hidden from her children, but magnified for the film viewer. The close shot dis­ plays, all at once, Naifan’s feelings of anguish and gratitude. Even as the seamstress Naifan remains virtually invisible to her own daughter, the two are now cinematically su­ tured together in the frame before the viewer (see fig. 2.8).

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty

Figure 2.8 Naifan closely measures her daughter’s back

Customarily we praise an actor or actress for taking on a character and disappearing into a part. In the role of the aging Naifan, Ruan accomplishes precisely that—even as her more familiar star image was simultaneously restored to the screen in the figure (p. 54) of lively Guanying. The children’s inability to recognize Naifan heightens the tension within the diegesis, while ironically their blind spot is so visible to the film spectator that it only serves to accentuate our own recognition of the actress Ruan Lingyu playing the two roles. The charge of this scene arises from the actress simultaneously recognizing—and not recognizing—herself. The viewer is drawn into a game of hide-and-seek, and the dou­ ble role becomes a bravura tour de force, focusing our attention not only on the character but also on the actress and her star image. Naifan’s desire for another look at her children, even from a distance, propels her to go to their stage performance along with her daughter Ping’er (who has no knowledge of Naifan’s true relationship to the Huangs). Anonymous among the large audience in the darkened theater, Naifan beams with delight when Guanxiong and Guanying appear in the costumes she’s sewn for them. In a rush of enthusiasm she grabs a pair of binoculars from a young man seated beside her. This detail of the binoculars—not in the original nov­ el—creates a scopophilic, even metafilmic, moment within the film. We the viewers ob­ serve a viewer observing the magnified action. As Naifan adjusts the binoculars to zoom in on her children, we partake in her close-up view of Guanying and Guanxiong on stage. With the stage proscenium no longer visible, the magnified image of Guanying in sepia tones once again heightens our awareness of the movie star Ruan Lingyu. She twirls and sways, smiling coyly, attracting the attention of the diegetic audience in the theater. Faintly framed by the binoculars, we’re reminded that we’re watching the scene as if through Naifan’s eyes, sharing a cathartic moment. Shots of the young Guanying, inter­ cut with shots of the aged Naifan, heighten the contrast between the two and sustain the illusion that one character is being watching by the other. Simultaneously, we’re fully aware that this is another trick of the double casting: that we’re watching the star watch­ ing herself.

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty The film, like the original novel, presented this stage show as an allegorical interlude. Billed as a charity benefit in aid of the poor, held at the National Theater, and promoted (p. 55) by Huang Daren’s newspaper National Strengthening (國强報), the performance is introduced as an “International Dance” (萬國聯歡舞). Guanying and Guanxiong represent modern China, wearing costumes that are hybrids—she in a Chinese fitted top and West­ ern flared skirt, he in a Sun Yat-sen jacket and miniature fedora perched atop his head. They playfully step and turn at center stage, surrounded by performers in costumes of various countries, each nodding and bowing to Guanying and Guanxiong. With this scene, Love and Duty suggests that the younger generation stands in for a healthy new nation taking center stage in a supportive and admiring world, while the impoverished Naifan, as the struggling old China, looks on. This allegorical suggestion of China in its past and present forms is all the more touching because both are embodied by the same actress. Naifan ultimately turns to suicide when gossip about her scandalous past resurfaces, threatening to affect her second daughter, Ping’er. The girl’s relationship with a young man, Guan Kesheng, is stalled when his influential family learns of her background, and Naifan is devastated that her own past actions are now preventing her daughter from having the opportunity for the kind of love marriage that she herself was denied. Naifan decides to end her own life, leaving behind letters for Ping’er and Daren. Suicide was a controversial subject receiving considerable attention in the media in 1920s–1930s Chi­ na, and filmmakers risked running afoul of censorship regulations aimed at limiting the representation of acts deemed “damaging to social mores.” Where Luo Chen’s novel had Naifan overdosing on pills, and Zhu Shilin’s treatment described her jumping into the riv­ er, in the extant film Naifan’s suicide is not shown. She leaves letters behind for her sleeping daughter, visits Zuyi’s grave to say, “It’s now time for me to die….Wait for me, Zuyi, because I’m on my way,” and slowly walks away. Whether Naifan’s death was cut or just lost from the extant film, the elision movingly conveys the protagonist’s self-erasure. In the logic of the maternal melodrama and the national allegory embedded within it, Naifan’s suicide near the end of Love and Duty may be interpreted as carrying a heavy symbolic weight. As a daughter, mother, and wife, her repeated failure to achieve person­ al autonomy can come across as a cautionary tale, and the woes befalling Naifan seem like punishments for a woman’s transgressions. Only by sublimating her energies and de­ sires into maternal duty, sacrifice, and self-condemnation can she be redeemed and for­ given, clearing the path for a new kind of patriarchal order. Ping’er follows the instruc­ tions in her mother’s letter and finds Huang Daren, who takes her in after reading what Naifan has written to him. Her letter, displayed on the screen in Chinese and then in Eng­ lish translation, explains that she has been worn down by suffering and lingering shame for her sins; having raised Ping’er to adulthood, Naifan believes she has become an obsta­ cle to the girl’s future and asks that they forget her. In this sense, Love and Duty might be viewed as a conservative reaffirmation of family ethics and critique of romantic love, as Haiyan Lee notes in her analysis of Luo Chen’s novel.35 Yet even as the novel and film presented a kind of didactic critique, the cinematic rendition arguably achieved a more nuanced treatment, with Zhu Shilin, Bu Wancang, and Ruan Lingyu sensitively probing the individual psyche of characters caught between competing expectations. As Zhu Page 17 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty Shilin commented, each of the protagonists of Love and Duty possesses human strengths and weaknesses, deserving not outright condemnation but rather sympathy.36 The film presents Naifan’s suicide as motivated by many personal factors: an ac­ knowledgment of her own failed quest for happiness, a tragic means of escaping her per­ sonal suffering, a desire to pave a clear path for her daughter’s future, and a consumma­ tion of her long-deferred desire to be united with her lover, even in death. In the film’s de­ nouement, the death of Naifan effectively makes way for the reconstituted nuclear family —yet her photographic portrait remains on the wall as a palpable reminder of her ab­ sence. As Naifan’s children kneel mournfully before their mother’s picture in its gilded frame, and Daren looks on, wiping tears from his eyes, the portrait seems to return their gaze. A full shot of the portrait, depicting the elegant, reserved Naifan in her younger years, summons up the refined, understated glamour of Ruan Lingyu’s own publicity pho­ tos. The mother has been effaced, yet she becomes hauntingly present; the actress has disappeared into the multiple roles, yet her image is visible and enduring. (p. 56)

Both as cinema and literature, Love and Duty reverberated in the China of the 1930s and beyond. The book went through several more printings and editions in China and in France during the years after the film’s release. Luo Chen’s “expanded and updated” Chi­ nese-language edition of 1934 placed greater weight on national survival, which had be­ come a major theme for artists in China following Japan’s military actions in Manchuria and Shanghai beginning in September 1931. This expanded edition was reprinted well in­ to the wartime period.37 Likewise, the film went through multiple remakes and was enor­ mously influential for the new generation of filmmakers. Just a few years after Ruan’s sui­ cide in 1935, Bu Wancang decided to remake Love and Duty as a sound film. His 1938 version retained the original English title, but the new Chinese title was even more emo­ tive: Days of Love, Blood, and Tears (情天血淚). Ruan’s recent suicide made the new film especially poignant, and her absence was all the more noticeable with Jin Yan still in the male lead. Two Cantonese-dialect renditions of Days of Love, Blood, and Tears came out in 1947 and 1959, and Shaw Brothers 邵氏 issued a new Mandarin version of Love and Du­ ty in 1955 by director and screenwriter Tu Guangqi 屠光启. The thematic concerns, tone, and style of Love and Duty remained staples of Chinese film melodrama during the 1930s and beyond, with Zhu Shilin and Bu Wancang becoming masters of the genre. Many of the films they would go on to write and direct, including Maternal Radiance (母性之光, 1933), Three Modern Women (三个摩登女性, 1933), Coming Home (歸來, 1934), Tears of a Mother (慈母淚, 1937), New and Old Times (新舊時代, 1937), and Family (家, 1941), contained elements familiar from Love and Duty: contemporary young women and men struggling for autonomy and self-fulfillment, becoming enmeshed in love triangles, or grappling with the conflict between individual desire and the larger ethical demands of the Confucian family and social morality, or lunli 倫理, all against the backdrop of the nation’s struggle for advancement and survival. With its emphasis on per­ sonal restraint, sublimation, and sacrifice for the sake of lunli, often ending in quiet tragedy, Love and Duty can be seen as an important antecedent for a new wave of film melodrama, wenyi pian (文藝片; literally, “art film”), that emerged (p. 57) over subsequent Page 18 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty decades, epitomized by the many renditions of this particular film and other classics, in­ cluding Love without End (不了情, 1947), Spring in a Small Town (小城之春, 1948), and re­ cent productions such as In the Mood for Love (花樣年華, 2000). As a vehicle for Ruan Lingyu’s virtuosity in the roles of both mother and daughter, Love and Duty propelled Lianhua’s mission to raise the quality of Chinese cinema and elevate performers to the status of screen artists. Ruan’s nuanced performance as the tragic Yang Naifan would serve as a template for her greatest films for Lianhua—and, perhaps, for her life. Embodying women who seek independence (or just survival) in the face of con­ vention or oppression, Ruan dramatized many of the tensions in 1930s society and even, in some roles, symbolically enacted the nation’s fraught search for modernity. But where The Goddess and The New Woman would frame the female protagonist within a set of in­ stitutional problems requiring public solutions, Love and Duty offered a more deeply indi­ vidual, private realm that fully displayed the emotional complexity of the actress’s silent gestures and expressions.

Works Cited Ban Xiang 瓣香. “Jieshao jibu fuxing shengzhong de xin guopian” 介紹幾部復興聲中的新國片 [Introducing several new domestic films heralding a renaissance]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 1.7–8 (June 1, 1930): 34–35. Harris, Kristine. “The Goddess: Fallen Woman of Shanghai.” Chinese Films in Fo­ cus: 25 New Takes. Ed. Chris Berry. London: British Film Institute, 2003. 111–119. (p. 60)

Harris, Kristine. “The New Woman Incident: Cinema, Scandal, and Spectacle in 1935 Shanghai.” Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Ed. Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997. 277–302. Ho Ro-se. Love and Duty: The Love Story of a Chinese Girl. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1926, with additional printings in 1927, 1929, 1932. Horose. Nos sangs mêlés. Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Debresse Collection Mondialiste, 1957. Horose, S. La symphonie des ombres chinoises [A symphony of Chinese shadowplay]. Paris: Editions Madeleine, 1932. Horose, S. “Progrès du cinéma dans la Chine moderne” [The progress of cinema in mod­ ern China]. Pour Vous 133 (Apr. 6, 1931): 11. Hua Luo Chen furen 華羅琛夫人. “Zhongguo jindai yingxi jinbu qingxing” 中國近代影戲進步情 形 [The progress of modern Chinese film]. Trans. Lu 廬. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 2.2 (Oct. 1931): 36–37. Hua Xinmin 華新民. Weile buneng shiqu de guxiang 為了不能失去的故鄉 [For a hometown we can’t lose]. Xindian, Taiwan: New Century Publishing Company, 2009. Page 19 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty Huang Yicuo 黃漪磋. “Chuangban Lianhua yingye zhipian yinshua youxian gongsi yuanqi” 創辦聯華影業制片印刷有限公司緣起 [The origins of the establishment of the Lianhua Film Pro­ duction and Printing Company]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 1.9 (Aug. 1, 1930): 44–45. Lee, Haiyan. “From Abroad, with Love: Transnational Texts, Local Critiques.” Tamkang Review 36.4 (Summer 2006): 195–199. Lu Cun 露存 [Luo Chen 羅琛]. Xinwen 心文. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1926. Lu Xun 魯迅. “Lun zhaoxiang zhi lei” 論照相之類 [On photography]. Yusi 語絲 9 (Jan. 12, 1925): 1–3. Luo Chen 羅琛, Lian’ai yu yiwu zengdingben 戀愛與義務: 增訂本 [Love and duty: updated edition]. Shanghai: Commercial Press, Mar. 1934, third printing 1939. Luo Chen furen 羅琛夫人. Lian’ai yu yiwu 戀愛與義務 [Love and duty]. Shanghai: Commer­ cial Press, 1924. Luo Chen nüshi 羅琛女士. Lian’ai yu yiwu 戀愛與義務 [Love and duty]. Serialized in Xi­ aoshuo shijie 小說世界 [Story world] 1.6–13 (1923). Luo Mingyou 羅明佑. “Shezhi Lian’ai yu yiwu zhi yuanyin” 攝制戀愛與義務之遠因 [The rea­ sons for filming Love and Duty]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 1.11–12 (Apr. 1, 1931): 69. Luo Mingyou 羅明佑. “Wei guopian fuxing wenti jinggao tongye shu” 為國片復興問題敬告同業 書 [A letter to members of the industry about the issue of reviving the nation’s cinema]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 1.9 (Aug. 1, 1930): 44–45. Meng 夢. “Yecao xianhua lingwen” 野草閒花玲聞 [A little news about Wild Flower]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 1.9 (Aug. 1, 1930): 51. Meyer, Richard. Ruan Ling-Yu: The Goddess of Shanghai. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univer­ sity Press, 2005. Rothman, William. “The Goddess: Reflections on Melodrama East and West.” Melodrama and Asian Cinema. Ed. Wimal Dissanayake. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 59–72. Tang, Tianran 唐天然. “You yiwei shenqie daonian Lu Xun de guoji youren—lai Hua Faguo wenxuejia Hua Luo Chen” 又一位深切悼念魯迅的國際友人—來華法國文學家華羅琛 [Another in­ ternational friend who grieved for Lu Xun—the French author who came to China, Hua Luo Chen]. Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 鲁迅研究月刊 [Lu Xun research monthly] 5 (1991): 63–66. Ye Limin 葉立民. “Guan Lian’ai yu yiwu hou” 觀『戀愛與義務』後 [After seeing Love and Duty]. Yingxi shenghuo 影戲生活 [Movie weekly], April 17, 1931, 23–24. (p. 61)

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty Yi Zhong 伊重. “Cong Gudu chunmeng shuodao Yecao xianhua ji Lian’ai yu yiwu” 從『故都 春夢』說到『野草閒花』及『戀愛與義務』 [From Spring Dream of the Old Capital through Wild Flower and Love and Duty]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 2.2 (Oct. 1, 1931): 26–33. Zhang Junxiang 張駿祥 and Cheng Jihua 程季華, eds. Zhongguo dianying dacidian 中國電影大 辭典 [Encyclopedia of Chinese cinema]. Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 1995. Zhongguo dianyingjia xiehui dianyingshi yanjiubu 中國電影家協會電影室研究部, ed. Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1985. Zhu Shilin 朱石麟. “Dianying xiaoshuo Lian’ai yu yiwu” 電影小說戀愛與義務 [Film story: Love and Duty]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 1.11–12 (Apr. 1, 1931): 70–71. Zhu Shilin 朱石麟. “Lian’ai yu yiwu zuozhe Luo Chen nüshi zhi zhushu ji qi baofu” 戀愛與義 務作者羅琛女士之著述及其抱負 [The writings and aspirations of Love and Duty author Ms. Luo Chen]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 1.11–12 (Apr. 1, 1931): 69. Zhu Shilin 朱石麟. “Lian’ai yu yiwu: Yibu genju Huabei nüzuojia Luo Hua Chen [sic] furen yuanzhu xiaoshuo biancheng zhi weida tezhipin” 戀愛與義務: 一部根據華北女作家羅華琛夫人原 著小說編成之偉大特製品 [Love and Duty: A work of great distinction adapted from the origi­ nal novel written by female author of North China Madame Luo Hua Chen]. Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine] 1.10 (Oct. 31, 1930): 38–39.

Notes: (1.) Publicity photograph for Love and Duty, in Yingxi zazhi 影戲雜誌 [The film magazine], 1.11–12 (Apr. 1, 1931): 41. The Lianhua company published this periodical with the Eng­ lish title The Film Magazine on the cover alongside its Chinese title; note that Yingxi zazhi also translates, more literally, to Shadowplay Magazine. (2.) Leading a new wave of biographies in Chinese about the actress was the 1985 com­ memorative volume Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1985). English-language analyses of Ruan Lingyu’s films and her life include William Rothman, “The Goddess: Reflections on Melodrama East and West,” Melodrama and Asian Cinema, ed. Wimal Dissanayake (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 59–72; Harris Kristine, “The New Woman Incident: Cinema, Scandal, and Spectacle in 1935 Shanghai,” Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender, ed. Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997), 277–302; Harris Kristine, “The Goddess: Fallen Woman of Shanghai,” Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes, ed. Berry Chris (Lon­ don: British Film Institute, 2003), 111–119; and Meyer Richard, Ruan Ling-Yu: The God­ dess of Shanghai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005). (3.) Huang Yicuo 黃漪磋, “Chuangban Lianhua yingye zhipian yinshua youxian gongsi yuanqi” 創辦聯華影業制片印刷有限公司緣起 [The origins of the establishment of the Lianhua Film Production and Printing Company], and Luo Mingyou 羅明佑, “Wei guopian fuxing wenti jinggao tongye shu” 為國片復興問題敬告同業書 [A letter to members of the industry Page 21 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty about the issue of reviving the nation’s cinema], both in The Film Magazine 1.9 (Aug. 1, 1930.): 44–45. (4.) Advertisement for Lianhua productions, in The Film Magazine 1.10 (Oct. 31, 1930): 15. The original reads: “對抗外國文化經濟之侵略， 宣揚我國民族藝術之美點.” (5.) Advertisement for Lianhua productions, in The Film Magazine 1.10 (Oct. 31, 1930): 15. The original reads: “民族和文化寫實的創作，電影與文藝聯合的先聲， 揭破兩性間的戀愛義務, 表演婦女界的思想委屈.” (6.) Luo Mingyou 羅明佑, “Shezhi Lian’ai yu yiwu zhi yuanyin” 攝制戀愛與義務之遠因 [The reasons for filming Love and Duty], The Film Magazine 1.11–12 (Apr. 1, 1931): 69. (7.) Descriptions of the author’s life vary widely; the details I present here have been cor­ roborated by multiple sources and archival research in China, France, and the United States. (8.) Cai Jiemin 蔡孑民 [Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培], preface (dated Dec. 31, 1921) to Lian’ai yu yiwu 戀愛與義務 [Love and duty], by Luo Chen nüshi 羅琛女士, in Xiaoshuo shijie 小說世界 [Story world] 1.6 (1923): 1; Zhu-Hu Binxia 朱胡彬夏, foreword (dated May 10, 1926) to Xinwen 心 文, by Lu Cun 露存 [Luo Chen 羅琛] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1926); S. Horose, “Pro­ grès du cinéma dans la Chine moderne,” Pour Vous 133 (Apr. 6, 1931): 11; Horose, Nos sangs mêlés (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Debresse Collection Mondialiste, 1957); Tang Tian­ ran 唐天然, “You yiwei shenqie daonian Lu Xun de guoji youren—lai Hua Faguo wenxuejia Hua Luo Chen” 又一位深切悼念魯迅的國際友人—來華法國文學家華羅琛 [Another international friend who grieved for Lu Xun—the French author who came to China, Hua Luo Chen], Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 鲁迅研究月刊[Lu Xun research monthly] 5 (1991): 63–66; Hua Xinmin 華 新民, Weile buneng shiqu de guxiang 為了不能失去的故鄉 [For a hometown we can’t lose] (Xindian, Taiwan: New Century Publishing, 2009). (9.) Luo Chen nüshi 羅琛女士, Lian’ai yu yiwu 戀愛與義務 [Love and duty], serialized in Story World 1.6–13 (1923); Luo Chen furen 羅琛夫人, Lian’ai yu yiwu 戀愛與義務 [Love and duty] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1924); Ho Ro-Se, Love and Duty: The Love Story of a Chi­ nese Girl (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1926, with additional printings in 1927, 1929, and 1932). (10.) Lu 廬, translator’s preface to “Zhongguo jindai yingxi jinbu qingxing” 中國近代影戲進 步情形 [The progress of modern Chinese film], by Hua Luo Chen furen 華羅琛夫人, The Film Magazine 2.2 (Oct. 1931): 36–37. (11.) Cai Jiemin, preface to Love and Duty, 1. (12.) Hu Jichen 胡寄塵, foreword (dated June 1927) to Ta yu ta 她與他 [Her and him], by Hua Luo Chen 華羅琛 (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1928). (13.) Zhu-Hu Binxia 朱胡彬夏, foreword (dated May 10, 1926) to Xinwen 心文, by Lu Cun 露 存 [Luo Chen 羅琛] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1926) Page 22 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty (14.) Hua Luo Chen furen, “Progress of Modern Chinese Film,” 36–37. This article was translated from an article the author also published in France as S. Horose, “Progrès du cinéma dans la Chine moderne.” (15.) Luo Mingyou, “Reasons for Filming Love and Duty,” 69. (16.) Luo Mingyou, “Reasons for Filming Love and Duty,” 69. (17.) Ban Xiang 瓣香, “Jieshao jibu fuxing shengzhong de xin guopian” 介紹幾部復興聲中的新 國片 [Introducing several new domestic films heralding a renaissance], The Film Magazine 1.7–8 (June 1, 1930): 34–35; cast and crew listed in an advance advertisement for Love and Duty, in The Film Magazine 1.10 (Oct. 31, 1930): 1. (18.) Meng 夢, “Yecao xianhua lingwen” 野草閒花玲聞 [A little news about Wild Flower], The Film Magazine 1.9 (Aug. 1, 1930): 51. (19.) Luo Mingyou, “Reasons for Filming Love and Duty,” 69. (20.) See Zhu Shilin 朱石麟, “Lian’ai yu yiwu zuozhe Luo Chen nüshi zhi zhushu ji qi baofu” 戀愛與義務作者羅琛女士之著述及其抱負 [The writings and aspirations of Love and Duty author Ms. Luo Chen], The Film Magazine 1.11–12 (Apr. 1, 1931): 69. The longer Chinese edition of Luo Chen’s novel was eventually published three years after the film’s release, as dis­ cussed below. (21.) S. Horose, La symphonie des ombres chinoises [A symphony of Chinese shadowplay] (Paris: Editions Madeleine, 1932). (22.) Zhang Junxiang 張駿祥 and Cheng Jihua 程季華, eds., Zhongguo dianying dacidian 中國 電影大辭典 [Encyclopedia of Chinese cinema] (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 1995), 1387–1388. (23.) Zhu Shilin, “Writings and Aspirations,” 69. (24.) Zhu Shilin, “Dianying xiaoshuo Lian’ai yu yiwu” 電影小說 戀愛與義務 [Film story: Love and Duty], The Film Magazine 1.11–12 (Apr. 1, 1931): 70–71; Zhu Shilin “Writings and As­ pirations,” 69. (25.) Love and Duty opened on April 5 at Shanghai’s Guanghua Daxiyuan (光華大戲院) on Beijing Road and Nanjing’s Guomin daxiyuan (國民大戲院). The film also ran at Fu’an Daxiyuan 福安大戲院 in Shanghai and at Henan Daxiyuan 河南大戲院 in Tianjin, among oth­ er locations. Advertisements in The Film Magazine 1.11–12 (Apr. 1, 1931): 41. (26.) Ye Limin 葉立民, “Guan Lian’ai yu yiwu hou” 觀『戀愛與義務』後 [After seeing Love and Duty], Yingxi shenghuo 影戲生活 [Movie weekly], April 17, 1931, 23–24. (27.) Zhu Shilin, “Writings and Aspirations,” 69. (28.) Shenbao zengkan 申報 增刊 [Shenbao supplement], April 5, 1931, 7. Page 23 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty (29.) Runtimes for the extant print of Love and Duty vary depending on the projection speed used. The extant thirteen-reel film runs anywhere from 152 to 180 minutes when projected at the speed of nineteen to twenty-two frames per second appropriate to silent films made in China during this period. This chapter discusses the extant film alongside printed sources; the editing history is analyzed in further detail elsewhere, in my ongoing book project. (30.) Luo Mingyou, “Reasons for Filming Love and Duty,” 69. (31.) Meng, “A Little News about Wild Flower,” 51. (32.) Yi Zhong, “From Spring Dream of the Old Capital,” 32–33. (33.) For one example, see Yi Zhong, “From Spring Dream of the Old Capital,” 33. (34.) Lu Xun 魯迅, “Lun zhaoxiang zhi lei” 論照相之類 [On photography], Yusi 語絲 9 (Jan. 12, 1925): 1–3, available in English translation in Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945, trans. and ed. Kirk Denton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 196–203. (35.) See Haiyan Lee, “From Abroad, with Love: Transnational Texts, Local Critiques,” Tamkang Review 36.4 (Summer 2006): 195–199. (36.) Zhu Shilin 朱石麟, “Lian’ai yu yiwu: Yibu genju Huabei nüzuojia Luo Hua Chen [sic] furen yuanzhu xiaoshuo biancheng zhi weida tezhipin” 戀愛與義務: 一部根據華北女作家羅華琛 夫人原著小說編成之偉大特製品 [Love and Duty: A work of great distinction adapted from the original novel written by female author of North China Madame Luo Hua Chen],” The Film Magazine 1.10 (Oct. 31, 1930): 38–39. (37.) Ho Ro-Se, Love and Duty; Horose, La symphonie des ombres chinoises; Luo Chen 羅 琛, Lian’ai yu yiwu zengdingben 戀愛與義務: 增訂本 [Love and Duty: updated edition] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, Mar. 1934, third printing 1939).

Kristine Harris

Kristine Harris is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at the State Uni­ versity of New York at New Paltz, and has also served twice as Visiting Associate Pro­ fessor in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Her recent writing on Chinese film and cultural history appears in Opera Quarterly: Performance + The­ ory + History (Spring-Summer 2010), edited by Judith Zeitlin & Paola Iovene; The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s, edited by Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco, with a foreword by Linda Nochlin (University of Michigan Press, 2011); Gender and Chinese Cinema: New Interventions, edited by Mary Ann Doane and Lingzhen Wang (Columbia Univer­ sity Press, forthcoming 2012); and Images in History: Pictures and Public Space in

Page 24 of 25

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Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty Modern China, edited by Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh (University of Califor­ nia Berkeley Institute for East Asian Studies, forthcoming 2012).

Page 25 of 25

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China

Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China   David Der-wei Wang The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0004

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses a turning point of Chinese cinematic aesthetics in the late 1940s. It focuses on two movies directed by Fei Mu, Eternal Regret and Spring in a Small Town. These two films, one featuring the stylized performance of Mei Lanfang, the greatest fe­ male impersonator of Beijing opera, and the other a realist melodrama of a wartime ro­ mance amid ruins, are very different projects. But the fact that they were shot back to back points to something more than a mere coincidence. It renders a compelling story of how Fei Mu, with the inspiration of Mei Lanfang, negotiated a new way of screening Chi­ na, and more intriguingly, how he produced a radical manifestation of cinematic “Chine­ seness” where it was least expected. Keywords: lyricism, air, Beijing opera, war, melodrama

This chapter focuses on Fei Mu 費穆 and his two 1948 films, Eternal Regret (生死恨) and Spring in a Small Town (小城之春). One of the most influential Chinese directors of the twentieth century, Fei Mu has been nicknamed “poet director” for his experimentation with form, penchant for symbolism, and philosophical contemplation of film as a modern visual medium of subjectivity.1 In the spring of 1948, Fei Mu made Eternal Regret—the first color picture of Chinese cinema—in collaboration with Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳, master of female impersonation and the most innovative and popular Beijing opera singer in mod­ ern China. Almost at the same time, Fei Mu directed Spring in a Small Town, regarded by many critics as the best Chinese movie ever made.2 By relating the way in which the two movies were conceived and produced, I make the following observations. First, through Eternal Regret and Spring in a Small Town, Fei Mu ponders the fate of modern Chinese visual subjectivity not as an isolated existence but as a continued manifestation of historical experience across different periods, realities, and technologies; second, to envision such a subjectivity, he calls on the visual power of Chi­ nese lyrical practices ranging from Mei Lanfang’s theatrics to classical Chinese painting theory, as well as on cinematic know-how, and invests them with a dynamics of mutual il­ lumination; third, highlighting cinema’s capacity for generating lyrical aura, he asserts Page 1 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China that it is the most viable manifestation of Chinese “poetic mind” in an age of mechanical reproduction. These factors, I argue, provide the context within which Fei Mu came to terms with the polemics of Chinese “national cinema.” Cinema and Beijing opera were two of the most popular forms of performing arts in early modern China. Despite sharing little common ground in terms of their historical origin, aesthetic appeal, and visual technology, the two forms appeared to reciprocate each other as early as the incipient moment of Chinese moviemaking. Dingjun Mountain (定軍山, 1905), the first movie made in China, was based on a Beijing opera of the same title. By the midthirties, moviemakers and critics such as Tian Han 田漢 (p. 63) and Mao Dun 茅盾 had already noticed the reciprocal relations between the two forms in psychological input and technological effect. In view of the recent campaign to make Beijing opera “national drama,”3 these critics sought to elucidate the conditions of “national cinema.”4 Among these moviemakers and critics, none could surpass Fei Mu in either theory or practice. Eternal Regret and Spring in a Small Town represent the outcomes of his long and tortuous engagement with cinema and traditional theater. The two movies are very different projects, but the fact that they were shot back-to-back points to something more than a mere coincidence. As will be discussed below, when juxtaposed with one another, the two films present a compelling story of how Fei Mu, with the inspiration of Mei Lan­ fang, negotiated a new way of screening China and, more intriguingly, how he produced a radical manifestation of cinematic “Chineseness” where it was least expected.

In Search of the “Air” of Chinese Cinema Before he became a director, Fei Mu served as assistant to Hou Yao 侯曜, film director and author of Techniques of Writing Shadowplay Scripts (影戲劇本作法, 1925), the first theory book about making Chinese cinema. Hou Yao shared with his peers a view of cinema as a kind of theater, calling it yingxi 影戲 (literally, “shadowplay”); he also noted that cinema conveys a far more powerful sense of realism thanks to the mediation of modern technol­ ogy.5 Echoing Ferdinand Brunetière’s notion, Hou contended that “no struggle, no dra­ ma” and argued for a structure with which to incorporate the elements of conflict, such as crisis, confrontation, and obstacle, into a meaningful matrix.6 Fei Mu’s first three movies, Night in the City (城市之夜, 1933), Life (人生, 1934), and Sea of Fragrant Snow (香雪海, 1934), reveal the tension between him and both his mentor and the majority of directors of his time. Where Hou Yao stresses conflict, Fei Mu relieves it; and where Hou Yao upholds structure, Fei Mu subverts it. Thus when Hou Yao and his peers were approaching cinema in terms of the familiar genre of theater, Fei Mu was al­ ready trying to locate in film a new set of visual and cognitive schemes. His stance is best represented in the essay “A Brief Discussion of ‘Air’” (略談“空氣,” 1934), in which he pro­ poses that a director should be good at creating “air”—the invisible yet crucial element that enlivens cinema—so as to “capture his audience’s attention and make them assimilat­

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China ed with the circumstances of the characters.”7 He argues that this “air” can be generated in four ways: First, from the function of the camera on its own terms; second, from the object of the camera; third, from a suggestive mise-en-scène, fourth, from sound effect.8 For Fei Mu, the camera eye, thanks to its technological virtuosity, is far more agile than human vision, and it therefore brings about a visual wonder beyond the verisimilar effect of live theater. In other words, though committed to the reflective power of (p. 64) cinema, Fei Mu contends that the camera is capable of creating reality on a different plane. He notices that various types of “air” arise when “cinematography is linked with the objects being filmed”9 and that the “ob­ jects” can be either drawn from the world of nature or constituted by artifice.

As in real life, “air” is the indispensable element that enlivens cinema, while it comes across as anything but visible. “Air” can only be hinted at rather than presented; it never­ theless presupposes a careful design of camerawork. Thus, one finds a paradox in Fei Mu’s essay, in that he seeks to utilize the new, powerful specular apparatus of cinema to approximate an invisible atmosphere. Optical setup and visual spontaneity are seen as mutually implicating each other, thus generating the fantastic effect of movies. Nevertheless, Fei Mu adds a polemical layer to his theory by calling attention to “new drama” (新劇). New drama is a hybrid genre inspired by both traditional Chinese and re­ cently imported Western theater; its boisterous, sensational effect is anything but the “air” Fei Mu hopes to achieve in his movies. Interestingly enough, Fei Mu found in new drama a special realistic appeal thanks to its hybrid combination of topical subjects, strange innovations, and stylized performative skill derived from traditional theater. Moreover, Fei Mu was impressed by the moral bearings embedded in new drama, such that he deplored the recent proliferation of movies with nonsensical, fantastic elements.10 Beyond surface tears and exclamations, as he would have it, new drama brings forth the “moral occult,” elucidating virtues and vices of humanity otherwise eclipsed in actual life.11 Vacillating between the appeal of the ethereal “air” of cinema and the call for the “moral occult” of new drama, Fei Mu had yet to find a way to smooth over the inconsistencies of his claims. But precisely because his claims are glaringly contradictory, we are prompted to rethink the magnitude of his stake in reforming Chinese visual aesthetics and ethics. Fei Mu’s efforts at negotiating theater and cinema are illustrated by his next few pic­ tures. Song of China (天倫, 1934), for instance, tells of the story of a prodigal son turned benevolent Confucian patriarch over a span of three generations. While made as part of the national campaign for the New Life Movement, the movie nonetheless shows Fei Mu’s intent to valorize Confucian values in the post–May Fourth era—for which he earned the nickname “Modern Saint” (摩登聖人).12 As if responding to the criticism that he was indifferent to the impending national crisis, Fei Mu tried to highlight in his movies his political agenda in the midthirties. Blood on Wolf Mountain (狼山喋血記, 1936), his first sound movie, propagates the theme of antiJapanese aggression. Fei Mu’s experimentation during this time culminated in a short fea­ Page 3 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China ture An Interrupted Dream in a Spring Chamber (春閨夢斷, 1937), one of the eight episodes of the omnibus work Symphony of Lianhua Studio (聯華交響曲).13 His patriotic in­ tention notwithstanding, Fei Mu is said to have been much struck by Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920);14 indeed, the attention that An Interrupted Dream lavishes on distorted set design, active camera angles, sharp lighting contrast, and stylized acting carries clear imprints of German expressionist cinema. At the same time, Fei Mu demonstrated his national consciousness by undertaking a very different kind of movie—the Beijing opera film Murder in an Oratory (斬經堂, 1937). The movie starred Zhou Xinfang 周信芳 (also known as Qiling Tong 麒麟童), (p. 65) one of the most popular actors in the male role (laosheng 老生) in 1930s China. Murder in an Oratory raises two questions with respect to Fei Mu’s cinematic aesthetics. First, for all his fond­ ness for Beijing opera, Fei Mu had been resistant to making films based squarely on tradi­ tional theater. Cinema, as he maintained, should enjoy a position independent of drama. Second, a more immediate reason for Fei Mu to take up Beijing opera at this time stemmed from his desire to respond to the call for nationalism within the film industry.15 While both Blood on Wolf Mountain and An Interrupted Dream carry a patriotic theme, the expressionist style in which they are made still suggests Fei Mu’s attachment to West­ ern inspirations. Fei Mu may have asked himself: If he meant to promote a genuinely “Chinese” culture, wouldn’t it be a new challenge, or mission, to make a movie of Beijing opera, the “national drama”? Here Fei Mu’s task lies not merely in reconciling his person­ al taste for “air” and the inherent sensationalism of traditional theater, as discussed above; he also has to deal with the more slippery issue of what constitutes the Chinese­ ness of Chinese cinema. Take Murder in an Oratory. The movie could easily be identified as “Chinese” for its story, which presents Confucian values of loyalty and filial piety in conflict, or merely for its cos­ tume, music, and setting. But what intrigued Fei Mu is the fact that Beijing opera, despite its melodramatic plot and high-strung emotional charge, is predicated on a theatrics through which actions are aestheticized and emotions codified. If there is an affective mo­ tive to speak of, it has less to do with empathy than with a “distanced” sympathy. Hence Beijing opera produces a unique effect of catharsis, in the sense that the audience under­ goes not so much a “purification” from pity and fear as an acquiescence to the stylized representation of human conditions. Nevertheless, despite his theoretical engagement, Fei Mu experienced unexpected hur­ dles when shooting Murder in an Oratory. Fei Mu and Zhou Xinfang are said to have ne­ gotiated numerous times before they were finally able to reach a compromise on issues that concerned them. To suggest a theatrical ambiance, Fei Mu had his camera positioned mostly at a middle or long distance throughout the movie and was restrained in present­ ing action and mood. Still, for those not familiar with Beijing opera, the movie may look like no more than a screen reproduction of traditional performance. The cut from exterior to interior scenes and from stylized to realistic gestures and props is often so abrupt as to exaggerate the gap between the two genres. Fei Mu sounded sincere when he later claimed that he had yet to grasp the method of making a “Chinese” movie: its fundamen­ Page 4 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China tal challenge is “not so much a problem of technique as one of artistry.”16 Fei Mu’s search for this “artistry” was to be realized only after his encounter with Mei Lanfang, the most illustrious figure of Beijing opera.

Eternal Regret In the winter of 1947, Fei Mu paid a visit to Mei Lanfang and proposed to collaborate with him on a Beijing opera movie in color, which would be the first color picture ever to be made in China. The two first met in Hong Kong in the late 1930s, and for their project (p. 66) they settled on the opera Eternal Regret. Premiering in 1936, the opera was de­ rived from an early Ming story about the adventures of a woman, Han Yuniang, after the 1129 fall of the Northern Song dynasty to the Nüzhen Tartars. Yuniang falls into the hands of a Tartar lord and is forced to marry a fellow Han slave, Cheng Pengju. She per­ suades Cheng to flee south on their wedding night, only to be turned in by him out of fear. Upon seeing Yuniang being brutally punished, Cheng becomes convinced of her loyalty and fidelity. He acts on her wish to flee and join the Song army and eventually becomes a governor. For years Cheng misses his wife, but when he finally finds her, it is too late. Al­ ready wasted from hardship and longing, Yuniang dies the moment she is reunited with her husband. Mei Lanfang produced Eternal Regret on the eve of the Second Sino-Japanese War, with a clear goal of critiquing Japanese expansionism and propagating patriotism. In the after­ math of the war, both Mei and Fei Mu believed that the opera’s nationalist theme re­ mained as powerful as it had been when the opera was first performed, its political poignancy only accentuated as a result of the emerging civil war. The play’s tragic end­ ing, a rarity in the repertoire of Beijing opera, appealed to them, as it foregrounds the contingency of history that befell common men and women. Mei Lanfang was no newcomer to filmmaking. He shot his first movie as early as 1920, and by 1947 he had starred in eight features.17 When visiting the United States in 1930, Mei made his first sound film and befriended stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fair­ banks, and Mary Pickford.18 On his tour of the Soviet Union in 1935, Mei not only met with Sergei Eisenstein but also shot an episode of his performance of Hongniguan 虹霓关 [Hongni pass] at the latter’s invitation.19 As is evinced by his recollection, Mei was at­ tuned to the unique technological and aesthetic demands of filmmaking, particularly the “segmentation” of camerawork, which results in a continued reorientation of time, mood, and bodily movement. When making silent films in early years, Mei tried to time his ges­ tural rhythm and expression in such a way as to evoke a “visual” effect of singing.20 Upon the advent of sound-track technology, he took it as a great advantage to have his image and voice disseminated to the audiences far and wide. Constantly pursuing ways to en­ hance his performance, Mei was naturally attracted to the prospect of producing the first color picture in China. When implementing Mei Lanfang’s art into cinematic production, Fei Mu came across no fewer hurdles than before. He still had to deal with the fundamental discrepancies be­ Page 5 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China tween the abstraction of Beijing opera and the verisimilar appeal of cinema. He was de­ termined not to make a documentary-like movie of Eternal Regret and instead hoped to draw inspiration from the vocal and choreographic configuration of musicals. Meanwhile, he looked to the style of classical Chinese painting to generate a suggestive ambience. One major attraction of the new movie was the adoption of color, which presumably would enhance the power of visual spectacle on the screen. Fei Mu, however, contended that “if color is toned down, it could become more beautiful,” although “if a certain color is toned up, feeling could become more beautiful.”21 Accordingly, actors were asked to wear lighter makeup, and the set and costumes were designed to downplay their color scheme, while Fei Mu paid special attention to lighting so as to foreground the “color” of the mood of select scenes.22 Above all, Fei Mu had to work closely with Mei Lanfang in turning the master’s acting into one suitable for the camera. As Mei recalled, before formal work started, Fei Mu test-shot a segment of his performance in a conventional stage format, with no realis­ tic props or backgrounds except for a customary set consisting of a table and two chairs. Much to Mei’s dismay, the footage looked tedious and banal, a sharp contrast to his on­ stage performances. Fei Mu concluded that camera projection had “flattened” the three(p. 67)

dimensional stage performance into a “shadowplay” devoid of sculptural perception. En­ livening Mei’s on-screen performance necessitated a rethinking of not only acting skill but cinematic technology. Our focus here is the climax of the play, “night soliloquy” (夜訴), in which Yuniang, now in exile, is seen weaving alone at night while recollecting the trials she has gone through. In the stage performance, Yuniang sings for as long as twenty minutes and is seated throughout her singing, her physical movement reduced to a few gestures of weaving. This is a moment of lyrical caesura, so to speak, when motion gives way to emotion, and it requires an acting of the most subtle kind to bring out the psychological turmoil under­ neath bodily composure. Fei Mu did not think the night scene would work well on screen: it would appear too long and tedious for a “motion” picture. To redesign the scene, he ordered a real, oversized loom in replacement of the original prop, and asked Mei Lanfang to figure out a way to interact with it. This was a huge challenge for Mei because, for one thing, the size of the loom was such that it might overshadow him were he to sing sitting next to or behind it. A more serious concern, however, was that the loom appeared to be an intrusion into a per­ formance system premised on stylization and symbolism. It reminded Mei and his audi­ ence of the fact that a clumsy “reality” had set in, demanding its place in an acting that otherwise programs a given experience into conventions. Although scholars have expressed reservations about this scene,23 I take it as a crucial moment of Fei Mu’s intervention with the representational paradigm of Beijing opera. I argue that the loom is as much a realistic object as it is a tool with which Fei Mu shocked his cast and audience into a cinematic re-vision of traditional theater. To begin with, Fei Mu had Mei Lanfang perform with not one but two “machines”: Mei is confronted by a Page 6 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China life-size loom; meanwhile he is also watched by a camera. Both machines, however differ­ ent in function, are set up in the name of recapitulating reality more accurately. Mei therefore had to significantly modify his movement to accommodate both the loom and the camera. But one has to keep in mind that Fei Mu is not a simple-minded believer in the stark real­ ism of moviemaking. He must have pondered: If Beijing opera is already an art heavily mediated by conventions, what kind of “effect of the real” can a Beijing opera movie bring about through a camera lens? By disturbing the aesthetic equilibrium of Mei Lanfang’s acting with the conventional prop loom, Fei Mu introduced an “air” into his film. This “air” points not so much to a verisimilar illusion as to the contested effect of theater ver­ sus screen, bodily semblance versus mechanical reproduction. We need to pay equal attention to Mei Lanfang’s contribution to the movie. A conscien­ tious artist, Mei spent many sleepless nights trying to find a way to incorporate the loom (p. 68) into his acting before the camera, and the result was most inspiring. As seen in the movie, Mei does not sit through the “night soliloquy” scene as in his onstage perfor­ mance; rather, he moves around the loom, demonstrating a variety of gestures, such as leaning on it, dusting its parts, weaving with a shuttle, and occasionally pausing and pon­ dering—all while singing his arias. Instead of acting with the loom, Mei acts on it in the sense that he treats it as that which motivates his feeling and movement. The loom, a quintessential token of female productivity in ancient China,24 appears first to be a re­ minder of Yuniang’s gratuitous labor; it nevertheless takes on a new dimension along with her weaving and singing. Stranded in a foreign place, Yuniang is wasting away year after year. But she has to weave to make a living and sustain her waiting, to the point where the mechanical rhythm of the loom seems resonant with the Sisyphean soundings from her heart. The loom ends up becoming a testimony to the Chinese Penelope’s romantic and loyalist feeling. Moviemaking thus prompts Mei to play out a fundamental Chinese lyrical motif— from ganwu 感物 (feeling the object/world) to ganwu 感悟 (epiphany). One recalls that, ety­ mologically, the Chinese character shu 抒 (unravel, release) in shuqing 抒情, or “lyricism,” is interchangeable with the character 杼, which is pronounced zhu and literally means “loom.” In other words, Mei’s interaction with the loom brings back to mind the bifurcat­ ed faculty inherent in Chinese lyricism: to unravel, and at the same time to weave, the ta­ pestry of feeling. Where Mei Lanfang lends his magical touch to the loom, Fei Mu works with his camera to capture the lyrical “air” of the scene as a whole. He lets his camera first pan across the domestic space, and then focus on Yuniang’s interaction with the loom. With a few shots from a slightly elevated angle, his camera tracks Mei’s movement horizontally, at a pace in response to the tempo of his singing. This camera rarely gets too close to Mei, but it follows his movement around the loom, providing the audience with an almost 360-de­ gree shot of Mei at work. In this way, Fei Mu renders a visual access to Mei Lanfang the theater audience could never have achieved. Page 7 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China But Fei Mu’s camerawork is not merely a showing off of its optical agility; it acts as a con­ duit through which a new configuration of perceptions comes into sight. We thus come across a most intriguing moment. When panning across the set in following Mei, Fei Mu’s camera at least twice captures a glimpse of another, smaller loom—in the shape of the miniature prop one would have expected to see on the conventional stage. The coexis­ tence of the two looms could hardly have been mere coincidence, given Fei Mu’s meticu­ lous attention to mise-en-scène. For viewers familiar with Mei Lanfang’s onstage perfor­ mances, the miniature prop loom is not a redundant entity of the otherwise minimalist set, but rather a token of the residual memory of Mei’s onstage performance, a trace that lingers behind any effort at “undoing” the past. The two looms, therefore, offset each other’s claim to realism as much as they contextualize each other’s function in bridging life and artistic representation. The “night soliloquy” scene culminates with Yuniang falling asleep in the intermission of her work. Yuniang has a dream in which she finds her humble residence turning into a splendid edifice and her shabby clothes transformed into a set of luxurious garments, while a jubilant procession has arrived to welcome her to a reunion with her (p. 69) hus­ band. Fei Mu uses a series of dissolves to effect an instantaneous, mutual diffusion of the real and the fantastic, something not easily achievable by stage production. He also uses a reddish hue of lighting to suggest a festive mood, as opposed to the bluish color scheme that dominates the weaving scene. More importantly, Fei Mu lets his camera pan back and forth to expose the fact that Yuniang’s house is actually part of a larger, empty studio set. The opening up of the optical scope, together with the use of dissolves, vividly re­ minds us that all happenings in the play, life or death, reality or dream, are forming a con­ tiguous relationship under the spell of the camera. In this way, Fei Mu uses camerawork to advance his poetics of life as illusion versus realism.

Spring in a Small Town Although preparation work started in the winter of 1947, the shooting of Eternal Regret was put off till the following summer for financial and technical reasons. In the spring of 1948, when waiting for the logistics for producing Eternal Regret to be resolved, Fei Mu found himself in a window period. It was at this time that he was given a script titled Spring in a Small Town and took interest in it. Fei Mu took up the project and finished it in three months, with a cast of five actors mostly unknown to audiences at the time. Spring in a Small Town was nevertheless to become a landmark picture, having even been ranked the best in the first century of Chinese cinematic history.25 Much has been said about Spring in a Small Town as a poetic movie. But one has yet to in­ quire into how Fei Mu’s movie works to bring out his poetics. In his essay “On the Future of Chinese-Made Cinema” (國產片的出路問題)—written right before the shooting of Spring in a Small Town—Fei Mu points out three challenges faced by Chinese moviemakers: first, the lack of facilities and well-trained actors; second, a stress on “content,” often motivat­ ed by propaganda and didacticism, at the expense of “form”; and third, a conflict between realism and romanticism. Fei Mu is particularly concerned about the third challenge. He Page 8 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China acknowledges that conscientious Chinese directors never follow the Hollywood trend by making only crowd-pleasers but rather strive to “face up to reality,” with the result that their works are “closer to the European trend, showing more subjectivity in skill.”26 Fei Mu welcomes this European inclination, but he deplores that in displaying their “subjec­ tive” sensibility vis-à-vis reality, most of his fellow directors merely let sentimentalism take over, such that they fall prey to a crude presentation of romanticism plus realism, “totally incongruous with the coherent style required of a film.”27 Fei Mu’s concern boils down to the question of how, given its limited resources, a “Chinese made” movie could demonstrate a “subjective” reflection of reality while succumbing neither to emotional ex­ cess nor to artistic formulism. Spring in a Small Town showcases Fei Mu’s concern as well as his answer to it. The story of Spring in a Small Town takes place one year after the end of the Sino-Japan­ ese War (1946), while the movie itself was made one year before the Chinese Communist takeover of the mainland (1949). The historical implications of Fei Mu’s project could not have been clearer: To what extent can a movie, presumably a most (p. 70) accurate vehi­ cle of visual representation, register the sentiment of his time? Just the year before (1947), three films had won huge box-office success, Far-Away Love (遙遠的愛), Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon (八千里路雲和月), and A Spring River Flows East (一江 春水向東流). These movies all deal with the consequences of the war, and they are all pack­ aged in a melodramatic form, or what Fei Mu would have called “romanticism plus real­ ism.” They address a cluster of political or ethical concerns—such as ideological alle­ giance, family responsibility, and marital fidelity—that challenge Chinese humanity when all values were turned upside down. Fei Mu made his movie an intriguing dialogue with this trend. Roaming atop a ruined city wall every day, his heroine, Zhou Yuwen, is a woman trapped in a lifeless marriage with Dai Liyan, the bed-ridden master of a decayed household. Yuwen’s romantic passion is rekindled when her first love, Zhang Zhichen, who happens to be Liyan’s close friend, pays them a surprise visit. The triangle quickly becomes too much to bear for all three parties. With such a plot Fei Mu could have easily made a tearjerker of Spring in a Small Town, thereby aligning himself with the directors of the aforementioned movies. Howev­ er, Fei Mu “reprogrammed” the emotional input of the story at both public and personal levels and produced a movie full of psychological nuances and poetic undertones. Spring in a Small Town ends with “nothing” really happening. After much inner struggle, Yuwen decides to stay with her husband; we last see her and Liyan standing together on the top of the city wall, watching Zhichen leave. Leftist critics have criticized the decadent, ambiguous mood of the movie, while sympa­ thetic reviewers have argued that Fei Mu deserves praise precisely because he conveys the pervasive melancholy at a time when nothing seemed to hold firm any more. Neither side, however, was able to offer more insight into how sentiment could be modulated to represent the impending historical crisis, let alone how an “air” could be conjured up to

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China characterize a “national movie” about such a crisis.28 Fei Mu has famously written about his motive and methodology of shooting Spring in a Small Town: In order to transmit the gloomy mood of old China, I have undertaken a presump­ tuous and daring experimentation with my work, relying on “long take” and “slow motion” (without seeking any further craft). As a result, the movie comes across as being too dull….The playwright hoped to make a movie that neither cries out nor points a way out. For me, however, to make such a movie is far less easy or power­ ful than a production based on either sentimentalism or didacticism….The only thing I can offer to console myself, however ironically, is that I did not play with any craft.29 Here Fei Mu notes two specific techniques that he uses in his film: the long take and slow mo­ tion.

As repeatedly observed by critics, Spring in a Small Town is dominated by long takes, which efficiently slow down the sense of temporality, as opposed to the more popular de­ vice of montage often adopted by mainstream films. Fei Mu’s long takes, however, are never monotonous, extended shots over a length of time, but rather are endowed with nu­ anced devices aimed at multiple associations with feeling. Props, paraphernalia, (p. 71) lighting, and setting are all carefully arranged. Stage direction plays an equally important role. Related to Fei Mu’s long takes is his preference for dissolves. Compared with cuts, dissolves facilitate a smoother and more rhythmic transition within individual and be­ tween scenes. Within a single scene, dissolves function to suggest changing perspectives of the mind’s eye of either characters or implied viewers. In Li Cheuk-to’s 李焯桃 words, “Dissolves bring in a sense of continuity….The film’s long takes linked together by dis­ solves are so constructed that conflicts and contradictions develop within the same space.”30 Take the scene of Yuwen and Zhichen’s meeting on the city wall, which presents Liyan’s plan to have Zhichen marry Dai Xiu, Liyan’s sister. Fei Mu uses three dissolves, each showing Yuwen and Zhichen taking different positions against the same back­ ground, to intimate the passage of time and the pressure of prolonged uncertainty during the talk. When Yuwen finally tells Zhichen her decision, that she will stay, the scene cuts to her running away from the wall, an action that offsets the preceding, almost dreamlike, sequence composed of dissolves. Fei Mu’s frequent use of long takes has been cited as a Chinese response to the theory of his contemporary, André Bazin.31 Bazin critiques the artificial collage of montage and its implied ideology relating to time and space, promoting instead a stark cinematic realism that can bring out the ontological state of the real in flux through the camera lens. Not unlike Bazin, Fei Mu stresses cinema’s capacity for screening the world as it “really is.” But when coming to the issue of what constitutes the real, Fei Mu has a rather different take. If Bazin brings realism to showcase a Bergsonian obsession with the flux of time and subjectivity’s vital position along with time,32 Fei Mu emphasizes not the existential po­ tential embedded in film but its continuous interplay with fullness and emptiness, truth­ fulness and fictionality, on- and off-screen. He is more concerned with how cinema can capture the layered emotive implications of humanity vis-à-vis external stimuli, and how Page 10 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China cinema can lend an aesthetic and ethical perspective through which fragments of life can be sutured and floating moods can be anchored, however tentatively. This leads us to rethink the way Fei Mu brings long takes to bear on the aesthetics of vi­ suality in the Chinese tradition. Just like a classical hand-scroll painting that calls forth moveable, changing viewpoints, Fei Mu achieves through his camerawork multiple per­ spectives. Instead of a panoramic view, the scroll-like horizontal camerawork renders scenes in a series of seemingly inexhaustible segments, thereby giving rise to proliferat­ ing perspectives. Such a device encourages viewers to make associations with scenes continually coming into, and falling out of, sight; it thereby gives rise to a configuration of time and space in sharp contrast with that of pictures based on perspectivism.33 Take the birthday party scene in which the feeling between Yuwen and Zhichen finally be­ comes “visible” to Liyan. The camera pans to introduce a series of interactions between wife and husband, wife and lover, wife and her sister-in-law, and servant and master. When everyone appears increasingly taken over by the mood of inebriation, the ethical, romantic, and class orders they otherwise would have observed start to dissolve. The scene was originally shot in a single take, and if it had not been well rehearsed, Fei Mu would not have been able to control so precisely the multiple actions along with (p. 72) the same time sequence. Fei Mu’s camera moves continually throughout the long take, as if driven by a curiosity of its own about the goings-on both between and within the char­ acters. Moreover, to build up the tension, Fei Mu cuts the footage so as to flaunt key mo­ ments of changing perspectives. The result is a series of montages—within the drinking take—of skewed relations among the characters that unfold amid the noises of the wine game, under glimmering lamplight, in a cramped space of a traditional Chinese house. Equally suggestive is Fei Mu’s use of slow motion as a companion technique of the long take. By slow motion, however, Fei Mu does not mean a technique of overcranking the film; Spring in a Small Town features no part where the speed of images actually slows down. Rather, he points to a special acting and directing style that creates the impression that action becomes protracted and mood prolonged. Fei Mu explains that he adopts this sort of slow motion so as to foreground a group of figures lagging behind their time and incapable of real action—and in this respect it resembles one of Anton Chekhov’s plays. But one wonders if perhaps Fei Mu did not play with a more polemic thought. Just as he invests in long takes a spatial view of Chinese reality, Fei Mu uses slow motion as a way to intervene with time. Slow motion offers a different pace in one’s conceptualization of time and history, in contrast to the contemporary call for a quick fix of the status quo though war and revolution. Slow motion also means a stylized motion, one informed by aesthetic imaginaries and movements with an aim to reconfigure the relationships be­ tween the subject and the world, distance and proximity. Finally, when it holds the diege­ sis of a movie at such a dawdling pace, almost to the point of a pause, slow motion tends to “spatialize” time, calling attention to the multiple layers of reality in a synchronized zone.

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China Fei Mu’s major source of inspiration has to be Mei Lanfang. It was in the early 1940s that Fei Mu became increasingly familiar with Mei and with Mei’s art. As Fei Mu sees it, the charm of Mei Lanfang’s performance resides in its smooth oscillation between mimetic identification and self-alienation, such that it gives rise to a rhythmic shuffling between life and acting. For him, Mei neither lets himself be completely overtaken by his role nor deliberately calls forth an “alienation effect.” Performance is therefore treated like an event in its own right, like any other that sets in motion the fiduciary relationships be­ tween self and other, existential temporality and historical flow. Finally, I call attention to the fact that Spring in a Small Town was made during the inter­ im of the production of Eternal Regret, and with this context in mind, its aesthetic premise, performative style, and even ideological underpinning can be appreciated in re­ lation to those informing the Beijing opera movie. In the opera, Han Yuniang and Cheng Pengju are Han slaves whom their barbarian lord has arranged to have marry each other. Although they have little romantic attachment to speak of, they share the same loyalism that becomes the catalyst of their eventual emotional bonding. Years of separation and hardship cannot diminish their mutual trust; but when their reunion turns out to be a time for eternal farewell, we are brought to witness the harsh outcome of individual fate versus historical contingency—hence “eternal regret.” (p. 73)

When transforming this play into a movie, Fei Mu was bound to ask himself: Could

the story of Eternal Regret, which was first staged as a patriotic play on the eve of the Se­ cond Sino-Japanese War, still mean anything to Chinese audiences after the war? It is at this juncture that Spring in a Small Town offers an ironic counterexample. In the movie, Yuwen and Zhichen were in love before the war broke out. Despite Zhichen’s request that they leave for the hinterland together, Yuwen chose to stay and ended up marrying Liyan. The lovers’ reunion eight years later brings them “regret,” too—regret about failed promise, thwarted passion, and wasted time. Both cases show the conflicts between morality and passion underlining the changing ethos of the time, and both feature a young woman made to test, and being tested by, the new boundaries of beliefs and values. Whereas Yuniang embodies unwavering loyalism and endurance, Yuwen appears torn between romantic love and marital duty; whereas Yu­ niang dies a tragic death to consummate her dedication, Yuwen decides to reconcile her­ self with the status quo. To be sure, Eternal Regret and Spring in a Small Town are different projects. I suggest nevertheless that they are related like the print of a film and its negative, furnishing the contradictory and complementary sides of a Fei Mu take on Chinese reality. Put these two movies side by side, and one comes to realize that the anti-Japanese war is but the latest of a long succession of calamities in Chinese history, and that individual will, social imper­ ative, and fatal aberration have been as intertwined with each other as ever. Whereas “re­ gret” in Eternal Regret displays the profound terms of the “moral occult” of humanity, it manifests itself in Spring in a Small Town at the most quotidian level of life.

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China One can easily consider Yuniang a paragon of feminine virtue and frown on Yuwen’s inde­ cisiveness and compromising decision. But the circuitous way in which Yuwen reaches her (non)decision is no less symptomatic of the consequence of war than that which com­ mited Yuniang unconditionally to her loyalism eight hundred years ago. Precisely because of the gap that exists between Yuwen’s and Yuniang’s ways of performing their social and emotional roles, one is led to discern in Spring in a Small Town that “time” changes, and as a result there arises a new sensibility called the “modern.” Thus the spring of 1948 saw a most fascinating engagement of Chinese cinema with Bei­ jing opera, and filmic vision with poetic illumination. But the story behind the screen was anything but poetic. For instance, since color film called for much brighter lighting, addi­ tional electricity generators were brought in to produce enough power for lighting, but they produced such noise as to affect on-site recording. Even Mei Lanfang’s costume had to be replaced, as it caused unexpected reflections under the strong spotlight. When the first footage was test-screened, both Fei and Mei were disappointed by its unstable color. It turned out that the film was developed in the bathtub of the cinematographer’s apart­ ment and that its color varied along with the change of water temperature—which was kept down by ice and therefore rose when the ice melted. These travails during the shooting period were nothing compared with what happened to the postproduction work. As Mei Lanfang recalled, the screening was disastrous because the color appeared extremely pale because of the use of Ansco color film instead of regu­ lar Kodak color film for budgetary reasons. Ansco color was generally (p. 74) used for shooting 16 mm film, and its color runs when it is blown up to 35 mm for commercial showing. Worse, the sound track and the image were not synchronized, a result of unsta­ ble voltage during shooting. While the color problem could not be remedied, Fei Mu reed­ ited the film inch by inch in order to make the sound track match the image.34 In any case, Eternal Regret was finally released, but because of the undesirable color quality and the civil war that had engulfed most of China, the first color picture of China did not receive much attention. By then A Spring in a Small Town had already been shown in select cities, and reviews were mostly unfavorable. So for what Fei Mu and Mei Lan­ fang tried so hard to make, the result was disappointing. Both movies were quickly moved out of sight when the new era came. It would take decades for audiences to rediscover what the two artists had accomplished for Chinese cinema in the spring of 1948.

Works Cited Aitken, Ian. European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction. Bloomington: In­ diana University Press, 2001. Bray, Francesca. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berke­ ley: University of California Press, 1997. Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Page 13 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China Chen Huiyang 陳輝揚. Mengying ji: zhongguo dianying yinxiang 夢影集: 中國電影印象 [Dream images: Impressions of Chinese cinema]. Taipei: Yunchen chubanshe, 1990. Chen Mo 陳墨. “Fei Mu dianying lun” 費穆電影論 [On Fei Mu’s movies]. Dangdai dianying 當 代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 5 (1997): 26–40. Chen Mo 陳默. Liuying chunmeng: Fei Mu dianying lungao 流鶯春夢: 費穆電影論稿 [Flying oriel, spring dream: A study of Fei Mu’s movies]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2000. Chen Shan 陳山. “Disanzhong dianying: Fei Mu dianying siwei de shuli luoji” 第三種電影: 費 穆電影思維的疏離邏輯 [The third kind of movie: The logic of alienation in Fei Mu’s movies]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 5 (1997): 41–47. Chen Shan 陳山. “Yongyuan de Xiaocheng zhichun” 永遠的小城之春 [Spring in a Small Town forever]. Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao 北京電影學院學報 [Journal of the Bei­ jing Film Academy] 1 (2002): 50–58. (p. 77)

Daruvala, Susan. “The Aesthetics and Moral Politics of Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 1.3 (2007): 169–185. Ding Yaping 丁亞平. Yingxiang zhongguo: 1945–1949 影像中國: 1945–1949 [Imaging China: 1945–1949]. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1998. Fei Mu 費穆. “Daoyan, juzuozhe–xiegei Yang Ji” 導演, 劇作者—寫給楊紀 [Director, playwright —to Yang Ji]. Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩人導演費穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu]. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pinlun xuehui, 1999. 99. Fei Mu 費穆. “Fengge mantan” 風格漫談 [Random talk about style]. Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩人導演費穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu]. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pinlun xuehui, 1999. 112–115. Fei Mu. “Guochanpian de chulu wenti” 國產片的出路問題 [On the future of Chinese-made cinema]. Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩人導演費穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu]. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pinlun xuehui, 1999. 94. Fei Mu. “Lüetan ‘kongqi’” 略談 “空氣” [A brief discussion of “air”]. Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩 人導演費穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu]. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pin­ lun xuehui, 1999. 27. Fei Mu. “Shengsihen tekan xuyan” 生死恨特刊序言 [Foreword to the brochure of Eternal Regret]. Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩人導演費穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu]. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pinlun xuehui, 1999. 104. Goldstein, Joshua. Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera, 1870–1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China Li Cheuk-to 李焯桃. “Yihu zhongguo, chaohu chuantong” 宜乎中國, 超乎傳統 [So Chinese and so untraditional]. Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩人導演費穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu]. Ed. Wong Ainling. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pinlun xuehui, 1999. 294. Li Lingling 李伶伶. Mei Lanfang de yishu yu qinggang 梅蘭芳的藝術與情感 [The art and ro­ mance of Mei Lanfang]. Taipei: Zhibingtang chubanshe, 2008. Li Shaobai 李少白. “Zhongguo xiandai dianying de qianqu” 中國現代電影的前驅: 論費穆和小城 之春的歷史意義 [The forerunner of modern Chinese cinema: On Fei Mu and the historical significance of Spring in a Small Town]. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 1996: no. 5, 34– 78. Li Suyuan 酈蘇元. Zhongguo xiandai dianying lilunshi 中國現代電影理論史 [A history of mod­ ern Chinese cinema theories]. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2005. Luo Yijun 羅藝軍. “Fei Mu xinlun” 費穆新論 [A new study of Fei Mu]. Dangdai dianying 當代 電影 [Contemporary cinema] 5 (1997): 4–15. Mei Lanfang. “Diyibu caise xiqupian Shengsihen de paishe” 第一部彩色戲曲片生死恨的拍攝 [The making of Eternal Regret, the first color picture in China]. Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩 人導演費穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu]. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pin­ lun xuehui, 1999. 213–236. Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳. Yibu bu huanxing 移步不換形 [Moving forward without altering funda­ mental forms]. Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 2008. Qi Rushan 齊如山. Qi Rushan huiyilu 齊如山回憶錄 [A memoir of Qi Rushan]. Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005. Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲, ed. Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩人導演費穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu]. Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pinlun xuehui, 1999. Ying Xiong 應雄. “Xiaocheng zhichun yu dongfang dianying” 小城之春與東方電影 [Spring in a Small Town and Oriental cinema]. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 1993: no. (p. 78)

1, 11–18; no. 2, 46–52. Zhang Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zheng Peikai 鄭培凱. “Xiqu yu dianying de jiuge: Mei Lanfang yu Fei Mu de Shengsihen” 戲 曲與電影的糾葛: 梅蘭芳與費穆的《生死恨》 [The entangled relationship between traditional theater and cinema: Mei Lanfang and Fei Mu’s Eternal Regret]. Wenyi lilun yu tongsu wenhua 文藝理論與通俗文化 [Literary theory and popular culture]. Ed. Peng Hsiao-yen 彭小 妍. Taipei: Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, 1999. Vol. 2, 570.

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China

Notes: (1.) See Wong Ain-ling’s 黃愛玲 edited volume on Fei Mu, Shiren daoyan Fei Mu 詩人導演費 穆 [Poet-director Fei Mu] (Hong Kong: Xianggang dianying pinlun xuehui, 1999). (2.) Spring in a Small Town was rediscovered and featured in Hong Kong in 1983. It was celebrated as the first of the ten greatest Chinese movies in a special issue of Dianying shuangzhoukan 電影雙週刊 [Movie biweekly], and it was again voted by movie critics and scholars as the best of the first century of Chinese movies (1905–2005) in Hong Kong. See Chen Huiyang 陳輝揚, Mengying ji: Zhongguo dianying yinxiang 夢影集: 中國電影印象 [Dream images: Impressions of Chinese cinema] (Taipei: Yunchen chubanshe, 1990), 126. Also see “Zhongguo bai da dianying jingdianzuo chulu Wang Jiawei ronghuo babu zuopin ruxuan” 中國百大電影經典作出爐 王家衛榮獲八部作品入選 [The one hundred best movies made in China have been announced; eight of Wong Kar-wai’s movies are included], in Yingyin tai 影音台 [Kingnet] http://movie.kingnet.com.tw/media_news/index.html? act=movie_news&r=1110868977; Li Cheuk-to 李焯桃, “Yihu Zhongguo, chaohu chuan­ tong” 宜乎中國, 超乎傳統 [So Chinese and so untraditional], in Wong Ain-ling, Poet-Director Fei Mu, 294. (3.) Li Suyuan 酈蘇元, Zhongguo xiandai dianying lilunshi 中國現代電影理論史 [A history of modern Chinese cinema theories] (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2005), 162–178. Among the trumpeters of Peking opera as “national opera,” Qi Rushan 齊如山 is the most prominent figure. See Qi Rushan 齊如山, Qi Rushan huiyilu 齊如山回憶錄 [A memoir of Qi Rushan] (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005), chaps. 7–8. For critique of Qi Rushan’s notion of “national drama,” see Joshua Goldstein’s succinct analysis in Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera, 1870–1937 (Berkeley: Uni­ versity of California Press, 2007), chap. 4. (4.) Throughout his career Fei Mu was occupied with the question of how to make a Chi­ nese movie that highlights its national character. See, for example, his 1950 essay “Fengge mantan” 風格漫談 [Random talk about style], in Wong Ain-ling, Poet-Director Fei Mu, 112–115. (5.) See Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896– 1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), chap. 3. (6.) Li Suyuan, Modern Chinese Cinema Theories, 105. (7.) Fei Mu, “Lüetan ‘kongqi’” 略談 “ 空氣 ” [A brief discussion of “air”], in Wong Ain-ling, Poet-Director Fei Mu, 27. (8.) Fei Mu, “Brief Discussion of ‘Air,’” 27. (9.) Fei Mu, “Brief Discussion of ‘Air,’” 27. (10.) Fei Mu, “Zaxie,” in Wong Ain-ling, Poet-Director Fei Mu, 29.

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China (11.) I am borrowing Peter Brooks’s terminology, in The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), chap. 1. (12.) Chen Mo 陳默, Liuying chunmeng: Fei Mu dianying lungao 流鶯春夢: 費穆電影論稿 [Flying oriel, spring dream: A study of Fei Mu’s movies] (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2000), chap. 9. (13.) Chen Mo, Flying Oriel, Spring Dream, chap. 11. (14.) Chen Mo, Flying Oriel, Spring Dream, 149. (15.) Chen Mo, Flying Oriel, Spring Dream, chap. 10, especially 129–132. (16.) Chen Mo, Flying Oriel, Spring Dream, 83. (17.) Mei starred in fourteen movies based on Peking opera. See Li Lingling 李伶伶, Mei Lanfang de yishu yu qinggang 梅蘭芳的藝術與情感 [The art and romance of Mei Lanfang] (Taipei: Zhibingtang chubanshe, 2008), 198–212. (18.) Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳, Yibu bu huanxing 移步不換形 [Moving forward without altering fundamental forms] (Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 2008), 226–252. For Mei Lanfang’s tour to the United States, see Joshua Goldstein, Drama Kings, particularly chapter 8. (19.) Mei Lanfang, Moving Forward, 191–215. (20.) Mei Lanfang, Moving Forward, 100. (21.) Fei Mu, “Shengsihen tekan xuyan” 生死恨特刊序言 [Foreword to the brochure of Eter­ nal Regret], in Wong Ain-ling, Poet-Director Fei Mu, 104. (22.) The famous “nocturnal soliloquy” (夜訴) scene, for instance, is cast in blue, while the scene of the dream reunion is dominated by red. (23.) See Zheng Peikai 鄭培凱, “Xiqu yu dianying de jiuge: Mei Lanfang yu Fei Mu de Shengsihen” 戲曲與電影的糾葛: 梅蘭芳與費穆的《生死恨》[The entangled relationship be­ tween traditional theater and cinema: Mei Lanfang and Fei Mu’s Eternal Regret], in Wenyi lilun yu tongsu wenhua 文藝理論與通俗文化 [Literary theory and popular culture], ed. Peng Hsiao-yen 彭小妍 (Taipei: Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, 1999), vol. 2, 570 n. 30. (24.) See Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial Chi­ na (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), chaps. 4–5. (25.) But the recognition of Spring in a Small Town came as late as the 1980s. The eclipse of the movie from the late forties to the early eighties and its belated “rehabilitation” be­ speak the dynamics of Chinese cinema on both aesthetic and political fronts.

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China (26.) Fei Mu, “Guochanpian de chulu wenti” 國產片的出路問題 [On the future of Chinesemade cinema], in Wong Ain-ling, Poet-Director Fei Mu, 94. (27.) Fei Mu, “Future of Chinese-Made Cinema,” 94. (28.) For discussions of Spring in a Small Town, see Li Shaobai 李少白, “Zhongguo xiandai dianying de qianqu: Lun Fei Mu he Xiaocheng zhichun de lishi yiyi” 中國現代電影的前驅: 論 費穆和小城之春的歷史意義 [The forerunner of modern Chinese cinema: On Fei Mu and the historical significance of Spring in a Small Town], Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Cinematic art] 5 (1996), 34–78; Ying Xiong 應雄, “Xiaocheng zhichun yu dongfang dianying” 小城之春與東 方電影 [Spring in a Small Town and Oriental cinema], Cinematic Art 1.2 (1993): 11–18, 46– 52; Luo Yijun 羅藝軍, “Fei Mu xinlun” 費穆新論 [A new study of Fei Mu], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 5 (1997): 4–15; Chen Mo 陳墨, “Fei Mu dianying lun” 費穆 電影論 [On Fei Mu’s movies], Contemporary Cinema 5 (1997): 26–40; Chen Shan 陳山, “Dis­ anzhong dianying: Fei Mu dianying siwei de shuli luoji” 第三種電影: 費穆電影思維的疏離邏輯 [The third kind of movie: The logic of alienation in Fei Mu’s movies], Contemporary Cine­ ma 5 (1997): 41–47; and Chen Shan 陳山, “Yongyuan de Xiaocheng zhichun” 永遠的小城之春 [Spring in a small town forever], Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao 北京電影學院學報 [Journal of the Beijing Film Academy] 1 (2002): 50–58. Also see Susan Daruvala, “The Aesthetics and Moral Politics of Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town,” Journal of Chinese Cin­ emas 1.3 (2007): 169–185. (29.) Fei Mu, “Daoyan, juzuozhe–xiegei Yang Ji” 導演, 劇作者—寫給楊紀 [Director, playwright —to Yang Ji], in Wong Ain-ling, Poet-Director Fei Mu, 99. (30.) Li Cheuk-to, “So Chinese and So Untraditional,” 282. (31.) Ding Yaping 丁亞平, Yingxiang zhongguo: 1945–1949 影像中國: 1945–1949 [Imaging China: 1945–1949] (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1998), 374–376. For a general in­ troduction to Bazin’s cinematic aesthetics, see Ian Aitken, European Film Theory and Cin­ ema: A Critical Introduction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), chap. 7, par­ ticularly 179–193. (32.) Aitken, European Film Theory, 179, 182, 187. (33.) In Lin Niantong’s words again, the movie relies heavily on the perspective of “hori­ zontal distance” (平遠), a key notion of spatial composition in classical Chinese painting, to show a broad, embracing approach to reality. But this “horizontal distance” does not promise a placid, detached view any more than it calls forth an internal dynamics com­ posed by montage, dissolves, and other techniques. (34.) Mei Lanfang, “Diyibu caise xiqupian Shengsihen de paishe” 第一部彩色戲曲片生死恨的 拍攝 [The making of Eternal Regret, the first color picture in China], in Wong Ain-ling, Po­ et-Director Fei Mu, 213–236.

David Der-wei Wang Page 18 of 19

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Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor in Chinese Literature, Har­ vard University. His specialties are Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, Late Qing fiction, and Comparative Literary Theory. Wang’s English books include Fictional Realism in 20th Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen (1992), Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Mondernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911 (1997), The Monster That Is History: Violence, History, and Fictional Writing in 20th Century China (2004).

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation

A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture Association   Jie Li The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0005

Abstract and Keywords Founded in 1937, the Manchurian Motion Picture Association (Manying) produced hun­ dreds of films to propagate the ideology of the Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, most of which were lost in the postwar chaos. This chapter analyzes Manying’s maga­ zines, former employee memoirs, and seven extant films—including wartime interracial romances starring the Japanese-born Li Xianglan, who always played Chinese roles, a mu­ sical on the Russian community in Harbin, a comedy about a country bumpkin in the mod­ ern capital, a historical costume drama on the Opium War, as well as an animated “educa­ tional documentary” on the dangers of lice. Despite Manying’s exclusion from national film historiographies, this chapter shows that it was created as a “national cinema” that was to help a nation-building process, yet its remnant fragments evoked ambivalent and contradictory imaginations of nationhood, serving as an illuminating parable for the aspi­ rations and failures of modern states to engineer identities through cinema. Keywords: Manchuria, propaganda, Li Xianglan, Sino-Japanese coproductions, musical, comedy, historical cos­ tume film, documentary, animation

While studying in Beijing in 1937, a seventeen-year-old girl, born to Japanese parents in Manchuria, found herself in a Chinese student demonstration against the Japanese, where everyone had to answer the question: “What will you do when the Japanese are here?” While her Japanese name was Yamaguchi Yoshiko 山口淑子, she often used her Chi­ nese name, Li Xianglan 李香蘭, and her fellow students were not aware of her ethnic iden­ tity. When her turn came, she said: “I will stand on the city wall.”1 In the following years, Li Xianglan would become the brightest star of the Manchurian Motion Picture Association (Man’ei or Manying 满映), and her “pan-Asian” face and multi­ lingual voice became the most memorable icon of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Having played the Chinese lover of a Japanese man in multiple films, she was put on trial after the end of the war in 1945 as a traitor to China and would have been sen­

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation tenced to death had she not been able to prove her Japanese nationality just in the nick of time.2 These two biographical events bookend the rise and fall of Manying and evoke the con­ flicted position that Li Xianglan occupies in and outside her films. The liminal figure of the city wall articulates the contentious identity politics of Manchuria as a place beyond the Great Wall and at the geographic margins of both Japan and China proper, whereas the unfinished trial allegorizes the unsettled political and historical status of Manchuria’s cultural productions, subject to subsequent rediscovery and reevaluation, denunciation and dismissal. While Li Xianglan reclaimed her Japanese name and returned to Japan af­ ter the war, hundreds of films made by Manying and the South Manchurian Railway Com­ pany were lost in the chaos of political transition, with but a small fraction having been recovered over the last two decades, mostly from the Russian film archive Gosfilmofond by a group of Japanese researchers. In 1995, a thirty-VHS (p. 80) set of these films was re­ leased in Japan, and the Japanese scholar Yamaguchi Takeshi presented a copy to the Chi­ nese government in order to “give the people in China who helped make these films a second chance to see them.” In response, People’s Daily (人民日報) published an article re­ ferring to these films as “visible evidence of cultural invasion” and “shameful documents of the crimes of the Japanese militarists.”3 Based on research into several extant Manying features and documentaries, film maga­ zines, and published reminiscences by former Manying employees, this chapter explores the liminal position of Li Xianglan, Manying, and Manchuria at the margins of overlap­ ping nations and national histories. As much as this cinema—including the films them­ selves, the film industry, and a broader film culture—has been excluded from national film historiographies, I will show that the cinema was created to advance a nation-building process, even as its productions evoked ambivalent and contradictory visions of nation­ hood. Manying’s leaders were unabashed about their alignment with “national policy,” and the films tried hard to interpellate Manchuria’s multiethnic citizens as members of the same imagined community and to transform the region from a battlefield and frontier into a “homeland” for prodigal sons and daughters. At the same time, “Manchurian cine­ ma” embodied many of the innate contradictions of Manzhouguo as a nation-state—such as the tension between the trumpeted “harmony of the five races” and the perceived racial superiority of the Japanese. Whereas earlier works fetishized “virgin landscapes” and strove to cultivate “virgin mindscapes,” Manying’s staff of almost 2,000 employees by the end of the war mirrored the complex composition of the audiences of its films. These audiences included Japanese and Chinese, idealists and cynics, leftists and rightists, un­ derground Nationalist agents and Communist guerrillas, together with politically naive adolescent actors. Transcending the simplistic binary of resistance and collaboration that characterizes many existing accounts of Manying, I will instead attend to the ambiguities and contingencies faced by the filmmakers and their audiences, who invested these cine­ matic works with heterogeneous meanings and disparate ideas of nationhood. Ultimately, Manying’s fragments may serve as a parable for the aspirations and failures of modern states to engineer national identities through cinema.4 Page 2 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation Bearing in mind the irony that the Chinese Communist Party, the greatest denouncers of Japanese imperial propaganda, quickly took over Manying’s facilities at the end of the war to construct its own propagandistic film industry,5 the study of Manzhouguo’s cinema —in its crude form, short life-span, and retrospective illegitimacy—may offer some in­ sights into cinema’s role in generating imagined communities. Whereas Benedict Ander­ son has emphasized the role of print culture in the creation and affirmation of a national imaginary, the case of Manzhouguo’s cinema shows that nationalizing intentions were al­ so supported by a culture of images designed to display national unity in and through re­ gional and ethnic diversity. Moreover, whereas Benedict Anderson argues that the nation is in large measure imagined retrospectively, Manying—to borrow an observation Noel Carroll and Sally Banes make with respect to Eisenstein’s The Old and the New—instead “offers an interesting counterpoint—that of a nation imagined prospectively.” Indeed, like the Soviet Union, Manzhouguo “literally had to be invented,” and “cinema was expected to play a crucial role in this process.”6 Perhaps part (p. 81) of the reason why these Many­ ing films remain taboo in China today is precisely because they mirror all too well the cin­ ematic fabrication of the nation that characterized the rise of the People’s Republic itself.

The Creation of a “National Cinema” What does it mean to create a national cinema from scratch? At the time of Manying’s founding in 1937, there were already seventy-six film theaters built by Chinese, Japanese, and Russian entrepreneurs in Manchuria, screening films imported from Europe, Ameri­ ca, and Japan, as well as ones made in Shanghai. The filmmaking unit of the Japaneseowned South Manchurian Railway Company (Mantetsu) had been making travelogues, newsreels, ethnographic films, and science films about the region since 1924, advertising Manchuria and the railroad to a Japanese audience. By contrast, Manying was created to make “Manchurian films” for “Manchurians” (Manshū jin) or “Manzhouguoans” (Manshū kokujin)—which is to say, all the citizens of the nation of Manzhouguo. For such a national cinema to come into being, one needs to build a film studio, recruit “domestic” actors and staff, and create a distribution network that can bring the films to a “national” audience. Mantetsu provided half of the investment capital for Manying, as well as major technical personnel for the film unit and a basic infrastructure for the exhi­ bition of films along the railway lines. As the construction of the film studio in Xinjing (today’s Changchun Film Studios) was under way, the first groups of “Manchurian” actors as well as assistant directors and cameramen were recruited from the local population, among them Li Xianglan. Manying also launched a film magazine, Manchurian Film (满洲 映畫), to help cultivate cinephilia among its potential audience and to spell out the future visions for this emergent national cinema. The first issue of Manchurian Film was published in December 1937 with separate Japan­ ese-language and “Manchurian” (Chinese-language) editions, which came together bilin­ gually in the same magazine in August 1939. The cover of the inaugural issue shows a woman in a Chinese opera costume, followed by a six-page photo spread on the “natural Page 3 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation resources for Manchurian cinema,” featuring clear blue skies, songs of grasslands, coal mining, and so-called “descendents of Genghis Khan.” The next page features photos of newly recruited Manchurian actors and their new lives on the set. These opening images emphasize the role of women, landscape, and the native “noble savages” as cinema’s raw materials—not civilization but nature to be exploited. Manying is likened to a piece of vir­ gin land to be developed, an immature child to be nurtured.7 Meanwhile, this industry is to cultivate a naive and semiliterate population, providing them with a young nation’s founding myths. The magazine’s articles are self-righteous regarding the propagandistic or “educational” purpose of cinema, valued above mere entertainment.8 They spell out the hopes for “our country’s new cinema” and speak of film’s power to enter the hearts and influence the (p. 82) thoughts of the nation’s citizens, and of the necessity of having a national cinema adapted to local circumstances and customs, rather than relying on imports. Arguing that film productions must have convictions rather than pandering to the audience’s low tastes, the magazine also attacks martial-arts films that cause social disorder by praising rebellion against authority.9 The most frequently used adjectives for an ideal Manchurian cinema are “wholesome” (健全) and “bright” (明朗), as opposed to immoral and decadent.10 Amakasu Masahiko, Manying’s infamous and powerful leader from 1939, was determined to make films that appealed to the Manchurians, training local directors and scriptwrit­ ers, as well as hiring talented staff regardless of their political orientations.11 By early 1940, Manchurian directors who finished their training as assistant directors at Manying were allowed to direct their own films.12 Moreover, the magazine frequently published sample scripts, film scenarios, and how-to guides instructing aspiring screenwriters among the Manchurian readers on how to write filmable scripts. There were also sugges­ tions for Japanese directors to give Manchurian actors greater agency.13 Under these policies, Manying produced a total of 108 “entertainment” features, 189 “educational” documentaries, and hundreds of newsreels and children’s programs.14 As for distribution, over the course of Manying’s existence the number of film theaters in Manchuria almost tripled—half of which were owned by Chinese and the other half by Japanese, thereby catering to their respective audiences.15 Since most cinemas were in urban areas, Manying also employed itinerant projection teams to screen films in town­ ships lacking cinemas and in schools, either for free or for a nominal fee.16 These screen­ ings took place along the railroad lines, in Japanese schools and migrant villages, and in northern peripheral regions. There were also “special screenings” targeting migrant la­ borers from China proper.17 By 1944, these projection teams documented four or five mil­ lion viewers a year, and Manchurian Film would occasionally publish essays by projection­ ists on the delight with which these screenings were received by rural audiences.18 On the other hand, a Chinese member of a Manying projection team recalls that they some­ times faced death threats in villages under strong Communist influence.19

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation Despite efforts to attract local audiences, Manying films never truly became popular. Ac­ cording to a 1939 survey of educated Manchurian viewers, the obvious lack of familiarity with Manchurian life rendered films by Japanese directors—which were often adaptations from Japanese originals—dull and implausible.20 The ever-widening gap between what was projected on-screen and what was experienced in reality was perhaps another reason why audiences did not flock to the cinema. One of Manying’s Manchurian directors, Wang Ze 王則, wrote in a 1943 issue of Manchurian Film that a typical Manying film is “like an ugly daughter; no matter how much dowry her parents prepare for her, they simply can’t marry her off because she looks so repulsive.”21 Japanese film critics writing for a Japan­ ese audience also wrote scornfully about not only Manying films, but also the local audi­ ences themselves: “The acting was poor and the story insipid, but even more mystifying was how [the Manchurians] would roar in great belly laughs at the most absurd parts of the film.”22 Even in the early days of Manying, critics attributed the “low quality” of the films to the Manchurian audience’s simplicity—which hindered (p. 83) them from under­ standing sophisticated editing techniques—and their “gloomy national character.”23 Amakasu voiced a similar condescending attitude in 1943 when he proclaimed that “the films of the Manchurian Motion Picture Association are primarily targeted at the uncul­ tured masses….We must treat and educate them like children, and explain things to them slowly and in plain language.”24 These comments illustrate some of Manying’s many contradictions: the films were de­ signed to propagate “national policy,” but such “education” would be in vain if audiences were not entertained; they were intended to “make different ethnicities laugh and cry and be moved in unison.”25 Manzhouguo’s populations, however, were deeply divided by lan­ guage, tradition, politics, and socioeconomic inequalities; Japanese and Manchurian cine­ mas remained segregated until the end of the war, while Korean-, Mongolian-, or Russianlanguage theaters were practically nonexistent. Even the film magazine itself addressed Japanese and Manchurian readers differently, treating the latter as childish consumers by giving them trivia, manga, and how-to-guides.26 By contrast, the Japanese sections ad­ dressed their readers as makers of national policy, educators, and connoisseurs. Thus Manchurian cinema remained fragmented—unable to reconcile the conflicting identities of its intended audiences.

Colonization as Homecoming: Li Xianglan’s In­ terethnic Romances The vast majority of Manying films are no longer extant, and I was only able to locate copies of eight feature films, six of which starred Li Xianglan. Despite this small sample size, these films made between 1939 and 1943 can provide us with preliminary insights into the evolution of Manying and its national imaginary. Three of these are so-called con­ tinental goodwill films, set in either Manchuria or the Chinese mainland and featuring a romance between a Japanese man and a young Chinese woman played by Li Xianglan. Transforming foreign landscapes into familiar ones and strangers into lovers, these films Page 5 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation sought to resolve the questions of how, on the one hand, the colonizer could become a “native son” of a place he has conquered, and how, on the other hand, cultural differ­ ences and misunderstandings between different ethnicities and languages could be over­ come. As if taking advantage of the cinematic raw material of Manchuria’s photogenic land­ scapes, several Manying feature films, rather than relying on studio sets, instead incorpo­ rated a good deal of location shooting so that the spectators could vicariously travel through exotic sights while identifying with the gaze of the Japanese male protagonist on the Manchurian woman in the continental landscape. In the opening of The Song of the White Orchid (白玉蘭之歌), coproduced by Manying and Toho film in 1939, the JapaneseManchurian couple first appear in an idyllic shot under a tree, and Li Xianglan’s charac­ ter, Sekko, sings “When Will You Come Again?” (何日君再來) because her (p. 84) Japanese lover, Kokichi, must return to his dying father in Japan. As the song continues, we see a montage sequence of postcard-like landscapes that transitions to a flashback in which Sekko emerges in a rickshaw from under the city gate, again identifying her as part of the Manchurian landscape and the protagonist’s wanderlust. The remainder of the film, however, uses the trope of the prodigal son to transform Manchuria from a site of adventure into one of homecoming. In Japan, Kokichi buries his father and takes his younger siblings with him to settle in Manchuria. His brother Norio is initially bored with life in the colony, squanders stolen money at a brothel, and runs away from home, only to reappear as a penniless coal miner when united with his broth­ er. After coming to his senses, this prodigal son helps Kokichi defend the railroad from “Communist bandits.” Kokichi dies in battle, and the burial of his ashes in the soil of his adopted homeland becomes his “ultimate homecoming.” In carrying Kokichi’s ashes back to the village, Norio also undergoes a final rite of passage into a virtuous Japanese man and colonialist. Meanwhile, Sekko has been living under the guardianship of an uncle who is a loyal sub­ ject of Manzhouguo, but her cousin, a Communist, intercepts her correspondences with Kokichi and convinces her to join the guerrillas. She reencounters Kokichi in battle and outrages him in her manly uniform and her refusal to speak Japanese to him. As a prodi­ gal daughter, she first deviates from her Manchurian father and her Japanese lover-patri­ arch, but as soon as she recognizes the “misunderstanding,” Sekko switches to the Japan­ ese side and dies in battle together with Kokichi. Their sacrifice enables the completion of the railroad, and here Mantetsu documentary footage of railroad construction is inserted to enhance the film’s “reality,” in turn rendered part of a fictional national imaginary: Manzhouguo is consecrated with blood of martyrs. In a later and more notorious continental goodwill film, China Nights (中國之夜, 1941), Li Xianglan plays a Chinese orphan girl named Keiran rescued from the streets of Shanghai by a Japanese marine officer by the name of Hase, who nurses her back to health but only manages to win her heart by slapping her so hard that she falls to the floor. Besides obvi­ ous gender metaphors for China as the woman tamed into loving obedience to Japan, the Page 6 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation film also subsumes actual Chinese landscapes into a fictive narrative logic that justifies Japanese invasion as the “violent pangs of labor” while “the continent gives birth to a New Order.”27 In this parallel between the conquest of a woman and the conquest of land —through brute force combined with poetic courtship and diligent cultivation—romance becomes symptomatic of a Pygmalion desire to domesticate the wild girl / wilderness into a new housewife/homeland. Set in the chaotic recent battlefield of Shanghai and serene, idyllic Suzhou, China Nights surprisingly devotes a substantial sequence to location shooting amid Shanghai’s war rubble. After her convalescence from a fever, Keiran takes a walk in the ruined site of her childhood home—not an artificial set but rather the result of recent bombings—and upon seeing a blooming flower bush, she drifts into a reverie of the good old days with her fam­ ily. A Japanese female acquaintance happens to be praying nearby at her brother’s grave, a soldier fallen in the battle of Shanghai. After their conversation, the two women’s losses cancel each other out, and the ruins attain (p. 85) a sublime new meaning of sacrifice for the common good of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.28 Just as spring growth overcomes the rubble of bad memories, the honeymoon between Keiran and Hase in beautiful Suzhou displaces the war ruins in the earlier part of the film. With its temples, gardens, and canals, Suzhou becomes a stand-in for traditional Chi­ na, but rather than having Keiran share with Hase her cultural heritage, it is instead Hase who teaches Keiran his favorite classical Japanese poem—as if only Japan could restore China to its former glory. A photographer later takes a picture of the two lovers on a bridge, thereby turning a traditional Chinese landscape into an iconic picture of SinoJapanese friendship. After Hase is called away to war and subsequently reported dead, this framed photograph will assume even greater meaning and poignancy for Keiran. Thus reframed by imperial ideology and reinscribed with Japanese lyricism and Japanese sacrifice, the exotic and sometimes devastated Chinese landscapes have been assimilat­ ed, refamiliarized, and rehabilitated for a Japanese audience all too eager to believe in the fiction of goodwill, peace, and harmony in the cruel reality of war. The February 1940 issue of Manchurian Film published the leftist film critic Iwasaki Akira’s criticism of continental goodwill films for “merely confirming the image of Manchuria in Japanese hearts.” He maintained that “Manchurian films should exist for the masses of Manchuria, and foreign appreciation should only be secondary.”29 Published during Iwasaki’s imprisonment in Japan for criticizing the Film Law, this article suggests a certain measure of independence that Manying had from Tokyo, for after Iwasaki’s release a year later, he came to Manying as a film producer. His first film, Win­ ter Jasmine (迎春花,1942), also featured Li Xianglan (Bai Li) as a Manchurian romantic in­ terest of a Japanese man (Murakawa). Rather than an assertive soldier, however, Mu­ rakawa is a reticent and somewhat bewildered young man who has come to Manchuria to work in his uncle’s company. His uncle tells him to live and eat with the Manchurians—“in order to understand Manchuria”—as well as to maintain himself with a Manchurian salary—his Chinese colleagues teach him the art and virtue of frugality.

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation Providing Murakawa with geographic, cultural, and linguistic orientation, Li Xianglan’s character this time is not to be assimilated but rather the agent of assimilation. Whereas in China Nights the Japanese protagonist picks a dirty Li Xianglan (as Keiran) off the streets and orders her to bathe, in Winter Jasmine Li Xianglan (as Bai Li) admonishes the Japanese man not to take too many baths, in order to cut costs. Whereas in Song of the White Orchid Li Xianglan (as Sekko) tells her Japanese lover not to pay a rickshaw puller who bumped into his car, “because it’s a typical Manchurian ruse to cheat money,” in Win­ ter Jasmine Bai Li teaches Murakawa polite phrases in “Manchurian,” which he subse­ quently tries out on a rickshaw puller who doesn’t understand him because of his poor pronunciation. The film’s only blatant “national policy” moment is when the Japanese company boss tells his Manchurian friend that he detected similarities between some an­ cient Manchurian murals and medieval Japanese paintings, and thus the common origins of “East Asian art.” When the old Chinese man exclaims: “What a discovery! You should write an academic article about it,” it is not difficult to hear a sarcastic overtone to these words of praise. Ultimately, more than virgin territories and picturesque landscapes, Winter Jas­ mine evinces awe and fascination with “Manchurian ways of life.” Exceeding the film’s (p. 86)

simple plot are many “ethnographic moments” where the Japanese protagonist explores Manchuria’s streets alone, briefly joining a children’s game of shuttlecock or gawking at exotic birds and animals at the marketplace. As in previous “continental goodwill films,” the film inserts tourist sights into the narrative “documentary,” but rather than using an imperious gaze that seeks to colonize and transform what he sees, our guide here is an aimless flaneur who loses himself in the crowd. Thus, the continental romances starring Li Xianglan are mainly negotiations of Japanese identity vis-à-vis Manchuria. Rather than the imperialists and invaders described in histo­ ry books, the Japanese portrayed themselves in these films as pioneers of the frontier, carriers of civilization, martyrs for a better future, and respectful newcomers willing to adapt themselves to local customs. While transforming Japanese men from colonizers into “native sons,” these films present Li Xianglan as an embodiment of the continent—a vir­ gin land to be loved and conquered, a wilderness to be tamed and cultivated, and a school of alternative ways of life.

Cosmopolitanism and Modernity in Manchuria’s Cities Not all films made in Manying, however, were as obsessed with the role of the Japanese in Manchuria or in Mainland China. This section deals with two rather different Manying films from 1943: My Nightingale (Watashi no uguisu 私の鶯) is a musical with a mostly Russian cast, uses mostly Russian, and was banned before it was ever publicly screened; Everybody Is Happy (皆大歡喜) is a comedy directed by a Chinese director entirely in Chi­ nese for Chinese audiences. These films share a common interest in showcasing Manzhouguo’s cosmopolitan urban culture and modernization process, and furthermore Page 8 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation may be interpreted as both national allegories and as “documentaries” of Manchuria’s and Manying’s own ethnic diversity. Produced by Iwasaki and directed by Shimazu Yasujiro, My Nightingale was the most elaborate musical made in East Asia up to that time. It featured the White Russian musi­ cal community in Harbin, with Li Xianglan playing the role of Mariko, a Japanese girl adopted and raised by a Russian opera singer named Panin—a role that is perhaps closer than any of her previous ones to the actress’s real identity.30 The film opens with a Russ­ ian aristocrat singing of exile on a ship to Harbin after the October Revolution and tend­ ing to a wounded Japanese man named Sumida, who had helped him flee from the Bolshe­ viks but was separated from his family in the process. Fifteen years later, Sumida’s daughter Mariko appears under the guardianship of a Russian opera singer. During the Manchurian Incident, their home is pillaged by passing Chinese soldiers, so Panin en­ trusts Mariko to the Japanese army that restores order in Harbin and tells Mariko the (p. 87) truth of her birth. The ending features Mariko’s singing of “My Nightingale” at her adoptive father’s grave. On the one hand, the film’s convoluted plot serves to maximize its musical numbers, and the many performances by the Russian orchestra, opera, and cabaret function as a docu­ mentary elegy to the vibrant musical culture of the Russian émigré community in Harbin.31 Li Xianglan herself partially belonged to this community by virtue of having learned to sing from a Russian opera singer after an introduction from her childhood best friend, a young Russian Jew, whose gestures and facial expressions Li imitated in her role as Mariko.32 On the other hand, the film, if read as a national allegory, underscores the historical contingencies that created and destroyed Manzhouguo as well as the diverse origins and fictive kinships among its population. The film begins, climaxes, and ends with diasporic separations and reunions at crucial historical junctures: from the October Revolution (the loss of a nation), through the Manchurian Incident (the creation of a new nation), and concluding, I would argue, with the extradiegetic end of the war, which the film itself anticipates. Japanese families in Manchuria would soon be driven apart by the Soviet Red Army, and many Japanese war orphans would live out the next few decades under the care of their adoptive Chinese parents. Li Xianglan would have to “become Japanese” in the postwar collaboration trials, since by that point Manzhouguo, the land of her childhood and adolescence, would have already ceased to exist. In this film, however, her remarkably childish performance makes her appear younger than all her previous roles, as if she wished to return to her cosmopolitan childhood days when her different names, costumes, and languages did not yet bear political connotations, and when perfor­ mance was not deception or betrayal of a nation. Directed by Wang Xinqi 王心齊, Everybody Is Happy recounts a rural grandmother’s visit of her children, and the comic confrontation with modernity at the Great East Asia Expo­ sition in the “New Capital” (Xinjing, today’s Changchun). The alignment with the grandmother’s perspective positions the viewer as a Chinese tourist to Xinjing, sharing her amazement while laughing at her country bumpkin ways. This scene was clearly in­ spired by a well-known episode in the classic novel The Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓 Page 9 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation 夢), in which the rustic Granny Liu visits her distant aristocratic “relatives” in town, and her perspective as an outsider provides the pretext for a thick description of the house that would otherwise be superfluous. Like Granny Liu, the grandmother in Everybody Is Happy makes a laughingstock of herself—such as when she doesn’t know how to use a telephone—but she also makes shrewd observations and gives hearty advice to her urban children. Not only does she lecture them on the virtues of honesty between husband and wife, she admonishes them to be patriotic and help contribute to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In this way, national policy is interwoven into traditional values with which most audiences can identify. Through the grandmother’s travels, the film connects the idyllic countryside with the prosperous city as two spaces in perfect harmony, unlike the rural-urban dichotomy found in Shanghai’s 1930s left-wing cinema, where the corrupt decadence of the city is con­ trasted with the moral purity of the countryside. The fairground, the central (p. 88) set­ ting of the film, appears as a miniature of both Manchuria and the Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere. The exhibitions halls showcase products and technologies from all over the empire, including its forests (a fake forest with fake tigers), its army and air force (model airplanes, tanks), and its culture (music halls). In a sense, the grandmother’s trip—from the train ride to the city spectacles visible from the taxi window, from her sonin-law’s hospital to the horse-racing tracks where her son gambles—are all part of the same theme park, whose boundaries might be extended to include her village and family itself, an idyllic landscape constructed through colonial ideology. Alternatively, the fair­ ground may also be seen as a metaphor for Manying studios, with all its artifice and cheap thrills, the cooperation of the “five races,” and fantasies of progress and modernity. Quite ironically, the grandmother propagating national policy is here played by a twentyyear-old actress Zhang Min 張敏, whose husband Wang Ze, a director and critic at Many­ ing, was later arrested for his anti-Japanese writings and died in jail in 1944. Such retro­ spective knowledge transforms this comedy into a poignant document of the tragic reali­ ties of many who were both contributors and victims of this nation-building project.

The National Body under Threat from Opium and Lice In addition to films showcasing Manzhouguo’s virgin landscapes and cosmopolitan modernity, Manying also made films that focused on the sick bodies of its population, works meant to awaken its citizens to both internal and external enemies and to legiti­ mate the “puppet state” as a healer and savior. After all, nations are constituted not mere­ ly by natural resources and urban development, but also by external threats that help cre­ ate a sense of imagined solidarity. This section discusses the historical film Toward Eterni­ ty (萬世流芳, 1942), set in the era of the Opium War, as well as the “enlightenment docu­ mentary” Lice Are to Be Feared (可怕的虱子, 1943). Produced at the height of the Pacific War, the explicit message of both these films was to fight against the Western imperial­ ists, but both works also carry far more nuanced and ambivalent implications. Page 10 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation Coproduced by Manying and China United Productions in Japanese-occupied Shanghai,33Toward Eternity is a historical epic about the anti-British, anti-opium cam­ paign of the Qing imperial commissioner Lin Zexu 林則徐 in 1839. As a poor scholar, the young Lin stays with the illustrious Zhang family, where he mistakes the Zhang daughter’s show of affection as indecency and consequently marries someone else. Miss Zhang subsequently vows to remain chaste and devotes her life to producing and dissemi­ nating anti-opium drugs, eventually leading a local militia against the British and dies a martyr’s death. In her 1943 review of the film in the Shanghai English-language maga­ zine The XXth Century, Eileen Chang 張愛玲 points out that Toward Eternity is the first Chinese-language film to portray opium smoking on-screen and thus “deserves (p. 89) much praise for its candor, its many-sided approach to a painful subject.”34Toward Eterni­ ty’s most impressive scenes are associated with its subplot and set in an opium den, where a singsong girl named Fenggu, played by Li Xianglan, sells candy. Her song “Come Buy Candies” (買糖歌) attracts customers and wins the favor of the British owners. To per­ suade her Chinese lover to quit opium, however, in the second round of singing she changes her lyrics to warnings about the horrors of opium addiction, but since the Britons cannot understand Chinese they keep on applauding. Whereas the first perfor­ mance of the song features several long takes, connected by dissolves, of Fenggu walking through the elaborate architecture of the opium paradise with euphoric opium smokers, the second performance of the song cuts between Fenggu and close-ups of grotesque opi­ um smokers with a punctuated clarity. The content of the lyrics and the film editing work together to expose the phantasmagoric utopia as dystopia. The film’s portrayal of the Chinese opium smokers as the “sick man of Asia” (東亞病夫) and of the final triumph over the British inspired very different nationalistic feelings among the work’s viewers. For the Japanese Pan-Asianists, only the unity of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere could save the Chinese addicts from both the West and their own degeneracy. Despite the unspoken fact that the opium trade helped fund the Japanese administration in Manchuria, the Chinese opium smoker, as Miriam Kingsberg points out, was portrayed as “an embodied justification of imperial rule by Japan.”35 Defined against the West, such Asian racial solidarity served to legitimize Japan’s hege­ mony over other Asian nations such as Manzhouguo. Yet Toward Eternity also spoke to Chinese nationalists in the process of resisting Japanese imperialism, for, according to Li Xianglan’s autobiography, even the Communist guerrillas in Yan’an and the later leaders of North Korea appreciated the subversion of her candy-selling song.36 After all, the per­ formance of the song resorts to a guerrilla tactic that operates on the enemy’s territory, in sharp contrast with the grand strategies of the famous anti-opium official, Lin Zexu. Furthermore, since the film focused on the courage and virtue of female “guerrillas” like Fenggu and Miss Zhang over the more “official” resistance of Lin Zexu, it projected, as Poshek Fu has argued, “an allegorical nationhood…defined by loyalty, purity, and stead­ fastness.”37 Beyond inspiring a variety of national feelings among its audiences, Toward Eternity’s fe­ male characters also embody the heroic dilemmas of the mostly Chinese cast and crew. From a Chinese nationalist point of view, apolitical entertainment under Japanese occupa­ Page 11 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation tion may be considered what Marx famously called “opium of the people,” but the film alerts the audience that beneath the melodious entertainment could lie a hidden tran­ script of resistance, and that film could also function as an instrument of enlightenment and awakening. Such enlightenment is only effective, however, when the proselytizer could dissimulate herself and descend into corrupt, decadent places such as the opium den. Whereas the morally austere Lin Zexu fails to help his friend quit opium, Fenggu’s song and Miss Zhang’s medicine are able to do what a righteous man couldn’t. Instead of fighting the enemy and saving the fallen, Lin Zexu and other men in the film only flee to safer places while subjecting the women’s chastity to gruesome tests. Thus the film presents an implicit critique of the Manichaean categories of resistance and (p. 90) collab­ oration against which nationalists may judge Manying and other colonial/occupation cine­ mas. Besides presenting opium as a metaphor for the enslavement of mind and body, nation, and race, Manying also waged a campaign against what seems like a much more trivial enemy: lice. Commissioned by the Manzhouguo’s Department of Civilian Welfare (满洲國民 生部), the “enlightenment” documentary Lice Are to Be Feared embeds its propagandistic message and scientific lesson within a fictional scenario with humorous animation. An es­ tablishing shot of a miner’s dormitory in Fushun is followed by a comic close-up of a be­ spectacled Japanese man in cap and uniform, using a paper megaphone to call for cleanup. Next, three unkempt Chinese men protest their sleep deprivation, while a Chinese woman dumps a basin of dirty water into an open ditch. A miner with a fedora hat jokes that he’d be quite lonely without lice, whereupon the camera zooms into his belly and dis­ solves into an animated louse who responds: “Without you guys I’d be quite lonely too.” Later, a ferocious-looking louse with the mannerism and dialect of his host identifies him­ self as a migrant from Shandong, carrying the dangerous typhus. Animated anatomical di­ agrams illustrate the plague’s spread from one body’s itching spot to a family to an entire community, while subjective camera angles and montage are employed to show the devel­ oping symptoms of typhus in the man with a fedora hat—heaven and earth seem to change places while he digs his pick into the ground. Thus the film enables the audience to identify physically with the sick man—we can feel his nausea and horror—without feel­ ing any emotional sympathy. When Chinese workers finally panic from the danger of typhus, there is a cut to a Japan­ ese soldier bayoneting a huge louse. Superimposed over the picture is the intertitle “Lice are like the U.K. and the U.S., and must be exterminated.” Entrenched in war with the Al­ lies, Japanese film productions of this time often included such references—in Everybody Is Happy children use as their shooting targets caricatures of pale white men standing for England and America. The “educational” film that advocates hygiene comes with a dehu­ manizing message—enemies are vermin to be killed without mercy. Yet while the interti­ tles identify lice with the British and Americans, the film’s sound track, character design, and editing clearly identify typhus and lice with the Chinese workers. Parallel-cut with an­ imated lice that appear with the leitmotif of Beijing opera drums and gongs, the workers’ crude, unhygienic ways at the beginning render them into stumbling zombies at the end, Page 12 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation finally vanquished by—and with—the disease to the accompaniment of a triumphant Japanese military march.38 In the “documentary” segments, although the workers acting in this film are much better dressed than they ordinarily would be,39 we can still glimpse their rather miserable living conditions, with dozens of bodies crammed into the same long bed. When Japanese doc­ tors carry a sick or dead body out with a stretcher, the contemporary audience may think of the notorious human body experimentation conducted by Unit 731 in Harbin’s suburbs. In fact, Unit 731 once employed a Manying cameraman, a former leftist, to film the dis­ section of a Chinese man’s body after he died from the germs spread by the unit using lice and fleas. Most ironically, one of the cinematographic assistants for Lice Are to Be Feared had himself just returned from the Harbin suburbs, where Unit 731 (p. 91) had spread typhus germs, and was unconscious for forty days after filming some lice in micro­ scopic close-ups.40 As far as the promotion of hygienic habits is concerned, this film does represent a gen­ uine attempt to stop the spread of deadly diseases among the migrant Chinese popula­ tion. After all, colonization was not only a process of exploitation and suppression, but was also accompanied by some modernization and welfare.41 On the other hand, the rea­ son for such education was not so much humanitarian as capitalist. The choice of locale for the film is Fushun, the coal-mining city that grew in parallel with Mantetsu, the agent of capitalist development in Manchuria. If lives were valuable only insofar as they fur­ thered the capitalist goals of profit maximization, they were equally dispensable for the related purpose of imperialist expansion. Understanding the background of the film as well as its visual rhetoric makes us aware of the Janus-faced colonial policies, a govern­ ment that constructs with one hand and destroys with the other, that heals and infects, and that has both a benevolent and monstrous side.

From Manying to Dongying, and a Postscript on The Last Emperor Japan’s surrender in August 1945 brought an end to the short-lived nation known as Manzhouguo, and with it the demise of Manying. Amakasu Masahiko committed suicide with cyanide, and the large staff at Manying was thrown into disarray, with a few Chinese leaders attempting to seize power. Meanwhile, the Soviet Red Army occupied the city and sometimes “borrowed” equipment that was never returned. It is likely that the body of films found in the Russian film archive were among these confiscated materials. At this historical juncture, the Chinese Communist Party in Changchun sent representatives to mobilize supporters at Manying, eventually establishing the Northeast Film Company (東 北電影公司), later renamed Northeast Film Studios (東北電影制片廠) on October 1, 1945. The company members were largely self-selected, as conservative or right-leaning Many­ ing employees left on their own. The Japanese technical staff was asked to stay and help build up the burgeoning Chinese Communist film industry, and as repatriation to Japan was only a distant possibility, many accepted the offer. As Changchun itself faced invasion Page 13 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation by the Chinese Nationalist army, eighty-four Japanese staff even moved with the company —or rather, helped to move the film studio itself—to the coal-mining town of Xingshan (today’s Hegang) at the Sino-Soviet border in May 1946. Joined by over forty former members of the Yan’an Film Team,42 the studio produced some of the first influential pro­ paganda films for the Chinese Communist Party, among them The White-Haired Girl (白毛 女, 1950) and Zhao Yiman (趙一曼, 1950), about a female underground Communist martyr in Manchuria executed by the Guandong army in 1936.43 The latter film in particular turned Japanese characters into “Japanese devils,” caricatures and stereotypes that would persist in PRC war films (p. 92) for more than half a century. Meanwhile, in 1947, forty-three Japanese members of the Northeast Film Studio were sent to a year and half of hard labor in the coal mines for “thought reform,” so that they “could better under­ stand the lives of the Chinese proletariats.”44 After being released from the mines, they participated in twenty-five films—fiction and documentary features and shorts—until their repatriation in 1953. In 1955, Northeast Film Studio was renamed Changchun Film Stu­ dio (長春電影製片廠) and was to remain one of the most important and prolific film studios in the PRC. Its prehistory as Manying, however, remains disavowed in China to this day. I would like to conclude with another “non-Chinese” film that had considerable impact on Chinese film history, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987), a film whose final hour provides us with the most spectacular cinematic afterlife of Manzhouguo. In this film, Amakasu Masahiko, played by the composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, is a prominent and sinister character responsible for smuggling China’s “last emperor,” 愛新覺羅溥傑, to Manchuria in 1931. Erroneously identified as the head of the Japanese secret service and the chief of Manying, Amakasu turns the emperor’s life in Manzhouguo into propaganda newsreels, which Pu Yi would watch for the first time in Mao’s reeducation prison, reedit­ ed as evidence of his guilt and his responsibility for atrocities committed under his “reign.” In this moment of epiphany, Pu Yi discovers, as Robert Burgoyne observes, that “his seemingly ceremonious role as puppet emperor of Manzhouguo had real-world ef­ fects,” whereas we as audience discover that “the role of the film as an agent of history overtakes its role as a source of history.”45 In other words, the figures captured on film are found to be at once real and illusory, subject and object, with and without historical agency. The legacy of Manchurian cinema shows that there was more to Manzhouguo than the “theatre of shadows” or “fascist prison”46 that was Pu Yi’s palace, but if Bertolucci could recover some of Pu Yi’s subjectivity from the totalitarian surveillance that fashioned his image, we may also endeavor to “rescue history”—and individual sub­ jectivities—“from the nation”47 by looking more closely at the visual legacy of that shortlived state called Manzhouguo, if only as a distorted mirror of the relationship between cinema and national identity.

Works Cited Bakish, Olga. “Emigré Identity: The Case of Harbin.” South Atlantic Quarterly 99.1 (2000): 51–76.

Page 14 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation Baskett, Michael. The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008. Burgoyne Robert. “The Stages of History.” In Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor: Multi­ ple Takes. Ed. Bruce Sklarew, Bonnie S. Kaufman, Ellen Handler Spitz, and Diane Borden. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. 223–234. (p. 96)

Chang, Eileen, “On the Screen: The Opium War,” XXth Century (Shanghai: XXth Century Publishing) 4.6 (June 1943): 464. Choe Kilsung 崔吉城. “Manshu Eiga Shirami wa kowai kou” 満州映画『虱は怖い』考 [On Manchurian Film Lice Are to Be Feared]. In Ajia shakai bunka-kenkyu [The journal of so­ cial and cultural studies on Asia] 6 (2005): 121. Clark, Paul. Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949. New York: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1987. Duara, Prasenjit. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Duara, Prasenjit. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manzhouguo and the East Asian Modern. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Fu, Poshek. “The Ambiguity of Entertainment: Chinese Cinema in Japanese-Occupied Shanghai, 1941 to 1945.” Cinema Journal 37.1 (Autumn 1997): 69–76. Hu Chang 胡昶 and Gu Quan 古泉 Manying: Guoce dianying mianmian guan 滿映: 國策電影面 面觀 [Manying: An overview of national policy on filmmaking]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990. Hu, Jubin. Projecting a Nation: Chinese National Cinema before 1949. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Iwano, Yuichi. “Watashi no uguisu to ongaku no to Harubin” 『私の鶯』と音楽の都ハルビン [My Nightingale and the music capital Harbin]. Ri Koran to Higashi ajia 李香蘭と東アジア [Li Xianglan and East Asia]. Ed. Yomota Inuhiko. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press 2001. 77– 100. Kingsberg, Miriam. Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History. Berke­ ley: University of California Press (forthcoming). Li, Jie. “Phantasmagoric Manzhouguo: Documentaries Produced by the South Manchuri­ an Railway Company, 1932–1940.” positions: east asia cultures critique 21.2 (forthcoming in 2014). Li Zhanji 李戰吉 and Qian Shouren 錢守仁. “Wenhua qinlüe de yingxiang zhengci” 文化侵略 的影像証詞 [Audiovisual testimony of cultural imperialism]. Renmin ribao 人民日報 [People’s daily], May 27, 1995. Page 15 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation Liang Xiaosheng 梁曉聲. Yige hongweibing de zibai 一個紅衛兵的自白 [Confessions of a Red Guard]. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. Lü Ren 吕任. “Zhuming sheyingshi jian daoyan Li Guanghui” 著名攝影師兼導演李光惠 [Famous cinematographer and director Li Guanghui]. Changchun wenshi ziliao 長春文史資 料 [Changchun cultural historical sources] 2 (1987): 92. Nornes, Markus, and Fukushima Yukio. The Japan/America Film Wars: World War II Propa-ganda and Its Cultural Contexts. Langhorne, PA: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994. Rony, Fatimah Tobing. “The Last Emperor.” Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor: Multiple Takes. Ed. Bruce Sklarew, Bonnie S. Kaufman, Ellen Handler Spitz, and Diane Borden. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. 137–146. Welsh David. Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945. New York: Tauris, 2001. Yamaguchi Takeshi. Aishū no Manshū Eiga [Melancholic Manchurian cinema]. Tokyo: San­ ten Shobō, 2000. Yamaguchi Yoshiko 山口淑子 “Ri Kōran” o ikite: watakushi no rirekisho 「李香蘭」を生きて: 私の履歴書 [Life as Li Xianglan: My resume]. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2004. (p. 97)

Yamaguchi Yoshiko 山口淑子 Ri Kôran: Watakushi no hansei 李香蘭: 私の半生 [Li Xi­

anglan: Half a life]. Tokyo: Shichôsha, 1990 Yomota Inuhiko 四方田犬彦 and Yan Ni 晏妮. Post-Manshu eiga ron: nichichu eiga oukan ポ スト満州映画論: 日中映画往還 [Post-Manchurian film history: Sino-Japanese cinematic ex­ changes]. Kyoto: Jimbunshoin, 2010. Zhang, Yingjin. Chinese National Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Notes: (1.) Yamaguchi Yoshiko 山口淑子, “Ri Kō ran” o ikite: watakushi no rirekisho 「李香蘭」を生 きて:私の履歴書 [Life as Li Xianglan: My resume] (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2004), 36. (2.) Yamaguchi Yoshiko, Life as Li Xianglan, 104–116. (3.) Li Zhanji 李戰吉 and Qian Shouren 錢守仁, “Wenhua qinlüe de yingxiang zhengci” 文化 侵略的影像証詞 [Audiovisual testimony of cultural imperialism], Renmin ribao 人民日報 [People’s daily], May 27, 1995. (4.) Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manzhouguo and the East Asian Mod­ ern (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). (5.) Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 28. Page 16 of 21

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation (6.) Noel Carroll and Sally Banes, “Cinematic Nation-Building: Eisenstein’s The Old and the New,” in Cinema and Nation, ed. Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie (New York: Rout­ ledge, 2000), 121. (7.) “Sanwei yiti kentanhui: dianying jianshang zhe dianying shangren, dianying zhizuo zhe” 三位一體懇談會: 電影鑑賞者 、 電影商人、 電影製作者 [Earnest conversations between film critics, film merchants, and filmmakers], Manzhou yinghua / Manshū Eiga 满洲影畫 [Manchurian film] 8 (1939): 42–45. Incidentally, many documentary films by the Japanese railway company in Manchuria were ethnographic works set in the countryside, which fo­ cused on the nomadic population and ignored the agrarian Han Chinese population. (8.) Ono Kenta 小野賢太, “Kangde liuniandu manzhou dianyingjie de huigu” 康德六年度滿洲 電影界的回顧 [Retrospective on Manchurian film in the sixth year of the Kangde reign peri­ od], trans. Du Biayu into Chinese, Manchurian Film 1939: no. 12, 18–21. (9.) Ri Xuan 日宣, “Suo wang yu woguo zhi yinghua” 所望於我國之映畫 [Hopes for our na­ tional cinema], Manchurian Film 1937: no. 12, 7. (10.) Shikiba Ryûzaburô 式場隆三郎, “Dianying de ganhuaxing” 電影的感化性 [The influence of film], trans. Mu Gong into Chinese, Manchurian Film 1940: no. 9, 54–55. (11.) Amakasu was infamous in Japan for the 1923 murders of leading Japanese anar­ chists. He came to Manzhouguo in 1931 and was responsible for smuggling the last Qing emperor, Pu Yi, into Manchuria. See Michael Baskett, The Attractive Empire: Transnation­ al Film Culture in Imperial Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), 29–31, 123–128. (12.) See “Manxi daoyan fangwen ji” 滿系導演訪問記 [Interview with Manchurian direc­ tors], Manchurian Film 1940: no. 2, 16–19. (13.) “Hôten Manjin seinen bunkajin iitai hôdai no kai” 奉天満人青年文化人言い対放題の会 [A symposium of young and cultured Manchurians in Fengtian], Manchurian Film 1939: no. 1, 55–61; “Earnest Conversations”; Zhou Guoqing 周國慶, “Manzhou dianying de zhu wen­ ti” 滿洲電影的諸問題 [Various problems with Manchurian cinema], Manchurian Film 1940: no. 7, 11–15. (14.) Yingjin Zhang, Chinese National Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2004): 84. For de­ tailed statistics on Mantetsu productions, see Hu Chang 胡昶 and Gu Quan 古泉, Manying: Guoce dianying mianmian guan 滿映: 國策電影面面觀 [Manying: An overview of national pol­ icy filmmaking] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990), 136. For an overview of extant Mantetsu films, see my article “Phantasmagoric Manzhouguo: Documentaries Produced by the South Manchurian Railway Company, 1932–1940,” forthcoming in positions: east asia cul­ tures critique. (15.) Hu Chang and Gu Quan, Manying: An Overview, 63, 207.

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation (16.) Hiratsuka Satoshi 平塚敏 “Kokumin eiga ami no kensetsu” 国民映画網の建設 [The es­ tablishment of a national people’s film network], Manchurian Film 1939: no. 5, 20–23; Ak­ agawa Kôichi 赤川幸一 “16 mm Jun’ei shiryaku” 十六耗トーキー巡映史略 [Outline history of 16 mm itinerant projections], Manchurian Film 1939: no. 7, 39–42. A similar practice was also adopted by China’s Communist government in the 1960s and 1970s. As a sent-down youth in Northern Manchuria during the 1970s, my father was partly responsible for drawing propaganda on slides that would be projected before the movies at these itiner­ ant screenings. (17.) Ono Kenta, “Retrospective on Manchurian film,” 19. (18.) Hu Chang and Gu Quan, Manying: An Overview, 208–209. Also see “Earnest Conver­ sations”; “Mikkyo Nekka he no jun’ei kiroku” 秘境熱河への巡映記録 [Chronicle of itinerant projection in the secret border of Jehol], 1939.8:77–78; Ono Kenta, “Retrospective on Manchurian film,” 19. (19.) Lü Ren 吕任, “Zhuming sheyingshi jian daoyan Li Guanghui” 著名摄影师兼导演李光惠 [Famous cinematographer and director Li Guanghui], Changchun wenshi ziliao 長春文史資 料 [Changchun cultural historical sources] 2 (1987): 92. (20.) “Symposium of Young and Cultured Manchurians,” and “Earnest Conversations,” 43. (21.) Quoted in Jubin Hu, Projecting a Nation: Chinese National Cinema before 1949 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), 151. (22.) Quoted in Michael Baskett, The Attractive Empire, 127. (23.) Zhou Guoqing, “Various problems with Manchurian cinema,” 12, 11–15; and “Earnest Conversations,” 43. (24.) Quoted in Markus Nornes and Fukushima Yukio, The Japan/America Film Wars: World War II Propaganda and Its Cultural Contexts (Langhorne, PA: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994), 85. (25.) Ono Kenta, “Retrospective on Manchurian film,” 19. (26.) There are entertaining and frivolous pieces on “dismantling the peep-show” [拆穿西 洋鏡] that explain how films are made behind the scenes—how rain, tears, high jumps (Kuleshov effect), car scenes (back projection), and other special effects are achieved. Along the same lines, there is often a two- or four-page spread of “film news” of a tabloid and gossipy nature and short replies to readers letters (“Dianying xinxiang” 電影信箱 [Film mailbox], Manchurian Film 1939: no. 12, 41). (27.) I borrow these descriptions from Kamei Fumio’s documentary Fighting Soldiers (Tatagau heitai, 1939), about the “everyday lives” of Japanese soldiers on the Chinese bat­ tlefield.

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation (28.) Such an ethos also pervades wartime documentaries, best articulated through an in­ tertitle in Kamei Fumio’s Fighting Soldiers: “The continent is now going through the vio­ lent pangs of labor as it gives birth to a New Order.” (29.) Iwasaki Akira 岩崎旭, “Byakuran no uta ni yosete” 「白蘭の歌」 [On Song of the White Orchid], Manchurian Film, 1940: no. 2, 86–87. (30.) Although considerable resources and hope had been invested into this film, it was never released in Japan or Manchuria, considered by the Guangdong army as “running counter to national policy and of no value either for enlightenment or for amusement.” It was only in 1984 that a shorter version of the film was rediscovered and released. See Ya­ maguchi Yoshiko, Ri Kô ran: Watakushi no hansei 李香蘭: 私の半生 [Li Xianglan: Half a life] (Tokyo: Shichôsha, 1990), 278–279. (31.) Iwano Yuichi, “Watashi no uguisu to ongaku no to Harubin 『私の鶯』と音楽の都ハルビ ン,” [My Nightingale and the music capital Harbin] in Romota Inuhiku, Ri Koran to Hi­ gashi ajia 李香蘭と東アジア [Li Xianglan and East Asia] (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001), 77–100. Three generations of Russians lived in the city during seven decades of their presence in Harbin, from 1898 to the mid-1960s. The first generation originally con­ sisted of the builders of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), employees, and private set­ tlers, but in the 1920s, during and after the Russian civil war, its number was expanded with an influx of émigrés of the same ages. Their children, some born in Russia and oth­ ers in Harbin, formed the second generation, which was fated to grow up in emigration. In the mid-1930s and 1940s the second generation produced the third and last genera­ tion of Harbin Russians for whom Harbin was the only home they knew. See Olga Bakish, “Emigré Identity: The Case of Harbin,” in South Atlantic Quarterly 99.1 (2000): 51–76. (32.) Yamaguchi Yoshiko, Life as Li Xianglan, 221–222. (33.) China United Productions (中華聯合製片股份公司) was a collaborationist enterprise be­ tween the Japanese military government and Shanghai’s film industry. The company made only entertainment movies with no obvious propagandistic relevance until mid-1942, when it was pressured to demonstrate its “loyalty” by making a film with an anti-British and anti-American theme. See Poshek Fu, “The Ambiguity of Entertainment: Chinese Cin­ ema in Japanese-Occupied Shanghai, 1941 to 1945,” Cinema Journal 37.1 (Autumn 1997): 69–76. (34.) Eileen Chang, “On the Screen: The Opium War,” The XXth Century (Shanghai: XXth Century Publishing) 4.6 (June 1943): 464. (35.) Miriam Kingsberg, Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History. Berkeley: University of California Press (forthcoming). (36.) Yamaguchi Yoshiko, Life as Li Xianglan, 298–299. (37.) Poshek Fu, “The Ambiguity of Entertainment,” 75.

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation (38.) Such strategies of parallel editing between men and pests are used in Nazi Kultur­ filme, such as Fritz Hippler’s The Eternal Jew (Der Ewige Jude, 1940), where torrents of rats are crosscut with processions of Jews. See David Welsh, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 (New York: Tauris, 2001), 245–257. Similar propagandistic strategies would later be used by the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution, where adolescents were first forced to squash caterpillars like class enemies and then told to squash class enemies like caterpillars (Liang Xiaosheng 梁曉聲, Yige hongweibing de zibai 一個紅衛兵的自白 [Confessions of a Red Guard] [Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006], 22–45). (39.) Yamaguchi Takeshi, Aishū no Manshū Eiga (Melancholic Manchurian cinema) (Tokyo: Santen Shobō, 2000), 205. (40.) Yamaguchi Takeshi, Melancholic Manchurian Cinema, 201–203. (41.) Choe Kilsung 崔吉城, “Manshu Eiga Shirami wa kowai kou” 満州映画『虱は怖い』考 ” [On the Manchurian film Lice Are to Be Feared], Ajia shakai bunka-kenkyu アジア社会文化 研究 [Journal of social and cultural studies on Asia] 6 (2005): 121. (42.) Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema, 29. (43.) See Yomota Inuhiko 四方田犬彦 and Yan Ni 晏妮, Post-Manshu eiga ron: nichichu eiga oukan ポスト満州映画論: 日中映画往還 [Post-Manchurian film history: Sino-Japanese cinemat­ ic exchanges] (Kyoto: Jimbunshoin, 2010). (44.) Hu Chang 胡昶, Dongying de riben ren 東影的日本人 [The Japanese at Northeast Film Studios] (Changchun: Changchun zhengxie wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui, 2005), 24–31. (45.) Robert Burgoyne, “The Stages of History,” in Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor: Multi­ ple Takes, ed. Bruce Sklarew, Bonnie S. Kaufman, Ellen Handler Spitz, and Diane Borden (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 229–230. (46.) Fatimah Tobing Rony, “The Last Emperor,” in Sklarew et al., Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, 141. (47.) Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Mod­ ern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

Jie Li

Jie Li is a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in East Asian Humanities at the Princeton Soci­ ety of Fellows in Liberal Arts. Her articles on film have appeared or are forthcoming in the journals Public Culture, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, China Per­ spectives, Jump Cut, Journal of Chinese Cinemas and positions: east asia cultures cri­ tique. Her current book projects are Utopian Ruins: A Memory Museum of the Maoist

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A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture As­ sociation Era and Cinematic Manchuria: A Transnational History. She has also made documen­ tary films in China and Cameroon.

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period

A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period   Yomi Braester The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter outlines the intellectual and political agenda behind establishing the month­ ly Chinese Cinema in 1956. The journal followed the Hundred Flowers campaign and pro­ moted open discussion on the shortcomings of current film policy. In particular, it chal­ lenged the dogma of art for workers, peasants, and soldiers, emphasizing instead the im­ portance of debate. The chapter argues that the episode constituted a founding moment for Chinese cinephilia, in the sense of informed discourse rooted in a community commit­ ted to film interpretation. Understanding early PRC film culture in terms of cinephilia calls for rethinking the connection between art and politics under Mao. Keywords: Cinephilia, film journals, Hundred Flowers campaign, intellectual debates, Mao Zedong

When Antonioni’s Chung Kuo-Cina came out in 1972 and immediately fell out of favor with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), audiences were required to criticize the film, in individual writings and collective sessions. Screening of the film was prohibited, meaning that criticisms had to be made sight unseen. Reflecting on the paradoxical, indeed farci­ cal, situation of an entire nation forced to compose critical essays about a film practically no one in that country had watched, contemporary commentators deride Maoist propa­ ganda as antithetical to cinematic engagement.1 The written word was privileged over the filmic image to the point of the latter’s complete disappearance. Philistine and doctrinaire, the campaign against Cina can nevertheless be regarded as an instance of a culture of debate, understanding cinema as inseparable from a discourse that highlights its historical and ideological context. The concerted repudiation of Cina followed other political movements that established movie-going as part of a critical en­ deavor. Albeit extreme and excessive, the Cina campaign is symptomatic of how, during the Maoist period, decision makers and film professionals alike identified criticism as the foundation of cinema. In other words, Maoist cinematic practices gave rise to a version of cinephilia. Antoine de Baecque has defined cinephilia in the French context as “the invention of a gaze”—a new sense of what films should be watched and how, as well as a new awareness of the Page 1 of 19

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period viewer’s place in the history of film.2 Cinephilia reshaped postwar French culture—espe­ cially through the publication of Cahiers du Ciné ma, the emergence of the politique des auteurs, and the New Wave. De Baecque’s definition has been criticized for being tailored to the Cahiers du Ciné ma group, emphasizing an intellectual elite writing in a self-reflex­ ive manner and legitimizing film as a form of national heritage.3 Yet it is cinephilia as un­ derstood in France and the United States in the second half of the twentieth century that has dominated the discourse, and it is fascinating to see the unstated ways in which even the Chinese version has defined itself in relation to the French model. Chinese cinephilia developed in the environment of a state-sponsored attempt to answer the question, What is (Communist Chinese) cinema? The Maoist period was ener­ gized by debates that took the form of campaigns targeting specific films and critics. In parallel with French cinephilia, film practices in the PRC tied together moviegoing and discussion, on dedicated pages of magazines, among illiterate groups, and in called meet­ ings. This emphasis on a collective of viewers points to the existence of cultural permuta­ tions of cinephilia, in this case inflected by the particularities of Maoist aesthetics. (p. 99)

At the same time, Maoist film practices foreground an often-neglected trait of cinephilia worldwide: although it is usually perceived as an individual and emotional preoccupation, cinephilia is just as much a collective and intellectual endeavor. It has its roots in the con­ certed effort in postwar France to create a community, both intimate and imaginary, around movie viewing and interpretation. Personal insights may be gained in the privacy of the dark film theater, but once the lights are on, the group takes over as the location of shared perceptions and goals. In Maoist China, where audiences were defined by their so­ cial class, cinephilia too was based on collective identity. Understanding early PRC film culture in terms of cinephilia calls for rethinking the con­ nection between art and politics under Mao. Since film criticism was part of the government’s efforts to control cinematic production and even reception, critical efforts have been largely dismissed as dishonest propaganda. At best, film criticism has been an­ alyzed in terms reserved for official political statements rather than as an intellectual en­ deavor—Hu Ke 胡克, for example, describes the process in the 1950s as “the politicization of theory.”4 Yet rather than taking the didactic criticism of the time as undermining the essence of film as visual practice, we may regard Maoist film aesthetics as a cinephilic re­ versal of the hierarchy of image and word. The Marxist subjugation of superstructure to base also resulted in acknowledging affect as an ideological tool. The repudiation of cer­ tain images and even the banning of entire movies evidence the passion at the foundation of Maoist film criticism. Paradoxically, the Maoist cinephobia was to a large extent an es­ pecially vehement form of cinephilia. The passion for film was channeled into creating a community based on unpacking and interpreting signs. Undergirding this chapter is a growing body of scholarship acknowledging the richness of Maoist cinema, especially during the so-called seventeen years period (1949–1966).5 Recent studies contest the notion that film during the Maoist period failed to counter po­ litical control, and they stress the nuances, complexities, and inner conflicts in Maoist Page 2 of 19

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period film.6 I have also argued elsewhere that political terminology sometimes functioned in ways comparable with film studies vocabulary. In particular, mass campaigns may be dis­ cussed in terms familiar to genre studies.7 Likewise, campaigns such as those targeting The Story of Wu Xun (武訓傳, 1950) and Cina may be recast as examples of collective cinephilia. A full reevaluation of the Maoist period in terms of cinephilia awaits a more comprehen­ sive study. In this chapter I look at a specific moment that is symptomatic of Maoist cinephilia, but at the same time constitutes an exception. I turn to the Hundred Flowers campaign (June 1956–July 1957), a hiatus in political control. The opinions aired during this temporary relaxation reveal how the logic of Maoist cultural politics could also result in an alternative trajectory of film and critical practice. The new direction in cinema during the Hundred Flowers period was led by the group that formed around the monthly Chinese Cinema (中國電影), founded in 1956.8 The journal’s founders were motivated by cinephilia and sought to introduce a major change in the popular perception of film in China. The attempt did not last long—as the Hundred Flowers policy gave way to the antirightist campaign, Chinese Cinema quickly adapted and changed direction, leaving the cinephilic project in a state of disorientation. The (p. 100)

episode not only exposes hidden undercurrents in film circles during the early Maoist pe­ riod, it also suggests how cultural politics and state policies were at times decoupled through a sphere of critical debate. Even though the potential for such separation was largely unrealized at the time, it has left an enduring legacy.

A Space for Public Debate The Hundred Flowers campaign encouraged airing opinions in public. Many organiza­ tions interpreted the new policy as legitimating humanistic argumentation9 or even as an incentive for creating spaces of debate. The idea of establishing a critical forum on film was also the impetus behind Chinese Cinema. Chen Huangmei 陳荒煤, a revolutionary vet­ eran (he attended Mao’s Yan’an Talks) and at the time the deputy bureau head of the Film Bureau in the Ministry of Culture, saw the current policy as an opportunity for productive debate. Encouraged by Zhou Yang 周揚, then vice minister of propaganda, Chen turned to several colleagues, including the filmmakers Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生, Huang Gang 黃鋼, Jia Qi 賈霽, and Geng Xi 耿西, as well as the critics Cheng Jihua 程季華 and Zhong Dianfei 鐘惦 棐. Together, they formed an editorial board de facto presided over by Chen. (The monthly journal was placed under the Film Bureau and was published by the Chinese Film Press in Beijing.) The editors continued holding their other positions and made use of inside in­ formation. Chen Huangmei was exposed at the Film Bureau to concerns raised by film­ makers; Zhong Dianfei’s work at the Propaganda Bureau gave him advance knowledge of film policy; Cheng Jihua kept his position as the founding editor of the journal Film Art Translations (電影藝術譯叢; known since 1981 as World Cinema [世界電影]). Soon they were joined by editors previously working for Popular Cinema (大眾電影), inspired by Chinese Cinema as the first professional film journal in China.10 Although Chinese Cinema did not Page 3 of 19

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period mark a specific approach and its regular contributors were not identified as a clique, the editorial group promoted a consistent and distinctive agenda. The inaugural issue of Chinese Cinema appeared on October 28, 1956, and a short piece titled “Words from the Editorial Board” carefully delineated the journal’s mission. It com­ prises ten items, the first two of which read: 1. This journal was established for the needs of film art workers and some film lovers. We hope that it will become a place for everyone to learn about film (p. 101) culture and research and discuss current trends in film art and theoretical ques­ tions…. 2. The discussions and criticism published in this journal are primarily the creative and free work of art criticism in the field of film. The journal consists of scholarly re­ search; therefore the essays in the various columns reflect the writers’ personal opinions. The editors respect differences of opinion and require only that the essays make sense and be substantiated. We do not require that they comport with the edi­ tors’ opinions…. The comrades [whose essays are published in this volume] express varying personal opinions about the creative work of Chinese film…each of them ex­ presses his own view and does not regard his view as the last word. We hope that henceforth film circles will dispel the silence that has prevailed and engage in pro­ found, serious, and scientific research. The participants in this research should not be a minority but everyone. It should include not only systematic theses but also hap­ hazard ideas about film art.11 The editorial statement establishes the journal as a professional endeavor rather than be­ ing committed to a particular ideology. The appeal for a community based on “differences of opinion”—literally “a hundred schools” (百家)—relies on the current policy to “let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools contend” (百花齊放, 百家爭鳴). The editors seized the opportunity provided by the new policy to promote their agenda: to go beyond determining films’ consistency with the Party line and provide a space for public debate. This mission statement, as well as other essays in early issues of Chinese Cinema, broke away from existing practices and redefined debate on film. The editors appealed to film industry insiders as well as to “film lovers” or “cinephiles” (dianying aihaozhe 電影愛好者). The phrase dianying aihaozhe for “cinephiles” had little purchase previously and seems inspired by similar terms used to refer to connoisseurs of literature and music. Juxta­ posed with another new coinage, dianying gongzuozhe 電影工作者, for “film workers,” this new term connotes persons of lesser investment in the film industry but distinct from— probably more committed than—uncritical film fans. (Significantly, the mission statement avoids the term yingmi 影迷 [“film fans”]—which had already been in common usage in pre-1949 magazines.) Further inquiry is needed to establish the nature of film criticism before 1949; rhetorically, at last, the Chinese Cinema group strove to differentiate itself from earlier patterns of viewing.

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period The editorial also reveals its vision by using the term “film art” (電影藝術). The term had been invoked in preceding years to denote the craft involved in filmmaking, as distinct from film policy. A description of Ruan Qian’s 阮潛 1951 book A Brief Discussion of Film Directing (電影編導簡論) explains: “Film art is the combined product of art and technique, occupying an important place in people’s lives. All comrades wishing to pursue work in any aspect of film—editing, directing, acting, or music—must understand the process of filmmaking.”12 The term film art enjoyed common usage in the USSR; it appears in the ti­ tles of essays translated from Russian in the 1950s,13 and its Russian equivalent has been the title of the USSR’s leading journal on film (Iskusstvo (p. 102) kino, founded 1931). The emphasis on the creative process implicit in the term (rather than on reception or the in­ dustry) was also a major concern for Chinese Cinema, which changed its name to Film Art in 1959. The mission statement also mentions planned regular features that further establish the journal’s interest in “film art.” The editors maintain that since film is a composite art, the development of film art will benefit from the views of artists in other fields. The inaugural issue includes essays by famous Chinese painters, and the mission statement promises fu­ ture attention to literature, drama, and music. Other columns offer reports on specific di­ rectors, the history of Chinese film, film outside Chinese, and digests of Chinese film criti­ cism. These multiple frameworks—art in other media, directorial authority, historical and critical perspectives, and the global context—establish the tools for understanding film as art. The journal also included a “Readers’ Forum” (讀者論壇), and the guest essay in the inau­ gural issue underlines the difference between Chinese Cinema and other publications. The essay looks at the magazine Popular Cinema. Established in 1950 and merged in 1952 with New Cinema (新電影), Popular Cinema was widely read and set the tone for dis­ cussing film in the early years of the PRC. The author starts by commending Popular Cin­ ema for its accessible format and language and for the quick feedback on current films. Yet the initial praise turns to a virulent attack: popularization, writes the author, is not an excuse for superficiality.14 The essay in the Readers’ Forum sets Chinese Cinema apart while discrediting its main competition. The author, who goes by the name Li Hong 李弘, is eloquent and informed— clearly not a lay reader but rather someone well acquainted with the editors. Li faults Popular Cinema for exercising little judgment and providing no assessment of either polit­ ical or artistic value. Throughout the four-page essay, Li pounds on Popular Cinema, con­ tending that its editorial board suffers from “hollow dogmatism” and fails to tell the truth about flawed films, to the point of losing all credibility. The magazine, he claims, includes no principled analysis, is nonargumentative, and is useless to its readers. Chinese Cinema, one may infer by contrast, will be more combative and will promote more contro­ versial views. Chinese Cinema aimed to fill a critical vacuum.

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period

Between Ideology and Form Arguably the best indication of the new journal’s aspirations may be found in Chen Huangmei’s essay in the inaugural issue. As indicated by the essay’s title—“About ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom’ in Film Art”—the lead editor situates Chinese Cinema in the context of the current political campaign. Chen is ready to make controversial arguments and point out specific culprits. His thesis foreshadows the stance of other members of the editorial board in identifying a crisis in the Chinese film industry and challenging the poli­ cymakers. Chen begins by noting that Chinese cinema has still to catch up with its prewar condition, either in yearly output or in quality. He blames the plight of the film industry on the policy (instated by Yuan Muzhi 袁牧之) that has called for serving the three revolu­ tionary sectors: the workers, peasants, and soldiers.15 Chen couches his criticism in praise for the Party policy, approving of earlier campaigns that criticized the films The Story of Wu Xun, Company Commander Guan (關連長, 1951), and A Married Couple (我們夫 婦之間, 1951) and targeted the “counterrevolutionary clique” associated with Hu Feng 胡 風.16 Chen claims that the emphasis on workers, peasants, and soldiers is correct—it was, after all, at the heart of the campaign against The Story of Wu Xun—but misunderstood. (p. 103)

Art criticism and theory, in film and the other arts, has oversimplified Marxism-Leninism and remained dogmatic and sectarian. (The removal of “sectarianism” and “dogmatism” was a main slogan of the Hundred Flowers campaign, as announced in People’s Daily [人 民日報]).17 Chen invokes party doctrine only to attack the cultural establishment and to fo­ cus instead on film craft: The policy of “serving the workers, peasants, and soldiers” and the principle that art should serve politics were understood simplistically, disregarding the rules of artistic creation, not following authors’ insights gained from the actual conditions, deciding on themes through simple formulas, and requiring the author to comport with political tasks mechanically according to the current political campaign. Con­ sequently cinema—which is most attuned to the masses, reflects reality most pow­ erfully, and is the weapon of widest scope—has been restricted in subject matter and form. Now it can only address the subject matter of workers, peasants, and soldiers directly, and reflect only a certain aspect of the lives of workers, peasants, and soldiers…. This narrowing of subject matter and simplification of film scripts has resulted in a dramatic decrease in film numbers and caused many films to be­ come dry political didactics…. We have no drama, no tragedies, no comedies. Our creative workers and those in charge of art often consider only policy, reflecting and outlining the campaign [of the day], and rarely consider what artistic form and means should be used to reflect life.18 Against policy, Chen posits form. The implications go beyond contrasting subject matter and artistic device. Chen explicitly calls for melodramas, tragedies, and comedies, emphasizing not the represented topics but rather crowd-pleasing genres. He is even ready to question the tenet

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period of socialist realism, if artists are comfortable expressing themselves through other forms. Chen also goes against dogma by emphasizing individual creation rather than collective effort:

The demand for cinematic characteristics is by no means tantamount to writing off the author’s unique style or ignoring the author’s expression of his own thought…. In other words, authors should be permitted to fully develop their independent thinking to promote their creation and establish their own style.19 In the context of the Maoist control over the arts, Chen’s words sound dangerously heretic. A decade later, during the Cultural Revolution, artists would no longer sign their (p. 104) names, but rather would attribute their work to a collective. Chen, on the other hand, calls for free au­ thorial rein. He spells out his advocacy of directorial autonomy: “[Under present circumstances] the author will never feel free…. Authors must have the power to filter demands and criticism…. Those supervising artistic creation must change entirely any approach that counters artistic cre­ ation.”20 Chen goes as far as to suggest a corresponding restructuring of state control. He pro­ poses a body for screening films for superior plot structure, character building, and other ele­ ments of the craft. He writes of “inspecting” (審查) the films, using the same term that refers to political censorship.21 In a circumspect manner, therefore, Chen suggests substituting ideologi­ cal censorship with a vetting process based on a professional evaluation of a film’s artistic merit.

As if this challenge were not daring enough, Chen contests the revolutionary narrative in favor of a factual account of film history. He claims that the demand for socialist realism— the predominant aesthetic value in the 1950s—tends at times toward abstract discussion. Calling instead for “seeking truth in facts” (shishi qiushi 實事求是, which later became Deng Xiaoping’s 鄧小平 motto), Chen adopts a broader definition of the ideal film—one that is “socialist in content and of the Chinese people in form.” Chen looks to other Chi­ nese art forms and to earlier Chinese films, thereby not only upholding the agenda of Chi­ nese Cinema for “film art” but also rolling back the purported achievements of PRC cine­ ma. Chen looks for models in films such as Crossroads (十字街頭, 1937) and Myriad of Lights (萬家燈火, 1948)—the prewar “left-wing” films. Chen implicitly rejects the narrative of progress toward better and better films under Mao; roots his observations in an under­ standing of cinema as a medium with a history separate from if parallel to political histo­ ry; and—in a cinephilic gesture par excellence—acknowledges that film’s viability in the present depends on one’s consciousness of the medium’s history. Chen was not the only one to strike a daring stance. The same issue of Chinese Cinema also includes an essay by the director Shi Hui 石揮. Setting out from the same premise— that Chinese film needs a change of direction—Shi similarly identifies the problems in po­ litical control. The existing hierarchy privileges supervisors at the studio and the Film Bu­ reau, leaving directors little room for maneuver. Directors follow orders from above—they cannot choose a script for its qualities, nor do they even know what film they are going to shoot next. After the shoot, films go through inhibiting censorship. The final products are often tagged as “commercial,” “lewd,” “ghost films,” or “influenced by Hollywood.” If they are eventually distributed, the films are evaluated only by people from within the su­ pervising units. Cinema thereby loses its most valuable supporters—the audience.22 Such direct criticism of the Party apparatus that controls film production and distribution would be inconceivable before (or after) the Hundred Flowers campaign. Page 7 of 19

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period Like many intellectuals, Shi was naive in letting down his guard, and he paid dearly for it later. Yet his essay does not seem to aim at political change; rather, the challenge to Party supervision is a by-product of Shi’s advocacy of professional oversight. He writes: We have not been responsible for the artistic overview of films, nor have we stud­ ied the films completed—whether these movies are good or bad, what makes them good (p. 105) or bad, and how to make better movies. These scholarly questions cannot be resolved through only a creative conference held once every two years. Instead, discussion of these interesting questions should be habitual among artists.23 In other words, Shi calls for a detailed study of films rather than doctrinaire judgment. To decide on—and more importantly, to explain—the merits of specific films, there is need for a critical community that sees as one of its standing duties to discuss films on a regular basis.

The cumulative effect of Chen Huangmei, Shi Hui, and other contributors to the early is­ sues of Chinese Cinema goes beyond specific suggestions for restructuring. They are pri­ marily interested in setting up a different way of looking at films. Film culture in the first years of the PRC continued the prewar fanzine culture. (It is no coincidence that unlike the Beijing-based Chinese Cinema, Popular Cinema was founded in Shanghai, where gos­ sipy fan magazines had been the rage in the 1930s.) The editors of Chinese Cinema aimed at establishing the cinephilic gaze in the environment of Maoist cultural production.

Reaching for International Cinephilia The essays in Chinese Cinema released an astounding amount of pent-up resentment to­ ward political control; more surprising is the fact that despite limited exchange with nonSoviet countries, as soon as the concept of public debate was accepted, film circles were ready to push for a critical model similar to recent French cinephilia. Much like those writing in Cahiers du Ciné ma, the contributors to Chinese Cinema laid out an agenda for a community bridging industry insiders, professional critics, and informed audiences, based on an awareness of film history and formal aesthetics. The proximity of events (Cahiers was established in 1951, while Chinese Cinema was established in 1956) across the cultural and geopolitical distance deserves special attention. The affinity between Chinese and French cinephilia sheds light on—and raises new questions about—film cul­ ture in Maoist China. Previous publications, such as People’s Literature (人民文學), had already been covering developments abroad. Readers of Film Art Translations were apprised of every aspect of Soviet cinema—directing, cinematography, acting, and scriptwriting were described by both professionals and critics. Also covered were theoretical aspects (such as realism and dubbing), pedagogical questions (including the training at the Gerasimov Institute of Cin­ ematography), and issues in policymaking. The essays addressed the USSR almost exclu­ sively, while periodical reviews brought brief news from other countries, prominently from eastern Europe. These reviews always provided an ideological context—for example, Hollywood films came under attack, while special praise was reserved for left-leaning U.S. Page 8 of 19

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period films, such as Salt of the Earth (1954).24 Even though the essays provided Soviet-centric and heavily biased information, they maintained interest in film (p. 106) as a profession; they also imply that the inner circles could access and discuss an even wider body of for­ eign film criticism. A notable exception to the focus on Soviet cinema may be found in the attention to French filmmakers and critics. In 1953, Film Art Translations printed Fernand Grenier’s “The Crisis of French Cinema,”25 which had appeared earlier that year in L’Humanité. Grenier, a Stalinist and a prominent member of the French Communist Party (FCP), ex­ pressed a sentiment common among French critics in disapproving of Hollywood’s grow­ ing market share. The interest in French film circles may be explained by their explicit support of the communist cause—the inaugural issue of Chinese Cinema also featured an interview with the director Louis Daquin, a member of the FCP.26 Yet most likely writers such as Grenier were given a stage because of the rising importance of French criticism, and in particular its role in stirring a debate around Hollywood’s global influence. Chinese Cinema distinguished itself by paying even more attention to French film culture. Many publications took the Hundred Flowers campaign as license for expanding beyond the Soviet bloc, but it was an especially significant statement for a journal named Chinese Cinema to feature prominently developments in foreign film. (In July 1958 a new journal, International Cinema [國際電影], took up the task—only to merge a year later with Chinese Cinema under the new title Film Art.) The editors of Chinese Cinema took special interest in introducing aspects of French film culture now identified as postwar cinephilia. In 1956, no less than eight essays in Chinese Cinema focused on French film, providing multiple surveys, addressing recent forms of realism, and describing the state of the French film industry. One essay provided a history of the Cinématheque Française, detail­ ing the contribution of its founders, Henri Langlois and Georges Franju.27 The initial im­ petus for publishing the essay may have been the exhibition of the Chinese films Daugh­ ters of China (中華女兒, 1949) and The Heavenly Match (天仙配, 1955) among the world masterpieces screened on the occasion of the Cinemathéque’s twentieth anniversary. Yet the essay also functions as an introduction to the early days of French cinephilia and places Chinese films within that context. The major source on French film was Georges Sadoul (see fig. 5.1), five of whose essays appeared in the first year of Chinese Cinema. Sadoul was personally acquainted with Chi­ nese film circles, meeting with directors and critics at film festivals and in his travels to China.28 His books were translated into Chinese in the 1950s.29 Sadoul also had the ideo­ logical credentials—a militant communist since 1948 and a fervent Stalinist since 1950 (in 1956 he distanced himself from Stalinism, which may account for his subsequent dis­ appearance from the pages of Chinese Cinema). He had been trained at the French Insti­ tute for Advanced Film Studies (IDHEC) and became a film historian (including his life­ long work on the six-volume Histoire gé né rale du ciné ma) and critic (publishing regu­ larly in La Nouvelle Critique, Europe, and L’Écran franç ais). Writing on films from every

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period country, Sadoul was probably the most respected communist film critic in the world from the 1940s to the 1960s.30

Figure 5.1 George Sadoul (first on right) with a Chi­ nese film delegation in Cannes. Next to Sadoul stands the director and Chinese Cinema cofounder Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生. To the left of the woman are the directors Situ Huimin 司徒慧敏 and Shui Hua 水華 and Zhang Kebei 張可奮, a member of the founding editor­ ial board of Popular Cinema. Source: Sadoul, “Bali guoji dianying chuangzuozhe huiyi de guanghui chengjiu.” My special thanks to Luo Yijun 羅藝軍, member of the Chinese Cinema edi­ torial board since 1958 and later the president of the Chinese Film Critics Association (中國電影評論學會), for his help in identifying the people in the photo and sharing with me his firsthand experience of the peri­ od.

Sadoul was a key figure in the development of French cinephilia. Antoine de Baecque points out Sadoul’s contribution to forming “criticism with a thesis” (critique (p. 107) à thè se)—writing about specific films to illustrate arguments about the history of cinema, bal­ ancing between strong political convictions and addressing specific films. In 1950, Sadoul and André Bazin engaged in a public debate on “the Stalin myth.” The controversy was arguably the first instance of full-fledged collective cinephilia, in which critics aligned themselves with certain camps, debating at length which films are good and what consti­ tutes a good film. As de Baecque notes, the unprecedented factionalism fostered open de­ bate and redefined cinema as part of a larger critical endeavor of discussing and writing about films.31 Sadoul’s support of Stalinist cinema was related to his stance on Hollywood’s influence. Mainstream American films were introduced to France after World War II and triggered considerable animosity among communist stalwarts (Grenier’s above-mentioned essay echoes Sadoul’s writings). Sadoul did not stop, however, at lamenting the crisis; instead, he suggested remedial measures, emphasizing specific traits of French cinema, and realism in particular, as the desired path for future films. His influence as a critic derived from both his polemical stance and his ability to provide a clear agenda. Page 10 of 19

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period It may have been the same traits that attracted the editors of Chinese Cinema to Sadoul. These characteristics are evident in Sadoul’s essay on French cinema, published (p. 108) in Deutsche Filmkunst in 1953 and reprinted in a twenty-two-page translated version in Chinese Cinema in 1956.32 In this essay, Sadoul stresses the need for a French film indus­ try that would resist Hollywood, a theme that must have found resonance with Chinese film critics in the 1950s, who touted the need for a “national cinema” (民族電影) and sought to define the desirable characteristics of realism, whether socialist or otherwise modulated. The editors of Chinese Cinema seem to have internalized Sadoul’s blend of ideological dogmatism and informed criticism. During the brief thaw of the Hundred Flowers campaign, Sadoul’s variety of cinephilia—ideologically motivated but not dogmat­ ic—could serve as a source of inspiration.

The End of an Era of Openness As soon as Chinese Cinema initiated a culture of debate, other publications followed. On November 14, 1956, the daily Wenhui bao 文匯報—reeling from a short period of heavyhanded political intervention and seeking to reestablish its reputation as an independent voice—initiated a discussion under the title “Why Are There So Few Good Chinese Films?” For the following two months, Wenhui bao featured a regular column with re­ sponses to the question, mostly from film industry insiders such as actors, directors, and projectionists, who provided firsthand testimonials on the audience’s lack of enthusiasm for formulaic though ideologically sound productions. The very audience for which the films were intended—workers, peasants, and soldiers—saw little merit in them.33 The debate on the pages of Wenhui bao has become a celebrated case, representative of the reception of the Hundred Flowers campaign among film circles.34 What seems forgot­ ten is that the dysfunction of Chinese cinema had been raised as a topic more than two weeks earlier in the inaugural issue of Chinese Cinema. Moreover, the essays in Chinese Cinema followed the same reasoning of blaming the Party’s control, the disregard for the intended audience, and the celebration of workers, peasants, and soldiers. The origina­ tion of the debate in Chinese Cinema is not only a question of primacy; rather, the ad­ vancement of identical arguments by multiple writers, in two separate publications, evi­ dences a consensus among film circles on the need to abolish the policy regarding onscreen representation of workers, peasants, and soldiers. Between them, Chinese Cinema and Wenhui bao reached to both professional and lay readers. The most famous contribution to this debate was Zhong Dianfei’s essay “The Battle Drums of Cinema” (電影的鑼鼓), which appeared in The Literary Gazette (文藝報) on De­ cember 15, 1956, and was reprinted in Wenhui bao on December 21. It was Zhong who had suggested the “Why Are There So Few Good Chinese Films?” column when ap­ proached by the Beijing office of Wenhui bao.35 In “The Battle Drums of Cinema,” Zhong offered his own contribution to the debate—the title is a celebration of Wenhui bao’s call for explaining the failures of Chinese film: “The battle drums of cinema sounded this No­ vember.” Zhong bases his criticism on hard numbers showing the (p. 109) decline in audi­ Page 11 of 19

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period ence attendance during the seven years since the founding of the PRC, and states the im­ portance of this fact for an art form that depends on contact with spectators. He finds fault primarily with the policy of emphasizing workers, peasants, and soldiers, but does not criticize the principle directly and instead warns against misinterpreting it in a “dog­ matic and sectarian” manner. Zhong proceeds to challenge the film-planning policy based on assigning quotas to films addressing these three revolutionary sectors.36 In all these elements, Zhong advances arguments very similar to those Chen Huangmei had made in the inaugural issue of Chinese Cinema. “The Battle Drums of Cinema” was in fact written with the new journal in mind, but both Chinese Cinema and People’s Daily asked for modi­ fications, deeming the content too politically sensitive.37 The differences between Zhong and Chen, however, were rhetorical rather than substantial. Zhong Dianfei’s and Chen Huangmei’s writings from the Hundred Flowers period share more than a challenge to dogmatic control; they also include new and important implica­ tions for film criticism. Both writers note the fundamental importance of subject matter, only to dissociate it from political and industrial considerations. Subject matter becomes rather an issue of form—the art of filmmaking. In ways reminiscent of the debate be­ tween Bazin and Sadoul on the Stalin myth, Zhong and Chen argue for assessing how the subject matter is portrayed, and in particular the portrayal’s credibility (or “realism”). In the name of these principles, they envision a transformation beyond changing viewers’ opinions and demand a comprehensive reform to restore decision powers to filmmakers. In pattern and content, the debate on the representation of workers, peasants, and sol­ diers is exemplary of a nascent cinephilia. Yet as the challenge to authorities became more direct, policymakers decided to shut down the debate. Like many local units during the Hundred Flowers campaign, Wenhui bao took liberties that alarmed the party leaders. The “Why Are There So Few Good Chi­ nese Films” column was discontinued on December 22, and Zhong’s “The Battle Drums of Cinema” was singled out for criticism by Mao Zedong 毛澤東 in a speech given at the Supreme State Council. It is important to note that Zhong’s essay was not considered in­ sidious immediately. Indeed, it had appeared in the Literary Gazette, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Writers Association (中國作家協會), under the auspices of the Central Propa­ ganda Bureau (中宣部). The essay won the Gazette’s explicit stamp of approval, as Zhong was identified as a member of the Gazette’s editorial board. Mao Zedong seems to have liked the essay at first, yet Zhong had already run afoul of Jiang Qing 江青 in conjunction with the Life of Wu Xun affair.38 Zhong ended up being labeled a rightist, and his thesis was attacked in dozens of essays. Perhaps the most virulent detractor was none other than Chen Huangmei. Having been denounced as well and undergone fifteen criticism sessions, Chen seems to have had no choice. (Later, in 1964, Chen was accused of being a revisionist by Zhou Yang.)39 Zhong’s and Chen’s close colleague, Shi Hui, also charged with being a rightist, committed suicide in 1957.40Chinese Cinema was restructured in 1959 and renamed Film Art, then halted publication between 1966 and 1979. It would take many years, and another generation of critics, to revive cinephilia in the PRC.

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period (p. 110)

The Legacy of 1950s Cinephilia

Emerging out of the Cultural Revolution, film critics turned their backs on Maoist aes­ thetics and looked for novel ways to invigorate Chinese cinema. The short episode of 1956 was neglected if not forgotten, even as Chen Huangmei, Zhong Dianfei, and Cheng Jihua returned to writing and teaching. Nevertheless, the cinephilia of the 1950s was a foundational moment for film criticism in the PRC, demonstrating the possibility and val­ ue of criticism beyond direct political agenda and establishing cinema as the subject of an independent discourse. Largely unacknowledged, the legacy of Chinese Cinema has con­ tinued to influence post-Maoist cinema. Hand in hand with the reinvigoration of Chinese cinema in the early 1980s by Fourth Generation and Fifth Generation directors, critics called for new approaches. Zhang Nu­ anxin 張暖忻 and Li Tuo 李陀, in their seminal 1979 essay, “The Modernization of Film Lan­ guage” (談電影語言的現代化), were interested in the same problem addressed by critics in 1956—“modernization” denoted for Zhang and Li liberation from ideological control. They also suggested solutions similar to those proposed by the editors of Chinese Cinema in 1956. Zhang and Li focused on form, the visual vocabulary of film, and they called for a historically informed analysis: “A key point from which to start is to analyze, study, and summarize carefully the changes and development of international film language.”41 They found inspiration in foreign trends (particularly Italian neorealism and the French New Wave). Fortunately for Zhang and Li, as well as their fellow critics, they encountered much briefer and less harmful forms of resistance from the authorities. The battle drums of Chinese cinema beat loud in the 1980s. Zhang and Li were especially enthusiastic in introducing André Bazin’s theorization of the long take.42 Inadvertently, the Bazinian wave in 1980s China reenacted the developments in French cinephilia in the 1960s. Bazin sided with the “young Turks” such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who found inspiration in Hollywood movies and thought Sadoul’s communist principles wooden.43 Much like the rift in French circles that brought to prominence the Bazinian strain of cinephilia, the Chinese critics of the 1980s felt less restricted by political dogma and imitated the fervent convictions and informed analysis of the Chinese Cinema group. The opinions voiced and critical practices established in 1956 laid the foundations for Chinese cinema since the 1980s, both in calling for a com­ mercially viable industry and in establishing the importance of a zealously committed crit­ ical community.

Works Cited “Bianjibu de hua” 編輯部的話 [Words from the editorial board]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1956: no. 1, 96. Braester, Yomi. “The Political Campaign as Genre: Ideology and Iconography during the Seventeen Years.” Modern Language Quarterly 69.1 (March 2008): 119–140.

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period Braester, Yomi, and Tina Mai Chen. “Film in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979: The Missing Years?” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5.1 (2011): 5–12. Chen Huangmei 陳荒煤. “Guanyu dianying yishu de ‘baihua qifang’” 關於電影藝術的“百花齊 放” [About “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom” in film art]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1956: no. 1, 5–10. Cheng Jihua 程季華. “Dianying Yishu chuchuang yu ‘Dianying de luogu’” 《電影藝術》初創與 “電影鑼鼓” [The founding of Film Art and “The Battle Drums of Cinema”]. Dianying yishu 電 影藝術 [Film art] 2006: no. 6, 5–6. Clark, Paul. Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1987. de Baecque, Antoine. La cinéphilie: Invention d’un regard, histoire d’une culture, 1944– 1968. Paris: Fayard, 2003. Delurining [Druzhinin?] V. В•德路日宁. “Zai dianying yishu de gongtong xinglie li: lun dun­ huapian” 電影藝術的共同行列裡—論動畫片 [On a common path with film art: On animation]. Trans. Yang Xiu 楊秀. Dianying yishu yicong 電影藝術譯叢 [Film art translations] 1952: no. 4: 98–109. “Dianying biandao jianlun” 電影編導簡 [A Brief Discussion of Film Directing]. Renmin wenxue 人民文學 [People’s literature] 1951: no. 2. Grenier, Fernand [as 格雷尼埃]. “Faguo dianying de weiji” 法國電影的危機 [The crisis of French cinema]. Film Art Translations 1953: no. 1, 120–132. “Guoji dianying xinwen” 國際電影新聞 [International film news]. Film Art Translations 1953: no. 9, 81–95. Hu Ke 胡克. Zhongguo dianying lilun shiping 中國電影理論史評 [A critique of the history of Chinese film theory]. Beijing: China Film Press, 2005. Jullier, Laurent, and Jean-Marc Leveratto. Cinéphiles et cinéphilies: Une histoire de la qualité cinématographique. Paris: Armand Colin, 2010. Kraus, Richard. “Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend.” Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Rev­ olution. Ed. Ban Wang. Leiden: Brill, 2010. 249–262. (p. 114)

Lagesse, Cecile. “Bazin and the Politics of Realism in Mainland China.” Opening Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and its Afterlife. Ed. Dudley Andrew and Hervé Joubert-Laurencins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 316–323. Li Hong 李弘. “Ping Dazhong Dianying” 評《大眾電影》 [Criticizing Popular Cinema]. Zhong­ guo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1956: no. 1, 79–82.

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period Lin Yi 林藝 “He Faguo pengyou zai yiqi” 和法國朋友在一起 [Together with a French friend]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1956: no. 1, 88–89. Lukefu [Rukov?] L. Л•鲁柯夫. “Wei heping er douzheng de dianying yishu: zai guoji diany­ ingjie de yinmushang” 為和平而斗爭的電影藝術—在國際電影節的銀幕上 [Film art struggling for peace: On the international film festival screens]. Trans. Zhigang 志剛. Film Art Transla­ tions 1952: no. 1: 24–36. Luo Xuepeng 羅學蓬. “Zhong Dianfei yu ‘Dianying de luogu’” 鐘惦棐與《電影的鑼鼓》 [Zhong Dianfei and “The Battle Drums of Cinema”]. 2002. Tianya.cn. McDougall, Bonnie. Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art”: A Translation of the 1943 Text with Commentary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980. Pickowicz, Paul G. “Acting Like Revolutionaries: Shi Hui, the Wenhua Studio, and Private Sector Filmmaking, 1949–52.” Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Re­ public of China. Ed. J. Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 256–287. Qi Zhi 啟之. Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying (1949–1966 nian) 毛澤東時代的人民電影 (1949–1966年) [The people’s cinema in the Mao Zedong era, 1949–1966]. Taipei: Xiuwei zixun, 2010. Sadoul, Georges. “Bali guoji dianying chuangzuozhe huiyi de guanghui chengjiu” 巴黎國際 電影創作者會議的光輝成就 [The brilliant success of the Paris international filmmakers con­ ference]. Trans. He Zheng 何正. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese Cinema] 1956: no. 7, 53–57. Sadoul, Georges. “Faguo dianying yishu” 法國電影藝術 [French film art]. Trans. Gao Gan 高 淦. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1956: no. 9, 1–22. Shi Hui 石揮. “Wo dui zhengming de yixie kanfa” 我對爭鳴的一些看法 [Some of my views on (a hundred schools) contending]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1956: no. 1, 20–21. Wang, Zhuoyi. “Revolutionizing the Silver Screen: Cultural Hybridity, Power Struggles, and Political Sexuality in the Chinese Revolutionary Cinema: 1946–59.” PhD diss., Univer­ sity of Washington, 2009. Yan Ping 嚴平. Ranshao de shi linghun: Chen Huangmei zhuan 燃燒的是靈魂—陳荒煤傳 [It is souls that are burning: An autobiography of Chen Huangmei]. Beijing: China Film Press, 2006. Yao Fangzao 姚芳藻. “‘Dianying Luogo’ da fengbo” “電影鑼鼓”大風波 [The great gust of “The Battle Drums of Cinema”]. 1998. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949–1979 中國電影研究

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period 資料, 1949—1979 [Research materials on Chinese cinema, 1949–1979]. Ed. Wu Di 吴迪 Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. Vol. 1, 150–155. Zhang, Nuanxin, and Li Tuo. “The Modernization of Film Language.” Chinese Film Theo­ ry: A Guide to a New Era. Ed. George Semsel, Xia Hong, and Hou Jianping. New York: Praeger, 1990. 10–20. Zhao 昭 [Xu Zhao? 徐昭], “Faguo dianying buwuguan chengli ershi zhounian” 法國 電影博物館成立二十周年 [The twentieth anniversary of the French film museum]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1956: no. 12, 88–89. (p. 115)

Zhong Dianfei 鐘惦棐. “Dianying de luogu” 電影的鑼鼓 [The battle drums of cinema]. 1956. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949–1979 中國電影研究資料, 1949–1979 [Research mate­ rials on Chinese cinema, 1949–1979]. Ed. Wu Di 吴迪. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. Vol. 2, 78–85.

Notes: (1.) Anecdotally, copies of Cina circulated with a dubbed Chinese text that included the criticism of the film as part of the text. For the testimony of a man who had to criticize the film without watching it, see Jia Zhangke’s 賈樟柯 film, I Wish I Knew (海上傳奇, 2010). (2.) Antoine de Baecque, La ciné philie: Invention d’un regard, histoire d’une culture, 1944–1968 (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 9–11. (3.) Laurent Jullier and Jean-Marc Leveratto, Ciné philes et ciné philies: Une histoire de la qualité ciné matographique (Paris: Armand Colin, 2010), 10–14. (4.) Hu Ke 胡克, Zhongguo dianying lilun shiping 中國電影理論史評 [A critical history of Chi­ nese film history] (Beijing: China Film Press, 2005), 188. (5.) For a survey of seventeen-year cinema in English, see Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). For a state-of-the-field survey, see Yomi Braester and Tina Mai Chen, “Film in the People’s Re­ public of China, 1949–1979: The Missing Years?” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5.1 (2011): 5–12. (6.) See Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5.1 (special issue: “The Missing Period—PRC 1949– 1979”). (7.) Yomi Braester, “The Political Campaign as Genre: Ideology and Iconography during the Seventeen Years,” Modern Language Quarterly 69.1 (March 2008): 119–140. (8.) Renamed Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] in 1985, the now-bimonthly journal is the flagship publication of the Chinese Film Association (中國電影家協會).

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period (9.) Richard Kraus, “Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend,” in Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution, ed. Ban Wang (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 252. (10.) Cheng Jihua 程季華, “Dianying yishu chuchuang yu ‘Dianying de luogu’” [The found­ ing of Film Art and “The Battle Drums of Cinema”], Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 2006: no. 6, 5–6. See also Yan Ping 嚴平, Ranshao de shi linghun: Chen Huangmei zhuan 燃 燒的是靈魂—陳荒煤傳 [It is souls that are burning: An autobiography of Chen Huangmei] (Beijing: China Film Press, 2006), 143–150. (11.) “Bianjibu de hua” 編輯部的話 [Words from the editorial board], in Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1956: no. 1, 96. (12.) “Dianying biandao jianlun” 電影編導簡論 [A brief discussion of film directing], Renmin wenxue 人民文學 [People’s literature] 1951, no. 2. (13.) See for example Delurining [Druzhinin?], V. В• 德路日宁. “Shizai dianying yishu de gongtong xinglie li: lun donghuapian” 實在電影藝術的共同行列裡—論動畫片 [On a common path with real film art: On animation], trans. Yang Xiu 楊秀, Dianying yishu yicong 電影藝術 譯叢 [Film art translations], 1952: no. 4; and Lukefu [Rukov?], L. Л• 鲁柯夫. “Wei heping er douzheng de dianying yishu: zai guoji dianyingjie de yinmushang” 為和平而斗爭的電影藝術— 在國際電影節的銀幕上 [Film art struggling for peace: On the international film festival screens], trans. Zhigang 志剛, Film Art Translations 1952: no. 1. (14.) Li Hong 李弘, “Ping Dazhong Dianying” 評《大眾電影》 [Criticizing Popular Cinema], Chinese Cinema 1956: no. 1, 79–82. (15.) On Yuan Muzhi’s policy, see Yan Ping, It Is Souls That Are Burning, 147. The policy was based on Mao’s “Yan’an Talks,” which stipulated that “literature and art are funda­ mentally for workers, peasants, and soldiers.” See McDougall Bonnie, Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art”: A Translation of the 1943 Text with Commentary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980), 68. (16.) Chen Huangmei 陳荒煤, “Guanyu dianying yishu de ‘baihua qifang’” 關於電影藝術的 “ 百花齊放 ” [About “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom” in film art], Chinese Cinema 1956: no. 1, 5–10. (17.) Wang Zhuoyi, Revolutionizing the Silver Screen: Cultural Hybridity, Power Strug­ gles, and Political Sexuality in the Chinese Revolutionary Cinema: 1946–59, PhD diss., University of Washington, 2009, 121–123. (18.) Chen Huangmei, “About ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,’” 6. (19.) Chen Huangmei, “About ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,’” 10. (20.) Chen Huangmei, “About ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,’” 10.

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period (21.) The idea of abolishing political inspection of film came, surprisingly, from Zhou Yang. See Yan Ping, It Is Souls That Are Burning, 144. (22.) Shi Hui 石揮, “Wo dui zhengming de yixie kanfa” 我對爭鳴的一些看法 [Some of my views on (a hundred schools) contending], Chinese Cinema 1956: no. 1, 20–21. (23.) Shi Hui, “Some of My Views,” 20. (24.) “Guoji dianying xinwen” 國際電影新聞 [International film news], Film Art Translations 1953: no. 9, 81–95. (25.) Fernand Grenier [as 格雷尼埃], “Faguo dianying de weiji” 法國電影的危機 [The crisis of French cinema], Film Art Translations 1953: no. 1, 120–132. (26.) “He Faguo pengyou zai yiqi” 和法國朋友在一起 [Together with a French friend], Chi­ nese Cinema 1956: no. 1, 88–89. (27.) Zhao 昭 [Xu Zhao? 徐昭], “Faguo dianying buwuguan chengli ershi zhounian” 法國電影 博物館成立二十周年 [The twentieth anniversary of the Chinese film museum], Chinese Cine­ ma 1956: no. 12, 88–89. (28.) Sadoul’s name is rendered in Chinese as Qiaozhi Saduer 喬治 • 薩杜爾. (29.) Sadoul’s Charlie Chaplin appeared in Chinese in 1954, and again in 1958; his history of French cinema in 1956; his Dianying yishu shi 電影藝術史 (literally, “History of Film Art,” which is probably a translation of his Histoire d’un art le cinema: Des origines a nos jours) was translated in 1957; Dianying tongshi 電影通史 (literally, “Comprehensive Histo­ ry of Cinema,” which is probably a translation of his Histoire du ciné ma mondial) ap­ peared in 1961. (30.) Antoine de Baecque, La ciné philie, 64. (31.) Antoine de Baecque, La ciné philie, 86–87. (32.) Georges Sadoul, “Faguo dianying yishu” 法國電影藝術 [French film art], trans. Gao Gan 高淦, Chinese Cinema 1956: no. 9, 64. (33.) For more on the debate in Wenhui bao, see Zhuoyi Wang, Revolutionizing the Silver Screen, 10–40. (34.) See also Hu Ke 胡克, Zhongguo dianying lilun shiping 中國電影理論史評 [A critical his­ tory of Chinese film history] (Beijing: China Film Press, 2005), 204–205. (35.) Luo Xuepeng 羅學蓬, “Zhong Dianfei yu ‘Dianying de luogu’” 鐘惦棐與《電影的鑼鼓》 [Zhong Dianfei and “The Battle Drums of Cinema”] (2002) Tianya.cn. (36.) Zhong Dianfei 鐘惦棐, “Dianying de luogu” 電影的鑼鼓 [The battle drums of cinema] (1956), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949–1979 中國電影研究資料, 1949—1979 [Re­

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A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period search materials on Chinese cinema, 1949–1979], ed. Wu Di 吴迪 (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006), vol. 2, 78–85. (37.) Cheng Jihua 程季华, “Dianying Yishu chuchuang yu ‘Dianying de luogu’” 《電影藝術》 初創與 “電影鑼鼓” [The founding if Film Art and “The Battle Drums of Cinema”], Film Art 2006: no. 6, 5–6; for a slightly different version see Yao Fangzao 姚芳藻, “‘Dianying Luogo’ da fengbo” “電影鑼鼓”大風波 [The great gust of “The Battle Drums of Cinema”] (1998) in Wu Di, Research Materials on Chinese Cinema, 150–155. (38.) See Luo Xuepeng, “Zhong Dianfei and ‘The Battle Drums of Cinema.’” (39.) Qi Zhi 啟之, Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying (1949–1966 nian) 毛澤東時代的人 民電影 (1949–1966年) [The people’s cinema in the Mao Zedong era, 1949–1966] (Taipei: Xiuwei zixun, 2010), 476–480. (40.) On Shi Hui’s brushes with politics, see Paul Pickowicz, “Acting Like Revolutionaries: Shi Hui, the Wenhua Studio, and Private Sector Filmmaking, 1949–52,” in Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China, ed. J. Brown and Paul G. Pick­ owicz (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 256–287. (41.) Zhang Nuanxin and Li Tuo, “The Modernization of Film Language,” in Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to a New Era, ed. George Semsel, Xia Hong, and Hou Jianping (New York: Praeger, 1990), 12. (42.) On Bazin’s introduction to China, see also Cecile Lagesse, “Bazin and the Politics of Realism in Mainland China,” in Opening Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and its Afterlife, ed. Dudley Andrew and Hervé Joubert-Laurencin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 316–323. (43.) Antoine de Baecque, La Cinéphilie, 42.

Yomi Braester

Yomi Braester is Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the Uni­ versity of Washington in Seattle. His publications include Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford UP, 2003), Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract (Duke UP, 2010), and Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia (coedited with James Tweedie; Hong Kong University Press, 2010).

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema

Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema   Poshek Fu The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0007

Abstract and Keywords Mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong entertainment business has attracted increasing atten­ tion from scholars in recent years because of its importance in the cultural development of the city. It was a time during which the film industry was dominated by Mandarin-lan­ guage production. Cantonese-language filmmaking was in steady decline. With new archival materials recently available, this essay argues that the “Mandarization” of Hong Kong film culture has to be understood in the volatile context of Cold War politics in Asia. Hong Kong was a covert battleground of the global competition between the United States and its enemies. The battle for the allegiance of Free China (Taiwan) and Commu­ nist China was the defining characteristics of Cold War culture in Hong Kong, and the ide­ ologically divided film industry was a significant but understudied part of this cultural war. Keywords: Cold War, Shaw Brothers, Cathay, Chang-Feng-Xin

Mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong was marked by political volatility and economic uncer­ tainty accompanied by the escalating Cold War in Asia. During this period, the colony’s cinema industry was in a constant turmoil, roiled by an influx of migrants from China competing for limited job opportunities, by the loss of the China market following the es­ tablishment of the People’s Republic, by the rise of big Hollywood-style studios funded by transnational capital, as well as by a battle between the “Left” and the “Right,” Can­ tonese- and Mandarin-language productions. All of these forces contributed to a rapid transformations in business infrastructure, market structure, and production strategies of the industry that have paved the way for Hong Kong’s development, since the 1980s, into one of the most dynamic capitals of global filmmaking. The importance of the mid-twenti­ eth century in making Hong Kong cinema what it is today has generated considerable critical interest in recent years. New research materials including movie magazines and personal interviews have been discovered (mostly under the impressive auspices of the Hong Kong Film Archive), and new scholarly projects have been launched.

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema However, most of these new works have ignored the important archival materials now available at the U.S. State Department Archive and U.S. Information Service Archive in Washington, DC. Covering a wide range of subjects relating to the politics, culture, and society of the Cold War period, these archives contain materials that promise to expand and complicate our understanding of Hong Kong cinema. This chapter uses some of the documents found at the U.S. archives, together with the research materials available in Hong Kong, to help reconstruct the historical mutation of the Hong Kong film industry surrounding the history and cultural politics of the Shaw Brothers 邵氏 studio and its en­ tanglement with the changing vortex of global politics and colonial society from the 1940s to 1960s. The chapter will also bring attention to some issues and questions that require further study in order to deepen our understanding of Hong Kong cinema in (p. 117) what was the most politically volatile and industrially critical period with respect to its future development.

Rebuilding Postwar Cinema Less than a year after China’s liberation from the Japanese in August 1945, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists resumed. The political turmoil and collaps­ ing economy drove many Chinese to seek refuge across the border in Hong Kong, which had quickly recovered from the deprivation of the Japanese occupation (1941–1945). This massive influx continued following the Communist victory in 1949 and the subsequent ex­ ile of the Nationalist government to Taiwan. As a result, the colony’s population jumped sharply from around 600,000 in 1945 to 1.86 million in 1949 and 2.18 million in 1952. Among these refugees were major figures of the Shanghai film community—actors, direc­ tors, and entrepreneurs—whose skills and capital contributed to a quick revival of the war-torn Hong Kong cinema industry. Since the 1920s, Hong Kong had been the capital of Cantonese-dialect cinema. Mostly cheaply made and narratively simple, the films it produced were popular entertainment for a pan-Cantonese audience around the world, especially around the Macao-Guang­ dong–Hong Kong area and Southeast Asia. However, the film industry collapsed during the Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945, as most of the major filmmakers fled to the Chinese interior to avoid cooperation with the enemy. In 1946, before local filmmakers made their way back following the Japanese surrender, a group of Shanghai émigré businessmen, including Jiang Boying 蔣伯英 and Yan Youxiang 嚴幼祥, built the first film company in postwar Hong Kong, Da Zhonghua (大中華), which tried to take advantage of the colony’s free port and stable financial system to make Man­ darin films for the established markets in the mainland. In just two years, after producing about forty small-budget, crowd-pleasing pictures, all featuring Shanghai stars and some with Cantonese prints to broaden the audience base, the company was closed because it could recoup only a fraction of its box-office revenues from China because of the inflation­ ary economy.

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema However, the colony’s movie business was booming, with investment pouring in from as far as Singapore, Hanoi, New York, and San Francisco to meet the demands of eager au­ diences, particularly in Southeast Asia. And once again Cantonese movies dominated the marketplace. By 1948, there were around fifty film companies, mostly operating on a tight budget and with no production facilities of their own, which produced a total of 145 movies, 126 of which were in Cantonese. A few of these film companies were established by left-wing refugees who saw it as their mission to mobilize the colony in support of the Communist struggle against the Nationalist government, including Da Guangming 大光明 and Nanguo 南國, which was in effect the Hong Kong branch of Kunlun 崑崙 Studio. Compared to all the small film studios in postwar Hong Kong, the modern, Hollywoodstyled Yonghua 永華 was a giant, with a production studio in Kowloon Tong (p. 118) that in­ cluded two huge soundstages, a film-processing center, and all kinds of state-of-the-art filming equipment imported from the United States. It also had on contract an enormous production staff that included writers and filmmakers from varying political backgrounds —such as actors Zhou Xuan 周璇, Bai Yang 白楊, and Li Lihua 李麗華, directors Zhu Shilin 朱石麟 and Bu Wancang 卜萬蒼, together with leftist scriptwriters Ke Ling 柯靈 and Ouyang Yuqian 歐陽予倩. The company was founded with a starting budget of over US$3 million by Li Zuyong 李祖永, a U.S.-educated scion of a powerful pro-Nationalist family, who aimed (with advice from Zhang Shankun 張善琨, the wartime Shanghai “King of Cinema”) to go beyond current markets and sell Chinese films to a global audience. In order to elevate Chinese films to a global standard, Yonghua invested heavily in its debuts, Bu Wancang’s National Spirit (國魂, 1949) and Zhu Shilin’s Sorrows of the Forbidden City (清宫秘史, 1949), both of which were historical costume dramas imbued with impressive production values. The two movies were hugely popular among audiences in China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia; and although failing to gain access to the global market, Sorrows of the Forbidden City nevertheless won a prize at the Locarno Film Festival. However, like Da Zhonghua before it, Yonghua failed to get box-office profits out of China—its largest mar­ ket—as a result of the collapsing financial system. In addition to its cash flow problems, Yonghua suffered from poor management and constant personnel conflicts between em­ ployees of opposing political affiliations. In 1949, thus, the company was in disarray, un­ able to provide critical leadership for the Hong Kong film industry in the face of a new crisis: the loss of the China market. Shortly after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, Beijing prohibited the importation of movies from Hong Kong, except for those that advanced its own cultural policies. As a result, the colony’s film industry was thrown into chaos. Most affected by the new restriction were the Mandarin film industry and the many mainland refugees in­ volved in it. Whereas Cantonese cinema catered to Cantonese-speaking audiences throughout the region, especially Southeast Asia, the survival of Mandarin moviemaking in Hong Kong depended more narrowly on the markets in China and, to some extent, Southeast Asia. As journalist Shen Jianzhi 沈鑒治 recalled, a “patriotic fervor” prevailed in the film community in the wake of the Communist victory. With the loss of the China mar­ ket, many filmmakers with connections to the new government returned voluntarily to China, and some (such as Liu Qiong 劉瓊 and Shu Shi 舒適) were forced to return by the Page 3 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema colonial authority because of their pro-Communist activities.1 Those who chose not to re­ turn (or to go to Taiwan or to Southeast Asia) had to face a stark choice: to stay in the movie business, they either had to develop new markets or had to make movies that Chi­ na would allow into its own. In 1950, Changcheng 長城 (literally, “Great Wall”) was reorga­ nized by Yuan Yang’an 袁仰安 with backing of pro-Beijing businessman Lü Jiankang 吕建康 to produce films with a strong social message. With a production staff that included veter­ an director Li Pingqian 李萍倩, Changcheng became the first Hong Kong movie company to gain permission to sell to China. It was soon joined by two other “pro-Communist” stu­ dios. In 1952, eminent director Zhu Shilin, who fled Shanghai after being accused of col­ laborating with Japan, reorganized the recently closed Communist-led Wushi Niandai (五 十年代; literally, “1950s”) Studio into the (p. 119) Fenghuang (鳳凰) (literally, “Phoenix”) Film Company with the aim of carrying on the leftist filmmaking tradition in the colony. In the same year, the Cantonese-language film studio Xinlian 新聯 (literally, “New United”) was established by actor/director Lu Dun 卢敦 (under the leadership of Hong Kong–born communist journalist Liao Yiyuan 廖一原) with the backing of pro-Beijing financiers. Its purpose was to create a community of serious-minded artists to combat the alleged vul­ garity and backwardness of the Cantonese show business. This so-called Chang-Feng-Xin (長鳳新) triumvirate was under the direct control of the New China News Agency and en­ joyed close connections with top Communist leaders such as Zhou Enlai 周恩來 and Liao Chengzhi 廖承志, who was responsible for overseas Chinese affairs. It was the center of “patriotic” filmmaking in Hong Kong, promoting the cultural policy and political ideas of revolutionary China to the audiences in the region until the 1980s. However, most film studios sought to expand market shares in Southeast Asia and open the Taiwan market. The massive influx of refugees to Taiwan following the exile of the Na­ tionalist government there made it the largest Mandarin-language market outside the mainland. Yet, despite all expectations, the island turned out to be a difficult market be­ cause of Nationalist censorship, heavy taxation, a small exhibition circuit, and the domi­ nance of Hollywood and Japanese movies. In fact, as a journalist noted at the time, “The Mandarin movie industry is in serious trouble,” with a sharp decline in production and many minor stars and technicians out of work.2 To survive the crisis, film studios sought ever more funds from investors, the largest of which were the exhibition business giants Cathay Organization and the Shaw Brothers organization in Singapore. The crisis, then, led to the domination of Southeast Asian diasporic capital and business vision in mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong cinema.3 Indeed, Cathay expanded to Hong Kong in 1956 by establishing its production arm, Motion Pictures & General Investment Co. Ltd. (MP & GI), with the studio facilities it took over from Yonghua, which went bank­ rupt after several years of financial problems. Dato Loke Wan Tho 陸運濤, the charming Cambridge-educated heir of the multi-billionaire-dollar Cathay business empire, shuttled between Singapore and Hong Kong to give direction to MP & GI. Drawing top talents from the refugee community, he put together an impressive production team that includ­ ed directors Yue Feng 岳楓 and Yi Wen 易文, scriptwriters Yao Ke 姚克 and Qin Yu 秦羽, to­ gether with actresses You Min 尤敏 and Ge Lan 葛蘭, and also brought in U.S.-educated Zhong Qiwen 鐘啟文 and Stephen Soong 宋淇 to help him introduce Hollywood-style man­ Page 4 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema agement (for example, setting up a script section) to the studio operation. Trying to reach as large an audience as possible in the uncertain market conditions, MP & GI also set up a Cantonese film production unit filled with veteran directors and popular young actors such as Bai Luming 白露明 and Zhang Qing 張情. Between 1956 and 1960, the studio re­ leased a string of charming, sleekly made romantic comedies and Hollywood-inspired “musicals” (歌舞片) in both Cantonese and Mandarin portraying the rise of new middleclass values and lifestyle in Chinese cities under Western influences (such as Yi Wen’s Mambo Girl [曼波女郎, 1957] and Tang Huang’s 唐煌 Her Tender Hearts [玉女私情, 1959]), which were box-office successes not just in Southeast Asia but also in Taiwan and among the Cantonese-speaking (p. 120) audiences in Hong Kong. The success of MP & GI raised hopes of business expansion for postwar Mandarin filmmaking, and it also threatened the market position of Cathay’s long-standing rival: the Shaw Brothers organization. When Shaw Brothers fought back, it created a “Golden Age of Mandarin Cinema” in Hong Kong and in the process turned the city into what was dubbed “Hollywood of the East.”

Run Run Shaw and the Rise of “Movietown” The Shaw Brothers organization originated in Shanghai as the Tianyi 天一 (literally, “num­ ber one”) Film Company. It was founded in 1925 by four Shaw 邵 (in Mandarin, Shao) brothers—namely Zuiweng 醉翁, Runde (known in Chinese as Cunren) 邨人, Runme 仁枚, and Run Run (or, as he was known in Chinese, Yifu 逸夫). At a time when the nascent Chi­ nese film industry was being criticized for its overly Westernized orientation, Tianyi dis­ tinguished its products with an emphasis on traditional values and folk subjects that were familiar to the audience (and perhaps also aimed to arouse nationalist pride). In 1928, Runme and Run Run moved to Singapore to try to gain access to the lucrative Southeast Asia market. In less than a decade, they succeeded in building a region-wide chain of over thirty theaters that catered mainly to the Cantonese-speaking diasporic audience. Follow­ ing the surprise success of its Cantonese opera film Platinum Dragon (白金龍, 1934), Tianyi relocated to Hong Kong in 1934 to concentrate on Cantonese film production, and, two years later, it was reorganized as Nanyang 南洋 (literally, “Southeast Asia”) Studio un­ der Runde’s management. Located in two major urban centers in the British colonial em­ pire in Asia, which were connected by a transnational system of banking, shipping, and trading facilities, Nanyang’s operation depended on the cash flow and exhibition network in Singapore, and the Shaw Brothers organization continued to accumulate capital and expand its market with a constant supply of products and equipment from Hong Kong. The colonial authorities also benefited from the regime of affordable entertainments em­ phasizing traditional Chinese values Shaw Brothers provided for diasporic Chinese, as it helped promote peace and order in the empire. So, wittingly or not, the Shaw brothers’ cinema was, from its early days, politically enmeshed in the colonial system. The Shaw brothers’ movie business suffered a setback during World War II. Runde left Hong Kong, and it was unclear what Run Run and Runme did while in occupied Singa­ pore. Some of their movie theaters were destroyed, but their business recovered quickly after the war, with support by the colonial power. In the early 1950s, the Shaw brothers Page 5 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema had developed a sprawling entertainment business empire that included nightclubs, theme parks, movie studios of Chinese and Malay languages, and a massive circuit of over 130 theaters screening films from Hong Kong, India, Europe, and the United States. Their path to dominance in the region was, however, challenged by the Cathay Organiza­ tion, which, among its wide array of investments and properties, commanded a large cir­ cuit of mostly upscale, modern-looking movie theaters.4 Thus, as discussed above, the es­ tablishment of MP & GI in 1956 and the wide success of its chic and stylish (p. 121) releas­ es in both Mandarin and Cantonese (not to mention the thoughtful, carefully crafted so­ cial consciousness movies by the Chang-Feng-Xin triumvirate) put into relief the cheap­ ness and crudity of Nanyang’s small-budget quickies (which had only limited success in entering the Taiwan market) and threatened to undermine the business position of the Shaw Brothers organization. Shaw Brothers took up these challenges. In 1957, just one year after the establishment of MP & GI, and with Runme staying in Singapore, Run Run Shaw moved to Hong Kong to buy out Nanyang from his brother Runde and reorganize it into the Shaw Brothers Studio under his direct control.5 He then announced a series of ambitious business plans of verti­ cal integration that included restructuring the distribution networks in Hong Kong and Taiwan and building the largest, most sophisticated Hollywood-style studio facilities in Asia—“Movietown”—and producing highest-quality movies for markets around the globe. These plans went a step further than those of MP & GI, which was mainly interested in supplying movies for the Singapore-based exhibition chain, and instead were reminiscent of Yonghua’s global vision. Shaw Brothers was able to win (mostly insignificant) prizes for some of its movies at Cannes and the San Francisco International Film Festival in the ear­ ly 1960s, but, similarly, failed to break into the markets of Europe, Japan, and the United States beyond the “racial ghettos” of their respective Chinatowns. However, whereas Li Zuyong had lost a fortune trying to make world-class movies, Run Run Shaw succeeded, making their film studio a modern legend in the Chinese world. Movietown, which was the jewel of the Shaw Brothers movie empire, was completed in 1967. Located in Hong Kong’s Clear Water Bay, this 80,000-square-meter complex con­ tained twelve sound stages, two permanent sets, a state-of-the-art color film development facility, and all sorts of advanced film equipment imported from Europe and the United States. With these new technologies, Run Run Shaw was able to modernize Hong Kong moviemaking by producing all his pictures in Eastmancolor and widescreen. He also con­ stantly competed with Loke Wan Tho to hire the best movie talents in both Mandarin and Cantonese languages for the Shaw Brothers Studio, which, in the early 1960s, command­ ed an amazing production team of 3,300 employees, which included many big stars and eminent directors such as Li Lihua, Ivy Ling Po 凌波, Lin Dai 林黛, Zhao Lei 趙雷, Wang Yu 王羽, Li Hanxiang 李翰祥, Chang Cheh 張轍, and Yue Feng. Run Run Shaw also brought in the St. John’s–trained former U.S. Information Service (USIS) administrator Raymond Chow to help with publicity and to introduce modern stu­ dio system and capitalist management techniques to Movietown. Further research will re­ veal the ramifications of the USIS connection that Raymond Chow brought to Shaw Page 6 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema Brothers’ production policy, but his role in shaping the management style of Movietown was obvious. In contrast to the poor management of Yonghua, Movietown was run like a factory assembly line in accordance to the American Fordist-Taylorist model of industrial organization, with Run Run Shaw sitting at the top of the organization overseeing every part of the operations and making all decisions, from budgeting to casting, such that it operated on the principles of rational management, cost efficiency, professionalization, corporatization, and standardization of the production process in pursuit of maximum profit. As director He Menghua 何夢華 later recalled: “[In Movietown] (p. 122) everything was planned and needed prior approval. And you couldn’t simply ask for anything on the spot, regardless of how small it was.”6 To have rational control over its labor force, Shaw Brothers assigned all of its employees living quarters in Movietown on the basis of their seniority or “market value” and, except for a few big stars, subjected them to the discipli­ nary regime of long-term contract and stringent control (including the requirements to at­ tend “social functions”). As actress Cheng Pei-pei recalled with a sense of defensiveness: “Whenever there is any discussion about how we all lived together in the Shaw Brothers’ dormitory, many people, especially Americans, look at me with a very awkward expres­ sion and ask ‘Is it really true that Shaw Brothers were all locked up in the company’s dor­ mitory and completely cut off from the outside world?’ Indeed it is true that we were al­ most entirely ignorant of what went on outside the Shaw studio…. The company often worried that what went on in our private lives might influence box office results. For in­ stance, we were forbidden to date at too young of age.”7 In this “dream factory,” where control and efficiency were the guiding principles, the production of Shaw Brothers Stu­ dio increased year after year. At its peak from 1965 to 1970, over forty-five films were brought out every year. Unlike its rival MP & GL, which was associated in the public imagination with new fash­ ion, modern values, and a Westernized lifestyle, Shaw Brothers kicked off with a series of lavish, elaborately made costume dramas drawing from the familiar tradition of Chinese folk culture. It impressed audiences with its well-crafted stories, larger-than-life charac­ ters, memorable images, exquisite music, and poetic lyrics replete with classical refer­ ences to poetry and painting. Reminiscent of Tianyi’s traditionalist orientation (and with several similar titles), these historical dramas projected a China that was characterized by an enchanting landscape and a changeless culture of purity and fidelity despite the prevailing political corruption and included works such as Yue Feng’s Madame White Snake (白蛇傳, 1962) and Li Hanxiang’s Kingdom and the Beauty (江山美人, 1959), Love Eterne (梁山伯與祝英台, 1963), and historical epic Empress Yang (楊貴妃, 1962). Under the skillful craftsmanship of refugee directors such as Li Hanxiang and He Menghua, these films projected a vision of what I have called a romanticized, changeless China. It was a China of cultural purity and spiritual fulfillment with which the tens of millions of Chinese people displaced by the violent change of regime in 1949 could readily identify in their struggle to make sense of all the political turmoil and human sufferings surrounding them. These historical movies gave expression to the pain of their nostalgia for “home” while granting them a sense of identity and consolation in facing an uncertain future.8 Thus, if writers in exile in post-1949 Taiwan, as David Der-wei Wang argues, wrote to Page 7 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema “commemorate the loss of the motherland as well as the trauma of diaspora,”9 the Shaw Brothers’ Huangmei opera, or huangmeidiao (黃梅調), directors projected on the screen (within the studio system) the prevalent sense of loss, anxiety, as well as pride of the many people who were forced by war and revolution to leave behind their hometown. In an interview Run Run Shaw once explained why his movies did well at the box office: “I make movies to satisfy the hopes and desires of my audience…. They miss the homeland they have left behind and the cultural tradition they still cherish.”10 Indeed, (p. 123) Shaw Brothers costume pieces were immensely popular among the audiences in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and especially Taiwan, the largest Chinese community outside of the mainland. In particular, Love Eterne, which portrays the tragic romance between scholar Liang Shanbo and beauty Zhu Yingtai, was a box-office sensation in Singapore and “a cul­ tural phenomenon in Taiwan.”11 When the film opened in April 1963, its celebration of cultural nationalism practically turned the island into what the local press described a “city of fanatics” (狂人城). Love Eterne was shown to full houses for over half a year, and a United Daily 聯合報 reporter estimates that in Taipei alone at least 700,000 out of a mil­ lion people watched it. In fact, many people saw it over and over, memorizing its songs, which were also played on the radio all day long, while a massive cult following devel­ oped around the film’s leading star, Ivy Ling Po. The same reporter wrote with a national­ istic outburst that the film “makes Hollywood and Japanese movies look bad and inferior. This is a sheer miracle. Shaw Brothers Studio shows us that it has achieved the standards of world-class show business. The moon in foreign countries is not rounder than in China! Chinese movies have now established confidence in the audience here.”12 The phenome­ nal success of Love Eterne brought an end to Hollywood’s hegemony in Taiwan, and left the market wide open for Mandarin movies from Hong Kong. This opening of the Taiwan market and the wild popularity of huangmeidiao movies among Chinese audiences around the world enabled Shaw Brothers, like its chief rival, MP & GI, to phase out its Cantonese production unit and concentrate its resources on Mandarin films.13 This started the trend toward what sociologist I. C. Jarvie has aptly called the “Mandarization of Hong Kong cin­ ema in the 1960s,” which was marked by the Shaw Brothers’ ascent to predominance in the Chinese-language entertainment business in the pan-Chinese world.14

Cold War Politics and Golden Age of Mandarin Cinema Indeed, the changing market conditions intensified the rivalry between Shaw Brothers and Cathay in the early 1960s. They stole stars from each other, competed to add the­ aters and Hollywood film rights to their exhibition circuits both in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, and fought to bring their movies to the market first. For example, when Run Run Shaw discovered that MP & GI was producing its own Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai romance, he rushed to complete Love Eterne in just two weeks by putting together a team of writers under director Li Hanxiang to work on the script while using all the stages for its production, and in retaliation Loke Wan Tho lured Li Hanxiang away with promise of Page 8 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema providing funding for Li to establish his own film company in Taiwan. The two studios’ battles stopped only with Loke’s death in 1964, which precipitated a decline of Cathay.15 At the same time, with Shaw Brothers’ market clout and control of exhibition chains, many small Mandarin-language film studios survived by supplying movies to their (p. 124) distribution networks, while others simply moved to Taiwan or, like Huang Zuohan’s Ling Guang/Ling Kwong 嶺光 (Mountain light), shifted to productions in Cantonese (or other di­ alects like Amoy and Teochow).16 The Cantonese film industry in the 1960s underwent a rapid decline. In Hong Kong, where over 90 percent of the population spoke Cantonese, Cantonese film was one of the most important forms of popular entertainment. Appealing mainly to the lower middle class, its subjects focused around the everyday cultures and social life familiar to the Can­ tonese people, and many of its top stars, such as actresses Bak Yin 白燕 and Fong Yim-fun 芳艷芬, together with actors Ng Chor-fan 吳楚帆 and Cheung Ying 張瑛, were highly accom­ plished artists immensely popular in the pan-Cantonese entertainment world. However, the Cantonese movie industry was conservative and small in capitalization. Since the ear­ ly 1950s, with the exception of a few better-equipped and better-run companies, such as Xinlian and the Singapore-financed Kong Ngee (光藝) (literally, “bright arts”), the industry was technologically unsophisticated and crowded with small studios operating on shoe­ string budgets. They often financed their productions by preselling or preleasing them to distributors and exhibitors in Southeast Asia and the Americas, who were interested only in “following the market needs” and tried to increase their small profit margins by cutting corners in staff salary and production costs. As a result, although there were an average of 200 movies released every year from the late 1950s to early 1960s, most of them in­ volved little technological or artistic innovation and continued the generic trends that had begun in the prewar period, principally family melodrama and Cantonese opera film. However, as the population became younger (in 1961, half of the population was under twenty-one years old), better educated, and more urbanized, Cantonese movies kept los­ ing market share to the big-budget, Eastmancolor and widescreen pictures produced by Shaw Brothers. As an industry insider remarked, Shaw Brothers productions gave local audiences such a “thrilling experience” that “they left the Cantonese cinema en masse,” to the point that in the late 1960s, Cantonese films had stopped production altogether.17 Shaw Brothers’ “Mandarization” of the mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong entertainment business, and its domination in the Chinese diasporic movie markets of Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Americas,18 was also closely intertwined with the cultural politics of the Cold War in East Asia. This is a growing area of research, as increasing amounts of declassified documents and other archival materials in China, Great Britain, and the Unit­ ed States are becoming available to scholars. The emergence of a pro-USSR Communist government in 1949 made East Asia a new battlefield of the Cold War, a conflict between the two contending superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. With its prox­ imity to China and its relative political openness, Hong Kong was turned into a covert bat­ tleground of political and ideological conflicts. Agents of the United States and its ally, Nationalist Taiwan, collected intelligence about China, organized anti-Communist activi­ ties, and disseminated propaganda—which included publications, education, and movies Page 9 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema —to “induce” Chinese on the mainland, in Hong Kong, and throughout Southeast Asia “to support US and Free World policies and actions.” In response, Beijing set up agencies in the colony to gather intelligence on its enemies and to coordinate efforts in (p. 125) mobi­ lizing popular support for the “motherland” in its struggle against global capitalism. The battle for the allegiance of Free China (Taiwan) and Communist China, then, became the defining characteristic of the Cold War in Hong Kong.19 The mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong movie business was enmeshed in Cold War poli­ tics. There was a sharp division between the pro-Beijing “leftist” or “patriotic” studios, principally Changcheng, Fenghuang, and Xinlian, on the one hand, and the pro-Taiwan “free film industry” (自由影業), on the other. Under the guidance of top government offi­ cials in Beijing, the “patriotic” studios had access to the China market, but their aim was not to call for decolonization or anti-Chiang revolution, but to produce “healthy” (that is, no sex and violence) and tasteful entertainment to drum up support for the New China among the audiences in Hong Kong and in Southeast Asia. These studios collaborated and encouraged the sense of a community working toward the social good among their em­ ployees. They also established a small theater chain to bring their releases to the market. Some of their best-known works—such as Zhu Shilin’s Autumn Festival (中秋月, 1953), Li Pingqian’s family romance Daydreaming (白日夢, 1952), and Lu Dun’s Typhoon (十號風球, 1960)—skillfully incorporated the 1930s Shanghai tradition of social realism in thoughtful portrayals of ordinary people in a changing Hong Kong. Although there was occasional political harassment by the colonial authorities and salaries were low in “patriotic” stu­ dios, some top creative talents decided to stay because they enjoyed being a part of a pro­ gressive community of dedicated and “virtuous” artists. They included two of the three preeminently popular “Changcheng Princesses”: Shi Hui 石慧 (Shek Hwei) and Xia Meng 夏夢 (Hsia Moon). The influences of the “patriotic” studios sharply declined after 1966, when they had to follow the Cultural Revolution policy emphasizing class struggle and an­ ticapitalist evolution in their productions. 20 The “free” film industry included the two majors, Shaw Brothers and Cathay, together with smaller outfits that sold movies to Taiwan. The Nationalist leadership had realized the power of cinema as a weapon of mobilization after the Nationalist defeat, but the movie industry in Taiwan was small in infrastructure and underdeveloped in technology, and consequently the Nationalists looked to Hong Kong filmmakers for support of their crusade against communism. They provided tax breaks, market access, and other finan­ cial incentives to studios that pledged allegiance to the Cold War policy of Free China. As early as 1953 or 1954, some Mandarin film studio chiefs like Zhang Shankun and Hu Jinkang 胡晋康 (both of whom fled to the colony after the war because of their suspected collaboration with Japan) expressed their pro-Nationalist commitment by leading delega­ tions of movie stars to celebrate Chiang Kai-shek’s 蔣介石 birthday. In 1957, the Hong Kong and Kowloon Free Filmmakers General Association (港九電影戲劇自由總會) was formed as a quasi-Nationalist office in the colony to organize activities in support of Tai­ wan (e.g., the annual Double Tenth celebration) and approve membership for filmmakers, without which their films (even those in which they only appeared as a minor actor or a designer) could not be screened on the island. Both Cathay and Shaw Brothers were Page 10 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema prominent supporters of the General Association, and many small studio heads com­ plained that the Nationalist authorities gave all sorts of (p. 126) favors to the two majors in their fight to expand the Taiwan markets. Indeed, their relations with Taiwan were mu­ tually beneficial. Their big production budgets and massive exhibition chains gave the “free” film industry an enormous advantage over its “patriotic” counterpart and enabled it to constantly lure stars away from Changcheng or Fenghuang with better career oppor­ tunities, while the Nationalist support was critical for business expansion. It was there­ fore no coincidence that Yi Wen’s Air Hostess (空中小姐, 1959), an MP & GI musical, would showcase all the “achievements” of the capitalist development in Taiwan and Singapore while adding to its romantic narrative a folksong-inspired number by Ge Lan singing praises of the beauty and prosperity of the “Treasure Island” (寶島). Similarly, Shaw Brothers’ unabashed celebration of traditional Chinese values and culture in its popular costume dramas lent covert support to the U.S. Cold War propaganda strategy of “alienat­ ing the overseas Chinese from the [antitraditionalist ideology of the] Chinese Commu­ nists,” which was in line with the Nationalist government’s policy of “restoring Chinese culture” in the midst of the Communist eradication of Chinese tradition in the mainland.21 This approach was also in line with the colonial government, which did not want any U.Sor Taiwan-organized anti-Communist activities to be overly provocative and therefore detrimental to the stability of Hong Kong. However, the Cold War division did not stop Cathay, and even less Shaw Brothers, from building connections with the “patriotic” stu­ dios. For example, they financed works from Changcheng and Fenghuang, which were popular among the audiences in Southeast Asia, to increase supply for their theater chains, and Run Run Shaw was on friendly terms with Fenghuang production head Han Xiongfei 韓雄飛 and borrowed ideas from Chinese movies and operas such as the wellknown Yue opera Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) and Sang Hu’s 桑弧 opera film The Heavenly Match (天仙配, 1955), which in turn provided the inspiration for Love Eterne.22 Shaw Brothers benefited greatly from this Taiwan connection. As scholar Liu Xiancheng 劉現成 documents, Taiwan provided the studio with not only a large Mandarin-language movie market, but also a constant supply of creative talent, from directors and writers to actors and cinematographers, all of whom replaced the aging refugee filmmakers from Shanghai and contributed to the studio’s flourishing in mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong.23 Prominent examples include opera drama idol Ivy Ling Po, kung fu movie star Wang Yu, and prolific director Pan Lei 潘垒. The increase of Taiwan artists and technicians at Shaw Brothers expanded the influences of “Free China” in what is often regarded as the golden age of Mandarin cinema in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. In fact, the 1960s and early 1970s was also a golden age of the Taiwan entertainment culture in the colony. Mandarin pop singers like Teresa Teng 鄧麗君, Yao Surong 姚蘇蓉, and Qing Shan 青山 joined many Taiwan-originated Shaw Brothers movie stars to become the idols of young Cantonese-speaking audiences. In what ways did this Taiwan influence shape the popular culture and film business of mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong? Further research on the newly available archival materials could reveal in more depth the ways in which the Cold War politics and Nationalist factors shaped and determined Shaw Brothers’ production

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema strategies and business networks, which included the expanded diaspora markets in Aus­ tralia and the Americas.

Martial Arts, Japanese Expatriates, Copro­ duction (p. 127)

In 1965, in response to the waning of the costume drama craze and the growing populari­ ty of Japanese samurai movies and spaghetti Westerns in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, Shaw Brothers launched a new cycle of “New-styled wuxia pictures.” As noted film histo­ rian Law Kar 羅卡 points out: “The ‘Wuxia Century’ or ‘New School Wuxia Cinema’ inherit­ ed the [wuxia film] tradition of the 1920s and 1930s in Shanghai cinema. It absorbed the technical characteristics of Japan and Western cinemas, and continued the Cantonese cinema’s wuxia tendencies of the early and mid-1960s. In contrast to the Cantonese cine­ ma, there was an emphasis on realistic [representation] of violence and brutality in the fight sequences. And the script was [more carefully written].”24 Their action-packed nar­ rative and uninhibited violence were wildly popular throughout the Chinese world and, in­ advertently, brought about a “masculinization” of Hong Kong cinema that broke from what director Chang Cheh characterized as the “feminine” tradition (namely, the primary importance of female stars) of Chinese-language cinema since the 1920s.25 A new crop of handsome, muscular male stars emerged to dominate the screen, including Wang Yu from Taiwan and Ti Lung 狄龍 and Chen Kuan-tai 陳觀泰 from Hong Kong. Beneath all the beau­ tifully choreographed martial-arts fighting and tragic heroism, though, many of the bestmade wuxia movies—such as Chang Cheh’s One-Armed Swordsman (獨臂刀, 1967) and Great Assassin (大刺客, 1967), which romanticized the power of masculinity and male bonding, together with King Hu’s 胡金銓 skillful adaptation of Beijing opera in Come Drink with Me (大醉俠, 1966)—exhibited an ideological subtext similar to that of huangmeidiao drama: a setting in an imagined China of an unspecific past and cherishing the idealized traditional virtues of loyalty, filial piety, and self-suppression for the collective good. Shaw Brothers soon extended the wuxia cycle to include kung fu movies, which were invariably set in the chaotic Qing-Republican transition and highlighted southern-style martial arts and Lingnan popular cultures, in an attempt to “localize” their products for a radically changing audience across the region. For example, with a 1971 population of four million people, over half of whom were below the age of thirty-five, Hong Kong became a promi­ nent market for films. The ticket-buying audience, however, was not as interested in a re­ mote China as unconnected from their social experiences as the earlier generation. In­ deed, many of the widely acclaimed kung fu movies, such as Zhang Che’s Heroes Two (方 世玉與洪熙官, 1973) and Lau Kar-leung’s 劉家良 The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (少林三十六房, 1978) and Executioners from Shaolin (洪熙官, 1977), were, like Cantonese movies of the 1940s and 1950s, adapted from folktales, local opera, and historical lore widely popular in the Lingnan region and repackaged with fluid camerawork and thrillingly choreo­ graphed fighting scenes.26

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema In the “golden age of Mandarin cinema” in the 1960s and 1970s, as the Japan-trained pro­ duction chief Chua Lam 蔡澜, who replaced Raymond Chow in 1970, recalled, (p. 128) “Shaw Brothers operated under the mentality that the more they shot the more money they would make.”27 With their highly formulaic plotlines and easily recyclable sets and props, wuxia and kung fu pictures lend themselves perfectly to the assembly line opera­ tion of Movietown. In fact, leading directors of the genre Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung released an average of four or five films a year in the 1970s. Shaw Brothers hired Japan­ ese filmmakers to help boost production—according to detailed research by Darrell Davis, Yau Shuk-ting, and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, the studio began to bring in cinematographers and special effect technicians from Japan in the late 1950s to lift the technical know-how of color film production (especially on huangmeidiao drama). In the 1960s, as the Japan­ ese movie industry was in decline, Shaw Brothers had the money and facilities to hire ma­ jor directors along with their prosecution crew to improve the efficiency of its operation. Under Chua’s leadership, a large number of Japanese film directors, especially those affil­ iated with the Nikkatsu studio famous for its youth-appealing works, came and helped produce an impressive subsidiary line of spy and crime thrillers, musical movies, and youth films that were particularly popular among young Hong Kong fans. Along with these directors also came talented production staff: including musician Hattori Ryoichi and cinematographer Miyaki Yukio. Altogether “Japanese expatriates” added thirty-one movies to the Shaw Brothers lineup, which included big hits such as Inoue Umetsugu’s Hong Kong Nocturne (香江花月夜, 1967), arguably the studio’s best-made musical, and Akinori Matsuo’s Shaw-Nikkatsu coproduced Asia-Pol (亞洲秘密警察, 1967).28 If the wuxia and kung fu movies continued to project a remote, mystified China, these Japanese-made pictures celebrated the thrills of modern capitalism: fast cars, fancy nightclubs, busy air­ ports, and luxurious hotels, which were similarly distanced from everyday life in midtwentieth-century Hong Kong. There was no reflection of the 1967 Communist-led anti­ colonial riots or the horrendous social inequities and economic imbalance that accompa­ nied the advent of industrial capitalism in the colony. Was this escapist tendency a sign of the studio’s continuous refusal to confront the social reality of Hong Kong, as many schol­ ars argue, or was it (perhaps also) a corporate strategy to continue its Cold War propa­ ganda efforts in support of Taiwan and the colonial government?29 Hiring Japanese film directors and technicians, and occasionally coproducing with Korea film giant Shin Production Company and Hollywood Majors, was also part of Shaw Broth­ ers’ aspiration to produce movies, just as in the 1960s the toy and textile industries tried to attain world-class standards that could reach markets around the globe. Though the studio had limited success in selling to the mainstream markets in the West (mainly Eng­ lish-dubbed wuxia and kung fu movies), it established itself as the cinematic capital of Asia Pacific. As a cofounder (with Japan) of the most important film festival in the region, the Asian Film Festival, Shaw Brothers represented Hong Kong, Singapore, and “Free” China, winning numerous major prizes year after year beginning around 1960, and in the mid-1960s it replaced Japan as the festival’s chief spokesman. Similarly, the studio domi­ nated Taiwan’s Golden Horse Award competition, which was established in 1964, and turned it into an annual showcase of its own prestigious pictures. Shaw Brothers was pre­ Page 13 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema dominant in Asia, which enabled it to expand its business (p. 129) network across the re­ gion in the 1960s and 1970s, and Movietown became a mecca for creative talents and en­ tertainment businessmen in Asia. In retrospect, however, the 1970s marked Shaw Brothers’ transition from dominance to decline. In 1970, Raymond Chow left the studio and founded Golden Harvest. With a flexi­ ble subcontracting production system, Golden Harvest signed Bruce Lee 李小龍 and come­ dian Michael Hui 許冠文, after both of them had been rejected by Shaw Brothers, and went on to create a string of hits, such as Big Brother (唐山大兄, 1971), The Way of the Dragon (猛龍過江, 1972), and The Private Eye (半金百兩, 1976). These films, some of which were in Cantonese, projected a defiant, antiestablishment sentiment or satirized the in­ equality and inhumanity of modern life in a way that was refreshing and exhilarating to local audiences, which enabled Golden Harvest to challenge Shaw Brothers. Their rival­ ries were bitter and vicious, reminiscent of the earlier ones between Shaw Brothers and Cathay, except that this time Shaw Brothers was on the defensive. The “dream factory” lost its magic. Placing ever more stress on the bottom line and mass production, the stu­ dio fell behind the changing needs of its audiences and lost its competitive edge against the youthful and dynamic Golden Harvest, which broke open the Japan markets with the kung fu comedies of Jackie Chan 成龍 and many new Cantonese-language independents. In the early 1980s, shortly after his brother and longtime partner Runme’s death, Run Run Shaw decided to retool his film empire by selling off a major part of its theater cir­ cuits in Southeast Asia and phasing out the production operation. He moved on to take up the leadership of the Hong Kong Television Broadcasting Company to shepherd it to a new era of technological changes and global competition.30

Epilogue Film scholar Liu Hui 劉輝 notes that the release by Celestial Pictures of over 500 redigi­ tized Shaw Brothers DVD movies since the early 2000s has encouraged us to systemati­ cally reevaluate the studio’s operation, generic diversity, and technological modernization and the ways in which it shaped the “origin” of the globalization of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and 1990s.31 With support from the Hong Kong Film Archive, noted film critics Law Kar, Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲, and Sam Ho 何思颖 have retrieved and published a huge number of important materials, including personal interviews with studio executives and film directors and their writings, that have provided us with a more variegated picture of the mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong movie business. With new materials from previous­ ly inaccessible or unknown archives in China, England, Taiwan, and the United States, it is important to put the Hong Kong industry in the larger historical context of the Cold War in Asia with which it had to negotiate. Similarly, a deeper, more complicated knowl­ edge of the mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong film industry will shed important light on the role Hong Kong and its popular cultures played in the ever-changing politics, diploma­ cy, and ideological conflicts of the Cold War in Asia.

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema

Works Cited Bren, Frank. “Notes on Australia.” Border Crossing in Hong Kong Cinema. Ed. Law Kar. Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Service Department, 2000. 62–82. Chen, Edwin. “Musical China, Classical Impression: A Preliminary Study of Shaw’s Huangmei Diao Film.” The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003. 51–73. Chi-kwan, Mark. Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-American Relations, 1949–1957. Ox­ ford: Clarendon Press, 2004. Chiao, [Peggy] Hsiung-ping. “The Female Consciousness, the World of Signification and Safe Extramarital Affairs: A 40th Year Tribute to Love Eterne.” The Shaw Screen: A Pre­ liminary Study. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003. 75–86. Chung Po-yin 鍾寶賢. Xianggang yingshiye bainian 香港影視業百年 [A hundred years of Chi­ nese cinema and TV]. Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2004. Chung Po-yin. “Industrial Evolution of a Fraternal Enterprise, the Shaw Brothers and the Shaw Enterprise.” The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003. 15–18. Curry, Ramona. “Bridging the Pacific with Love Eterne.” In China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema. Ed. Poshek Fu. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 174–198. Davis, Darrell. “Questioning Diaspora: Mobility, Mutation, and Historiography of the Shaw Brothers Film Studio.” Chinese Journal of Communication 4.1 (March 2011): 53–55. Davis, Darrell, and [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh. “Inoue at Shaws: The Wellspring of Youth.” The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003. 255–272. Du Yun-chih 杜雲之. Zhongguo dianying shi 中國電影史 [History of Chinese cinema]. Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1972. Vol. 3, 123–124. Du Yun-chih 杜雲之. Zhongguo dianying qishi nian 中國電影七十年 [Seventy years of Chinese cinema]. Taipei: Dianying tushuguan chubanbu, 1986. Fu, Poshek, ed. China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema. Urbana: Uni­ versity of Illinois Press, 2008. Ho, Sam 何思穎. Wenyi renwu: Xinlian qiusuo 文藝任務: 新鏈求索 [In search of Xinlian]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2011. Hu Jinkang 胡晋康. “Guying zilian” 顧影自憐 [Self-pity]. United News 聯合報, February 28, 1960. Page 15 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema Huang Zhuohan 黃卓漢. Dianying rensheng 電影人生 [My cinematic life] (Taipei: Wanxiang tushu, 1994). Jarvie, I. C. Window on Hong Kong: A Sociological Study of the Hong Kong Film Industry and Its Audience. Hong Kong: Center of Asian Studies, 1977. Law Kar ed. Border Crossings in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services Department, 2000. Law Kar. “The Origins and Development of Shaw’s Color Wuxia Century.” The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003. 129–143. Liu Hui 劉輝. “Shaoshi dianying yanjiu de zhuangkuang, fangfa, he yiyi” 邵氏電影研究的狀況, 方法, 和意義 [The condition, methodology, and meaning of the study of Shaw Brothers cine­ ma]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 133 (April 2006): 81–85. Liu Xiancheng 劉現成. Taiwan: Dianying, shehui, yu guojia 台灣: 電影, 社會, 與國家 [Taiwan: Cinema, society, and nation]. Taipei: Yangzhi wenhua shiye, 1997. (p. 133)

Liu Xiancheng 劉現成. “Shaoshi dianying zai Xianggang” 邵氏電影在香港 [Shaw Brothers cinema in Hong Kong]. In Shaoshi yingshi diguo 邵氏影視帝國 [Shaw Brothers’ cinema and television empire]. Ed. Liao Jinfeng 廖金鳳 et al. Taipei: Ryefield Publishers, 2003. 128– 150. Pickowicz, Paul. “Three Readings of Hong Kong Nocturne.” China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema. Ed. Poshek Fu. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 95–114. Sha Rongfeng 沙榮峰. Binfen dianyingsishi chun 繽灃電影四十春 [My forty years of cinemat­ ic experiences]. Taipei: Guojia guojia dianying ziliaoguan, 1994. Shen Jianzhi 沈鑒治. “Jiu yinghua” 舊影畫 [Old movies]. In Lixiang niandai: Changcheng yu Fenghuang de rizi 理想年代：長城與鳳凰的日子 (Age of idealism: The days of Changcheng and Fenghuang). Ed. Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲 Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002. 250–318. Teo, Stephen. “Shaw’s Wuxia Films: The Macho Self-Fashioning of Chang Cheh.” The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003. 145–160. Wang, David Der-wei. The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writ­ ing in Twentieth-Century China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Wong, Ain-ling, ed. The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003.

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema Yan Pei 顏配. “Xianggang yingren zuohe zhunbei” 香港影人作和準備 [What should Hong Kong filmmakers prepare for?]. Guoji dianying 國際電影 [International film] 6 (June 1956): 36. Yau, Kinnia Shuk-ting 邱淑婷. “Shaoshi dianying de Riben yinsu” 邵式電影的日本因素 (The Japanese elements in Shaw Brothers cinema). Shaoshi yingshi diguo 邵氏影視帝國 [Shaw Brothers’ cinema and television empire]. Ed. Liao Jinfeng 廖金鳳 et al. Taipei: Ryefield Publishers, 2003. 76–113. Yau, Kinnia Shuk-ting. Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries: Understanding the Ori­ gins of East Asian Film Networks. New York: Routledge, 2010. Yip Hon Ming 葉漢明 “Zhimindi yu geming wenhua baquan” 殖民地與革命文化霸權 [Colony and revolutionary cultural hegemony]. Institute of Chinese Culture Journal 10 (2001): 191–215. Chang Cheh 張轍. Huigu xianggang dianying sanshi nian 回顧香港電影三十年 [A retrospec­ tive of thirty years of Hong Kong cinema]. Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1994. Zuo Guifang 左桂芳 ed. Tong Juejuan 童月娟 [The Life of Tong Yue-chian]. Taipei: Guojia di­ anying zhiliaoguan, 2001.

Notes: (1.) Shen Jianzhi 沈鑒治, “Jiu yinghua” 舊影畫 [Old movies], in Lixiang niandai: Changcheng yu Fenghuang de rizi 理想年代: 長城與鳳凰的日子 [An age of idealism: The days of Changcheng and Fenghuang], ed. Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002), 250–318. (2.) See Yan Pei 顏配, “Xianggang yingren zuohe zhunbei” 香港影人作和準備 [What should Hong Kong filmmakers prepare for?] Guoji dianying 國際電影 [International film] 6 (June 1956): 36. (3.) Du Yun-chih 杜雲之, Zhongguo dianying shi 中國電影史 [History of Chinese cinema], (Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1972), vol. 3, 123–124. (4.) There are many fine studies and memoirs of Cathay and MP & GI and its rivalries with the Shaw Organization that I will not discuss here. For example, see I. C. Jarvie, Win­ dow on Hong Kong: A Sociological Study of the Hong Kong Film Industry and Its Audi­ ence (Hong Kong: Center of Asian Studies, 1977), 35–48; Du Yun-chih, History of Chinese Cinema, vol. 3, 123–40; and Sha Rongfeng 沙榮峰, Binfen dianying sishi chun 繽灃電影四十 春 [My forty years of cinematic experiences] (Taipei: Guojia guojia dianying ziliaoguan, 1994). (5.) See, for example, I. C. Jarvie, Window on Hong Kong, 44–46; and Du Yun-chih 杜雲之, Zhongguo dianying qishi nian 中國電影七十年 [Seventy years of Chinese cinema] (Taipei: Dianying tushuguan chubanbu, 1986), 436–46. For an insider’s account, see Chang Cheh Page 17 of 20

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema 張轍, Huigu Xianggang dianying sanshi nian 回顧香港電影三十年 [A retrospective of thirty years of Hong Kong cinema] (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1994), 27–45. (6.) Interview with He Menghua 何夢華 by Zhu Shunci 朱顺慈 and Zhu Hong 朱虹, Hong Kong Film Archive, November 21, 1997. (7.) Cheng Pei-pei, “Reminiscences of the Life of An Actress in Shaw Brothers’ Movi­ etown,” in China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema, ed. Poshek Fu (Ur­ bana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 246–247. (8.) Poshek Fu, China Forever, 12–15. For an analysis of huangmeidiao movies, see Edwin Chen, “Musical China, Classical Impression: A Preliminary Study of Shaw’s Huangmei Diao Film,” in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), 51–73. (9.) David Der-wei Wang, The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 148– 149. (10.) Nanguo dianying 南國電影 [Southern screen] 82 (December 1964): 2. (11.) [Peggy] Chiao Hsiung-ping, “The Female Consciousness, the World of Signification and Safe Extramarital Affairs: A 40th Year Tribute to Love Eterne,” in Wong Ain-ling, The Shaw Screen, 75–86. (12.) Lianhebao 聯合報 [United news], May 13, 1963; see also “Liangzhu jiahua” 梁祝佳話 [The tale of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai], Southern Screen 65 (July 1963): 50–51. (13.) For a discussion of why Shaw Brothers privileged Mandarin over Cantonese lan­ guages in its production, see Poshek Fu, China Forever, 6–9. (14.) See I. C. Jarvie, Window on Hong Kong, 59. (15.) Chung Po-yin 鍾寶賢, Xianggang yingshiye bainian 香港影視業百年 [A hundred years of Chinese cinema and TV] (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2004), 215–223. (16.) See Huang Zhuohan 黃卓漢, Dianying rensheng 電影人生 [My cinematic life] (Taipei: Wanxiang tushu, 1994), 103–150. (17.) Xianggang nianjian 香港年鑑 [Hong Kong yearbook], (Hong Kong: Huaqiao ribao she, 1967), vol. 20, part 2, 119–20. (18.) See Frank Bren, “Notes on Australia,” in Border Crossing in Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Service Department, 2000), 62–82; and Ra­ mona Curry, “Bridging the Pacific with Love Eterne,” in Poshek Fu, China Forever, 174– 198.

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema (19.) See Julian Harrington to Department of State, Hong Kong, June 9, 1953, #2526, RG59, U.S. National Archives; Mark Chi-kwan, Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-Amer­ ican Relations, 1949–1957 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). For an in-depth study of left­ ist cultural institutions in Hong Kong, see Yip Hon Ming 葉漢明, “Zhimindi yu geming wen­ hua baquan” 殖民地與革命文化霸權 [Colony and revolutionary cultural hegemony], Zhong­ guo wenhua yanjiu xuebao 中國文化研究所學報 [Institute of Chinese Culture journal] 10 (2001): 191–215. (20.) See Sam Ho 何思穎, Wenyi renwu: Xinlian qiusuo 文藝任務: 新鏈求索 [In search of Xin­ lian] (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2011); and Wong Ain-ling, An Age of Idealism. (21.) See “Status United States Programs for National Security as of 20 June 1957,” For­ eign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, vol. 9, 608–10; Liu Xiancheng 劉現成, Tai­ wan: Dianying, shehui, yu guojia 台灣: 電影, 社會, 與國家 [Taiwan: Cinema, society, and na­ tion] (Taipei: Yangzhi wenhua shiye, 1997). (22.) See Zuo Guifang 左桂芳, ed., Tong Yuejuan 童月娟 [Tong Yue-Chian], (Taipei: Guojia di­ anying zhiliaoguan, 2001); Hu Jinkang 胡晋康, “Guying zilian” 顧影自憐 [Self pity], United News, February 28, 1960; and Liu Xiancheng, Taiwan. Quotation is from Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 9, 610. (23.) Liu Xiancheng, “Shaoshi dianying zai Xianggang” 邵氏電影在香港 [Shaw Brothers cin­ ema in Hong Kong], in Shaoshi yingshi diguo 邵氏影視帝國 [Shaw Brothers’ cinema and television empire], ed. Liao Jinfeng 廖金鳳 et al. (Taipei: Ryefield Publishers, 2003), 128– 150. (24.) Law Kar, “The Origins and Development of Shaw’s Color Wuxia Century,” in Wong Ain-ling, The Shaw Screen, 142. For a different emphasis, see Stephen Teo, “Shaw’s Wux­ ia Films: The Macho Self-Fashioning of Chang Cheh,” in Wong Ain-ling, The Shaw Screen, 145–160. (25.) See Chang Cheh, Retrospective of Thirty Years. (26.) For localization of the Shaw Brothers, see Poshek Fu, China Forever, 15–22. (27.) An interview with Chua Lam by Law Kar et al. in Law Kar, Border Crossing in Hong Kong, 138. (28.) See Darrell Davis, “Questioning Diaspora: Mobility, Mutation, and Historiography of the Shaw Brothers Film Studio,” Chinese Journal of Communication 4.1 (March 2011): 53–55; Darrell Davis and [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh, “Inoue at Shaws: The Wellspring of Youth,” in Wong Ain-ling, The Shaw Screen, 255–272; Kinnia Yau Shuk-ting 邱淑婷, “Shaoshi diany­ ing de Riben yinshu” 邵式電影的日本因素 [The Japanese elements in Shaw Brothers cine­ ma], in Liao Jinfeng et al., Shaw Brothers’ Cinema and Television Empire, 76–113; and Kinnia Yau Shuk-ting, Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries: Understanding the Ori­ gins of East Asian Film Networks (New York: Routledge, 2010).

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Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema (29.) See Paul Pickowicz, “Three Readings of Hong Kong Nocturne,” in Poshek Fu, China Forever, 95–114; and Darrell Davis, “Questioning Diaspora.” (30.) See Chung Po-yin, “Industrial Evolution of a Fraternal Enterprise, the Shaw Broth­ ers and the Shaw Enterprise,” in Wong Ain-ling, The Shaw Screen, 15–18. (31.) Liu Hui 劉輝, “Shaoshi dianying yanjiu de zhuangkuang, fangfa, he yiyi” 邵氏電影研究 的狀況, 方法, 和意義 (The condition, methodology, and meaning of the study of Shaw Broth­ ers cinema), Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 133 (April 2006): 81–85.

Poshek Fu

Poshek Fu is Professor of History and Law at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. His books include Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: Politics of Chinese Cinemas and Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual Choices in Occu­ pied Shanghai, 1937-1945, both of which have been translated into Chinese.

Page 20 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema

Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema   Tsungyi Michelle Huang The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0008

Abstract and Keywords Analyzing five recent Hong Kong films, this chapter argues that geographical collabora­ tion between China and Hong Kong is one of the major focuses of Hong Kong film in the recent decade and that the audience is invited to shape and reshape, on the level of imag­ inary linkage, the identity of Hong Kong and the gendered imagined figures that predomi­ nate in conceiving likely social connections and disconnections between people across the border. It is the diverse Chinese mobile women who cross the border to Hong Kong who serve as linking figures for the films to redefine the imagined community of contemporary Hong Kong, acting as a rhetorical vehicle to articulate connections and contradictions be­ tween Hong Kong and China. The seemingly banal gender ideology that assumes a di­ chotomy—wherein China is the feminized Other in contrast to a masculine Hong Kong subject—thereby generates new narratives of border crossing in response to the chang­ ing dynamics of capitalism development in Hong Kong and China over recent years. Keywords: Hong Kong cinema, Sino–Hong Kong relationship, mobile women from China, northbound movement, imaginary communities, border crossing

Situated on the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong is not only a prominent global city in the East Asian region, it has also quickly become South China’s pivotal command- and-control post. Following the 1997 Handover, Hong Kong braved the 1997 Asian financial crisis, a series of major economic recessions, the SARS emergency, and a high unemployment rate. These socioeconomic changes, together with the rise of China and an increase in in­ terregional urban competition, have engendered geopolitical and economic anxieties for Hong Kong as to how to reposition itself. A major form of such attempts to reinvent the city is the geographical alliance with southern China, to form a formidable economy body. This regional formation has emerged mostly as a result of two trade agreements that inte­ grate the Delta region. Signed in 2003, the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) is the first regional agreement between Hong Kong and China, and covers trade in goods, trade in services, and trade and investment facilitation. The second agreement, the Pan–Pearl River Delta Regional Cooperation, was signed in 2004 and outlines an eco­ Page 1 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema nomic zone that ambitiously incorporates South China’s nine provinces, as well as Hong Kong and Macau, targeting the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone as its main competi­ tor. The post-CEPA era has witnessed an ongoing trend of Hong Kong’s new positioning with regard to South China, casting itself as more of a nodal point for the region than as an independent global city, as it had previously represented itself before the Handover. As market-led, profit-driven economic integration becomes a hard fact, one is obliged to ask if it is possible to understand the Sino–Hong Kong relationship beyond economic terms, and if such integration also brings about a new imagined border-crossing community. This chapter looks at the role of culture (p. 135) in cross-border connections, examining how, in Hong Kong cinema, a combination of image and imagination helps shape Hong Kong’s new identity and its relationship with China. In terms of film production, the impact of CEPA has been a key factor in shaping Hong Kong’s cinematic gaze at the mainland. The film industry witnessed a peak of “north­ bound” practices in 2006, when half of all Hong Kong films were coproduced with China,1 significantly outnumbering those of the period between 1979 and 1997, when the Chi­ nese film market was not yet open and most of the collaborations involved period dramas set in China. CEPA stipulated that movies could be launched within China as domestic productions if they met certain criteria relating to a minimum ratio of domestic and for­ eign actors, certain structures of production, censorship requirements, and so forth. Since China has annual quotas for the number of foreign movies allowed (and Hong Kong films were classified as foreign), this arrangement proved to be a major attraction for the Hong Kong film industry. Furthermore, CEPA allowed for the establishment of Hong Kong–funded theaters in China, giving Hong Kong’s movie industry an even more favor­ able cut of the box-office revenue. Although the collaborative system has been in place for a long time, it was only after the signing of CEPA and the rapid rise of demand in China’s domestic film market that the Hong Kong–Chinese collaboration became truly influential, and the Chinese market became the most important for Hong Kong’s film industry.2 Since the signing of CEPA, more and more joint-venture films tell stories of Hong Kong while si­ multaneously catering to a mainland audience and toeing the line of China’s censorship policy.3 The perspective of film productions provides a context for this chapter to examine the imaginary dimensions of recent Hong Kong films. The goal is to make sense of Hong Kong’s place-making and self-writing by laying bare the gendered narrative and stylistic logic in representing a sense of cross-border anxiety. It is assumed that Hong Kong cine­ ma is a viable means for city residents to explore the drastic changes in the social envi­ ronment, resulting from what amounts to a reterritorialization of the economic regional­ ization outlined above. In particular, I will draw on Jennifer Robinson’s concept of “imagi­ native affiliations” to suggest ways in which the social and cultural identities of Hong Kong are negotiated in Hong Kong films. As Robinson reminds us, “The ways in which cities inhabit one another often has less to do with relationships that can be mapped in physical space—such as flow, dispersion or location—and more to do with the experiential and imaginative ways in which places are drawn together or kept apart.”4 Employing this sort of imagination-centered analysis, I will examine a few contemporary Hong Kong films Page 2 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema to illustrate how cinematic images may be used to shape social identities, particularly with respect to the perceived relationship between Hong Kong and China. The “China factor” of Hong Kong cinema, having surged as early as the first half of the twentieth century, continues to loom over recent Hong Kong cinema, especially in works from the 1980s and 1990s. It was in this period, punctuated by the Handover of Hong Kong to China, that witnessed the emergence of the New Hong Kong Cinema (p. 136) movement—a collective cultural project that seeks to endow Hong Kong with an identity and later imaging the city’s integration with China.5 The connection between this shift of political sovereignty and the flourishing of a new cinematic style is worthy of attention. In their preface to Hong Kong University Press’s New Hong Kong Cinema Series, Ackbar Abbas and Wimal Dissanayake explain that “if this cinema grew increasingly intriguing in the 1980s, after the announcement of Hong Kong’s return to China, it was largely be­ cause it had to confront a new cultural and political space that was both complex and hard to define, where the problems of colonialism were overlaid with those of globalism in an uncanny way.” More importantly, they stress that the defining feature of such New Hong Kong Cinema is the “transformation of a sense of place where all the rules have qui­ etly and deceptively changed.”6 In many of the films produced in Hong Kong during the political and economic crisis, Chi­ na is presented as the “other” against which Hong Kong defines itself. Comparing two representative films of the 1980s, Long Arm of the Law (省港旗兵, 1984) and Homecoming (似水流年, 1984), Esther Yau shows how the cinematic images of China suggest Hong Kong’s ambivalence toward the Handover. While criminals from the countryside in the first of the two films “reinforce Hong Kong viewers’ fear of and repulsion toward greedy and uncouth mainland intruders,” the second film, with its “paper butterflies and rice paddies[,] invoke[s] the residents’ nostalgia for the mainland’s unperturbed preindustrial tranquility.”7 For Shu-mei Shih, this ambivalence toward China also projects a fantasy fu­ ture-and-past into the city’s imaginaries. As Hong Kong films between 1990 and 1997 em­ body the link between the city’s past and its postcolonial future, Shih maintains that they are “fantastic souvenirs of a culture that was not perceived as an autonomous entity and an attempt to appease the anxieties of the nostalgic.”8 Along a similar line of postcolonial inquiry, Laikwan Pang points out that post-1997 Hong Kong films can still be seen as a cultural attempt at “place-making,” through which the people of Hong Kong negotiate their postcolonial identity.9 China does not simply figure as an external force that draws Hong Kong in; it is also man­ ifested in the internal desires of Hong Kong as embodied in “northbound” discourse—a form of cultural politics developed in the 1990s, which envisioned a tantalizing future of rich entrepreneurial possibilities in China if Hong Kong made best use of its advanced de­ velopments in modernity. Such a “northbound” push, largely a consequence of shifting capital investment and the relocation of factories into China, brought about cultural dis­ courses that reflected on the capitalist drive. In 1995, a version of this northbound dis­ course was articulated by contributors to a special issue of the Hong Kong Cultural Stud­ ies Bulletin (香港文化研究) devoted to rethinking Hong Kong’s cultural identity in the face Page 3 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema of the impending Handover. Scholars and cultural critics sought to reevaluate and even criticize the problems inherent in such a discourse, identifying Hong Kong’s mainland-dri­ ven entrepreneurialism as a new form of colonialism.10 The resulting controversy focused on Hong Kong’s position in relation to China after the Handover, raising questions such as: What lies beyond its political status as China’s Special Administrative Region? What are the roles of economy and culture in (p. 137) building the imagined communities of Hong Kong and China? Is it possible for Hong Kong’s economic success to culturally transform China? As we will see, these inquiries also persist in recent Hong Kong films, which provide an updated perspective on Hong Kong’s northbound discourse as an ex­ pression of both inner desire and entrepreneurial activity in the context of Hong Kong’s collaboration with China for an ever-intense regional integration. The following discussion focuses on the theme of border crossing in five recent films in which Hong Kong’s post-1997 identity is open for reimagination: Fruit Chan’s 陳果 Holly­ wood Hong Kong (香港有個荷里活, 2001), James Yuen’s 阮世生 Crazy n’ the City (神經俠侶, 2005), Herman Yau’s 邱禮濤 True Women for Sale (我不賣身 我賣子宮, 2008), Ann Hui’s 許鞍 華 Night and Fog (天水圍的夜與霧, 2009), and Johnnie To’s 杜琪峯 Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (單身男女, 2011). Not only have these works earned sizable profits and critical ac­ claim,11 they also offer ways to rethink Hong Kong’s northbound discourse.12 While Crazy n’ the City and Don’t Go Breaking My Heart find love and hope for Hong Kong men in the north, Hollywood Hong Kong, True Women for Sale and Night and Fog suggest anxieties about, if not criticism of, Hong Kong’s northbound ambitions as a form of entrepreneurial­ ism or even colonialism. The characters in these films fall into two main categories: that of the local man under siege, and that of the mobile woman from the mainland as the oth­ er against which Hong Kong defines itself. This contrast between male locals and female migrants provides a site for Hong Kong audiences to explore possibilities of rejection, ac­ ceptance, and interrogation with respect to the challenges inherent in cross-border unions. At the same time, while narrating the northbound stories of Hong Kong men and Chinese women from the middle and lower classes, these films also facilitate our understanding of the roles of class and gender in shaping the northbound imaginary. Given that mainland women in the films often function as a metaphor for the Sino–Hong Kong relationship, this analysis pivots around the socio-cultural significance of these border-crossing women in an attempt to grasp the desire and anxiety inherent in Hong Kong’s self-writing. These women can be aptly described as mobile women, a term used by Carolyn Cartier to refer to the underprivileged gender identities produced by “masculine entrepreneurialism in the south of China since the 1980s, including migrant workers, sex industry workers, [and the] second-wives of Taiwanese and Hong Kong businesspeople.”13 Cartier’s typolo­ gy overlaps with Shu-mei Shih’s observation of the dominant groups of Chinese women in Hong Kong during the mid-1990s—“new immigrants,” “dalumei (大陸妹) prostitutes,” and “mainland mistresses”—yielding a situation in which “although occasionally there were successful entrepreneurial and professional new immigrant women who became visible in society,” most mainland women nevertheless belonged to the lower stratum of new immi­ grants.14 This chapter will argue that, in recent Hong Kong cinema, we find not only rep­ Page 4 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema resentations of the lived experience of underclass women but also the middle-class pro­ fessional elite as newly emergent social subjects, symbolizing China’s growing economic power and specifically its implications for Hong Kong.

From Femme Fatale to Soul Redeemer: The Transformation of “Northern Girls” (p. 138)

In late 1990s and early in the next decade, “northern girls” (北姑), which is to say sex workers from the mainland, became synonymous with Chinese mobile women in Hong Kong. Given the official promotion of the Individual Visit Scheme and CEPA—cross-border crimes, especially illegal laborers, became the price of issuing the permit for traveling to and from Hong Kong and Macau after 2000. The Hong Kong media has produced a narra­ tive of collective phobia presenting mainland prostitutes as a social vice to be eradicated.15 To some extent, this anxiety regarding a deepened interaction with the mainland finds its counterpart in Fruit Chan’s Hollywood Hong Kong. Taking as its backdrop the 2001 de­ molishment of Tai Hom Village, the largest squatter site in Hong Kong, Hollywood Hong Kong relates the encounters between a northern girl by the name of Hung Hung and resi­ dents of Tai Hom Village, including a teenager by the name of Wong Chi-keung and the family of a local pork butcher, the Chu family. This “Angel from Shanghai,” as Hung Hung calls herself, stands for the overwhelming progress of urban China as opposed to an ig­ nored slum of Hong Kong. After Chi-keung has sex with her, for instance, he confesses that he has been living in the old Tai Hom Village all his life, to which Hung Hung replies, “You are more miserable than I. You were born in a poverty-stricken place and are being overshadowed all day by the high-rise cluster of Plaza Hollywood. It feels so uncomfort­ able.” She adds: “You have never been to Shanghai? Now it is a very beautiful place, even more beautiful than Hong Kong.” Down and out, Chi-keung lacks northbound ambition: his dream is to run a brothel in Mongkok. Here the heroine provides a contrast between a Hong Kong locale and Shanghai, which not only shows her superiority to Chi-keung and Tai Hom Village but also points to Hong Kong’s anxiety over the intense competition be­ tween the two cities following 1997. Hung Hung is presented as a femme fatale. The film’s allusions to the Chinese classical novel The Journey to the West (西遊記) suggest that the heroine is the Spider Demoness in­ carnate—protean, unpredictable, and perhaps even malicious. After having sex with prac­ tically every man in Tai Hom Village, the nymph-like Hung Hung professes to be under­ age and proceeds to extort money from each of them, including Chi-keung and the Chu family. She also symbolizes China’s upward mobility, in stark contrast to the socially trapped local Hong Kong men. Hung Hung not only lives in a luxurious apartment com­ plex called Plaza Hollywood that towers over the squalid Tai Hom Village, by the end of the film she has gone to the real Hollywood, while the Chu family is forced to move out of Tai Hom Village and Chi-keung seemingly disappears. Hung Hung, therefore, appears to be the winner of the social status competition. The last days of the squatters easily turn Page 5 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema into an apt symbol of damaged manhood in the film. Through the interaction between the locals and the newcomers in Tai Hom Village before demolition, Chan allegorizes the anx­ iety of the Hong Kong male subject toward an imminent (p. 139) loss of not only political sovereignty but also social and spatial mobility.16 As Vivian Lee observes, this female character’s mobility “is in direct contrast to the psychologically and physically crippled male characters who are always one step behind the game.”17 The demoness image that speaks to the prevalent fears toward “northern girls” in this pe­ riod, however, undergoes a drastic transformation a few years later, as seen in James Yuen’s 2005 film, Crazy n’ the City. Among the locals in the police precinct, Wanchai, an insane Hong Kong professional, Wong Shing, develops a relationship with a gentle-na­ tured massage therapist from the mainland. Their budding romance dramatizes the Sino– Hong Kong relationship in a familial and mutually beneficial light. Unlike the lower-class male in Hollywood Hong Kong, Wong Shing is initially an established architect with a de­ gree from the University of Hong Kong who suffers a series of unexpected personal crises after his wife miscarries twins and subsequently leaves him on account of his debts. In a sense, Shing’s drama of falling out of the middle-class taps into the collective uncon­ scious of post-1997 Hong Kong, when many middle-class men lost their jobs, contributing in turn to the disintegration of their families. In contrast to this restless, destructive and damaged male ego, the ultra-feminine Feifei, a hard-working single mother, is calm, tolerant, and patient. After breaking up with her ir­ responsible husband, Feifei leaves her daughter with relatives in Dongguan and comes to Hong Kong alone to make a living. Feifei’s maternal tenderness paves the way for the inti­ macy developed between this mobile woman and the insane Hong Kong man. To endow the mainland woman with an image different from that of the “northern girls,” the narra­ tive renders Feifei’s relationship with Shing as a kind of surrogate love. Each having just lost a spouse, the two characters come together as heartbroken singles. The sentimental link between the two protagonists is put in an economic light. Shing tells Feifei, before she returns to Guangdong, that the family will “have porridge when there is porridge, and will have rice when there is rice.” It is clear that such a romantic connec­ tion is anchored on a spatial metaphor of a political and economic union. The pledge for a future together for Shing is a photo of Feifei taken in 1998 in front of the Golden Bauhinia —a sculpture given to Hong Kong by China at the 1997 Handover ceremony, representing China’s role in ensuring “the everlasting prosperity of Hong Kong.” In the beginning of the film, we see Shing leading mainland tourist groups around Golden Bauhinia Square, explaining in fluent Mandarin the story of the statue and how the adjacent Convention Center symbolizes a bird returning to the nest of the motherland. In the subsequent ro­ mance between Shing and Feifei this politically charged Bauhinia is also identified with the monument of love. Later we discover that Shing was part of the design team of the square and the Convention Center. If Shing’s earlier fixation on the Golden Bauhinia is part of his madness, a symptom of his attachment to the good old days, the low-angle shot of him holding Feifei’s photo in front of the real sculpture toward the end of his story sug­ gests a man finding his old self through love. The photograph of Feifei standing in front of Page 6 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema the Golden Bauhinia not only indexes a Chinese mobile woman’s southbound yearning in 1998 but also implies that, a decade later, this Hong Kong dream of economic indepen­ dence has instead become a redemption fantasy of the Hong Kong male. Together, these two films reveal a thematic transformation of the northern girl from a voracious femme fatale to a mothering soul-redeemer, from a prostitute to a soonto-be family member. The essence of the link here transforms from mere commerce to kinship. Such a dramatic transformation of the northern girl image pushes audiences to­ ward a new horizon of understanding in terms of more diverse ways of imagining China, a change alluding to the mechanism of the northbound imagination that acknowledges the gaze returned by Chinese women. The figure of the mainland prostitute in Chan’s film al­ legorizes Hong Kong’s fear of a castrating China, while the Chinese mother and wife in Yuen’s film help romanticize the economic cooperation of Hong Kong and China. (p. 140)

From Prostitutes to Mothers: Reimaging Mi­ grants in the City With the rise in Hong Kong’s northbound entrepreneurialism in the 1980s and 1990s, not only did many Hong Kong businessmen begin keeping second wives in China, but further­ more many working-class Hong Kong men, facing a “marriage squeeze” resulting from sex ratio imbalances in the colony, also found it easier to take a rural mainland wife.18 Yet, as emergent social subjects in Hong Kong, mainland wives, along with their Hong Kong husbands, have been negatively stereotyped, often blamed for Hong Kong’s social and economic problems.19 Even during the Hong Kong economic boom in 2007, media ac­ counts of mainland wives remained negative, emphasizing how these women marry for money to support their mainland relatives and are unfaithful to their Hong Kong hus­ bands.20 The two cinematic representations of new immigrants discussed here, however, challenge the denigrating stereotypes of mainland wives and mothers by expounding on the weighty and complex social issues accompanying working-class cross-border marriage and roman­ ticizing mobile women, inviting Hong Kong urbanites to consider the diversity of Sino– Hong Kong families. In so doing, these works present the possibility of rethinking the role of class in shaping the northbound imaginary and invite a dialogue about the sociological and demographic work on cross-border familial relationships. True Women for Sale portrays the parallel stories of two female protagonists, a local pros­ titute and a mainland widow, living in the same dilapidated apartment, to promote a deep­ er understanding of the female underclass in Hong Kong. Wong Lin-fa, the widow from China, is featured as both a “predator of social resources” and a single mother pregnant with twins fighting the discrimination of border-policing institutions. In the beginning of the work, Lin-fa’s maternal image turns her into a morally suspicious woman who utilizes motherhood as a springboard for a better life in Hong Kong. She is depicted as someone not suitable for giving birth to children in Hong Kong. Fu-yi, her husband’s insurance Page 7 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema agent, jokingly tells her not to take giving birth to children lightly, (p. 141) since she is not giving birth to “barbecued pork.” A social worker tries to talk her into getting an abor­ tion: “You are so hot-tempered, and you want more kids. I feel sorry for them.” Lin-fa also tells her baby daughter that if she doesn’t stop crying she will feed her the rat they caught at home, further underscoring Lin-fa’s inaptitude as a mother. As suggested by the Chinese title of the film, which literally means, “I am not a prostitute, but my womb is for sale,” a mainland immigrant is perceived as at best a gold-digging spouse, if not an illegal second wife or mistress. This image of an unwelcome widowed mother crossing the border to claim the resources of Hong Kong society deserves attention after the 1999 ruling on “nonpermit children.” In January 1999, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeals ruled that Chinese children whose parents were permanent residents of Hong Kong should also be granted the permanent right of abode in Hong Kong, and that if Chinese nationals can prove that either of their parents is currently a Hong Kong resident, they can also acquire the right of abode in Hong Kong based on Article 24.21 The government of the Hong Kong Special Administra­ tive Region (SAR) estimates that around 1.67 million people meet this requirement and that the population pressure in Hong Kong would thereby worsen. Press reports periodi­ cally intimate that those applying for the right of abode in Hong Kong are of lower quality than the average Hong Kong resident, and that their dubious morality will pose a threat to Hong Kong family values and, by extension, society as a whole.22 Since the landmark ruling in 1999, the debate over residency status raged for many years. The context of this controversy allows the film to complicate the stereotypical rep­ resentation of Lin-fa by showing the immigrant trapped in the midst of misunderstand­ ings and difficulties in negotiation with the established migration controls. The director employs what Stuart Hall calls a “negotiated reading,” decoding the Hong Kong typecast­ ing of new immigrants from the mainland, wherein negotiated codes are operated through a visual logic of intimacy and sympathy.23 The film uses narrative details and a series of compassionate shots to compel the audience to observe Lin-fa with a sense of in­ timacy, even though her character is not entirely likable. The most obvious attempt to take into consideration the cosmopolitan foundations of Hong Kong’s cross-border communities occurs when Lin-fa gives birth on a bus. The episode explicitly performs the thorny issues surrounding the governing of mainland mothers. In 2007, in response to the rapid increase of Mainland Chinese women coming to Hong Kong to give birth, the SAR government enacted the Obstetric Services Require­ ments for Mainland Women act, requiring pregnant women from the mainland in their third trimester to present documentation from a Hong Kong hospital indicating that they have already registered and paid in full.24 Under this new rule, pregnant mainland women married to Hong Kong men are classified as aliens and must either pay a large sum up front to secure their right to give birth in Hong Kong or opt for costly emergency room deliveries. An underprivileged widow like Lin-fa would be refused by the hospital nurse and would have had little choice but to give birth in an emergency room.

Page 8 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema True Women for Sale captures the human compassion beyond the legal restrictions im­ posed in Hong Kong. Although Lin-fa is repeatedly set back in her attempts to acquire residency, when she gives birth on a double-decker bus, she is lauded by her fellow (p. 142) passengers for having given birth to “dragon twins in the dragon year.” Touched by such collective enthusiasm, Fu-yi, the insurance agent turned family friend, even agrees to be the “godfather” of all of her children, using a voluntary social bond to trans­ form the link between Lin-fa and the locals from one of hospitality to one of kinship. The cinematic intimacy is further enhanced by the way Lin-fa narrates her dream of stay­ ing in Hong Kong. Her voice-over describes her emotional longing for her ex-boyfriend in this agonizing moment between life and death, as she tells him, “I was really heartbroken on your wedding night. On the same night, I met Uncle Kin. On the same night, I decided to come to Hong Kong, too. Now we’re both here. But you have to keep going with your wife to claim the right of abode. And I…humiliated myself to such an extent that I gave my life away on a bus” (emphasis added). In this scene of childbirth, the film illustrates the potential creation of an imaginary community that might include both local Hong Kongers and newcomers from the north. The self-criticism of what can be called Hong Kong centrism enabled by a sympathetic de­ scription of mobile women from Mainland China is intensified in Ann Hui’s Night and Fog, in which a cross-border marriage turns out to be a fatal decision for a migrant. Inspired by a true story of the murder of a Chinese immigrant and her two daughters by her Hong Kong husband in Tin Shui Wai, a residential district crowded with mainland immigrants, Ann Hui’s film explores the shaky cross-border relations between underprivileged people at a time when the campaign for integration of Hong Kong and South China has been re­ peatedly endorsed officially. A shocking murder in 2004 brought immediate notoriety to Tin Shui Wai, and in the fol­ lowing two years three middle-aged women committed group suicide, leaving a posthu­ mous letter stating that there was “nothing worth living for,” and a mother tied up her children and threw them off a building. These incidents aroused immense public attention from Hong Kong citizens. After Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-Ngor 林鄭月娥, the secretary for the Hong Kong Development Bureau, publically referred to Tin Shui Wai as a “City of Sad­ ness,” various critiques and reevaluations of this area began to surface. The sequences representing the protagonist Wong Hiu-ling’s family in Sichuan are rare moments, within Hong Kong film, that candidly represent rural life in Mainland China and how Shenzhen and Hong Kong have similar dreams of economic opportunities. Hui’s por­ trayal of the Wong family captures the southbound aspiration of many of the daughters of peasant backgrounds in Mainland China since the 1980s, rooted in the idea of bringing “modernity” back to one’s home village. Hiu-ling, the eldest sister, has been working away from home since she was little, and the color TV she brings home as a teenager symbolizes the improved status she has achieved for her family. Similarly, her arrival sev­ eral years later with Sam Lee, her Hong Kong husband, brings a beaming smile to her mother’s face. The mother’s response to a neighbor’s compliments on the new house Sam Page 9 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema builds for them summarizes a common expectation of peasant daughters turned dagong­ mei (打工妹, literally “working girls”): “It’s because she went to work. What hope is there at home?” The heroine is portrayed as a victim of her parents’ unchecked material desire. As the narrative develops, the patriarchal, practical, and material-driven mother in a sense (p. 143) becomes an accomplice in her daughter’s murder. Her ingrained belief in Shen­ zhen and Hong Kong as the dreamland of economic success illustrates that the lifeworlds of rural peasants are closely entangled with those of cities like Shenzhen and Hong Kong. To sustain her imaginary link with the prosperous south, Hiu-ling’s mother chooses to be reticent about her son-in-law’s extramarital affair and physical abuse, telling Hiu-ling, “In our hometown, as you know, men in every village and every alley beat their wives…. Your man is good. He built us a house. He took you and your sisters to Shenzhen, to Hong Kong.” The mother’s dream of modernity and material wealth turns out to be her daughter’s nightmare. On the other hand, Hiu-ling is also a scapegoat for her husband’s frustrated northbound desire. An uneducated worker, Sam Lee’s connection with Hiu-ling’s family is rooted in a naive form of “northbound colonialism,” wherein both see Hong Kong as a model for China’s modernization. This attitude of superiority is expressed through Sam’s commit­ ment to being a harbinger of modernized life: “I’ll renovate their house and I’ll install a phone! I’ll show them ‘village modernization’!” In the Sichuan countryside, not yet open to a realistic understanding of Hong Kong, his counterfeit identity as an engineer and an entrepreneur allows Sam to relish his newfound privileged status and self-respect. His chauvinistic attitude also helps account for his affair with Hiu-ling’s own sister, as he as­ sumes that northbound development would even provide a playground for womanizers.25 Yet as Sam’s grocery store business fails to take off and the money they brought from Hong Kong is used up, Hiu-ling’s mother demands that they leave and return to Shenzhen or Hong Kong. At this point Sam inevitably wakes up from his northbound dream and complains to Hiu-ling about her mother’s plan: “Always Shenzhen and Hong Kong! You think the streets are paved with gold?” When Sam beats the family dog to death, he not only rebels against his mother-in-law, but also vents his fury and frustration with the northbound entrepreneurialism that ultimately leads nowhere. Implicated in the tragic marriage of the film’s protagonist, Wong Hiu-ling, migration is the result of misunderstandings between Hong Kong husbands and their wives’ families. In this way, the film explores the powerful imagination of cross-border dreams. What one could describe as a mutual perception of the other as symbol of economic success results in the northbound imaginary of Hong Kong people and the southbound desire of mainlan­ ders. For Hiu-ling’s mother, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are dream lands of material gains. Such belief suggests that despite the geographical distance, the everyday life of Sichuan peasants is deeply entangled with cities in the south both materially and symbolically. Equally importantly, the film points out the limitation of Hong Kong’s northbound desire—

Page 10 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema Sam’s stereotypes of Sichuan raise his hope of being a “king” and account for his later frustration with his shattered dreams and ego. With this retelling of a horrific crime, Ann Hui seeks to make a socially aware film with a positive image of a female immigrant from China, despite her claim that she “didn’t make [the characters] especially sympathetic or pitiable.”26 Hiu-ling, in devoting herself to two geographically separated families, is ultimately deprived of mobility in the neighborhood of Tin Shui Wai, the only place in Hong Kong that she is familiar with. She is (p. 144) mur­ dered the day she comes to a decision to attend a protest in Central, a business district on the north shore of Hong Kong Island, in hope of getting help from a congressman to escape from domestic abuse. The fact that Hiu-ling never made it to Central, despite hav­ ing been living in Hong Kong for many years, speaks volumes to the distance between the realities of underprivileged immigrants and an idealized Hong Kong dream. On the one hand, cross-border marriages in these two films are represented as Hong Kong’s thorny social issues, entangled with a prevalent worry about Chinese women’s claims for rights and resources and the stigmatized urban space of the underclass. On the other hand, both films cast a humanitarian gaze at the unequal relations of cross-border marriages in which Chinese women, denied citizenship, have to fight to survive in Hong Kong. Using the trope of the maternal body (Lin-fa’s pregnancy and delivery, and Hiuling’s abuse and mutilation), these films raise crucial issues facing Hong Kong’s new im­ migrants, including mainland woman’s birthrights, split families, a discriminatory social welfare system, and spatial exclusion.

The Professional Elite as the New Object of De­ sire Since China’s entry into the WTO in 2000, capitalism in China has continued to develop at an unprecedented pace. China’s large-scale urbanization has brought with it new cultural identities. The term white collar (白領), one of China’s neologisms in the postsocialist era, has been adopted by young professionals to articulate their class identity. In the 1990s, the identity of the urban white-collar woman has been more and more visible and desir­ able in China’s mass media. The best example is the Du Lala 杜拉拉 phenomenon, includ­ ing the huge success of the best-seller A Story of Lala’s Promotion (杜拉拉升職記) and a movie with the same title, together with television drama, a play, and many other fictional and nonfictional works in the same vein. Interestingly, images of Chinese professional women taking center stage in the mainland have also emerged in Hong Kong cinema. For the cinematic portrayal of mobile professional women, we may return to True Women for Sale and also consider another film, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. The implications for these Chinese professional women of acting as objects of desire for Hong Kong men will be analyzed and contrasted with the role of the prostitutes and mainland mothers, in an attempt to assess the way courtship has become a metaphor that articulates the Sino– Hong Kong relationship. While True Women for Sale seems to encourage the audience to Page 11 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema stay with the lively local, represented by two lower-class female protagonists, rather than pursue an elusive Chinese market, symbolized by the female doctor, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart instead suggests that business opportunities abound in second-tier northern cities like Suzhou, still a “virgin land” waiting to be explored and remade in the image of Hong Kong itself. One finds in True Women for Sale a positive portrayal of mobile women. The fe­ male professional Dr. Lee comes from the mainland, offering a stark contrast to the low­ er-class Lin-fa. The male protagonist, Fu-yi, initially dismisses Lee as just another main­ land quack doctor, but after she delivers impressive seminars to the insurance company he works for, he completely changes his mind, remarking: (p. 145)

Dr. Lee, actually you can apply for HK residence as a professional. Talented people like you have good prospects in Hong Kong. Well, not every mainlander wants to come. Only the useless bums do. Yeah, right. Hong Kong locals are no better, so self-centered. I would want to go with you to start a new market in the mainland. This distinction between these two types of mobile women from China rehearses the desirable presence of mainland elites in Hong Kong over their underprivileged counterparts. In Fu-yi’s de­ sire to collaborate with Dr. Lee we might see an imaginary exploration of Sino–Hong Kong con­ nections. Compared to the exceptionally tall Dr. Lee, Fu-yi looks humble, petty, and even igno­ rant. He remarks, “I’m not shy, and am willing to learn…. I’ll provide the best service possible. I’m different from most Hong Kong people. Most of them look down on mainlanders, but not me” (emphasis added). The brilliant female professional does not show any interest in Fu-yi’s in­ vitations and instead reproaches him for his naïveté, asking, “Do you realize that the mainland market is totally different?” Here the new mobile woman is not only a professional physician but also possesses insider knowledge of the Chinese market. Fu-yi’s frustrated attempts to pursue Dr. Lee suggests the ambivalent image of China held in Hong Kong, an image as elusive as it is alluring.

This hoped-for alliance between Hong Kong and China ends in a self-reflected change oc­ curring to the male protagonist. Fu-yi’s dream of taking advantage of the expanding mainland market is interrupted by his unexpected, genuine concerns for the lower-class women in the film. At first acting as a Good Samaritan helping Lin-fa give birth and then happening upon the story of a local prostitute, Lai Chung-chung, Fu-yi eventually has an epiphany and decides to forgo the idea of going north to pursue the female doctor and ex­ plore the Chinese market with her. This sudden realization that leads to his determination to stay in Hong Kong remains unexplained, but his final change of heart may perhaps be seen as the film’s self-reflexive critique of Hong Kong’s own northbound ambition: it may be more prudent to ground oneself in the everyday reality of the local than pursue the risky and unattainable mainland market. Another variation on the figure of the professional mobile woman is developed in Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, in which the protagonist is a “girl next door” who might appeal to the hearts of Hong Kong men and of the film’s general audience. An investment analyst from Suzhou, Zixin (played by the Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan 高圓圓) comes to Hong Kong with her boyfriend, who subsequently dumps her for a Hong Kong woman. This Page 12 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema episode of heartbreak turns out to be a blessing in disguise—soon after the breakup Zixin runs into two charming Hong Kong suitors. Zixin’s sudden desirability mirrors China’s own dramatic rise in its international status. She represents a new (p. 146) type of main­ land woman who brings to light the film’s imagination of the Sino–Hong Kong relation­ ship. The professional managerial elite reflects the current image of China rapidly casting away its associations of backwardness and instead donning an attractive glamour and the allure of desirable prospects. Zixin’s suitors may be seen as archetypes of two distinct types of Hong Kong profession­ als. Kevin is a Hong Kong–based architect who grew up in Canada and went to New York to study architecture, and stands for the ideal cosmopolitan identity for Hong Kong peo­ ple. Sean, on the other hand, represents a native, down-to-earth Hong Kong identity, a generic leading male character in the Hong Kong romantic comedy genre, a wild spirit with a heart of gold. Throughout the film, the tightly pursued connection between China and Hong Kong is re­ flected through the fairy-tale courtship between Zixin and Kevin. Kevin enters the film as an alcoholic architect who narrowly saves Zixin from a car accident right after she breaks up with her boyfriend. As a token of her appreciation, Zixin gives him everything her ex had left her, including a pet frog, whereupon the talented and handsome “frog prince” metaphorically expresses Hong Kong’s desire to connect with China. Central to the fairy tale of the frog prince is Hong Kong’s northbound development, wherein China’s secondtier cities have become fertile ground for Hong Kong professionals. In this “northbound fairy tale,” skyscrapers serve as the dominant symbol for success. From the very beginning, the charming mainland woman embodies the glamorous highrise. This trope of woman as high-rise begins in a scene that shows how Zixin magically inspires Kevin to design a monumental building in Suzhou. The scene takes place when Zixin bids farewell to Kevin after dinner. She turns back to him, urging the once-success­ ful architect, “Don’t give up. You can make it!” Onto the white billboard bathed in yellow lamplight, the bluish headlights of a passing car cast Zixin’s shadow, which looms large as the car drives away. The frog prince cannot break the spell and prove his blue blood until he shows the princess the building made in her image in Suzhou. She thus is not on­ ly the princess that rescues the frog prince, but his muse, inspiring this disheartened Hong Kong professional to find opportunities in the north. Later Kevin’s confession of love further shows how the film employs the romance formula to naturalize the urban landscape of skyscrapers. In other words, the developmental na­ ture of contemporary Chinese cities substantiates Kevin’s courtship. His rhetoric is highly inflected with the language of modernizing progress China has achieved. Three years from that night of the “divine inspiration,” upon reunion, Kevin talks Zixin into visiting Suzhou immediately to see the high-rise he has designed by explaining the city’s accessi­ bility: “We can fly to Shanghai tonight at 11:30 and drive to Suzhou. After showing you around the building, we will just take the morning flight back to Hong Kong and head to office directly from the airport.” The frog-turned-prince employs construction industry Page 13 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema jargon to woo her: “I have been falling for you for a long time. Starting from scratch, I de­ signed, drew, laid the foundation. Now there are 80 floors finished.” Kevin turns the sky­ scraper in China into a concrete token of the romantic bond. At the end of (p. 147) the film Chinese high-rises also become the swords with which the knights fight for the lady. In the double proposal scene, each suitor uses a building to propose to Zixin in the course of a single evening—with one staging a spectacular lightshow on the façade of a landmark building, and the other climbing the building designed by his rival to unveil a “Marry Me” banner. As the local Hong Kong man is defeated by his more cosmopolitan rival, Hong Kong seems to be merely a launching pad for this pursuit of China, fated to retire to the wings once its neighbor has found its way onto the global stage. Yet in a final resolving stroke, Sean proclaims that he will “return to the Earth,” meaning that instead of having sacri­ ficed his identity for a woman, he is now free to be his old frivolous self. Such a light­ hearted response to his frustration may be seen as the film’s final, albeit feeble, attempt to pay tribute to the Hong Kong spirit, as Tang Siu Wa observes.27 In both films, this figure of the female professional elite exemplifies the idea that north­ bound desire is intertwined with transnational flows of capital. In these two films the fe­ male protagonists are powerful agents of capital, rather than either gold-diggers (north­ ern girls) or competitors for social resources (mainland wives and mothers) who might frustrate or enable Hong Kong middle-class men’s northbound ambitions. One finds am­ bivalence in these two films regarding how Hong Kong changes from the position of a dominant decider of business to that of merely courting favors from China. It is notewor­ thy that both films suggest that failed attempts at pursuing Chinese women might be a blessing in disguise, presenting a chance for Hong Kong men to reflect upon themselves, the local, and the north.

Conclusion In approaching recent popular cinema from Hong Kong, it is necessary to consider not only the anxieties inherent in the narratives of geographical linkage through regional in­ tegration, but also the equally crucial questions raised by the northbound longing they help to engender, including the possibilities they raise for cross-border communities. The gendered roles (tough Chinese women vs. frustrated Hong Kong men) and the sexual ten­ sion the filmic narratives rely on offer important vantage points in comprehending how contemporary Hong Kong cinema not only mediates but also constructs border-crossing relationships by representing various ways of connecting Hong Kong men and mobile Chi­ nese women, as well as the accompanying ambivalent emotional experience, oscillating between fear and desire. This chapter has argued that the possibility of geographical collaboration between China and Hong Kong is a major concern in recent Hong Kong cinema. The mobile women who cross the border from China into Hong Kong serve as the figures of linkage for the films to redefine the imagined community of contemporary Hong Kong, acting as a rhetorical Page 14 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema vehicle to articulate connections and contradictions between Hong Kong and China. From prostitutes to wives and mothers, the transformed images of Chinese (p. 148) women point to a closer and also more tension-ridden Sino–Hong Kong relationship. While reflecting collective anxieties, the films under discussion also entertain the possibilities of a new imagined community. The representations of mainland professional women become the anchor for Hong Kong to imagine participating in China’s economic development. The seemingly banal gender ideology that assumes a dichotomy between China as the femi­ nized Other and Hong Kong as a masculine subject brings about new narratives of border crossing in response to the changing dynamics of capitalism development in Hong Kong and China over recent years.

Works Cited Abbas, Ackbar. Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. Minneapolis: Uni­ versity of Minnesota Press, 1997. Abbas, Ackbar, and Wimal Dissanayake. “Series Preface.” Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong, by Esther M. K. Cheung. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. ix–xi. “Ann Hui on Night and Fog.” Time Out Hong Kong. Time Out Group Ltd., May 7, 2009. Re­ trieved May 12, 2011, from http://www.timeout.com.hk/film/features/23156/ann-huion-night-and-fog.html. Cartier, Carolyn L. Globalizing South China. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002. Chan, Stephen C. K. 陳清僑, ed. Wenhua xiangxiang yu yishi xingtai: Dangdai Xianggang wenhua zhengzhi lunping 文化想像與意識形態: 當代香港文化政治論評 [Cultural imaginary and ideology: Contemporary Hong Kong culture and politics review]. Hong Kong: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 1997. Chan Suet-ling 陳雪玲 “Jinqian vs zunyan neidi laigang xinggongzuozhe beibu shilu” 金錢 vs 尊嚴內地來港性工作者被捕實錄 [Money vs. dignity: True stories of mainland sexual work­ ers arrested in Hong Kong]. Wen Wei Po 文匯報, July 5, 2007, C05. “Director Ann Hui Completes Tin Shui Wai Diptych.” YouTube, posted by scmp888 (South China Morning Post, SCMP.com). Google, April 22, 2009. Retrieved June 1, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49wna1xJCT0. Fu Chi-ming 符志明 “Dui daliang xinyimin yonglai de youlu” 對大量新移民湧來的憂慮 [Anxiety toward new immigrants flooding]. Wen Wei Po 文匯報, February 6, 1999, C4. Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.” Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79. Ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis. Lon­ don: Unwin Hyman, 1980, 128–138. He, Hilary Hongjin. “‘One Movie, Two Versions’: Post-1997 Hong Kong Cinema in Main­ land China.” Global Media Journal—Australian Edition 4.2 (2010): n.p. Retrieved Septem­ Page 15 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema ber 3, 2011, from http://www.commarts.uws.edu.au/gmjau/v4_2010_2/ hilary_hongjin_RA.html. Huang, Tsung-yi Michelle 黃宗儀, and Li Chi-she 李紀舍 “Dongya duochong xiandaixing yu fanchengzhang xushu: lun sanbu huayu dianying” 東亞多重現代性與反成長敘述: 論三部華語電 影 [Multiple modernities and the anti-bildung narrative: Mahjong, Unknown Pleasures, and Hong Kong Hollywood]. Zhongshan renwen xuebao 中山人文學報 [Sun Yat-sen journal of humanities] 24 (2007): 65–86. “Landmark Ruling.” South China Morning Post, January 30, 1999, 14. Law, Wing-sang. “Northbound Colonialism: A Politics of Post-PC Hong Kong.” positions: east asia cultures critique 8.1 (2000): 201–233. Lee, Maggy. “Policing Chinese Migrant Sex Workers in Hong Kong.” International Migra­ tion 46.3 (2008): 95–121. Lee, Vivian P. Y. Hong Kong Cinema since 1997: The Post-nostalgic Imagination. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. (p. 151)

Lin Lili 林莉麗 “Sanshinian hepaipian licheng: kaifang hezuo gongying” 30年合拍片

歷程: 開放合作共贏 [Thirty years of coproduction: Openness, cooperation, and a win-win sit­ uation]. Zhongguo dianying bao 中國電影報 [China film news], September 18, 2008, n.p. Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.dmcc.gov.cn/publish/main/ 266/2010/20100727170150471422030/20100727170150471422030_.html. “New Measures on Obstetric Services and Immigration Control Announced.” The Govern­ ment Information Centre. Government of HKSAR, January 16, 2007. Retrieved June 5, 2011, from http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200701/16/P200701160184.htm. Newendorp, Nicole. “‘Economically Speaking, I Am the Breadwinner’: Chinese Immigrant Narratives of Work and Family in Hong Kong.” International Migration 48.6 (2010): 72– 101. Pang, Laikwan 彭麗君 Huanghun weiwan: houjiuqi Xianggang dianying 黃昏未晚: 後九七香港 電影 [Around dusk: Hong Kong cinema since 1997]. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2010. Robinson, Jennifer. “Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35.1 (2011): 1–23. Sala, Ilaria. “CEPA and Hong Kong Film: The Mixed Blessing of Market Access.” China Rights Forum 4 (2003): n.p. Retrieved September 5, 2011, from http:// www.hrichina.org/sites/default/files/oldsite/pdfs/CRF.4.2003/b8_sala4.2003.pdf. Shih Shu-mei 史書美 “‘Beijin xiangxiang’ de wenti: Xianggang wenhua rentong zhengzhi” 「北進想像」的問題: 香港文化認同政治 [Problems of the “northbound imaginary”: Politics of cultural identity in Hong Kong]. Wenhua xiangxiang yu yishi xingtai: dangdai Page 16 of 20

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema Xianggang wenhua zhengzhi lunping 文化想像與意識形態: 當代香港文化政治論評 [Cultural imaginary and ideology: Contemporary Hong Kong culture and politics review]. Ed. Stephen C. K. Chan 陳清僑. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997. 151–158. Shih, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific. Berke­ ley: University of California Press, 2007. So, Alvin Y. “Cross-Border Families in Hong Kong: The Role of Social Class and Politics.” Critical Asian Studies 35.4 (2003): 515–534. Tang Siu Wa 鄧小樺 “Gangnü zhi xiaoshi?” 港女之消失? [The missing Hong Kong girl?]. Sing Tao Daily 星島日報, April 11, 2011, E07. Yau, Esther. “Border Crossing: Mainland China’s Presence in Hong Kong Cinema.” New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. Ed. Nick Browne. New York: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1994. 180–201. Yin Hong 尹鴻 and He Mei 何美 “Zouxiang houhepai shidai de huayu dianying: Zhongguo neidi yu Xianggang dianying de hezuo/hepai licheng” 走向後合拍時代的華語電影: 中國內地與香 港電影的合作/合拍歷程 [Chinese films after the period of coproduction: The historical devel­ opment of mainland-HK coproduction in the Chinese movie industry]. Chuanbo yu shehui xuekan 傳播與社會學刊 [Chinese journal of communication and society] 7 (2009): 31–60.

Notes: (1.) Yin Hong 尹鴻 and He Mei 何美, “Zouxiang houhepai shidai de huayu dianying: Zhong­ guo neidi yu Xianggang dianying de hezuo/hepai licheng” 走向後合拍時代的華語電影: 中國內 地與香港電影的合作 / 合拍歷程 [Chinese films after the period of coproduction: The historical development of mainland-HK coproduction in the Chinese movie industry], Chuanbo yu shehui xuekan 傳播與社會學刊 [Chinese journal of communication and society] 7 (2009): 34. (2.) See Lin Lili 林莉麗, “Sanshinian hepaipian licheng: kaifang hezuo gongying” 30 年合拍 片歷程: 開放 合作 共贏 [Thirty years of coproductions: Openness, cooperation, and a win-win situation], Zhongguo dianying bao 中國電影報 [China film news], September 18, 2008, n.p., retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.dmcc.gov.cn/publish/main/ 266/2010/97801997656070471422030/97801997656070471422030_.html. (3.) Revising the endings of films and casting mainland actors are common practices for such a purpose. See Hilary Hongjin He, “‘One Movie, Two Versions’: Post-1997 Hong Kong Cinema in Mainland China,” Global Media Journal—Australian Edition 4.2 (2010): n.p., retrieved September 3, 2011, from http://www.commarts.uws.edu.au/gmjau/ v4_2010_2/hilary_hongjin_RA.html; and Ilaria Sala, “CEPA and Hong Kong Film: The Mixed Blessing of Market Access,” China Rights Forum 4 (2003): n.p., retrieved Septem­ ber 5, 2011, from http://www.hrichina.org/sites/default/files/oldsite/pdfs/CRF.4.2003/ b8_sala4.2003.pdf.

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema (4.) Jennifer Robinson, “Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture,” Interna­ tional Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35.1 (2011): 16. (5.) Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 23–25; Vivian P. Y. Lee, Hong Kong Cinema since 1997: The Post-nostalgic Imagination (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 163–164. (6.) Ackbar Abbas and Wimal Dissanayake, “Series Preface,” Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong, by Esther M. K. Cheung (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), ix–xi. (7.) Esther Yau, “Border Crossing: Mainland China’s Presence in Hong Kong Cinema,” in New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics, ed. Nick Browne (New York: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1994), 198. (8.) Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 108. (9.) Pang Laikwan 彭麗君, Huanghun weiwan: Houjiuqi Xianggang dianying 黃昏未晚: 後九七 香港電影 [Around dusk: Hong Kong cinema since 1997] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2010), 242. (10.) See Stephen C. K. Chan 陳清僑, ed., Wenhua xiangxiang yu yishi xingtai: dangdai Xi­ anggang wenhua zhengzhi lunping 文化想像與意識形態: 當代香港文化政治論評 [Cultural imagi­ nary and ideology: Contemporary Hong Kong culture and politics review] (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Wing-sang Law, “Northbound Colonialism: A Politics of Post-PC Hong Kong,” positions: east asia cultures critique 8.1 (2000): 201–233. (11.) Hollywood Hong Kong won Best Original Screenplay at the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards (2003) and Best Director at the Taipei Golden Horse Awards (2002). Crazy n’ the City is the winner of Best Original Screenplay at both the Hong Kong Film Awards (2006) and the Golden Bauhinia Awards (2006). True Women for Sale won Best Leading Actress at the Taipei Golden Horse Awards (2008), and Night and Fog won Best Leading Actor at the Spanish Film Festival (2010). (12.) Other films worthy of attention include Yu Lik Wai’s 余力為 Love Will Tear Us Apart (天上人間, 1999), Fruit Chan’s Durian Durian (榴槤飄飄, 2001), Derek Yee’s 爾冬陞 One Nite in Mongkok (旺角黑夜, 2004), Derek Kok’s 郭子健 The Moss (青苔, 2008), and Johnnie To’s Sparrow (文雀, 2008). (13.) Carolyn L. Cartier, Globalizing South China (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 199. (14.) Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity, 103. (15.) For example, see Chan Suet-ling 陳雪玲, “Jinqian vs zunyan neidi laigang xing­ gongzuozhe beibu shilu” 金錢 vs 尊嚴 內地來港性工作者被捕實錄 [Money vs. dignity: True sto­ ries of mainland sexual workers arrested in Hong Kong], Wen Wei Po 文匯報, July 5, 2007,

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema C05. See also Maggy Lee, “Policing Chinese Migrant Sex Workers in Hong Kong,” Interna­ tional Migration 46.3 (2008): 95–121. (16.) See Tsung-yi Michelle Huang 黃宗儀 and Li Chi-she 李紀舍, “Dongya duochong xi­ andaixing yu fanchengzhang xushu: lun sanbu huayu dianying” 東亞多重現代性與反成長敘述: 論三部華語電影 [Multiple modernities and the anti-bildung narrative: Mahjong, Unknown Pleasures, and Hong Kong Hollywood], Zhongshan renwen xuebao 中山人文學報 [Sun Yatsen journal of humanities] 24 (2007): 65–86. (17.) Vivian Lee, Hong Kong Cinema, 181. (18.) Alvin Y. So, “Cross-Border Families in Hong Kong: The Role of Social Class and Poli­ tics,” Critical Asian Studies 35.4 (2003): 525. (19.) Alvin Y. So, “Cross-Border Families,” 531; and Nicole Newendorp, “‘Economically Speaking, I Am the Breadwinner’: Chinese Immigrant Narratives of Work and Family in Hong Kong,” International Migration 48.6 (2010): 79. (20.) Nicole Newendorp, “Economically Speaking,” 80. (21.) “Landmark Ruling,” South China Morning Post, January 30, 1999, 14. (22.) For example, see Fu Chi-ming 符志明, “Dui daliang xinyimin yonglai de youlu” 對大量 新移民湧來的憂慮 [Anxiety toward new immigrants flooding], Wen Wei Po, February 6, 1999, C4. (23.) Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” in Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79, ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis (London: Unwin Hyman, 1980), 128. (24.) “New Measures on Obstetric Services and Immigration Control Announced,” The Government Information Centre, Government of HKSAR, January 16, 2007, retrieved June 5, 2011, from http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200701/16/P200701160184.htm. (25.) For a gendered perspective of northbound colonialism, see Shih Shu-mei 史書美, “‘Beijin xiangxiang’ de wenti: Xianggang wenhua rentong zhengzhi” 「北進想像」的問題: 香 港文化認同政治 [Problems of the “northbound imaginary”: Politics of cultural identity in Hong Kong], in Cultural Imaginary and Ideology, ed. Stephen C. K. Chan, 151–158. (26.) See “Ann Hui on Night and Fog,” Time Out Hong Kong, Time Out Group Ltd., May 7, 2009, retrieved May 12, 2011, from http://www.timeout.com.hk/film/features/23156/annhui-on-night-and-fog.html; and “Director Ann Hui Completes Tin Shui Wai Diptych,” YouTube, posted by scmp888 (South China Morning Post, SCMP.com), Google, retrieved June 1, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49wna1xJCT0. (27.) Tang Siu Wa 鄧小樺, “Gangnü zhi xiaoshi?” 港女之消失? [The missing Hong Kong girl?], Sing Tao Daily 星島日報, April 11, 2011, E07.

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Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema Tsungyi Michelle Huang

Tsung-yi Michelle Huang is Associate Professor of Geography at National Taiwan Uni­ versity. She is the author of Walking Between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai (2004) and Articulating New Cultur­ al Identities: Self-Writing of East Asian Global City-Regions (Chinese)(2008).

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power

Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power   Song Hwee Lim The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0009

Abstract and Keywords How does one measure the significance of a nation’s cinema? This chapter presents a case for Taiwan cinema as a product of a small nation with enormous soft power. Tracing major awards won by Taiwan films and directors at international film festivals, it will show that a dismal domestic production level is no hindrance to a small cinema’s global critical acclaim and examine the paradoxical dynamic between a perceived failure in the state of domestic film production and consumption and the undeniable prestigious inter­ national status of Taiwan cinema. Using as its focus the Taiwan New Cinema (TNC) move­ ment that began in the early 1980s, this chapter advocates for “another kind of cinema” (a concept proposed during the TNC period) and explores the implications of this bifurcation for Taiwan film historiography. Keywords: Taiwan New Cinema, soft power, small nation, international film festivals, Cape No. 7, auteurism, histo­ riography

How does one measure the significance of a nation’s cinema? This chapter will address this question by examining the state of Taiwan cinema and its status in the world today, using as its focus the Taiwan New Cinema (TNC) movement that began in the early 1980s.1 By taking into consideration aspects of film production, consumption, and recep­ tion, the role of cinema as a diplomatic tool, and the enduring currency of auteurship, I will present a case for Taiwan cinema as a product of a small nation with enormous soft power. This paradoxical power dynamic, I argue, is premised upon a bifurcation between domestic production and international prestige, a split that finds its roots in the TNC peri­ od and that has become exacerbated since the dawn of the twenty-first century. As recent films such as Wei Te-sheng’s 魏德聖 Cape No. 7 (海角七號, 2008), Doze Niu’s 紐承澤 Monga (艋舺, 2010), and Giddens Ko’s 柯景騰 (also known as 七把刀) You Are the Apple of My Eye (那些年 ， 我們一起追的女孩, 2011) stirred up a new wave of popular domestic film con­ sumption in what has been called the post-TNC period, this chapter concludes by advo­ cating “another kind of cinema” (a concept first proposed during the TNC period) and ex­ ploring the implications of this bifurcation for Taiwan film historiography.

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power Despite a recognition of the limitations of national cinema and the promotion of other conceptual frameworks—in particular, that of transnational cinema—the national cinema model still persists within film scholarship.2 A recently edited book, The Cinema of Small Nations, attempts to provide a different take on the national cinema model by examining twelve case studies ranging from Singapore and Ireland to Cuba, New Zealand, and Burk­ ina Faso. In their introduction, the editors, Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, concede that “a definitive definition of small state cannot be provided,” but nevertheless argue that the concept of small nationhood “gives priority to the question of levels of production, there­ by blurring the distinction between the idea of a small nation that produces films and the idea of a country that produces a small number of films.”3 By asking their contributors to provide “information about the institutional parameters governing cinematic production in their context, to identify some of the persistent (p. 153) challenges faced by filmmakers in that context, and to discuss and assess the impact of any solutions that might have been explored over the years,”4 the editors clearly privilege issues of policy and produc­ tion as instruments for measuring the state of a nation’s cinema. While following this useful framework in looking at Taiwan cinema, I will argue that the privileging of the quantitative (levels of production) as a measure of smallness misses the point—not because size doesn’t matter but rather because, as the sexual connotation of this metaphor suggests, size alone cannot account for quality, whether measured by plea­ sure or prestige. Tracing major awards won by Taiwan films and directors at international film festivals, I will show that a dismal domestic production level is no hindrance to a small cinema’s global critical acclaim. I will then investigate how questions of domestic film production level and box-office performance still dominate discourses on Taiwan cin­ ema in the new millennium. This chapter, accordingly, will examine the paradoxical dy­ namic between a perceived failure in the state of domestic film production and consump­ tion and the undeniable prestigious international status of the same nation’s cinema.

Soft Power: Taiwan Cinema as International Miracle In 1995, the Danish film movement Dogme95 demonstrated that national cinema should be measured not only quantitatively with respect to domestic production levels, but also qualitatively with respect to international esteem indicators. With its now-famous tenpoint manifesto, “The Vow of Chastity,” and the histrionics of its founders (particularly Lars von Trier, the enfant terrible of European cinema), Dogme95 immediately captured the global imagination and spun out a transnational filmmaking movement that resulted in over thirty films made in its name between 1998 and 2004.5 Asked in an interview in the early days of the movement whether the Danes were proud to have provided the birthplace for the latest European avant-garde movement sweeping the globe, Dogme95’s cofounder, Thomas Vinterberg, declared, “Well, it’s the same thing as a guy with a small penis who wants a huge motorbike. I think part of the arrogance behind Dogme95 repre­ sents a very small country with very small penises. (Laughs) So it has to be very rigid and Page 2 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power arrogant.”6 As an uncompromisingly rigid (the manifesto is replete with imperatives) and comparatively short-lived movement, Dogme95 certainly came and went quickly, but its impact could be felt across the world, and it remains one of the most influential global film movements from the past twenty years. Dogme95 aptly illustrates Joseph S. Nye Jr.’s idea of soft power, which he defines as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments,” such an attractiveness arising from “a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies.”7 In his influential book, Nye identifies film as a form of soft power that not only helps (p. 154) ac­ count for America’s global domination and gave hope to Cold War–era Czech filmmakers, but also explains the success of East Asian films and filmmakers from Japan’s Akira Kuro­ sawa to Ang Lee’s 李安 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍, 2000).8 For Nye, soft power is “an important reality,”9 and this is especially the case in relation to Taiwan and Taiwan cinema. Beyond its economic prowess, Taiwan is a nation largely without an armor of hard power. Since withdrawing from the United Nations in 1971, Taiwan has been isolated within in­ ternational politics. More crucially, it remains technically at war with the People’s Repub­ lic of China (PRC) after the Nationalist (Guomindang, or GMD) regime’s defeat by the Chinese Communist Party, which led to its retreat to Taiwan in 1949, and this fraught re­ lationship has been manifested in the realm of cinema. When Taiwan-born Ang Lee thanked audiences in Taiwan (along with those in China and Hong Kong) in his accep­ tance speech for the Best Director Award for Brokeback Mountain (2005) at the Oscars, this incurred a cut of his speech by the Chinese media.10 More recently, Taiwan’s Govern­ ment Information Office (GIO) filed a complaint with the organizers of the Venice Film Festival for listing the originating country of Wei Te-sheng’s film Seediq Bale (賽德克巴萊, 2011) as being “China and Taiwan,” rather than simply Taiwan.11 While the second inci­ dent demonstrates a rare use of hard diplomatic power by the Taiwan government, Lee’s speech highlights precisely the clash between soft and hard power, between smallness and bigness, with the former embodied by a director originating from the cinema of small nation now gaining recognition from the global giant that is Hollywood, and the latter gaining notoriety for its rigid political and ideological positions as well as its clumsy exer­ cise of state-controlled institutions in an age of borderless mediascape. Being small and soft, therefore, proves no barrier to global praise and prestige. If, accord­ ing to Nye, the degree to which “a particular asset is a soft-power resource that produces attraction can be measured by asking people through polls or focus groups,”12 cinema as a soft-power resource can then be measured by awards conferred at international film festivals, since these awards are, in effect, an index of attractiveness decided by panels of judges acting as voting focus groups. In his chapter on Taiwan as a cinema of a small na­ tion, James Udden states categorically that “the core shadow shaping Taiwan’s cinematic predicament is cast by its own government, whether old or new,”13 before proceeding to provide a convincing account stretching from 1949 to the start of the new millennium. Noting that Taiwan cinema has never been respected by its government as “either an art

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power form or even as a commercial industry,” Udden concludes that it is “a small miracle” that it has had such achievements with world-renowned directors.14 This small miracle can be largely attributed to a quartet of directors with an undisputed auteur status: Hou Hsiao-hsien 侯孝賢, Edward Yang 楊德昌, Ang Lee, and Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮. Indeed, these four directors are collectively responsible for almost all the top prizes that Taiwan cinema has won at the three most prestigious international film festi­ vals (Berlin, Cannes, and Venice) since the late 1980s. Together with Lin Cheng-sheng’s 林正盛 2001 Silver Bear for Best Director for Betelnut Beauty (愛你愛我, 2001) (Lin is the only other Taiwan director to have won an award at this level), the (p. 155) quartet has garnered a dozen awards at these festivals since 1989, including those for Ang Lee’s Eng­ lish-language films (Sense and Sensibility, Golden Bear, 1996; Brokeback Mountain, Gold­ en Lion, 2005).15 Averaging just over one award every two years from 1989 to the time of this writing (ear­ ly 2012), Taiwan cinema’s winning streak at these three festivals is no mean feat for a small nation. A comparison with similar awards won by Hong Kong and China over this period (which witnessed the appearance of three cinematic new waves from the Chinese region, beginning with Hong Kong New Wave in 1979, TNC in 1982, and China’s Fifth Generation in 1983) reveals some interesting results. The seven awards won by Hong Kong are all in the categories of Best Actor/Actress and Best Director, while Taiwan, by contrast, has not won any Best Actor/Actress awards at this level, and only Edward Yang has a Best Director award. Over this period Hong Kong can be said to have the only credi­ ble star system in the Chinese region, which may partly explain its success in the acting category. An award for Best Director, on the other hand, can be seen as a one-off recogni­ tion for achievement in a particular film (e.g., Wong Kar-wai’s 王家衛 Happy Together [春光 乍洩, 1997], and Yang’s Yi Yi [一一, 2000]), whereas regular awards conferred on the same director’s films arguably have the effect of building an auteur status over time. In this lat­ ter category, Taiwan boasts two awards for Hou and four each for Lee and Tsai; and, of the directors from China and Hong Kong, only the PRC’s Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, with six films recognized at these festivals, claims a better record (see Appendix 8.1 at the end of this chapter for a full list of awards). If Taiwan is a small nation, China is, by any measure, a giant. The twenty-two awards won by PRC cinema are mainly for individual films, along with three recent prizes for Best Script/Screenplay and one for Best Actor, but none for Best Director. With twenty-two awards shared by thirteen recipients, the PRC awards are more widely spread, whereas the concentration of Taiwan’s awards on the quartet (particularly Lee and Tsai) boosts the name recognition index of these directors. More importantly, to extend my earlier argu­ ment about size, not only is size not the sole factor in assessing the status of a nation’s cinema, but the above comparison suggests that this status can also rest almost exclu­ sively on the shoulders of a few giant-sized auteurs whose consistent winnings have main­ tained the international profile of Taiwan cinema over the past quarter century.

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power By measuring success based on number of awards won at the three major international film festivals, where the currency of auteurism and artistry is most highly valued, my ac­ count would seem to concur with Udden’s premise that “decades of government policy eventually produced a cinema now almost entirely predicated on art and culture at the expense of any industry whatsoever.”16 Yet while Udden rightly critiques the Taiwan government’s treatment of cinema as being merely “a tool of the state: either for propa­ ganda purposes or as an endless source of tax revenue,”17 he fails to acknowledge the same government’s role in mobilizing cinema as its most effective diplomatic tool of soft power. As Udden claims, the government’s submission of Taiwan films to international film festivals was initially done “more as an afterthought than as a clear-cut strategy,”18 but a strategy has nonetheless been developed over the years to encourage (p. 156) partic­ ipation in and to reward success at these festivals. Udden’s focus on domestic production is understandable given the remit of the book, but it gives only half the picture if govern­ ment policy on international film festival participation has not been taken fully into ac­ count. The “Enforcement Directions Governing the Provision of Incentives and Guidance to the Motion Picture Industry and Industry Professionals Participating in International Film Festivals” was published by the GIO in February 1992 and had undergone fourteen revi­ sions by February 2010. The latest version lists seventy-one film festivals grouped into four categories, with Group A comprising the three abovementioned festivals and the Academy Awards.19 Under the scheme, a Best Film Award (Golden Lion, Golden Bear, Palme d’Or, Best Picture or Best Foreign-Language Film at the Oscars) would bring the director and the production company each a cash prize of ten million new taiwan dollars (NTD), or around US$346,000,20 as would a Best Director Award. There are varying amounts of cash prizes for different levels of award and of participation in all four cate­ gories of film festivals, including documentary and LGBT festivals. For example, with an annual average of more than three hundred participations in international film festivals by Taiwan cinema between 2004 and 2010, the GIO sponsored an average of more than a hundred people to attend these festivals each year.21 To put these figures into perspective, the Domestic Film Production Subsidy and Assis­ tance scheme would provide, in 2011, funding for no more than half of the production cost for a domestic feature-length film and a cap of twenty million NTD, that is, only dou­ ble the cash prize for a Best Film or Best Director Award at a Group A festival.22 As the only source of government subsidy for film production, the scheme opens itself up each year to a scramble for money, resulting in endless controversies among individuals, com­ panies, and factions while leaving other structural problems of the industry (in particular, the crippled distribution system) intact. Nevertheless, Taiwan filmmakers, including those in the world-renowned quartet, continue to rely on the scheme for part of their films’ funding. For instance, Hou received nine million NTD for his 2005 film, Three Times (最好 的時光), and fifteen million for a wuxia 武俠 (swordplay) film currently in production, whereas Tsai received nine million for his 2005 film, The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲), and eight million for his 2006 film, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (黑眼圈).23 Page 5 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power It would, therefore, be fair to say that the Taiwan government has devoted resources, however limited, to both domestic film production and international film festival partici­ pation. The landscape for both of these aspects, however, has changed drastically in the new millennium, even for the quartet who initially established themselves in TNC in the 1980s (Hou, Yang) and 1990s (Lee, Tsai). After his first three Chinese-language films co­ produced by Taiwan’s Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC, a GMD entity) and sponsored by the GIO’s production grant, Ang Lee has had virtually no relation to Taiwan’s film industry, having gone on to make a string of English-language films, enjoy a phenomenal global success with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and win two Golden Li­ ons in 2005 and 2007. Edward Yang’s Cannes-winning Yi Yi, which was to be his last film (Yang passed away in 2007), has never been released theatrically in Taiwan. Meanwhile, (p. 157) the careers of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang have taken them to far-flung places where their films are produced by foreign institutions and sometimes feature little or no use of any Chinese languages—including works such as Hou’s Musée d’Orsay–spon­ sored Flight of the Red Balloon (紅氣球, 2007) and Tsai’s Musée du Louvre–commissioned Visage (臉, 2009). Increasingly incorporated into a pantheon of world cinema auteurism, these directors’ career trajectories illustrate the effects of cinema as a form of soft power that have enabled filmmakers to penetrate not only beyond their national border but into the biggest film markets as well as the most prestigious art institutions in the world. This global soft power also marks a further bifurcation between Taiwan cinema’s international profile and its domestic self-image, the latter seeking to redefine Taiwan cinema in a more popular mode in what has been called the post-TNC era.

People Power: Cape No. 7 as Domestic Miracle In 2008 the phenomenal box-office success of Wei Te-sheng’s Cape No. 7 was credited for creating a new wave of interest in Taiwan in popular films. In a sense, Cape No. 7 has done for Taiwan cinema within its domestic market what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did for transnational Chinese cinemas on a global scale: both smashed box-office records and injected a new confidence in their products in their respective markets and audi­ ences. Cape No. 7 took in over NTD 530 million (US$18 million) in Taiwan,24 making it not only the island’s top grossing film in 2008 but also the second highest grossing film (after James Cameron’s 1997 Titanic) in Taiwan’s box-office history.25 Its intake of NTD 250 mil­ lion (around US$8.6 million) in Taipei city was at least twice as much as the Hollywood blockbusters it had beaten that year to second place (Rob Cohen’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, NTD 110 million) and third place (Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, NTD 109 million).26 In terms of all-time box-office record for domestic films, this figure is also almost double that of its then closest rival, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (色, 戒, 2007), which took in NTD 136 million (US$4.7 million) the previous year,27 and way above Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s NTD 101 million intake (US$3.5 million).28 Building on the success of Cape No. 7, Wei’s next project, the two-part film Seediq Bale, took in NTD 198 million (US$6.8 million) for its first part and NTD 135 million (US$4.66 million) for its second part.29 This places the film’s first installment, The Sun Flag (太陽旗), as the sec­ ond-highest grossing domestic film of all time and, with an equally strong performance Page 6 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power for its second installment, The Rainbow Bridge (彩虹橋), firmly establishes Wei as a com­ mercially bankable director in Taiwan.30 Moreover, Cape No. 7 pushed the market share of domestic films in Taipei over the 10 percent mark for the first time since 1996.31 In the twelve years prior to 2008, the domes­ tic market share of Taiwan films typically hovered around the 1 to 2 percent mark, and in some years as low as 0.2 percent (2001), 0.3 percent (2003), and (p. 158) 0.4 percent (1998 and 1999). The two exceptions in the period were in 2000, when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon pushed the percentage up to 4.65, and in 2007 when the figure was 7.38 percent thanks to Lust, Caution. Thus, the 12.09 percent domestic market share in 2008 was more than six times the average over the past twelve years (1.83 percent) and more than 50 percent above its closest counterpart in 2007. In 2011, thanks to Wei’s two-part film and Giddens Ko’s You Are the Apple of My Eye (which took in NTD 180 million, or US$6.2 million, making it the third-highest-grossing domestic film to date), a new record of 17.46 percent market share for domestic films was achieved.32 Just as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has helped move the wuxia genre, as Kenneth Chan observes, “from its marginal, subcultural appeal to viewers in American China­ towns, film festivals and cult followings in the past, to mainstream acceptability today,”33Cape No. 7 may be said to have led the way in shifting the self-image of Taiwan cinema from the auteur-centered, film-festival-participating, domestic-audience-alienat­ ing TNC period of the 1980s and 1990s, to a post-TNC period in the new millennium marked by a more popular mode of filmmaking that aims to appeal to a wider audience. This shift is indicated by the international conference “Auteurism and Popularity: Post-Tai­ wan New Cinema in 2008,” organized by Taiwan’s Academia Sinica and the Chinese Taipei Film Archive in October 2009. With five out of the eleven papers presented dis­ cussing Cape No. 7, the two-day conference reorientated attention on Taiwan cinema from the global to the local. The 2011 box-office record for domestic films seems to af­ firm, in retrospect, the claim for Cape No. 7’s landmark status in Taiwan cinema’s “re­ vival” and “renaissance.”34 In what sense can Cape No. 7 be said to have heralded a post-TNC period, and what pre­ cisely does the prefix post in post-TNC signify? In fact, this is not the first time the prefix post has been attached to TNC, and previous attempts have raised questions about TNC’s periodization. The scholarly consensus dates the death of the TNC movement to the “1987 Taiwan Cinema Manifesto” and/or a military recruitment short film made in 1988 by sev­ eral of the movement’s leading figures, including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wu Nien-jen 吳念真, Chen Kuo-fu 陳國富, and Hsiao Ye 小野.35 This dating has allowed critics to identify direc­ tors and films from the 1990s as “second-generation TNC,” “post–New Cinema,” and “new New Wave.”36 Nevertheless, the TNC label continues to enjoy currency if only be­ cause many directors emerging from the 1980s and 1990s are still making films and waves well into the new millennium. Not unlike the lasting careers of some of China’s Fifth Generation directors (Zhang Yimou in particular) and the longevity of the label of “Sixth Generation directors” (a label first used to designate new PRC directors from the

Page 7 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power 1990s, but which continues to be applied to those coming after the decade),37 TNC has largely remained a shorthand for contemporary Taiwan cinema. More importantly, the relationship in filmmaking and among filmmakers between the TNC and the so-called post-TNC periods is not so much a rupture as a continuation, in that most directors from the latter period received their apprenticeship from TNC direc­ tors.38 Wei Te-sheng was an assistant director for Edward Yang’s Mahjong (麻 (p. 159) 將, 1996) and played a crucial role in the production of Chen Kuo-fu’s 2002 film, Double Vi­ sion (雙瞳). Tom Lin 林書宇, director of Winds of September (九降風, 2008), worked as first assistant director on Tsai Ming-liang’s The Wayward Cloud (2005), whereas Hung Chih-yu 洪智育, director of the historical epic 1895 (2008), assisted on Wu Nien-jen’s A Borrowed Life (多桑, 1994) and Buddha Bless America (太平天國, 1996), as well as Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Puppetmaster (戲夢人生, 1993), Good Men, Good Women (好男好女, 1995), and Good­ bye South, Goodbye (南國再見, 南國, 1996). Doze Niu Cheng-tse, director of Monga, was a lead actor in Hou’s debut TNC feature, The Boys from Fengkuei (風櫃來的人, 1983).39 The connection between TNC and post-TNC filmmakers, therefore, is much closer to the one between TNC filmmakers and their predecessors. Taking the world-renowned quartet as an example, Yang was largely self-taught despite having attended film school at the University of Southern California,40 and Ang Lee graduated from New York University’s film school and based his career in the United States from the very beginning. While Tsai wrote screenplays for some early TNC films (specifically, two films directed by Wang Tung 王童) and honed his directing skills in theater and television drama,41 and while Hou served an extensive apprenticeship between 1973 and 1980 on some twenty films as screenwriter and assistant director to veteran directors such as Lee Hsing 李行,42 their TNC debut films signaled a thematic and stylistic rupture with their predecessors’ work in a manner that cannot be claimed of post-TNC directors. Indeed, if the shift within TNC from the 1980s to the 1990s in terms of thematic concern was marked by a move from a “historical I” to a “private I,”43 post-TNC films have em­ braced both narratorial strategies. Many of the films released in 2008, from Cape No. 7 to Yang Ya-che’s 楊雅喆 Orz Boyz (冏男孩), like their TNC counterparts, such as Yang’s 1991 A Brighter Summer Day (牯嶺街少年殺人事件) and Hou’s 1986 A Time to Live, A Time to Die (童年往事), construct their narratives around themes of a bildungsroman or past events in national history.44 In terms of style, particularly within the subgenre of youth films, one would arguably find more similarities than differences between Winds of September and Blue Gate Crossing (藍色大門, 2002), a film by second-generation TNC director Yee Chihyen 易智言. In all of these respects, the TNC, despite (or, perhaps, precisely because of) its death, continues to hover, as Sng Song-yong suggests, around Taiwan cinema like a float­ ing specter.45 Unlike previous attempts at affixing the prefix post to the label of TNC whose purpose was to demarcate periodization within a nation’s cinema, I would argue that this latest in­ tervention, staged at the 2009 Academia Sinica conference, is what Kwame Anthony Ap­ piah calls a “space-clearing gesture” aimed at claiming a stake within film Page 8 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power historiography.46 Signifying a change not so much in chronological time as in a mode of film production, consumption, and reception, here the prefix post functions as a categori­ cal act of “moving on” and/or “moving beyond,” in this case from international soft power to domestic people power. In particular, conference organizer Peng Hsiao-yen charges TNC for “losing its storytelling ability, neglecting cinema’s entertainment (p. 160) func­ tion, [and] walking into the cul-de-sac of art cinema.”47 This antiauteur stance brings to mind an earlier time when the TNC movement came under similar attack. It is thus ap­ propriate, in the conclusion of this chapter, to return to that moment in the 1980s and to revisit the question of smallness and softness in relation to national cinema.

Contesting Film Historiography: “Another Kind of Cinema” In early 1987 a “Taiwan Cinema Manifesto” was published almost concurrently in a major daily and an intellectual magazine in Taiwan.48 Drafted by Zhan Hongzhi 詹宏志, recog­ nized as “a powerful opinion leader and a major backer of the New Cinema,”49 the mani­ festo had fifty-three signatories comprising key TNC filmmakers and luminaries from oth­ er artistic fields. It called for a space, beyond “commercial film,” for “another kind of cin­ ema,” one that can be “a consciously creative act,” “an art form,” and even “a national, cultural act with reflection and historicism.”50 This other kind of cinema was represented by TNC, and all but one of the core directors associated with the movement signed the manifesto.51 However, unlike many manifestos that either preceded a cinematic move­ ment (such as François Truffaut’s “A Certain Tendency in French Cinema” and the French New Wave) or were launched in tandem with a new film (such as Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s 1969 “Towards a Third Cinema” and their 1968 film, The Hour of the Furnaces),52 the Taiwan manifesto was a last-ditch effort to save TNC from its impending death. By providing a diagnosis rather than a directive, it had the effect of describing TNC’s end rather than its beginning.53 Whereas the Dogme95 movement perceived the survival of the cinema of a small nation as threatened by external Hollywood-style globalization,54 TNC filmmakers and support­ ers sensed their threat coming closer from home, alluding in the manifesto to a 1984 arti­ cle by critic Du Yun-chih 杜雲之, “Please Don’t Kill Off Taiwan Cinema.” It has to be noted that while Taiwan cinema won some awards in second-tier international film festivals in the 1986–1987 period when the manifesto was drafted (Yang’s 1986 The Terrorizer [恐怖份 子] was awarded Silver Leopard at Locarno in 1987; Hou’s A Time to Live, A Time to Die won Best Non-American/Non-European Film at Rotterdam in 1987), no Taiwan film or di­ rector had yet won a major award at any of the top three festivals discussed above. The bifurcation between high international prestige and low domestic production was, at best, at an embryonic stage. Yet TNC was made a scapegoat then, as it is now, for posing a threat to the survival of Taiwan cinema. To dispel the myth of TNC’s murderous role in the domestic film industry, we return to the question of size and the opposition between soft power and people power. Page 9 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power To recall the privileging of film production level as a measure of the size of a nation’s cinema, Taiwan cinema would seem to have been in a healthier state in 1988, when 158 films were produced,55 than in 2008, when only 36 films were produced.56 These figures alone, however, do not tell us what kinds of films were made, how they were distributed, or their total share at the box office. For example, of the 158 domestic films produced in 1988, the 49 that were commercially released accounted for 8.61 per­ cent of that year’s domestic box-office revenue, while the twenty-six domestic films re­ leased commercially in 2008 accounted for 12.09 percent of the total box office.57 That is to say, compared to 2008, the substantially greater number of domestic films produced and released in 1988 did not translate into a higher market share in the box office.58 The reasons for this are complex. For example, the huge discrepancy between the number of films produced (158) and those released (49) in 1988 was the result of increasing demand in the video market and of a surge, following the newly introduced film classification sys­ tem, in the making of soft-porn films targeted at the Hong Kong market.59 Whereas the number of cinema closures increased from fifty in 1985 to nearly two hundred in 1989, film production level, on the other hand, jumped from 86 in 1987 to 158 in 1988,60 an in­ crease that could have easily given a false impression of a thriving film industry when, in (p. 161)

fact, most of the films made in 1988 were not even released theatrically, and therefore did not contribute to the domestic box-office intake. To return to my opening question, how can the significance of a nation’s cinema be mea­ sured and, by extension, what should the writing of a nation’s film history focus on? The paradoxical dynamic resulting from a bifurcation of domestic production and internation­ al prestige, I would suggest, raises a more fundamental question, in the case of Taiwan at least, about film historiography. It would appear that size, whether measured by film pro­ duction level or box-office intake, still matters after all. Indeed, in most discourses on na­ tional cinema, these quantitative measures tend to remain the thermometer of an industry’s health. People power—translated into the hard data of audience size and ticket sale—reigns supreme. Yet, like some other short-lived cinematic new waves—from the French Nouvelle Vague and New German Cinema to the Brazilian Cinema Novo, each of which typically lasted on­ ly a few years61—the soft power behind Taiwan New Cinema’s global reach is strong and the shadow cast by its legacy is long. Often emerging out of an urgent response to their own nations’ tumultuous sociopolitical changes, these new wave cinemas were led by in­ novative auteurs and accompanied by critical reflection and a concomitant experimenta­ tion in form and style. From Truffaut and Godard to Wender and Fassbinder, from Rocha and dos Santos to Hou and Tsai, these filmmakers have offered us not just “another kind of cinema,” but also another way of looking at cinema. Soft, small, and perfectly formed, this kind of cinema delivers qualitative pleasure derived from a deep and penetrating in­ vestment aesthetically, emotionally, intellectually, and politically. It is no miracle that Tai­ wan New Cinema stands tall in the history of world cinema, demonstrating the wide­ spread impact that a small nation can achieve through its long-lasting soft power.

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power

Appendix 8.1 Major Prizes Won at the Top Three International Film Festivals (Berlin, Cannes, Venice) (p. 162)

(p. 163)

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power Year

Taiwan

Hong Kong

Red Sorghum 紅 高粱 (Zhang Yi­ mou), Golden Bear, Berlin

1988

1989

China

A City of Sadness 悲情城市 (Hou Hsiao-hsien), Gold­ en Lion, Venice

Evening Bell 晚鐘 (Wu Ziniu 吳子 牛), Silver Bear: Special Jury Prize, Berlin Black Snow 本命 年 (Xie Fei 謝飛), Silver Bear for an outstanding single achieve­

1990

ment, Berlin 1991

Raise the Red Lantern 大紅燈籠 高高挂 (Zhang Yi­ mou), Silver Lion for Best Direc­ tion, Venice

1992

The Story of Qiu

Maggie Cheung

Ju 秋菊打官司 (Zhang Yimou),

張曼玉 for Centre Stage 阮玲玉

Golden Lion, Venice

(Stanley Kwan 關 錦鵬), Silver Bear for Best Actress, Berlin

1993

The Wedding Ban­ quet 喜宴 (Ang Lee), Golden Bear, Berlin; The Puppet­ master 戲夢人生 (Hou Hsiao-hsien), Jury Prize, Cannes

Women from the Lake of Scented Souls 香魂女 (Xie Fei), Golden Bear, Berlin;

Page 12 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power Farewell My Concubine 霸王別 姬 (Chen Kaige 陳 凱歌), Palme d’Or and FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes 1994

Vive L’amour 愛情萬 歲 (Tsai Mingliang), Golden Li­ on, Venice

1995

1996

Ge You, 葛優 Best Actor for To Live 活著 (Zhang Yi­ mou), Cannes; To Live (Zhang Yimou), Jury’s Grand Prix Exaequo, Cannes Blush 紅粉 (Li

Josephine Siao

Shaohong 李少 紅), Silver Bear

蕭芳芳 for Sum­ mer Snow 女人四

for an outstand­ ing single

十 (Ann Hui 許鞍 華), Silver Bear

achievement, Berlin

for Best Actress, Berlin

Sense and Sensibil­

Yim Ho 嚴浩, Sil­

ity (Ang Lee), Gold­ en Bear, Berlina

ver Bear for Best Director, Berlin, for The Sun Has Ears 太 陽有耳

1997

The River 河流 (Tsai Ming-liang), Silver Bear: Special Jury Prize, Berlin

Wong Kar-wai, Best Director for Happy Together, Cannes

1998 1999

Not One Less—個 都不能少 (Zhang Yimou), Golden Lion, Venice

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power 2000

Edward Yang, Best Director for Yi Yi, Cannes

The Road Home 我的父親母親 (Zhang Yimou), Silver Bear: Jury Grand Prix, Berlin; Devils at the Doorstep 鬼子來了 (Jiang Wen 姜文), Grand Prix, Cannes

2001

Lin Cheng-sheng, Silver Bear for Best Director, Berlin, for Betelnut Beauty

Beijing Bicycle 十 七歲的單車 (Wang Xiaoshuai 王小 帥), Silver Bear: Jury Grand Prix, Berlin

Goodbye, Dragon

Blind Shaft 盲井

Inn 不散 (Tsai Mingliang), FIPRESCI

(Li Yang 李楊), Silver Bear for

Award, Venice

an outstanding artistic contribu­

Tony Leung Chiu-wai 梁朝偉, Best Actor for In The Mood for Love 花樣年華 (Wong Kar-wai), Cannes

2002 2003

tion, Berlin 2004

Maggie Cheung, Best Actress for Clean (Olivier Assayas), Cannesa

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power 2005

The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Mingliang), Silver Bear for an outstanding single achieve­ ment, Berlin; Brokeback Moun­ tain (Ang Lee), Golden Lion, Venicea

Still Life 三峽好人 (Jia Zhangke 賈樟 柯), Golden Lion, Venice

2006

2007

Peacock 孔雀 (Gu Changwei 顧長 衛), Silver Bear: Jury Grand Prix, Berlin; Shanghai Dreams 青紅 (Wang Xi­ aoshuai), Jury Prize, Cannes

Lust, Caution (Ang Lee), Golden Lion,

Tuya’s Marriage 圖雅的婚事 (Wang

Venice

Quan’an 王全安), Golden Bear, Berlin

2008

Wang Xiaoshuai, Silver Bear for Best Script for In Love We Trust 左 右 (Wang Xi­ aoshuai), Berlin

2009

Lou Ye 婁燁, Best Screenplay for Spring Fever 春風 沉醉的晚上 (Lou Ye), Cannes

2010

Wang Quan’an 王 全安 and Na Jin 娜 金, Silver Bear for Best Script for Apart Togeth­ er 團圓 (Wang Quan’an), Berlin

John Woo 吳宇森, Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Venicea

Page 15 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power Source: Information on awards won at Cannes and Berlin has been culled from relevant pages on their festival websites, retrieved August 23, 2011, from http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/archives/ awardCompetition.html and http://www.berlinale.de/en/das_festival/ preise_und_juries/preise_internationale_jury/index.html, whereas in­ formation on awards won at Venice has been culled from various sources, as its festival website does not contain a full list. a

Awards won by director and actor for films made in non-Chinese-lan­ guages, except for John Woo, whose award recognizes both his Chi­ nese- and English-language films.

Works Cited Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Is the Post-in Postmodernism the Post-in Postcolonial?” Con­ temporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Padmini Mongia. London: Arnold, 1997. 55– 71. Chan, Kenneth. “The Contemporary Wuxia Revival: Genre Remaking and the Hollywood Transnational Factor.” The Chinese Cinema Book. Ed. Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward. London: BFI Publishing; Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 150–157. Chen Ru-shou 陳儒修. Taiwan xindianying de lishi wenhua jingyan 台灣新電影的歷史文化經驗 [Historical and cultural experience of Taiwan New Cinema]. Taipei: Wanxiang, 1994. Chiao, [Peggy] Hsiung-ping 焦雄屏. Taiwan dianying 90 xin xin langchao 台灣電影 90 新新浪 潮 [New New Wave of 1990s Taiwan cinema]. Taipei: Maitian, 2002. Higbee, Will, and Song Hwee Lim. “Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical Transnationalism in Film Studies.” Transnational Cinemas 1.1 (2010): 7–21. Higson, Andrew. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema.” Cinema and Nation. Ed. Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie. London: Routledge, 2000. 63–74. Hjort, Mette. “Dogma 95: A Small Nation’s Response to Globalisation.” Purity and Provo­ cation: Dogma 95. Ed. Mette Hjort and Scott McKenzie. London: BFI, 2003. 31–45. Ho, Regina 何瑞珠. “2008 Taiwan dianying piaofang zonglan” 2008 台灣電影票房總覽 [Review of box office of 2008 Taiwan films]. 2009 nian Taiwan dianying nianjian 2009 年台 灣電影年鑑 [2009 Taiwan cinema yearbook]. Taipei: Chinese Taipei Film Archive, 2009. 100–108. Hong, Guo-Juin. Taiwan Cinema: A Contested Nation on Screen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power Lim, Song Hwee. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contem­ porary Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006. Lim, Song Hwee. “Speaking in Tongues: Ang Lee, Accented Cinema, Hollywood.” Theoriz­ ing World Cinema. Ed. Lúcia Nagib, Chris Perriam, and Rajinder Dudrah. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012. 129–144. Lu Feii 盧非易. Taiwan dianying: Zhengzhi, jingji, meixue 1949–1994 台灣電影：政治、經濟、 美學 1949–1994 [Taiwan cinema: Politics, economics, aesthetics, 1949–1994]. Taipei: Yuanliu, 1998. Lu, Tonglin. “Taiwan New Cinema and Its Legacy.” The Chinese Cinema Book. Ed. Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward. London: BFI Publishing; Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 122–130. Ma Yue-lin 馬岳琳. “Cong ‘Haijiao’ chongshi guopian xinxin” 從「海角」重拾國片信心 [Regaining confidence in domestic films from Cape No. 7]. Tianxia zazhi 天下雜誌 [Commonwealth magazine] 406 (Sept. 24, 2008). Retrieved August 16, 2011 from http:// www.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=35706. (p. 169)

Mi Zou 迷走 and Liang Hsin-hua 梁新華, eds. Xindianying zhi si: Cong Yiqie wei mingtian dao Beiqing chengshi 新電影之死 ： 從「一切為明天」到「悲情城市」 [Death of New Cinema: From All for Tomorrow to A City of Sadness]. Taipei: Tangshan, 1991. Peng Hsiao-yen 彭小妍. “Haijiao qihao: Yiwai de chenggong? Huigu Taiwan xindianying” 海 角七號：意外的成功？回顧台灣新電影 [Cape No. 7: A surprise hit? Looking back on Taiwan New Cinema]. Dianying xinshang xuekan 電影欣賞學刊 [Film appreciation academic jour­ nal] 142 (Jan.–Mar. 2010): 124–136. Shi Yingying. “Lu Chuan Finds New Film-Makers a Bold Lot.” China Daily, May 27, 2010. Retrieved August 16, 2011 from http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-05/27/ content_9899711.htm. Sng Song-yong 孫松榮. “Qinglishi de xinling ganying: Lun Taiwan ‘hou-xindianying’ de liuti yingxiang” 輕歷史的心靈感應：語台灣後－新電影的流體影像 [The telepathy in downgrading his­ tory: On the fluid imaging of Taiwan’s “post–New Cinema”]. Dianying xinshang xuekan 電 影欣賞學刊 [Film appreciation academic journal] 142 (Jan.–Mar. 2010): 137–156. Vincendeau, Ginette. “Introduction: Fifty Years of the French New Wave.” The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks. Ed. Peter Graham with Ginette Vincendeau. 2nd ed. Lon­ don: Secker and Warburg, 2009. 1–29. Wang Cheng-hua 王清華. “2000 nian Zhongwai yingpian shichang yu faxing fenxi” 2000 年 中外影片市場與發行分析 [Analysis of market and distribution of domestic and foreign films in 2000]. In Zhonghua minguo 90 nian dianying nianjian 中華民國90年電影年鑑 [2001 cine­ ma yearbook in the Republic of China]. Ed. Luo Shu-nan 羅樹南 and Lin Min-ning 林民寧. Taipei: Chinese Taipei Film Archive, 2001. 110–120. Page 17 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power Wen T’ien-hsiang 聞天祥. Guangying dingge: Cai Mingliang de xinling changyu 光影定格﹕蔡 明亮的心靈場域 [Freeze-frame of light and image: The field of Tsai Ming-liang’s heart and soul]. Taipei: Hengxing, 2002. Wen T’ien hsiang 聞天祥. “Hou xindianying de dingyi yu misi” 後新電影的定義與迷思 [Post– New Cinema’s definition and myth]. Eye-Movie (Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan), June 20, 2003. Retrieved August 16, 2011, from http://movie.cca.gov.tw/files/ 15-1000-884,c163-1.php. Willemen, Paul. “The Third Cinema Question: Notes and Reflections.” Questions of Third Cinema. Ed. Jim Pines and Paul Willemen. London: BFI, 1990. 1–29. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, and Darrell William Davis. Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Yu Shih-hsien 游士賢. “Taiwan dianying chanye shengcun celüe 2004–2006” 台灣電影產業生 存策略 2004–2006: 從韓國電影市場解析台灣現況 [Survival strategies of Taiwan’s film industry, 2004–2006: A study of Taiwan’s current status through an analysis of the South Korean film market]. PhD diss., National Chengchi University 國立政治大學, 2004. NCCU Institu­ tional Repository, September 18, 2009. Retrieved August 23, 2011, from http:// nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/35370. Zhan Hongzhi 詹宏志. “Minguo qishiliu nian Taiwan dianying xuanyan” 民國七十六年台灣電 影宣言 [1987 Taiwan cinema manifesto]. Taiwan xindianying 台灣新電影 [Taiwan New Cine­ ma]. Ed. [Peggy] Chiao Hsiung-ping. Taipei: Shibao wenhua, 1988. 111–118.

Notes: (1.) Throughout this chapter I use Taiwan cinema instead of Taiwanese cinema, as the lat­ ter could also refer to films made in the Taiwanese dialect of Hoklo 福佬 (i.e., Taiyu pian 台 語片). All translations from Chinese sources are mine. (2.) On national cinema, see Andrew Higson, “The Limiting Imagination of National Cine­ ma,” in Cinema and Nation, ed. Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (London: Routledge, 2000), 63–74. On transnational cinema, see Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim, “Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical Transnationalism in Film Studies,” Transna­ tional Cinemas 1.1 (2010): 7–21. For examples of books on Chinese national cinema, see Zhang Yingjin, Chinese National Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2004); and Lim Song Hwee and Ward Julian, eds., The Chinese Cinema Book (London: BFI Publishing; Hamp­ shire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). (3.) Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, “Introduction,” in The Cinema of Small Nations, ed. Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007) 4, 3. (4.) Hjort and Petrie, Cinema of Small Nations, 2.

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power (5.) For the Dogme manifesto, see “Dogme 95—the Vow of Chastity (1995),” in The Euro­ pean Cinema Reader, ed. Catherine Fowler (New York: Routledge, 2002) 83–84. For a full list of Dogme films, see “Dogme 95 Movies—Chronologically,” Listal, September 30, 2008, retrieved August 1, 2011, from http://www.listal.com/list/dogme-95. (6.) Quoted in Richard T. Kelly, The Name of This Book Is Dogme95 (London: Faber & Faber, 2000), 119–120. (7.) Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Pub­ lic Affairs, 2004), x. (8.) Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power, 8, 17, 86, 88. (9.) JosephS. Nye Jr., Soft Power, 8. (10.) “Chinese TV Cuts Ang Lee’s Speech,” BBC News Channel, March 7, 2006, retrieved August 16, 2011, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4781586.stm. (11.) Andrew Pulver, “Taiwan Protests Venice Film Festival’s ‘China’ Label,’” The Guardian, August 1, 2011, retrieved August 16, 2011, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/ film/2011/aug/01/taiwan-protests-venice-film-festival. (12.) Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power, 6. (13.) James Udden, “Taiwan,” in Hjort and Petrie, Cinema of Small Nations, 144. (14.) James Udden, “Taiwan,” 157, 158. (15.) While some may quibble about whether awards for these English-language films should count toward the tally for Taiwan cinema, Ang Lee’s example illustrates precisely the untenability of the national cinema model. On how Ang Lee “epitomizes a director who can not only move between different cinemas but is also simultaneously located in all of them,” see Song Hwee Lim, “Speaking in Tongues: Ang Lee, Accented Cinema, Holly­ wood,” in Theorizing World Cinema, ed. Lúcia Nagib, Chris Perriam, and Rajinder Dudrah (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 130. (16.) James Udden, “Taiwan,” 144. (17.) James Udden, “Taiwan,” 157. (18.) James Udden, “Taiwan,” 152. (19.) “Enforcement Directions Governing the Provision of Incentives and Guidance to the Motion Picture Industry and Industry Professionals Participating in International Film Festivals,” Taiwan Cinema, March 15, 2010, Government Information Office, retrieved Au­ gust 16, 2011, from http://www.taiwancinema.com/ct.asp? xItem=53763&ctNode=143&mp=2.

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power (20.) All converted monetary figures in this chapter are based on the rate in August 2011 using XE—Universal Currency Converter, retrieved August 23, 2011, from http:// www.xe.com/ucc/. (21.) “Statistics of Activities of Taiwan Films in the International Film Festival (1998– 2011.06),” Taiwan Cinema, July 12, 2011, Government Information Office, retrieved Au­ gust 16, 2011, from http://www.taiwancinema.com/ct.asp? xItem=50900&ctNode=144&mp=2. While the source for these statistics lists these num­ bers as “total number of films in international film festivals,” I suspect the figures are for participation (e.g., multiple participation by one film) as Taiwan simply did not produce an average of three hundred films a year during this period. (22.) “Xingzhengyuan xinwenju yibainiandu guochan dianying changpian fudaojin banli yaodian” 行政院新聞局一百年度國產電影長片輔導金辦理要點 [Executive Yuan Government Infor­ mation Office 2011 domestic feature film assistance grant application notes], Taiwan Cin­ ema, May 12, 2011, Government Information Office, retrieved August 16, 2011, from http://www.taiwancinema.com/ct.asp?xItem=64205&ctNode=286. (23.) “Linian guochanpian zhizuo fudaojin ruxuan yingpian (1990–2010)” 歷年國片製作輔導 金入選影片 (1990–2010) [List of films selected for domestic film production subsidy and as­ sistance, 1990–2010], Taiwan Cinema, August 10, 2010, Government Information Office, retrieved August 16, 2011, from http://www.taiwancinema.com/ct.asp? xItem=252&ctNode=345. (24.) Cape No. 7 Official Website 2003–2011, Pixnet, retrieved August 16, 2011, from http://cape7.pixnet.net/blog/post/21746004. (25.) Regina Ho 何瑞珠, “2008 Taiwan dianying piaofang zonglan” 2008 台灣電影票房總覽 [Review of box office of 2008 Taiwan films], 2009 nian Taiwan dianying nianjian 2009 年台 灣電影年鑑 [2009 Taiwan cinema yearbook] (Taipei: Chinese Taipei Film Archive, 2009), 100. Since then, James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) has knocked Titanic off its number-one spot and pushed Cape No. 7 to third place in Taiwan’s box-office record. Box-office figures are usually available only for Taipei city and not the whole of Taiwan, and therefore all subsequent figures quoted are for Taipei city. (26.) Regina Ho, “Review of Box Office,” 105. (27.) Regina Ho, “Review of Box Office,” 100. (28.) Wang Cheng-hua 王清華, “2000 nian Zhongwai yingpian shichang yu faxing fenxi” 2000 年中外影片市場與發行分析 [Analysis of market and distribution of domestic and foreign films in 2000], in Zhonghua minguo 90 nian dianying nianjian 中華民國90年電影年鑑 [2001 cinema yearbook of the Republic of China], ed. Luo Shu-nan 羅樹南 and Lin Min-ning 林民 寧 (Taipei: Chinese Taipei Film Archive, 2001), 117.

Page 20 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power (29.) See relevant web pages on @movies (開眼電影網), retrieved March 26, 2012, from http://app.atmovies.com.tw/movie/movie.cfm? action=BoxOffice&film_id=fstw79905171&bo_code=taipeidays&more=Y and http:// app.atmovies.com.tw/movie/movie.cfm?action=; BoxOffice&film_id=fsch98433826&bo_code=taipeidays&more=Y. (30.) A shorter version of the film (at 155 minutes rather than the two-part total of 276 minutes) premiered at the 2011 Venice Film Festival under the title Warriors of the Rain­ bow: Seediq Bale. (31.) “Collection of Box Office Earnings of First-Run Theaters in Taipei (1999–2011.09),” Taiwan Cinema 12 Jul. 2011, Government Information Office, 16 Aug. 2011 ;. The page contains records dating back to 1996, though the title erroneously lists it going back only to 1999. (32.) “Collection of Box Office Earnings of First-Run Theaters in Taipei (1999–2011),” Tai­ wan Cinema 16 Jan. 2012, Government Information Office, 26 Mar. 2012 . (33.) Chan Kenneth, “The Contemporary Wuxia Revival: Genre Remaking and the Holly­ wood Transnational Factor,” in Lim and Ward, The Chinese Cinema Book, 151. (34.) See Pat Gao, “Secret to Revival,” Taiwan Cinema, January 5, 2011, Government In­ formation Office, retrieved August 16, 2011, from ;, and Ma Yue-lin 馬岳琳, “Cong ‘Haijiao’ chongshi guopian xinxin” 從「海角」重拾國片信心 [Regaining confidence in domestic films from Cape No. 7], Tianxia zazhi 天下雜誌 [Commonwealth magazine] 406 (Sept. 24, 2008), retrieved August 16, 2011, from http://www.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=35706. (35.) See Tonglin Lu, “Taiwan New Cinema and Its Legacy,” in Lim and Ward, The Chinese Cinema Book, 122; Lu Feii 盧非易, Taiwan dianying: Zhengzhi, jingji, meixue 1949–1994 台 灣電影 ： 政治、經濟、美學 1949–1994 [Taiwan cinema: Politics, economics, aesthetics, 1949–1994] (Taipei: Yuanliu, 1998), 308–309, 314; Mi Zou 迷走 and Liang Hsin-hua 梁新華, eds. Xindianying zhi si: Cong Yiqie wei mingtian dao Beiqing chengshi 新電影之死 ： 從「一 切為明天」到「悲情城市」 [Death of New Cinema: From All for Tomorrow to A City of Sad­ ness] (Taipei: Tangshan, 1991). (36.) See Wen T’ien-hsiang 聞天祥, Guangying dingge: Cai Mingliang de xinling changyu 光 影定格 ﹕ 蔡明亮的心靈場域 [Freeze-frame of light and image: The field of Tsai Ming-liang’s heart and soul] (Taipei: Hengxing, 2002), 88; Wen T’ien hsiang 聞天祥, “Hou xindianying de dingyi yu misi” 後新電影的定義與迷思 [Post–New Cinema’s definition and myth], EyeMovie, June 30, 2003, Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan, retrieved August 16, 2011, from http://movie.cca.gov.tw/files/15-1000-884,c163-1.php; [Peggy] Chiao Hsiung-ping 焦 雄屏, Taiwan dianying 90 xin xin langchao 台灣電影 90 新新浪潮 [New new wave of 1990s Taiwan cinema] (Taipei: Maitian, 2002).

Page 21 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power (37.) The label of Seventh Generation directors has been proposed to describe directors who see themselves as coming after the Sixth Generation, but it has yet to gain wide cur­ rency in Chinese film scholarship. See Shi Yingying, “Lu Chuan Finds New Film-Makers a Bold Lot,” China Daily, May 27, 2010, retrieved August 16, 2011, from http:// www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-05/27/content_9899711.htm. I thank Jason McGrath for pointing me to this source. (38.) Information on these post-TNC directors has been culled from relevant pages on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), retrieved August 23, 2011, from http://www.imdb.com/, and Sng Song-yong 孫松榮, “Qinglishi de xinling ganying: Lun Taiwan ‘hou-xindianying’ de liuti yingxiang” 輕歷史的心靈感應 ： 論台灣後 － 新電影的流體影像 [The telepathy in downgrad­ ing history: On the fluid imaging of Taiwan’s “post–New Cinema”], Dianying xinshang xuekan 電影欣賞學刊 [Film appreciation academic journal] 142 (Jan.–Mar. 2010): 146. (39.) I emphasize the term TNC debut film here because Hou made three popular feature films as director between 1980 and 1982 that are widely seen as his transition from Healthy Realism, the dominant genre with which he was working during apprenticeship, to TNC. Calling this period that of “Hou Hsiao-Hsien before Hou Hsiao-hsien,” Guo-Juin Hong argues that these films challenged the existing commercial cinema paradigm and already displayed aesthetic traits (long shot and long take) for which Hou would later be known. See Hong, Taiwan Cinema: A Contested Nation on Screen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 89. (40.) Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis, Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Is­ land (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) 92, 265 n. 1. (41.) Wen T’ien-hsiang, Freeze-frame, 238–248. (42.) Guo-Juin Hong, Taiwan Cinema, 88. (43.) Song Hwee Lim, Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 127–128. (44.) Sng Song-yong, “Telepathy in Downgrading History,” 146. (45.) Sng Song-yong, “Telepathy in Downgrading History,” 141. (46.) Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” in Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Padmini Mongia (London: Arnold, 1997), 63. (47.) Peng Hsiao-yen 彭小妍, “Haijiao qihao: Yiwai de chenggong? Huigu Taiwan xindiany­ ing” 海角七號 ： 意外的成功 ？ 回顧台灣新電影 [Cape No. 7: A surprise hit? Looking back on Taiwan New Cinema], Film Appreciation Academic Journal 142 (Jan.–Mar. 2010): 124. (48.) Zhan Hongzhi 詹宏志, “Minguo qishiliu nian Taiwan dianying xuanyan” 民國七十六年台 灣電影宣言 [1987 Taiwan cinema manifesto], in Taiwan xindianying 台灣新電影 [Taiwan New Cinema], ed. [Peggy] Chiao Hsiung-ping (Taipei: Shibao wenhua, 1988), 111–118. The Page 22 of 24

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power idea for the manifesto was initially floated at Edward Yang’s fortieth birthday party on November 6, 1986, and the manifesto was published in Zhongguo shibao 中國時報 [China times] on January 24, 1987 (Peng, “Cape No. 7,” 130, 136 n. 24) and in the February 1987 issue of Wenxing 文星 magazine (Zhan Hongzhi, “1987 Taiwan Cinema Manifesto,” 118). (49.) Yeh and Davis, Taiwan Film Directors, 76. (50.) Zhan Hongzhi, “1987 Taiwan Cinema Manifesto,” 117, 111. (51.) A broadly consensual list of core TNC directors are Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Wang Tung 王童, Chen Kun-hou 陳坤厚, Ko I-cheng 柯一正, Wan Jen 萬仁, Zeng Zhuangxiang 曾壯祥, and Chang Yi 張毅. See Chen Ru-shou 陳儒修, Taiwan xindianying de lishi wenhua jingyan 台灣新電影的歷史文化經驗 [Historical and cultural experience of Taiwan New Cine­ ma] (Taipei: Wanxiang, 1994), 169–179. The only significant absence was Wang Tung, al­ ready a veteran director at the launch of TNC and whose entry film to the movement, A Flower in the Rainy Night (看海的日子, 1983), was described by Zhan Hongzhi as “relative­ ly mediocre” compared to films by Hou and Yang (Yeh and Davis, Taiwan Film Directors, 75–76). (52.) On Truffaut and the French New Wave, see Ginette Vincendeau, “Introduction: Fifty Years of the French New Wave,” in The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks, ed. Peter Graham with Ginette Vincendeau, 2nd ed. (London: Secker and Warburg, 2009), 1–29. On Third Cinema, see Paul Willemen, “The Third Cinema Question: Notes and Reflections,” in Questions of Third Cinema, ed. Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (London: BFI, 1990), 1–29. (53.) Tonglin Lu, “Taiwan New Cinema and Its Legacy,” 122. (54.) Mette Hjort, “Dogma 95: A Small Nation’s Response to Globalisation,” in Purity and Provocation: Dogma 95, ed. Mette Hjort and Scott McKenzie (London: BFI, 2003) 31. (55.) Lu Feii, Taiwan Cinema: Politics, economics, aesthetics, table 11a, n.p. (56.) “Statistics of Films Passed.” (57.) Lu Feii, 盧非易, “Taiwan dianying guanzhong guanying moshi yu dianying yingyan shichang yanjiu: 1980–1999” 台灣電影觀眾觀影模式與電影映演市場研究: 1980–1999 [Survey of moviegoing pattern and film exhibition industry in Taiwan: 1980–1999], Xingzhengyuan guojia kexue weiyuanhui zhuanti yanjiu jihua chengguo baogao 行政院國家科學委員會專題研 究計畫成果報告 [Executive Yuan National Science Council special topic research project outcome report], quoted in Yu Shih-hsien 游士賢, “Taiwan dianying chanye shengcun celüe 2004–2006” 台灣電影產業生存策略 2004–2006: 從韓國電影市場解析台灣現況 [Survival strate­ gies of Taiwan’s film industry 2004–2006: A study of Taiwan’s current status through an analysis of the South Korean film market], PhD diss., National Chengchi University 國立政 治大學, 2004, chap. 3, 16–17, NCCU Institutional Repository, September 18, 2009, re­ trieved August 23, 2011, from http://nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/35370.

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Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power (58.) Lu Feii provides a convincing account that details a combination of factors, includ­ ing government policies (relaxation of the quota for domestic release of foreign films), po­ litical change (lifting of the thirty-eight-year martial law in 1987), and economic circum­ stances (appreciation of Taiwan’s currency by 23 percent to offset Taiwan’s trade surplus with the United States). See Lu, Taiwan Cinema: Politics, economics, aesthetics, 320–321. (59.) Lu Feii, Taiwan Cinema: Politics, Economics, Aesthetics, 323–324. (60.) Lu Feii, Taiwan Cinema: Politics, Economics, aesthetics, 322–323. (61.) Sng Song-yong, “Telepathy in Downgrading History,” 138–139.

Song Hwee Lim

Song Hwee Lim is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Con­ temporary Chinese Cinemas (2006) and co-editor of Remapping World Cinema: Iden­ tity, Culture and Politics in Film (2006) and The Chinese Cinema Book (2011). The founding editor of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, his new book, Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness, will be published in 2013 by the University of Hawaii Press.

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film

Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film   Michael Berry The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0010

Abstract and Keywords This chapter traces the radical changes within the Chinese film industry from the 1990s to 2012, highlighting seven categories through which a new model described as “Chinese cinema with Hollywood characteristics” has emerged. The seven categories discussed in­ clude (1) Hollywood-style Chinese blockbusters, (2) Hollywood/Chinese coproductions, (3) Chinese remakes of Hollywood productions, (4) artificial Hollywood, (5) invisible Holly­ wood, (6) the rise of bicultural filmmakers, and (7) international casting choices. Films like the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid are explored within the context of the Chinese film industry’s transformation from a national cinema model to deterritorialized system modeled in many ways by Hollywood aesthetic and industrial standards. Keywords: blockbuster film, coproduction, remakes, deterritorialization, The Karate Kid, globalization, Chinese film industry

In 2010 I was in my Beijing Hotel room during a summer research trip when I happened to come across a prime-time gala film premiere event broadcast on China’s main party broadcast mouthpiece, China Central Television (CCTV). The star-studded event featuring Will Smith and family, together with Han Sanping 韓三平 and other luminaries from the Chinese movie world, was in honor of a film that was released in China as Gongfu meng 功 夫夢, or literally “Kung Fu Dream,” but which is better known internationally by its official English title, The Karate Kid (2010).1 The film is indicative of changes taking place within the industry as coproductions align studios with foreign production companies,2 local tal­ ent with international celebrities, and often exploit Chinese locations for their cheaper shooting costs and exotic nature. For me, though, the most uncanny moment of the CCTV event came toward the end of the broadcast when the master of ceremonies, attempting to garner support for the film, prodded the audience and the millions of at-home viewers, “Everyone must go out and support Chinese cinema!” But how did The Karate Kid—a Harald Zwart–directed remake of a 1984 Hollywood boxoffice hit—come to be embraced as an example of Chinese cinema? While on one level the statement could certainly be interpreted as a mere rhetorical trick to get Chinese audi­ Page 1 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film ences into the theaters, it also prods us to consider to what extent Hollywood-Chinese co­ productions like The Karate Kid have been embraced and even integrated into the Chi­ nese film industry. How do these types of complex transnational productions challenge our traditional conception of a Chinese national cinema? And what are the ideological and aesthetic ramifications when a film like The Karate (p. 171) Kid comes to be regarded as an example of “Chinese cinema”? This sort of big-budget Hollywood-Chinese coproduc­ tion is but one side of a larger trend that might be described as the “Hollywoodization” of Chinese cinema. Besides exploring the growing number of highly visible coproductions, this chapter also attempts to identify a series of alternate production models and industry trends that collectively point to a fundamental shift in the way in which Chinese-language films have been produced, distributed, and consumed in the PRC since the 1990s. Inextricably bound to these questions is the other side of the coin—namely, how the Chi­ nese film industry and the impact of Chinese genres, actors, and talent is simultaneously transforming Hollywood. The curious phenomena that have led to the production of such films as The Karate Kid can be seen as the merging of two distinct trends that have been playing out in different regions over the course of several decades. This chapter will his­ toricize these trends and explore the forces that have led recent Chinese-Hollywood co­ productions, while delving into some of the more transparent ways in which the Holly­ woodization of Chinese cinema has been taking place.

China’s Hollywoods Between the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 and the beginning of the reform era in the late 1970s, Mainland China’s film industry was largely insulated from Hollywood’s influence.3 This insulation functioned to stamp out the “negative impact” of a liberal, capitalist, decadent, and democratic worldview espoused through mainstream Hollywood, while also protecting the local industry from the single most influential (and potentially threatening) global screen industry. With the advent of the reform era (1978–) in the People’s Republic of China, Hollywood films and various aspects of Hollywood cul­ ture began to be reintroduced into China, in a process that took place alongside the (re)introduction of a stunning amalgamation of other foreign and traditional cultural ele­ ments that had been banned or suppressed during the previous decades. Television react­ ed more quickly, with American miniseries like The Man from Atlantis (Lee S. Katzin, 1977–1978) making an entry into Chinese homes early on in the reform era. Cinema, how­ ever, reacted more slowly, with the first official theatrical release in China of a Hollywood picture not taking place until 1994.4 In addition to the exhibition and broadcast of popu­ lar Hollywood films and U.S. television shows, the local Chinese industry also capitalized on the widespread curiosity about all things Western (and limited selection and accessibil­ ity of Hollywood films) with a series of popular films that attempted to cinematically rein­ troduce America and the figure of the American back into China. Early reform era films such as Love on Lushan (廬山戀, 1980) and The Herdsman (牧馬人, 1982) attempted to reintroduce the figure of “America” to audiences while offsetting Page 2 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film these foreign elements with an overarching theme of patriotism and Chinese nationalism.5 While these and later portrayals of America and Americans represented a (p. 172) very different cinematic and ideological model than that of Hollywood, they also played into local Chinese audiences’ appetite for the foreign—an appetite that was initial­ ly not being fulfilled by direct Hollywood imports because of a strict quota and censorship system. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, as the Chinese film industry underwent transformative changes that echoed the larger social and economic reforms happening in China at large, American-themed Chinese films and works that pay homage to, reference, copy, or satirize Hollywood became increasingly common. For instance, in the opening se­ quence of his 1997 film The Dream Factory ( 甲方乙方), Feng Xiaogang 馮小剛 attempted a humorous recreation of Patton (1970), and later, in his Big Shot’s Funeral (大腕, 2001), he similarly took a deconstructionist crack at The Last Emperor (1987). There was also an in­ creasing number of Chinese-language films shot on location in the United States, includ­ ing Xie Jin’s 謝晉 The Last of the Aristocrats (最後的貴族, 1989) and Feng Xiaogang’s Be There or Be Square (不見不散, 1998). Among these films shot on location in the United States, The Treatment, aka The Gua Sha Treatment (刮痧, 2000), stands out for presenting a more fully realized collaborative model between Chinese and American cast and crew. Although all of these titles have been enormously successful in the local Chinese market, they nevertheless have remained largely invisible in the United States and other overseas markets.6 While Chinese films (and television miniseries) shot on location in the United States have intermittently continued, from Zheng Xiaolong 鄭小龍 and Feng Xiaogang’s runaway hit miniseries A Beijinger in New York (北京人在紐約, 1993) to Huang Shuqin’s 黃 蜀芹 Hi, Frank (嗨 ， 弗蘭克, 2001), one can detect a gradual turning away from direct por­ trayals of America as a means of incorporating Hollywood-style models into Chinese cine­ ma in favor of more complex models. While the iconic Hollywood sign in the Santa Moni­ ca Mountains that appears in the opening credit sequence of each episode of Ying Da’s 英 達 telenovella drama Chinese Restaurant (中國餐館, 1999) signals Hollywood as the site of fantasy and desire, this superficial vision (the characters in that miniseries live and work in a Los Angeles Chinese restaurant) has gradually been pushed aside as a series of new cinematic forms emerge that internalize Hollywood practices, industry standards, and aesthetic models. In a sense, it may appear counterintuitive to speak of a “Hollywoodization of Chinese cin­ ema” during a period when official government regulation of the local film industry may appear to retain a distinctly anti-Hollywood stance.7 Not only do strict quotas remain in place when it comes to foreign films, in January 2010, amid a record-breaking box-office run, Avatar (2009) was suddenly pulled from Chinese theaters to make way for the locally produced Confucius (孔子, 2010), and the following year the government enforced a tem­ porary moratorium on foreign films during the months leading up to the ninetieth an­ niversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, effectively relegating the lat­ est Hollywood would-be-blockbusters like Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2 (2011) to the liminal space of DVD bootleg­ gers, precisely in order to open up box-office space for The Beginning of the Great Revival (建黨偉業, 2011), a party-endorsed propagandistic historical drama chronicling the found­ Page 3 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film ing of the CCP itself. All the while, even in “good times” China continues to limit the num­ ber of Hollywood imports, censor their content, and demand (p. 173) a higher percentage of box-office gross for Hollywood products in China than perhaps any other foreign mar­ ket. The very notion that some form of “Hollywoodization” can take place amid a climate so superficially “anti-Hollywood” begs further clarification. By Hollywoodization I am referring not to Hollywood’s conquering of the local Chinese in­ dustry per se or to the success blockbusters such as Titanic (1997) have enjoyed in the Chinese box office, but rather to the ways in which Hollywood industry and aesthetic standards have been appropriated and internalized by the Chinese industry itself, as well as the numerous subtle or invisible means by which Hollywood has fundamentally trans­ formed the Chinese industry. In this sense, the term Hollywood refers not only to the in­ dustry but also to an aesthetic model for commercial mainstream entertainment filmmak­ ing, a series of production, promotion, and distribution models, the rise of a Hollywoodstyle star culture, and so forth. From this vantage point, even The Beginning of the Great Revival and its predecessor, The Founding of a Republic (建國大業, 2009), appropriated a Hollywood-style star culture mod­ el in which each film was inundated with well over one hundred top Chinese screen celebrities. The savvy marketing of these films as star spectacles, as opposed to the more compulsory methods used to promote propaganda films of old (which, by the way, were still used by Revival and Republic), is just one small but significant example of how this in­ ternalization of Hollywood practices is taking place. What made Revival and Republic so commercially effective was the savvy combination of these Hollywood-style models of film marketing and promotion and the use of star culture combined with the more deeply en­ trenched Chinese models and networks of promoting “main melody” (主旋律) propaganda films, which involve organizing screenings and compulsory ticket purchases for schools and government offices while positioning such films as good examples of healthy patriotic education. The beauty of the final product is such that the combination, when successful, simultaneously fulfills both the market and ideological imperatives of cinema—that is, these are films that promote Chinese patriotism and make money at the box office, with aesthetics being the ingredient most often sacrificed in this new equation. Taking the above case as an example, what I am referring to may be described not so much as the Hollywoodization of Chinese cinema but as a sort of “Chinese cinema with Hollywood characteristics”—implying not a fundamental copying or colonization of the Hollywood industry but a more subtle appropriation of key aspects of the Hollywood mod­ el while leaving space for a more subversive and critical reading.8 At the same time, there lies a fine line between this sort of Chinese cinema with Hollywood characteristics and what we might call a “Hollywood cinema with Chinese characteristics,” and as processes of globalization advance, the lines between these two entities become increasingly per­ meable. The term characteristics also allows the flexibility to embrace the complex and varied ways in which Hollywood aesthetics, industry standards, and business models have been Page 4 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film engaged with in the Chinese context that I attempt here to describe. The heart of this chapter will identify and discuss seven models that encapsulate some of the ways in which the Chinese film industry has increasingly moved toward a model of Chinese (p. 174) cinema with Hollywood characteristics. Although for the convenience of discus­ sion I will be discussing each model individually, it should be stressed that these models often blur into one another. The categories to be discussed include (1) Hollywood-style Chinese blockbusters, (2) Hollywood/Chinese coproductions, (3) Chinese remakes of Hol­ lywood productions, (4) artificial Hollywood, (5) invisible Hollywood, (6) the rise of bicul­ tural filmmakers, and (7) international casting choices.

Hollywood-Style Chinese Blockbusters Hollywood-style Chinese blockbusters emerged only after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Drag­ on (臥虎藏龍, 2000), and the overall model is in many ways indebted to the unprecedented success of Ang Lee’s 李安 film. The work, which grossed more than US$213 million world­ wide and more than US$128 million in the U.S. domestic market alone and remains the most successful foreign-language film in U.S. film history,9 triggered a revival of the wuxia 武俠 genre and established a transnational production model that would be imitated and adapted over the course of the next decade. Crouching Tiger not only represented a breakthrough in terms of its transnational model (including its use of a pan-Chinese cast, diverse funding, Taiwanese American director, cross-cultural screenwriting team, global distribution and marketing, etc.), but also went on to become a film-as-event, with largescale promotional campaigns, widespread controversies, product and promotional tie-ins, and action figures, along with countless spin-offs and knockoffs. While there has been a long history of Chinese-language films being tied to other media, that is, adaptations for stage and serial comic books, in most cases this was carried out primarily as a means to further the ideological message of the original work. However, shifts in China toward an increasingly market-reliant economy over the course of the 1990s, which accelerated af­ ter Deng Xiaoping’s 鄧小平 1992 “Southern Tour,” had already begun to transform China’s domestic film industry, positioning it to better take advantage of this new market-based model of the blockbuster film. Changes such as the rise of private film studios and pro­ duction companies like Huayi Brothers 華誼兄弟, together with the development of new state-of-the art studio facilities such as Xu Wenrong’s 徐聞榮 Hengdian World Studios 橫店 影視城 (which is now the largest film studio in the world), helped pave the way for a new breed of Chinese-style blockbuster filmmaking, implicitly modeled on the Hollywood blockbuster film pioneered and perfected by mainstream filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Michael Bay, in which the film-as-event model has been re­ sponsible for the top-grossing feature films of all time. In the post–Crouching Tiger period, as PRC productions began to implement new meth­ ods of production and promotion, Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, the single-most influential Chinese filmmaker of the 1990s, ushered in this new era with Hero (英雄, 2002). As scholars such as Dai Jinhua 戴錦華 have noted, Hero was the first PRC production to appropriate the blockbuster model, the first example of which can be seen in (p. 175) the pan-Chinese Page 5 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film cast, which included Zhang Ziyi 章子怡, Maggie Cheung 張慢玉, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai 梁朝 偉, Jet Li 李連杰, Donnie Yen 甄子丹, and Chen Daoming 陳道明. The eclectic casting not on­ ly combined actors from different regions—the PRC (Chen and Zhang), Hong Kong (Che­ ung and Leung), and even the United States (Yen)—but also seemed to be consciously reaching out to different audience bases through the casting, including teenagers and housewives, the art-house audience, and multiplex action masses. The film itself fur­ thered this strategy by combining gorgeous cinematography and a Rashomon-like struc­ ture with incredible martial-arts sequences and Matrix-inspired special effects. But a big part of Hero’s commercial success also lies with genius marketing and promotion. Bill Kong 江志強 (who also coproduced Crouching Tiger and has subsequently become one of the biggest forces behind the development and evolution of the Chinese blockbuster) and the other producers designed an elaborate campaign that included a private jet that shut­ tled the cast around China on a whirlwind set of screenings, press conferences, and inter­ views to promote the film. Other marketing tools included elaborate product tie-ins, fea­ turing everything from a novelization and a making-of documentary to comic books and action figures. Surrounding the film’s release was also an unprecedented clampdown on bootleg versions of the film, which included heavy security at early screenings prohibiting illegal videotaping and widespread rumors about an under-the-table deal with Chinese bootleg distributers to ensure illegal copies were suppressed. The film quickly broke all existing Chinese box-office records (but has subsequently been surpassed several times as the industry continues its rapid development) and cemented a formula for this Holly­ wood-style Chinese blockbuster. While the genre’s detractors criticized these new blockbusters as shallow or propagandis­ tic spectacles, Zhang Yimou has defended his decision to turn to the blockbuster form on the grounds that it was a conscious strategy aimed at protecting the local Chinese film in­ dustry. According to Zhang, there are now countless younger and more experimental di­ rectors who can make the sorts of small, personal films for which Zhang himself was once better known, but only a handful of name-brand directors are able to attract the funding necessary to produce the sorts of big-budget films that might compete with polished Hol­ lywood-level productions.10 And so, one by one, China’s A-list filmmakers made the shift toward this new blockbuster format, yielding works such as Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 The Promise (無極, 2005) and Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet (夜宴, 2006), together with Zhang’s own House of Flying Daggers (十面埋伏, 2004) and Curse of the Golden Flower (滿 城盡帶黃金甲, 2006). As the budgets got bloated and the battles bolder, and as blue-screen special effects took over, critical reception for many of these films began to falter. And while most still performed well in the Chinese market, none was able to recapture the in­ ternational success of Crouching Tiger or Hero. In some cases, such as with The Promise, which tried to take both special effects and transnational casting to a new level, the re­ sults were widespread criticism and mockery.11 However, even The Promise, a film gener­ ally regarded as a critical failure, remains one of the top twenty-five Chinese films in the PRC box office of all time, proving the potency of the formula.

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film Nevertheless, toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, there was a shift away from classical costume wuxia blockbusters (such as those set in the Qin and Tang dynasties) to a revamped version of the gongfu film (功夫片), usually set during the late imperial or early Republican era. This new page in the evolution of the block­ buster, as represented by the Ip Man (葉問, 2008, 2010, 2010) series, Bodyguards and As­ sassins (十月圍城, 2009), Let the Bullets Fly (讓子彈飛, 2010), Wu Xia (武俠, 2011), and The Grandmasters (一代宗師, 2012), also bears witness to ever-increasing integration of the PRC and Hong Kong film industries when it comes to these blockbuster films. Steering away from palace politics and tales of imperial assassins, many of the films in this new group instead highlight an anti-imperialist stance and a neonationalist ideology of selfstrengthening. The relationship between many of these films and the tradition of Bruce Lee 李小龍, who best embodies the original elements of the cross-cultural Chinese/Ameri­ can blockbuster film, should not be overlooked. Not only does Lee’s own personal experi­ ence—he was a multiracial figure who was born in the United States, worked in the Hong Kong film and U.S. television industries, and collaborated with top American and Chinese filmmakers—capture the spirit of recent Hollywood-Chinese collaborations, the themes of many of his films, such as The Chinese Connection (精武門, 1972), also directly engage (p. 176)

with the politics of imperialism, diaspora, and the meanings of being a “global Chinese.” Bruce Lee, whose films have only recently been rediscovered in the mainland, serves as a potent avatar for a new confident and powerful global China.12 The rise and ongoing evolution of the Chinese blockbuster runs parallel and is intricately connected to China’s own emergence as an economic superpower in the twenty-first cen­ tury. As cinema becomes an increasingly important component of Chinese “soft power,” the scale, spectacle, and ideological underpinnings of blockbuster films from Hero to De­ tective Dee (狄仁杰之通天帝國, 2010) take on allegorical dimensions vis-à-vis Olympic-era China. While film industry trends are primarily driven by a desire to replicate successful models and formulas, it is no coincidence that the same decade that witnessed the rise of the Chinese blockbuster with Hollywood characteristics coincided with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai World Ex­ po, the spread of Confucius Institutes across the globe, mushrooming foreign exchange reserves, and rampant international investment. These new big-budget Chinese block­ busters are primarily vehicles for mass entertainment, but in their volume, texture, and (digitally enhanced) vistas they also serve as one of the most potent mirrors for China’s own rise, both real and perceived.

Hollywood/Chinese Coproductions The phenomenal success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero, combined with the attraction of an ever-expanding Chinese film market, also gave rise to a renewed interest in Hollywood-Chinese coproductions. These types of coproductions come (p. 177) in many forms and can be divided into three categories. The first category includes works that use China as the primary backdrop for wartime dramas like The Children of Huangshi (Roger Spottiswoode, 2008) and The Painted Veil (John Curran, 2006), as well as those that uti­ Page 7 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film lize the skyscrapers and modern exteriors of Shanghai and Hong Kong for large-scale ac­ tion set pieces, such as Mission Impossible III (J. J. Abrams, 2006) and The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008). A second category is composed of films where China is ex­ ploited for its lower production costs, using less-expensive studios to shoot material that is often not even set in China, such as Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series (2003, 2004), The Kite Runner (Marc Forster, 2007), and Looper (Rian Johnson, 2012). While many of these films are technically registered as coproductions, I would argue that they remain “Hollywood products” in terms of the overall production control and creative vision. I am more interested in a third category of films that present a more complex alignment of Chinese and foreign creative talent and funding sources, as found, for instance, in the 2008 film The Forbidden Kingdom. With other interregion collaborations becoming in­ creasingly prevalent, such as the partnerships announced in 2011 between Relativity Me­ dia and Huaxia Film Distribution / Skyland Film-Television Development and the multimillion-dollar deal between Legendary Entertainment and Huayi Brothers Media,13 along with the 2012 formation of Oriental DreamWorks, it appears that this mode of coproduc­ tion will only become increasingly prevalent. What is interesting about these films is the way they have pioneered a new production model aimed at combining Chinese film talent, locations, and lower shooting costs with international investment, scripts, and the infrastructure of the Hollywood system to pro­ duce big-budget commercial films that can be easily marketed across different cultures, languages, and regions. That is not to say that films produced out of this new mold do not have their challenges. On the one hand, the inherent structure of Western studio heads, directors, and screenwriters orchestrating largely Chinese casts and crews working in Chinese locations hints at a form of cultural imperialism. Another facet of this new pro­ duction model is a tension, or even contradiction, between content and form. While the form—this transnational production model—is, at least for the Chinese film industry, an innovative new model that points to bold new possibilities for Chinese cinema, the result in terms of content—narrative forms and genre—has been an extremely conservative film­ making style laden with stereotypes and time-worn tropes. The Forbidden Kingdom, for instance, seemed pieced together from scraps of Journey to the West (西遊記), Drunken Master (醉拳), The White-Haired Girl (白毛女), and Daoist and Buddhist philosophy. And while Chinese A-list actors Jackie Chan 成龍 and Jet Li 李連杰 appear together here in their first on-screen collaboration, they are essentially relegated to playing supporting roles to the much less known American actor Michael Angarano, who serves as the film’s main fo­ calizer. The result was a schizophrenic product that performed well in the U.S. market (the film was number one at the U.S. box office during its opening week), though in China the film was generally poorly received and disappointed many critics. Even Li and Chan seemed to have radically different talking points depending on the audience, in that they remained fairly positive (p. 178) when addressing the Western media but were openly crit­ ical of the film when speaking to the Chinese press. While Hollywood had been packaging successful action films for Asian stars for more than a decade since the Hong Kong invasion of Jet Li, Jackie Chan, John Woo 吳宇森, and Chow Yun-fat 周潤發 in the 1990s, virtually all previous productions were contemporary Page 8 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film action films shot primarily in the United States. The Forbidden Kingdom stood out as the first coproduction helmed by an American director that attempted to make a primarily English-language wuxia genre film set in a fantastical premodern China (albeit a distorted version of the form) for a global audience. Previously, the wuxia film had been a genre ex­ clusive to East Asian filmmakers, but with the success of films like The Forbidden King­ dom, we see Hollywood’s further encroachment into new cinematic terrain. The potential threat here is what this means to local Chinese filmmakers in the long term as this new Hollywood-style commercial wuxia film is further developed and perfected as a produc­ tion model. After all, why would any major U.S. studio take a chance on a Chinese direc­ tor with a fifty-million-dollar production when they can hire a bankable American director like Rob Minkoff or Edward Zwick to create a “global” version that will better translate across different cultures and markets.

Chinese Remakes of Hollywood Productions While remakes of foreign films have traditionally been relatively rare in the Chinese film industry, they have recently started to become more popular. This is perhaps the most re­ cent chapter in this long and complex process by which the Chinese film industry has en­ tered into the realm of the Hollywood remake. An area previously unexplored by earlier films during the reform era because of the prohibitive cost of purchasing remake rights from Hollywood, the “remake” had been relegated to homage (such as the earlier exam­ ples of Patton and The Last Emperor) and unofficial rip-offs, not just in terms of stories and plot but even in the pervasive practice of copying Hollywood poster designs. Since the end of the first decade of the 2000s, however, the ascendancy of the industry and ris­ ing box-office revenue have allowed the Chinese industry to begin purchasing remake rights from major Hollywood studios and production companies. This process of linguistic and cultural translation has seen the Coen Brothers’ early classic Blood Simple (1984) reimagined by Zhang Yimou as A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (三槍拍案驚奇, 2009), Nancy Meyer’s Mel Gibson vehicle What Women Want (2000) remade under the same English title by Chen Daming 陳大明 (我知女人心, 2010), and Disney’s blockbuster franchise High School Musical (2005, 2007, 2008) transformed into High School Musical: China (歌 舞青春, 2010). While Zhang Yimou has repeatedly claimed that remake rights are so ex­ pensive that he did not foresee additional Chinese remakes of Hollywood films in the near future,14 the realities of the industry have already begun (p. 179) to prove him wrong, as licensed Chinese-language remakes of foreign films become an increasingly prominent part of the Chinese filmscape. In other instances, directors circumvent copyright issues by offering conceptual remakes, such as Ah Gan’s 阿甘 Big Movie (大電影之數百億, 2006), which combined comic references to dozens of Chinese and Hollywood blockbuster films in what is clearly a reworking of the successful knockoff genre pioneered by films like the Scary Movie series (2000, 2001, 2003, 2006) and continued with titles like Meet the Spartans (2008) and Dance Flick (2009). Ah Gan’s 2008 follow-up Big Movie 2.0: Two Stupid Eggs (大電影: 兩個傻瓜的荒唐事) not only attested to the success of this new model, but also introduced yet another trade­ Page 9 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film mark of Hollywood’s business model to an industry that rarely produced sequels—the franchise. This trend comes with the gradual turning away from Chinese literary sources, which had dominated the local industry up through the 1990s,15 in favor of more marketproven cinematic sources that have already favorably performed in other foreign mar­ kets. The shift from Chinese literary sources to Hollywood cinematic sources says a lot about the direction of the industry. To a certain extent, however, this trend also points to a homogenization of the industry where a more formulaic approach dominated by Holly­ wood narrative norms, prepackaged story-lines, and straight remakes leave less room for local innovation and originality.16

Artificial Hollywood Beyond Chinese-style blockbusters, coproductions, and large-scale remakes, there are al­ so other means by which Hollywood as a kind of cultural code is referenced in order to le­ gitimize, market, and promote local Chinese productions. This use of Hollywood as a sell­ ing point for local productions ranges from the aforementioned cinematic quotations from films like Patton (in The Dream Factory) and The Last Emperor (in Big Shot’s Funeral) to the numerous Chinese film posters that directly model themselves after their successful Hollywood counterparts. However, the key to this model does not require big budgets, transnational casts, or international investment; instead it simply involves a game of mar­ keting. By far the easiest (and crudest) means by which Chinese cinema has displayed its Hollywood-style ambitions can be seen via countless taglines on film posters, DVD pack­ aging, trailers, and, sometimes, even film titles that directly reference Hollywood films.17 I describe this trend as “artificial Hollywood,” as it is a primarily marketing gimmick used to imply associations between local Chinese films and Hollywood blockbusters. And while “Hollywood” is here an entirely artificial construct, this trend clearly illustrates a power­ ful facet through which local productions are imagined and projected as part of a larger global industry and are thus an important component of the rise of “Chinese cinema with Hollywood characteristics.” Typical examples of this type of marketing can be seen in the 2005 film on the Nanjing Massacre, Qixia Temple 1937 (棲霞寺, 1937), which was not only marketed as “the Chinese Schindler’s List” but furthermore was described in the film’s posters and DVD (p. 180) cover as a work that would “take the Academy Awards by storm.” Similarly, veteran director Huang Shuqin’s film Hi, Frank was widely marketed as “the Chinese version of Bridges of Madison County,” referencing the 1995 Clint Eastwood film that became an instant classic in China. And when promotional taglines referencing famous international blockbuster films are not enough, some films project their Holly­ wood dreams directly into the film’s title, such was the case with Li Kelong’s 李克龍 2009 film Lao Wu’s Oscar (老五的奧斯卡), in which the protagonist dreams of one day writing a screenplay that could win an Oscar. These marketing ploys represent a method by which a local film can take on a “Holly­ wood” appearance, while producers and distributers can inexpensively brand their film as a cosmopolitan “global” product. At the same time, the phenomenon also represents a

Page 10 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film certain insecurity among the industry regarding the quality, prestige, and recognition of local films versus Hollywood products.

Invisible Hollywood The flip side of a notion of “Hollywood” artificially projected onto otherwise local films is the recent trend of behind-the-scenes Hollywood investment in works that externally ap­ pear to be local productions. This trend represents a very different strategy when it comes to Hollywood’s presence in China. One portion of Hollywood studios’ investment strategy has long been in overseas film markets, especially those local markets in which English-language films have had difficulty penetrating. This has allowed Hollywood to reap profits even in countries where their films may not dominate, though, in the case of China, this strategy was not possible until the state-controlled structure of the Chinese film industry became increasingly privatized during the reform era. At the same time, Hollywood interest in China expanded because of the international box-office success of Chinese-language films like Crouching Tiger and Hero, which opened up a new space for Chinese-language films to be distributed abroad. This, in turn, led to an increased inter­ est in benefiting from the expanding Chinese market, leading to behind-the-scenes invest­ ment and backing of Chinese films by Hollywood studios. This trend could be described as “invisible Hollywood” because the result is often Chinese-language films with a strong local flavor that often appeal primarily to a local audience but are partially or primarily funded by Hollywood studios and their subsidiaries. By “invisible” I am not suggesting that studios are masking their involvement (which is usually evident by carefully reading the credits), but there does seem to be a deliberate underplaying of the global capital at work behind the scenes. The structures of “invisible Hollywood” enable the production of films that will evade China’s foreign film quotas, which are still one of the greatest hur­ dles confronting Hollywood imports, and also avoid any perception among neonationalist groups that foreign films are “invading.” While in terms of funding structure many of these titles seem to be quite similar to typical coproductions, I draw a distinction because while coproductions like The Forbidden Kingdom clearly (p. 181) have a diversified market strategy and are heavily promoted in China, the United States, and other markets, these latter examples of “invisible Hollywood” rely upon the Chinese market for their primary revenue. Among the players is Columbia Pictures Asia, which steadily increased its presence over the course of the first decade of the 2000s. The company has backed both successful crossover films such as Crouching Tiger and Stephen Chow’s 周星馳 Kung Fu Hustle (功夫, 2004) and several films that have performed well in Chinese-language film markets, such as Feng Xiaogang’s New Year’s hit Cell Phone (手機, 2003) and Chen Kuo-fu’s 陳國富 Taiwan supernatural thriller Double Vision (雙瞳, 2002). Similarly, many viewers will be surprised to learn that other “local” films, such as Ning Hao’s 寧浩 breakout hit Crazy Stone (瘋狂的石頭, 2006), a film lauded for its novel use of the Chongqing dialect, slang humor, fast-paced editing, and local color, was actually coproduced by Warner China, or

Page 11 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film that the slick, romantic drama starring a pan-Chinese cast of A-listers, Hot Summer Days (全城熱戀, 2010), was actually produced by Fox. At the other end of the spectrum, there is also the issue of how Hollywood and foreign el­ ements have impacted low-budget independent Chinese films. Alongside the gritty, realist independent Sixth Generation films of Zhang Yuan 張元 and Wang Xiaoshuai 王小帥 appeared the polished urban comedies of Zhang Yang 張揚. One of China’s most commer­ cially successful post–Fifth Generation directors, Zhang Yang actually got his start with a series of films produced by independent American producer Peter Loehr. Together Loehr and Zhang produced such well-received films as Spicy Love Soup (愛情麻辣燙, 1997) (which Loehr also cowrote) and Shower (洗澡, 1999), which at the time offered an alterna­ tive to both mainstream studio films and the edgier indies of the Sixth Generation. While not affiliated with any of the American major studios, Loehr nevertheless helped define a new breed of contemporary comic yet socially relevant commercial filmmaking in China. This trend reveals that beyond the big-budget cross-cultural blockbusters that seem to epitomize Hollywood’s presence in the Chinese industry, there also lies a complex and multilayered structure through which Hollywood studios and international forces have be­ come inextricably interwoven with the local industry at the level of investment, produc­ tion, and distribution. A key factor fueling the rise of several of the above-discussed categories (particularly co­ productions, the use of Hollywood as a selling point for Chinese local films, and behindthe-scenes Hollywood investment) stems from China’s foreign film quotas. While the quo­ ta for big-budget studio films was expanded from twenty to thirty-four in 2012, (the four­ teen new slots devoted exclusively to IMAX and 3D releases),18 the quota had stood at twenty films a year from 2001 until 2012 and a mere ten films a year before 2001. These stringent quotas, designed to protect the local market, have produced a system that has at once hindered the direct impact of Hollywood films, fueled the bootleg DVD market, and forced both Hollywood and local Chinese studios to explore alternatives that inject aspects of Hollywood-style filmmaking into the Chinese industry. In other words, I would argue that on some level the evolution of “Chinese cinema with Hollywood characteris­ tics” has been not been hindered, but rather has been strengthened, by the quota system. With an intense interest in, and (p. 182) appetite for Hollywood products left unquenched because of the quota system, it is the Chinese industry itself that has risen to the task of filling the gap—by appropriating features of Hollywood itself.

The Rise of Bicultural Filmmakers While most socialist-era Chinese filmmakers had relatively little access to foreign cinema and even less opportunity to travel abroad, since the reform era travel, study, and ex­ change with Western countries has become more common. It has taken more than a gen­ eration since the beginning of China’s Open Door policy, but there is now a robust and ever-growing group of thoroughly bicultural filmmakers working within, and sometimes on the margins of, the mainstream Chinese film industry. This group includes veterans of Page 12 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film the PRC industry who went abroad to study or work, only to return, in some cases decades later, to help reinvigorate the local industry. It also includes a younger genera­ tion of Chinese filmmakers, who grew up during the reform era on Hollywood films and studied or worked abroad before entering the industry. In many cases, these are filmmak­ ers who challenge us to rethink traditional categories of national cinema by virtue of their cross-cultural background, perspective, and aesthetic. Luo Yan 羅燕, Joan Chen 陳沖, and Vivian Wu 烏郡梅 are all actresses who rose to promi­ nence in the PRC film industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and after immigrating to the United States they each returned to China and helped bring new transnational ele­ ments to the local Chinese industry. Luo Yan and Joan Chen were both successful in China at a young age; Luo became known for her breakout role in Girl in Red (紅衣少女, 1985), and Chen was famous for her roles in Youth (青春, 1977) and Little Flower (小花, 1980). In 2001, Luo returned to China for Pavilion of Women, a big-budget adaptation of the classic Pearl Buck novel for which she not only served as screenwriter and producer but also starred opposite Willem Dafoe. Besides appearing in a series of mainstream U.S. televi­ sion serials such as Knight Rider, Miami Vice, MacGyver, and Twin Peaks, Chen emerged as a director in the late nineties with the gritty Cultural Revolution film Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl (天浴, 1998) and, after a follow-up mainstream Hollywood film (Autumn in New York, 2000), made a high-profile return to the Chinese screen by appearing in films di­ rected by Ang Lee, Zhang Yang, Jia Zhangke 賈樟柯, and Jiang Wen 姜文. Vivian Wu began her career at the age of fifteen with the Shanghai Film Studio and has starred in several important coproductions and Hollywood films set in China, including The Last Emperor (1987), Iron & Silk (1990), and Wayne Wang’s recent adaptation of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011). Along with her director-writer husband Oscar L. Costo, Wu also partic­ ipated in the 2006’s Shanghai Red and 2010’s Shanghai Blue, which paired Hollywood ac­ tors like Wu and Richard Burgi with popular Chinese stars Sun Honglei 孫紅雷 and Ge You 葛優. Other figures who have helped pioneer this type of cross-cultural Hollywood-Chinese film­ making include Ann Hu 胡安, who was among the first crop of self-funded Chinese (p. 183) foreign students to study in the United States after the Cultural Revolution. After earning a business administration degree from NYU and pursuing a successful business career, Hu turned to filmmaking in 1992 and in 2000 released Shadow Magic (西洋鏡), a five-mil­ lion-dollar film about the origins of cinema in China that combined investment from the United States, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and the PRC. In 2007 theater director Shi-zheng Chen 陳士爭 released Dark Matter, an independent feature that paired Liu Ye 劉燁 with Meryl Streep and Aidan Quinn. And then there are the Canadian-Chinese documentary filmmakers Yung Chang 張喬勇 and Fan Lixin 範立欣, whose Montreal-based production company EyeSteelFilm is responsible for such award-winning documentary films as Up the Yangtze (沿江而上, 2007) and Last Train Home (歸途列車, 2009). Chang and Fan have helped combine the gritty on-the-spot realism of contemporary underground Chinese doc­ umentary filmmaking and the access usually only afforded to cultural insiders with a pol­ ished narrative and distribution network that has helped their films break into much wider international markets. In the commercial realm there is Dayyan Eng 伍仕賢, a bira­ Page 13 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film cial Chinese-American filmmaker who grew up in the United States, attended the Beijing Film Academy, and made a splash on the Beijing film scene with his romantic comedy Waiting Alone (獨自等待, 2005), which brought a smart, polished new commercial sensibili­ ty to independent productions. These sorts of bicultural Chinese filmmakers will only be­ come more prevalent as greater economic mobility brings ever growing numbers of Chi­ nese film students to the United States for their education. Of course, there are numerous other examples, such as the ultimate bicultural filmmaker Ang Lee, who has shot two films on location in Mainland China (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lust, Caution) and continues to cross linguistic, cultural, and filmic bound­ aries. Even Fifth Generation director Chen Kaige, who spent several years in New York during the early nineties and directed the English-language film Killing Me Softly (2002), stands as testament to the pervasive linkages between Hollywood and Chinese cinema. Rather than merely catalog examples of Chinese filmmakers crossing borders between in­ dustries, my goal here has been to illustrate the different ways in which the very makeup of the industry is changing by way of the transnational profile of so many leading and upand-coming film directors.

International Casting Choices Another facet of the “Hollywoodization” of the industry—and perhaps the most visible— plays out on the level of casting choices that lend a markedly international face to other­ wise local casts. The presence of Hollywood and other internationally recognized actors is another means by which Chinese cinema is increasingly positioning itself as a global medium. These casting choices work in two ways, with the presence of well-known global superstars functioning as a legitimizing factor, signaling to local Chinese audiences that Chinese cinema has now somehow “made it” and been recognized on a global (p. 184) scale, while also helping enable Chinese films to compete more effectively in the global “star market” where the presence of iconic actors does indeed translate to greater visibil­ ity and a larger share of global box-office receipts. The casting of international celebrities also brings a highly visible “Hollywood” sensibility to local films, while evading the quota limitations on imports. While examples of well-known Western stars were quite rare be­ fore the 2000s, the terrain gradually began to transform in the new millennium. One ear­ ly example is Donald Sutherland’s appearance as Tyler in Feng Xiaogang’s Big Shot’s Fu­ neral. In 1977 and 1990 Sutherland had played Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who is a hero in China, making him fairly well known there. Since then, we have seen David Morse in Double Vision, Johnny Holloway in Johnnie To’s 杜琪峰 film Vengeance (復 仇, 2009), and other on-screen appearances of Western stars in Chinese-language films. These types of casting decisions are often the product of the previously discussed new breed of cross-cultural film directors, such as Luo Yan’s casting of Willem Dafoe in Pavil­ ion of Women or Dayyan Eng’s casting of Kevin Spacey in Inseparable (形影不離). In 2010, Zhang Yimou, who had repeatedly brushed off questions about whether he would ever “go Hollywood” with the stock answer, “I don’t speak English and don’t have the under­ standing of America to make a film there,”19 announced that he was casting Academy Page 14 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film Award–winner Christian Bale to star in his Nanjing massacre film The Flowers of War (金 陵十三釵). The following year, Feng Xiaogang announced the casting of Adrien Brody and Tim Robbins in a historical film about the 1942 famine. Another means through which this star system is appropriated comes through the casting of Chinese actors who have succeeded internationally and are now reintroduced to the Chinese market as “international superstars” (國際巨星), including figures such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Joan Chen, Chow Yun-fat, Zhang Ziyi, and Gong Li 鞏利, together with newer talent such as Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 and Liu Yifei 劉亦菲. When Chow Yun-fat makes his sur­ prise appearance at the end of the slick commercial urban comedy Waiting Alone, it is not just a scene-stealing cameo but also marks a symbolic return of flashy Hollywood-style commercial narrative to the once heavily politicized medium of Chinese cinema—Chow is here clearly positioned as an international icon. What is interesting here is the use of the term “international superstar,” which takes on new meaning in the Chinese context. Whereas upon initial introduction into the Hollywood market, actors like Chow, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Gong Li were billed as “international superstars,” this served as code for “famous abroad but not in Hollywood.” But after a series of successful films in Hollywood, these same stars get reintroduced into the Chinese market, and the same term now sig­ nals their acceptance within the Hollywood film market. In each case, success within the Hollywood system allows the stars to return to the Chinese market with new cultural cap­ ital. With the lead actors serving as the public face of the production, the casting of inter­ national talent remains one of the most direct and effective means by which to brand an otherwise local film as an “international product.” Beyond these high-profile cross-cultural pairings, the increasing prevalence of bicultural filmmakers, the casting of foreign actors, and the general integration of the mainland in­ dustry with talent from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other regions help delineate an industry model that is less bound to a national cinema model and more indebted (p. 185) to a glob­ al Hollywood model.20 Hollywood may bear the name of a site-specific locale, though over time the term has grown to encompass a much larger and more decentralized and deter­ ritorialized system of film production, financing, and distribution. So while Hollywood cin­ ema and American cinema are often used synonymously, besides being frequently read as a distinctly “American-inflected” cultural product, Hollywood is also a global industrial commodity that has long been open to “non-Americans” whose names and likenesses have become synonymous with the industry itself. The fact that countless foreign-born Hollywood directors and leading actors have become an integral part of the Hollywood system speaks to the industry’s global identity largely unencumbered by xenophobic na­ tionalism or regionalisms. Traditionally, because of the state-sponsored structure of the Chinese studio system, lim­ ited import and export networks, and linguistic, cultural, and ideological divides, the Chi­ nese film industry had held on to a national cinema model that was highly homogeneous in terms of funding (Chinese state studio system), talent (local PRC cast and crew), lan­ guage (standard Mandarin Chinese), and ideology (socialist, and then market-oriented so­ cialism). But with the above-detailed changes taking place within the Chinese film indus­ Page 15 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film try, especially the new fluidity when it comes to pan-Chinese and foreign talent, we are witnessing a shift that is taking Chinese cinema further from a pure, homogeneous “na­ tional cinema model” and closer to a Hollywood-style system where the market and indus­ try trumps nationalism and ideology (although the latter elements certainly continue to exert a prominent influence on many films, such as “main melody” propaganda films). For the Chinese film industry, this has been a gradual change, outlined by increasingly diver­ sified and transnational funding, the above-described regional diversification of both be­ hind-the-scenes and on-screen talent, an increased openness to films shot completely or partially in foreign languages and Chinese regional dialects,21 and the increasing preva­ lence of “pure entertainment” films (with ideological content downplayed or removed), which better appeal to international audiences. Ultimately, these changes describe an in­ dustry moving closer to the Hollywood model in which issues like the ethnic or national identity of the filmmakers is less important than the true operating language—profit.

The Karate Kid Revisited Having outlined the diverse and myriad ways in which Hollywood practices have become integrated into the Chinese film industry and moviemaking practices, it seems instructive to return to the case of Harold Zwart’s 2010 remake of The Karate Kid that began this chapter. In terms of the way the coproduction model functions, we are presented with a powerful example of the aforementioned tension between innovative form and conserva­ tive content. While the film marked a new page in Sino-U.S. film coproductions in terms of the massive scale and budget (approximately US$40 million) and the backing of Will Smith and his production company Overbrook Entertainment alongside Han (p. 186) San­ ping and China Film Group, it stands as another extremely conservative and formulaic film in terms of content. Not only is the film a remake—always the “safest” choice from an investment perspective because the same story already has a track record of performing well in an earlier market—but The Karate Kid also duplicates the set formula of the young foreigner being introduced to the “alien culture” of China, where they must face chal­ lenges and overcome them (and of course, fall in love with the local girl). Along the way, we are taken on a journey that exoticizes China as the protagonist goes from the tradi­ tional Beijing hutong alleys and iconic statues of Mao to sweeping, beatified helicopter shots of the Great Wall and a mystical Daoist temple atop a mountain. And as in The For­ bidden Kingdom, Jackie Chan is again relegated to a supporting role to child actor Jaden Smith. Smith’s casting as the protagonist Dre Parker (Daniel Larusso in the 1984 version) also alters the racial formula of the original film. What is interesting about the casting choice is that while it subverts certain racial elements present in the original film, it si­ multaneously falls into a newer tradition of successful African American–Chinese onscreen star pairings—Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour series (1998, 2001, 2007), Jet Li and DMX in Cradle 2 the Grave (2003), Jet Li and Aaliyah in Romeo Must Die (2000), and so forth—which speaks to the film as simultaneously fulfilling another com­ mercially successful formula that has already been market tested.22

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film The increasing prevalence of these types of Hollywood-Chinese coproductions is also challenging us to rethink the traditional parameters and even definition of “Chinese cine­ ma.” Questions of language, ethnic identity, and cultural authenticity are all pushed to the foreground as new production forms challenge long-standing preconceptions about the very nature of Chinese film. After all, what makes a film “Chinese”? Is it the ethnic identi­ ty of the director? Or the contributions of a Chinese cast and crew? And what about where the film is shot, and ramifications of funding sources and production companies? In view of the complicated imbrication of the Chinese and Hollywood film industries out­ lined above, I wonder what it was that so disturbed me about The Karate Kid being re­ ferred to by CCTV as an example of “Chinese cinema”? Perhaps it is because the result is an increasingly homogenized version of a “Chinese cinema with Hollywood characteris­ tics” or perhaps a “Hollywood with Chinese characteristics,” but distinguishing between them will no longer matter because, through this process of cultural homogenization, they will all look the same. It is also through this process of large-scale Hollywoodization that all of the innovations in narrative, cinematography, and cinematic form that came with the early Fifth Generation in the early to middle 1980s and again with the rise of in­ dependent Chinese cinema starting in the middle to late 1990s will become increasingly rare. And even though independent productions will undoubtedly continue, albeit on a much smaller scale, they will face increasing difficulty in finding their place in super-mul­ tiplexes dominated by Karate Kids and Heroes. At the same time, there lies the risk that as quotas on foreign films are relaxed, a greater percentage of even “Chinese” wuxia and action films will be helmed by foreign directors with little or no cultural knowledge of China, in order to deliver a product that can appeal to a broader global market. And therein lies the risk. (p. 187)

Certainly, my initial surprise of The Karate Kid being described by CCTV as an ex­

ample of Chinese cinema was guided by several decades of experience with and expecta­ tions about the nature of “Chinese cinema,” which has historically been defined by a na­ tional cinema model with prescribed formal and ideological features dictating production, content, and distribution. However, it is perhaps time to recalibrate our approach. After all, although the most recent cinematic incarnation of the iconic superhero Batman is di­ rected by London-born Christopher Nolan and stars Welsh-born Christian Bale, most would not hesitate to describe The Dark Knight as a mainstream Hollywood, even Ameri­ can, cinema. So why couldn’t a work like The Karate Kid represent Chinese cinema? While such a comparison may seem far-fetched, it is meant to illustrate the preconcep­ tions and double standards that many audiences and critics, including myself, have held about Chinese cinema and that are being shattered. The myriad shifts taking place within the Chinese film community have already transformed moviemaking practices and the very nature of the industry. An intrinsic component of this new form I am describing as “Chinese cinema with Hollywood characteristics” is precisely the decentralizing and de­ territorializing factor, which will reduce the Chinese in Chinese cinema to an increasingly abstract notion, disassociated from its territorial, linguistic, and cultural components. Just as it is fairly common for a typical Hollywood film to be directed by a British director, star Page 17 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film an Australian lead, and be shot on location in Canada, so too we must begin to rethink the landscape (and repercussions) of a deterritorialized Chinese cinema, where foreign direc­ tors like Harald Zwart can helm pictures shot in China and starring a transnational cast.23 Certainly this will simply be read by some as a mere extension of Hollywood’s own global expansion, increasing evidence of the further deterritorialization of Hollywood’s in­ dustrial reach. However, what I have attempted to sketch in this chapter is the pervasive and multiple levels upon which the Chinese industry has internalized Hollywood practices and the irreversible ways in which the two industries have become intertwined. The com­ mercial Chinese film industry is opening up in new ways and pushing into uncharted wa­ ters. It is time for audiences and critics to engage with the complexity and, sometimes, strangeness of this new reality. And according to the logic of this new reality, The Karate Kid is an example as much of Hollywood’s expansion as it is of China’s. So, Dre Parker, welcome to Beijing!

Works Cited Berry, Michael. “The Absent American: Figuring the United States in Chinese Cinema of the Reform Era.” Companion to Chinese Cinema. Ed. Yingjin Zhang. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, 2012. 552–574. Ho, Fred, and Bill V. Mullen, eds. Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connec­ tions between African Americans and Asian Americans. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Zakaria, Fareed. “Why the Transformers Can’t Beat Their Way into Beijing.” CNN World, July 10, 2011. Retrieved October 14, 2012, from http:// globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/10/why-the-transformers-cant-beattheir-way-into-beijing/?iref=allsearch.

Notes: (1.) The complete program “The Karate Kid Worldwide Premiere Ceremony” (Gongfu meng quanqiu shouying qingdian 《功夫夢》全球首映慶典) has been archived by CCTV and is available for online streaming at http://space.tv.cctv.com/video/ VIDE9780199765607888. (2.) In the case of The Karate Kid, Hollywood-based production companies like Will and Jada Pinka Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment and Jerry Weintraub’s JW Productions aligned with Sony Pictures and China Film Group to package the film. (3.) Naturally, there remained a Hollywood influence in post-1949 Chinese cinema via Hollywood storytelling and editing conventions, which had greatly impacted generations of Chinese directors educated before the communist victory. While Hollywood continued to have a degree of aesthetic influence, however, the direct impact of its new titles on younger audiences and the larger market was largely brought to an end. Page 18 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film (4.) The first Hollywood film to receive an officially sanctioned release in China after the reform era was the Harrison Ford vehicle The Fugitive (1993). (5.) For more on this phenomenon and how it dominated Chinese portrayals of America for the next several years, see my article “The Absent American: Figuring the United States in Chinese Cinema of the Reform Era,” in A Companion to Chinese Cinema, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 552–574. (6.) Of the above-mentioned films, the only title to receive commercial distribution (albeit a one-week run at two theaters) in the United States is Feng Xiaogang’s Big Shot’s Funer­ al, starring Donald Sutherland. While the film reportedly grossed a mere $646 at the U.S. box office, it more than paid for the $3.3 million budget with its excellent performance in Chinese theaters, where it was one of the biggest hits of the year. (7.) On the temporary Chinese moratorium on foreign films that went into effect in 2011, see political commentator Fareed Zakaria’s essay (and accompanying video essay), “Why the Transformers can’t beat their way into Beijing,” CNN World, July 10, 2011, retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/10/why-thetransformers-cant-beat-their-way-into-beijing/?iref=allsearch. (8.) With socialism as a pure ideology largely disregarded in favor of market policies, “so­ cialism with Chinese characteristics” is a term often read as code for something akin to “capitalism with Chinese socialist bureaucracy.” (9.) For box office figures, see http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/? id=crouchingtigerhiddendragon.htm. (10.) Author’s interview with Zhang Yimou, November 2006. (11.) Besides scathing print and online reviews of the film, The Promise was also subject of a parody video Murder by Mantou (一個饅頭引發的血案, 2005) by Hu Ge 胡戈, which went viral in late 2005. (12.) Yip Man (1893–1972), the subject of the Yip Man series and The Grandmasters, was a well-known martial artist and teacher who once taught Bruce Lee. Around the time these films were being produced, Bruce Lee reemerged as an important figure in the landscape of contemporary PRC cultural terrain with a popular CCTV miniseries about his life, The Legend of Bruce Lee, newly erected statues, and rebroadcast of his classic films. (13.) Hollywood production house Legendary Entertainment, producer of works such as The Dark Knight, Inception, and the Hangover series, announced a joint venture with Huayi Brothers Media in August 2011. The venture, which has already raised over $220 million, plans to produce one or two “major, event-style films” per year beginning in 2013. Earlier the same month another joint venture was announced between Relativity Media and the Chinese companies Huaxia Film Distribution and Skyland Film-Television Devel­ opment to “develop, produce, distribute and acquire Chinese material that also possesses worldwide appeal.” See Relativity’s press online release: http:// Page 19 of 21

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film www.relativitymediallc.com/news.asp?article={3786DCCD-CD48-4983-9AE5F6B5CE28CE08} or the article at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/22/ hollywood-china-venture-raises-220m/print/ for more details on the Legendary-Huayi ven­ ture. (14.) Author’s interview with Zhang Yimou, September 2010. (15.) Besides the series of film adaptations of classics during the early reform era such as Rickshaw Boy (駱駝祥子, 1982), Memories of Old Beijing (城南舊事, 1982), and The True Story of Ah Q (阿Q正傳, 1983), most of the major films of the 1980s and 1990s, including Old Well (老井, 1987), Hibiscus Town (芙蓉鎮, 1986), Raise the Red Lantern (大紅燈籠高高掛, 1991), To Live (活著, 1994), and Farewell My Concubine (霸王別姬, 1993), were adapted from contemporary literary works. (16.) For a more detailed case study of specific remakes in the contemporary Chinese film industry, see Yiman Wang’s chapter in this volume. (17.) For a sampling of Chinese film posters designed according to Hollywood blockbuster film models, see http://www.wenxuecity.com/news/2012/03/05/1666075.html. (18.) Beyond these studio films there are additional slots reserved for foreign indepen­ dent films, with the number at forty per year in 2012. (19.) Author’s interview with Zhang Yimou, September 2010. (20.) While here I primarily discuss the rise of Chinese bicultural filmmakers and highprofile international casting choices in recent PRC cinema, a much more prevalent exam­ ple of the diversification and opening of Chinese cinema comes via the widespread inte­ gration of the Hong Kong and PRC industries post-1997 and the increasing collaboration between Taiwan film professionals and their PRC counterparts. (21.) Prominent examples of the rise of Chinese dialect filmmaking include the art films of Jia Zhangke and the mainstream comedies of Ning Hao. More recent examples of the growing acceptance of this trend include the Sichuan dialect version of Jiang Wen’s 2010 blockbuster Let the Bullets Fly and Zhang Yimou’s Nanjing Heroes. (22.) For more on the intersection of Afro-Asian cultures, see Afro Asia: Revolutionary Po­ litical and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans, ed. Ho Fred and Mullen Bill V. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). (23.) An interesting counterpoint might be Lust, Caution (色, 戒, 2007), a coproduction helmed by a Taiwanese-American film director Ang Lee, starring a pan-Chinese cast of ac­ tors from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, and the United States, and shot on location in Southeast Asia (after shooting permits were denied in China), but belatedly granted “co­ production” status after shooting. Unlike coproductions like The Karate Kid, which many Chinese audiences seem to think of as “foreign films,” Lust, Caution is typically consid­

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Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid Became a Chinese Film ered an example of Chinese cinema, and there seems little challenge to the film’s “Chi­ nese” status.

Michael Berry

Michael Berry is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the Universi­ ty of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Columbia, 2005), A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia, 2008), Jia Zhangke’s The Home­ town Trilogy (British Film Institute & Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and the forthcom­ ing book Memories of Shadows and Light: In Dialogue with the Cinematic World of Hou Hsiao-hsien (INK, 2012). He is also the translator of several novels, including The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (with Susan Chan Egan) (Columbia, 2008), To Live (Anchor, 2004), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (Columbia, 2002, Anchor, 2004, Faber & Faber, 2004), and Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up (Columbia, 2000).

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema

World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema   Pheng Cheah The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0011

Abstract and Keywords One of the main aims of contemporary world cinema is to bear witness and to make a cel­ luloid record of disappearing forms of human life or communities that are being de­ stroyed by global capitalist modernization so that such cultures can be preserved in pos­ terity for the gaze of the world. This chapter examines the problematic politics of repre­ sentation of commodified world cinema and critical approaches to world cinema, arguing that both are based on a spatialized understanding of the world (following Heidegger's thesis of the becoming-picture of the world) that leads to a conflation of the world with the globe and the obscuring of the normative dimension of the world. This chapter argues that Jia Zhangke’s Still Life exemplifies a different kind of world cinema that explores the normative character of the world by thematizing how worldliness is destroyed by global­ ization even as it points to unexpected resources in globalization processes that can give rise to other worlds within destruction. Keywords: world cinema, globalization, alienation, Three Gorges Dam, capitalist modernity, sociality, worldliness, spatialization, Heidegger, world-picture

World alienation, and not self-alienation as Marx thought, has been the hallmark of the modern age. Hannah Arendt

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema

Figure 10.1 Sanming staring at the river scene

There are two scenes in Jia Zhangke’s 賈樟柯 Still Life (三峡好人, 2006) that can be inter­ preted as an allegory both of the fundamental problematic of world cinema, understood as a forum in which cultures and peoples from different parts of the world can be given accurate filmic representation, and of the status of Jia’s film as an example of world cine­ ma. Significantly, currency notes are a central visual point of reference in both scenes. This imagery suggests the entry of the People’s Republic of China into the global financial system. In the first scene, which occurs at the beginning of the film, Han Sanming, the male protagonist, who has just disembarked from the ferry that has brought him along the Yangtze River to Fengjie, a small town near the Three Gorges Dam designated for flooding, is dragged into a conjuring show. The conjurer chants that when “one floats on water, one will need to rely on U.S. dollars” and transforms some blank paper into euros and then the euros into renminbi. The second transformation takes place directly in front of Sanming. The conjurer taps Sanming’s head twice with the notes, asking him whether he has learned the magic trick. His gang then collects “tuition fees” from the hapless au­ dience for this lesson in changing paper into different currencies. When Sanming does not respond, the gangster asks him sarcastically whether he has heard of intellectual property rights. In the second scene, Sanming, who has landed a job as a demolition worker, tries to identify the hometown of a coworker and to tell others of his own home­ town by referring to the idealized iconic landscapes in the tradition of the shanshui hua (山水畫) landscape images that appear on ten- and fifty-yuan notes, the workers telling each other that their respective hometowns are beautiful based on (p. 191) these idealized images. In the next shot, we see Sanming staring at a still somewhat idyllic misty river scene in the real landscape while comparing it to the image on the ten-yuan note (see figs. 10.1 and 10.2). The following shot is of Fengjie under demolition, where the sounds of the ferry are replaced by demolition hammering.

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema

Figure 10.2 Sanming comparing the scene with the image on the money note

These scenes suggest degradation, loss, and disappearance. The first scene alludes to the damaging social consequences of the opening of the PRC to global capitalist flows by dra­ matizing the entry of the Chinese currency into the forex marketplace and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, with its emphasis on trade-related aspects of intellec­ tual property rights (TRIPS), as conjuration for the purposes of criminal extortion and as initiation into trickery and counterfeit. The second scene contrasts an aestheticized im­ age with what the landscape has become because of the destruction and ruination brought about by infrastructure development. Indeed, whether it is the Three Gorges or Sanming’s hometown, the Hukou Falls on the Yellow River, the physical landscape along with its communal-emotional meaning has been irreparably ruined by demolition and the displacement of people. As objects of beauty, sites of emotional (p. 192) cathexis or com­ munal sentiment, such places have disappeared or are in the constant process of disap­ pearing. They can only be visualized in memory or pictorial representation. When the pic­ torial representation is on a piece of money, we have a classic case of what Marx would call money fetishism: the replacement of social relations between people by money rela­ tions. In a scene replete with irony at the end of the film, Sanming says as he is about to leave Kuimen that he will remember his coworkers whenever he looks at a ten-yuan note. One of the avowed aims of Jia Zhangke’s films is to depict people of marginal social status such as displaced migrant workers who are kept hidden from view by the official images of China disseminated by the PRC state. The life experiences and living conditions of such people are also not visible in the entertainment and popular media, despite the fact that they are a large part of the Chinese masses. As Jia puts it, “I feel that I have the same character as migrant workers, the same sense of reality. I also feel that the movie screen at that time was not really concerned for this kind of person, was completely without any concern. I think that I filmed Xiaowu (小武) because I felt that I had a kind of dissatisfac­ tion, a kind of life experience, the life conditions of many people were hidden from view.”1 Jia thus seeks to give a certain picture of China to the larger world, a portrait of those members of Chinese society whose living conditions are being disrupted and destroyed but who are occluded from the phenomenality of global public light at the very point in history when China is opening up to the capitalist world system under the direction of a socialist regime. In this spirit, he comments in his director’s notes for Still Life that “great Page 3 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema change occurred to this place due to the construction of the Three Gorges hydro project: countless families who lived there for many generations had to relocate to other strange places in the country. The old town with a two thousand year history was to be torn down and submerged under water forever within two years. I entered this disappearing city with my camera to witness demolitions, explosions and collapses.”2 To bear witness and to make a celluloid record of disappearing forms of human life or communities that are being destroyed by global capitalist modernization so that such cul­ tures can be preserved in posterity for the gaze of the world at large: this is one of the main aims of world cinema, whether one views this aim cynically in terms of the commod­ ification of cultural difference for the savvy consumer of global culture or in the vocation­ al terms of critical resistance at the level of subject matter and aesthetic style to Holly­ wood film production. The debate over the term, and the phenomenon of, “world cinema” essentially concerns a politics of representation in the double sense of mediatic depiction (adequate mimesis) and substitution of voice (standing in for others). World cinema is closer to world music than to the Goethean-inspired project of Weltliteratur because it does not have an explicitly elaborated normative dimension.3 First, because world cinema is not given mainstream theatrical release and is largely available through limited art­ house distribution, it relies heavily on the film festival circuit in order to gain internation­ al visibility and acclaim.4 However, the world cinema certified and disseminated through film festivals is often a commodified form of cultural difference that appeals to the tastes of film festival audiences and their touristic desire for consuming (p. 193) visual images of exotic cultures in the same way that in the 1980s world music exploded as a lucrative marketing category and developed to signify “a global industry, one focused on marketing danceable ethnicity and exotic alterity on the world pleasure and commodity map.”5 Second, while one can assume an implied normative charge in critical approaches to world cinema that expose its connections to global cultural commodification and EuroAmerican-centrism and that seek to envision an alternative type of world cinema that re­ jects the dominant center-periphery model in favor of a polycentric model, this normative vocation is reducible to the ethical or just representation of different cultures in all their complexity. The vocation of world cinema would then consist in giving phenomenality— both visibility and audibility—to cultural difference determined as plural spatialized and generally noncoincident identities, even if these identities may be dynamic and fluid. Dif­ ferent but interrelated forms of phenomenality should be distinguished here: commercial visibility, fame and critical recognition, the adequacy or accuracy of a given world cine­ matic representation in relation to its cultural subject, the “right” of non-Western cine­ matic cultures to be seen and heard, and the “authenticity” of the culture being repre­ sented in film, especially if the culture in question is of a social stratum that is socially or politically marginalized. The fundamental motivation behind the affordance of these different forms of phenome­ nality is the urgency of letting both what is occluded by unequal global networks of cine­ matic representation and what is marginalized in an unequal system of global politicaleconomic relations be represented—to let what is obscured be able to speak or figure it­ Page 4 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema self or, at least, to have a representative that can give phenomenality to this subject ei­ ther by speaking in its place and creating images of it or letting it speak and relay images of itself through cinematic form. Hence, a tacit isomorphism is posited between inequali­ ty at the level of networks of cinematic representation and the inequality of the contem­ porary world system. For present purposes, what is important is that this isomorphism means that the world in the discourse of world cinema is a spatial category. The discourse of world cinema conflates the world with the globe, the object that processes of globaliza­ tion produce. The world is the phenomenality that global networks bring. Hence, global­ ization is regarded as conducive to the critical type of world cinema and even its material condition of possibility because, first, it enables new global distribution networks and, second, the technologies that develop with globalization create new channels of viewing. These networks and channels traverse national borders and escape the limitations of na­ tion-state distribution and cultural policies in the same way that globalization undermines the limitations of the political-economic sovereignty of the territorial state by breaking down national barriers, thereby preparing the way for a more democratic world system. This conflation of a world with the globe is best seen in the following quotation from a re­ cent academic essay on world cinema in which the world is defined as a global process, in terms of space, or more precisely, as circulation in global space: “World cinema is simply the cinema of a world. It has no centre. It is not the other, but it is us. It has no beginning and no end, but it is a global process. World cinema, as the world itself, is circulation.”6 (p. 194)

The problem with a spatialized understanding of world cinema is twofold. First,

the conflation of the world with global processes necessarily carries with it the residual developmentalist values of the discourse of economic globalization. Although the critical vision of world cinema seeks to overcome inequality in cinematic representation in a way that either alerts us to inequality in the political-economic world system or somehow di­ rectly overcomes political-economic inequality, the material conditions and financial means for the creation of this sort of world cinema necessarily presuppose an unequal world system. Economic inequality is conducive to the promotion of exotic authenticity in aesthetic production. We see this most clearly in the funding proposal language of the World Cinema Fund, a funding body set up by the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) in cooperation with the Goethe Institute, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Deutsche Welle, as part of the Berlin In­ ternational Film Festival. Film production in less-developed regions of the world is deemed worthy of funding only if the proposed films express an authentic cultural voice because supporting such films will enhance cultural diversity in German cinema: The World Cinema Fund [WCF] works to develop and support cinema in regions with a weak film infrastructure, while fostering cultural diversity in German cine­ mas. The World Cinema Fund supports films that could not be made without addi­ tional funding: films that stand out with an unconventional aesthetic approach, that tell powerful stories and transmit an authentic image of their cultural roots.7

Page 5 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema A requirement is that the director originates from one of the listed regions. This is a precondition for applications since the “voice” of a native director and his/her connection to the identity and reality of his/her homeland are essential for the WCF. The WCF regions are Africa, Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and the Caucasus.8 The purpose of the World Cinema Fund is to support films from regions whose film cultures are endangered by political and or economic crises. The World Cinema Fund is intended to help provide a higher profile and increased accessibility for these films in Germany and to enable their presentation to an international audi­ ence. Projects eligible for funding should deal with the cultural identity of their re­ gions and should contribute to the development of the local film industry.9 Second, if the very picturing of the world, the conceptualization of the world as picture, is fundamental to processes of globalization that create inequality, does not the critical vi­ sion of world cinema unwittingly reinforce and contribute to these deeper processes that lead to inequality because in the very attempt to rectify inequality, its politics of represen­ tation, which tries to give phenomenality to marginalized peoples, repeats the reduction of the world to a picture? The argument about the negative consequences (p. 195) of the becoming-picture of the world is, of course, Heidegger’s. The metaphysical or ontological basis of modernity and its scientific view of the world, Heidegger suggests, is the objecti­ fication of beings in which their being is determined as the certitude of existence that corresponds with a showing or representing (Vorstellen) that issues from the anthropos as a knowing and calculating subject. This representing, Vor-stellen, is literally a fore-set­ ting and setting-before whereby a being is placed, in an anticipatory manner, in front of the human subject. The being is fixed in place, and this makes the being into an object, thereby reducing the being of this being to its objectness.10 Four aspects of Heidegger’s argument are important for present purposes. First, this set­ ting-in-place of being so that it can be determined as object means that the world as such is grasped as picture, indeed, becomes picture, that is to say, a system in which each of the contents is in a fixed relation to each other. This is because the fixing in place of an object in front of the subject permanently fixes it in a relation of structured unity to other objects as part of a systemic whole that is accessible to the calculations of the subject, thereby rendering a given object ready or at-hand for the subject.11 Second, because it reduces the being of beings to their representedness (Vorgestelltheit), the becoming-picture of the world makes beings purposive for humankind, makes them available to be disposed by it. The world as picture thus simultaneously establishes the representing human subject as the central point of reference for all beings within the frame of the world-picture since all objects are by definition referred back to the subject’s power of representation that constitutes them as objects and subordinates them to it in that process. As Heidegger puts it, to represent (vorstellen) means “the placement before and in relation to oneself” [das vor sich hin und zu sich her Stellen].12 Hence, when the world becomes picture, “man…becomes that being upon which every being, in its way of Page 6 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema being and its truth, is founded. Man becomes the referential center of beings as such” [Der Mensch wird zu jenem Seienden, auf das sich alles Seiende in der Art seines Seins und seiner Wahrheit grü ndet. Der Mensch wird zur Bezugsmitte des Seienden als solchen].13 Third, because every being is always forcibly related back to humankind as the represent­ ing subject, the human being becomes the source of standards, the realm from which standards are given.14 This constituting activity of humankind as the representing subject who puts every being in picture, Heidegger argues, is the ontological basis of modernity. The interminable innovation and endless renewal that typifies modernity presupposes the human control of nature. Such control is predicated on “the realm of human capacity as the domain of measuring and execution for the purpose of the mastery of beings as a whole” [den Bereich der menschlichen Vermö gen als den Maß - und Vollzugsraum fü r die Bewä ltigung des Seienden im Ganzen besetzt].15 Modernity is thus the conquest of the world as picture. This is epitomized by the appearance of the gigantic (das Riesen­ hafte), “destruction of great distances by the airplane,” “the representations of foreign and remote worlds in their everydayness produced at will by the flick of a switch,” that is, the space-time compression that is the hallmark of globalization.16 Fourth, this setting up of the human being as the measure of all beings has disastrous ex­ istential consequences. Insofar as all beings are now reduced to objects of representa­ tion, they suffer a loss of being (Seins verlustig).17 This evacuation of being (p. 196) is compensated for by the attribution of values (Wert) to objects and their constructed being (ausgelegten Sein), but such values are merely “the powerless [kraftlos] and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background [hintergrundlos].” “No one dies for mere values,” Heidegger poignantly re­ marks.18 It is in this sense that modernity is characterized by the flight or loss of gods (Entgö tterung). This is not merely the elimination of gods with the rise of secularism. It is instead the fundamental evacuation or disappearance of any being that is not reducible to the human subject of representation. The relation to the divine persists in modernity but only by being transformed into the religious experience of a subject. Heidegger’s account of the becoming-picture of the world emphasizes the destructive consequences of the spatialization of the world in modernity. In her less metaphysical ac­ count of worldliness, Hannah Arendt suggests that the world alienation that typifies modernity is the direct result of a decisive change in the character of capitalist produc­ tion. For Arendt, a world is the milieu in which human life can be received, sustained, and endowed with a meaningful permanence in its very evanescence. Worlds are repeatedly constituted through human endeavor. In the first instance, the repeated use of objects made for use by human work, as distinguished from labor, which only creates things for consumption, engenders an enduring web of relations.19 But what has greater perma­ nence than object-directed intercourse are the ties created by action and speech since these bonds are intrinsically meaningful “phenomena” that transcend biological life and mere instrumentality. However, in modernity, capitalist expropriation, which is set off by the liberation of labor power as a natural process, involves the relentless transformation Page 7 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema of wealth into capital whereby any wealth generated by expropriation is “fed back into the process to generate further expropriations, greater productivity, and more appropria­ tion.”20 This endless process of productivity causes world alienation because it destroys the basic condition for worldliness: the durability and stability of things that create ties of belonging to a common world.21 The problem of the spatialization of the world seems especially pertinent to world cinema in comparison to world literature or world music. For although the different types of world culture presuppose the same process of spatialization, world cinema reinforces the reduction of the world to picture since its politics of representation is essentially one of restoring justice in the world by means of more adequate and, therefore, more ethical representational pictures of the world. I want to suggest that Jia Zhangke’s Still Life is an example of another kind of world cinema that explores the normative character of the world and critically reinscribes the Heideggerian problematic of the becoming-picture and spatialization of the world. On the one hand, Jia’s film foregrounds the distinction be­ tween the globe and the world. It thematizes the destruction of the normative force of worldliness by spatialization by portraying how globalization, the direct consequence of spatialization, makes a world through ruination, or better yet, makes a ruined world. On the other hand, however, the film also suggests that there may be quite unexpected re­ sources in processes of globalization that can give rise to other worlds within destruction. Such resources for world creation are unexpected because they are entirely fortuitous and contingent, completely a matter of chance. Jia’s films, especially those after his Fengyang trilogy, portray the integration of China into the global capitalist system as a form of destruction: the creation of a degrad­ (p. 197)

ed world, a world that has been denuded by the destruction of buildings, mass displace­ ment, and environmental pollution as a result of overly rapid industrialization. Nothing epitomizes such destruction more than the Three Gorges Dam. The PRC state marked the project’s completion in 2006 by a list of world records. It is the world’s largest dam, the biggest power plant, the biggest hydroelectric project, and the biggest consumer of dirt, stone, concrete, and steel.22 The project has subsequently created ecological and geologi­ cal problems such as water pollution, drought, and the danger of earthquake and land­ slides.23 And although hydroelectronic power is a cleaner form of electricity, the project brought about the record-setting displacement of 1.4 million people, many of whom have not rebuilt their lives after eviction.24 On its face, Still Life is a film about the destruction of the environment and historical local communities for the purpose of creating energy sources for industrial development as China enters into the global capitalist economy. The justification of the Three Gorges project in the informational film that plays on the ferry that Shen Hong, the main female protagonist, takes on her way to Shanghai announces that the dream of party leaders has now been made into reality. Still Life suggests that this kind of destructiveness may be inevitable, a necessary part of economic growth: the mining of coal, the more widely used energy source in China’s power plants, is similarly sacrificial because of the dangerous character of coal mining, Hanming’s source of liveli­ hood in Shanxi. Indeed, even the demolition work Hanming undertakes in Fengjie while searching for Missy Ma, his estranged wife, is an industry of its own and a source of Page 8 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema livelihood for migrant workers. But the radical ambivalence of this source of subsistence is illustrated by the fact that as part of his job, Sanming tears down the rental flat where he had initially lived. The film’s Chinese title, which literally means “The good people of the Three Gorges,” with its obvious allusion to Brecht’s Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (The good person of Sichuan), seems to value the authenticity or at least the morality of its central characters under chaotic circumstances that are structurally conducive to greed, exploitation, and corruption. The ringtone of Sanming’s mobile phone sings of how good-hearted people are blessed, to which Mark, a young gangster who is also a leader of a demolition crew, responds by saying that there are no longer any good people in Fengjie. The film’s two main plotlines—Sanming’s search for Missy Ma and Shen Hong’s attempt to find her hus­ band, Guo Bin—are driven by this tension between the ruined external physical and cor­ rupt social environment and the moral integrity of the two main protagonists. The two quests illustrate the entire spectrum of social corruption, from that of the petty gang­ sters, thugs, and cheats Sanming encounters to the large-scale corruption of an emerging business elite and local government administration in which Guo Bin is embroiled. As part of the gradual privatization of local government-owned enterprises, the local government of Fengjie has sold the town’s key assets to the mysterious Ding Ya-ling, a wealthy busi­ nesswoman from Xiamen who may be having an affair with Guo Bin, her henchman. The factory where Guo Bin used to work closed down a few years ago, and the film’s viewer sees together with Shen Hong in the course of her quest a photograph of the destruction of the building of the Education Bureau in 2002 and the actual demolition of a huge (p. 198) factory. Privatization is necessarily facilitated by violent expropriative gangster activity that is rooted in the privileges accorded to former army ranks and party cadres. Guo Bin, we learn later, is Mark’s boss. The unraveling of the ethical fabric of socialist so­ ciety by privatization is the bitter ironic truth of the Chinese communist dream. In a scene set in an open-air dancing club on a terrace overlooking a bridge where Shen Hong awaits Guo Bin’s arrival, a businessman boasts to his friend that this bridge he has just built costs 240 million yuan. Before the lights on the bridge are turned on for VIP guests, his friend replies that he has made Chairman Mao’s dream come true. The gap between the moral interiority of the two main characters and the destruction and radical change of the external surroundings is expressed as a conflict between two differ­ ent modes of temporality. The shocking rapidity of modernization and development and its violent impact on the lives of the inhabitants of the local communities in the Three Gorges, indicated by the din of demolition, is contrasted through long-take sequences with the relative slowness of everyday experience. The disjunction between these two temporalities suggests the difficulty of registering and comprehending what is happening in the outside world on the part of many of the people affected, their inability to keep up with the temporal present, the eternal “now” of modernization. This makes them anachro­ nistic and effete, literally “out of time.” Sanming is unaware that Fengjie is no longer un­ der the jurisdiction of the Sichuan authorities, and he has an outdated address for Broth­ er Ma, Missy Ma’s elder brother. Shen Hong only has a seven-digit phone number for her husband when all phone numbers have been of eight digits for a long while. To be left be­ Page 9 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema hind and to be left out of the time of modernization is precisely to be left out of the world created by China’s opening up to capitalist modernization. At the same time, this new world is also built on the shattering of other worlds: the bonds of affection that tie San­ ming to Missy Ma and Shen Hong to Guo Bin have been broken and require repair if they are not to be decisively abandoned. Jia’s authorial message is ultimately an uplifting one. In his director’s notes, he observes that “in the roaring noise and fluttering dust, I gradually felt that ‘life itself’ (生命本身) re­ ally could blossom in brilliant colors even in a place with such desperation.”25 This blos­ soming of life is a process of creation or natality that is future-looking rather than the res­ urrection of an authentic past rooted in idealized Chinese rural cultural traditions cele­ brated by the World Cinema Fund. Still Life explicitly pokes fun at nostalgia for a lost past. When Sanming begins to establish a friendly rapport with Mark and tells him of his past with Missy Ma, Mark comments that Sanming is “quite nostalgic.” When Sanming adds that “we remember our pasts,” Mark hams it up and says that present-day society doesn’t suit them because they are too nostalgic, a lesson he attributes to Chow Yun-Fat 周潤發, the lead actor in the Hong Kong gangster film A Better Tomorrow (英雄本色, 1986), which is playing on a television in the room. In part, this ridiculing of nostalgia occurs be­ cause it is impossible for authentic traditions to survive intact in contemporary China. But more importantly, there is nothing to be nostalgic about because the authentic past was never ideal. As Sanming reveals in his narrative about why he has come to Fengjie, this is a town where women outnumber the men, and it is a common practice for women to be sold into the countryside as wives. This practice of human trafficking is the result of (p. 199) the conjunction between the PRC’s population control policies and the traditional patriarchal practice where girls from poor families were sold into bondage as maidser­ vants, secondary wives, or prostitutes. Missy Ma’s life is entirely determined by her being the object of repeated trafficking. Sanming had bought her to be his wife for 3,000 yuan, and she had escaped with their daughter after years of marriage. Hence, in Sanming’s case, there is no going back but only a moving forward, a living on or surviving, with the hope of building a new future by improving on a past based on sexual-economic exploita­ tion. What is significant is that the film depicts the establishment of new ties of solidarity and community and the restoring of sundered ties of affection during the course of the two main characters’ quests as processes that involve the sharing of mundane objects of con­ sumption and the interruption of the time of modernization and the spatialization of the world that underwrites modernity. In the first place, the creation of new forms of sociality in the film always involves the circulation and use of daily consumer items such as ciga­ rettes (煙), liquor (酒), tea (茶), and candy (糖). These are the four subheadings that are used to divide the film, much as a novel is divided into different parts. Such objects have a curious status. On the one hand, as objects for consumption, they seem to allude in a quasi-Marxist fashion to the use-value of objects and, thus, the importance of producing useful things as opposed to commodities. On the other hand, they are clearly consumer goods since, other than tea, none of these items falls within the group of daily necessities for a meal listed in the idiomatic phrase “firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, Page 10 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema tea” (柴米油鹽醬醋茶). Yet, unlike the tools that Arendt regards as the objective basis of a world, they are clearly fungible and meant for consumption. At the same time, although they are the “meanest” of consumer goods, they do not exist to satisfy basic needs. In­ stead, they afford simple pleasures. The film suggests that such simple pleasures are the basis of the circle of sharing, sociality, or community in everyday life. Mark shares sweets with Sanming. Sanming shares cigarettes with his coworkers, and in a scene of great sig­ nificance that we will discuss shortly, he shares cigarettes with Mark’s departed spirit. In a touching scene in a partially demolished building where Sanming is emotionally reunit­ ed with Missy Ma after he has pledged to redeem her for 30,000 yuan from the man who has bought her from her brother, she gives him candy. As they turn to gaze through the hole of the building at the ongoing spectacle of crumbling buildings outside, he reaches out and holds her from behind in a protective gesture that suggests the creation of a smaller world within the larger world that is falling apart (see fig. 10.3).

Figure 10.3 Sanming holds Missy Ma to make a world

The importance of small consumer goods in the creation of solidarities and affective ties indicates that notwithstanding the film’s trenchant critique of capitalist globalization, the circulation of commodities can give rise to new worlds in unexpected ways. This theme of radical randomness and chance is further explored in the idea that flows of culture and technology can also facilitate the creation of other worlds in an entirely nonanticipatable manner by rending the perpetual presence of the temporality of modern development so that something new can be given place. A striking sequence of scenes toward the end of the film portrays how the global circulation of popular culture and technology interrupts the temporality of hyperdevelopment and literally puts it out of joint. But the disjunction in temporality that takes place in this sequence of scenes (p. 200) is not the tension be­ tween a backward temporality and the temporality of modernization that is passively suf­ fered by those who cannot keep up. Instead, it is a disjunctive synthesis between the tem­ porality of postmodern technological culture and that of the everyday experience of the provincial masses insofar as the former has suffused the latter and become appropriated by the masses to the point that it is now an integral part of their daily lives. This disjunc­ tive synthesis tears the temporality of modern hyperdevelopment, points beyond it to an­ other temporality, and opens up a new world. In the first scene, we see opera singers in full traditional costume and makeup playing videogames in Sanming’s lodgings, indicat­ Page 11 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema ing the extent of the integration of postmodern technology in daily leisure time (see fig. 10.4). Meanwhile, Mark has gone missing. He has been killed in a demolition accident (or by foul play) and is now buried beneath a pile of rubble, the detritus of modernization. But no one knows where he is.

Figure 10.4 Opera singers playing video games

Figure 10.5 Sanming locates Mark’s body using his phone

Figure 10.6 Sanming lights a cigarette for Mark

Page 12 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema

Figure 10.7 Cigarettes as a ritual offering for Mark

Figure 10.8 Mark’s corpse is sent away by boat

In the next scene, Sanming, who has developed a friendship with Mark, manages to lo­ cate him by calling his cell phone (see fig. 10.5). The ringtone is the theme song from (p. 201) The Bund (上海灘), a popular Hong Kong TV series from 1980 about the glory days of Shanghai modernity and its underworld society prior to World War II. The lead actor in the series is also Chow Yun-Fat, whom Mark idolizes and mimics. The ringtone sounds through the rubble. The rubble signifies by singing, and what it sings is a simulacrum of an alternative modernity. The Cantonese lyrics compare the drama of life in Shanghai with the ebb and flow of waves in the Huangpu River. Shanghai is situated at the mouth of the Yangtze River and bisected by the Huangpu River, the Yangtze’s tributary. It is liter­ ally at the geographical source of the water that needs to be controlled to produce hydro­ electric power. Moreover, as a major financial center, historically and in the present, Shanghai is an important site for the spread of capitalist modernity and economic and technological change in China. Can contemporary China revive the excitement of those glory days? I cannot be sure, but the film’s tone at this point is surely satirical. Despite the celebration of the Shanghai version of modernity in its lyrics, the ringtone is at the same time the means by which this young man who is scarcely more than a boy can be given the semblance of a proper burial and mourning according to bastardized traditional religious rites. Cigarettes also play a crucial role here. In the scene following the retrieval of the body from the pile of rubble, Sanming lights three cigarettes and places them in the manner of joss sticks in front of the makeshift memorial altar he has set up with a photo of Mark (see figs. 10.6 and 10.7). Mark’s corpse is then sent away on a boat in a Page 13 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema quasi-ritualistic ceremony, presumably for proper burial (see fig. 10.8). Hence, a meaning­ ful world is opened up—the community between Sanming, Mark, and other coworkers in his death. But this world is opened up as a result of chance and contingency rather than the ability of modern reason to control time and deploy objects in a spatialized world. It is opened up by the misuse of technology and the ironic circulation of Hong Kong popular culture, by a use and an end that was not intended or designed. As well as being a means of communication, the cell phone is often used by its owner to tell the time. But neither of these uses is pertinent for a dead owner. The force in question is technical. But it is not controllable and instead disjoins the temporality of modernization in at least two ways. First, although it is an entirely modern or postmodern product, (p. 202) (p. 203) it becomes synthesized with quasi-traditional, “premodern” rituals of mourning that are modified through ad hoc practices. Second, it is not a temporal force because it comes from be­ yond the world of presence. And yet this uncanny force opens up another time, a future. It enables a friendship and opens up a world or being-with that friendship implies. It facil­ itates both the survival of the boy in memory and the continuing viability in daily life of the transformed rituals that enable his commemoration as practices that can create a world. Simply put, the picture of the good people of the Three Gorges that Still Life renders does not subscribe to the principles of the politics of representation of world cinema in its re­ ceived meanings nor the world as picture that world cinema presupposes. The tenacious­ ness of life, its capacity to keep on blooming in the ruined world of modern capitalist hy­ perdevelopment, is a matter of the random synthesis of disjunctive temporalities and the adaptive conjunction of modern/postmodern technologies and “premodern” traditional rit­ uals in daily practices. It cannot be a matter of rational decision and control, the decisive control that characterizes the world as picture. The world cinema exemplified by Still Life is one in which worlds arise from radical chance. As Sanming and Shen Hong leave the Three Gorges area and the frame of the film, it appears that they have both come to oppo­ site but equally courageous decisions. Sanming refuses to accept that the cutting of ties with Missy Ma is irreparable and makes the heroic promise to redeem her from the man to whom she has been sold yet again by her brother. Shen Hong, on the other hand, is firm in her resolve to sever her ties with Guo Bin. But both endings are equally marked by radical uncertainty. Is Sanming a foolhardy romantic who puts his life at risk for a woman who has deserted him because he is an ignorant, uneducated, but good-natured provin­ cial? He can only fulfill his promise to redeem her by returning to the life-endangering job of a coal miner. In contradistinction, is the educated nurse, Shen Hong, wise because she prudently decides to cut her losses with Guo Bin, confident in her calculations that she will find happiness elsewhere? Or has Sanming’s love for Missy Ma and his daughter giv­ en him an aim in life that drives him to become a leader who will find jobs in the coal mine for his coworkers from the demolition crew, whereas Shen Hong is the one who moves toward an uncertain future because she still foolishly dreams of love with her new man? If radical chance is that which lets a new world come amid the ruined one made by globalization, it can guarantee nothing, least of all that the world it brings into phenome­

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema nality is one that will last and endure. What is its very promise is also a principle of ruina­ tion, perhaps ruination itself.

Works Cited Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Chauduri, Shohini. Contemporary World Cinema: Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and South Asia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Cheah, Pheng. “What Is a World? On World Literature as Cosmopolitanism.” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 137.3 (Summer 2008): 26–38. Dennison, Stephanie, and Song Hwee Lim. “Introduction: Situating World Cinema as a Theoretical Problem.” Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. Ed. Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim. London: Wallflower Press, 2006. Eckholm, Erik. “As Dam on Yangtze Closes, Chinese Tally Gain and Loss,” New York Times, June 9, 2003. Retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/ 2003/06/09/world/as-dam-on-yangtze-closes-chinese-tally-gain-and-loss.html? ref=threegorgesdam. Feld, Steven. “A Sweet Lullaby for World Music.” Public Culture 12.1 (2000): 145–171. Heidegger, Martin. “The Age of the World Picture.” Off the Beaten Track. Ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 57–85. Heidegger, Martin. “Die Zeit des Weltbildes.” Gesamtausgabe. Vol 1.5. Holzwege. Frank­ furt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977. 75–113. Jia Zhangke 賈樟柯. “Jia Zhangke: Zai ‘Zhantai’ shang dengdai” 賈樟柯: 在 “站台” 上等待 [Jia Zhangke: Waiting at the Platform]. Wo de sheyingji bu sahuang: Xianfeng dianying ren dang’an, shengyu 1961–1970 我的攝影機不撒謊: 先鋒電影人檔案, 生於 1961–1970 [My camera doesn’t lie: Files of avant-garde Chinese filmmakers born between 1961 and 1970]. Ed. Cheng Qingsong 程青鬆 and Huang Ou 黃鷗. Beijing: China Friendship Press, 2002. 341– 379. Nagib, Lúcia. “Towards a Positive Definition of World Cinema.” Remapping World Cine­ ma: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. Ed. Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim. London: Wallflower Press, 2006. 30–37. Roberts, Martin. “‘Baraka’: World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry.” Cinema Jour­ nal 37.3 (Spring 1998): 62–82. Wines, Michael. “China Admits Problems with Three Gorges Dam.” New York Times, May 19, 2011. Retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/ world/asia/20gorges.html?_r=1.

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema Wong, Edward. “Three Gorges Dam Is Said to Hurt Areas Downstream.” New York Times, June 2, 2011. Retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/ world/asia/03china.html. Yardley, Jim. “Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for Their Human Costs.” New York Times, November 19, 2007. Retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/ 2007/11/19/world/asia/19dam.html?pagewanted=all.

Notes: (1.) “Jia Zhangke: Zai ‘Zhantai’ shang dengdai” 賈樟柯: 在 “ 站台 ”上等待 [Jia Zhangke: Wait­ ing at the Platform], in Wo de sheyingji bu sahuang: Xianfeng dianying ren dang’an, shengyu 1961–1970 我的攝影機不撒謊: 先鋒電影人檔案, 生於 1961–1970 [My camera doesn’t lie: Files of avant-garde Chinese filmmakers, born between 1961 and 1970], ed. Cheng Qingsong 程青鬆 and Huang Ou 黃鷗 (Beijing: China Friendship Press, 2002), 362. (2.) Jia Zhanke, “Director’s Notes” printed on the sleeve of the DVD. The notes appear in both Chinese and English on the sleeve, and the English translation cited here has been modified. (3.) Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim suggest that world cinema, world literature, and world music are similar because “they are categories created in the Western world to refer to cultural products and practices that are mainly non-Western.” “Introduction: Situ­ ating World Cinema as a Theoretical Problem,” in Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, ed. Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim (London: Wall­ flower Press, 2006), 1–2. But this misses the normative dimension of Weltliteratur, which I have elaborated in Pheng Cheah, “What Is a World? On World Literature as Cosmopoli­ tanism,” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 137.3 (Summer 2008): 26–38. (4.) See Shohini Chauduri, Contemporary World Cinema: Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and South Asia (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 3–6. (5.) For an incisive critique of the relation between world cinema and industrialized glob­ al culture that draws an analogy between world cinema and world music, see Martin Roberts, “‘Baraka’: World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry,” Cinema Journal 37.3 (Spring 1998): 62–82. On world music as a commercial marketing tool, see Steven Feld, “A Sweet Lullaby for World Music,” Public Culture 12.1 (2000): 145–171. The quote is from Feld, p. 151. (6.) Lúcia Nagib, “Towards a Positive Definition of World Cinema,” in Dennison and L, Remapping World Cinema, 35. (7.) http://www.berlinale.de/en/branche/world_cinema_fund/wcf_profil/index.html. (8.) http://www.berlinale.de/en/branche/world_cinema_fund/richtlinien_formulare/ index.html. Page 16 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema (9.) WCF Guidelines, http://www.berlinale.de/media/pdf_word/world_cinema_fund/ richtlinien_pdf/WCF_Guidelines_en.pdf. (10.) Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in Off the Beaten Track, ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 66, translation modified; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” in Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 1.5, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), 87. Subsequent Hei­ degger citations are all taken from these two texts. The longer passage from which the preceding quote was taken is as follows: “This objectification of beings is first accom­ plished in a setting-before, aimed at bringing each being before it in such a way that the man who calculates can be sure—and that means certain—of the being… It is in the meta­ physics of Descartes that, for the first time, the being is defined as the objectness of rep­ resentation, and truth as the certainty of representation” [Diese Vergegenstä ndlichung des Seienden vollzieht sich in einem Vor-stellen, das darauf zielt, jegliches Seiendes so vor sich zu bringen, daß der rechnende Mensch des Seienden sicher und d.h. gewiß sein kann….Erstmals wird das Seiende als Gegenstä ndlichkeit des Vorstellens und die Wahrheit als Gewiß heit des Vorstellens in der Metaphysik des Descartes bestimmt]. Hei­ degger is presumably drawing on the connection between Vorstellung and the Latin, repraesentatio, found in Kant, where Vorstellung refers to a priori mental principles or “images” such as conceptions, intuitions, and ideas that are employed by our cognitive faculties, as opposed to Darstellung, the power of presentation by which a concept is giv­ en actuality by being exhibited in intuition. (11.) Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” 67–68; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” 89: “That we are ‘in the picture’ about something means not just that the being is placed before, represented by, us. It means, rather, that it stands before us together with what belongs to and stands together with it as a system. To be ‘in the picture’ resonates with: being well informed, being equipped and prepared. Where the world becomes picture, beings as a whole are set in place as that for which man is prepared; that which, therefore, he correspondingly intends to bring before him, have before him, and, thereby, in a decisive sense, place before him….Understood in an essential way, world picture does not mean “picture of the world” but, rather, the world grasped as picture. Beings as a whole are now taken in such a way that a being is first and only in being insofar as it is set in place by representing-producing humankind.” [“Wir sindü ber etwas im Bilde” meint nicht nur, daß das Seiende unsü berhaupt vorgestellt ist, sondern daß es in all dem, was zu ihm gehö rt und in ihm zusammensteht, als System vor uns steht. “Im Bilde sein,” darin schwingt mit: das Bescheid-Wissen, das Gerü stetsein und sich darauf Einrichten. Wo die Welt zum Bilde wird, ist das Seiende im Ganzen angesetzt als jenes, worauf der Mensch sich einrichtet, was er deshalb entsprechend vor sich bringen und vor sich haben und somit in einem entschiedenen Sinne vor sich stellen will….Weltbild, wesentlich ver­ standen, meint daher nicht ein Bild von der Welt, sondern die Welt als Bild begriffen. Das Seiende im Ganzen wird jetzt so genommen, daß er erst und nur seiend ist, sofern es durch den vorstellend-herstellenden Menschen gestellt ist]. (12.) Martin Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” 69; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” 92. Page 17 of 19

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema (13.) Martin Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” 66–67; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” 88. (14.) Martin Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” 69; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” 91: “Representation here means:…to relate it [the present-at-hand] to oneself, the represen­ ter, and, in this relation, to force it back to oneself as the norm-giving domain….[M]an sets himself forth as the scene in which, henceforth, beings must set-themselves-before, present themselves—be, that is to say, in the picture. Man becomes the representative of beings in the sense of the objective.” [Vorstellen bedeutet hier:…auf sich, den Vorstellen­ den zu, beziehen und in diesen Bezug zu sich als den maß gebenden Bereich zurü ckzwin­ gen… Damit setzt sich der Mensch selbst als die Szene, in der das Seiende fortan sich vor-stellen, prä sentieren, d.h. Bild sein muß. Der Mensch wird der Reprä sentant des Seienden im Sinne des Gegenstä ndigen]. (15.) Martin Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” 69; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” 92. (16.) Martin Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” 71; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” 95. (17.) Martin Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” 77; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” 101. (18.) Martin Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” 77; “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” 102. (19.) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 94. (20.) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 255. (21.) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 255–56: “[The productive process] remains bound to the principle of world alienation from which it sprang; the process can continue only provided that no worldly durability and stability is permitted to interfere, only as long as all worldly things, all end products of the productive process, are fed back into it at an ever-increased speed. In other words, the process of wealth accumulation, as we know it, stimulated by the life process and in turn stimulating human life, is possible only if the world and the very worldliness of man are sacrificed.” (22.) Jim Yardley, “Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for Their Human Costs,” New York Times, November 19, 2007, retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/ 2007/11/19/world/asia/19dam.html?ref=threegorgesdam (23.) Edward Wong, “Three Gorges Dam is Said to Hurt Areas Downstream,” New York Times, June 2, 2011, retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/ 2011/06/03/world/asia/03china.html?_r=1. (24.) Erik Eckholm, “As Dam on Yangtze Closes, Chinese Tally Gain and Loss,” June 9, 2003, New York Times, retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/ 2003/06/09/world/as-dam-on-yangtze-closes-chinese-tally-gain-and-loss.html? ref=threegorgesdam, and Michael Wines, “China Admits Problems with Three Gorges

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World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s as World Cinema Dam,” New York Times, May 19, 2011, retrieved October 14, 2012, from http:// www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/asia/20gorges.html?_r=1. (25.) Jia Zhanke, “Director’s Notes” on sleeve of DVD. Translation modified.

Pheng Cheah

Pheng Cheah is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1999. He has published extensively on the theo­ ry and practice of cosmopolitanism. He is the author of Spectral Nationality: Pas­ sages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (Columbia Uni­ versity Press, 2003) and Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Harvard University Press, 2006). He has co-edited Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (U of Minnesota P, 1998), Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson (Routledge, 2003), and Derrida and the Time of the Political (Duke UP, 2009). He is completing a book on theories of the world and world literature from the postcolonial world in an age of financial globalization and a related He book on globalization and the three Chinas as seen from the perspectives of the independent cinema of Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming-Liang and Fruit Chan.

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form

The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural National­ ism and Cinematic Form   Stephen Teo The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0012

Abstract and Keywords The Chinese opera film is one of the least understood and appreciated of the genres in Chinese cinema. In fact, the genre is as old as Chinese cinema itself, but, despite the inti­ mate connection between opera and cinema, the opera film remains an obscure form. This chapter examines the genre from its early beginnings to its development under the Maoist regime in the 1950s and its transference to the Hong Kong film industry. One of its principal subgenres, the huangmei diao, is put in focus since it became probably the most representative musical form of the Shaw Brothers studio in the 1960s. Classical films including Shaw Brothers' Liang Shanbo yu Zhu Yingtai, or in English, The Love Eterne (1963), and the Mainland Chinese version of the same opera first released in 1953 and which inspired the huangmei diao fad in Hong Kong, are analyzed. Keywords: opera film, Chinese cinema, Hong Kong cinema, cultural nationalism, huangmei diao

The Chinese “opera film” (戲曲片), one of the most unique forms in world cinema, has been mostly ignored in the critical literature on film and remains largely unexamined in the literature on Chinese cinema published in English in the past twenty years or so.1 Historically, the genre has excited little or no interest from the West, though Chinese crit­ ics have all along affirmed or reaffirmed its value. The opera film has functioned like “a flower to cinema’s green leaf,” according to Chen Shaozhou 陳少舟.2 But even Chinese critics regard the genre as more or less a relic of the past whose relevance to the present development of Chinese cinema is ambiguous at best. This chapter makes a case for the opera film as a truly significant genre in Chinese cine­ ma. Aesthetically, it is the most distinctive of all Chinese genres and is often recognized as a quintessential embodiment of a cultural-nationalist form in Chinese cinema. Perhaps because of its cultural-nationalistic elements, the opera film has been at the vanguard of historical experiments serving as a test model for the very development of cinema in Chi­ na. The first Chinese film, Dingjun Mountain (定軍山), reportedly made in 1905, consists of an extract from Beijing opera, and furthermore opera would later provide the vehicle through which Chinese filmmakers introduced color and sound. As a result of its pivotal Page 1 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form position in these experimental stages of cinema, the opera film has been featured at the heart of the theoretical discourse surrounding cinema’s mimetic conventions or its indexi­ cality to the real world. Opera’s own mimetic tradition is perceived to be different, which may explain the “failure” of some early but crucial works in the opera film genre. The virtual disappearance of opera film from contemporary Chinese and Hong Kong cine­ ma raises questions concerning the viability of the genre as a cinematic form. Is the genre too much of a cultural-nationalist artifact? Is it a synthesis of an indigenous genre (opera) and a foreign mode of production (cinema)? Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh has described (p. 210) the process of “sinification” by which cinematic genres are granted Chinese char­ acteristics so that cinema, being foreign to China, can develop in a Chinese environment.3 How does this notion of sinification relate to the opera film? Unlike other genres such as melodrama, comedy, or action adventure, the opera film never really needed to be “sini­ fied.” Instead, I argue in this chapter, the issue was more that opera film was already too sinified, which in turn presented problems for how the genre could be adapted to the modern form of cinema. The cinematic form, accordingly, suggests an abiding contradiction in its integration of opera. The fundamental problem that will be addressed here concerns the idea of cinema being, as Weihong Bao has put it, a “material embodiment of Western technology and re­ alistic aesthetics” that is fundamentally challenged by “a self-conscious performance tra­ dition that resisted the easy objectification of the realistic apparatus and representational system.”4 This chapter will investigate the form of the opera film, as codified in a group of representative works from China and Hong Kong, including A Wedding in a Dream (生死 恨, 1948), The Butterfly Lovers (aka Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai 梁山伯與祝英台, 1953), and The Heavenly Match (天仙配, 1955), together with the Hong Kong Shaw Brothers re­ make of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, known in English as The Love Eterne (梁山伯與祝英 台, 1963). The traditional opera form renders the opera film into a distinctive musical genre that is obviously very different from the kind of contemporary musical featuring cabaret-style dancing and singing that we usually associate with musicals. The opera film refers to a specific genre that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s before beginning to decline in the 1970s. The cinematic nature of the form needs obviously to be assessed so as to reflect on the factors of the genre’s decline, including the following questions: Are there synchronic or time-specific properties that have led to its decline? Was the genre’s form hampered by the nature of opera, which has tended to struggle to find contemporary audiences and to be relevant to the times? And has cinema in a sense made opera irrelevant, meaning that the opera film itself is an anomaly? It is perhaps only natural that a connection was made between cinema and opera theater right at the birth of cinema in China. Theater, at the turn of the twentieth century in Chi­ na, was still dominated by the traditional form known as opera, and specifically Beijing opera, which is the best known of the many regional forms of opera in China. Though Bei­ jing opera is in fact a relatively new form, emerging “as a fully independent, influential Page 2 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form theatre form” only in the mid-nineteenth century,5 the opera form is usually contrasted with the modern form of the spoken drama (話劇), which is a nonmusical genre and is en­ tirely new to the twentieth century.6 In view of the predominance of opera, early Chinese cinema gravitated toward opera rather than spoken drama, and the development of the opera film as a cinematic genre must therefore count as one of the truly unique conse­ quences of the historical connection between opera and cinema. In this early developmental stage of the opera film, the link to theater presented aesthetic and narrative problems in the attempt to integrate traditional theater with the completely new and modern form of cinema. Basically, the fragmentary mode of early opera film demonstrated that filmmakers could not overcome the initial difficulty of using cinema to (p. 211) tell a story in operatic form. Filmmakers apparently could not tell a whole story in the traditional opera form on film, although this was eventually overcome in the sound period in the 1930s. However, the aesthetic problems inherent in translating the stage to the screen still posed considerable difficulties even in the genre’s heyday in the 1950s. How the opera film outgrew the theater and acquired a cinematic aesthetic that is dis­ tinctive while still maintaining the theatrical link is thus a recurring theme in its develop­ ment. Following the pioneering years of the silent period, opera film was once again prominent­ ly featured as an experimental model with the arrival of sound. Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh has observed that “the first sound films made in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were all based on Chinese opera.”7 The first Chinese sound film (consisting of sound recorded on a disc), The Songstress Red Peony (歌女紅牡丹, 1931) included four opera fragments and, according to Yeh, Mei Lanfang’s 梅蘭芳 voice was also featured as the singing voice of the lead actress Hu Die 胡蝶.8 The first sound opera film, Fourth Son Visits His Mother (四郎探 母), was released in 1933. Adapted from the Beijing opera of the same title, the film was said to have been generally well received, but critics could not help but notice its odd blend of realistic locations and mimed action, as in a scene where Fourth Son arrives at a real location riding a horse—with the horse-riding completely mimed, a standard practice on the opera stage but an anomaly in cinema. There were different aesthetic expectations in each medium, and the need to maintain some kind of integration between the two forms was the lesson delivered by this first sound production of an opera film in Chinese cinema.9 From that point onward, opera film may be regarded as a genre with a problem at its core, and as far as the genre has existed, it could be said that this problem was nev­ er really resolved satisfactorily.

Fei Mu’s Experiment Fei Mu 費穆, the director who had the most to do with the genre in the early Chinese cine­ ma, recognized the risk in merging the two forms and warned in an article first published in 1941 that “if not done properly or if one’s attitude was too cavalier, both cinema and opera could be destroyed in one move.”10 Despite seeing great potential in the new genre as a commercial form that could at the same time be used to promote a “national Page 3 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form essence” (國粹),11 the greatest difficulty of the opera film form, as Fei saw it, involved finding a way to cinematize the abstract qualities of the opera art. Fei likened opera to Chinese painting, on the grounds that there was no realism in traditional Chinese paint­ ing, and instead in painting the impressions of the artist were his reality. Fei stated that he tried many times to embed the style of Chinese painting in the struc­ tures of his film narratives but acknowledged that he had failed in his experiments.12 The art director Han Shangyi 韓尚義, also a veteran of the genre, and whose 1956 article on opera film style and form is now considered a standard text in Chinese film theory, de­ scribed the opera film as “an artistic unification between expressionism and realism” (p. 212) where expressionism (xieyi 寫意) is a property of the stage, and realism (xieshi 寫 實) is a property of cinema, which basically defines the central problem of making an opera film.13 Han went on to elucidate the problem by touching on the more complex is­ sues of mise-en-scène involving a union between “scenic and performance space”: In short, the form of opera strongly rejects the realistic setting of feature films. The detailed, complex props and furniture of feature films should therefore be dis­ carded, and all props and architectural components in opera have to be designed with a deliberate intention to bring out the specificity of a scene, which, in turn, brings out the specificity of the characters.14 Han’s account of the different spatial aesthetic in the opera film actually spells out one of its unique characteristics. The idea of space in opera is perhaps best understood by the actor’s act­ ing style, which may be described as one of “conquering space,” resulting in the practice of miming actions and movements without any indexical references to reality. On the stage there was no need for props and realistic settings. The writer Lu Xun 魯迅 reportedly claimed that there was no setting in old Chinese opera.15 Indeed, it is said that in opera, the settings are present in the actor. As a result, the style of opera acting is highly exaggerated, a style that would be incongruous with that of cinema. In cinema, the actor must be shown to perform in a realistic set, and the actor’s performance must harmonize with his or her setting. Any lack of harmony would therefore underscore the persisting problem of harmonizing opera and cinema.

The contradictions between the two forms and the inability of Chinese filmmakers to sat­ isfactorily resolve these contradictions might explain why the opera film was never a pop­ ular genre in terms of prolific production in the 1930s. This was the period considered to be the golden age of Chinese cinema for its left-wing progressive films addressing the pressing issues and concerns of the times. Thus Chinese cinema of the period was driven by the tenor of the era toward the social genre of the melodrama. Paul Pickowicz has spo­ ken of melodrama as a “May Fourth tradition” in Chinese arts.16 Costumed genres such as the opera film and the wuxia film were largely seen to fall outside of the May Fourth in­ tellectual tradition that targeted social ills as well as the weaknesses and oppressiveness of the Chinese state. These were exactly the kind of genres that contained too much sini­ fication, but in a socially progressive sense they were now ostracized by the intellectuals who considered them outdated, conservative forms that were also potentially harmful. Wuxia film, a hugely popular genre with the masses, was actually banned by the govern­ ment in 1931 on the grounds that it fostered superstition and feudal thinking. The opera film in this period represented a quest among Chinese filmmakers for more aesthetic ex­ Page 4 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form ploration and discovery—in this case they were experimenting with a blend of the stage and the screen—but such attempts were too haphazard and rudimentary to impress the May Fourth intellectuals. In fact, the opera film as a genre did not come into full flowering until the 1950s, and ar­ guably not so much in the mainland but in Hong Kong, although it was in the mainland that the genre had been established as a narrative form through early experiments such as Fei Mu’s Murder in the Oratory (斬經堂, 1937), starring Zhou Xinfang 周信芳, (p. 213) and A Wedding in a Dream, starring Mei Lanfang. Fei Mu was instrumental in pushing the opera film to fulfill its cinematic potential. Murder in the Oratory is considered the first truly successful opera film in Chinese cinema. Olaf Möller has described the film’s open­ ing scenes, in which we “find Fei furiously fusing opposites…. Curtains are raised on a natural landscape, and battles fought in stage fashion are turned into moments of pure, almost abstract cinema by filming them from odd angles.”17 In A Wedding in a Dream, the tendency to “fus[e] opposites” is undertaken from a slightly different vantage point. The work features no natural landscapes and instead is completely a stage experience intend­ ed to preserve the original’s reputation as one of the most famous and representative of Mei Lanfang’s operas. Mei had shown great creativity in his portrayal of female charac­ ters “who were overwhelming in both their theatricality and subtlety,” as a result of the actor’s “superlative command of acrobatic, song, speech, movement, and acting tech­ niques.”18 The film is generally thought to be a failure, even by Mei Lanfang himself, who is reported to have said, “I sometimes wanted to throw it into the Whangpoo River.”19 The failure of the film, such as it is, may stem from its faithfulness to the stage. Fei Mu tried to make the opera as much of a cinematic experience as he could by employing montage and decoupage techniques. As the director put it in his 1941 article, he had tried to avoid turning “an old opera that has been filmized into a film that has been opera-ized.”20 In other words, one should avoid doing a filmed opera and instead try to employ cinematic means to make an opera film. In the famous “Nocturnal Appeal” (夜訴) number, Fei’s experimentation is evident in his use of editing, constantly cutting into the solo number performed by Mei Lanfang that could otherwise have been shown in one static long take that might have emphasized all the more the theatricality of the scene. We see the actor in a medium shot as he moves across the stage, whereupon Fei cuts to a closer shot of the actor. Medium shots alternate with medium close-ups, with some of these shots taken from a variety of camera angles, including the occasional odd high-angle shot. These cuts do not interrupt the continuity of Mei’s singing nor his movements across the stage but rather complement his perfor­ mance and gestures in a rhythmic manner. Fei’s cutting is said to boost the presence of another actor on the stage, namely the cam­ era: Mei Lanfang adapts his performance to the camera’s presence as if carrying on a dia­ logue with the camera.21 The set itself is decorated to take into account the spatial aes­ thetic described above by Han Shangyi. There is an austere minimalism, but it is also re­ alistic—a union of xieyi and xieshi. The only prop visible on stage is a prominently dis­ played loom, the presence of which can be said to be a cinematic touch in that it observes Page 5 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form the cinematic principle of realism. By contrast, the opera stage would have completely dispensed with the prop altogether (in the theater, Mei simply mimed the movements of weaving and spinning). Ultimately, the scene conforms to opera practice by showing the actor delivering his per­ formance according to opera conventions, observing the right tone, mood, and rhythm of the style of singing required for the scene in Beijing opera. The style of music employed was the so-called erhuang 二簧 (literally, “two flutes”) with its peculiarity being the fanban (反板), “a sort of con dolore or pathetique singing.”22 The mood (p. 214) is deliberately slow, and if Fei had used a long take, it might have made the whole scene interminably slow and plaintive. Fei’s cutting undoubtedly hastened the pace that made the scene more cinematic. Mei’s performance is also cinematic in that it seems just right and natur­ al, without any exaggerated moves or gestures more typical of the real opera stage. Fei Mu had effectively conducted a cultural experiment to test how traditional Chinese opera, with all its prescribed conventions, could be molded into a cinematic form. As Olaf Möller has observed, “Whenever Fei adapted an opera, he did so with the utmost respect for the art’s origins and basis: instead of trying to ‘open it up,’ he searched for ways to create a heightened stage experience through the particularities of cinema.”23 This was certainly the case in A Wedding in a Dream, which presents a heightened stage experi­ ence in the mode of the cinema. The film may have been a failure, but Fei’s attempts to cinematize the opera by using montage and other techniques make it a really interesting failure. Apart from using cuts in the scene discussed above, Fei also used a number of dis­ solves in the “Dream” (夢幻) scene to signal the transition from reality to dream and back again, where Mei’s character dreams that she is reunited with her husband, a fellow slave who escapes and makes something of himself as a free man, later becoming the prefect of the county. The techniques employed by Fei are signs of his cinematic approach to the traditional theater, and what is interesting about them is Fei’s willingness to break up the spatial unity and composition of the scenes. This penchant for cutting distinguishes Fei’s method and may be regarded as contrary to the idea of the theater as a long take. It would cer­ tainly not be amiss to shoot opera scenes in long takes, which did become the practice in 1950s opera films, but it is interesting to note that Fei eschewed that practice, recogniz­ ing it as perhaps being more akin to the stage. Fei’s experiments advanced the opera film as a unique model where theater and cinema appear to complement each other. Incidentally, the film was also China’s first color experiment, originally shot on 16 mm stock and blown up to 35 mm, and as such was not considered “ideal” by critics24—and the work as a whole may have been simply far too experimental to be regarded as a ma­ ture model of a Chinese opera film. It was only the fourth opera film to be produced in the sound cinema up to that time, and it has survived in very poor incomplete prints, serious­ ly compromising its quality (one can only hope that a full copy of the film may eventually be restored in the future).

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form

From Opera to Melody This section will sketch the development of the genre in Mainland Chinese cinema and in the Hong Kong film industry, focusing particularly on the Huangmei opera form, or huangmeidiao (黃梅調), as it came to be known in Hong Kong, and which became one of the most popular musical forms of the Shaw Brothers studio of that era. The difference (p. 215) between the designations of opera (usually rendered as xi 戯 in Chinese) and “melody” (diao 調) in this subgenre is quite crucial and will be made clear later. The mainland opera films showed a vogue for regional operas that reflected the develop­ ment of opera in the theatrical world. The regional operas manifested in cinema included Pingju (平劇), Kunqu (昆曲), Wuxi opera (錫劇), Hebei “Silk String” opera (絲弦), Shanxi Pu opera (蒲劇), Guangxi Gui opera (桂劇), Fujian Minnan opera (閩南劇), Chaozhou opera (潮 劇), and Cantonese opera (粵劇), highlighting the variety and complexity of the genre as it matured into a new cinematic art form entailing a high order of artistic creativity.25 Following Fei’s experiments with the genre in A Wedding in a Dream, the opera film en­ tered the 1950s with a work that was widely considered to be a failure but which never­ theless was a kind of prototype. By the 1950s, the Chinese cinema was no longer the same industry in which Fei Mu had worked. The mainland was now under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party with Mao Zedong at the helm and new standards to be applied to the arts. Fei by this time had relocated to Hong Kong, where he died in 1951. In the realm of the opera film, Fei’s legacy would be that of a pioneer and an experimenter of form. The opera film took off under the new regime in terms of production. Judith Zeitlin re­ ports that “at least 115 opera films” were released between 1953 and 1966, which she considered “an extraordinarily high number by any measure.”26 Though Zeitlin doesn’t really account for why there are more opera films produced in the People’s Republic in this period than in any other period in the history of Chinese cinema, she does say that “the Party’s cultural policy during this period was open to folklore as an expression of the common people and as a way to appeal to their sensibilities.”27 The Communist Party may indeed have seen the opera film as a folkloric, cultural-nationalist form that could be used as a tool not only to unite the people as a nation, but also to inculcate policies and the new ideology of socialism. The opera film was one of the most popular cinematic genres among the peasantry, for whom it satisfied the peasantry’s demand for traditional aes­ thetics and social rituals.28 The 1956 production of Liu Qiaoer (劉巧兒), directed by Yi Lin 伊琳 and sung in Pingju, is prototypical of this strand of development. The film describes the plight of a peasant woman’s opposition against the system of arranged marriages and the practice of selling off farmers’ daughters to rich landlords under the old feudal order. The Pingju form conveys traditional aesthetics while allowing for the inculcation of Com­ munist Party policy heralding the birth of a new order. Liu Qiaoer is one of the rare opera films of the 1950s to be set in contemporary times, thus accentuating the sense that opera is far from an outdated mode of performance and that in fact it continues to exert relevance. The opera film is in this way a ready-made cultural-nationalist product whose form was already so sinified that there would not have been any need to hesitate over its Page 7 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form adequacy or popularity as a genuinely indigenous art form that could still be exploited in modern times. Indeed, the opera film became “part of mainstream film production, commercially prof­ itable and popular with the public” in the 1950s and 1960s.29 The genre fit in quite well with the Party’s cultural policy at the time, which was focused not so much on exposing social ills as it was on experimenting with cinematic formalism to propagate (p. 216) the Party and its policies. Zhou Bin 周斌 has made the point that in the early 1950s there were very few films that “reflected the realities of life” in China.30 The debilitating campaign against Sun Yu’s 孫瑜 The Life of Wu Xun (武訓傳, 1951), about the life of a nineteenth-cen­ tury beggar who founded several charity schools for the poor, certainly discouraged any trend toward the depiction of social realities and brought about a trend of formulaic pro­ ductions.31 This may partly explain the “formalist drift” in Chinese cinema aesthetics that, as Jason McGrath has observed, “already had been well under way before the Cultural Revolution” and which culminated in the so-called “model operas” (樣板戲).32 Besides pro­ viding an accessible “national form” through their adaptation of traditional Chinese per­ formance practices, the model opera films, by means of their replacement of mimesis and cinematic realism with stylization and cinematic formalism, brought to an extreme an aes­ thetic shift that had begun during the initial “seventeen years” (1949–1966) of the People’s Republic.33 The experiments with “stylization and cinematic formalism” of the opera form had in fact already begun with Fei Mu. In fact, the Party’s cultural workers and filmmakers took the opera film as seriously as Fei Mu did. As Weihong Bao informs us, in the 1950s a heated debate welled up concerning “the conception, form, and techniques for the making of opera films.”34 The opera film was considered “an emerging genre” that reflected the renewed tensions and affinities between cinema and theater: between realistic settings and symbolic performance, between sound and image, between cinematic and theatrical organization of space and time, and between the centrality of the actor’s body and the role of the filmmaker and film editor.35 Bao’s eloquent descriptions of the opera film’s instability of form point to a recurring problem “that still haunt[s] film studies today, particularly regarding the ontological status of cinema and the politics of performance vis-à-vis the technological apparatus of cinema.”36 I submit that it was this factor of a recurring problem in the opera film’s development that eventually led to its decline and disappearance as a mainstream genre.

For the new regime, the opera film was certainly fair game for reform. The regime estab­ lished a Bureau of Drama Reform in 1949 that was tasked with ensuring that supersti­ tious themes, erotic content, exaggerated movement and speech insulting the proletarian class, and feudalistic moral standards were all banned from plays and operas.37 An “Opera Improvement Bureau” was also set up, headed by Tian Han 田漢, one of the tower­ ing figures of Chinese opera, drama, and cinema.38 However, the empirical evidence of the opera films themselves suggest that, at least in the early period of the 1950s, the re­ form was more benign than might be expected, centering on terms of ideology and using the genre to propagate the new order, as in Liu Qiaoer, rather than on a revolutionary Page 8 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form change of the aesthetics or form of the genre, which would come later with the “model operas” of the Cultural Revolution. The first opera films produced under the auspices of the new regime, The Sister-in-Law (小姑賢, 1953) and Pick Up the Jade Bracelet (拾玉鐲, 1954), were basically stage affairs that respected the theatrical origin of opera. The latter work, sung in Guiju style, consist­ ed (p. 217) of a single stage set with only two chairs and a table as props. However, both films exerted fascination in the performances of standard acting styles and mimetic ges­ tures peculiar to the opera stage, as if there were something inherently cinematic about opera itself. Like A Wedding in a Dream, these opera films kept the formulaic form of opera intact but were far less experimental than Fei’s approach. In 1953, the Shanghai Film Studio produced its version of the Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai story—which more acutely addressed the principle of cinematizing traditional opera, and thanks to its suc­ cess, a more satisfactory prototype was now obtained. The production was directed by Sang Hu 桑弧 and Huang Sha 黃沙, sung and spoken in Zhejiang Yueju 越剧 opera style, and was performed by an all-female company that had popularized the opera on the stage. Huang Sha was the original director of the stage version, and his shared credit with Sang Hu on the film version indicates a cooperative attempt to integrate the stage version of the opera into cinema. The film can be seen as a response to Fei’s experiment in A Wedding in a Dream. Like Fei’s film, this latter work could not be derooted from the stage and was in fact conceived as a stage experience in cinematic form, based on the supposition that cinemagoers would instantly recognize the film to be a stage work and that there was hence a “mutual recognition between the audience and the actor of the artificiality of the theater, a con­ tractual knowledge further corroborated by stage conventions, particularly the actors’ highly stylized and self-referential performances.”39 In the case of A Wedding in a Dream, the audience would have known instantly that the film was a Mei Lanfang opera. The same kind of recognition would befall Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, which featured the original cast from the opera. Both films were hence based on stage successes. Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai opens with a scene of curtains raised on a stage; the camera dol­ lies into the stage, giving the audience the sense that it is now positioned in the midst of a stage production. As with Fei’s A Wedding in a Dream, this version of Liang Shanbo was produced in color, making it one of the first films in China to be made in color, using the Sovcolor process provided by the Soviet Union.40 Color is an important ingredient in the opera film, as Han Shangyi has pointed out, since it increases the sense of realism and makes visible the chromatic symbolism in the costumes. Without color, the opera film is “an incomplete art form.”41 The colors in Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai successfully enhanced the film, bringing out the splendor of the costumes and the old-world sets. The sets granted the opera a realistic background, allowing the actors to move naturally and with ease. The di­ rectors opted for a less obtrusive use of montage cutting in contrast to Fei’s method of persistent cutting in a decoupage manner. Longer takes were used in filming the tradi­

Page 9 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form tional numbers, as for example the “The Eighteen-li Farewell” (十八相送) duet made fa­ mous by the Yueju stage version of the play now being faithfully re-created on film. The entire number is shot as a series of long sections that provide the actors the space to sing one large section in a single take before cutting to the next. The music and the songs harmonize with the actors’ movements and gestures, the sets, and the colors. The camera is always elegantly poised to slowly dolly in or out, but never so close or far away (p. 218) that the audience loses its sense of the theatrical space. As in A Wedding, the performers are usually kept at a fair middle distance from the camera, the better to integrate them with the theatrical settings. In effect, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai achieved the union of xieyi and xieshi more successfully than any of its predecessors. The adaptation preserves the fidelity to the opera stage but at the same time is convincingly cinematic. The film was a hit, and it was one of the few films from the People’s Republic from the period to be successfully exported.42 The film was said to have moved Charles Chaplin to tears when it was specially shown to him in Geneva in 1954,43 and it was a huge success when it was released in Hong Kong. It was in Hong Kong, however, that the film served its function as a prototype of the opera film. The Shaw Brothers studio quite faithfully followed the narrative blueprint and the song numbers to produce its own, arguably more cinematically fluid, version of the opera. Their version was sung not in the style not of Yueju but rather of the huangmeidiao, which originated in Hubei province but was usually associated with Anhui province. The Shaw Brothers film, which goes under the English title The Love Eterne, was released in 1963, and helped make huangmeidiao even more popular as a cinematic genre, and certainly much better known among overseas Chinese than the other regional forms of opera that were adopted for cinema. Indeed, so popular was the film that it generated a whole sub­ genre of huangmeidiao films produced in Hong Kong by two competing studios, Shaw Brothers and Cathay. The Love Eterne owed an aesthetic debt to the earlier version produced by the Shanghai Film Studio, but it was also influenced by other mainland opera films that were distrib­ uted in Hong Kong. Another sensational hit was the huangmeidiao production The Heav­ enly Match, also from the Shanghai Film Studio. The director, Shi Hui 石揮, wrote in an article first published in 1956 that he envisaged the film as a “fairy-tale musical.”44 The music of huangmeidiao was emphasized, which Shi considered “rich in vitality and emo­ tive power,” but the film was essentially a fantasy. The main difficulty, according to Shi (who was better known as an actor than a director), was how to shoot the film as a film, given that it was not to be a “documentary of a stage performance,” or, in other words, a filmed opera.45 Shi utilized special effects to make his opera-fantasy as cinematic as possible, as evident in the scene depicting the passage of Seventh Sister, the heavenly immortal of the title, from heaven to earth. Seventh Sister takes pity on Dong Yong, a young man whose father has passed away and who had to sell himself off as a slave in order to pay for his father’s burial, and she comes down to earth to marry him so that she may help him out of his Page 10 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form servitude. The Jade Emperor later learns of Seventh Sister’s migration to earth and com­ mands her return to heaven. Pregnant with Dong Yong’s child, Seventh Sister is forced to separate from her husband but vows to come down to earth again to return his child. More special effects were used in later scenes denoting Seventh Sister’s magic, for exam­ ple, in making a tree talk to convince Dong Yong to marry the immortal (he of course is not aware that she is an immortal). Cinematic techniques such as matte shots and dis­ solves were also employed to reinforce the fantastic premises of the opera. As Shi Hui saw it, the cinematization of the opera was helped along by the fact that the conventions of huangmeidiao opera were less codified than those of Beijing opera and Kunqu, and consequently “it had great flexibility…in going its own way.”46 Shi be­ lieved that huangmeidiao conventions “formed a system of their own through a lively and organic process,” which implied that as far as the cinematic form of The Heavenly Match was concerned, “the contradictions between the two [the opera and the film] were some­ what less than in the case of other genres of traditional opera.”47 This statement indicat­ ed a strong belief that the form of Huangmei opera was conducive to integration with cin­ ema. This is ultimately borne out by the empirical evidence of the popularity of huangmei­ diao films produced in Hong Kong, particularly by the Shaw Brothers studio in the 1960s. (p. 219)

Outside China, the popularity of huangmeidiao films was triggered by the success of The Love Eterne and the previous success of The Kingdom and the Beauty (江山美人, 1959), both of which were produced under the directorial helm of Li Hanxiang 李翰祥. These suc­ cesses underscored a fundamental difference between the Shaw Brothers approach and the mainland approach to Huangmei opera. Despite his best efforts to cinematize the opera, Shi Hui’s film was always a Huangmei opera film, remaining true to its stage ori­ gins, whereas the Shaw Brothers approach to Huangmei opera was to detach itself from the opera stage, effectively to put the stage at the service of cinema. The emphasis was not on the stage but on the melody—thus the designation of huangmei diao 黃梅調 (literally, “yellow plum melody”) rather than huangmei xi 黃梅戲 (literally, “yellow plum play”).48The Love Eterne is a representative example of this huangmeidiao subgenre, inasmuch as it does not seem tied to the opera stage. Although it has a studio-bound look, it nevertheless features an abundant use of camera movements and traveling shots, par­ ticularly the dolly track that Shaw Brothers perfected as a kind of studio signature—a “Chinese dolly” that was an expansive, sweeping, and highly fluid track from one end of a set (usually an exterior) to the other end (usually an interior). This way, the illusion of cin­ ema is more pronounced since the camera appears to traverse the limits of the stage. One of the attractions of the huangmeidiao form was undeniably the conceit of opera as a feminine form, which was the central premise of both Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai and The Love Eterne. Both films afforded actresses opportunities to cross-dress. Ivy Ling Bo 淩波 was the iconic figure of the huangmeidiao movie in Hong Kong, and she often played male roles as if to suggest that one of the chief characteristics of the opera film apart from the music and the melodies was the invariably female gender features of its lead performers. Feminine charm and grace was always part of the aesthetics of the opera film, as performed by Mei Lanfang in A Wedding in a Dream, and the quality of crossPage 11 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form dressing is hence also a part of the unique nature of the genre at large (in the Hong Kong Cantonese opera film, Yam Kam-fai 任劍輝, a female star specializing in male roles, further attests to this disposition of the opera film in general). However, gender as a characteris­ tic essentially underscores the fantasy and the theatrical, dreamlike nature of opera. The more female actors are featured in opera films playing male roles, the more faithful these films are to the theatrical, made-up spirit and temperament of opera. By now the opera film in Hong Kong Mandarin cinema was already established as one that was almost exclusively tied to the Huangmei melody, which was flexible and loose enough to be applied to more dramatic, less obviously operatic, scripts. In fact, huangmeidiao musical interludes were used to embellish the cinematic genres that Shaw Brothers specialized in, such as the period romances, the historical epics, and the melo­ drama. The opera film became somewhat corrupted as a form by the incorporation and mixture of other genres. The prescriptive ingredients of the opera form itself (the music and the traditional melodies of Huangmei Opera in this instance, as well as the feature of cross-dressing) were all put to the services of making a film entertainment. Thus, the opera film in Hong Kong Mandarin cinema became a less purist form when compared with its mainland counterpart. The Shaw Brothers studio had reacted to the mainland (p. 220)

aesthetics of the opera film at the time, which tended to be more refined and elegant, as a means to differentiate its own product. The studio succeeded in refashioning the huang­ meidiao movie as an alternative musical form that could function more commercially in a capitalist society. Thus the huangmeidiao film reached an apex of development in the Shaw Brothers studio, which put any element of “opera” at the service of cinema. This cinematic model of the opera film has been appropriated in the 2001 mainland pro­ duction Challenge of Life (生死擂), China’s first huangmeidiao movie to be shot in color, us­ ing the Scope ratio and in stereophonic sound, and as such is regarded as a breakthrough production in the genre.49 The film neatly embeds Huangmei opera into a romantic sce­ nario set in the late Qing period, with some kung fu action revolving around a rice-mea­ suring contest between British and Chinese interests over the local rice market. Even Shaw Brothers never thought of mixing kung fu with opera, though the studio would cer­ tainly have approved.

Conclusion The popularity of the huangmeidiao film in Hong Kong lasted only about five or six years, and it has not been revived since—at least not in cinema, though the genre remains very popular in theater and television. As a musical form, the traditional opera film appeared obsolete particularly compared with the modern musical, and the Shaw Brothers studio itself signaled the end of the opera film when it turned to making the kind of musicals that were more in line with contemporary tastes, including works such as Hong Kong Nocturne (香江花月夜, 1967) and Hong Kong Rhapsody (花月良宵, 1967). The rise of the “new school” wuxia film, with its emphasis on male brawn and machismo, inevitably wiped out the opera film. A similar movement occurred in the Cantonese cinema in Hong Page 12 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form Kong, where the Cantonese opera film reached a climax of popularity in 1956 but was gradually supplanted by the kung fu films in the Wong Fei-hung 黃飛鴻 series. A discussion of the Cantonese opera film is beyond the scope of this chapter, but suffice it to say that, like the huangmeidiao movie in the Mandarin cinema and other traditional opera films in Mainland China, the Cantonese opera film began to slide into oblivion (p. 221) toward the end of the 1960s. In China, the Cultural Revolution model opera arguably represented a nadir in the genre’s development, though this, too, lies outside the scope of this chapter. Today, the opera film has largely disappeared, but in its heyday it attracted the best tal­ ent in the industry. Some of the best directors in Chinese-language cinema have made opera films, including Fei Mu, Ying Yunwei 應云衛, Wu Yonggang 吳永剛, Sang Hu 桑弧, Zhu Shilin 朱石麟, Li Hanxiang, King Hu 胡金銓, Chu Yuan 楚原, and John Woo 吳宇森. These di­ rectors have found fame in other genres, but the fact that they have all made opera films attests to a cultural affirmation or reaffirmation of a unique form. While seeking to popu­ larize the opera form, these films constitute textual evidence of an “artistic unification be­ tween expressionism (xieyi) and realism (xieshi).” The contradictions of the opera stage and the screen space attained by photographic realism remain constant in the genre, which may explain why it has virtually disappeared in our present era but also under­ scores the uniqueness of the opera film within Chinese cinema.

Works Cited Arlington, L. C. The Chinese Drama: From the Earliest Times until Today. New York: Ben­ jamin Blom, 1966. Bao, Weihong. “The Politics of Remediation: Mise-en-Scène and the Subjunctive Body in Chinese Opera Film.” Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010): 256–290. Chen Shaozhou 陳少舟. “Zhongguo xiqu dianying de huangjin shidai” 中國戲曲電影的黃金時 代 [The golden era of the Chinese opera film]. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 2005: no. 6, 61–67. Chen Yanyan 陳艷艷 and Liu Guangyu 劉廣宇. “Chuantong nongmin de dianying shenmei guan” 傳統農民的電影審美觀 [The traditional peasantry’s view of film aesthetics]. Qingnian zuojia (Zhongwai wenyi) 青年作家 中外文藝 [Young writers (Chinese and foreign arts)] 2010: no. 4, 33–34. Cheng Jihua 程季華. Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi 中國電影發展史 [A history of the develop­ ment of Chinese cinema]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1980. Dai Guangxi 戴光晰. “Aiwan beikang de juechang” 哀婉悲亢的絕唱 [Mournful and defiant opera]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2001: no. 6, 16–17. Fei Mu 費穆. “Zhongguo jiuju de dianying hua wenti” 中國舊劇的電影化問題 [The problem of cinematizing old Chinese opera]. Fei Mu: Shiren daoyan 費穆 ： 詩人導演 [Fei Mu: Poet-di­ rector]. Ed. Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 1998.

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form Feng Guangyu 馮光鈺. “Xiqu dianyinghua, dianying xiquhua” 戯曲電影化，電影戲曲化 [Cinematizing opera, operatizing cinema]. Huangmei xi yishu 黃梅戲藝術 [Art of Huangmei opera] 2002: no. 1, 11. Han Shangyi 韓尚義. “The Design and Style of Opera Films” (originally “Xiqu yingpian de zaoxing fengge” 戲曲片的造型風格, published in 1956). Trans. J. K. Y. Chan and Judith Zeitlin. Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010): 446–454. Lan Fan 藍凡. “Shaoshi Huangmei diao dianying yishu lun” 邵氏黃梅調電影藝術論 [On the Shaw Brothers’ Huangmei melody films]. Shanghai daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 上海 大學學報 （ 社會科學版 ） [Journal of Shanghai University, social sciences] 14.2 (2007): 37– 42. Leyda, Jay. Dianying: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China. Cam­ bridge: MIT Press, 1972. (p. 224)

MacKerras, Colin, and Elizabeth Wichmann. “Introduction.” Chinese Theater: From its Origins to the Present Day. Ed. Colin Mackerras. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1983. 1–6. McGrath, Jason. “Cultural Revolution Model Opera Films and the Realist Tradition in Chi­ nese Cinema.” Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010): 343–376. Möller, Olaf. “Amongst the Ruins: The Two Poles of Fei Mu.” Cinema Scope, issue 45, 13.1 (2011). 19–21. Ning Jingwu 寧敬武. “Xiqu dui Zhongguo dianying yishu xingshi de yingxiang: Zuo wei shiyan dianying de Fei Mu xiqu yingpian chuangzuo” 戯曲隊中國電影藝術形式的影響—作爲實 驗電影的費穆戲曲影片創作 [The influence of opera on Chinese film form: Fei Mu’s experi­ mental opera films] Fei Mu: Shiren daoyan 費穆: 詩人導演 [Fei Mu: Poet-director]. Ed. Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 1998. 312–321. Pickowicz, Paul. “Melodramatic Representation and the ‘May Fourth’ Tradition of Chinese Cinema.” From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Fiction in Twentieth Century Chi­ na. Ed. Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, 295–326. Shi Hui 石揮. “Notes about Directing Married to a Heavenly Immortal.” Trans. W. L. Ide­ ma. Opera Quarterly 26.2–3) (2010): 435–445. Wichmann, Elizabeth. “Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Beijing Opera Perfor­ mance.” TDR 34.1 (1990): 146–178. Wichmann, Elizabeth. “Traditional Theatre in Contemporary China.” In Chinese Theater: From its Origins to the Present Day. Ed. Colin Mackerras. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1983. Yang, Daniel S. P. “Censorship: 8 Model Works.” Drama Review 15.2 (1971): 258–261. Page 14 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form Yeh, [Emilie] Yueh-yu. “Historiography and Sinification: Music in Chinese Cinema of the 1930s.” Cinema Journal 41.3 (2002): 78–97. Zeitlin, Judith. “Operatic Ghosts on Screen: The Case of A Test of Love (1958).” Opera Quarterly 26.2–3) (2010): 220–255. Zhao, Yingbo 趙影波. “Shoupeng ‘jinji’ zan Huangmei” 手捧”金雞”贊黃梅 [Holding the “gold­ en rooster” in praise of Huangmei opera]. Huangmei xi yishu 黃梅戲藝術 [Art of Huangmei opera] 2002: no. 1. Zhou Bin 周斌. “Cong wutai dao yinmu: Lun xin Zhongguo huaju de dianying gaibian” 從舞 臺到銀幕: 論新中國話劇的電影改編 [From the stage to the screen: On film adaptation from Chinese drama after the 1950s]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 178 (2011): 71–77.

Notes: (1.) Recently, though, a set of articles on the topic was published in a special issue of Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010). (2.) See Chen Shaozhou 陳少舟, “Zhongguo xiqu dianying de huangjin shidai” 中國戲曲電影 的黃金時代 [The golden era of the Chinese opera film], Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 2005: no. 6, 61. (3.) See [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh, “Historiography and Sinification: Music in Chinese Cinema of the 1930s,” Cinema Journal 41.3 (2002): 78–97. (4.) Weihong Bao, “The Politics of Remediation: Mise-en-Scène and the Subjunctive Body in Chinese Opera Film,” Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010): 268. (5.) Elizabeth Wichmann, “Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Beijing Opera Per­ formance,” TDR 34.1 (1990): 146. (6.) See Colin MacKerras and Elizabeth Wichmann, “Introduction,” in Chinese Theater: From its Origins to the Present Day, ed. C. Mackerras (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1983), 1. (7.) See [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh, “Historiography and Sinification,” 78. (8.) [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh, “Historiography and Sinification,” 84. (9.) Cheng Jihua 程季華, Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi 中國電影發展史 [A history of the de­ velopment of Chinese cinema], (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1980), vol. 1, 285. (10.) Fei Mu 費穆, “Zhongguo jiuju de dianying hua wenti” 中國舊劇的電影化問題 [The prob­ lem of cinematizing old Chinese opera], in Fei Mu: Shiren daoyan 費穆: 詩人導演 [Fei Mu: Poet-director], ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 1998), 81. Page 15 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form (11.) Fei Mu, “Cinematizing Old Chinese Opera,” 81. (12.) Fei Mu, “Cinematizing Old Chinese Opera,” 82. (13.) Han Shangyi 韓尚義, “The Design and Style of Opera Films” (originally “Xiqu yingpi­ an de zaoxing fengge” 戲曲片的造型風格, published in 1956), trans. J. K.Y. Chan and Judith Zeitlin, Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010): 447. (14.) Han Shangyi, “Design and Style of Opera Films,” 447. (15.) Quoted in Ning Jingwu 寧敬武, “Xiqu dui Zhongguo dianying yishu xingshi de yingxi­ ang: Zuo wei shiyan dianying de Fei Mu xiqu yingpian chuangzuo” 戯曲隊中國電影藝術形式 的影響—作爲實驗電影的費穆戲曲影片創作 [The influence of opera on Chinese film form: Fei Mu’s experimental opera films], in Wong Ain-ling, Fei Mu, 316. (16.) Paul Pickowicz. “Melodramatic Representation and the ‘May Fourth’ Tradition of Chinese Cinema,” in From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Fiction in Twentieth Century China, ed. Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang (Cambridge: Harvard Universi­ ty Press, 1993), 295–326. (17.) Olaf Möller, “Amongst the Ruins: The Two Poles of Fei Mu,” Cinema Scope, issue 45, 13.1 (2011): 21. (18.) Elizabeth Wichmann, “Traditional Theatre in Contemporary China,” in C. Mackerras, Chinese Theater, 193. (19.) Jay Leyda, Dianying: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), 171. (20.) Fei Mu, “Cinematizing Old Chinese Opera,” 81. (21.) Ning Jingwu, “Influence of Opera,” 318. (22.) L. C. Arlington, The Chinese Drama: From the Earliest Times until Today (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966), 21. (23.) See Olaf Möller, “Amongst the Ruins,” 21. (24.) Cheng Jihua, Development of Chinese Cinema, vol. 2, 274. (25.) Fei Mu, “Cinematizing Old Chinese Opera,” 83. (26.) Judith Zeitlin, “Operatic Ghosts on Screen: The Case of A Test of Love (1958),” Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010): 220. (27.) Judith Zeitlin, “Operatic Ghosts on Screen,” 220. (28.) See Chen Yanyan 陳艷艷 and Liu Guangyu 劉廣宇, “Chuantong nongmin de dianying shenmei guan” 傳統農民的電影審美觀 [The traditional peasantry’s view of film aesthetics], Page 16 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form Qingnian zuojia (Zhongwai wenyi) 青年作家 中外文藝 [Young writers (Chinese and foreign arts)] 2010: no. 4, 33–34, 44. (29.) Judith Zeitlin, “Operatic Ghosts on Screen,” 246. (30.) Zhou Bin 周斌, “Cong wutai dao yinmu: lun xin Zhongguo huaju de dianying gaibian” 從舞臺到銀幕: 論新中國話劇的電影改編 [From the stage to the screen: On film adaptation from Chinese drama after the 1950s], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 178 (2011): 71. (31.) Zhou Bin, “From the Stage to the Screen,” 71. (32.) Jason McGrath, “Cultural Revolution Model Opera Films and the Realist Tradition in Chinese Cinema,” Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010): 344. (33.) Jason McGrath, “Cultural Revolution Model Opera Films,” 344. (34.) Weihong Bao, “The Politics of Remediation,” 256. (35.) Weihong Bao, “The Politics of Remediation,” 256. (36.) Weihong Bao, “The Politics of Remediation,” 256. (37.) Daniel S. P. Yang, “Censorship: 8 Model Works,” Drama Review 15.2 (1971): 259. (38.) Judith Zeitlin, “Operatic Ghosts on Screen,” 222. (39.) Weihong Bao, “The Politics of Remediation,” 257. (40.) Jay Leyda, Dianying, 209. (41.) Han Shangyi, “Design and Style of Opera Films,” 451. (42.) Jay Leyda, Dianying, 209. (43.) Chen Shaozhou, “Golden Era of the Chinese Opera Film,” 62. (44.) See Shi Hui 石揮, “Notes about Directing Married to a Heavenly Immortal,” trans. W. L. Idema, Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (2010): 441. (45.) Shi Hui, “Notes about Directing,” 439. (46.) Shi Hui, “Notes about Directing,” 440. (47.) Shi Hui, “Notes about Directing,” 440. (48.) See Lan Fan 藍凡, “Shaoshi Huangmei diao dianying yishu lun” 邵氏黃梅調電影藝術論 [On the Shaw Brothers’ Huangmei melody films], Shanghai daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 上海大學學報 （社會科學版） [Journal of Shanghai University, social sciences] 14.2 (2007): 40. Page 17 of 18

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The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form (49.) See Dai Guangxi 戴光晰, “Aiwan beikang de juechang” 哀婉悲亢的絕唱 [Mournful and defiant opera], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2001: no. 6, 16–17; Feng Guangyu 馮光鈺, “Xiqu dianyinghua, dianying xiquhua” 戯曲電影化, 電影戲曲化 [Cinematizing opera, operatizing cinema], Huangmei xi yishu 黃梅戲藝術 [The art of Huangmei opera] 2002: no. 1, 11; Zhao Yingbo 趙影波, “Shoupeng ‘Jinji’ zan Huangmei” 手 捧 “ 金雞 ” 贊黃梅 [Holding the “golden rooster” in praise of Huangmei opera], Art of Huangmei Opera 2002: no. 1, 12.

Stephen Teo

Stephen Teo is Associate Professor in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Teo is a leading scholar of Hong Kong cinema and is now focusing on Chinese and other Asian cine­ mas in his research. He is the author of Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film Institute, 1997), Wong Kar-wai (London: BFI, 2005), King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). His new book is The Asian Cinema Experience: Styles, Spaces, Theory, published by Routledge.

Page 18 of 18

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A Small History of Wenyi

A Small History of Wenyi   Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0013

Abstract and Keywords The concept of wenyi played a key role in the distribution and promotion of films in the period from the second decade of the twentieth century to the early 1930s. Unlike the negative connotations of triviality, self-indulgence, even puerile pursuits that the term tends to carry today, wenyi at the time promised a sophisticated, worldly experience. This chapter maps the trajectory of wenyi, clarifies its importance, including its shifting mean­ ings driven by literary and political forces and, more crucially, places it in a fluid cultural environment of literary enlightenment and social reform. Though wenyi as a construct has followed different paths since the 1960s, around 1930 it was a robust way to classify and describe cultural products and consumption. By revising wenyi’s history during the first decade of China’s full-fledged film production, we also find some of the exchanges be­ tween film and literature in this period. Keywords: wenyi, wenyi pictures, melodrama, early Chinese film, Mandarin ducks and butterfly literature

On June 3, 1931, the Hollywood picture The Mysterious Lady (1928) was advertised in Shenbao (申報) as “a wenyi masterpiece, bursting with eroticism and military action”1 (see fig. 12.1). Ten months later, on April, 14, 1932, Shenbao ran another advertisement for a Hollywood film, Street Scene (1931), as “a great wenyi picture that bombarded the States —a famous Pulitzer Prize–winning work, directed by the great King Vidor”2 (see fig. 12.2). Another five months later, on September 25, the tagline for the Chinese film Romance of Tears and Laughter (啼笑因緣) (1932) describes it as a “wenyi masterpiece. Do not miss it”3 (see fig. 12.3).

Page 1 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi

Figure 12.1 The Shenbao ad for The Mysterious Lady, June 3, 1931

What these three film advertisements share is the word wenyi (文藝). Used in phrases such as “a wenyi masterpiece” or “a wenyi picture,” wenyi stands out as the defining term used to sell these three very different works, invoking a specific literary property. The Mysterious Lady is a 1928 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer adaptation of an espionage novel, War in the Dark, by Ludwig Wolff. Greta Garbo plays a double Russian agent named Tania who is operating a spy ring in Austria. She is given a mission to seduce an Austrian officer in order to steal from him certain important plans for her country. Her scheme succeeds— but in the process she falls in love with the officer. Tania as the femme fatale is character­ ized in an early scene of the film where she responds coyly to the officer’s overtures, but just as the rejected officer is dragging himself shamefully toward the door, Tania extends her arm, urging him to return, while pressing her other hand to her breast. In response to her beckoning, he turns back, and there they begin their affair. Despite Garbo’s sensa­ tional performance, duly rendered in the film’s Chinese title, Xiaohun (銷魂, literally, “tin­ gling sensations”), it was actually the film’s literary origin—not the star nor her “tingling” performance—that was the selling point for this romantic thriller. Similarly, Street Scene was adapted from Elmer Rice’s play, which centers on a group of young people desperate to escape the tenements of New York. The play was produced in 1929 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the same year, and although the resulting film boasted King Vi­ dor as director, the Shanghai distributor insisted on using a major (p. 226) literary award to promote it. The hierarchy that structures the film’s symbolic capital is made abundant­ ly clear: a preexisting literary property weighed more than the film product itself, includ­ ing its principal creative talent.

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A Small History of Wenyi

Figure 12.2 The Shenbao ad for Street Scene, April 14, 1932

Figure 12.3 The Shenbao ad for Romance of Tears and Laughter, September 25, 1932

The third film advertisement cited above refers to the sequel to Romance of Tears and Laughter, a major production by China’s leading film company at the time, Star 明星. The film was directed by Star’s leading director, Zhang Shichuan 張石川, and was based on a novel by Zhang Henshui 張恨水, one of the best-known novelists in the Republican era (1911–1949). Zhang specialized in long-form fiction, and Romance, like his other (p. 227) novels, was first serialized in a newspaper. It concerns a southern gentleman by the name of Jiashu who goes to Beijing for college, but upon arriving in the capital he is immediate­ ly enthralled by the bustling street life of the old entertainment district filled with tradi­ tional performing arts like acrobatics, kung fu, and folk songs. Jiashu’s enchantment with the city quickly crystallizes into involvement with three local beauties of different class backgrounds. The customary love triangle involving a “scholar and beauty” (才子佳人) was an essential selling point for the novel, but there is an additional element that enhanced its appeal to the Chinese readers at the time. According to Eileen Chow, it was the exotic sights of the capital seen through rural eyes of the protagonist that anchors the special appeal of the storytelling.4 These elements rendered Romance an instant hit when it was Page 3 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi published in 1930 and Star wasted no time exploiting it in the ancillary film market. The serialization of the novel was matched, in the film, by six separate installments (partially sound, all released in 1932). Like Mysterious Lady and Street Scene, Romance’s salient literary origin prompted its distributor to hail it a wenyi masterpiece and to place it in the same league as a Pulitzer Prize winner and European spy fiction. (p. 228) Once again, wenyi worked to clearly identify a film’s story source, its literary connection, and its po­ tential audience. Given the prominent place wenyi occupied in these and other advertisements, I propose that the concept played a key role in the distribution and promotion of films in the period from the second decade of the century to the early 1930s. Unlike the negative connota­ tions of triviality, self-indulgence, even puerile pursuits that the term tends to carry today, wenyi at the time promised a sophisticated, worldly experience. This chapter will map the trajectory of wenyi, clarify its importance, including its shifting meanings driven by liter­ ary and political forces and, more crucially, place it in a fluid cultural environment of lit­ erary enlightenment and social reform. Though wenyi as a construct has followed differ­ ent paths since the 1960s, around 1930 it was a robust way to classify and describe cul­ tural products and consumption. In this chapter I sketch this journey of wenyi in relation to the early film industry. Instead of outlining wenyi’s overall history, from its initial intro­ duction to Chinese readers and filmmakers in the 1920s to the Chinese Communist Party’s current rehabilitation of the wenyi genre in Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 biopic Forever En­ thralled (aka, Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳, 2008), I offer a small history of wenyi, a piecemeal ac­ count tracing its appearance and trajectory in the 1920s and 1930s. By revising wenyi’s history during the first decade of China’s full-fledged film production, we also find some of the exchanges between film and literature in this period. What is wenyi? In Chinese, wenyi is a composite phrase, linking wen 文 and yi 藝—literally, “letters and arts”—to signify various referents, including literature, literary art, visual, and performing arts. But during the late Qing and early Republican period, wenyi had a different meaning from its literal denotation, and instead it functioned as a brand-new concept that was initially used to refer to translated literature from abroad and subse­ quently came to be used to refer more generally to Western-style literature and cognate genres, such as fiction, poetry, prose, and drama. Because of its foreign—and specifically, Western—connotations, wenyi became the principle and standard in literary productions and tastes, modeled as an index to the country’s progress toward modern, international stature. Wenyi’s influence soon spread to film and was used to benchmark cinema’s rele­ vance to cultural and artistic modernization. Wenyi as a critical, evaluative as well as a generic category hence embarked on an unusual journey in Chinese cinema. Instead of of­ fering the account of wenyi chronologically, I will begin my discussion with the problemat­ ic place that wenyi has occupied in Chinese film studies, together with the forced affilia­ tion between wenyi and its presumed close cousin melodrama.

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A Small History of Wenyi

A Problem Genre, a Genre Problem “Wenyi pictures” (文藝片) may be the most diverse and malleable among major genres in Chinese-language cinema. Wenyi’s diversity is striking on account of its continual (p. 229) evolution, to the point that domestic drama, romance, tragedy, musicals, social satires, women’s pictures, art film, literary adaptations, epics, and biopics have all been seen, at different times, as derivatives of the wenyi genre. Given the many variations and branch­ es of wenyi narratives, it is impossible to define wenyi as a coherent category with clearly marked features. Wenyi’s taxonomical slippage is also related to its etymological link to letters, and its nascent bond with writing. The tie with literature has in fact prevented wenyi film from being identified solely by its sonic or visual specificity, a common marker for film genres. Compared to more visually charged genres like martial-arts film, costume drama, and opera, wenyi iconography and sounds are less distinct. So a protean audiovi­ suality and diffusion opened wenyi to an array of emotive, symbolic, and metaphysical registers. While these might be readily representable in certain audiovisual terms, wenyi forms are afforded ample room for imagination and improvisation. This in turn allows wenyi variations in narrative manifestations. Wenyi’s malleable nature is duly acknowledged by Chinese film historians and critics. In his Studies on Modern Chinese Wenyi Cinema (中國近代文藝電影研究), Cai Guorong 蔡國榮 describes wenyi as a genre of emotion and sentiments: Those movies with thoughtful themes and the ability to strike a chord with the au­ dience, along with those that could be appreciated like most artworks, are all qualified to be called wenyi pictures. Insofar as they express perennial human emotion and the sentiments of the time, genre pictures such as musicals, war epics, or martial arts can all be included within the wenyi proper.5 Wenyi is thus defined as a metanarrative of emotion and sentiments, with an emphasis on the contemporary setting. Cai goes on to explain that the concept of emotion he refers to as the pri­ mary marker for the wenyi pictures is not just romantic or sexual love, but also includes a wider range of feelings, such as filial piety, parental affections, patriotism, and friendship. This exten­ sive emotional constitution of wenyi places wenyi films within a sprawling field and dilutes the genre’s effective boundaries, since virtually any film can be seen to address problems of emo­ tion, depending on how emotion is understood and represented. In a similar vein, Stephen Teo calls wenyi an “enigmatic” term, referring to its diverse but mutually connected terrains.6

Emphasis on emotion has prompted film scholars and critics to compare wenyi with melo­ drama. For writers interested in East-West film comparison, melodrama is even more tempting as a “handy” referent, as Wimal Dissanayake has suggested. In his explanation of melodrama’s entry into Asian film scholarship, Dissanayake acknowledged that be­ cause “there is no term for melodrama in the classical vocabularies, Asian scholars and critics of cinema are increasingly using this Western term to effect finer discriminations. As a consequence of the impact of the West, literature, drama, and cinema (which is di­ rectly an outgrowth of Western influence) have undergone profound transformations.”7 Here Dissanayake is making space for melodrama in Asian visual and performing arts, and his argument is based on the “contamination” model of national cinema that reiter­ Page 5 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi ates the historical conditions where the institutions of the cinematic apparatuses (includ­ ing technologies and narratives) in most countries were, to a large (p. 230) extent, a hy­ bridized construct of local and foreign practices.8 Dissanayake refers to those historical conditions to mobilize cross-cultural analyses of Asian cinema. This, however, appears to be an expedient measure in terms of accepting and utilizing an existing framework of East-West comparison and its attendant conceptual and analytic mechanism. What pre­ vents scholars of Asian cinema from moving beyond the “handiness” of the melodramatic source and treating the “unknown” local text and context in their own terms, before sub­ jugating them to the melodramatic crucible? Writers often show little interest in citing wenyi as a term comparable to melodrama. This is because melodrama has already occupied the place of host, a priori, in fixing the histo­ riography of most non-Western films. Many of these writings pertain to the presumed sim­ ilarity between Chinese and Hollywood melodrama, with the Hollywood versions often seen as a precept to their Chinese adaptations. Paul Pickowicz, for instance, rehabilitated Hollywood melodrama as a foundational mode in pictures sensitive to sociopolitical is­ sues. Rejecting the view perpetuated by communist film historiography, Pickowicz assert­ ed that melodrama was central in Chinese film industry and that the melodramatic root was so deeply planted, not even the left-wing film movement could do without it.9 Chinese film historians Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊彬 remarked on the incredible twists and turns of what is frequently described as China’s first feature film, The Crime and Death of Yan Ruisheng (閻瑞生, 1921). The film is based on a crime story that caused a huge sensation in Shanghai in 1920. Yan, a bank employee, found himself deeply in debt as a result of his fondness for gambling and expensive women. He tried to borrow money from a rich client by the name of Wang, but to no avail. Frustrated and angry, Yan killed and robbed Wang. After he had dumped Wang’s body in a field, Yen was arrested and put to death for his crime. The story was first adapted to stage in the form of “civil drama” (wenmingxi 文明戲), a type of Chinese spoken drama derived from Japanese “new drama” (shingeki). The play was an instant hit, and a film company rushed to adapt the stage version for the screen. The result was exemplary of melodrama, a “plot drama” (情 節劇), a well-crafted crime thriller complete with character-driven action, causality, and verisimilitude.10 Ma Ning, in his seminal essay on Street Angel (馬路天使, 1937), also set out to restore Hollywood’s currency in Chinese leftist films, though he failed to mention that the Chinese film was named after Frank Borzage’s 1928 film Street Angel, which shared a similar melodramatic pathos of an ill-fated love of a starving artist and a desti­ tute streetwalker.11 These three examples illustrate some of the ways that melodrama was referenced as a model in early Chinese film, particularly the use and convenience of melodrama in its promise to pass along critical and emotive spheres for a socially con­ scious audience. Qin Xiqing 秦喜清, in her defense of early Chinese filmmakers’ pursuit of the melodramat­ ic mode found in the works of Griffith and Lubitsch, argued that the melodramatic form should not be seen as exclusively Western. Questioning Western film’s “ownership” of melodrama, Qin identifies several standard devices such as the last-minute rescue, coinci­ Page 6 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi dence, and a stark divide between good and evil—quasi-melodramatic elements that can also be traced in China’s traditional literature, drama, and opera. Qin’s argument (p. 231) is inspired by the “China-centered approach” promoted by historian Paul Cohen, who challenged the long-standing Eurocentric methodology of China studies and advocated in­ stead an attention to indigenous factors in driving late imperial Chinese history.12 Qin, however, did not go further than a nominal statement by lodging a “China-centered” exer­ cise to back up her claim of the inherent melodramatic ingredients in Chinese narrative culture. It is not clear under what context and conditions the melodramatic mode had been grounded in native literary soil. Stephen Teo offers wenyi as a separate, indigenous substitute for the Western term melo­ drama. This is motivated by an oversight in the previous writings on Chinese melodrama that failed to “pursue the notion of the melodrama as a pre-existing Chinese genre.”13 Teo argues that the Chinese term wenyi is not directly borrowed from Hollywood, but rather also evolved from Chinese “civil drama” (wenmingxi). Whether wenmingxi is indeed one of the origins of wenyi is debatable, but Teo’s claim that wenyi as the equivalent to melo­ drama is equally questionable. Using a local term to replace a Western axiom is a step up in balancing a historiography dependent on a Western construct, but to treat wenyi and melodrama as interchangeable, if not completely identical, requires qualification. Teo was not alone in proposing wenyi as a more reflexive term than melodrama within the Chinese historical context. In the mid-1980s, following the publication of Cai’s full-length study on the wenyi genre, Hong Kong’s Law Kar 羅卡 and Li Cheuk-to 李焯桃 presented a self-reflexive account of the relationship between wenyi and melodrama.14 The occasion was the bilingual editorial in a catalog on Cantonese melodrama of the 1950s and 1960s, published as a print record of the annual Chinese-language film retrospective program for the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the question arose of how to render melodrama in Chinese: whether to follow existing practice and translate it as either plot drama (情節劇) or popular drama (通俗劇), or instead to use the Chinese term wenyi, which had been used widely in the vernacular for decades. Li Cheuk-to proposed the following solution: To a certain extent, wenyipian is quite similar to “melodrama” in the West, seen by many as a “phantom genre” because it includes all works that can hardly fall un­ der any categorisation. In fact, most wenyipian share the specificities of melodra­ ma: highly schematic characters, plots punctuated by fortuities and coincidences, extreme emotions and conflicts…for convenience sake, we are naming the Chinese title of the retrospective, wenyipian, and the English, melodrama. Nevertheless, the two terms are not strictly identical. While wenyipian is delimited by its subjectmatter or theme, melodrama is essentially a kind of dramatic convention, applica­ ble to films of various subject-matter or theme.15 Following Li’s introduction, Law Kar opens the lead article by making a distinction between wenyi and melodrama. Law cites Cai Guorong’s account of wenyi, particularly its lyrical quality and close connection to modern history, in justifying his discretion to use the term: “I believe it would be more suitable for us to use Cai Guorong’s definition of wenyipian…in our retrospective Page 7 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi of 50s and 60s Cantonese films rather than (p. 232) resorting to the Western definition of ‘melo­ drama’ as a form of film or stage theatre that can encompass anything from romances to thrillers.”16

Juxtaposing wenyi and melodrama for a bilingual publication is first and foremost an in­ tercultural exchange, and as a result the publication as a whole shows a rare attention to the dialectics of both terms. The reason given for placing wenyi alongside melodrama is not grounded on a historically informed assessment of the films, yet the sensitivity to the potential contradictions derived from juxtaposing wenyi and melodrama opens the door for a reflexive historiography.

Putting Wenyi Back into History Curiously, as one of the first critics to initiate a close examination of wenyi films, Cai Guorong never once mentioned melodrama in his book on wenyi. Why this omission? I would argue that Cai’s choice was less an “omission” than an active maintenance of a conceptual and practical distinction between these two categories. Wenyi was never a formal translation of melodrama, which was termed as “plot drama” in Chinese, and referred to its formulaic story-lines, sensationalism, and hyperbole. Prior to the 1990s, melodrama as “plot drama” was used primarily in drama studies, and it sel­ dom crossed over to film criticism, unlike the impact that Peter Brooks’s The Melodramat­ ic Imagination (1973) had on film studies in the United States and UK in the 1980s. Nei­ ther was wenyi particularly relevant to the cinematic, at least not in the initial two decades of cinema’s introduction to China. The linkage of letters and arts is often regard­ ed incongruous to the moving image. As Yu Dafu 郁達夫 observed in 1927: unlike litera­ ture, which is made of words and is bound by a still quality, the shadow play is meant to animate the words and is the opposite of being still.17 So what does wenyi mean to Chi­ nese cinema? Where is wenyi in relation to Chinese film? Wenyi’s earliest connection to cinema, to the best of our knowledge, can be found in (Xu) Zhuodai’s (徐)卓呆 1924 book On Photoplay (aka On Shadowplay 影戲學).18 Xu studied in Japan and was known at the time for his translation, comic stories, and wenmingxi performance, and On Photoplay is possibly the first full-fledged textbook on cinema. Com­ prised mostly of materials Xu had translated from Japanese, this primer is an introduction to screenplays, stagecraft, editing, lighting, camera handling, screening, and so on. Wenyi appears in the book’s first chapter, where the author introduces genre classifications. Listed last, the twelfth genre is that of “wenyi pictures” (文藝片), or “art film” (藝術片). Xu explains wenyi as follows: “Wenyi pictures refer to film works that were transformed from wenyi. For instance, Resurrection is the cinematic version of Tolstoy’s published work. We call literary works expressed in moving shadowplays ‘wenyi pictures.’”19 This passage is possibly the earliest existent record on the wenyi genre. Here, wenyi specifically refers to screen adaptations of wenyi fiction, in the sense of translated foreign literature. Note that Xu used Tolstoy’s Resurrection to substantiate his usage of the (p. 233) term wenyi. This is because wenyi by this time was already an established syn­ Page 8 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi onym for Western literature and an art form that is specifically foreign, outside of Chi­ nese conventions. Such connotation propelled Xu to place wenyi and art film side by side, as a mixed genre. According to Xu, it is difficult and inappropriate to distinguish wenyi from art film, because when a wenyi novel was made into a successful shadowplay (i.e., a wenyi picture), it is simultaneously an art film, for its realization of the cinematic requi­ sites: movement, ellipsis, verisimilitude, and so forth. Wenyi and art are not and should not be treated as two separate concepts. Blending art into wenyi further extends wenyi’s foreign, Western provenance to an added register of higher cinematic performance. In Xu’s classification, wenyi reconfigured as a cross-disciplinary concept with not one, but several, attributes, including gestures of translation and literary and cinematic ambition. Xu’s classification was resonant with the literary environment of the 1920s. As illustrated in the example he cited, wenyi’s historical provenance relates to translation of Western and Japanese literature into China at the turn of the twentieth century. These translated literatures were lumped together into a category known as wenyi zuopin 文藝作品 (literal­ ly, “works of letters and arts”), in contradistinction to traditional writing known for its highly formulaic pattern and structure, as exemplified in the classic parallel prose of the Six Dynasties (est. CE 220–589) or Tang poetry (est. CE 618–907). A long-established term in classical Chinese, wenyi indicates writing techniques and crafts in general. This meaning shifted when wenyi reentered in the early twentieth cen­ tury as a loan word from the Japanese term bungei, which was itself a reinvention of the classical Chinese term wenyi, denoting a new type of literature and its cousins in per­ forming arts such as theater, music, dance, and film during the first part of the Meiji peri­ od (1868–1912). This shift in meaning was documented in Nakamura Masanao’s transla­ tion of Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help (1859), Saikoku risshihen: genmei jijoron, between 1870 and 1871, and since then bungei had been charged with a mission beyond the cultivation of refined literary skills. This new meaning of bungei pertained to Japan’s rise as a unified nation-state equipped with an advanced technology and modern institutions. Bungei enabled such a process by taking cues from Western literature in order to help modernize Japanese language and thinking. These include the incorporation of free verse and collo­ quial language into written works; use of first-person narration; depiction of inner, mental states of protagonists; egoism; and finally, transcendence of human emotions into a sub­ lime aspect of nature.20 By 1900, bungei had become codified, as shown in a major liter­ ary and art magazine called Bungei kurabu (letters and arts club, est. 1894) featuring lit­ erature, photography, theater, and fine arts. Those who brought the Japanese term bungei to China and retranslated it as wenyi were probably Chinese scholars studying in Japan between 1890 and 1920. For instance, Liang Qichao 梁啟超, councilor to the Qing emperor Guangxu 光緒, escaped to Japan after their Wuxu Reform Movement was corrupted in late 1898. While hiding in Japan, Liang pub­ lished newspapers in which he ran his translations of foreign works to spearhead the re­ form of Chinese literature. He translated Jules Verne’s Two Years’ Vacation (p. 234) (Deux ans de vacances) and Camille Flammarion’s The End of the World (La fin du monde). In 1902, Liang published his famous piece “On Fiction and Its Relation to Mass Gover­ Page 9 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi nance,” in which he advocated a reliance on Western fiction to reform Chinese literature.21 Hence wenyi’s primary significance began with a Chinese association with the “for­ eign” (外國), and the “Western” (西洋), thereby making it, to borrow Lydia Liu’s term, a “translingual” property. The translingual especially manifested in wenyi as translation. Virtually all writers in the second and third decades of the century were engaged in trans­ lation. Besides taking translation as a way to communicate with unknown, new terrains of knowledge, these writers invested in translation as a new method of writing. To translate is not simply to transpose a host language onto the target language, but to actively rewrite and re-create, transforming one text into another. Key translated texts of foreign fiction during this period were thus known for their intentional “infidelity,” indicating their translingual and intercultural hybridity.22 Precisely because of this translingual register, wenyi functioned as an important vehicle to accelerate Chinese literature to catch its Western and modern counterpart in these decades. Wenyi was therefore synonymous with progressive and serious literary and artis­ tic production in its mission to take China into modernity, away from its feudal establish­ ments. Wenyi quickly became the title of many a literary magazine or newspaper supple­ ment. According to the counting of Chinese literary historian Chen Pingyuan 陳平原, a to­ tal of fifty-seven wenyi magazines were published between 1902 and 1916, marking the prevalence of the term in this early modern literary period.23 The relations between Chi­ nese wenyi and Japanese bungei are beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is safe to say by the second decade of the century wenyi had developed into an important translingual concept guiding the direction of China’s literary and cultural criticism, so much so that not even the new narrative medium of cinema was exempt from its mandate. Once associ­ ated with wenyi, Chinese cinema was forever stamped with a requirement to reform, ad­ vance, and innovate. As the first book-length study on motion pictures, On Photoplay remained for the most part a textbook, and in fact it was quite distant from what was practiced in the Chinese soundstage. Xu Zhuodai, for one, did not perform what he proposed and propagated. When he later set up his own production company, Kaixin 開心 (Happy), he produced mostly slapstick, martial arts, and folk legends, far from the wenyi mandates. Was Xu an exception? Did wenyi indeed guide the production of Chinese cinema? How many wenyi pictures were produced in the immediate period before and after Xu’s On Photoplay? To answer these questions, I conducted a content analysis of film advertisements on Shen­ bao, Shanghai’s leading newspaper for leisure and culture, in order to find out how prevalent the term wenyi was in the 1920s and 1930s. My hypothesis assumed wenyi to be an active generic category, and based on this assumption I asked how many films were produced, distributed, and promoted under the name of wenyi. I scanned film advertise­ ments from January 1920 to the end of 1940 and compiled my findings (see Appendix 12.1 at the end of this chapter).

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A Small History of Wenyi Appendix 12.1 provides a number of key facts about the contents of wenyi pictures and their distribution in foreign and domestic movies. In general the material in the table reveals the following clues. From 1920 to 1924, there were just a few film advertisements published in Shenbao. These advertisements were less concerned with the films than the exhibition of the films and, in particular, the events presented by the venues indicated in the ads. In other words, the sales pitch focused on the venues themselves and their activi­ ties, such as singers, acrobats, orchestral interludes, and so forth, rather than the distinc­ tion of the film works. Sometimes it is difficult to tell from the ad if an attraction is a live performance or a film. Hence there was no evidence indicating that the film industry was conscious at this point of promoting film exhibition based on any genre specificities. In this context, wenyi remained a dormant term in film distribution and exhibition. (p. 235)

Beginning in 1925, there appeared a significant increase in film advertisements of foreign imports. Domestic films were not nearly as visible in these film advertisements. Most of these film ads used phrases such as hilarious drama or eye-catching thrills as hooks. Wenyi was yet to be used as a keyword. A total of ninety-three entries related to literary works or literary adaptation were identified, only five of which were advertisements for a Chinese film. These ninety-three ads used phrases like masterpieces of the literary giants or literary adaptation to sell the pictures. As yet, wenyi was nowhere to be seen. In 1931, an advertisement for Escape ran a tagline identifying it as a “great wenyi,” and another for The Mysterious Lady called it a “brilliant wenyi work.” In 1932, wenyi appeared in the advertisement of Romance of Tears and Laughter. These are the earliest appearances of wenyi in film advertisements I collected from Shenbao. The phrase wenyi pictures began to be frequently used in film ads from 1935 onward, suggesting the grow­ ing cultural capital that the term yielded in commercial film trade. Even then, however, wenyi continued to be associated mainly with foreign pictures, while Chinese films re­ mained marginal within the growing trend of wenyi as a strategy of promotion and a re­ finement of taste. Film exhibition in Chinese prior to the 1920s was a business operated exclusively by Eu­ ropean entrepreneurs. Film advertisements had yet to find a niche to sell pictures, other than listing the most obvious items such as stars, film titles, and occasionally famous au­ thors if the films were screen adaptations of literary works. Shakespeare, for instance, is the most cited name in these early film advertisements. On the other hand, Chinese films were nonexistent until the mid-1920s, when domestic film production began to take shape with the maturity of several key players. These companies included Star (明星), Unique (天一), Moving Pictures Division of the Commercial Printing Press (商務印活動影戲 部), Shanghai Shadowplay Production (上海影戲), Great Wall (長城), Great China (大中華), China Sun Film Company (民新), and Lily (百合). The establishment of United Six (六合), an alliance of cinemas formed by six production companies, further pushed the growth of the film industry in the late 1920s.24 China-made films by this time were finally able to com­ pete with foreign pictures in the domestic market; moreover, their rising popularity in Southeast Asia attracted (p. 236) financing from overseas Chinese investors. Funds from Southeast Asia enabled a steady and standardized production line, which, in turn, fos­ Page 11 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi tered the formation of genre pictures. These genres ranged from slapstick to magic spirit martial arts and folk stories, but few of these could be called wenyi. Throughout the 1920s, except for Tian Han’s 田漢 Lakeside Dreams (湖邊春夢, 1927), the art and literature labels were rare, and I did not discover any other example that came close to the wenyi category. Despite the scarcity of wenyi pictures, the meaning of wenyi as demonstrated in the ads collected was consistent with the description made by Xu Zhuodai in On Photoplay. There were ample illustrations of wenyi’s equivalence to literature, judging from the repetitive citations of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Alexander Dumas pè re, Jack London, Lord Byron, and Mark Twain as either “literary giants” or “literary virtuosos” and naming Resurrection, Camille, Three Musketeers, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Sea Wolf as “literary masterpieces.” It is quite certain that at this time authors were more powerful than stars when it came to promoting movies. Finally, it took nearly seven years after the 1924 pub­ lication of On Photoplay to see the fruition of the wenyi genre, though even then it was not completely codified in the distribution for Chinese productions.

Conclusion: Bringing Wenyi Up Front This chapter has attempted to historicize wenyi, reconstructing the motives, intent, and objectives behind this term, together with the discourses that employed it. Borrowing cul­ tural prestige from the West for use in an Asian colonial context, wenyi is a distillation of literariness, synonymous with quality, and adaptable to Chinese writing, writers, and film adaptations. The standard literature on Chinese melodrama has assimilated wenyi to the term melodrama, but I questioned this association. We need to look at wenyi independent of melodrama, not a “handy” equivalent of its seemingly American counterpart, but a lo­ calized discourse and practice toward a national cinema. The connection between wenyi and melodrama should be reconstructed in specific historical terms, and the previous habit of placing the relationship as an unproblematic translation, or a cross-cultural as­ similation, should be reexamined. Considering the wide horizon of the wenyi materials and the intertextual nature of wenyi studies, an introduction to the history of wenyi is but a piecemeal recovery of the interdependent historiography of early Chinese film and liter­ ature. This chapter offers a preliminary synopsis of wenyi pictures, and I will continue to explore wenyi’s changing connotations, its course of artistic maturity, its transformation, and its ultimate “disappearance” in Chinese-language cinema across different times and industrial political contexts.

Appendix 12.1 Film Advertisements Featur­ ing Keywords of Wenyi, Literature, and Literary Work (1920–1940) (p. 237)

(p. 238)

(p. 239)

(p. 240)

(p. 241)

(p. 242)

(p. 243)

(p. 244)

(p. 245)

(p. 246)

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A Small History of Wenyi Original Film Title

Chinese Film Title

Exhibition Details

1

His Majesty Bunker Bean

Naweng pantu (拿翁叛徒) Napoleon in­ carnated

Apollo Theater (1/20/1926) “A masterpiece of the American literary virtuoso Harry Leon Wilson” “Crossover of Matt Moore and Dorothy Devore, ac­ tors of Warner Bros. Pic­ tures Co.”

2

Bobbed Hair

Mingxing jian­ fa ji (明星剪髮記) Romance of a short haircut

Apollo Theater (1/22/1926) “Collaboration of the top 20 literary virtuosos of America” “The latest masterpiece presented by Warner Bros. Pictures Co.”

3

4

5

6

Monte Cristo

Qingchou

Isis Theater (3/14/1926)

(情仇) Love

“A masterpiece of the French literary virtuoso

vengeance

Alexandre Dumas”

Meiren xin (美人心)

Palace Theater (6/19/1927) “An artistic, sentimental,

To catch a beauty’s heart

and poetic film”

No English ti­

Hubian chun

Apollo Theater (10/9/1927)

tle

meng (湖邊春夢) Lakeside dreams

“Story written by renowned Chinese literary writer Tian Han” “An artistic film that culti­ vates audiences”

The Sea Wolf

Haishang bawang (also known as Haishang mowang)

Nanking Theater (11/18/1927) “A masterpiece of the renowned novelist Jack London”

Don Juan

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A Small History of Wenyi (海上霸王/又名 海上魔王) Devil of the sea

Nanking Theater (1/1/1931) “A masterpiece of the liter­ ary virtuoso Jack London”

7

Nazimova Camille

Chahua nü (茶花女) The fallen woman

Peking Theater (11/20/1927) “A masterpiece of the French literary virtuoso Dumas, fils”

8

The Three Musketeers

San jianke (三劍客) Three swords­ men

Isis Theater (5/8/1928) “Originated from the work of the French literary virtu­ oso Alexandre Dumas” Penglai Theater (5/7/1937) “A great wuxia wenyi film” “An immortal masterpiece by Alexandre Dumas, pre­ sented by Radio Keith Or­ pheum” Grand Theater (5/23/1939) “A great wenyi film”

9

10

The Iron

Xu san jianke

Carlton Theater and Capi­

Mask

(續三劍客) Three swords­

tol Theater (4/3/1929) “An immortal masterpiece

men II

of Alexandre Dumas”

Fushide (浮士德)

Peking Theater (6/11/1929) “Originated from the work

Faust

of the giant German writer Goethe”

Faust

11

Love’s Blind­ ness

Mangmu de aiqing (盲目的愛情) Love blind

Carlton Theater (7/12/1929) “Originated from the work of the great British woman writer, Elinor Glyn”

12

Hangman’s House

Huoli zuiren (火裡罪人)

Isis Theater (7/24/1929) “A masterpiece of the liter­ ary virtuoso Donn Byrne”

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A Small History of Wenyi Sinner in the fire 13

Resurrection

Fuhuo (復活) Resurrection

Foh Sing Theater (6/2/1930) “An immortal masterpiece of the Russian literary vir­ tuoso Leo Tolstoy”

14

The Cossacks

Gesaka (哥薩克) The Cossacks

Pantheon Theater (10/7/1930) “Originated from the work of the Russian literary vir­ tuoso Leo Tolstoy”

15

Tom Sawyer

Wantong xiao zhuan

Capitol Theater (1/1/1931) “An immortal masterpiece

(頑童小傳) The adventure

of the American literary virtuoso Mark Twain”

of a naughty boy

“A Paramount Picture”

Qing zei

Nanking Theater

(情賊) Love thief

(1/24/1931) “An immortal masterpiece

16

Raffles

of the giant writer Ernest William Hornung” 17

Escape

Fawang yu

Strand Theater (4/26/1931)

qingwang (法網與情網)

“The greatest Wenyi makes the greatest film!”

Law and love

“Adapted from English Lit­ erature”

18

The Mysteri­ ous Lady

Xiao hun (銷魂) Tingling sensa­ tions

Crystal Theater (6/3/1931) “A wenyi masterpiece featuring combat”

19

No English ti­ tle

Yi jian mei (一剪梅) Broken plum blossoms

Isis Theater (7/20/1931)

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A Small History of Wenyi “Adapted from the immor­ tal masterpiece of the liter­ ary virtuoso William Shake­ speare.” 20

Cimarron

Zhuangzhi qianqiu (壯志千秋) Hero eternal

Nanking Theater (11/4/1931) “An immortal masterpiece of the great woman author Edna Ferber. Colossal”

21

Street Scene

Jietou canju (街頭慘劇) Street tragedy

Apollo Theater (4/14/1932) “A wenyi masterpiece that bombarded America” “An immortal masterpiece that won the Pulitzer Prize” “Directed by King Vidor”

22

No English ti­ tle

Tixiao yinyuan (啼笑姻緣)

Nanking Theater (9/25/1932)

Romance of tears and

“A wenyi masterpiece”

laughter 23

All Quiet on the West

Xi xian wu zhanshi

Shanxi Theater (1/31/1933) “An immortal masterpiece

Front

(西線無戰事) No war on the

of literature”

western front 24

Tess of the Storm Coun­ try

Qing chao (情潮) Passion

Nanking Theater (1/31/1933) “Based on the masterpiece of the great novelist Grace Miller White”

25

The Sin of Madelon Claudet

Duan chang hua (斷腸花) Broken heart

Paris Theater (3/10/1933) “The award-winning wenyi masterpiece of 1931”

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A Small History of Wenyi 26

Men of Chance

Ruo nü de yin­ tong (弱女的隱痛) Silent outcry of a woman

Nanking Theater (3/22/1933) “A masterpiece of the liter­ ary virtuoso Louis Weitzenkorn”

27

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Huashen boshi (化身博士) Doctor in dis­ guise

Shanxi Theater (3/22/1933) “An immortal masterpiece of the great British novelist Robert Louis Stevenson”

28

The Woman Accused

Qing hai bo lan (情海波瀾) Troubled love affairs

Capitol Theater and Lyceum Theater (6/5/1933) “A reputable collaboration of the 10 greatest literary writers in America”

29

Murders in

Bali xue’an

Paris Theater (7/29/1933)

the Rue Morgue

(巴黎血案) Murders in

“Adapted from the immor­ tal masterpiece of the

Paris

great American poet Edgar Allan Poe”

No English ti­

Meihua luo

Paris Theater (8/6/1933)

tle

(Part II) 梅花落 (後部)

“A masterpiece of the gi­ ants of literature”

Fallen plum blossoms Part

“Directed by Zhang Shichuan”

II

“A masterpiece”

Luan wu chun­ qiu

Nanking Theater (9/13/1933)

(亂舞春秋) Romance in wartime

“A masterpiece of the liter­ ary virtuoso Noel Coward”

Manli mi shi (曼梨秘史) The mystery of Mary

Nanking Theater (10/10/1933) “A masterpiece of the great novelist Rex Beach” “A wenyi film! The best artistic film!”

30

31

32

Cavalcade

The Past of Mary Holmes

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A Small History of Wenyi 33

Don Quixote

Mo xia Ji Kede (魔俠吉訶德) Don Quixote

Nanking Theater (12/12/1933) “An immortal masterpiece of the Spanish literary vir­ tuoso Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.” “The soul of literature in the sixteenth century!”

34

Ann Vickers

Fengchen li je (風塵歷劫) Love in a trou­ bled time

Metropole Theater (1/19/1934) “The masterpiece of Sin­ clair Lewis that bombard­ ed the world”

35

The Count of Monte Cristo

Jidushan en chou ji (基度山恩仇記)

Grand Theater (1/28/1934) “A historical wenyi film of sentiment”

A tale of love and vengeance

“An immortal masterpiece of the French giant writer

in Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas” Capitol Theater (2/4/1935) “The unique historical wenyi film of sentiment” Carlton Theater (4/22/1935) “An immortal masterpiece of the literary virtuoso Alexandre Dumas” “A historical wenyi master­ piece”

36

Great Expec­ tations

Yu di yu sheng (獄底餘生) Remains of life in jail

Metropole Theater (2/27/1934) “An immortal masterpiece of the great British novelist Charles Dickens” “A sentimental wenyi mas­ terpiece” “A great work presented by Universal Pictures Co.” Capitol Theater (4/28/1935)

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A Small History of Wenyi “A masterpiece of the liter­ ary virtuoso Charles Dick­ ens” “A literary masterpiece, starring 9 famous artists” 37

Little Women

Xiao furen (小婦人) Little women

Metropole Theater (4/9/1934) “A great literary film” “A masterpiece of the most reputable American woman writer Louisa May Alcott”

38

Laughing Boy

Yiguo qingyuen (異國情鴛)

Grand Theater (6/9/1934) “Based on an award-win­ ning novel of the Pulitzer

A mixed cou­ ple

Prize” “One of the greatest works presented by Metro-Gold­ wyn-Mayer Inc.”

39

40

David Cop­

Kui rou yu

(3/30/1935)

perfield

sheng (塊肉餘生)

“A great literary film” “An immortal masterpiece

Survivor

of the romantic British nov­ elist Charles Dickens”

Lihua haitang

Cathay Theater (4/4/1935)

(梨花海棠) Midlife crisis

“A masterpiece of the con­ temporary literary virtuoso

Babbitt

Sinclair Lewis.” “A romantic wenyi master­ piece” “Collaboration of actors from Warner Bros. Pictures Co.” 41

Peck’s Bad Boy

Wantong (頑童) Naughty boy

Rialto Theater (4/22/1935) “An ethical wenyi master­ piece of sentiment”

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A Small History of Wenyi 42

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Chen yuan (沉冤) Injustice

(4/22/1935) “The only detective master­ piece of the British literary virtuoso Charles Dickens” “A miraculous historical wenyi masterpiece”

43

The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Gui yuan (閨怨) Forbidden love

Rialto Theater (5/5/1935) “The one and only, spectac­ ular, retro, sentimental wenyi masterpiece”

44

Vanessa, Her Love Story

Lan yin xu guo (蘭因絮果) Love unful­ filled

Nanking Theater (5/5/1935) “An immortal masterpiece of the British literary virtu­ oso Hugh Walpole” “A wenyi masterpiece, star­ ring five famous artists, di­ rected by William K. Howard, and presented by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.”

45

Treasure Is­ land

Jin yin dao (also named

Kui Sing Theater (5/24/1935)

Jin yin baodao) (金銀島/又名金

“An immortal masterpiece of Robert Louis Stevenson,

銀寶島) Isle of gold

the literary virtuoso of the nineteenth century”

and silver

“A romantic wenyi master­ piece”

46

20,000 Years in Sing Sing

Laoyu erwan nian (牢獄二萬年) Twenty thou­ sand years in prison

Hongkew Theater (7/21/1935) “The masterpiece that bombarded the world”

47

Of Human Bondage

Nie zhai (孽債) Fateful debt

Paris Theater (8/14/1935)

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A Small History of Wenyi “The masterpiece that bombarded the world—a reputable romantic film of W. Somerset Maugham, au­ thor of Rain” 48

Laddie

Xiao meimei (小妹妹) Little sister

Metropole Theater (8/17/1935) “One of the top six master­ pieces in the world”

49

A Dog of Flanders

Liang xiao wu cai (兩小無猜) Innocence

Nanking Theater (8/17/1935) “A sentimental masterpiece of the literary virtuoso Ouida”

50

No English ti­ tle

Meiren en (美人恩)

Palace Theater and Palais Oriental Theater

When a lovely girl bestows

(9/8/1935) “A masterpiece of the

her favors

renowned Chinese novelist Zhang Henshui”

Zuanshi

(9/21/1935)

dawang 鑽石大王

“A spectacular wenyi mas­ terpiece”

51

Diamond Jim

King of dia­ monds 52

53

Anna Kareni­

Chun can

Nanking Theater

na

meng duan (春殘夢斷) Broken heart in late spring

(10/13/1935) “A sentimental masterpiece of the Russian literary vir­ tuoso Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy”

Les miser­ ables

Gu xing lei (孤星淚) Tears of an or­ phan

Metropole Theater (11/2/1935) “An immortal masterpiece of the French literary virtu­ oso Victor Hugo”

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A Small History of Wenyi 54

Peter Ibbet­ son

Meng can hun duan (夢殘魂斷) Broken souls, shards of life

Grand Theater (12/19/1935) “A sentimental wenyi mas­ terpiece, starring two fa­ mous artists”

55

Ah Wilder­ ness

Dadi zhi chun (大地之春) Here comes spring

Nanking Theater (1/16/1936) “A literary masterpiece presented by Metro-Gold­ wyn-Mayer Inc.” “A masterpiece of the American literary virtuoso Eugene O’Neill”

56

The Last Days of Pom­ peii

Gucheng mori ji (古城末日記)

(2/10/1936) “A historical literary mas­ terpiece—a million produc­

A tale of an an­ cient city at its

tion of Radio Keith Or­ pheum”

end 57

As You Like It

Jie da huanxi (皆大歡喜)

Grand Theater (1/16/1936) “A pure wenyi

All rejoice

masterpiece” “Presented by Twentieth Century Fox Inc.” “A masterpiece of the liter­ ary virtuoso William Shake­ speare”

58

59

A Tale of Two

Shuang cheng

Nanking Theater

Cities

ji (雙城記) A tale of two cities

(3/10/1936) “A historical literary mas­ terpiece” “A masterpiece of the British giant writer Charles Dickens. An adaptation of Dickens’s classic of the French Revolution”

No English ti­ tle

Daiyu zang hua

Ritz Theater (4/3/1936)

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A Small History of Wenyi (黛玉葬花) Lin Daiyu buries fallen petals

“A wenyi masterpiece in classical customs and dia­ logue” “Presented by Da Wah Film Company, the giant of South China film industry”

60

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Xiao bojue (小伯爵) Little lord

Grand Theater (5/26/1936) “The greatest wenyi mas­ terpiece in ten years”

61

Ramona

Lei Mengna (雷夢娜) Ramona

Grand Theater (11/1/1936) “A well-known wenyi mas­ terpiece (color film)”

62

Come and Get It

Shui shang yuefu

Metropole Theater (12/29/1936)

(水上樂府) Songs on wa­

“An immortal masterpiece of the great woman writer

ter

Edna Ferber”

Qu zhong ren san, aka

Ritz Theater (2/2/1937) “A literary masterpiece of

Changhen xin ge

sentiment”

63

The Melody Lingers On

(曲終人散/又名 長恨新歌) The last song, aka, Everlast­ ing regrets 64

Captain Blood

Tie xue jiangjun (鐵血將軍) The general of iron blood

Empire Theater (4/1/1937) “A stirring historical wenyi masterpiece featuring mar­ itime warfare” “An immortal masterpiece of the literary virtuoso Rafael Sabatini”

65

Dante’s Infer­ no

Shiren you diyu (詩人遊地獄)

Kui Sing Theater (4/1/1937) “The one and only, wenyi masterpiece in the mood of horror”

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A Small History of Wenyi The poet roaming in hell

“Originated from the work of the Italian poet Dante”

66

A Midsum­ mer Night’s Dream

Zhongxiaye zhi meng (仲夏夜之夢) Dream in a midsummer night

Broadway Theater (4/4/1937) “A spectacular, literary, po­ etic masterpiece” “A masterpiece of William Shakespeare”

67

The Green Light

Ziwo xisheng (自我犧牲) Self-sacrifice

Cathay Theater (4/13/1937) “The greatest wenyi mas­ terpiece, consisting warm, sentimental and miracu­ lous elements” “The latest masterpiece directed by Frank Borzage. Presented by Warner Bros. Picture Co.”

68

69

Girl Over­ board

Mary of Scot­ land

Jue dao yuan hen

Lafayetee Theater (4/26/1937)

(絕島冤痕) Island of

“A sentimental, miracu­ lous, historical wenyi mas­

calamities

terpiece”

Fengliu shijia (風流世家)

Penglai Theater (5/16/1937)

The amorous house of royal­

“A glorious historical wenyi masterpiece, presented by

ties

Warner Bros. Picture Co.”

70

Taras Bulba

Zhongyi mieqin (忠義滅親) The patriot

Cathay Theater (6/1/1937) “A historical wenyi master­ piece featuring combat” “A masterpiece of the Russ­ ian literary virtuoso, Niko­ lai Gogol.”

71

The Prince and the Pau­ per

Qigai huangdi (乞丐皇帝)

Grand Theater (6/1/1937) “A miraculous, historical wenyi masterpiece”

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A Small History of Wenyi

72

The Outcasts of Poker Flat

Beggar emper­ or

“A well-known masterpiece of the humorous American literary virtuoso Mark Twain” “The million production of Warner Bros. Picture Co.” “Directed by William Keighley”

Duchang haox­ ia (賭場豪俠) The chivalrous gambler

Metropole Theater (6/19/1937) “A spectacular, miraculous, chivalrous literary master­ piece” “Presented by Radio Keith Orpheum” “A well-known masterpiece of Bret Harte”

73

The Woman I Love

Zhan yun qing lei

Metropole Theater (7/4/1937)

(戰雲情淚) War love trian­

“A literary masterpiece”

gle 74

Winterset

Qiong xiang zhi dong

Rialto Theater (7/16/1937) “A literary masterpiece”

(窮巷之冬) Poor be

“Presented by Radio Keith Orpheum”

damned 75

Pygmalion

Mai hua nü (賣花女) The flower girl

Cathay Theater (4/14/1939) “A wenyi masterpiece” “A masterpiece of the Irish literary virtuoso George Bernard Shaw”

76

Four Daugh­ ters

Si qianjin (四千金) Four daugh­ ters

Paris Theater (4/25/1939)

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A Small History of Wenyi 77

Wuthering Heights

Hun gui li hen tian (魂歸離恨天) Love of a bit­ ter end

Nanking Theater (7/18/1939) “Brontë’s Wuthering Heights”

78

If I Were King

Wo ruo wei wang (我若為王) If I were king

Metropole Theater (9/1/1939) “A wenyi masterpiece featuring combat”

79

Huckleberry Finn

Wantong liu­ lang ji (頑童流浪記) A tale of a boy’s fancy ad­ venture

Nanking Theater (10/7/1939) “A wenyi masterpiece”

80

Gulliver’s Travels

Xiao ren guo (小人國)

Grand Theater and Metro­ pole Theater (2/13/1940)

The miniature kingdom

“A wenyi masterpiece (animated film in color)”

The Hunch­

Zhonglou

Nanking Theater

back of Notre Dame

guairen (鐘樓怪人)

(2/13/1940) “A masterpiece of the

The freak in the bell tower

French literary virtuoso”

The Rain

Yu lai

Metropole Theater

Came

(雨來) Here comes

(2/29/1940) “A sentimental wenyi mas­

the rain

terpiece”

81

82

83

We Are Not Alone

Ren hai yuan­ hun (人海冤魂) We are all vic­ tims

Cathay Theater (2/29/1940) “A sentimental wenyi mas­ terpiece”

84

Pinocchio

Mu’ou qiyu ji (木偶奇遇記)

Nanking Theater and Metropole Theater (2/29/1940)

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A Small History of Wenyi A curious en­ counter of a wood puppet

“A wenyi masterpiece (animated film in color)”

85

Robinson Crusoe

Lu Binxun jiat­ ing piaoliu ji (魯賓遜家庭飄流 記) The drifting story of the Robins

Nanking Theater and Metropole Theater (2/29/1940) “A wenyi masterpiece”

86

Gone With the Wind

Luanshi jiaren (亂世佳人) A beauty of a troubled time

Da Wah Theater (6/19/1940) “A wenyi masterpiece (color film)”

87

Disputed Pas­ sage

Shengsi lian (生死戀)

Grand Theater (8/19/1940) “A wenyi masterpiece”

Romance of life and death Note: All English film titles, save for a very few exceptions that ap­ peared in the advertisement, are my own findings, based on the cast, directors, studios, and story lines. The italicized words under “Exhibi­ tion Details” are keywords pertaining to wenyi copied directly from the ads and translated word by word into English. Some of the copies contained original English phrases, and they are kept in the English translation.

Works Cited Benjamin, Walter. “A Small History of Photography.” One-Way Street. Trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter. London: Verso, 1979. 240–257. Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Cai Guorong 蔡國榮. Zhongguo jindai wenyi dianying yanjiu 中國近代文藝電影研究 [A study on modern Chinese wenyi pictures]. Taibei: Zhonghua mingguo dianying tushuguan, 1985. Chen Pingyuan 陳平原. Ershi shiji zhongguo xiaoshuo shi 二十世紀中國小說史 [A history of twentieth-century Chinese fiction]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1989.

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A Small History of Wenyi Chow, Eileen Cheng-yin. “Serial Sightings: News, Novelties, and an Unofficial History of the Old Capital.” Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon. Ed. Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chen-yin Chow. London: Routledge, 2009. 54–77. Cohen, Paul A. Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Davis, Darrell William. Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Dissanayake, Wimal, ed. Melodrama and Asian Cinema. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Law Kar. “Archetypes and Variations: Observations on Six Cantonese Films.” Cantonese Melodrama, 1950–1969. Ed. Li Cheuk-to. The Tenth Hong Kong International Film Festi­ val. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1986. 10–20. Li, Cheuk-to, ed. “Introduction.” Cantonese Melodrama, 1950–1969. The Tenth Hong Kong International Film Festival. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1986. 7–8. Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊彬. Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國無聲電影史 [A history of Chinese silent film]. Beijing: China Film Press, 1996. Liang Qichao 梁啟超. “Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi” 論小說與群治之關係 [On the rela­ tionship between literature and state governance]. Xin xiaoshuo 新小說 [New literature], Nov. 1, 1902. Liu, Lydia. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity —China, 1900–1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. Ma, Ning. “Symbolic Representation and Symbolic Violence: Chinese Family Melodrama of the Early 1980s.” East-West Film Journal 4.1 (1989): 32–49. Pickowicz, Paul G. “Melodramatic Representation and the ‘May Fourth’ Tradition of Chi­ nese Cinema.” From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China. Ed. Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. 295–326. Qin Xiqing 秦喜清. “Zhongguo shijiao: Haolaiwu yu zhongguo dianying bijiao yanjiu de fangfa lun fansi 中國視角 ： 好萊塢與中國電影比較研究的方法論分析” [A methodological reflec­ tion on Chinese and Hollywood film comparisons: Toward a China perspective]. Huayu di­ anying gongye: xin lishi yu xin fangfa 華語電影工業 ： 新歷史與新方法 [Rethinking the Chi­ nese film industry: New methods, new histories]. Ed. Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh 葉月瑜. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2011. 121–134. Smiles, Samuel. Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct. London: J. Mur­ ray, 1958.

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A Small History of Wenyi Snell-Hornby, Mary. The Turns of Translation Studies: New Paradigms or Shifting View­ points? Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 2006. Sugawara, Yoshino. “Liuhe yingpian yingye gongsi zaitan 六合影片影業公司再 探” [Liuhe film company revisited]. Huayu dianying gongye: xin lishi yu xin fangfa 華語電影 工業 ： 新歷史與新方法 [Rethinking the Chinese film industry]. Ed. Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh. Bei­ jing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2011. 95–120. (p. 249)

Teo, Stephen. “Chinese Melodrama.” Traditions in World Cinema. Ed. Linda Badley, R. Barton Palmer, and Stephen Jay Schneider. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. 203–213. Varley, H. Paul. Japanese Culture: A Short History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. [Xu] Zhuodai [徐]卓呆. Yingxi xue 影戲學 [On photoplay]. Shanghai: Huaxian Shangyeshe tushubu, 1924. Yu Dafu 郁達夫. “Dianying yu wenyi” 電影與文藝 [Film and literature]. Yin xing 銀星 [Movie guide] 12 (1927). Reprinted in Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent film], ed. Dai Xiaolan 戴小蘭 et al. Beijing: China Film Press, 1996. 447–450.

Notes: (1.) “Xiaohun” 銷魂 [Sensations], film advertisement for Crystal Theater, Shenbao 申報, June 3, 1931. (2.) “Jietou canju” 街頭慘劇 [Street tragedy], film advertisement for the Apollo Theater, Shenbao, April 14, 1932. (3.) “Tixiao yinyuan” 啼笑姻緣 [Romance of tears and laughter], film advertisement for Nanking Theater, Shenbao, September 25, 1932. (4.) Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, “Serial Sightings: News, Novelties, and an Unofficial History of the Old Capital,” in Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon, ed. Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow (London: Routledge, 2009), 57–58. (5.) Cai Guorong 蔡國榮, Zhongguo jindai wenyi dianying yanjiu 中國近代文藝電影研究 [A study on modern Chinese wenyi pictures] (Taibei: Zhonghua mingguo dianying tushuguan, 1985), 2. (6.) Stephen Teo, “Chinese Melodrama,” in Traditions in World Cinema, ed. Linda Badley, A. Barton Palmer, and Stephen Jay Schneider (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 203. (7.) Wimal Dissanayake, ed., Melodrama and Asian Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1993), 3.

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A Small History of Wenyi (8.) Darrell William Davis, Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). (9.) Paul G. Pickowicz, “Melodramatic Representation and the ‘May Fourth’ Tradition of Chinese Cinema,” in From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Cen­ tury China, ed. Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 300–303. (10.) Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊彬, Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國無聲電影史 [A history of Chinese silent film] (Beijing: China Film Press, 1996), 67–69. (11.) Ma Ning, “Symbolic Representation and Symbolic Violence: Chinese Family Melo­ drama of the Early 1980s,” East-West Film Journal 4.1 (1989): 32–49. (12.) Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Re­ cent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 187–188. (13.) Stephen Teo, “Chinese Melodrama,” 203. (14.) Law Kar, “Archetypes and Variations: Observations on Six Cantonese Films,” in Can­ tonese Melodrama, 1950–1969, ed. Li Cheuk-to, The Tenth Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1986), 10–20; and Li Cheuk-to, “Introduction,” in Li Cheuk-to, Cantonese Melodrama, 7–8. (15.) Li Cheuk-to, “Introduction,” 8. (16.) Law Kar, “Archetypes and Variations,” 15. (17.) Yu Dafu 郁達夫, “Dianying yu wenyi” 電影與文藝 [Film and literature], in Yin Xing 銀星 [Movie guide] 12 (1927): 449, reprinted in Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent film], ed. Dai Xiaolan 戴小蘭 et al. (Beijing: China Film Press, 1996), 447– 450. (18.) [Xu] Zhuodai [徐]卓呆, Yingxi xue 影戲學 [On photoplay] (Shanghai: Huaxian Shangyeshe tushubu, 1924). Zhuodai was the pen name of Xu Zhuodai, also known as Xu Fulin 徐傅霖 or Xu Banmei 徐半梅. (19.) [Xu] Zhuodai, On Photoplay, 17. (20.) Paul Varley, Japanese Culture: A Short History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 183–185. (21.) Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi” 論小說與群治之關係 [On the relationship between literature and state governance], Xin xiaoshuo 新小說 [New litera­ ture], November 1, 1902, 1. (22.) See Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); and Mary Page 30 of 31

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A Small History of Wenyi Snell-Hornby, The Turns of Translation Studies: New Paradigms or Shifting Viewpoints? (Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 2006). (23.) Chen Pingyuan 陳平原, Ershi shiji zhongguo xiaoshuo shi 二十世紀中國小說史 [A history of twentieth-century Chinese fiction] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1989), 80. (24.) Yoshino Sugawara, “Liuhe yingpian yingye gongsi zaitan” 六合影片影業公司再探 [Liuhe film company revisited], in Huayu dianying gongye: xin lishi yu xin fangfa 華語電影工業: 新 歷史與新方法 [Rethinking the Chinese film industry: New methods, new histories], ed. Emi­ lie Yueh-yu Yeh (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2011), 90–120.

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh is Professor and Head of the Cinema-TV Program and Director of the Centre for Media and Communication Research at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her major publications include: Rethinking Chinese Film Industry: New Methods, New Histories (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2011). East Asian Screen Industries (with Darrell Davis, British Film Institute, 2008), Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island (with Darrell Davis, Columbia University Press, 2005), Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (with Sheldon Lu, University of Hawaii Press, 2005, Choice's 2005 outstanding academic title), and Phantom of the Music: Song Narration and Chinese-Language Cinema (Taipei: Yuan-liou, 2000). Her current re­ search projects include China’s film marketization, Chinese wenyi pictures and early film industry.

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema

Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema   Wang Ban The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0014

Abstract and Keywords Focusing on two Korean War films, this chapter traces the development of aesthetic forms in relation to geopolitics and revolutionary ideology from the 1950s through the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Although Chinese films of the Korean War depict dramatic scenes of battlefields and intriguing strategies, they seek to offer an ideological exemplar rather than exciting stories. The war film articulates a politics of spirit and expresses Mao’s mili­ tary romanticism. Against the Cold War geopolitics and the fetishism of weapons and through aesthetic, operatic elaboration, the war film holds up heroic, self-sacrificing fig­ ures of idealism for the whole society to emulate so as to empower the population. The politics of spirit also projects a cultural internationalism that aligns with third-world na­ tions in the common struggle against imperialism. Keywords: politics of spirit, internationalism, military romanticism, imperialism

Just as war, as Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously observed, may be seen as merely the “continuation of politics by other means,”1 war films may similarly be seen as a form of politics by nonmilitary means—using audiovisual effect, imagery, and ideology to achieve their goals. There is no better place to see Chinese political culture at work than in Chinese war films. In particular, an overview of Chinese cinema during the seventeen years from 1949 to 1966 reveals a large number of works depicting war. It is well known that the dominant film genre in China is one of “revolutionary history,” and since revolutionary history is a history of wars and armed class struggle, marked by the strategically crucial campaigns to combat foreign invasions and the ambition to wrest state power from the Nationalist regime, the Chinese war film can accordingly be catego­ rized as a subgenre under the rubric of the revolutionary historical narrative. As an inseparable part of China’s revolutionary history culminating in the founding of the People’s Republic, the Chinese war film serves an educational function concerning the history, struggle, and buildup of the People’s Republic of China. Mao’s famous statement “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”2 sums up the experience of armed struggle against overwhelming odds and affirms the necessarily belligerent nature of Page 1 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema state building.3 This history traverses several stages, each of which generated landmark films. The history up to 1927 is characterized as the grand revolution, with revolutionary wars against warlords waged by the united front of the Communists and Nationalists. Film presentations of this period focus on peasant uprisings and the Northern Expedition. The second period, 1927–1937, is marked by the wars of land revolution and is crucial to the birth of the Red Army, its rural military action, and the Long March. The next stage from 1937 through 1945 is the Anti-Japanese War, which includes numerous memorable productions such as Mine Warfare (地雷戰, 1962) and Tunnel Warfare (地道戰, 1965). The fourth stage is the civil war between (p. 251) the Communists and Nationalists. Also known as the War of Liberation, its most prominent film is Battles across the Land (南征北 戰, 1952). The Korean War broke out shortly after communists took state power, with Shanggan Ridge (上甘岭, 1956) and Heroic Sons and Daughters (英雄兒女, 1964) being the most iconic films from this period. As a form of education, the war film is a visual history paralleling revolutionary history. The typical war film performs many functions. It asserts the centrality of a strong army for class and national struggle in the revolutionary era and for territorial security under the threat of geopolitical conflict in the Cold War. As Mao said, “Without a people’s army the people have nothing.”4 The genre’s educational function is to present exemplary he­ roes for the moral edification of the masses. Often martyrdom is a prominent theme. The war film instructs and entertains in a realistic and romantic style, creating audiovisual impact and serving up thrills, pleasure, and catharsis for mass audiences. Embedded in a cultural tradition boasting works such as Sun Zi’s Art of War (孫子兵法) and the novel Ro­ mance of Three Kingdoms (三國演義), the Chinese have been fascinated with the tour de force in strategy and tactics. The ingenuity of strategists and maneuvers of the rank and file in the war film are a popular attraction. Bravery in combat has everything to do with calculated choice and tricky ploys and little to do with foolhardiness. All these features and more are present in a typical war film, and they combine pleasurable cinematic spec­ tacle with ideological edification. The revolutionary war film contrasts sharply with a recent development in war films in transnational cinemas. In general, war stories have turned away from warring forces in favor of individuals’ vicissitudes, romance, trauma, and the facile triumph of the “human spirit.” The Korean film The Brotherhood of War (Taegukgi, 2004) and the Chinese direc­ tor Feng Xiaogang’s 馮小剛 Assembly (集結號, 2007) are two striking recent examples. War is no longer political but a backdrop for an individual story. Whether imperialist or colo­ nialist, as invasion or national defense and liberation, wars crush individuals in indiscrim­ inate slaughter and bloodshed, unmotivated by any human agent and without any politi­ cal and moral purpose. Preoccupied with personal loyalty, military camaraderie, or family ties rather than any collective identity, and advocating a form of survivalist individualism against trauma, the new development in the “war” genre obscures geopolitical conflict and ideological divide in the past and present. By reexamining Chinese films dealing with the Korean War, I will bring a politicized perspective to our interpretation of war and con­ flict in the history of the Cold War. Page 2 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema This chapter looks at two classic Korean War films from the Maoist era, Shanggan Ridge and Heroic Sons and Daughters. Deploying Shanggan Ridge as a reference point to ex­ plore in more detail the themes of politics, culture, and internationalism in Heroic Sons and Daughters, I argue that the latter work came as a visual reflection of geopolitical ten­ sions and ideological conflict during the Cold War and third-world internationalism on the eve of the Cultural Revolution and does so by compressing art, politics, and military expe­ rience into a politics of spirit.

Shanggan Ridge: Realism, Patriotism, and Technology (p. 252)

Released in 1956, three years after the cease-fire, Shanggan Ridge became an instant classic and appealed to a growing sense of nationalism and patriotism. China’s military intervention in Korea in late November 1950 surprised the world. It seemed incredible that the PRC, barely on its feet as a state and in dire economic conditions, would take such an enormous risk by engaging in a conflict with a superpower. Despite being poorly equipped, the Chinese voluntary soldiers, allied with the army and people of North Korea, managed to defeat the well-armed U.S./UN forces and bring them to the negotiating ta­ ble. The narrative of Shanggan Ridge shows how heroism coupled with a judicious use of force may bring the enemy to negotiation. The film is based on a real battle. In the fall of 1952, during the break of the cease-fire negotiations at Panmunjorn in Korea, the U.S./UN troops suddenly launched a massive attack on the area close to the 38th parallel, seeking to overtake the strategically important Shanggan Ridge and Mount Wusheng. A fictional re-creation based on the actual battle, the film tells the story of a company of the Chinese volunteer army assigned the task of holding ground against the enemy advance. Although the Chinese soldiers fend off thirty-eight attacks in a single day, they are far outnumbered and suffer heavy casualties when enemy reinforcements close in. The company is thus or­ dered to retreat into tunnels and caves. By hunkering down in the belly of the ridge, which has been taken by the enemy, this small group attacks the enemy’s flank and drags down their progress. Fighting under nearly impossible conditions for twenty-four days, the soldiers exhibit courage and perseverance and endure enormous hardship until the Chinese and North Korean forces launch a counteroffensive, eventually forcing the U.S./ UN forces back to the negotiating table. While the Maoist-era war film generally adopts an aesthetic of realism combined with rev­ olutionary romanticism, the balance between the two varies according to the ideological climate of the production. For all its heroic eulogy and romantic flair, Shanggan Ridge reveals a gritty realism rarely seen in other films. The hand-to-hand combat, the piles of wounded and dead soldiers, the raining bombardment, and finally the excruciating details of day-to-day survival in the dark tunnel without water—all point to an impulse to register the immediate, painful experience of war. This emphasis on physical details, which one

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema critic calls “new realism” (新寫實主義),5 stands in stark contrast with the breezy and ro­ mantic style that we will find in Heroic Sons and Daughters. This gritty realism is not incompatible with the rising national pride in the wake of the Korean War. While the war boosted Chinese confidence in the new nation, the heavy price paid needed to be remembered so as to make the victory seem all the more hard won and significant. An immediate personal experience of a large portion of the Chinese popula­ tion, the war involved a huge sacrifice of human lives on the Korean battlefields and eco­ nomic hardship at home. The pressure for a realistic presentation seemed to be (p. 253) on the director Sha Meng 沙蒙, who tipped the balance of realism and romanticism toward a starker realism. While he recognized the importance of elevating combat experience to a higher romantic level, Sha argued that a work of art should be faithful to the experienced actualities and that realism should not give way to ideological messages and political im­ peratives.6 In addition to the graphic portrayal of combats and casualties, the film depicts a range of idiosyncratic characters. Missing from this gallery is the later glorified image of the sub­ lime hero who is “tall, grand, and perfect” (高大全). Although the company leader Zhang Zhongfa could have been a good candidate for such glorification, he appears uncouth, awkward, and rustic. He needs a drink in the middle of intense fighting and is at times undisciplined and quick to flout rules and defy authorities. Parched from lack of water, the company’s political instructor, whose job is to keep up combat morale, recounts a mo­ tivational story by the ancient warlord Cao Cao from the novel Romance of Three King­ doms (三國演義), in which Cao Cao tricks his tired and thirsty soldiers into anticipating a berry orchard ahead in order to quench their thirst—a very “feudal” way of instruction! The film does not flinch from a straightforward depiction of brutality and gore in the com­ bat sequences. When Zhang’s company is sent to replace another company, for instance, we are told that the company has been nearly wiped out, and that several feet of soil have been shelled by the airstrike bombardments and artillery shelling. In many war films, a soldier in his last breath may utter a high-sounding message as a sign of martyrdom, and the same is true of the final episode, when a soldier throws himself onto the bunker to block the shooting machine gun—a reenactment of the now-legendary death of an actual soldier by the name of Huang Jiguang 黃繼光, though this occurs only after a stream of soldiers attacking the bunker has already been mowed down. This gritty realism enhances rather than undermines heroism. Highlighting the soldiers’ plebian but admirable courage and perseverance, the film’s general tenor remains posi­ tive and upbeat. At a significant moment, heroism is fueled by patriotism. At the lowest ebb, when mere survival is in doubt, the female nurse Wang Lan, a common figure in Chi­ nese war films, sings “My Motherland” (我的祖國). With its beautiful melody and patriotic sentiment, this song has helped etch Shanggan Ridge deep in the memories of genera­ tions of the Chinese audiences. Beginning with a close-up of Wang Lan, the camera slowly pans over the smeared faces of soldiers listening to the song as they visualize their home­ land. The singing serves as the sound track to an MTV-like montage ranging from the Yel­ low River to the cities, from booming factories to thriving crops in the fields. Significant Page 4 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema in this montage are the emblems of industrial power, manifest in towering chimneys, huge dams, and sprawling construction sites. The song describes beautiful girls and broad-minded boys born and raised in the motherland. The soldiers’ mission is to protect this land, such that “when friends come we treat them with good wine; but when wolves come we greet them with rifles.” Patriotism seems to be what sustains the volunteers and propels them to victory. But spir­ it alone does not win a war. Modern weaponry, backed by the industrial might and eco­ nomic growth sought after by the newly minted PRC, is also an important concern in (p. 254) the film. The work’s drama hinges on a mismatch between the technologically ad­ vanced American troops and an ill-equipped Chinese volunteer army. With inadequate supplies and transportation lines constantly under fire, the Chinese and their North Kore­ an allies need time to move ammunition, supplies, and troops to the front. In strategic terms, therefore, the battle of Shanggan Ridge is a delaying move. The army commander, directing from his underground command center, discovers that small groups can halt an enemy offensive. The effectiveness of this tactic confirms Mao’s tactics of deploying few to defeat many and of the weak prevailing over the strong. Although the revolutionary spirit of fearlessness and self-sacrifice is an added weight in this asymmetrical armed conflict, the Chinese must rely on modern technological hardware. There is a persistent myth of the Korean War that paints the Chinese soldiers as undiffer­ entiated and faceless masses, swarming and overrunning the Americans like clouds of lo­ custs. In a polemical jab at this caricature, the film’s focus on technology suggests that, for all the faith in a revolutionary spirit, modern weaponry based on industrial might is still a decisive factor. This theme is evident in other Korean War films that focus on the struggle to keep open the supply line. In Train through War Flame (烽火列車, 1960) and Railroad Guards (鐵道衛士, 1960), for example, the railroads and bridges are constantly under attack, and the burden of the narrative is to ensure the transfer of supplies and am­ munition from the Manchuria industrial rear to the battlefront. In Shanggan Ridge, tech­ nology, weaponry, and strategy are crucial to winning the battle. The division commander who directs the campaign proves to be a military expert well versed in ammunition and weaponry. Company leader Zhang is identified as a sharpshooter with an advanced ma­ chine gun. The counteroffensive of the final episode bombards the viewer with a massive display of advanced weapons. As row after row of heavy artillery and Soviet bazookas fire brilliantly into the night sky and savagely pound their target, the film stages a spectacu­ lar show of firepower, aestheticizing military might. The strategically savvy commander contrasts sharply with the status of the political director and propaganda in Heroic Sons and Daughters, where politics rather than firepower is put in command.

Art, Politics, and the Cold War In comparison with Shanggan Ridge, Heroic Sons and Daughters proves less realistic in its portrayal of warfare and more romantic in its narrative flow and cinematic effect. Ro­ mantic here not only means the intense, extravagant expression of emotion and imagina­ Page 5 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema tion, but also what Stuart Schram has termed Mao’s “military romanticism.” Shu-guang Zhang has elaborated on Mao’s military romanticism at work in the Korean War, stressing that subjective factors are a category of military capability and that a politics, imbued with ideology and spirit, guides the army and is key to victory.7 In this light, this war film seems much less interested in battle than in ideology and propaganda—propaganda not in the sense of imposing false consciousness on soldiers but rather in (p. 255) the positive sense of an inspirational and galvanizing power. As mentioned above, the war film serves to disseminate knowledge of revolutionary history. Made in 1964 on the eve of the Cultur­ al Revolution, this film conveys Mao’s injunction to “put politics in command” by extolling heroism marked by self-sacrifice and idealism. The imbrication of politics with spirituality allows me to speak of a “politics of spirit.” Heroic Sons and Daughters is adapted from Ba Jin’s 巴金 1961 story “Reunion” (團圓). Not one of Ba Jin’s best-known works, this story was the product of the author’s field trip to gain firsthand experience of the Korean War. Ba Jin was accompanied by a group of other famous writers, including Wei Wei 魏巍, whose essay “Who Is the Most Lovable People” (誰 是最可愛的人) celebrates patriotism and internationalism of the volunteer soldiers and is probably the best-known literary work of the war. While the purpose of this trip was to al­ low the authors to observe and experience the war up close, Ba Jin’s resulting story focus­ es more on family relations. It describes how Wang Wenqing, the political director of a volunteer army brigade, tries to hide the truth about a female soldier’s parentage from her—namely, the fact that Wang Fang, who serves in the army’s art troupe, is actually Wang Wenqing’s own biological daughter. Twenty years earlier in Shanghai, Wang Wen­ qing and his wife had worked as underground revolutionaries, and after his wife was ar­ rested and killed by Guomindang police, Wang entrusted the care of his daughter to his neighbor, Wang Fubiao, who raised her as his foster daughter. During the Korean War, Wang Fubiao visits the volunteer army and reveals to Wang Fang that Wang Wenqing is her biological father. Hence the reunion. Terse and preoccupied with family reunion, the story lacks the drama, excitement, and in­ spiration of the film adaptation. While the film continues to enact a drama of family sepa­ ration and lost identity, it develops these themes in the tense atmosphere of the Korean War while engaging with broad issues of politics and culture. The work begins as Wang Wenqing meets a familiar-looking female soldier and discovers that she is actually his daughter. Unlike the original story, the film adaptation devotes considerable attention to Wang Fubiao’s son, Wang Cheng, who encounters his stepsister Wang Fang in the war. Af­ ter an excited reunion, they separate and Wang Cheng goes on to participate in a critical military mission, in which he sacrifices himself for his fellow soldiers. After the victory, Wang Wenqing reveals to Wang Fang that he knew her brother and admired his heroism. Under his encouragement, she and her propaganda team launch a campaign to extol Wang Cheng’s heroic deeds. Wounded at the front line, Wang Fang is sent back to China for treatment, and shortly afterwards her foster father Wang Fubiao comes to visit the volunteer army with a delegation of civilians. There he meets Wang Wenqing, from whom

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema he has been separated for twenty years, and after Wang Fang also returns to the war front, Wang Fubiao reveals to her that Wang Wenqing is her biological father. Instead of the expert military commander, Wang Wenqing the political director enjoys prominence in the film, suggesting that political/ideological work is the essence of the army. An army general involved in the event dramatized in the film notes that the work “accurately reflects the wartime political work and method.”8 Owing to this political char­ acter, Heroic Sons and Daughters has been widely adopted as a visual textbook for the training of soldiers in army discipline. Political work here is not about power struggle (p. 256) or faction, nor about leadership and hierarchy. It is about raising political con­ sciousness as spiritual power, which translates into military capability. Interestingly, in Maoist military parlance politics is less about combative effectiveness than spiritual pow­ er: it is much less a strategic or technical affair than a moral, emotional, and spiritual for­ mation. Its goal is to shore up virtue, personality, and character. While Shanggan Ridge reveals the division commander at the top of the military command structure, unaided by a political director, Heroic Sons and Daughters, by contrast, has Wang Wenqing as, first, a division director and then an army political director. The latter work begins with Wang heading off to the front line to boost morale rather than direct the battle. He makes an in­ spirational speech to the volunteer soldiers in the familiar ritual of precombat mobiliza­ tion, which grants Wang Cheng, who has fled from hospital with unhealed wounds, an ex­ cuse to return to the troops. During the battle, Wang the director never issues any order of military importance but rather offers moral encouragement to soldiers and officers, as if spiritual power would automatically prevail. Throughout the film he plays the most im­ portant role in promoting the postcampaign celebration and artistic propaganda. With him at the helm, military life of this “war” film turns out to be resolutely political-ideologi­ cal: propagating the heroic image of Wang Cheng so that every soldier will become like him. Wang Wenqing’s gentle bearing and soft-spoken manner are devoid of the stern aura associated with a commander. Paternal and caring, his image is a far cry from your orderissuing, commandeering military officer. One significant way in which the film deviates from Ba Jin’s story involves the sublime im­ age of Wang Cheng, whose glorification moves the politics of spirit into the realm of art. From the story’s brief mention of Wang’s death, the film re-creates a full-blown fighter and a well-sung, living legend that is widely propagated in Chinese and Korean armies. A composite figure composed of traits from real soldiers, Wang Cheng’s image is primarily inspired by Yang Gensi 楊根思, a voluntary army soldier in the Korean War who is leg­ endary for an incident in which, while holding a high ground and surrounded by enemy troops, he called upon the Chinese artillery unit to shell closer and closer around him. In the film, Wang Cheng is thrust into a similar situation: he is to hold out against an enemy outnumbering him by the thousands. From the mountaintop, he single-handedly beats back wave after wave of advancing troops. Surrounded from all sides, he uses his phone to instruct the command center to “fire on me.” This call became the signature expres­ sion of the ultimate self-sacrifice of the Chinese volunteer soldier.

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema Although its combat situations are as deadly and bloody as in Shanggan Ridge, Heroic Sons and Daughters backs off from the earlier gritty realism and tends instead toward ro­ mantic exuberance. This black-and-white film presents Wang Cheng’s combat acting in an intensely operatic and theatrical fashion. Critics have noted the prominent role of music in the film, and especially in the sequence in which Wang’s his ground against the enemy advance. As the U.S./UN troops are about to overtake the high ground and Wang is ready to plunge into the crowd with an explosive, for instance, all battle sounds are suddenly muted.9 Instead, the sound track is punctuated by grand lofty music, and a booming voice-over launches into a recital extolling Wang’s courage and heroism. Choral singing accompanies Wang’s fighting acts, and orchestral music elevates the (p. 257) battlefield into a grand theater of war as well as an edifying morality play. In the final minute of this episode, Wang stands on the hilltop, explosive in hand. A low-angle shot reveals his ro­ bust upper body, which takes up much of the screen, suggesting the Chinese expression of a godlike human “shouldering heaven while firmly planted on earth” (頂天立地). A defuse backlight breaks through the clouds, granting Wang a saintly halo. A medium close-up reveals his look of resolve and determination, as he faces death as if it were the ultimate triumph. With his towering figure bathed in a divine aura intimating a transcen­ dent being, this stream of shots creates an intense operatic impact and choreographs Wang’s deeds into a sublime musical poem. Commentators find that this film depicts not so much war experience as artistic activities extolling the bravery of the volunteer soldier. Wang’s combat episode, though idealized and romanticized, still delivers impressions of combat in a war film. But this episode takes up only a fifth of the film, and the work’s center of gravity falls instead on the cam­ paign to celebrate and memorialize Wang’s heroism. The bulk of the film depicts how Wang Cheng’s stepsister Wang Fang sings, performs, and propagates his image through­ out the army camps. In other words, the film seems more interested in running an aes­ thetic campaign than serving up thrills of war spectacle. Why does a putative war film give short shrift to combat while paying such profuse attention to artistic performance? The answer can be found in the role of art in relation to the politics of spirit. If Wang Cheng is a legendary hero, his combat action is only the beginning of a much more elaborate campaign to memorialize his heroism. Immediately after Wang Cheng’s death, Wang Wenqing, now the director of the army’s political department, proposes to propagate Wang’s heroic deeds and spirit. The celebration of heroism taps into a long tra­ dition in the Chinese army, which attaches great importance to the politics of spirit through the medium of art. The army’s political department regularly manages a propa­ ganda team composed of talented recruits. Wang Cheng’s story becomes a great occasion to strengthen morale as soldiers prepare and retrain for further battle. While the perfor­ mance of a Korean folk dance enhances cultural exchange and friendship among Koreans and Chinese, the priority is given to the ideological campaign. The crowning moment of this aesthetic campaign is the performance of the “Song of the Hero” (英雄贊歌), the lyrics and melody of which have gone down in history as a best-loved work of the Red Classics. Even today, the song remains a favorite among music lovers. Page 8 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema As the lead artist of the propaganda project, Wang Fang is portrayed as a lively and en­ thusiastic young girl. Versatile and talented, she is good at Korean drum dance, solo singing, composing lyrics, “clappertalk” (快板書), and performing a folk art from North China called “drum song” (大鼓書). Her image has contributed considerably to the film’s enduring attraction. But her artistic project, though aimed at exalting her brother so that soldiers would emulate him, is first of all a story of ideological self-transformation. The first draft of lyrics she writes is drenched in tears as she mourns the death of her brother —and is deemed by another soldier to be too soft and sentimental. Under the guidance of the political director, however, she is able to transcend her sisterly love and private feel­ ings, and the revised lyrics take her brother’s heroic deeds to a higher political and artis­ tic level. Her performance dramatizes the politic of spirit whose mission is (p. 258) to spread Wang Cheng’s heroism and instill his spirit in the hearts and minds of every sol­ dier. Her lyrics imbue Wang with a cosmic magnitude. A soldier armed with Mao Zedong Thought and “a man made of special material” (特殊材料製成的人), the hero emerges as a gigantic figure capable of saving the world: “Stopping the sinking earth with his own body; Raising the single arm to hold up the falling sky” (地陷下去獨身擋 ， 天塌下來只手擎). Wang’s virtue is also for the preservation of world peace: In the winds and flames of war we sing of the hero The green mountains around prick up their ears to listen Thunderous claps resonate with the beating of the golden drums The oceans generate wave after wave to keep harmony People’s soldiers are driving away tigers and wolves, Sacrificing their lives to preserve the peace. 風煙滾滾唱英雄 四面青山側耳聽 青天響雷敲金鼓 大海揚波作和聲 人民戰士驅虎豹 捨身忘死保和平 As the singing continues, the camera slowly pans over the audience, then shifts to a series of long shots of landscapes, the sky, and pine trees that bring forth the immortality of the spirit. The heroic image is being broadcast as the viewer is treated to images of diverse combat units of the Chinese and North Korean military: tanks, artillery, fighter jets, and foot soldiers. The suc­ cess of this propaganda prompts the art group to travel far and wide in the front to stage more performances.

Behind this close connection of art and military is a combative ideology of Mao’s military romanticism, which can be traced to the early revolutionary era. In his famous Talks at the Yanan Forum, Mao indicated that literature and art are integral to the Anti-Japanese War on a par with actual military forces. As “a component part” of the revolutionary ma­ chine, literature and art “operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the peo­ ple and for attacking and destroying the enemy.” Art’s rallying powers “help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind.”10 Speaking of the fetishism of weapons during the Anti-Japanese War, Mao wrote that “weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive. The contest of Page 9 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. Military and economic power is necessarily wielded by people.”11 This combative ideology is one tenet of Mao’s voluntarism: morally empowered human beings in their concerted effort can prevail over weapons and technology. The Cold War era resembled the discrepancy in power and resources between communists and their en­ emy in the revolutionary era. China’s split with the Soviet Union in the early 1960s de­ prived it of much-needed expertise and resources, and the embargo by the United States barred China’s trade contact with developed Western countries. This situation (p. 259) called for a revival of revolutionary belief in subjective willpower to bridge the growing gap in resources and technology, putting the politics of spirit in focus. The politics of spir­ it arose as a means of forging subjectivity, forming common purpose, unifying different in­ terests, and tightening solidarity. Through compelling performance and by appealing to emotion and sensibility, this aestheticized politics aimed at mobilizing the masses and shaping them into combat readiness. Holding up an example of empowered human agency and subjective power, the army is more a political than a military organization: it is a spiritually disciplined, morally inspired model for reorganizing Chinese society at large. Inseparable from the people, the army is like fish to the ocean of people. The mili­ tary is a school, a production unit, a university, and a powerhouse of art and performance This tradition of military culture sheds light on the growing tendency on the eve of the Cultural Revolution toward political mobilization via militarization. The reemphasis on ar­ tistically driven propaganda in the army, the nationwide campaign to learn from the People’s Liberation Army, the injunction to emulate Lei Feng 雷鋒 and other army heroes— all this reasserted a form of spiritualized politics. This politics became all the more perti­ nent in the face of the growing administrative and bureaucratic tendency in the Chinese party-state in the Cold War era. From the 1950s up to the Cultural Revolution, one may discern a split between a “hard” engineering and a “soft” cultural approach to moderniza­ tion and modernity. The former attempted to usher in a statist, administrative, rational­ ized agenda of industrialization by the technocratic elites, modeled on the “universal” path of modernization in the West, while the latter aimed at keeping the revolutionary ethos alive and carrying on cultural revolution, reinforcing revolutionary drives and egali­ tarian spirit. Socialism, in this latter view, involves not only a mastery of machines but al­ so the creation of new men and new human relations based on revolutionary morality. This divergence was intensified as the CCP launched ideological polemics against the Soviet Union over its ideological orientation and opposed U.S. involvement in Asia as an­ other instance of the military-industrial complex. The ideological split raised the vision of popular classes in the third world as a new “united front.” As a counterforce to colonial­ ism and imperialism, people seeking national independence and laborers striving to throw off class rule had a ready example from the Chinese Revolution. This accounted for China’s redoubled efforts to forge alliances with newly independent nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America from the 1950s to the Cultural Revolution. In this light, ex­ tolling the moral virtue of the new heroic man is associated with a global outlook and in­ ternationalism. Page 10 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema As a result of the Sino-Soviet split over the direction of international communist move­ ments, Mao Zedong’s third-worldism departed from the Soviet model of world revolution. Unlike the top-down statist model, third-world internationalism stressed the bottom-up upsurge of popular rebellion and independence movements. In Mao’s vision, the Soviet Union was revisionist and tried to make peace with U.S. imperialism by means of peaceful coexistence and détente. Becoming China’s enemy by the mid-1960s, the world’s first so­ cialist state was corrupt and well on its way to a bureaucratic, technocratic, capitalist party-state. The concentration of state power and alienation from the working people put Soviet Russia in the same league as the capitalist United States. Remarking that this was a (p. 260) worldwide phenomenon at the time, Franz Schurmann wrote that economic and scientific development was leading to the bureaucratic state buttressed by the military-in­ dustrial complex. The liberal ideology in America accepted much of the de facto ideology of the Soviet Union, forging an imperialist and military-industrial state dominated by cor­ porate monopoly and technocratic elites. Schurmann concludes that “there is thus not on­ ly a systematic convergence between the United States and the Soviet Union, but also an ideological convergence.”12 In sharp response to this top-heavy bureaucratization be­ tween two superpowers came Mao’s third-worldism. In Schurmann’s words, Mao warned that “any alienation between state and society will lead either to tyranny or a revolt of the masses.”13 Thus it fell to the working and decolonizing people to keep revolution alive and China was obliged to support them. Afro-American uprisings in the inner cities, dissi­ dent youth and counterculture in the West, and decolonizing and newly independent peo­ ple in emerging nations shared global solidarity and aspirations. While the Comintern in­ ternationalism followed Stalin’s statist model, Mao’s third-world internationalism relied on the broadest swaths of masses as a world class. As in the past, the popular politics stresses “the role of the united front, guerrilla warfare, and the creation of revolutionary base areas.” Rather than the elitist party-state, what drove the class struggle and armed uprising in rural areas was the party-led military. During the 1960s and the Cultural Rev­ olution, China encouraged organization of revolutionary movements, supported antirevi­ sionist, antistate Communist parties, and built alliances with third-world nations.14 In third-world internationalism, discourse about international politics is couched in a lan­ guage of people’s war and human subjectivity. In his 1965 essay “Long Live the People’s War” (人民戰爭勝利萬歲) commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the victory in the an­ ti-Japanese War, Lin Biao 林彪 situates the war in the context of contemporary geopolitics and stresses its relevance to third-world revolution. The victory twenty years earlier, he declares, was that of the Chinese people’s revolutionary war. The victory dismantled imperialism’s East Asian front and altered the balance of power in Asia’s geopolitical landscape. It was an inspirational force for national liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and as U.S. imperialist expansion in Southeast Asia was doing what the Japanese had done in the past, the struggle of the Vietnamese people continued as part of the worldwide decolonization movement, like the anti-Japanese War.15 Key to this revolutionary, national-popular war was armed struggle, led by the CCP and based on the policy of a united front. The success of armed struggle required a highly dis­ ciplined army under the absolute command of the Party. Lin’s renewed emphasis on the Page 11 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema effectiveness of the Party-led military reveals a divergence within the Chinese Communist Party between politics and virtue, between the bureaucratic party apparatus and sponta­ neous mobilization through moral spiritualization. Mao’s notion of strengthening an army, Lin says, lies in bringing politics to the forefront. The statist and bureaucratic tendency in the Soviet Union, the United States, and within the CCP—the “capitalist road”—is to lose touch with society and people. Benjamin Schwartz noted that from the late fifties on, Mao became suspicious of the revisionist tendencies in the Communist Party, and in turning on the Party he fell back on the military.16 Mao (p. 261) regarded the PLA as imbued with rev­ olutionary virtue and as a solid pillar of socialist morality. The army could be a party out­ side the corrupt Party bureaucracy, and the outsider could revitalize the party-state drift­ ing in the capitalist, revisionist direction. Mao’s faith in military virtue came from the past revolutionary experience and mass movements. Revolutionary virtue had been borne out by proven combative effectiveness in the past and present. The Korean War testified to that. Despite the mismatch between impoverished, war-torn China with its ill-equipped army and the United States at the apex of its power, the oftentimes starving volunteer sol­ diers did in fact prevail over the technological “tiger” of the American army. Revolutionary virtue thus trumps the fetishism of modern weaponry and technology. This recalls the afore-mentioned theme of man versus weapon in the war film—a conflict be­ tween the reign of virtue and the technocrats’ faith in modern high tech. In defeating an enemy armed to the teeth, victory requires not just weapons but spirit. The spirit cannot be individualistic self-aggrandizement, but rather stems from the unified strength of an organization driven by moral imperatives and focus of purpose. The politics of spiritual empowerment takes the form of an intense promotion and heightened exercise of virtue. The drive for a robust character led to an intense political program of shoring up the right kind of subjectivity. “The people’s army surely should constantly improve weapons and equipment and enhancing military technology,” Lin Biao writes, “but winning a battle does not only depend on weapons and technology. More importantly it depends on poli­ tics, on commanders and soldiers’ proletarian revolutionary consciousness and bravery”: Mao’s program of building the army will heighten the political morality of the sol­ diers, raise their morale, and enable them to stand tightly united based on deep hatred against the enemy. This amounts to a great spiritual power. This spiritual power can translate into fighting power: fearing no hardship and death, the sol­ diers can advance and hold their ground. One person can match dozens, even hun­ dreds…. This can create unimaginable miracles in the world of humans.17 This well-known idea of a “spiritual atomic bomb” (精神原子彈) identifies moral virtue with mili­ tary power. War is politics by other means, and military power stems from political power ampli­ fied and intensified spiritually. An increase of power hinges on a morally exalted figure. Under a heightened moral imperative, a horrendous act of fighting could be seen at once poignant, trag­ ic, and triumphant, and self-sacrificing fighters become the most lovely and loveable people.

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema

Family, Class, and Internationalism Heroic Sons and Daughters suggests that the experience of the Chinese army as the agent of the Chinese revolution can be extended to the world revolution. To the extent that the Chinese war film is intertwined with the history of the Chinese revolution, Heroic Sons (p. 262) and Daughters explores the way the Chinese revolution goes on to the third world in pursuit of internationalism. The Korean crisis, with the U.S. intervention in June 1950, constituted a threat to China’s territorial security and industrial base in Manchuria and disrupted China’s plan to liber­ ate Taiwan. But China’s decision to enter the war might have been more ideological than strategic. The crisis presented an opportunity of broad ideological and political conse­ quence. Chen Jian has shown that Mao and his associates believed that by firmly con­ fronting U.S. imperialist aggression in Korea and Taiwan, the new leaders “would be able to translate the tremendous pressure from without into dynamics that would help en­ hance the Chinese people’s revolutionary momentum while legitimizing the CCP’s author­ ity as China’s new ruler.”18 The Chinese revolutionaries, having established a new state, were poised not only to consolidate state power and transform the socioeconomic struc­ ture but also to expand revolutionary momentum to East Asia. The Chinese Revolution is both a national and world revolution. By fighting the domestic ruling class and imperial­ ism it is a national independence movement. Internationally, in the struggle to gain na­ tional sovereignty, China’s revolutionary struggle coincided with those of working classes in other nations for national self-determination and against imperialism. All working classes of the world share, as Joseph Levenson put it, “a common plane of victimization and a common destiny.”19 Early in the war of resistance against Japanese invasion, Mao noted that revolutionaries are both patriots and internationalists, because different na­ tional peoples could form an international class based on common interests and endeav­ ors.20 The success of the Revolution encouraged the view that China’s revolutionary expe­ rience is transferable to other nations and peoples. Not only did the experience of the Chinese people under foreign and domestic class rule resonate with that of other decolo­ nizing Asian nations, the victory of the Revolution also provided an example of throwing off the yoke of colonial rule and imperial powers. It is in this ideological framework that we can understand the significance of China’s intervention in the Korean War and its for­ eign policy later toward the third world. Heroic Sons and Daughters alludes to the notion of continuous revolution throughout the world. Made in 1964, many years after the war and on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, the film speaks more to ideological presuppositions of world revolution than to the Korean War itself. From the late 1950s through the Cultural Revolution, China’s increasing al­ liance with movements of decolonization and independence in the third world challenged the bipolar Cold War structure maintained by the Soviet Union and the United States. The 1960s witnessed a high tide of decolonization, nonalliance movements, and national inde­ pendence movements, and it was in response to these trends that Mao developed his no­ tion of the three worlds. In this light, America’s role in the Korean War could be readily seen in a broader geopolitical landscape as a forerunner of U.S. involvement in Southeast Page 13 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema Asia. Heroic Sons and Daughters casts the Korean War as an anti-imperialist struggle by the Chinese and Korean people in taking control of their own destiny and defending their territories. It is also a story of the hero’s coming of age imbued with an internationalist outlook. The connection between the Chinese revolution and internationalism becomes ap­ parent in the relation between family and class. The film portrays not only family rela­ tions but also their international extensions. In light of the Chinese Revolution as a strug­ gle against domestic class rule and external imperialist domination, the family relation takes on first a class meaning. It is important to note that Wang Wenqing is an under­ ground revolutionary and Wang Fubiao and his son were workers in an auto factory owned by foreign capitalists. The worker’s family bears the imprint of imperialist inva­ sion, as the Japanese bombing of Shanghai’s Zhabei area forced them to move away from their devastated neighborhood. Both father and son are exploited workers who get into conflict with their foreign bosses. Wang Wenqing, on the other hand, is a revolutionary with a leadership role, but without support from the worker’s family he is unable to care for his daughter. In theory, he is of the same revolutionary class as the working class. In Ba Jin’s story “Reunion,” this class base is kept to the domestic scene even though the re­ (p. 263)

union happens in Korea. Underscoring this point, the film re-creates on a broader scale Wang Fubiao’s working-class background and Wang Dong’s revolutionary credentials. The worker epitomizes domestic support in weapons, supply, and morale. Wang Wenqing, being the political director or ideological chief, is at the frontline of the war—a revolution­ ary leader outside one’s country. Thus, while family relations in the story are class-based and domestic, the film projects a strongly international aspect. Family relations also extended to relations between Kore­ ans and Chinese. A Korean family, a father and a daughter, dote on Wang Fang as if she were their own adopted daughter. Wang Fang learns Korean folk dance from her Korean “sister” and addresses the elder man as father in Korean. In one telling episode, the Kore­ an father and daughter brave icy water and raging bullets from American planes to carry the wounded Wang Fang across a river. The film’s repeated highlighting of war-torn land­ scapes also suggests that Korean mountains and rivers are to be defended by the joint forces of the Korean army and Chinese volunteers, and that the Chinese soldiers will readily sacrifice their lives in defense of the Korean homeland. These family relations also extend to cultural exchange and mutuality between Koreans and Chinese. The military actions in this film are balanced by scenes of everyday life and activities in logistics, transportation, infrastructure repair, civic associations, artistic per­ formance, and cultural sharing between Chinese and Koreans. Cultural exchange be­ tween the two countries raises the familiar issue of nationalism and internationalism. If China’s intervention in the Korean War had been for the sake of national defense, there would have been no good reason in this war drama for extensive portrayal of cultural ties. If Chinese nationalistic sentiment were the priority, why do friendship, mutual aid, and cultural relations between the two nations figure so prominently? This question becomes more salient if we contrast Shanggan Ridge with Heroic Sons and Daughters. The former Page 14 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema extols the bravery and endurance of the volunteer soldiers and links their heroism to a full-blooded patriotism rooted in the love of China’s beautiful land and rivers. Recall the MTV-like episode in which a female soldier sings of the motherland while other soldiers imagine the magnificent landscape. With national security as its primary concern Rail­ road Guards addresses the way in (p. 264) which patriotic, vigilant protagonists thwart U.S.- and Japan-sponsored domestic sabotages. The cultural exchange between two Asian nations in Heroic Sons and Daughters speaks to a particular feature of Chinese national­ ism that projects an internationalist dimension. Internationalism envisages an intercultural, intersocietal relation based on an imagined community of the international coalition of peoples and nations in struggles for indepen­ dence. The ideology of internationalism is distinct from conventional interstate, intercul­ tural relations. Historically, relations between China and Korea have been very close and have included many ties in trade, commerce, and tributary relations. During China’s revo­ lutionary wars led by Sun Yat-sen 孫中山 and Mao, a large number of Koreans served in the Chinese army as officers and soldiers. Many more Koreans were involved in the war of resistance against the Japanese invasion, their presence being a famed, formidable force in Manchuria. The total number of Korean troops who fought in China and filtered back to the Korean War was somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000.21 In the Korean War, the past experience of cooperation certainly enhanced teamwork at the high ranks of the two armies, with Korean commanders being close comrades-in-arms with Chinese generals. While historical cooperation may have elements of inchoate internationalism, the experience is not articulated into an ideology. The film’s focus on internationalism, manifest in cultural and military cooperation be­ tween Koreans and Chinese, however, takes on new significance through the vision of third-world internationalism. In the 1950s China’s foreign policy can be characterized as leaning “to one side,” toward the Soviet Union, even though the pragmatic Chinese lead­ ers, aiming to build a strong, industrial nation-state, sought in vain to build trade and diplomatic relations with the United States. With the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, Mao and other Chinese leaders began to regard the Soviet Union as a superpower like the United States. The two superpowers were hegemons bent on dominating the world at the expense of the emerging nations in the South and the East. The revolutionary re­ sponse to this bipolar structure was a powerful reassertion of national independence, eco­ nomic self-reliance, and regional nonalliance movements. It also contained a class dimen­ sion, which urged a continuous revolution of oppressed classes of the world to challenge the hegemonic powers. The third-world view draws a world map of class analysis, wherein the United States and other industrialized countries of Western Europe make up the first world, the USSR and Eastern Europe constitute the second world, while the developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America belong to the third world. As China’s natural ally in waging a global struggle against the two superpowers, the third world was also the recipient of China’s extensive foreign aid, which often came in amounts disproportionate to the nation’s im­ poverished conditions and capacity. Although third-world countries rewarded China by Page 15 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema voting it into the United Nations in 1971, the vision of international alliance went beyond national interest and power sharing. Underlying factors that sealed the ties between de­ veloping countries are ideological and based on the solidarity of the world’s working peo­ ple.22 International affinity in the third world is based on ties between societies and peo­ ples. Cultural exchange puts the accent on the general term people as a class. In the so­ cialist period Chinese artworks and cinema brought third-world peoples together onto a common plane of victimization while fostering a common, antisystemic aspiration. The film Heroic Sons and Daughters fits right into this framework of international solidarity. Speaking of socialist cosmopolitanism and nationalism, Joseph Levenson remarks that “peoples”—be they from the third or first world—“could be nationalist and international­ ist at the same time.” Since internationalism (Levenson’s term is communist cosmopoli­ tanism) is based on a notion of oppressed classes of different peoples, it is “to pair with nationalism, not to impair it.”23 This is because peoples of all nations are supposed to share a common cause. Within a bounded territory, a particular national people constitute the nation. Inwardly, oppressed people as the revolutionary class make a genuine nation with its broad national identity and with a claim to national sovereignty. Outwardly, peo­ (p. 265)

ples of oppressed classes around the world make genuine internationalists in their com­ mon cause. If a certain class within a country claims to be the nation while serving as running dogs for the imperialists, this class, though governing the nation, does not de­ serve to be considered national, for it fails to represent the will of the people. By no means sympathetic to third-worldism, Levenson’s insight that the people are the basis of national and international solidarity is derived from Mao’s third-world theory and resembles Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the national-popular.24 This can be called thirdworld internationalism, which combines far-reaching international affinities with histori­ cally endowed and self-created national, cultural identity. This makes possible the appre­ ciation of a unique national cultural endowment as being both national and international, turning both inward and outward, both provincial and cosmopolitan. National culture is not guarded jealously as inherited treasures and exclusive property but rather as open public assets sharable by other nations. This emphasis on mutually sharing cultural heritage is linked to an interpretation of real­ ism, which is indeed an element of socialist realism. Realism, in Levenson’s account, is al­ so defined by a class stratum, in that it pertains to “real life,” majority life, not the artifi­ cial existences of an effete, self-styled elite.25 In discussing cross-cultural translation be­ tween China and the West, Levenson notes that Chinese translations of Western cultural masterpieces act on this class consciousness and favor dramas about ordinary people in European nations in their struggle against the aristocratic ancient regime. The use of lan­ guage further intensifies the style of the popular masses. The popular national style is in­ ternationalist without the closeted sense of the essentialist, canonical exclusiveness. The realistic language is embedded in the everyday, inherited lifeworlds and styles of every­ day people or the laobaixing 老百姓—literally the “old hundred names.”26 Since this unique national style is the self-made cultural achievement of each nation, it follows that Page 16 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema one self-made national style may join and exchange with another unique style, based on the interchangeability of the cultural accomplishments by different peoples. One can un­ derstand Italian people or English people, despite or precisely because they create some­ thing very different on their own, just as Chinese people have created their own culture independently. The combination of nationalism and internationalism, a strong feature of the cul­ tural scene in China from the 1950s through 1970s, accounts for the salience of family re­ lations in Heroic Sons and Daughters. This family relation metaphorically bonds Koreans and Chinese—in cultural exchange and nonmilitary cooperation—into a revolutionary family. Wang Fang, for instance, is a transcultural and international artist. She excels in the Chinese popular art form of drumsong, but her first performance in the victory cele­ bration for the troops, both Chinese and Korean, is a Korean drum dance she has learned from her Korean sister. Wang Fang’s use of these two popular, indigenous art forms al­ ludes to the sharable culture of ordinary people. With the camera intercutting between her performance and the mixed audience of Koreans and Chinese, it is difficult to tell if the performers are Korean or Chinese. The Korean War slogan “defending our homeland and nation” (保家衛國) is intimately linked to the contemporary slogan “resisting America (p. 266)

and assisting Korea” (抗美援朝). In propaganda rhetoric, artists sing of warriors who sacri­ fice their lives for Korean people and who shed blood so that Korean soil will be green and prosperous. To conclude, in the climate of the Cold War and alluding to Mao’s military romanticism, Heroic Sons and Daughters brings art and propaganda back into military life and drama­ tizes the politics of spirit in the campaign to popularize heroism. This spiritualized mili­ tary life was exemplary for Chinese society at large on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Rather than simply extolling courage and the fighting spirit, the film presents the artistic formation of a heroic form of subjectivity and a moral character. This subjectivity has both national and international aspects, facilitating cultural exchange based on thirdworld internationalism.

Works Cited Ba Jin 巴金. “Tuanyuan” 團圓 [Reunion]. Yingxiong de gushi 英雄的故事 [Stories of heroes]. Chengdu: Sichuan remin chubanshe, 1979. Chen, Jian. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. Trans. J. J. Graham. Disread.com, 2008. Cummings, Bruce. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: Norton, 1997. Cummings, Bruce. North Korea: Another Country. New York: New Press, 2004. Fukuyama, Francis. The Origins of Political Order. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Page 17 of 20

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema Gramsci Antonio. The Antonio Gramsci Reader. Ed. David Forgacs. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Levenson, Joseph R. Revolution and Cosmopolitanism: The Western Stage and the Chi­ nese Stages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Lin Biao 林彪. Renmin zhangzheng shengli wanshui 人民戰爭勝利萬歲 [Long live the people’s war]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1965. Mao Zedong. Mao Tze-tung on Literature and Art. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1967. Mao Zedong. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung. Beijing: Foreign Lan­ guages Press, 1972. (p. 268)

Mao Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tsetung. Vols. 2 and 3. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967. Meng Liye 孟犁野. “Xin xieshi yu yingxiong shishi” 新寫實主義與英雄史詩 [New realism and epic of heroism]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 5 (2002): 52–57. Schurmann, Franz. Ideology and Organization in Communist China. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Schwartz, Benjamin. China and Other Matters. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. Wang Zhi 王直. “Yingxiong ernü beihou de gushi” 英雄兒女背後的故事 [The story behind Heroic Sons and Daughters]. Fujian dangshi yuekan 福建黨史月刊 [Party history monthly of Fujian] 15 (2011): 13–19. Wei Wei 魏巍. Shui shi zui ke ai de ren 誰是最可愛的人 [Which is the most loveable people?] 4th ed. Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1973. Wu Rongbin 吳榮彬 and Wen Shijiang 文仕江. “Cong 78 nian qianhou zhanzheng pian kan dianying shengyin changzuo chayi” 從78年前後戰爭片看電影聲音創作差異 [Considering differ­ ences in cinematic sound in war films before and after 1978]. Dianying wenxue 電影文學 [Film literature] 6 (2011). Zhang, Shuguang. Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950–1953. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995. Zhu, Tianbiao. “Nationalism and Chinese Foreign Policy.” China Review 1 (Fall 2007): 1– 27.

Notes: (1.) Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. J. J. Graham, Disread.com, 2008, 34.

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema (2.) Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), vol. 2, 512. (3.) The political theorist Charles Tilly has argued that European state building was dri­ ven by the need of the monarchs to wage war. See Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Po­ litical Order (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 110. (4.) Mao Zedong, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1972), 99. (5.) Meng Liye 孟犁野, “Xin xueshi yu yingxiong shishi” 新寫實主義與英雄史詩 [New realism and epic of heroism], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 5 (2002): 52. (6.) Meng Liye, “New Realism,” 52. (7.) Shuguang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950–1953 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 1–11. (8.) Wang Zhi 王直, “Yingxiong ernu beihou de gushi” 英雄兒女背後的故事 [The story behind Heroic Sons and Daughters], Fujian dangshi yuekan 福建黨史月刊 [Party history monthly of Fujian] 15 (2011): 18. (9.) Wu Rongbin 吳榮彬 and Wen Shijiang 文仕江, “Cong 78 nian qianhou zhanzheng pian kan dianying shengyin changzuo chayi” 從78年前後戰爭片看電影聲音創作差異 [Considering differences in cinematic sound in war films before and after 1978], Dianying wenxue 電影 文學 [Film literature] 6 (2011): 121. (10.) Mao Zedong, Selected Works, vol. 3, 70. (11.) Mao Zedong, Selected Works, vol. 2, 143–4. (12.) Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: Uni­ versity of California Press, 1971), 521. (13.) Schurmann, Ideology and Organization, 521. (14.) Schurmann, Ideology and Organization, 526–527. (15.) Lin Biao 林彪, Renmin zhangzheng shengli wanshui 人民戰爭勝利萬歲 [Long live the people’s war] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1965), 3. (16.) Benjamin Schwartz, China and Other Matters (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 174. (17.) Lin Biao, Long Live the People’s War, 24–26. (18.) Jian Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 87.

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Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema (19.) Joseph R. Levenson, Revolution and Cosmopolitanism: The Western Stage and the Chinese Stages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 25. (20.) Mao Zedong, Selected Works, vol. 2, 196. (21.) Bruce Cummings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: Norton, 1997), 241. (22.) Tianbiao Zhu, “Nationalism and Chinese Foreign Policy,” China Review 1 (Fall 2007): 1–27. (23.) Joseph R. Levenson, Revolution and Cosmopolitanism, 7, 8. (24.) Antonio Gramsci, The Antonio Gramsci Reader, ed. David Forgacs (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 363. (25.) Levenson, Revolution and Cosmopolitanism, 10. (26.) Levenson, Revolution and Cosmopolitanism, 10.

Wang Ban

Ban Wang is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies at Stanford University and the Yangtze River Professor at East China Normal University. He is currently chairperson of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. His major publica­ tions include The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth Century China (Stanford UP, 1997), Illuminations from the Past (Stanford UP, 2004), and History and Memory (in Chinese, Oxford UP, 2004). He co-edited Trauma and Cinema (Hong Kong UP, 2004), The Image of China in the American Classroom (Nan­ jing UP, 2005), China and New Left Visions (Lexington 2012), and Debating Socialist Legacy in China (forthcoming Palgrave). He edited Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution (Brill, 2010). He was a research fellow with the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2000 and the Institute for Ad­ vanced Study at Princeton in 2007.

Page 20 of 20

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976

Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976   Gary Gang Xu The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0015

Abstract and Keywords This chapter is intended to give long overdue credit to the Cultural Revolution period films, which have been largely ignored and dismissed as “Maoist films” because of their explicit propagandistic nature. Mining through historical documents and film archives, this study seeks to depict a dynamic moviegoing scene during the Cultural Revolution and reads closely two of the four films produced in 1974, when film production was resumed for the first time since 1966. The author shows that Chinese filmmaking was not entirely blank during that period and that these films established certain styles or routines that have left indelible mental and emotional marks on contemporary China. This chapter pays special attention to the emotive expressions through the formulaic and yet well-crafted vi­ sual devices in these films. Keywords: Cultural Revolution period films, Bright Sunny Sky (Yanyang Tian), Pine Ridge (Qingsong ling), Maoist films, three-highlights principle (san tuchu), edification, qing

In Jiang Wen’s 姜文 acclaimed black-and-white film Devils on the Doorstep (鬼子來了, 2000), the opening sequence immediately following the prelude is electrifying: the Japan­ ese navy’s marching band blasts horns and beats drums, a gunship sails on the river/ reservoir next to the mountain path, villagers await in both trepidation and excitement, and children quickly line up to receive candies handed out by the Japanese captain. A scene of terror indeed, showing the village’s uneasiness and fake peace under foreign oc­ cupation. Strangely, however, this scene is not entirely free of excitement or even of hap­ piness. The quick editing, mixed with multichannel sound recordings, creates dynamic ac­ tions that appeal directly to the audience’s senses. The beats are uplifting, and the hustle and bustle builds up an almost carnivalesque atmosphere. While one may attribute the at­ traction of this scene and of Jiang Wen’s films in general to his unique cynicism, film scholars have also likened this sequence to the heart-pumping and blood-pressure-raising military actions constantly on display during the Cultural Revolution, which Jiang Wen was accustomed to witnessing when he grew up.1 One of his earlier and equally ac­ claimed films, In the Heat of the Sun (陽光燦爛的日子, 1994), features a beginning se­ Page 1 of 13

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 quence with similar carnival atmosphere, a sequence built upon the adrenaline rush caused by the military actions seen in the eyes of boys on the brink of adulthood. Jiang Wen is not alone in generating excitement out of Cultural Revolution experience. Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, in his Under the Hawthorn Tree (山楂樹之戀, 2010), creates a lyricism out of the hardships two young people undergo during the Cultural Revolution. Gu Changwei’s 顧長衛 award-winning Peacock (孔雀, 2005) highlights the young heroine’s wild dream of becoming a paratrooper against the background of a most banal and bland life during the Cultural Revolution. These filmmakers generated these filmic representations out of their personal memories of the Cultural Revolution, (p. 270) but upon closer exami­ nation we may find that these films are not direct representations of the filmmakers’ per­ sonal experiences, but rather most of the memorable film details seem to have been fil­ tered through or mediated by references to artworks created during the Cultural Revolu­ tion. The artwork could be a song, a fragment of lyrics, a Mao poster, or a film sequence. The film sequence that inspired Jiang Wen’s “on the doorstep” mise-en-scène, for in­ stance, is not only the opening scene of In the Heat of the Sun, but more importantly the sublime and heartwarming scenes of Party cadres entering a village/factory in many Cul­ tural Revolution period films. In Bright Sunny Sky (艶陽天, 1974), the hero Xiao Changchun encounters difficulties in his effort to galvanize struggles against the “class enemies” in the village. At this crucial juncture, the Party secretary of the commune rides his bicycle into the village to lend his ardent support to Xiao Changchun. The first person to spot the leader loudly announces his arrival; the villagers excitedly spread the news; and everyone, from toddlers to the el­ derly, rushes out to welcome the leader. The excitement is palpable, and the editing and sound are very similar to the sequence in Devils on the Doorstep or the one in In the Heat of the Sun. This “welcoming” or “aggregating” scene represents one of the most repeated and formulaic visual arrangements during the Cultural Revolution. Repeated numerous times and thus made highly memorable, this sequence is designed to highlight the Party leadership, to connect the Party elite with the masses, and to generate a warm and fuzzy feeling in the audience because the Party leader always quickly makes himself a part of the big revolutionary family. In order to achieve a maximum didactic effect, Cultural Rev­ olution period films feature many arrangements like this one. Anyone who grew up dur­ ing that period could easily confuse what is remembered of actual happenings with what was projected onto the screen because of the countless times they watched the films. The repeated viewing helped the viewers establish emotional connections to certain film scenes. That warm and fuzzy feeling when the old Party secretary enters the village must have a strong staying power if one had to watch the scene for hundreds of times and was taught, through numerous state-control apparata such as school and mandatory politics study sessions, never to question the familial appeal of the Party leaders. The sound of the announcement over the loudspeakers of the arrival of the Party leader could easily trigger feelings of excitement, of being attended to by, or of welcoming, a family member or a friend.

Page 2 of 13

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 The underlying emotional connections between people in contemporary China and filmic representations produced in the Cultural Revolution are the focus of my research on Cul­ tural Revolution period films. This chapter seeks to give long overdue credit to these films, which have been largely ignored because of their explicitly propagandistic nature. I hope to show that Chinese filmmaking was not entirely blank during the Cultural Revolu­ tion and that these films established certain styles or routines that have left indelible mental and emotional marks on many contemporary Chinese. Filmmakers such as Jiang Wen, Zhang Yimou, and Gu Changwei have been edified through affection because their emotive expressions are largely connected to many of the routines established in Cultural Revolution period films. Edification, etymologically related to the verb “to build,” comes from repetition mixed with emotional appeals and forceful (p. 271) messages. Slowly but surely, individuals built their emotional responses and expressions based on what they were given to see during the Cultural Revolution. Given that the Cultural Revolution peri­ od films are adept in expressing emotions in formulaic yet well-crafted visual devices, any study of the history of Chinese cinema would therefore be incomplete without this unique and highly controversial group of films. The general perception of cultural life during the Cultural Revolution might be summed up by the phrase “eight model plays for 800 million people” (八億人民八個樣板戲)2, which refers to the dominance of the model plays and the relative absence of other forms of per­ formance and entertainment. This perception is somewhat misleading because it over­ looks, among other things, a vibrant moviegoing scene during these ten years. We must first note that all eight model plays were adapted into film versions between 1967 and 1973. These model play films were regularly screened at even the most remote villages by traveling exhibition teams; the reception of these films had as much to do with the special features of cinema as with those of theater: passionate memoirs have been written on the curiosity over the projector running on electricity, on the giant screen, on the moving images, and, above all, on the shining white light over villages that were oth­ erwise dark because of the lack of electricity. Most Chinese who lived through the Cultur­ al Revolution also like to recall the festive atmosphere accompanying the arrival of the movie team; many were particularly fond of watching the films from behind the screen and chuckling over the reversed images.3 While it is perhaps debatable whether this is a “cinema of attractions,” these model play films did play a crucial role in China’s continu­ ous imagination of the modernity of the mechanical age. Besides the model play films there were other film-going options as well. As soon as the Cultural Revolution began, all the films produced in the “Seventeen Year Period” (1949– 1966) as well as foreign imports were sealed off and put away at the demand of Jiang Qing 江青.4 Soon, however, the “Revolutionary Three”—the three black-and-white war films previously produced—were allowed to be rereleased. Battles across the Land (南征北 戰, 1952), Mine Warfare (地雷戰, 1962), and Tunnel Warfare (地道戰, 1965) began to be shown in movie theaters nationwide in January 1970 and stirred up nostalgia for a heroic

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 past, indirectly calling for restoring of the social order smashed in the previous four years. In addition to the limited number of domestic films, foreign films continued to be distrib­ uted. There were, however, only thirty-six imports, all from five of China’s socialist “brothers”: Albania, North Korea, Vietnam, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The emotional im­ pact of these films on Chinese audiences cannot be overstated; the entire nation was caught in the exotic and often sexual imagination inspired by these otherwise obscure films. Walter Defends Sarajevo (Yugoslavia and Romania, 1972), for instance, was dubbed by Beijing Film Dubbing Studio and released in China in 1973. Almost overnight, the theme song was heard all over China; the audiences used the film to learn about World War II, and more importantly, about European history, landscape, and peoples; and the fe­ male “traitor” triggered rich sexual imaginations.5 These thirty-six imports were released to the general public; there were also Western European, (p. 272) “Revisionist” Russian, and American films made available to a much smaller audience. This privileged audience was not limited to people at the top, which were Jiang Qing and her colleagues in the Cul­ tural Revolution Central Committee Film Subcommittee; residents of military compounds, government compounds, film studio employees, and their friends and families all had ac­ cess to these films, generally called “films for internal circulation” (内参片).6 Jiang Wen’s In the Heat of the Sun, which is based on Wang Shuo’s 王朔 autobiographical novel, allows us an intimate look at the excitement stirred up by these “internally circulated films.” In the film, an old army general is watching a foreign movie with a nude scene; the young la­ dy sitting next to him explains to the crowd hoping for a glimpse: “This is a film we are criticizing. Highly poisonous!” The film is Kampf um Rom (Germany, 1968), which was im­ ported and dubbed by Shanghai Dubbing Studio, and it was released to “internal audi­ ences only” in 1971. This is not the only Western European or American film available in the early 1970s. A quick glimpse at the titles reveals a surprisingly rich array of works: The Red Shoes (Britain, 1948, dubbed by Shanghai Dubbing Studio and released in 1970), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (France and Italy, 1956, dubbed by Shanghai Dubbing Studio and released in 1972), and Jane Eyre (United States, 1944, dubbed by Shanghai Dubbing Studio and released in 1972). Most are world classics and were presented in their original uncut versions. Although access was limited to “friends and family,” this cir­ cle could be surprisingly large, meaning that a large percentage of the Chinese were al­ lowed to view a select number of outstanding films. The impact of these films on the Chi­ nese cultural life in general and on honing Chinese filmmakers’ skills cannot be overstat­ ed. It is in the context of the dynamic film-going scene that I set out to reevaluate the narra­ tive feature films produced and released in the second half of the Cultural Revolution. Through reading representative films of this period, I contend in this chapter that these works cannot be simply viewed as propaganda films or a collective anomaly severed from the other periods of Chinese cinema. These films, despite their propaganda agenda, in­ herited the rich tradition of Chinese filmmaking in the 1930s and 1940s. They also share many formal features with Hollywood and European cinemas, and their immense popular­ ity during the Cultural Revolution has made so-called Maoist aesthetics not simply a tar­ Page 4 of 13

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 get of parody but also a legacy continuously recalled and reproduced in contemporary Chinese visual culture. At a talk in July 1972, Mao asserted that “the number of films and plays is too small” and voiced his worries over the possible “disappearance of the hundred flowers.” Premiere Zhou Enlai immediately gathered film studios heads to encourage them to start making new films. Changchun Film Studio was the first to respond, and soon Shanghai Film Stu­ dio, Beijing Film Studio, and August First Film Studio joined in the effort of making the first batch of narrative feature films since 1966. In 1973, four films were released: The Red-Hot Time (火紅的年代) was made by Shanghai Film Studio, and the other three, Pine Ridge (青鬆嶺), Conquering the Flood (戰洪圖), and Bright Sunny Sky, were all produced by Changchun Film Studio. The number of films produced increased annually: in 1974, there were fifteen; in 1975, there were twenty-two; and in (p. 273) 1976, there were thirty-five. Altogether, seventy-six films were made and released in this four-year span from 1973 to 1976.7 These films have been easily dismissed in China as evidence of Jiang Qing’s subversion of the Maoist revolution. Some, such as Spring Sprouts (春苗, 1975) and Denouncement (决 裂, 1975), were indeed directly controlled by Jiang Qing’s people and became thinly veiled personal attacks on her political enemies, mainly Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. But most others, especially the first four, were well-crafted works by veteran filmmakers, many of whom had just been released from forced labor. These filmmakers had to succumb to pressure from above in order to make most politically correct films. Granted, many of them were fully convinced by their lack of revolutionary perfection in the typical self-in­ spection culture during the Cultural Revolution and wanted to break away from their old “capitalist” ways. The final products, however, were surprisingly “nonrevolutionary.” Jiang Qing famously said, in her criticism of Bright Sunny Sky, that “the class struggle seems to have been pasted on.”8 She sensed that the film was not as revolutionary as it should have been, but what did she mean by “pasted on”? My own reading of the film is similar to Jiang Qing’s, although our stances could not be farther apart. The class strug­ gle that is supposed to be the focus of the entire film feels like a theme forced upon it, with no coherent link to the main components of the work itself. These first four films share many thematic and technical features. Thematically, all four films are about “socialist production,” showcasing the achievements of China under col­ lectivism in agriculture and heavy industry. All four are set in a time prior to the Cultural Revolution. The focus on economic activities before the Cultural Revolution showed signs of economic recovery and anticipated the things to come after 1978. Of course, class struggle cannot be completely cast aside. There would be a long-hidden enemy, who is motivated by signals of Chiang Kai-shek’s 蔣介石 comeback to sabotage the work of the revolutionaries. The enemy’s archrival is usually a young male Party secretary in a pro­ duction unit or a brigade, an ardent revolutionary who is the epitome of perfection: he never makes any mistakes; he sacrifices his personal life for the sake of completing the impossible task; and he even dares to challenge his superior when the confused superior fails to see the right direction in difficult times. This is what was called a character of Page 5 of 13

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 “three highlights” (三突出)—the highlight of the positive characters among all characters, the highlight of the heroic characters among all positive characters, and the highlight of the main hero among all heroic characters. Conceptualized and mandated by Jiang Qing and her followers, the “three highlights” was the guiding principle for artworks during the Cultural Revolution. Between the “main hero among all heroic characters” and his archenemy stands a gray character, who could be the administrative head of a unit. He and a small group of people who only care about their own economic interests are usually misled by the class enemy in creating unnecessary obstacles for the production. But the revolutionary has the most important weapon: Mao’s work. He studies Mao’s work well into the night and then everything clears up for him: the air is sweeter, the sun brighter, and he is more determined than ever to throw himself into his work. (p. 274) He is not alone: he is always flanked by eager young understudies, one of whom is a woman. The young lady would give him her strongest support, ostensibly not out of love but out of ca­ maraderie. In the end, a special kind of steel is made, a harvest protected, or an entire village is saved from flood. And the enemy is revealed and put away. This highly formulaic story-line is realized by means of equally formulaic techniques. The cinematography is predictable: low-angle shots for the good people and high-angle shots for the bad one. Whenever the main hero appears, he must be the focus point of the miseen-scène: everyone’s eyes turn toward him and the camera focuses on him. When he con­ fronts the enemy, he must tower over the latter, who is forced into a corner of the picture. And the lighting is always brighter for the hero and his followers, who always smile and are never frustrated by difficulties. By contrast, the lighting is always dark and gloomy for the enemies. These formulaic techniques lead Jason McGrath to proclaim, not without an ironic twist, that “communists have more fun!”9 Although McGrath speaks in general terms of the en­ tire “mass cinema of the Mao era,” his primary example for analysis is a single film: the 1961 classic Red Detachment of Women (紅色娘子軍). His argument is that the propaganda films in the Mao era (1949–1976) are much more inclined to seek happiness than be ob­ sessed with purely revolutionary missions. Citing Ban Wang’s seminal study on the in­ triguing relationship between the revolutionary sublime and the surge of sexual energy in literary and cinematic representations, McGrath reads the Mao era films in terms of the pursuit of happiness in order to “reflect on the model of personal fulfillment offered by the alternative modernity of Maoism—not just as an exercise in cultural history, but more importantly as a backdrop to what often appears as an almost diametrical reversal in post-revolutionary China.”10 Yomi Braester also studies the Mao era films from the angle of the revolutionary sublime, going beyond the libidinal explanation of sublimation by emphasizing that there is a spe­ cial grammar, or semiotics, in the model plays and model play films. He uses the term purloined to refer to the coded revolutionary message in the Red Lantern in particular and in the Maoist films in general. In a way similar to how the Hitchcock MacGuffin or the Edgar Ellen Poe letter functions, the revolutionary message becomes meaningless

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 once everyone achieves some personal fulfillment in the process of pursuing the message.11 While I agree with Ban Wang’s, McGrath’s, and Braester’s readings of Maoist films, I hope that we can be more detailed, more differentiated, and less generalized in treating Mao era films. While it is true that all Maoist films are examples of revolutionary sublima­ tion, some films, such as the first four feature films produced in the Cultural Revolution, tell the age-old story of qing 情 versus li 理 underneath the theme of class struggle “past­ ed” onto the narrative. The clash between qing and li makes li the purloined letter, while the audience is more likely overwhelmed by the affects conveyed in the films that are de­ signed to better connect with them. It is in this sense that these four films and many oth­ ers produced in the four-year span between 1973 and 1976 are what connect the Chinese films of the golden era with the innovative works of (p. 275) the Fifth and Sixth Generation directors, who are known for their intense emotional exuberance. In what follows, I provide a reading of Bright Sunny Sky as an example of affective edifi­ cation. Edification is different from explicit propaganda: instead of a forcible imbuing of external values and ideological messages, moral teaching is achieved through step-bystep emotional identification with the characters and events. My use of the term edifica­ tion to describe the way qing functions in Chinese cinema is inspired by Kierkegaard’s un­ derstanding of edification based on the indispensable role of the “love within.” Kierkegaard states: So it is an edifying thought that against God we are always in the wrong. If this were not the case, if this conviction did not have its source in your whole being, that is, did not spring from the love within you, then your reflection also would have taken a different turn; you would have recognized that God is always in the right, this you are compelled to recognize, and as a consequence of this you are compelled to recognize that you are always in the wrong….So you recognize that God is always in the right, and, as consequence of this, that you are always in the wrong; but this recognition does not edify you. There is no edification in recogniz­ ing that God is always in the right, and so, too, there is none in any thought which follows from this by necessity.12 The most interesting and radical notion in this passage is that edification cannot come from the need to edify. In other words, if one feels compelled to correct oneself because of the coercion by logic or by authority, this very thought of compelling is not edifying. In order for edification to be possible, one must be completely, willingly, and unconditionally open to the idea of the exis­ tence of one’s own flaw. The source for such openness can only come from the love within one­ self. The love within cannot be verified, but it must be presupposed in order for edification to work. Kierkegaard’s understanding of edification, if without the religious undertone, comes close to the conceptualization of qing in the Chinese context. For qing also requires a predes­ tined “love within” that unconditionally accepts the other as the object of affection; one’s inner morals are only enhanced in an unknowing and gradual way. During the Cultural Revolution, no matter how everyone actually thought of Mao, the presumption of loving him was absolute and could not be questioned. Page 7 of 13

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 For Cultural Revolution films such as Bright Sunny Sky, the predestined “love within” is best manifested by the “three highlights” heroes because they are always unconditionally happy and full of love and passion. Mao’s work is unquestionably the absolute other. It is not that Maoism is recognized as being in the right and the self as being in the wrong, but rather that the self is wholeheartedly filled with the love within, which in turn gives the character a shining visual tribute that is positive, heroic, and sublimated. The protagonist of Bright Sunny Sky is Xiao Changchun, whose appearance in any scene is always visually centered and shot with low angles. In the prelude, which is set in 1956, a lean year in the Dongshan Valley Village, Xiao Changchun makes a heroic entry by sin­ gle-handedly stopping a horse-drawn carriage that goes to town to trade for food. He is thus the champion of collectivism, while his arch-enemy, Ma Zhiyue, (p. 276) a long-hidden Guomindang agent, is a market-economy advocate. Xiao gains power the year after his ar­ rival, which sees a great harvest. We see him enjoying the view of the harvest, showing care and attention to the village elderly and to his young aides, one of whom is a lady, Jiao Shuhong. We see him confront Ma Zhiyue and Ma’s reactionary allies: Wanwanrao (liter­ ally, “Mr. Shrewd”), a selfish “capitalist-roader,” and Ma Xiaobian (“Mr. Ponytail”), a for­ mer landowner. Xiao’s actions are perfectly calibrated and his words honed, and he al­ ways makes the right decision at even the most difficult time. When his son “Little Stone” is kidnapped by Ponytail, instead of joining the search for his son he decides to work with the commune members to save the harvest from rain. Little Stone is rescued in the end, and the enemies are punished. Happy ending. In this film adaptation of the original trilogy by Hao Ran 浩然, there are two crucial and telling changes. One is that Little Stone dies in the novel, and the other is the love story between Xiao Changchun and Jiao Shuhong. The two changes are closely related. The very first sentence in Hao Ran’s first installment is this: “It had been three years since Xi­ ao Changchun’s wife passed away; he had yet to remarry.”13 Jiao Shuhong enters the scene. The two are a perfect match except for one thing: Jiao is Little Stone’s cousin by several removes. To legitimize her relationship with Xiao Changchun, she asks Little Stone to call her aunt instead of sister. Still, it does not feel right until Little Stone’s death eliminates the awkwardness. Little Stone is only injured instead of killed in the film, thus maintaining the ethical obstacle between Xiao Changchun and Jiao Shuhong. A love story would not have been allowed anyway for a “three highlights” character. There is no men­ tion, therefore, of any romantic possibility between Xiao Changchun and Jiao Shuhong. Still, the audience would have been too familiar with the original novel not to notice the changes. Something had to be done from the filmmaker’s perspective to patch up the glaring hole. In the film, when the commune Party secretary comes to visit and hears Lit­ tle Stone call Jiao Shuhong “Aunt,” he is taken aback and asks Little Stone, “Aren’t you supposed to call her Sister?” It takes Jiao Shuhong’s own words to explain away the awk­ wardness: “I asked him to call me Aunt so that I can have a chance to call Changchun my dear brother.”

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 Romantic love is replaced by kinship love in the imagined big revolutionary family of col­ lectivism. But no matter how Jiao Shuhong tries to explain it away, the erotic tension stubbornly persists. Why is it? One may find answers in film’s inherent sensuality. But isn’t it true that the perfect character Xiao Changchun is created precisely for the pur­ pose of making every audience fall in love with him? Jiao Shuhong looks at him with such admiration and even worship that she serves as stand-in for the audience in the love story between the viewer and the viewed. One cannot help but think of her and Xiao Changchun as a pair of lovers. Even the slightest hint of this love relationship was enough for a sex-starved audience to extend it into a richly erotic imagination. The making of Bright Sunny Sky was full of twists and turns. The script went through more than ten drafts, and the actual shooting of the film was deemed a total failure the (p. 277) first time around. The crew wrote in their self-criticism on July 19, 1974: “We failed because of unclear themes, lack of highlighting of the main heroes, loose structure, numerous loose ends, equal distribution of scenes and shots to characters. As a result, the middle characters are very active while Xiao Changchun looks pale.” How poignantly accurate! After repeated attempts, the film was finally allowed to be released. Jiang Qing, however, was not happy, and ordered that it be reshot five more times in the six months following the film’s premiere. Her reason? She said that the conflicts in the original novel are much more intense than those in the film, and that the middle characters are too ac­ tive.14 The crew was in a terrible double-bind: if the middle characters are not active enough, then the conflicts would not be intense. Both the crew and Jiang Qing sensed ex­ actly where the problem was, but neither side could find a perfect solution. The result was that the final product was widely circulated and drew the audience’s interest to mid­ dle characters and the love potential between Xiao Changchun and Jiao Shuyun rather than to Xiao’s heroics. Compared to Bright Sunny Sky, the production of Pine Ridge was much less eventful. The film was built on a solid foundation: it was remade from a 1965 film that was in turn adapted from a well-received Chengde Spoken Drama Troupe play with the same title. The main actor, Li Rentang 李仁堂, plays Zhang Wanshan, the “three highlights” charac­ ter. Li was also the main performer in the play and the original film. Interestingly, Li was in a labor camp because of his “class enemy” classification when Changchun Film Studio decided that no one else was as suitable to perform the role of Zhang Wanshan. After the studio head’s hard bargaining with the local authority, Li Rentang was released and joined the film crew.15 His acting skills were far superior to those of Zhang Lianwen 張連 文, whose rigid and awkward portrayal of Xiao Changchun was partially responsible for the negative reactions to Bright Sunny Sky. Li Rentang is magnificent in the film: he is at once heroic and vulnerable, and the little bit of emotional and physical vulnerability makes him all the more flawless and unforgettable. On July 22, 1974, the Pine Ridge crew wrote a summary of the filming process under the title of “Reflecting the Party’s Fundamental Principles and Creating an Epitome of the Proletariat Hero.” The report talks about the changes from the original to the remake: “The original has many thematic loopholes, such as vagueness of the historical back­ Page 9 of 13

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 ground, passivity in the heroic character, and aggressiveness in the class enemies. Zhang Wanshan was not always correct. He made several unforced errors. In remaking the film, we first clarified the historical background, firmly setting the time at after the Tenth Ple­ nary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party in 1962,…and designed three sets of theatrical conflicts centered upon who controls the horse whip.”16 The clashes are indeed much more focused in the remake, and the multiple sets of clues give the film a depth not present in the original. The whip is highly allegorical, symbolizing the helm of China imagined as a socialist ship. Who controls the whip will determine whether China takes the socialist or the capitalist road. Socialism is undoubtedly that toward which the film’s logic, its li or “rationality,” steers. The qing in the film, however, is more complicated than the presupposed love within that makes one absolutely buy into Mao’s teachings and unquestionably follow (p. 278) the road of socialism. The entire village’s sentiment sides with Qian Guang, the middle character, whose glibness makes his actions ever more plausible: what’s wrong with collecting a few pinecones and selling them for some cash to subsidize living expens­ es? This, of course, would soon become Deng Xiaoping’s sentiment and the driving force behind Deng’s economic reform, which was initially meant for farmers to have a little eco­ nomic freedom in managing their own harvests. An emotional and passionate identification without a moral content is edifying but dan­ gerous. Without a strong conviction as possessed by the “three highlights” hero, the audi­ ence would easily turn its attention away from the shining one and instead become at­ tracted to the “bad guys.” Ponytail, Qian Guang, and the negative characters in the other three films of the same period all became much more memorable than the heroes. Audi­ ences could recite every word said by these characters and imitate their every move, and even the way they dress—Qian Guang’s signature hat became immensely popular (see fig. 24.1). The fascination with these characters had to do with their down-to-earth-ness and the audience’s getting tired of Maoist politics, but it also has to do with the very nature of qing edification—when coerced, not fully and wholeheartedly convinced, one tends to find jouissance in the negative. In Pine Ridge, Qian Guang has a famous line, “If you want to catch a criminal act, then I’ll have nothing to do with it; but for capitalism, who doesn’t have a little bit in himself?” This line became the truism after the kickoff of the capitalism-oriented economic reform in 1979, and every successful village entrepreneur could easily identify with Qian Guang. In fact, China’s most famous and officially endorsed comedian for the past three decades, Zhao Benshan 趙本山, has made Qian Guang’s hat his signature look. Finding jokes with this former gray character in a Cultural Revolution period film, Zhao Benshan is able to create laughter year in and year out on China’s biggest stage, the Spring Festival CCTV Show. Is this simply because this is an everyman character who talks in a funny north­ eastern accent? Probably the reason is far more than that. The answer lies in the double bind in the edification project overseen by Jiang Qing as much as in the inherent incon­

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 gruities of a reform agenda that relies on making Qian Guang the new hero without rid­ ding itself of Maoist heroism.

Figure 14.1 Qian Guang wearing his signature hat

Works Cited Braester, Yomi. Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twenti­ eth Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Cao Lei 曹雷. “Wenge zhong shenmi de neicanpian” 文革中神秘的内参片 [The mysterious “in­ ternally circulated films” during the Cultural Revolution]. Dang’an chunqiu 档案春秋 [Annuals of archive] 2010: no. 8, 24–32. Hao Ran 浩然. Yanyang tian 艶陽天 [The bright sunny sky]. Beijing: Renmin wenx­ ue, 1965. (p. 280)

Hong Shi 弘石. “Wenge dianying beiwanglu” 文革電影備忘錄 [Memoirs of the Cultural Revo­ lutionary period film]. Wenhua yuekan 文化月刊 [Culture monthly] 1994: no. 1, 41–45. Kierkegaard Søren. Either/Or: A Fragment of Life. Ed. Victor Eremita. Trans. Alastair Hannay. New York: Penguin Classics, 1992. Lu Gusun 陸谷孫. “Wenge zhong kan dianying” 文革中看電影 [Watching movies during the Cultural Revolution]. Nanfang zhoumo 南方周末 [Southern weekl y], October 16, 2008. McGrath, Jason. “Communists Have More Fun! The Dialects of Fulfillment in Cinema of People’s Republic of China.” World Picture 3 (Summer 2009). Retrieved April 13, 2011, from http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_3/McGrath.html. Mittler, Barbara. “‘Eight Stage Works for 800 Million People’: The Great Proletarian Cul­ tural Revolution in Music—A View from Revolutionary Opera.” Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (Spring–Summer 2010): 377–401. Shen Yizhen 沈義貞. “Zhanzhengpian yu xianshizhuyi: Guanyu Wa’erte Baowei Salarewo de meixue suixiang” 戰爭片與現實主義: 關於《瓦爾特保衛薩拉熱窩》的美學隨想 [War films and

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 realism: Aesthetic interpretations of Walter Defends Sarajevo]. Yishu baijia 藝術百家 [The hundred schools of art] 2007: no. 5, 51–55. Su Yun 蘇雲. Interview by Di Zhai 狄翟. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 1995: no. 3, 90. Wang Miao 王淼. “Wenge dianying fengyun lu” 文革電影風雲錄 [Stories of the Cultural Revo­ lution period films]. Wenshi jinghua 文史精華 [Culture and history digest] 2011: no. 1, 23– 27. Xu, Gary. Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.

Notes: (1.) For a detailed analysis of Devils on the Doorstep and Jiang Wen’s filmmaking, see Gary Xu, Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 47–66. (2.) See Barbara Mittler, “‘Eight Stage Works for 800 Million People’: The Great Proletari­ an Cultural Revolution in Music—A View from Revolutionary Opera,” Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (Spring–Summer 2010): 377–401. (3.) See, for instance, Lu Gusun’s 陸谷孫 memoir, “Wenge zhong kan dianying” 文革中看電影 [Watching movies during the Cultural Revolution], Nanfang zhoumo 南方周末 [Southern weekly], October 16, 2008. (4.) See Hong Shi 弘石, “Wenge dianying beiwanglu” 文革電影備忘錄 [Memoirs of the Cul­ tural Revolutionary period film], Wenhua yuekan 文化月刊 [Culture monthly] 1994: no. 1, 41–45. (5.) See Shen Yizhen 沈義貞, “Zhanzhengpian yu xianshizhuyi: Guanyu Wa’erte Baowei Salarewo de meixue suixiang” 戰爭片與現實主義: 關於《瓦爾特保衛薩拉熱窩》的美學隨想 [War films and realism: Aesthetic interpretations of Walter Defends Sarajevo], Yishu baijia 藝術 百家 [The hundred schools of art] 2007: no. 5, 51–55. (6.) See Cao Lei 曹雷, “Wenge zhong shenmi de ‘neicanpian’” 文革中神秘的内参片 [The mys­ terious “internally circulated films” during the Cultural Revolution”], Dang’an chunqiu 档 案春秋 [Annuals of archive] 2010: no. 8, 24–32. (7.) Wang Miao 王淼, “Wenge dianying fengyun lu” 文革電影風雲錄 [Stories of the Cultural Revolution period films], Wenshi jinghua 文史精華 [Culture and history digest] 2011: no. 1, 23–27. (8.) Quoted in an interview of Su Yun 蘇雲, the longtime head of Changchun Film Studio between 1973 and 1984, by Di Zhai 狄翟 for the journal Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 1995: no. 3, 90.

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Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976 (9.) Jason McGrath, “Communists Have More Fun! The Dialects of Fulfillment in Cinema of People’s Republic of China,” World Picture 3 (Summer 2009), retrieved April 13, 2011, from http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_3/McGrath.html.. (10.) McGrath, “Communists Have More Fun.” (11.) Yomi Braester, Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 106–127. (12.) Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, ed. Victor Eremita, trans. Alastair Hannay (New York: Penguin Classics, 1992), vol. 2, 352. (13.) Hao Ran 浩然, Yanyang tian 艶陽天 [The bright sunny sky] (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1965), vol. 1, 1. (14.) Interview with Su Yun, 89–90. (15.) Interview with Su Yun, 90–91. (16.) Interview with Su Yun, 91.

Gary Gang Xu

Gary Xu is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He also holds a Distin­ guished Visiting Professorship at the Institute of Arts and Humanities of Shanghai Jiaotong University. A native of Nanjing, he earned a doctorate from Columbia Uni­ versity (2002) and has wide-ranging interests in Chinese art, film, literature, and psy­ choanalysis. His monographs include Looking Awry: The Unconscious in Contempo­ rary Chinese Art (2012), The Cross-cultural Zizek Reader (2011), Sinascape: Contem­ porary Chinese Cinema (2007), and Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Cul­ ture (2007). He has also published numerous articles on art, film, and literature, and has curated several high-profile art exhibitions in China and Singapore.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity

Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melan­ cholia of chinese masculinity   Michael Eng The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0016

Abstract and Keywords This chapter argues that the imaginary of the Chinese male body in Hong Kong kung fu cinema functions both as a site through which vengeance is sought against the Chinese experience of modernity as well as a figure of racial melancholia that expresses the fail­ ure to achieve such vengeance. Fredric Jameson’s notion of the political unconscious serves as a way to connect existing criticism on the Chinese experience of colonial moder­ nity and the image of Chinese masculinity in kung fu cinema to the question of kung fu cinema’s relationship to Hong Kong’s contemporary historical condition. An analysis of Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury (1972), starring Bruce Lee, then offers the opportunity to explore a par­ ticular restaging of colonial modernity by kung fu cinema that invites a consideration of the kung fu film as a vehicle of “traumatic-melancholic cinematic affect.” Keywords: kung fu, racial melancholia, masculinity, Chinese male body, colonial modernity, vengeance, trauma, af­ fect, political unconscious

Historically, the Hong Kong kung fu action film has deployed a number of formal narra­ tive elements. First, there is the death of the hero’s master or family member that the hero attempts, but is initially unable, to avenge. Second, there is a sequence in which the hero disciplines his body by learning the proper style of kung fu or a secret technique that will expose the villain’s vulnerability and make possible his defeat. Finally, there is a showdown between the hero and the villain, in which the hero exacts his revenge in spec­ tacular fashion. While there are certainly many variations on this basic formula, this chapter approaches the kung fu film genre from an interest in the formula’s ceaseless repetition, and the way vengeance never seems to be questioned as a legitimate narrative motivation. Someone is wronged. They need to be avenged. The villain is killed. Repeat. Though the repetition of such a narrative form can no doubt be attributed to the recycling tendencies of the Hong Kong culture industry, this chapter takes the narrative element of the Chinese male body’s training as an indication that something more may be at work—that is, another kind of working-through may be taking place in such formal narrative repetition. This Page 1 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity chapter asks, for example, whether the repeated disciplining of the Chinese male body through kung fu represents a persistent desire for vengeance that the genre ultimately cannot master. If so, of what is the vengeance sought out in the kung fu film genre ulti­ mately indicative? What is the wrong the kung fu film attempts, yet fails, to overcome? My hypothesis is that the Chinese male body in Hong Kong kung fu cinema functions both as a site through which vengeance is sought against the Chinese experience of modernity, as well as a figure of racial melancholia that expresses the failure to achieve such vengeance. Building on existing criticism that attends to connections between the Chi­ nese experience of colonial modernity and the image of Chinese (p. 282) masculinity in kung fu cinema, my argument will seek first to establish a means by which to think the re­ lationship of Hong Kong cinema to what Fredric Jameson has termed the political uncon­ scious. My discussion will then proceed to a detailed analysis of Lo Wei’s 羅維 Fist of Fury (精武門, 1972), starring Bruce Lee 李小龍, as a way to explore how kung fu cinema’s return to colonial modernity allows a contestation of Hong Kong’s contemporary historical condi­ tion. I contend that the cost of such a restaging of colonial modernity speaks to an experi­ ence of racial melancholia and invites a consideration of the kung fu film as a vehicle of “traumatic-melancholic cinematic affect.”

The Martial-Arts Film and the Political Uncon­ scious The consensus among Chinese cinema scholars is that the martial-arts film came to prominence through the Hong Kong film industry in the 1960s and 1970s, a period in which mainland film production was essentially shut down by the Cultural Revolution. The exiled filmmakers who subsequently made Hong Kong their base, such as the Shaw Brothers 邵氏 and King Hu 胡金銓, produced two distinct forms of Mandarin-language, male-focused martial-arts cinema, which came to displace the local, Cantonese-dialect, fe­ male-centered Hong Kong cinema.1 These Mandarin-language martial-arts cinematic forms were the wuxia pian (武俠片, literally “martial chivalry film”) and the kung fu film (功夫片). Though one could find the martial-arts film in Cantonese-language Hong Kong cinema, its reception as a transnational cinematic form coincides with its production by the Mandarin-language Hong Kong film industry in the middle to late 1960s and attains global status with the advent of Bruce Lee as a kung fu action hero in the early 1970s. In his fundamental 1997 study Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions, Stephen Teo notes that the wuxia and kung fu genres can be generally distinguished according to the types of narrative and fighting styles they depict. While the wuxia film features sword fighting within supernatural plots against ancient and historical settings, the kung fu film instead exhibits empty-hand combat set within more realistic plots.2 Furthermore, Teo al­ so observes that wuxia came to be seen by film critics as representative of a northern style of both fighting and storytelling, perhaps owing to the fact that the directors credit­ ed with launching the wuxia cinema, King Hu and Chang Cheh 張轍, were Mandarin speakers from northern China. Kung fu, particularly in the ways its narratives are orga­ Page 2 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity nized around the Shaolin monks from China’s Guangdong province, came to be viewed as representative of a southern style of fighting and storytelling.3 While the wuxia film was considered a transplant from Shanghai, kung fu was held to be a Hong Kong native and eventually came to be produced by Hong Kong’s Cantonese-language film studios in the 1980s.4 Additional accounts of martial-arts cinema have further specified that wuxia narratives are typically set in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), whereas kung fu narratives, with some notable exceptions, are often set in the late Qing and early Republican period (from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century).5 These traits have been seized upon by many critics to speculate on how martial-arts films may be seen as responding to the historical circumstances particular to the time of their production. The dynastic set­ tings of wuxia films, for example, overlap with the feudal backdrops of the Japanese samu­ rai or chambara films that preceded the wuxia film’s appearance on the cultural scene in the 1960s and whose narratives routinely took place during the Edo or Tokugawa period (1603–1868). Thus, the appearance of the wuxia genre in Chinese cinema may be seen as not only a rejoinder to the samurai film’s popularity, but also a response to the samurai film on the imaginary level by forging what critics have characterized as the “siniciza­ (p. 283)

tion” of Chinese cinema—including both the “becoming-Chinese” of the foreign technolo­ gy of film as well as cinema’s transformation into a vehicle for nationalist projections and desires.6 It may thus be acknowledged that if the samurai film’s prominence was a sign of Japan’s expansion, then the subsequent emergence of the wuxia film was an expression of China’s emerging status as a nascent world superpower.7 At the same time, it might be argued that the wuxia film’s historical settings reveal how China’s desire to compete with Japan on the world stage takes place through a nostalgia for its imperial past. These critical approaches reflect the interpretive strategy Fredric Jameson proposed in order to engage what he has called “the political unconscious.” This “doctrine,” as Jame­ son puts it, operates according to the basic principle “that there is nothing that is not so­ cial and historical,” which is to say “that everything is in ‘the last analysis’ political.”8 The claim around which the political unconscious is oriented, however, is not epistemological. It is not a question of the knowability of the objects and relationships of cultural produc­ tion, but rather it is a question of how we critically approach such objects and relation­ ships. Treating cultural objects as private, personal creations promotes a mode of reifica­ tion that detaches works from their social and historical ground and presents them as iso­ lated and apolitical (think, for instance, of the way the tradition of Western bourgeois art portrays its objects as products of artistic genius). Jameson maintains that the separation between the public and the private is a public—that is, social—construction, and it is ideo­ logical insofar as this constructed separation is taken to be natural or self-evident. The supreme “lesson” of the political unconscious is that any attempt to keep separate the pri­ vate from the public (or the social and historical) is itself indicative of some ideological, which is to say, historical and political, situatedness. The disavowal of politics is itself in­ herently political. At the same time, “the political” becomes a perpetual moving target from the standpoint of the political unconscious; even direct political statements are sub­ tended by some more fundamental social and historical conditions that make such state­ Page 3 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity ments possible to begin with. This is why Jameson will argue not only for the necessity of interpretation in general when it comes to the question of (p. 284) history, but more specif­ ically for a dialectical—which is to say, Marxian—mode of interpretation. The impulse to pursue the political unconscious that one finds in the critical discourse on the wuxia film is followed even more closely in the discourse on the kung fu film. In addi­ tion to tracing kung fu’s emergence from the wuxia tradition,9 its diasporic character,10 and its influential legacy with regard to other film genres and forms,11 a number of theo­ rists have focused both on the genre’s formal elements as well as the significance of the form itself. Japan and Japanese martial artists serve as central antagonists in many of kung fu’s inaugurating works, including Wang Yu’s 王羽 The Chinese Boxer (龍虎鬥, 1970), Chang-wha Chung’s 鄭昌和 King Boxer (天下第一拳, 1972), and Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury, and this fact is often tied directly to the late Qing–early Republican period historical settings of these films. As Siu Leung Li notes, that period marked “a time when China was in im­ minent danger of being carved up by western powers and post-Meiji Japan.”12 Thus, the disciplining of the Chinese male body through kung fu training may be understood as a symbolic act by which China attempts to catch up to modernity (not only Western moder­ nity but the especially the Japanese adoption of Western modernity).13 In Yvonne Tasker’s characterization, the training depicted by kung fu films functions to remasculinize the Chinese body in the wake of its implicit feminization by colonial powers.14 Both Li and Tasker present critical interpretations that help make visible the political ground of the personal, as it is emphasized in Jameson’s notion of the political unconscious. Furthermore, such restaging of the colonial past in kung fu films provides a glimpse of what is at stake in the kung fu form. If the kung fu form harbors a relation to the political unconscious, then something of the contemporary must be at work as well. In this re­ spect, the antagonisms of China’s colonial modernity presented in kung fu serve as a dis­ placed site or screen for the antagonisms that are contemporary to the kung fu film’s pro­ duction, which brings us back most immediately to China’s economic competition with Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. This account, however, relies on an identification between China and Hong Kong, which is difficult to take for granted. It may be possible to view the exiled filmmakers of the Hong Kong film industry as choosing cinema for the terrain on which to “work out” the violations of the past. Yet one must also recognize that the Hong Kong film industry benefited in many ways from the events of colonial modernity it so often presents in traumatic terms and which it seeks, in narrative guise, to overcome: it owes its distribution network to the trade and shipping routes established by the British,15 and despite the antagonistic role Japan fulfills diegetically, kung fu films adopt­ ed many Japanese cinematic production standards and were also the direct recipients of contributions from a good number of directors and choreographers from the Japanese film industry.16 These circumstances underscore the hybrid, contradictory, and overdeter­ mined nature of the kung fu film and of the Hong Kong film industry in general. At the same time, they also raise interesting questions concerning Hong Kong cinema’s relation­ ship to colonial modernity and the traumas associated with it.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity

The Sick Man of Asia: Kung Fu Cinema and the Legacies of Colonial Modernity (p. 285)

The sustained attention that has been given to mainland cinematic and literary medita­ tions on the colonial and revolutionary modernities of China’s long twentieth century in­ vites an exploration of how the kung fu form negotiates its relationship to the legacies of these various modernities.17 Further encouraging such an exploration is a set of recur­ ring tropes that routinely provides the logic for the disciplining of the Chinese male body in the kung fu film narrative, and whose repeated recurrence suggests an inability to sim­ ply “let go” of colonial modernity: on the one hand, a drive for vengeance against a Japan­ ese antagonist, and, on the other hand, a personal and political “wrong” committed by the Japanese antagonist. From The Chinese Boxer to Fist of Fury, the Japanese commit their violations against the Chinese protagonists out of a conviction regarding the latter’s infe­ riority. The Chinese Boxer, for instance, pits Japanese karate and judo against Chinese kung fu, with kung fu initially coming up short, as dramatized by the demise of the kung fu school’s master at the hands of Japanese karate experts. Only after training in a combi­ nation of special techniques that the master explained before his death was the only way karate could be defeated, does one of the master’s pupils gain the ability to avenge his master’s death. However, the kung fu film that most clearly deploys the theme of Chinese inferiority presupposed by The Chinese Boxer is Fist of Fury. Set in 1908, Fist of Fury features Bruce Lee as Chen Zhen, who returns to his school in Shanghai’s International Settlement following the death of his master, Huo Yuanjia. Though Chen Zhen is a fictional character, Huo Yuanjia 霍元甲 was an actual martial artist who lived from 1868 to 1910 and was the founder of the Jing Wu Athletic Association in Shanghai. The film opens with a narrative voice-over explaining that Huo was known for defeating foreign fighters in famous matches and the claim that his death was the result of poisoning. The film then depicts Chen Zhen’s meting out vengeance on those responsi­ ble, who, we learn, are Japanese. Fist of Fury does not depict Huo’s actual death, but instead opens with Chen arriving late for his master’s funeral. The opening scene is followed by a memorial service for Huo held at Jing Wu. Two Japanese from a dojo in the International Settlement interrupt the memorial service. They are accompanied by a Chinese interpreter named Hu, and the three of them present the mourners with a plaque bearing the phrase, Sick Man of Asia (東亞病夫)—which historically was used to characterize China in the nineteenth century and justify its colonization by the West and Japan.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity

Figure 15.1 Memorial, dojo, and park scenes from Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury (1972)

Figure 15.1 contains shots from three scenes that follow closely upon one another in the film. The first pair of screen shots is of the memorial service for Huo, at which the Japan­ ese present the sick man of Asia plaque. The second pair is of Chen Zhen returning the plaque to the dojo and flooring all the Japanese inside. Defeating the entire dojo (p. 286) and revealing his ripped, topless body, Chen Zhen drives home the point that, as he puts it, “the Chinese are not the sick people of Asia.” Finally, the third pair depicts Chen Zhen’s encounter with an infamous (and imaginary) sign banning dogs and Chinese from Huangpu Park at the northern end of the Bund. Chen watches as a foreign, white woman walk her dog into the park and is told that an exception exists for foreigners, and then proceeds to beat up some more Japanese at the park’s entrance after one of them sug­ gests Chen can accompany him in if Chen gets down on all fours as though he were the Japanese man’s dog. Chen’s ultimate act of defiance, however, is to destroy the sign with a spectacular flying drop-kick. This sequence of scenes is interesting not only in terms of the affective force assigned to the symbolic interpellations of Chen and the Chinese by the plaque and the park sign, but also because of Chen’s acquiescent identification with these interpellations. In fact, Chen’s first acts of vengeance are against these interpellative symbols, rather than the actual agents who conspired to kill his master. The film quite cleverly sutures the racist and nationalist insult to the master’s death, as his death becomes “proof” of the sickness with which the Chinese are identified. Thus, the act of avenging the master’s death be­ comes a matter of proving that the Chinese are not sick. This is why Bruce Lee’s exhibi­ tion of his toned and muscular body is not incidental to the dojo scene or to the film’s ulti­ mate fight scene, but rather is essential to the act of vengeance. Both the sick man of Asia plaque and the battle at the dojo become so iconic that they are repeatedly invoked (p. 287) not only in Fist of Fury’s various remakes, but also in films that elaborate on the Fist of Fury mythology.18 In many respects, Fist of Fury presents what, in psychoanalytic terms, functions as a fantastic origin or “primal scene” of a wrong that must be avenged.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity Many critics credit Bruce Lee and the few films he made during his short career as spark­ ing the global spread of the kung fu film, due on the one hand to his hybrid identity as a Chinese-American who grew up in Hong Kong, and on the other hand to the fact that in his films he always played a Chinese character who was somehow out of place and was typically pitted against the Japanese.19 There is, however, another dimension of the film that is not so easily explained. Though certain myths of Bruce Lee’s relationship to the Japanese have been added in the critical literature,20 and while theorists such as Stephen Teo have offered a nuanced notion of the nationalism Bruce Lee supposedly represented,21 the focus on the actor deflects attention from the cinematic logic of the works themselves. Yingchi Chu argues that the contemporary situation of Hong Kong cinema at the time of the rise of martial art films reflected a specific triangulation between Hong Kong, the mainland, and the British government. Restrictions on movement between the mainland and Hong Kong were maintained by both the Chinese and the British governments, and, according to Chu, allowed Hong Kong cinema to be severed from that of Mainland China. When mainland film production was allowed to proceed under the Communist Party, it did so in service of revolutionary narratives, even as Hong Kong cinema became increasingly diasporic. Chu concludes: National politics was almost absent in Hong Kong films, even compared to Hong Kong films of the earlier period. Instead, history before China became a modern nation was often presented in Hong Kong films. Differences between the mainland and Hong Kong films in selecting materials from the past produced two different images of China: a geopolitically defined modern nation on the mainland, and an ancestor-based or cultural civilisation defined ethnic nation in Hong Kong. Hong Kong historical films therefore produced a cultural identity of the Chinese diaspo­ ra as imperial descendents different from the mainland Communists. Moreover, they revealed a diasporic consciousness of China as their true homeland.22 If the kung fu film identifies itself with China, as is presumed by the interpretation that sees it as triumphing over Japan and the West, then it does so by way of fantasy. However, this fantasy re­ quires, on the one hand, an internalization of the traumas of colonial modernity experienced by China before it became a modern nation. On the other hand, this fantasy also expresses an am­ bivalence toward the revolutionary modernity through which China established itself as a mod­ ern nation-state. The two slopes of the fantasy kung fu cinema sustains help clarify the question of the kung fu film’s obsessive returns not only to the antagonisms with Japan (and to a lesser extent the West) but especially to the traumatic sick man of Asia interpellation that rationalized the nineteenth-century colonial incursions on China. The cost of a symbolic triumph over this pattern of interpellation is that of having to restage the interpellation’s traumatic capture. Nonetheless, the choice the kung fu film makes is to attempt to work through the trauma of colo­ nial modernity, which perhaps is seen as easier than confronting the antagonism with the (p. 288) mainland that resulted from revolutionary modernity, and which contributed at that time to Hong Kong cinema’s diasporic status.

From the standpoint of the political unconscious, however, one cannot simply keep histo­ ry out. While we can see kung fu’s preoccupation with colonial modernity as a symptom Page 7 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity of Hong Kong avoiding a confrontation with revolutionary modernity, others have also at­ tempted to point out places where the ambivalence with Chinese identity contemporary to Hong Kong’s relationship to the mainland nonetheless inflects kung fu’s narratives. Fist of Fury is once more taken as a key instance in this respect.

Fist of Fury and the “Thwarted Narcissism” of the Chinese Male Body Recent research by Chris Berry has scrutinized what one might see as the sick or defi­ cient Chinese body that appears to function as the negative image against which Bruce Lee’s strong, athletic body is juxtaposed, and which Bruce Lee’s body therefore counters.23 In Fist of Fury, this deficient Chinese body belongs to the interpreter/collabo­ rator Hu, whose presence in this and other Bruce Lee films raises additional questions as to whether the projection of an actual image of a sick man of Asia becomes the vehicle by which kung fu expresses its ambivalence with respect to modern Chinese identity. In Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon (猛龍過江, 1972), Wei Ping’ao 魏平澳, the actor who por­ trays Hu in Fist of Fury, plays a Chinese character who collaborates with the non-Chinese antagonists. As in Fist of Fury, Wei’s character in Way of the Dragon is not aligned with the Chinese protagonists of the film, but rather is marked as separate and in fact differ­ ent (i.e., not Chinese) by his homosexual affect, which of course also marks him as defi­ cient in masculine terms as well. Where Berry quite rightly identifies the portrayal of Wei’s character in Way of the Dragon as informed by a homophobia that employs queer signifiers to establish a constitutive out­ side to a “correct”/“authentic” Chinese masculinity, in Fist of Fury Wei’s interpreter casts himself as a more evolved, advanced, modern Chinese than those at the Jing Wu school. When one of the Jing Wu students asks Hu upon the latter’s entrance to the memorial ser­ vice whether or not he is Chinese, Hu answers, “Yes, but I’m different from you.” Clearly set off visually from the rest of the characters framed in the scene by being dressed in a Western suit, Hu represents a Chinese character aligned with Western/Japanese moderni­ ty, while his response to the Jing Wu student suggests a disavowal of Chineseness.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity

Figure 15.2 The Chinese interpreter/collaborator Hu versus Chen Zhen

Fist of Fury proceeds to inscribe the difference between modern and traditional Chinese identities on the bodies of Wei’s Hu and Bruce Lee’s Chen (see fig. 15.2). The sickness and weakness Hu embodies is due to his embrace of a modern Chinese subjectivity and his willingness to be a lackey for the Japanese, and the film takes great pains to (p. 289) drive home the message that, although Hu considers himself the more evolved Chinese, he is in fact inferior to Bruce Lee’s character. At a dinner welcoming a Russian fighter, which visually presents the geopolitical formation of Japan and Russia aligned against China, Hu is depicted as inexperienced with both women and alcohol, as he is overly titil­ lated by a Japanese Geisha dancer’s striptease and forced to drink sake past his tolerance point. When he seeks to depart from the celebration early because of having had too much to drink, the head Japanese character, Suzuki, tells him he can only leave if he gets down on all fours and crawls out like a dog, a command to which Hu ultimately accedes. By contrast, Chen Zhen punishes the Japanese who tell him to perform the same act at the park’s entrance, and we also see Chen forgo a relationship with his fiancée in order to fulfill his duty to avenge his master’s death. As Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar have ob­ served, the film’s final act emphasizing Hu’s inferiority is the scene where Chen kills Hu after picking him up from his dinner with the Japanese. However, (p. 290) Hu’s death is not only not spectacular, it is literally without spectacle—given that it takes place out-offrame following a single punch from Chen, implying that he was not even worthy of a proper kung fu death.24 It should be no surprise that masculinity is at stake in a kung fu film. Fist of Fury’s narra­ tive is consistent with the basic trajectory the kung fu film routinely follows, in which the master’s (i.e., the “father’s”) death is avenged by the master’s best pupil (i.e., his “good son”), thereby preserving a patrilineal integrity.25 The film’s mapping of this contestation of masculinity onto the conflict between modern and traditional Chinese identity is sub­ tended by the film’s suturing of the master’s death to the sick man of Asia interpellation. Page 9 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity In this way, Fist of Fury invokes the discursive history of the sick man of Asia phrase, which entered circulation at the end of the nineteenth century as a pejorative label ap­ plied to China by the West, but was quickly appropriated by Chinese advocating national reform.26 Because Hu ultimately proves to be compromised and deficient in Fist of Fury, the film can be seen as an inversion of the sick man appellation, identifying modernity itself with a bodily decadence. Yet the fact that the kung fu form makes this argument cinematically— first by repeatedly returning to the traumatic scene of colonial modernity and then pro­ viding a sick body that is eclipsed by the kung fu body—raises the question of whether the kung fu film may have internalized the very image of sickness it ostensibly aims to overcome. That is to say, does the repeated disciplining (i.e. “remasculinization”) of the Chinese male body in kung fu film function as a disavowal of the genre’s triumphant fan­ tasy? For the historical reality, the reality from which kung fu cinema projects its nostal­ gic fantasy, is that a modern China does in fact emerge from imperial China’s collapse un­ der colonial modernity. If the body disciplined through traditional fighting techniques is proper to the kung fu form, might one then also find a body that is just as proper to kung fu cinema—which is to say, one that always appears in concert with the kung fu-disci­ plined body, but that is disciplined by modernity instead? If so, might not this modern body that serves as a negative image to the kung fu body be also a haunting image of a historical reality the kung fu form invokes and yet can only negate symbolically? Novel and provocative ways to read the kung fu form suggest themselves when we con­ sider the possibility that the nationalism typically associated with Fist of Fury is not as tri­ umphant as one might be inclined to believe. Fist of Fury, after all, concludes with Bruce Lee’s character being executed by the International Settlement’s police forces and so might be seen as quite aware of the historical reality from which the film provides a mo­ mentary fantasy of resistance to coloniality. As a result, Chen Zhen’s righteous vengeance may also be read as an enraged expression aimed at the futility of avenging the wrongs of modernity, at modernity’s triumph over an imperial China, and at an irrevocable loss of a traditional China. If the triumphant interpretation of Fist of Fury relies on a triangulation of nationalism, masculinity, and what has been called Bruce Lee’s narcissistic display of the disciplined male body, then the considerations that promote a questioning of the integrity of the film’s nationalism result in a similar suspicion regarding both the integrity of Bruce Lee’s (p. 291) Chinese masculinity and the status of his narcissism. The critical literature on Bruce Lee has debated less whether he performed a kind of narcissism in his films than the status of this narcissism itself. Teo has responded to contentions that Bruce Lee’s na­ tionalism was really a mask for his narcissism by arguing that this narcissism enabled an abstract form of nationalism with which those in the Chinese diaspora (as well as those in both the third world and America’s urban ghettos) may readily identify.27 However, more recent criticism has pursued Bruce Lee’s cultural appearance as touching on what Rey Chow has described as a “thwarted narcissism,” which she locates as pecu­ Page 10 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity liar to an ethnic ego that has been marginalized, accused, traumatized, and “wounded.” What appears as narcissistic self-love (on its face, an apt description of Bruce Lee’s bodily self-presentation both on and off screen) is in fact a self-withdrawal and self-reporting/ac­ counting resulting from a collective experience of cultural oppression, surveillance, and failure to achieve the narcissism of a stable identity.28 Chow’s notion of a “thwarted nar­ cissism” thus resonates with the “double narcissism” within which Frantz Fanon famously held the colonized subject is caught, the hegemonic mirroring that forces the colonized to identify with the negative image of otherness established by the colonizer and that is the cause of what Fanon calls “an affective exacerbation in the black man, a rage at feeling diminished, and an inadequacy in human communication that confine[s] him to an un­ bearable insularity.”29 What Chow’s and Fanon’s reflections on narcissism and group sub­ jectivity help open up is a view of the rage typically associated with vengeance in the kung fu film as only part of a larger affective architecture. Literary theorists David Eng, Shinhee Han, and Anne Anlin Cheng have each pursued research that suggests there is another affective layer that results from the “thwarted narcissism” Chow speaks of as carried by historically disenfranchised ethnic groups, which Eng, Han, and Cheng call “racial melancholia.”30 If the rage that Bruce Lee’s Chen manifests in response to the na­ tionalist/ethnic dismissal of the sick man of Asia interpellation is in fact a result of a wounded ethnic ego that exists both within and outside the cinematic text, then might the vengeance in Fist of Fury also harbor an affective layer of racial melancholia?

The Racial Melancholia of Chinese Masculinity and Traumatic-Melancholic Cinematic Affect Eng, Han, and Cheng conceive racial melancholia as a suspended state those who have been designated racial others occupy in relationship to mainstream white society (in both their analyses, white American society). For both, Freud’s 1917 essay “Mourning and Melancholia” provides the point of departure for their critical interventions, and specifi­ cally Freud’s characterization of mourning as the normative mode of dealing with loss and melancholia as its pathological opposite. While the one who mourns is (p. 292) eventu­ ally able to “work through” his or her grief at losing the object, the melancholic’s grief is interminable. Where the one who mourns gradually moves on to other objects, the melan­ cholic cannot let go of the original object of loss and instead internalizes it into his or her ego and maintains an ambivalent relationship to it for the precise reason that the melan­ cholic has not been able to master the object’s loss. Instead, the melancholic subject iden­ tifies with the lost object and builds his or her ego around this loss.31 The lost object thus haunts the melancholic’s psyche, impoverishing it, producing a dynamic that inverts the normative process of mourning, such that “in mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.”32 In “A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,” Eng and Han state their interest in exploring melancholia from the standpoint of race in order to think it in nonpathological as well as in extraindividualistic terms. They describe a form of racial melancholia specific to Asian Page 11 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity American attempts to assimilate to mainstream white American culture, which they claim are often fraught and, even if mostly successful, never quite complete: “This suspended assimilation—this inability to blend into the ‘melting pot’ of America—suggests that, for Asian Americans, ideals of whiteness are continually estranged. They remain at an unat­ tainable distance, at once a compelling fantasy and a lost ideal.”33 Eng and Han proceed to describe the feelings of “ambivalence, anger, and rage” that accompany melancholia in a manner not unlike the “structure of feeling” Fanon assigns the colonized subject in Black Skin, White Masks.34 They draw out Freud’s claim that the self-impoverishment un­ dergone by the melancholic subject to maintain his or her ego around the lost object un­ folds easily into self-destructive tendencies, including suicide, which Eng and Han extend to not only physical suicide but also psychic suicide. Psychic suicide in the form of a selferasure of one’s identity is how Eng and Han attempt to expand the Freudian conception of melancholia to include a structure of affect that forms a group ego in relation to race, sex, or gender.35 In The Melancholy of Race, meanwhile, Cheng gives particular attention to the way Freud describes the melancholic subject’s identification with the lost object as a mode of canni­ balistic consumption. The description conveys for Cheng an image of the melancholic sub­ ject first identifying with the lost object by eating it and then sustaining his or her ego by feeding on the internalized loss. It is more accurate to say, Cheng tells us, that melancho­ lia involves not loss as such so much as the melancholic’s “entangled relationship with loss.”36 The melancholic “legislates” over loss as a way of establishing and managing his or her ego, and since the lost object is only maintained as lost in the melancholic subject’s ego, the relation to it is theatrical; it requires perpetual staging.37 For Cheng, the salient feature of Freud’s conception of melancholia is the way this dynamic of self-consumption and perpetual spectral drama the melancholic subject maintains around the lost object sustains a more general structure of “exclusion-yet retention”: the melancholic subject re­ tains a hold on the very thing from which it is excluded.38 For Cheng, the structure of melancholia mirrors the one upon which the process of racialization operates, in which a dominant racial ideal (whiteness) is grounded in the retention of an excluded, racialized other.39 In distinction to Eng and Han, however, Cheng diagnoses melancholia as forma­ tive of the American identity tout court, and not merely (p. 293) an affect distinct from racialized others: both those who are grouped under the racial ideal and those who are grouped as racial others internalize the exclusion that conditions their respective racial identities.40 Combining the work of Eng and Han with that of Cheng helps flesh out the insights chart­ ed by Fanon, and we can see how the anger of Bruce Lee’s Chen in Fist of Fury appears to be sparked by the master’s death and the suturing of his death to the dismissal of the sick man of Asia slogan. Chen’s interminable grief in the film, however, and the overdetermi­ nation of the object to be avenged (the master’s death? the nationalist/racist dismissal?) suggest a more profound experience of racial melancholia. Cheng’s tack of reading racial melancholia as a symptom of the process of racialization as such that affects both regis­ ters of Same and Other lends support to a view of the figure of the sick man of Asia as in­ terpellating not just the members of the Jing Wu school but also those who levy this accu­ Page 12 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity sation as a means of differentiating themselves from the “sick man of Asia.” As we see with the interpreter/collaborator Hu, the film works both sides of the interpellation in a way that touches on Cheng’s recognition of the dual-sloped dynamic of racial melancho­ lia. Hu engages in the very self-hatred Cheng, Eng, and Han describe in their theoriza­ tions. How might the concept of racial melancholia influence the way we understand the econo­ my of affect in Fist of Fury, and in the kung fu form in general? In his Kung Fu Cult Mas­ ters, Leon Hunt refers briefly to how the kung fu film can be considered in terms of what Steven Shaviro and Linda Williams have called a “body genre.”41 Hunt notes in particular the attention Shaviro and Williams give to not only the bodies within films, but also the body of the spectator, and he cites Shaviro’s depiction of the body as being “charac­ terised by ‘its capacity for being affected’” in order to think about the kung fu film’s abili­ ty to “[act] on the spectator’s body.”42 Hunt’s appeal to Shaviro is especially interesting in this context, because Shaviro is draw­ ing on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of cinema in his reflections on the relationship be­ tween film and the body.43 Though Shaviro explicitly states he is attempting to use Deleuze’s hostility to psychoanalysis to break with psychoanalytic film theory, the result­ ing focus on affect and cinema helps strengthen the possibility of reading the kung fu form in terms of racial melancholia, as well as the possibility that what might appeal to audiences who are outside the Chinese diaspora, strictly speaking, is as much a racial melancholic affect as an excitation of the senses. It is in this sense that we might say that the “sick,” modern body of the Hu character is as much a body that is proper to the kung fu form as the body disciplined by kung fu practice, as both are vital to the affective econ­ omy of the kung fu film. However, we might also wonder about whether Bruce Lee’s body in Fist of Fury is more than simply a vehicle of anger and vengeance, and also expressive of what could be called a “traumatic-melancholic cinematic affect.”

Figure 15.3 Melancholic moments in Fist of Fury: Chen Zhen with his unnamed fiancée

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity There are two scenes in Fist of Fury where Bruce Lee’s body is practically inert, and both scenes feature Chen Zhen’s unnamed fiancée and the absent presence of Chen’s master (see fig. 15.3). The first scene takes place just after the Japanese go to Jing Wu looking for Chen following his confrontation at the dojo. They beat everyone up and cause physical destruction at the school before demanding that Jing Wu hand Chen over (p. 294) to them within three days. Chen arrives just after the Japanese leave to see the damage and injury that resulted from his impetuousness. After Chen is told by the school to leave Shanghai to protect himself and the school, his fiancée finds him sitting at the foot of Huo’s memor­ ial altar. Chen begins to reflect in a somewhat incoherent manner about his regret at hav­ ing caused harm to come about his friends at the school, along with the collapse of their marriage plans. The scene is interrupted when Chen overhears the conspirators who poi­ soned his master, and he ends up killing them. After killing the conspirators, Chen goes into hiding in order to find those responsible for his master’s murder. His fiancée tracks him to his master’s grave, and just before she ar­ rives we see him eating an animal he caught and cooked over an open fire. As he takes a bite, he catches a glimpse of his master’s grave, which is just feet from where he is sit­ ting, and falls into a daze. Not realizing at first that it is his fiancée who has found him, he strikes a defensive posture but then relaxes once she appears in full view. She asks him to return to the school to sort things out, but he refuses, claiming he is not hiding but rather following through on plans that he nonetheless will not share with her. She reflects on how they grew up together and how they used to tell each other everything. After telling her that he loves her, Chen instructs her to not ask questions. This is man’s work he’s undertaking. Then the conversation turns to an accounting of their lost opportuni­ ties, as if continuing their earlier exchange. From an action-film perspective, these scenes are striking in that they practically bring the film’s action to a halt. From a general cinematic perspective, it is noteworthy that they also almost bring to a stop the movement of the entire narrative. While they provide background on Chen and his fiancée, it is difficult to determine how this information ad­ vances Fist of Fury’s story. Their effect is to paint Chen as a melancholic figure who ex­ hibits an affect of loss, the object of which is indeterminate. Even more interestingly, Bruce Lee’s body, which we typically associate with lightening quick movement (p. 295) and spectacle, seems to express an affective, despondent lethargy that appears incurable and that one does not find again in his other films.

Conclusion Paradoxically, it is precisely because one does not find such suspended action again in Bruce Lee’s films or in kung fu cinema in general that I would suggest Fist of Fury is ex­ emplary of the kung fu form. For its melancholic affect makes visible the unconscious knowledge of historical failure that motivates and haunts kung fu cinema, and which I would posit belongs to the global affective legibility of Fist of Fury.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity

Figure 15.4 Chen’s “sacrifice”

Our consideration of the thwarted narcissism of racial melancholia should also encourage us to reflect on the legibility and status of the final scene where Chen sacrifices himself for the school and performs a flying dropkick into the firing squad (see fig. 15.4). This scene, along with the dojo and park scenes, has also been viewed from the standpoint of the triumphant interpretation of the film. Is this really a saving sacrifice, though, or some­ thing belonging to the self-impoverishment/self-destruction of racial (p. 296) melancholia? Just before Chen’s self-sacrifice, those in the school point out the inequities in how the In­ ternational Settlement authorities treat the Chinese killed in the Jing Wu school and the Japanese whom Chen kills. In fact, though the inspector assures Chen that the school would be protected if Chen were to give himself up, there is an unresolved sense that there will be no justice for Jing Wu; the Japanese who killed those at the school while Chen exacted his revenge against Suzuki will not face prosecution. Thus, Fist of Fury really ends with an affirmation of the impotence and meaningless of Chen’s vengeance when all is said and done. Though mythic, Fist of Fury remains faithful to the traumatic, historical upshot of Japanese and Western imperialism in China, and perhaps one implica­ tion to consider is the possibility that it is through the mythic that one is able to engage with the political unconscious of the kung fu form. To characterize Fist of Fury as exemplary of kung fu cinema, though, suggests also that we can appeal to it as a template for approaching other kung fu films. I contend that if we attend to the movement and affect of bodies within the genre—not just those bodies disci­ plined by kung fu, but to all the bodies populating kung fu film and organizing its narra­ tives—we will be able to discern the appearance of what I have been calling kung fu cinema’s traumatic-melancholic cinematic affect.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity

Works Cited Berry, Chris. “Stellar Transit: Bruce Lee’s Body or Chinese Masculinity in a Transnational Frame.” Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cultures. Ed. Fran Martin and Larissa Heinrich. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006. 218–234. Berry, Chris, and Mary Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Colum­ bia University Press, 2006. Berry, Michael. A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Braester, Yomi. Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twenti­ eth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Cha-Jua, Sundiata Keita. “Black Audiences, Blaxploitation and Kung Fu Films, and Chal­ lenges to White Celluloid Masculinity.” China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema. Ed. Poshek Fu. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Cheng, Anne Anlin. The Melancholy of Race. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Chow, Rey. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chi­ nese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Chow, Rey. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Columbia Uni­ versity Press, 2002. Chu, Yingchi. Hong Kong Cinema: Coloniser, Motherland, and Self. New York: Routledge, 2003. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Desser, David. “Diaspora and National Identity: Exporting ‘China’ through the Hong Kong Cinema.” Post Script 20.2–3 (Winter 2000): 124–136. Desser, David. “Making Movies Male: Zhang Che and the Shaw Brothers Martial Arts Movies, 1965–1975.” Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema. Ed. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005. 17–34. Eng, David L., and Shinhee Han. “A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia.” Loss: The Politics of Mourning. Ed. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 343–371. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2008. Page 16 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity Feng, Peter X. “False Consciousness and Double Consciousness: Race, Virtual Reality, and the Assimilation of Hong Kong Action Cinema in The Matrix.” Chinese Connections: Criti­ cal Perspectives on Film, Identity, and Diaspora. Ed. Tan See Kam, Peter X. Feng, and Gi­ na Marchetti. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. 9–21. Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Standard Edition of the Com­ plete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. Lon­ don: Hogarth Press, 1953. 237–258. (p. 300)

Fu, Poshek. “Introduction: The Shaw Brothers Diasporic Cinema.” China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema. Ed. Poshek Fu. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 1–26. Gateward, Frances. “Wong Fei-Hung in Da House: Hong Kong Martial-Arts Films and HipHop Culture.” Chinese Connections: Critical Perspectives on Film, Identity, and Diaspora. Ed. Tan See Kam, Peter X. Feng, and Gina Marchetti. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. 51–67. Hunt, Leon. Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London: Wall­ flower Press, 2003. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981. Kato, M. T. From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution and Popular Culture. Al­ bany: SUNY Press, 2007. Li, Siu Leung. “Kung Fu: Negotiating Nationalism and Modernity.” Cultural Studies 15.3– 4 (2001): 515–542. North, Dan. “Virtual Actors, Spectacle and Special Effects: Kung Fu Meets ‘All That CGI Bullshit.’” The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded. Ed. Stacy Gillis. New York: Wall­ flower Press, 2005. 48–61. Ongiri, Amy Abugo. “Bruce Lee in the Ghetto Connection: Kung Fu Theater and African Americans Reinventing Culture at the Margins.” East Main Street: Asian American Popu­ lar Culture. Ed. Shilpa Davé, LeiLani Nishimi, and Tasha G. Oren. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 249–261. Prashad, Vijay. Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Tasker, Yvonne. “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema.” Race and the Subject of Masculinities. Ed. Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. 315–336.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity Teo, Stephen. Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Teo, Stephen. Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions. London: BFI, 1997. Wang, Ban. Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Wang, Ban. The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Wang, David Der-wei. The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writ­ ing in Twentieth-Century China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Wilkins, Fanon Che. “Shaw Brothers Cinema and the Hip-Hop Imagination.” China Forev­ er: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema. Ed. Poshek Fu. Urbana: University of Illi­ nois Press, 2008. 224–245. Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess.” Film Genre Reader II. Ed. Bar­ ry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. 140–158.

Notes: (1.) See David Desser, “Diaspora and National Identity: Exporting ‘China’ through the Hong Kong Cinema.” Post Script 20.2–3 (Winter 2000): 124–136. See also David Desser, “Making Movies Male: Zhang Che and the Shaw Brothers Martial Arts Movies, 1965– 1975,” in Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 17–34. (2.) Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: BFI, 1997), 98–99. (3.) Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema 98–99. See also Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), 6–7. (4.) David Desser, “Diaspora and National Identity” 127; Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Mas­ ters, 7. (5.) Siu Leung Li, “Kung Fu: Negotiating Nationalism and Modernity,” Cultural Studies 15.3–4 (2001): 515–542; Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters 6–7. As Li notes, exceptions to the typical historical setting of the kung fu narrative occur not insignificantly in the films of Bruce Lee (Li 517). (6.) Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar in China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 48; Stephen Teo, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 2. (7.) Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema, 97–98.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity (8.) Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 20. (9.) Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema; Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters. (10.) David Desser, “Diaspora and National Identity.” (11.) See, for instance, the genre’s quotation and assimilation by blaxploitation films of the 1970s or its appropriation by Hollywood action cinema in the 1990s, as with the Wa­ chowski Brothers in their Matrix trilogy. See Prashad Vijay, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fight­ ing: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001); Amy Abugo Ongir, “Bruce Lee in the Ghetto Connection: Kung Fu Theater and African Americans Reinventing Culture at the Margins,” in East Main Street: Asian Ameri­ can Popular Culture, ed. Shilpa Davé, LeiLani Nishimi, and Tasha G. Oren (New York: NYU Press, 2005); Kato M. T., From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007); Cha-Jua Sundiata Keita, “Black Audiences, Blaxploitation and Kung Fu Films, and Challenges to White Celluloid Masculinity,” in Chi­ na Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema, ed. Poshek (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008); Fanon Che Wilkins, “Shaw Brothers Cinema and the Hip-Hop Imagi­ nation,” in Poshek Fu,China Forever; Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters; North Dan, “Vir­ tual Actors, Spectacle and Special Effects: Kung Fu Meets ‘All That CGI Bullshit,’” in The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded, ed. Gillis Stacy (New York: Wallflower Press, 2005); Feng Peter X., “False Consciousness and Double Consciousness: Race, Virtual Reality, and the Assimilation of Hong Kong Action Cinema in The Matrix,” in Chinese Connections: Critical Perspectives on Film, Identity, and Diaspora, ed. See-Kam Tan, Feng Peter X., and Marchetti Gina (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009); Frances Gateward, “Wong Fei-Hung in Da House: Hong Kong Martial-Arts Films and Hip-Hop Culture,” in See-Kam, Feng, and Marchetti, Chinese Connections. (12.) Li, “Kung Fu,” 517. (13.) Li, “Kung Fu,” 516. (14.) Yvonne Tasker, “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema,” in Race and the Subject of Masculinities, ed. Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 322. (15.) See Fu Poshek, “Introduction: The Shaw Brothers Diasporic Cinema,” in Poshek Fu, China Forever, 2. (16.) See David Desser, “Diaspora and National Identity.” (17.) Cf. Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contempo­ rary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) and Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Yomi Braester, Wit­ Page 19 of 22

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity ness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); David Der-wei Wang, The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Michael Berry, A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). (18.) For instance, see Gordon Chan’s 陳嘉上 1994 remake of Fist of Fury, Fist of Legend (精武英雄), Wilson Yip’s recent Ip Man (葉問) films (2008; 2010), Andrew Lau’s 劉偉強 Leg­ end of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (精武風雲 － 陳真, 2010), Ronny Yu’s 于仁泰 Fear­ less (霍元甲, 2006), and Herman Yau’s 邱禮濤 The Legend is Born—Ip Man (葉問前傳, 2010). (19.) Both The Big Boss (唐山大兄, 1971) and The Way of the Dragon (猛龍過江, 1972) fea­ ture modern-day communities of the Chinese diaspora. The Big Boss is set among Chinese immigrant workers in Thailand, and The Way of the Dragon features a group of Chinese who run a Chinese restaurant in Rome. Fist of Fury was the only period film in which Bruce Lee acted, and even though it is set in Shanghai, the narrative takes place in the International Settlement, where the Chinese are depicted as not at home even when they are at home. (20.) M. T. Kato quotes from a story Bruce Lee’s widow, Linda Lee, tells of a young Bruce Lee at one point shaking his fist at a Japanese plane that flew overhead while he and his family were living in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation during World War II. See Kato, From Kung Fu to Hip Hop, 19. (21.) Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema, 111. (22.) Yingchi Chu, Hong Kong Cinema: Coloniser, Motherland, and Self (New York: Rout­ ledge, 2003), 33. (23.) Chris Berry, “Stellar Transit: Bruce Lee’s Body or Chinese Masculinity in a Transna­ tional Frame,” in Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cul­ tures, ed. Fran Martin and Larissa Heinrich (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 218–234. (24.) See Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, China on Screen, 203. (25.) Cf. David Desser, “Making Movies Male.” (26.) Ban Wang inventories the appearance of the figure of the sick body in Chinese liter­ ary modernism and the call by modernist writers for a strong national body, including the fact that Yan Fu 嚴復 was one of the first to have called China a “sick man” in his 1895 ar­ ticle “On Power” (原強). See Ban Wang, Sublime Figure of History 57–58, 275 n.7. (27.) Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema, 111. On Bruce Lee’s adoption by third-world audi­ ences and audiences from America’s urban ghettoes, see Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, “Black Audiences, Blaxploitation” and Fanon Che Wilkins, “Shaw Brothers Cinema.”

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity (28.) Rey Chow, The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 144. (29.) Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2008), 33. (30.) Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); David L. Eng and Shinhee Han, “A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,” in Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian (Berkeley: University of Cali­ fornia Press, 2003). (31.) Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in The Standard Edition of the Com­ plete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 14, trans. and ed. James Strachey (Lon­ don: Hogarth Press, 1953), 237–258. (32.) Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” 246. (33.) David L. Eng and Shinhee Han, “Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,” 345. (34.) David L. Eng and Shinhee Han, “Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,” 365. (35.) David L. Eng and Shinhee Han, “Dialogue on Racial Melancholia” 346. (36.) Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race, 8. (37.) Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race, 10. (38.) Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race, 10. (39.) Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race, 10. (40.) Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race, xi. (41.) Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters, 2. Hunt cites Steven Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993) and Linda Williams’s “Film Bod­ ies: Gender, Genre and Excess,” in Film Genre Reader II, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 140–157. (42.) Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body 59, cited in Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters, 2; Kung Fu Cult Masters, 2. (43.) See Deleuze Gilles, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Tomlinson Hugh and Habberjam Barbara (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). The Time-Image is especially pertinent in this context in that Deleuze sees a direct correspondence between the (European) traumas of the twentieth century and twentieth-century cinematic form.

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Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese mas­ culinity Michael Eng

Michael Eng is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University, where he teaches courses in aesthetics and philosophy and film. He has published on Jean-Luc Godard's TVideo work in relationship to Deleuze's Cinema and on the film/video in­ stallation work of the artists Renée Green, Maryam Jafri, and Knut Åsdam. He has an essay on the racial organization of knowledge in The Matrix appearing in the volume Race, Philosophy, and Film (Routledge 2013), and he is currently preparing a manu­ script titled “The Sense of the Image: The Metaphysical Imaginary in Cinema, Archi­ tecture, and Philosophy.”

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema

Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema   Sean Metzger The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0017

Abstract and Keywords “New Queer Cinema,” as coined by B. Ruby Rich in 1992, denotes a set of English and American films featuring same-sex desire and which engage in formal experimentation. How might we understand queer Chinese film? In the American academy, the resurgence of queer has much to do with the question of sociality: how and to what end do normative structures of kinship function and what might the search and practice of other alterna­ tives yield? Queer has also entered Chinese linguistic discourse—although somewhat dif­ ferently in the context of Hong Kong, the PRC, and Taiwan. This chapter investigates sev­ eral clusters of works to articulate the formal structures of queer Chinese film and, ulti­ mately, how the meanings of “Chinese,” “queer,” and “film” shift in relation to one anoth­ er through transnational distribution networks. Keywords: Chinese, queer, distribution, Cui Zi’en, Fish and Elephant, Solos

“Queer Chinese Cinema” is conventionally associated with the narratives and visual dis­ plays of same-sex eroticism that began to emerge on screen in the 1990s. Examples in­ clude Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬, 1993), Zhang Yuan’s 張元 East Palace/West Palace (東宮西宮, 1996), Li Yu’s 李玉 Fish and Elephant (今年夏天, 2001), to­ gether with Tsai Ming-liang’s 蔡明亮 The River (河流, 1997) and films by Zero Chou 周美玲 and Mickey Chen 陳俊志 from Taiwan. Hong Kong queer cinema might include the oeuvre of Yau Ching 游靜 along with selected works by director Wong Kar-wai 王家衛 and Stanley Kwan 關錦鵬. In the diaspora, Richard Fung, Ang Lee, Quentin Lee, Ming-Yuen S. Ma, and Alice Wu have all achieved recognition. Anyone familiar with these figures and films will immediately recognize the fissures within these loose groupings—that is, rubrics like na­ tion and language do not provide coherent categorization for this diverse body of work. Many films are coproductions, and often they use multiple languages. Some are shot on 16 mm or DV. And, perhaps most importantly in the context of the intersection of cinema and sexuality studies, these works engage markedly different contexts in which the con­ struction of nonnormative, often homoerotic, desires and related social spheres—both within the diegetic worlds and across the loci of production—is uneven and contradictory.

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema Indeed, the technological production of Chineseness in the global marketplace enables a rethinking of what is perhaps misleadingly understood as Chinese film. In this vein, Olivia Khoo and I have argued for the more capacious term Chinese screen cultures to desig­ nate the numerous interfaces through which Chineseness configures as a relative term, produced, legitimated, and challenged through various discursive contexts.1 This chapter explores the ways in which such contexts might yield a notion of queer/Chinese/cinema in which each of those terms destabilizes the others. To be clear, the emphasis here is not on content (e.g., the cinematic representation of homosexuality (p. 302) in film) so much as on the ways in which this trio of concepts might take shape as an analytic. Below, I ex­ plore the implications of such a constellation in a global marketplace in order to think anew about film studies, Chineseness, desire, and distribution.2 Compared to production and reception, distribution has received comparatively little attention within cinema stud­ ies.3 But such work potentially alters the ways in which both transnationalism and the medium itself have been understood, given that film has often functioned as a privileged object to explore transnational flows of culture and the increasingly global economic sphere. The queer in queer/Chinese/cinema foregrounds but also contests the normative. Insofar as the films I discuss share characteristics, it is to mark(et) various forms of difference from assumed social mores, which obviously shift across any given cultural milieu. Never­ theless, my reflections take as their departure point a U.S.-China interface as the struc­ turing condition for queer/Chinese/cinema. Rather than routing all possibilities of sexuali­ ty through an American perspective, however, this contention aims to highlight the rise of queer’s particular associations with an academic knowledge project (queer theory), U.S.based politics (both queer nation and the now more general use of the term as a synonym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender [LGBT] organizing), and the attendant neoliberal ethos that shapes their background (sometimes in dramatic opposition, sometimes not). The Chinese films I investigate exist in a world inflected by the development of sexology, the AIDS crisis, and subjects who might access a transnational discourse of rights for sex­ ual minorities. This is not to say that articulations of queerness from the United States subsume or overdetermine those from Chinese spaces in Asia. As Lisa Rofel’s work has demonstrated, neoliberalism is not a coherent structure, and instead neoliberal ideolo­ gies in the PRC manifest as a national project in nondeterministic ways that exploit “the social field of desire as experimental.”4 The moves from Maoist collectivity to privatiza­ tion and individualization as a symptom and practice of kaifang 開放 (“opening up”) have articulated new desiring subjects in China, but the longings expressed through this na­ tional modality often exist in tension with one another. To the extent that queer marks a personal expression of nonnormative sexual desire that is often linked to a valuation of market-mediated forms of affiliation, queer/Chinese might suggest an erotic economy that circulates bodies through various public media, from bars to the Internet. Chinese spaces from Singapore to Taiwan to the PRC and its Special Ad­ ministrative Regions (SARs), have produced such public spaces, as well as the individuals who might inhabit them in a noncoeval fashion across the twentieth and twenty-first cen­ turies. These disjunctive temporalities do not indicate zones fully removed from Western Page 2 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema developments in sexology and related theory but instead point to the ways in which such discourses have been accessed, appropriated, and transformed in disparate ways by pop­ ulations constituted through distinct yet ever-changing social, political, economic, and re­ ligious frameworks.5 How, then, might the category of queer/Chinese/cinema hang togeth­ er? I argue that queer/Chinese/cinema has emerged as a relatively legible category in terms of form and flow. Rather than a set of stable generic properties, this form is highly flexi­ ble, although a few recurrent features might assist in describing it. The most salient (p. 303) commonality among these films is their display of same-sex eroticism. The works I discuss in this chapter also generally cohere in terms of their use of static framing, long shots and long takes, new or nonprofessional actors, and sound tracks replete with ambi­ ent noise. These formal features might characterize what Zhang Zhen has termed the ur­ ban generation and what Jason McGrath reluctantly names “independent” cinema in the vein of postsocialist realism, though both Zhang and McGrath note the overlap and poten­ tial inadequacies of their own terms and others in common currency, such as Sixth Gener­ ation and underground. It is also worth noting that these formal devices occur in many new wave cinemas, and we might well remember that such filmic techniques can be dic­ tated in part by low production budgets. While this fact may initially seem to suggest that poverty breeds stylistic innovation, these examples more often indicate a variety of techne in which filmmakers engage to address moments and spaces of economic and so­ cial tension. In this analysis, form constitutes a relation to the social matrix of the produc­ tion context and the pressures of marketing brought to bear on screen products in the global marketplace. That being said, the films I discuss participate in the display of naked or near-naked bodies, which both sustain and contest an eroticized gaze. In a major de­ parture from typical Fifth Generation works, all of these films tend to emphasize private settings more than large public ones or landscapes. In sum, this rather loose formal cate­ gory facilitates the analysis of antinomies in which what might often seem like conven­ tional technologies emerge with new significance as vehicles of queer expression. The legibility provided through these formal elements enables the films to circulate across and beyond localized contexts as queer/Chinese/cinema. In other words, the very ability to move through transnational distribution networks helps mark this queer/Chi­ nese/cinema as a product that might retain what Koichi Iwabuchi calls a “cultural odor,” but which nevertheless resonates strongly with U.S. and western European notions of queer subjects. As Iwabuchi writes, a “cultural odor” may emerge when “cultural features of a country of origin and images or ideas of its national, in most cases stereotyped, way of life are positively associated with a particular product in the consumption process” (emphasis in the original).6 In the body of films of interest here, even orientalist rhetoric that would highlight the repressive effects of particular states (China) or social structures (Confucian familial organization) on expressions of sexuality functions to vali­ date queer/Chinese/cinema; what is worth watching is the assumed illumination of ob­ scured or even objectionable aspects of society. On a more general level, the ostensible

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema demonstration of difference from assumed (white) Western norms provides the films with value in a market saturated with queer desire.

Genealogies New Queer Cinema, as coined by B. Ruby Rich in 1992, denotes a set of English and American films featuring same-sex desire that engage in formal experimentation. (p. 304) The filmmakers Rich discusses labored at the apogee of the AIDS crisis in the United States; a certain political urgency informed the reception of these largely independently produced works. Indeed, such historical exigencies propelled queer through English and American universities throughout the 1990s. But a shared “white normativity” marked the artistic work and scholarship most often constellated under the queer umbrella.7 As an extension of and corrective to queer studies, David Eng and Alice Hom, in a 1998 text relevant to Chinese discussions of sexuality, write that “perhaps there is always some­ thing curiously queer—something curiously divergent, contradictory, or anomalous—that arises from the crossing of homosexuality and race.”8Queer, for Eng and Hom, refers “to a political practice based on the transgressions of the normal and normativity rather than a straight/gay binary of heterosexual/homosexual identity.”9 Eng and Hom trace the genealogy of queer Asian America to two historical phenomena: the publication in the 1970s and 1980s of Asian American lesbian writers who marked themselves as such, on the one hand, and the formation of Asian American lesbian and/or gay community organizations in the 1980s, on the other. If the former centered, to some degree, the U.S. national framework through devices such as English-language text to render queer intelligible, the latter have more often than not conceived of Asian American as a category that links Asia and America in ways that would recognize cultural differ­ ences within juridical and social matrices where such differences impinge on access to government services.10 These NGOs often use several languages, including various Chi­ nese ones, as part of their respective missions to validate and recognize cultural differ­ ence. The U.S. nation-state tends to serve as the locus of intervention, but the actual la­ bor for redress or service provision often contests any easy equation of Asian immigrant and U.S. citizen. Likewise, within the trajectory of institutionalized Asian American stud­ ies originating in the late 1960s, queer made its grand entrance on the scene with the 1994 publication of the “Dimensions of Desire” issue of Amerasia Journal, which also re­ sisted a simple equivalence between the terms queer and American. Again, the develop­ ments I have described might seem to center the United States as they initially appear to privilege political formations within the nation-state, but certain trajectories within Asian American studies have long configured themselves in opposition to cultural nationalist ideals. Indeed, the field has cast queer largely as a corrective to national and diasporic paradigms that emphasize heterosexual family drama to the exclusion of other possibili­ ties of desire and transnational movement.11 Asian Americanists have often tracked the kinds of affiliations engendered through these travels through expressive cultural forms. Reframing the work of Stuart Hall in relation Page 4 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema to what she refers to as a queer Korean American diasporic history, Yeun Lee reminds us that “the past is a story, motivated by investments and constituted through modes of rep­ resentation in the here and now.”12 This emphasis on what I would call modes of produc­ tion might better be apprehended in the then and now, which is to point to the clefts around, between, and through which Asian and American are and have been relationally constituted. Usually partial, such processes of cleaving and clinging have animated an evolving body of work in Asian American studies that examines the slash (solidus) as the foundational grammar of Asian/American cultural production. Celine (p. 305) Parreñas Shimizu employs the slash particularly in regard to representational media like film to mark the circulation of fantasy, perverse sexuality, and power that renders Asian/Ameri­ can meaningful as a signifier.13 For me, this slash marks the persistent if uneasy conjoin­ ing of discourses of nationalism, sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, and gender evoked through queer/Chinese/cinema. In this light, my argument follows that of other Asian American media scholars like Eve Oishi, Glen Mimura, and Parreñas Shimizu, but where­ as these scholars theorize spectatorship as an act of knowledge production, pleasure, and power primarily through and within the independent film and video circuit in the United States, my emphasis instead falls on the distribution of transnational Chinese screen cul­ tures across a United States / China interface in order to reflect on the streams of queer discourse traced here. The developments I have outlined coincide with the more general turn to queer theory in the U.S. academy in the early 1990s, as found in the work of Judith Butler, Teresa de Lau­ retis, Eve Sedgwick, and B. Ruby Rich, among others.14 New Queer Cinema’s shared visu­ al and thematic content—if any exists—might be understood as a set of nonnormative erotic practices. Filmmakers like Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin, John Greyson, Derek Jarman, Isaac Julien, Greg Araki, and Rose Troche constituted les enfants terribles, who produced art during the initial decade and a half of the AIDS crisis. This body of work, together with the new academic emphasis on queer, helped foster what is now a large body of scholarship invested in epistemological concerns but with an avowed slant toward social transformation for those perceived as sexual minorities. Early iterations of this critical project may be found in the sustained oeuvre of Thomas Waugh, the collections How Do I Look (1991) and Queer Looks (1993), and the “Theories of Representation” and “Differ­ ence” series from Indiana University Press edited by de Lauretis. Despite its historical contingencies and its miring in the specific cultural contexts of North America, activists in various Asian locations eventually appropriated queer. Again, scholarship and social practice found some common ground here. Founded in 2000, the AsiaPacifiQueer group based in Australia has facilitated the tracking of this emergence by calling for and organizing forums on inter-Asian articulations of sexuality, desire, and re­ lated flows of power. In their introduction to their published collection, editors Fran Mar­ tin, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McClelland, and Audrey Yue suggest that queer’s legibility in Asia depends on what I would call a recursion.15 My use of the term recursion functions as a shorthand for the local conditions including language, gender formations, different relationships to European and American structures of knowledge production, and so forth, that the AsiaPacifiQueer editorial team has elaborated in order to demonstrate how Page 5 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema queer in Asia both does and does not reference the West. Recursion clarifies an under­ standing of queer—or perhaps better, a queer understanding—that situates the term as not from the West yet, simultaneously, not not from the West. This formulation accounts for the complexities of conducting research on sexuality and attendant subjectivities in different spaces, given the vastly disparate dispensations available to subjects living un­ der, with, and through global capital. The ascendance of the marketplace as a mode of be­ ing has given rise to distinct (p. 306) modernities, and with them variously imagined per­ sonhoods including, but not limited to, those bound to sexual and related norms. Certain­ ly, capitalist modernities cannot account for all subject formations and other forces might constitute modern social life. Nevertheless queer seems to have taken root most readily in those spaces thoroughly saturated with capital. In sinophone Asia, this local accommodation of an increasingly global phenomenon regis­ ters, for example, in the term kuer 酷兒, or literally “cool kid,” as a Chinese transliteration of the English term queer. Kuer’s visibility partakes of the imagining of sexuality as a par­ ticular facet of governmentality in Greater China during the colonial and semicolonial re­ lationships with Japan and the West, and afterwards. In this vein, Chou Wah-Shan has traced the development of the lexicon describing (often illicit) sexuality in the contexts of Hong Kong, the PRC, and Taiwan.16 Although Chou’s work emphasizes men, Fran Martin has done similar work for lesbian communities in postoccupation Taiwan. She traces the use of queer in particular to the June 1994 issue of the magazine Ai-Bao 愛報, focused on queer nation.17 The phenomena tracked by these studies indicate the degree to which no­ tions of sexual subjects and resultant political and social movements are linked to AngloAmerican discourses, although they also evoke slippages and disjunctures from AngloAmerican to Chinese contexts: again not the West, yet not not the West. The recursive structure of these sexual discourses informs and is undoubtedly shaped by a number of films that deal explicitly with sexual desires involving same-sex object choic­ es. Relatively early examples include Ang Lee’s 李安 The Wedding Banquet (喜宴, 1993) and Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, both of which clearly mark transnational cul­ tural exchanges. But even more localized productions from Tsai Ming-Liang’s The River to Stanley Kwan’s Lan Yu (蓝宇, 2001) and Zero Chou’s Spider Lilies (刺青, 2007) exhibit at least oblique references to a world outside a frame of a globalized notion of queer. Indeed the frank visualization of the erotic embraces of same-sex couples provide some of the conventional markers that have enabled these motion pictures to circulate through the in­ ternational LGBT film festivals. And while such festivals have increasingly been located in various Asian locales, the programmers of such events often acquire films at other festi­ vals around the world, which is certainly the case with the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival founded in 1989 (the oldest of its kind in Asia).18 The distribution of queer/ Chinese/cinema relies on a recursive structure in terms of actual films and the contexts used to frame them. Three case studies enable us to see the vicissitudes of queer/Chinese/cinema. While not exhaustive in scope, this trio provides distinct ways of framing Chineseness and sexuality. Each director also avails herself or himself of different distribution mechanisms, creating Page 6 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema asymmetrical circuits through which audiences might encounter and experience Chinese­ ness as queer, and queer as Chinese. Such screen cultures finally refuse queer/Chinese/ cinema as a substantive term in the sense of referring to some existing reality and insist on the particular processes not only of diegetic representation, but also of extradiegetic collaboration and contextualization, which bring queer, Chinese, and cinema into mean­ ingful constellation.

(p. 307)

Case 1: Naked Aliens

I have chosen the cinematic oeuvre of Cui Zi’en 崔子恩 as my first example, because his films both reinforce and refute the kind of historical Asian-North American distribution network from Frank Lee to Ang Lee that Ramona Curry has suggested between Greater China and the United States.19 Hailed as the PRC’s first openly gay auteur, Cui Zi’en has directed films such as Feeding Boys, Ayaya (哎呀呀, 去哺乳, 2003) and The Old Testament (舊約, 2002) that are, as Chris Berry observes, anomalous within mainstream Chinese dis­ course not only because of the explicitly gay subject matter created by an openly gay artist, but also because of the way they explore sexuality through a discourse of Chris­ tianity.20 Cui Zi’en’s narratives of people outside the mainstream reach a particular height in Star Appeal (星星相吸惜, 2004), a work billed as “the first all gay Chinese science fiction film.”21 Although there is much to say about the films themselves, my analysis here focuses not on any individual film but on Cui’s U.S.-based distributor. The work of Cui Zi’en has not appeared regularly in theaters, in contrast to someone like Jia Zhangke 賈樟 柯, whose cinematic productions headline festivals and art houses, or Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, whose dapian 大片 (“blockbusters”) command even Cineplex space. Instead, Cui Zi’en’s work reaches a relatively niche market, which has everything to do with the framing by the distributor. Having initially learned of Cui from an NYU student, the president of Water Bearer Films, Mike Stimler, has continually distributed Cui’s DVDs through a nonexclusive contract.22 After seeing Feeding Boys, Ayaya and Men and Women (男男女女) in the 1990s, Stimler en­ gaged Cui via e-mail for his next three productions. Feeding Boys sold a respectable 3,000 units (Water Bearer’s top-selling titles may sell 30,000-40,000 units over the course of their lifetimes). Despite weaker sales of the other two films, Stimler has continued to dis­ tribute Cui’s works, although the more recently formed company dGenerate Films has al­ so picked up a few of Cui’s titles—especially his documentaries, a category in which Wa­ ter Bearer rarely traffics. Stimler’s relationship to Cui in this instance seems to reflect his tradition of maintaining relatively long partnerships with individual artists. This lengthy cooperation has produced a casual business relationship in which Cui receives payment based on royalties of units sold. While such an arrangement is not unusual, what is per­ haps more surprising is that Cui often sees the final distributed version of his works only after they are already on the market. Even then, getting Cui copies of his own “finished” films has frequently proven difficult, and the exchange is often conducted through an in­ termediary. The distributor thus actually helps to shape the film. For example, the prere­ lease cuts sometimes lack subtitles, in which case Stimler contracts them out, often re­ Page 7 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema solving idiomatic issues without the filmmaker’s input. The same is true even of the titles of Cui’s films. The English title Feeding Boys, Ayaya of Cui’s Ayaya, for instance, would seem to explicate or at least contextualize Cui’s Chinese term buru (哺乳), which literally means “drink mother’s milk” (ayaya is retained in the English title as a kind of marker of translation difficulties). This kind of shaping is also true in postproduction cleanup. Cui’s Chinese cinema, (p. 308) in short, owes its final vision to someone who avowedly knew nothing and continues to know little about China. What Stimler does know, however, is marketing, and Cui was picked up precisely because of the financial potential of Asian cinema. Cui’s works fit the bill for a China angle as Stimler was looking for films that pushed the envelope of what by the late 1990s had be­ come, in Stimler’s estimation, “gay mainstream cinema.” Water Bearer’s mission main­ tains an emphasis on edgier, challenging selections that have formed the company’s core business since its inception in 1988, when Stimler and his partner licensed Pasolini films.23 Within a decade, Stimler bought out his partner, but the goal of procuring films that deal with a range of more risqué issues including prostitution, sex with minors, and brutality has remained consistent, earning Water Bearer a reputation as a distributor with “no fear.” Initially, the company focused on distributing VHS tapes of features with gay content (but not pornography). Targeting independent stores that he found by word of mouth and by scouring the phone book, Stimler sold most of his titles through quarterly catalogs he printed. The Water Bearer website now provides the interface for most sales, and it organizes films into discreet lists, which maintain auteurist categories but also rely on regional rubrics such as “Asian Films” (former groupings prior to a recent website up­ date included “Asian Gay Bestsellers” and “Gay Films from the Philippines”). These cate­ gories have emerged through serendipity and the uneven acquisition of titles from differ­ ent regions. Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s Slight Fever of a 20-Year Old was Water Bearer’s first Asian title; later Filipino connections, “made by accident” according to Stimler, began a relationship with one of Asia’s larger gay film industries. Both happenstance and a desire to compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace drove Stimler’s acquisition of Asian films, and he acknowledged that some of his initial activist impulse has been tem­ pered by competition. As an example, while “Lesbian Cinema” remains on the website, Water Bearer offers only five selections. Stimler stopped developing that list ten to fifteen years ago, as consumers seemed scant and he felt he could not do justice to the category. The dominance of the Internet altered and continues to transform business dramatically. The technologies and economies of nontheatrical viewing distribution, from DVD rentals to pay-per-view to digital downloads, have played a crucial role in determining who has access to films and the iterations of Chineseness attendant to those cinematic projec­ tions. For Stimler, what all of these platforms require from a distributor’s perspective is the need for a provocative image to capture a potential viewer’s attention. Given that Cui Zi’en’s films usually arrive in the United States without publicity photographs, the compa­ ny often relies on screen grabs since, according to Stimler, “nothing sells a DVD like a cover.” Although the Christian motif found in many of Cui’s other works does not appear in Star Appeal, for instance, the DVD cover nevertheless pictures the alien in cruciform pose at the boundary between land, water, and air. Stimler picked up Star Appeal with Page 8 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema three more Cui films, noting that underground cinema has a particular cachet today. I would add that the process of distribution and the narratives told about that process help construct this appeal. The website states that this is an underground product “from China’s leading activist film maker” and offers the tagline “What would you do with a Naked Alien?” Stimler claims that “the naked martian sells the film” and (p. 309) insists that consumers buying products from his website are eventually “going to want someone to take their clothes off.” As I have argued in this adumbration of Cui Zi’en’s relationship with Water Bearer, the distribution network for Chinese independent cinema in the United States relies on serendipitous and recursive knowledge formations, and these networks of relationships can actually frame and produce the film’s content. It is precisely this intertwining of ma­ terial migrations, cultural translations, and financial investments that transform what we might have once understood as Chinese film into queer/Chinese/cinema, thereby revising popular understandings of independent film distribution. As Manohla Dargis argues in the New York Times: In the Old World of distribution, filmmakers hand over all the rights to their work, ceding control to companies that might soon lose interest in their new purchase for various reasons, including a weak opening weekend….In the New World, film­ makers maintain full control over their work from beginning to end: they hold on to their rights and, as important, find people who are interested in their projects and can become patrons, even mentors.24 Given the ways in which films circulate today, it is obviously erroneous to believe that a film ever remains in one person’s control. This case of distribution also refutes the paradigm of the nation­ al in cinema and draws attention to the ways in which films are positioned within a network of image flows facilitated by technology and desire. In the case of Cui Zi’en, image and narrative are framed as an opposition to the “gay mainstream cinema” in the United States. While Cui may be one of the most vocal proponents of a specifically queer discourse in the PRC, his work has been packaged for mass consumption with the particularity of queer discourse in the United States.

This assertion does not negate the fact that these films may circulate within Greater Chi­ na through other means. However, insofar as distribution relies on formal economic sys­ tems that can be tracked through and are themselves dependent on commercial regula­ tions, a study of the marketing and viewing of Cui’s oeuvre within the PRC and/or Greater China would require a different analytical lens. The widespread practice of piracy, along with the dissemination of films through informal transactions facilitated by guanxi and network capital, constitutes perhaps the dominant mode of film distribution for mainland cinema.25 The very terms of my argument, however, insist on the specific apparatuses that enable the viewing of queer/Chinese/cinema as a category inflected by English-lan­ guage constructions. While such a rubric for understanding may or may not inform the circulation of Cui’s films in his homeland, the analysis of recursion posited in this chapter assists in defining and unpacking the formal economy of cinema’s transnational distribu­ tion.

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema

Case 2: Animal Instincts Cui has dated the emergence of queer cinema in China to the late 1990s and early 2000s, with works such as Zhang Yuan’s East Palace, West Palace (1996), Cui’s own Men and (p. 310) Women (1999), together with Li Yu’s Fish and Elephant (2001), the latter being a 16 mm work generally regarded as the first lesbian film from the PRC.26 Fran Martin has described Fish and Elephant’s distribution within China through the pirating practices that continue to dominate filmic reception there. Her analysis offers a thorough account of the film in terms of its investment in a critical presentism.27 For my purposes, the im­ port of her essay is to note how the film departs from a female homoerotic memorialism that Martin sees as a generalized structure for “homoerotic representation in transnation­ al Chinese popular and entertainment cultures.”28 The film refutes the norms that Martin sees operating within the very category of lesbian Chinese cinema as she articulates it. But the film’s official online distributor mines the tension between the work’s potential novelty and the ways it participates in the rubric used to identify it: “lesbian drama.” The current online distributor for Fish and Elephant is Ariztical Entertainment. Founded in 1985, the distribution company began with campy horror but now bills itself in more ex­ pansive terms, as evidenced by the self-description that appears on its website: Ariztical has a wide variety of LGBT films to please even the most discerning cus­ tomer. Whether you’re looking for dramas, comedies, “family” flicks, light erotica or male nudity you’ll find what you’re looking for at our company. We at Ariztical are proud to see the company grow into what is sure to become one of the leading names in quality LGBT, independent and art house films.29 The company remains under the leadership of one of its founders, Michael J. Shoel. Like its competitor Water Bearer, Ariztical defines itself according to the seminal vision of its current president and CEO. According to Shoel, this mission has consistently emphasized commercial viability. The bestselling title of the hundred or so currently distributed is Q. Allan Brocka’s Eating Out (2004), which has sold approximately 50,000 units and has spawned several sequels. For the Eating Out series, Ariztical Entertainment serves as both producer and distributor; the former function had always interested Shoel, and his financial success has enabled him to move into that section of the business. In contrast to most of their other products, these Ariztical-produced movies have circulated through the film festival circuit (and particularly the LGBT festivals). The films’ content also indicates a commercial appeal consistent with what Stimler had identified as the “gay main­ stream”: a contemporary U.S. setting where young, muscular men look for Mr. Right. A sound track of hip music and dialogue replete with witticisms complete the package. But Ariztical has also challenged Hollywood competition by showcasing male full frontal nudi­ ty. Given this unabashed concern with revenue streams for Ariztical, “any films that are for­ eign are difficult.”30 According to Shoel, lesbian content compounds this issue, because there does not seem to be the same viable market base interested in purchasing such Page 10 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema works. Nevertheless, Ariztical’s founder has maintained titles that feature female homo­ erotic desire on his list. For the would-be film seller, guidelines are offered on (p. 311) the acquisitions page of the website, which encourages submissions of either queer or “nonGLBT” films that interrogate “ethics and values” and states that the company welcomes a conversation if “your film fits” the following criteria: “A GLBT film that is exciting, sexy, relevant and filmed well….For a comparison, check out our catalog of films that has a part number beginning with CQC.”31 The two other Chinese “lesbian drama” titles on the list are Yau Ching’s Let’s Love Hong Kong (好郁, 2002)—the first lesbian feature from the SAR—and Youxin Yang’s Feuille (2004), perhaps the first French-Chinese lesbian feature. The advertisements for these films also open by staking a claim to the particular and end­ ing with a gesture toward the universal. In the case of Let’s Love Hong Kong, the prose reads, “The streets of Hong Kong are a cacophonous clash of technology, neon lights, ghettos, food and sex. Caught in the midst of this are three very different women whose lives are about to quietly intersect….What follows is a provocative testimony to lesbian love, pornography, social decay and the day-to-day balancing act we all must perform to manage family, tradition, career and sexuality.”32 The site of Chinese urban space and the trio who move through that space yields to a rather shocking assertion in the first-person plural. Culturally specific iterations of female same-sex desire produce a situation that anyone who can read English and shop on the web should, apparently, recognize.33 If the online trailers were to provide any indication of what links Fish and Elephant, Let’s Love Hong Kong, and Feuille, then the would-be spectator would expect significant segments dedicated to scenes in which women kiss and embrace other women. As the earliest of these three “first” films, Fish and Elephant may be used as a case study. The web page dedicated to the advertisement of the film itself provides a brief plot synop­ sis followed by a statement to entice the would-be viewer: “Filmed entirely ‘under­ ground,’ Fish and Elephant is a ‘graceful, intimate’ film that treats its subject with sensi­ tivity and good humoured honesty.”34 Spectators can then click on a trailer, which frames the relationship story within the visual images of fish and the elephant mentioned in the English-language title (the Chinese title, by contrast, literally means “this summer”). This interface builds the lesbian drama by editing the sequences so that it appears as if an allfemale love triangle structures the plot. The clip ends with approximately twenty-five sec­ onds of steamy kissing and groping by the two principal women characters. In the narra­ tive as a whole, several sex scenes do appear—heterosexual, homosexual, and autosexual —but the trailer frames the film as a lesbian erotic fest intercut with scenes of its titular nonhuman animals. The trailer for Fish and Elephant situates the film as relatively com­ patible with Ariztical’s other offerings. Although Shoel’s personal taste shapes the collection available for purchase at Ariztical just as Stimler’s does for Water Bearer, Shoel used international brokers to procure his films.35 Unlike Cui’s works, Fish and Elephant—like most of the rest of the Ariztical line— already possessed trailers when it arrived in the distributor’s hands. Between production and (Western) reception, then, two middlemen work to package and position the film in relation to such issues as genre and market. And whereas Ariztical clearly has the capaci­ ty to produce its own films, Shoel has stated that this line of work depends on commercial Page 11 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema considerations, which favor clear narratives and (p. 312) U.S. contemporary settings. While Shoel has offered what might be considered rare space for lesbian Chinese cinema, the company’s fostering of talent has been directed at features with gay male content: the Eating Out series, Vampire Boys (Charlie Vaughn, 2011), and Shut Up and Kiss Me (Devin Hamilton, 2010). The very availability of queer/Chinese/cinema at Ariztical seems to func­ tion as a means to diversify what might otherwise strike a shopper as an exclusive focus on a flesh-fest of abs, biceps, pecs, and penises…made in the USA.

Case 3: Market States36 Solos (2007) holds the distinction of being the first gay feature from Singapore. Kan Lume and Loo Zihan’s collaboratively directed debut emerged from a university filmmaking workshop during which Kan and Loo collaborated on a five-minute short.37 Largely driven by Kan’s greater experience in filmmaking and his professional contacts, Solos provided the newer filmmaker with invaluable experience (not to mention a feature directing cred­ it), which he would later leverage in his successful bid for graduate admission to the Art Institute of Chicago. The work seems to have gained traction, particularly in American and European spaces, having screened at the “12th Pusan International Film Festival…it has [subsequently] screened at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles, Sydney Mardi Gras Film Fes­ tival, London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. Solos won the Best First Feature Award at Torino GLFF in Italy.”38 In this context, Solos might be seen as a success. Produced and distributed by Red Dawn Productions, a company started in 2006 by Florence Ang (who had previously been a suc­ cessful publicist for theater and film), the work’s placement at the 2007 Korean festival can, according to Loo, be largely attributed to Ang’s entrepreneurial skill. Solos has actu­ ally used the suppression within Singapore to market the film internationally.39 The DVD announces that the film’s plot (a romantic liaison between a teacher and a student) was “inspired by true events” and was “banned in its home country for sexual content.” In­ deed, the two interviews on the DVD-release (with actor Ian McKellan and actor/director John Cameron Mitchell) emphasize the restrictions on freedom of expression when Singa­ pore contrasts itself to the UK and the United States. This strategy allows the West, in ef­ fect, to reenergize colonialism by articulating the civil advancement won through several decades of queer activism in Western spaces. In other words, the circulation of Solos might initially seem to reinscribe a discourse in which Singapore will learn from its West­ ern counterparts a path toward LGBT liberation. Pride events in Singapore reliant on so­ cial media such as pinkdot constitute a relatively recent phenomenon that might rein­ force this notion but, again, within the specific logics of Singaporean capitalism. But even if the framing of Solos lends itself to such interpretations, the work itself is de­ cidedly more ambivalent. A film without speech, the narrative content occurs largely (p. 313) in black and white, although the diegesis is occasionally punctuated by solo dance sequences, which include fabrics of vibrant color. Given the lack of language in the diege­ sis, together with the often provocative cuts to images only loosely associated with narra­ Page 12 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema tive construction (e.g., a close-up on a fish’s gills), Solos does not provide any easy asser­ tion of Chineseness (or any other cultural marker for that matter). Certain phenotypes ap­ pear, and also certain rituals (incense burning during the collection of ashes), but these provide impressions rather than narrative coherence. The film never specifies the actual names of its characters, and doesn’t even provide identificatory labels (boy, mother, man, dancer, extra, and so forth) until the final credits. Moreover, the “extra” character partici­ pates in a ménage à trois with “boy” and “man” and seems to cause a great deal of fric­ tion in the principal romantic relationship at the center of the narrative. A tension, then, exists, between the framing of the film (on the website, on the DVD cover, through the DVD extras) and the work as a narrative construction in its own right. The discourse around the film repeatedly references its gay content. Consider the producer’s note on the film’s website: “Although Solos is largely centered on a teacherstudent homosexual relationship, the film was not made to validate or criticize any form of lifestyle. Instead, we decided to make the film to reflect the repercussions of such rela­ tionships in the real world.”40 Such blurbs encourage the film’s screening in spaces con­ cerned with LGBT issues. In exactly this vein, Solos screened as part of the Short Circuit film festival in Singapore. This event featured mostly students from the Lasalle College of the Arts and the Ngee Ann Polytechnic School of Film and Media Studies. Largely pro­ duced by an older generation of queer activists, most of whom had been educated abroad and have been leaders in the formation of the activist group People Like Us (PLU), the festival itself was a three-hour showcase of predominately English-language program­ ming. As might be expected, the government curtails such events but not necessarily through explicit censorship, given that the government’s position is that the deliverance of economic goods equates to the “good life.” Instead, Singapore has instituted exorbitant licensing fees (for screening venues and the like), most if not all of which require official approval. Indeed, the various laws policing gay life might initially seem to have less to do with sexuality as such than with other indices of community organizing. PLU, for example, has never registered more than ten participants, in order to avoid running afoul of the legislation restricting illegal association. Within this context, some organizers have tried to appeal to the peculiar market logics that seem to drive Singapore’s political positions. As a salient example, Stuart Koe has argued that gay rights discourse has monetary val­ ue, both in terms of tourism and also in terms of the retention of a creative class of entre­ preneurs who have the potential to grow the economy. Despite these arguments that would fit Solos into a larger framework of a strategy marketing diversity, the film has not had a formal domestic release, and the Short Circuit screening apparently occurred with­ out the knowledge of at least one of the filmmakers. But the work’s status as the first gay film from Singapore is likely to keep it in circulation for the foreseeable future.

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema

First Times and the Rise of Queer/Chinese/ Cinema (p. 314)

I have argued that a focus on the moments after production and prior to screening may elucidate how queer/Chinese/cinema might function as both a category of analysis and an analytic unto itself. What are the conditions through which these terms become legible and how does a transnational marketplace value the iterations of desire depicted through these films? The examples I have investigated share some notoriety as a series of firsts— the first openly gay filmmaker from the PRC, the first lesbian Chinese film, and the first gay film from Singapore. The stakes of such labeling lie in the rendering of a teleological narrative in which ostensibly Chinese films have “come out”; the celebration of inaugura­ tion implicitly gestures toward an ordinal system in which these “firsts” herald what is to come. In other words, the marketing of these films invests in a progress narrative in which Chinese cultural productions catch up to preexisting categories sanctioned by and developed within the West. The films themselves may resist such deterministic under­ standings, but the windows that allow formal access to these works frame them in ways that demonstrate a reliance, if not a dependency, on discourses of sexuality common to the United States and western Europe. But, as all the interviewees for this chapter have also suggested, the technologies that enable spectators to see films are shifting rapidly, meaning that what constitutes queer/Chinese/cinema is always contingent not only on geopolitical structures but also on mechanical ones. This chapter will therefore conclude with a series of questions rather than answers. I end with a gaze toward Taiwan, which has perhaps the most developed local scene for queer/Chinese/cinema. Moreover, there is evidence of a desire to import films produced by some of the companies based in the United States mentioned earlier in this chapter. According to Andrew Chang, who runs Attitude Films, which sells foreign (e.g., Ameri­ can) queer cinema to Asia, the national ethos of Japan and Korea is “too macho” to devel­ op a market in the importing of queer cinema. The ubiquitous nature of piracy in South Asia has meant that most distributors cannot afford to pay the requested licensing fee. Hong Kong is “too small” for this particular niche, and one must “forget about” Mainland China because of its government.41 Chang has further averred that the desire for Asian queer film (that is, cinema from other countries within the region) is limited, leading him to surmise that the iteration of queer and Asian depends on local context. Given Chang’s business, I would add that these local scenes are situated in a recursive relationship to Western, particularly American, understandings of queer cinema. But as more and more filmmakers move back and forth between different regions in Asia and the rest of the world, and as the U.S. economy suffers while those of other regions become stronger, the question arises as to how queer/Chinese/cinema might configure differently in the future, and how such future projections might alter the ways that cinemagoers understand and narrate the past.

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema

Works Cited Berry, Chris. “Happy Alone? Sad Young Men in East Asian Gay Cinema.” Queer Asian Cin­ ema: Shadows in the Shade. New York: Haworth Press, 2000. 187–200. Berry, Chris. “The Sacred, the Profane, and the Domestic: Locating the Cinema of Cui Zi’en.” positions: east asia cultures critique 12.1 (2004): 195–202. Chou, Wah-shan. Tongzhi: Politics of Same-Sex Eroticism in Chinese Societies. New York: Haworth Press, 2000. Cui Zi’en. “The Communist International of Queer Film.” positions: east asia cultures cri­ tique 18.2 (2010): 420–421. Curry, Ramona. “Bridging the Pacific with Love Eterne” China Forever: The Shaw Broth­ ers and Diasporic Cinema. Ed. Poshek Fu. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 174– 198. Curtin, Michael. Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007. Dargis, Manohla. “Declaration of Indies: Just Sell it Yourself.” New York Times, January 14, 2010. Retrieved January 17, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/ 2010/01/17/movies/17dargis.html?th&emc=th. (p. 318)

Davis, Darrell William, and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh. East Asian Screen Industries. London: BFI, 2008. de Lauretis, Teresa. “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities: An Introduction.” differ­ ences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3.2 (1991): iii–xviii. Eng, David L. Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Eng, David L., and Alice Y. Hom. Q&A: Queer in Asian America. Philadelphia: Temple Uni­ versity Press, 1998. Fu, Poshek. China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires: Queer Diaspora and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Iwabuchi, Koichi. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnational­ ism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Khoo, Olivia. “The Ground beneath Her Feet: Faultlines of Nation and Sensation in Yau Ching’s Ho Yuk: Let’s Love Hong Kong.” GLQ 14.1 (2007): 99–119.

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema Lee, Jee Yeun. “Toward a Queer Korean American Diasporic History.” Q&A: Queer in Asian America. Ed. David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. 185–209. Lim, Song Hwee. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contem­ porary Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006. Liu, Petrus, and Lisa Rofel. “Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics.” positions: east asia cultures critique 18.2 (2010): 281–289. Manalansan, Martin. Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. Durham: Duke Uni­ versity Press, 2003. Martin, Fran. “Backward Glances”: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Ho­ moerotic Imaginary. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Martin, Fran. Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film, and Public Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Martin, Fran, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McClelland, and Audrey Yue, eds. AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Metzger, Sean. “Saving Face, or the Future Perfect of Queer Chinese/American Cinema?” Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures. Ed. Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger. Bristol: Intellect, 2009. 223–240. Metzger, Sean, and Olivia Khoo. “Introduction.” Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures. Ed. Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger. Bristol: Intellect, 2009. Muñoz, José. “Dead White: Notes on the Whiteness of the New Queer Cinema.” GLQ 4.1 (1998): 127–138. Ong, Aihwa. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Rofel, Lisa. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Shimizu, Celine Parreñas. The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/Ameri­ can Women on Screen and Scene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. (p. 319)

Tang, Denise Tse-Shang. “Demand for Cultural Representation: Emerging Independent Film and Video on Lesbian Desires.” Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Tem­ poralities in Chinese Screen Cultures. Ed. Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger. Bristol: Intel­ lect, 2009. 169–190.

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema

Notes: (1.) Sean Metzger and Olivia Khoo, “Introduction,” in Futures of Chinese Cinema: Tech­ nologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures, ed. Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger (Bristol: Intellect, 2009). (2.) My project thus differs from the useful studies that trace the transformations of tropes of sexuality in Chinese cinemas, such as Song Hwee Lim’s Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), or Chris Berry’s “Happy Alone? Sad Young Men in East Asian Gay Cinema,” Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade (New York: Ha­ worth Press, 2000), 187–200. (3.) Three recent works buck this trend. Preliminary sketches a history of the ways in which major studios altered production practices to suit local, regional, and international audiences may be found in the essays that comprise Poshek Fu’s edited collection on the Shaw Brothers, China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema (Urbana: Uni­ versity of Illinois Press, 2008). A more contemporary overview of studio distribution prac­ tices in China can be found in the work of Michael Curtin. Darrell William Davis and Emi­ lie Yueh-yu Yeh have also investigated distribution as part of pan-Asian cinema; their fourpart typology finds in what they call “Pan-Asian programme packagers” a distribution model through which Asian films achieve full or limited commercial release in theaters within and beyond Asia. See their East Asian Screen Industries (London: BFI, 2008). The films I discuss here have generally not achieved even limited commercial theatrical re­ lease, having primarily been screened at festivals, often after having been distributed on DVD. (4.) Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Cul­ ture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 23. (5.) In this regard, my argument overlaps with that of Petrus Liu and Lisa Rofel, who write, “Beyond the partly ironic notion of a queer nation lies the reality that queer people have, through long histories of colonialism, mimicked and mirrored one another’s lives, even as power-laden differences among us have meant not equivalence but fraught al­ liances.” See their “Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Poli­ tics,” positions: east asia cultures critique 18.2 (2010): 283. (6.) Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transna­ tionalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 27. (7.) For a critique of the whiteness of queer cinema, see José Muñoz, “Dead White: Notes on the Whiteness of the New Queer Cinema,” GLQ 4.1 (1998): 127–138. (8.) David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom, Q&A: Queer in Asian America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 1. (9.) David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom, Q&A, 1. Page 17 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema (10.) For example, Asian Pacific Health Care Venture was founded in LA in 1987, Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, in San Francisco in 1988, Gay Asian and Pacific Islander Men of New York in 1990. (11.) See David L. Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Di­ aspora and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); and Mar­ tin Manalansan, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham: Duke Universi­ ty Press, 2003). (12.) Jee Yeun Lee, “Toward a Queer Korean American Diasporic History,” in David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom, Q&A, 186. (13.) Celine Parreñas Shimizu, The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 14. (14.) See GLQ 1.1 (1993); Teresa de Lauretis, “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexuali­ ties: An Introduction,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3.2 (1991): iii– xviii. My slash also plays on de Lauretis’s work on the lesbian and gay bar. (15.) Fran Martin, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McClelland, and Audrey Yue, AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008). (16.) Wah-shan Chou, Tongzhi: Politics of Same-Sex Eroticism in Chinese Societies (New York: Haworth Press, 2000). (17.) Fran Martin, Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Public Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003). For constructions of female same-sex desire in China, see Tse-lan D. Sang, The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). For simi­ lar issues in relation to Hong Kong, see Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Undercurrents: Queer Cul­ ture and Postcolonial Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009) and Denise Tse-Shang Tang, Conditional Spaces: Hong Kong Lesbian Desires and Everyday Life (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011). (18.) For the difficulties associated with acquiring and developing queer/Chinese/cinema in Hong Kong, see Denise Tse-Shang Tang, “Demand for Cultural Representation: Emerg­ ing Independent Film and Video on Lesbian Desires,” in Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger, Futures of Chinese Cinema, 169–190. Current members of the HKGLFF team Joe Lam and Vicci Ho have also described to me the process for selecting films, which generally produces a roster composed largely of European and American films. (19.) Ramona Curry, “Bridging the Pacific with Love Eterne,” in Poshek Fu, China Forever, 174–198. (20.) Chris Berry, “The Sacred, the Profane, and the Domestic: Locating the Cinema of Cui Zi’en,” positions: east asian cultures critique 12.1 (2004): 195–202. Page 18 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema (21.) The promotional blurb reads as follows: What Would You Do With A Naked Alien? They find him alone and naked on the highway, he claims to be from Mars. They bring him home so he can learn about Earth. They give him the name ET, his mission is to learn about physical human in­ teraction, he could not have picked a better family. Xiao Bo, the man who brought him home is bisexual, he has both a girl friend and a boy friend. Both feel threatened by ET. Xiao’s girl friend even tries to have a ba­ by with ET, but this causes him to fall into a coma, only the words, uttered from Xi­ ao, “I love you” can bring him around. Before ET can leave he must learn the meaning of Earthly love. Xiao teaches him in a tender moment of passion. From China’s leading activist film maker, Cui Zi’en, the maker of “Feeding Boys, Ayaya,” comes the first all gay Chinese science fiction film. The website where this was initially archived, http://www.waterbearerfilms.com/ gayasianfilms.html, retrieved March 13, 2010, has changed to http:// store.waterbearerfilms.com/starappeal.aspx, retrieved November 19, 2011.

(22.) The material on Water Bearer Films comes from the author’s interview with Mike Stimler, November 5, 2008. (23.) At this time, Stimler notes, Strand Releasing was the only other major distributor for gay film. (24.) Manohla Dargis, “Declaration of Indies: Just Sell it Yourself,” New York Times, Janu­ ary 14, 2010, retrieved January 17, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/ movies/17dargis.html?th&emc=thdownload. (25.) Here I reference Aihwa Ong’s discussion of Chinese capital more generally in her Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 155–156. (26.) Cui Zi’en, “The Communist International of Queer Film,” positions: east asian cul­ tures critique 18.2 (2010): 420–421. (27.) Fran Martin, “Backward Glances”: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 147–179. (28.) Fran Martin, “Backward Glances,” 147. I am in partial agreement with Martin here. My own reading of Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004), a film that Martin also mentions, sug­ gests that another temporality is perhaps the major structuring force in a certain trajecto­ ry of Chinese/American films, though I use queer to designate a figuration that moves through but also beyond the lesbian relationship in the film. See Metzger “Saving Face,

Page 19 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema or the Future Perfect of Queer Chinese/American Cinema?” in Olivia Khoo and Sean Met­ zger, Futures of Chinese Cinema, 223–240. (29.) http://www.ariztical.com/corporate/about.html, retrieved November 7, 2011. (30.) Michael J. Shoel interview with author, November 14, 2011. (31.) http://www.ariztical.com/aquisitions/, retrieved November 7, 2011. (32.) http://www.ariztical.com/filmsAZ/lets_love_hong_kong.html, retrieved November 7, 2011. (33.) For a different interpretation of this film that sees it as quite specific to Hong Kong, see Olivia Khoo, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: Faultlines of Nation and Sensation in Yau Ching’s Ho Yuk: Let’s Love Hong Kong,” GLQ 14.1 (2007): 99–119. (34.) http://ariztical.com/filmsAZ/fish_and_elephant.html, retrieved November 7, 2011. (35.) Michael J. Shoel interview with author, November 14, 2011. (36.) The information in this section regarding the Short Circuit Film Festival, and gay politics in Singapore more generally, was generously provided by Alex Au, whom I inter­ viewed on August 6, 2010. (37.) July 5, 2011, interview with Loo Zihan. The short can be viewed online at http:// loozihan.com/portfolios/90071-untitled-2005, retrieved October 17, 2011. (38.) http://www.solosmovie.com/about_the_film.html, retrieved October 17, 2011. (39.) Florence Ang declined to be interviewed for this chapter. (40.) http://www.solosmovie.com/notes.html, retrieved November 20, 2011. (41.) Andrew Chang, interview with author on November 17, 2011.

Sean Metzger

Sean Metzger is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Los An­ gelas. He has co-edited three volumes: with Gina Masequesmay, Embodying Asian/ American Sexualities (Lexington Books, 2009); with Olivia Khoo, Time Signatures: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures (Intellect 2009); and, with Michaeline Crichlow, a special issue on Race, Space, Place: the Making and Un­ making of Freedoms in the Atlantic World (Cultural Dynamics, Nov 2009). He is com­ pleting a book currently called “Chinese Looks: The Skein of Race and Asian/Ameri­ can Spectatorship,” which investigates Chineseness, fashion, film, gender, migration, and performance through four objects—the queue, the qipao, the Mao suit, and the tuxedo—during the long twentieth century.

Page 20 of 21

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Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places:

Thirdspace Between Flows and Places   Yingjin Zhang The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0018

Abstract and Keywords Most scholarship on Mainland Chinese independent documentary champions its defiant, subversive intent and its consistent claim to truth. In light of theories of spatiality and polylocality, especially the tactic of thirding, this chapter argues that Mainland Chinese independent documentary has accomplished a great deal more: documenting the fastchanging landscape of a globalizing China, intervening in cases of social justice, retriev­ ing lost memories of individuals and groups, contemplating the self in crisis, cultivating genuinely subaltern images, and constructing professional networks across social and ge­ ographic borders. The chapter draws attention to the translocal operations of indepen­ dent documentary and its various tactics and techniques, from observational and interac­ tive to performative and experimental. Rather than following a binary logic of repression versus subversion, Mainland Chinese independent documentary often explores a third way of bypassing conventions and norms and creating new spaces for articulating visions of truth, memory, and subjectivity. Keywords: independent documentary, spatiality, polylocality, thirding, place, flow, globalizing China

Chinese independent documentary, also known as new documentary (新記錄片), has devel­ oped quickly in Mainland China over the past two decades as an unusual force that con­ tinues to challenge our fundamental concepts of art, aesthetics, memory, history, truth, reality, ethics, and subjectivity.1 This chapter proposes that the politics of place has been of ultimate importance to Chinese independent documentary, whose development pro­ vides a rich site for engaging contemporary social theories of space and locality. Ideologi­ cally and financially independent of the mainstream political and commercial media,2 Chinese independent documentary constitutes a particular kind of Thirdspace as concep­ tualized by Edward Soja. Always navigating between what Manuel Castells theorizes as the space of flows and the space of places, Chinese independent documentary has accom­ plished a great deal beyond its signature position of defiance and subversion vis-à-vis the establishments: documenting the fast-changing landscape of globalizing China (via tropes such as disappearance and ruins), intervening in cases of social injustice (AIDS, demoli­ tion, migration, natural disasters), retrieving the lost memories of individuals and groups Page 1 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: (often related to sensitive political campaigns), contemplating subjectivities in crisis (via video diary and still photos), cultivating authentic subaltern images (village and neighbor­ hood documentary projects), and constructing professional networks across social and geographic borders (through workshops, exhibitions, festivals). Given the sheer variety of its concerns, Chinese independent documentary has cultivated a widespread network of translocal operations and has deployed a diverse range of tactics and techniques, from observational to interventionist and investigative, from interactive to performative and experimental.3 The framework of Thirdspace, I suggest, can help us better comprehend the complicated, often improvised but nonetheless ingenious ways in which Chinese inde­ pendent documentarians work to (p. 321) sidestep mainstream conventions and project al­ ternative visions of truth, memory, and subjectivity. It is worth remembering that Chinese independent documentary started in the late 1980s with an acute sense of both placelessness and emplacement. As represented by Wu Wenguang’s 吳文光 Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (流浪北京: 最後的夢想者, 1990), Beijing appeared as a transitory space between places sanctioned and forbidden, a space where the subjects’ former socialist identities (i.e., those grounded in their danwei 單位 [work unit] and hukou 戶口 [household registry]) are forsaken and their new postsocialist identities have yet to fall into place. Arriving at the end of a decadelong “cultural fever” (文化熱), when a renewed sense of historical mission had reigned over the cultural and theoretical fields, the emergent Chinese independent documentary looked not only out of place (i.e., belonging to nowhere) but also out of time (i.e., being left behind). Wu Wenguang’s last dreamers—including himself as a “drifting” (盲流) artist from the south­ western city of Kunming—are “last” in the sense that they came too late to participate in the glorified intellectual project of 1980s enlightenment and that their dreams of finding a decent place in Beijing were crushed one by one, right on camera.4 Paradoxically, how­ ever, it is documentary filmmaking itself that keeps all these contradictory elements of spatiality, temporality, and subjectivity in place.5 In an intentionally unglamorous way, the documented experiences of the migrant artists in Bumming in Beijing bear witness to what Michel Foucault announces in “Of Other Spaces”: “We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and the far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment… when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein.”6 Foucault’s an­ nouncement in 1967 was meant to encourage scholars to rethink key categories of modernity such as time and history in distinctively spatial terms in addition—if not in op­ position—to theories of temporality, development, and progress that had prevailed EuroAmerican thought since the nineteenth century. Foucault’s theory reminds us that the privileged linear, even teleological model of narrating the nation (or world history for that matter) inevitably conceals multiple temporalities and spatialities. Contrary to what the official media suggest, China is not a single gigantic space-time unified by the powerful centripetal ideologies of nationalism and globalization. The spatial logic of the side-byside, if we follow Foucault, compels us to examine other sides and other spaces marginal­ ized or obscured by the dominant discourse. As Bumming in Beijing and countless other Page 2 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: works of Chinese independent documentary have demonstrated, in the course of its sweeping transformation in the recent decades, contemporary China is defined by hetero­ geneity and polylocality rather than homogeneity and singularity, and our favorite “dialec­ tical” models (e.g., tradition-modernity, oppression-liberation, impact-response, center-pe­ riphery) tend to map the apparent opposing forces only on the macro levels of nationstates and supranational regions (e.g., the Asia Pacific) and neglect the micro level of place-based translocal networking. It is exactly on this micro level that Chinese indepen­ dent documentary has found its place and its mission: to investigate, document, and re­ store on a distinctively local (p. 322) or translocal level the heterogeneity and polylocality of China, Chinese history, and Chinese experiences. To better appreciate the significance of Chinese independent documentary’s self-position­ ing through Thirdspace, in the following three sections we shall revisit theories of space and place in the era of globalization, rethink critical thirding as an effective means of so­ cial intervention, and reconceptualize the local through translocality and polylocality. In the final two sections, I will show how Chinese independent documentary has taken up the challenge posed by social theories of space and locality and how new insights from performance studies may further shed light on our understanding of the operations and accomplishments of Chinese independent documentary.

Globalization: Of Flows and Places Schematically, there are three principal ways in which globalization has been subject to spatial conceptualization.7 First, in terms of sociospatial restructuring, Manuel Castells points to the transformation of socially and spatially based relationships of production in­ to flows of information and power that articulate the new flexible system of production and management. Central to a new sociospatial logic, the “space of flows” is considered to be global in its impact on the new informational society and functional at three promi­ nent levels: the infrastructural (the “wired world”), the organizational (world cities), and the managerial (informational elites). While paying more attention to structural than hu­ man factors, Castells nonetheless presents a persuasive argument that globalization is “an era where timeless time exists in tension with chronological time” and “a space of flows exists in tension with a space of places.”8 The simultaneity of multiple temporalities and spatialities is thus reconfirmed for the new information age. Second, in terms of space-place reconfiguration, place seems to be losing out to space in the era of globalization. As Castells asserts, “A place is a locale whose form, function and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity.”9 Driven by the logic of flows, the world of places (e.g., the home, the community) is increasingly super­ seded by spaces characterized by circulation, velocity, and flow. This process is visually reflected in the changing cityscape of a globalizing China: on the one hand, there is the widespread demolition of old neighborhoods in aspiring global cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which has become a favorite subject in Chinese independent filmmaking,10 and on the other hand, there is an endless proliferation of serialized, ahistorical, and acultural Page 3 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: architectural projects like international hotels and airports in metropolitan cities. Howev­ er, the “view of place as bounded…as singular, fixed and unproblematic” upheld by Castells and other system-minded scholars does not go without challenge.11 For Doreen Massey, place is relational and productive just as space is. From this vantage point, Marc Augé contemplates: “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a place which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.”12 In Augé’s classification, then, (p. 323) international ho­ tels and airports, along with office buildings, shopping malls, highways, and multiplex cinemas, are all examples of “nonplaces,” which serve as the symptoms of “supermoder­ nity” and foreground the latter’s “essential quality: excess.”13 The proliferation of non­ places around the world, which represents the space of flows as the ultimate sign of glob­ alization, thus forms a sharp contrast to the world of places. Third, in terms of scale-readjustment, globalization tends to favor the global at the ex­ pense of the local. Even the apparently balanced term glocalization—a neologism derived from a 1980s Japanese marketing slogan, dochakuka—has implied unevenness in that it means globalization for some and localization for others.14 Globalization thus works to po­ larize society in accordance with differentiated mobility: to quote Zygmunt Bauman, “Some inhabit the globe; others are chained to place.”15 The polarization of freedom of movement and its lack has consequently added a new dimension to deprivation: being merely local in a globalized (or glocalized) world is automatically rendered a secondary existence.16 Globalization, in Bauman’s judgment, “divides as much as it unites.”17 Given this division and its consequential differences in places, globalization masks multiplicity behind its façade of uniformity across the globe. All three spatial configurations of globalization summarized here grant power to space over place, or more precisely the space of flows over the space of places. Deliberately or not, this differentiated allocation of spatial power has reinscribed a long Western intellec­ tual tradition in privileging time over space. This reinscription of binaries reminds Massey of “the same gendering operating through the series of dualisms which are linked to time and space. It is time which is aligned with history, progress, civilization, politics and transcendence and coded masculine. And it is the opposites of these things which have…been coded feminine,” such as “stasis, passivity and depoliticization.”18 Indeed, the privileging of global flows over local places has helped grant power not only in gender terms but also in other social formations. As Arturo Escobar observes: “The global is asso­ ciated with space, capital, history and agency while the local, conversely, is linked to place, labor, and tradition—as well as with women, minorities, the poor and…local cul­ tures.”19 Before confronting the question of whether the world of places is indeed locked in stasis, in decline, or in danger,20 we must recognize the real-world consequences of globalization theories. One such consequence is discussed within “development discourse,” which champions the space of capital and power and reinforces the impression that place is left behind due to its grounded locality and backward tradition, both of which have rendered it less competitive in globalization and more susceptible to stagnation and poverty.21 Page 4 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Worse still, as Massey comments on this logic of development, “So long as inequality is read in terms of stages of advance and backwardness not only are alternative stories dis­ allowed but also the fact of the production of poverty and polarization within and through ‘globalization’ itself can be erased from view.”22 Needless to say, much is at stake in these contending theories of space and place regard­ ing globalization. In an effort to restore a balanced view of space and place in globaliza­ tion, Massey calls for “a global sense of the local, a global sense of place.”23 Both Massey and Dirlik have attempted to reconfigure the existing power-geometries of space over (p. 324) place, or global over local by redefining the concept of place. For Massey, the lo­ cal is by no means locked forever in place, for the boundaries of place—contrary to Castells’s formulation—are porous and open to traffic in both ways. For Dirlik, the appar­ ent global-local symmetry in the term “glocal” is deceptive and the politics of “placebased imagination” is urgently needed for interrogating “the voices of globalism that erase both people and places” and recovering “the voices of the weak who are straining to be heard.”24

Thirdspace: Critical Thirding-as-Othering For those familiar with Chinese independent documentary, it should be clear by now that it has actively participated in the mission of recovering the voices of the weak and inter­ rogating the logic of development championed by both transnational capital and the Chi­ nese state. It is in the name of “development” (發展) that the Chinese government has launched countless large-scale urban projects and has engineered a widespread demoli­ tion of local communities and cultures throughout the country. True, much of the footage from such documentaries as Zhang Yuan’s 張元 Resisting Eminent Domain (釘子戶, 1998) and Ou Ning’s 歐寧 Meishi Street (煤市街, 2008) may reconfirm the impression of the vic­ timization of the local and the endangerment of places in the era of globalization,25 but it is precisely through on-site documentary filmmaking that Chinese artists have succeeded in keeping place in the flow, this time, if not in reality when the place in question may be in danger or in ruin, then at least in the virtual space where the documentary images speak volume to viewers from one place to another, both inside and outside China.26 To a certain extent, Chinese independent documentary responds to Edward Soja’s appeal for openness: it is “more urgent than ever to keep our contemporary consciousness of spatiality—our critical geographical imagination—creatively open to redefinition and ex­ pansion in new directions; and to resist any attempt to narrow or confine its scope.”27 For Chinese independent documentarians, to keep their geographical imagination open is to challenge the state-sanctioned globalization discourses of development and consumption and to explore alternative spaces, places, voices, and images that have been ignored or distorted by the mainstream media. It is significant that Chinese independent documen­ tarians have resolutely resisted celebrating the glamour of the space of flows. Instead, they firmly position themselves with the space of places but do so without surrendering their critical consciousness or confining themselves to stasis. Page 5 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Soja’s concept of Thirdspace can help us appreciate the self-positioning of Chinese inde­ pendent documentary. In Soja’s case, the need for openness is generated by Lefebvre’s triple dialectic (dialé ctique de triplicité), which “produces what might best be called a cumulative trialectics that is radically open to additional otherness, to a continuing expan­ sion of spatial knowledge.”28 In Lefebvre’s theorization, “il y a toujours l’Autre” (p. 325) (there is always the Other); therefore, as Soja explains, when “faced with a choice con­ fined to the either/or, Lefebvre creatively resisted by choosing instead an-Other alterna­ tive, marked by the openness of the both/and also…, with the ‘also’ reverberating back to disrupt the categorical closures implicit in the either/or logic.”29 In accordance with the logic of thirding-as-Othering, Lefebvre has added key third terms in two formulations: first, to the dyad of “historicality” and “sociality” that had long dominated modern West­ ern thought, Lefebvre has added “spatiality” to form what Soja calls the ontology-based “trialectics of Being”; second, to the materiality of the “perceived space” (spatial prac­ tice) and the imagination of the “conceived space” (spaces of representation), Lefebvre has added the real-and-imagined of the lived space (representation of spaces or represen­ tational spaces), thereby forming what Soja calls “the trialectics of spatiality.”30 In Soja’s reading, Lefebvre’s third term “partakes of the original pairing but is not just a simple combination.”31 Take the lived space for example: as spaces of representation, they cover a great variety, some of which Soja enumerates at length: These spaces are also filled with politics and ideology, with the real and the imag­ ined intertwined, and with capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and other material spa­ tial practices that concretize the social relations of production, reproduction, ex­ ploitation, domination, and subjection. They are the “dominated spaces,” the spaces of the peripheries, the margins and the marginalized, the “Third Worlds” that can be found at all scales, in the corpo-reality of the body and mind, in sexual­ ity and subjectivity, in individual and collective identities from the most local to the most global. They are the chosen spaces for struggle, liberation, emancipation.32 All of Soja’s examples for the spaces of representation can be categorized under Castells’s space of places. For critical thirding-as-Othering to work, however, “the original binary choice is not dismissed entirely but is subjected to a creative process of restructuring that draws selectively and strategically from the two opposing categories to open new alternatives.”33 Interestingly, Castells’s more recent project on “grassrooting the space of flows” suggests that this logic of thirding is operational in a reevaluation of flows and places in globalization.

Although he still insists on the view that “the space of places is fragmented, localized, and thus increasingly powerless vis-à-vis the versatility of the space of flows,” Castells is willing to accept that the broad-based, frequent participation of users on the Internet and other communication technologies, along “with the creative cacophony of their social di­ versity and the plurality of their values and interests…, and the linkage between places and information flows transform the logic of the space of flows and make it a contested space—a plural and diversified space.”34 The space of flows, in this scenario, is not com­ pletely sealed off from other spaces, but is subject to the logic of critical thirding where­ Page 6 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: by, in Castells’s own description, “a new dynamics” of “interpenetration of uniformity and autonomy, of domination and resistance, of instrumentality and experience” has produced what Soja would regard as a Thirdspace between flows and places.35 As a result of the new dynamics, Castells writes, “The attempt by capital, media, and power to escape into the abstraction of the space of flows, bypassing democracy and experience (p. 326) by confining them in the space of places, is being challenged from many sources by the grassrooting of the space of flows.”36 Nonetheless, although his word grassrooting suggests the trialectics’ othering effect, Castells’s interest lies first and foremost in the space of flows. Understandably, he has lit­ tle to say for the space of places, except noting that “trenches of resistance to the domi­ nation of flows of capital and information are being built primarily around places.”37 I judge the metaphor of “trench-building,” which gives away Castells’s fundamentally bina­ ry thinking regarding flows versus places, to be quite misleading, for the tactics of con­ tention, resistance, and subversion are not necessarily confined to a self-contained, forev­ er-fixed place. Even Castells himself has recognized that “a fast growth of networks of solidarity and cooperation on the Internet” has occurred in multiple places, often simulta­ neously.38 Through dynamic interpenetration, a Thirdspace opens up when a place resorts to the same communication technologies of networking used by the space of flows and tactically connects with other places in forging solidarity and cooperation and working to preserve democracy and experience. As I will illustrate below, Chinese independent docu­ mentary functions precisely in such a manner.

Polylocality: Toward Multiple Translocal Net­ works Contrary to Castells’s preoccupation with the space of flows, Dirlik calls for “a recogni­ tion of the primacy of place, and of its autonomy, and, on that irreducible basis, to pro­ duce translocal or, better still, transplace alliances and cooperative formations.”39 I take “translocal” to be a key concept in Dirlik’s endeavor to tip the balance of global versus lo­ cal or spatial versus place-based toward the second term in the pairs, to critique the dis­ courses of progress and development that increasingly bind the state and capital in a re­ lationship of complicity, and to reinstate the crucial importance of grassroots, place-based politics. Referencing Bruno Latour’s “railroad model,” which suggests that a railroad is local at all points but is global as well (albeit not universal), Dirlik is convinced that “the local is as difficult to locate as the global, which endows it with meaning,”40 and the al­ leged indeterminacy of the local has led to his preference for “the place-based” (judged more locatable) to the local in his exploration of place consciousness. Nonetheless, I argue that the local does not necessarily need the global to endow it with meaning, as Dirlik hypothesizes, because years prior to and during globalization, the local did and still does generate meanings on its own or across places. The notion of translocal­ ity, of the material and imaginary connections between different localities and people, al­ ready alludes to the production of meanings alternative to or even independent of that Page 7 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: which is imposed by global capital or the state. Translocality therefore supports Dirlik’s distinction between “place-based” and “place-bound,” granting the former more flexibility and agency than the latter.41 Laura Chernaik’s clarification is illuminating: “Local prac­ tices are (p. 327) not bound to place but are potentially possible to articulate across space, globally. The form that this global articulation takes, though, is more often a network than a system; a coalition of specific, different groups rather than a universalization of any one political identity.”42 Chernaik’s “network” metaphor resonates with Foucault’s description of the spatiality of our contemporary life experience on the one hand and Castells’s obser­ vation of the new virtual networking of solidarity and cooperation proliferating across the space of flows. The network in question here, I emphasize, is that of translocality. Translocality presup­ poses polylocality (or multiple localities) and mobility that connects them. In times of modernity and globalization, mobility does not necessarily entail uniformity; rather, mo­ bility produces multiple networks of translocality whose form and function vary according to the contingency of place, space, and time. Yet I want to maintain a crucial difference between translocality and polylocality: whereas polylocality recognizes the existence of multiple localities and contains the idea of translocality that would connect these locali­ ties, it differs from translocality in that it does not guarantee the realization of the translocal potential of any given set of places. In other words, polylocality acknowledges that (1) identification and connection between localities could be denied or prohibited, (2) not all polylocality is brought into translocality in the same way, and (3) inequality or un­ evenness exists in polylocality because of different access to translocality. More than translocality, then, polylocality recognizes that, although most places may con­ tain the local and the global at the same time, not all of them are local or global in the same way. While acknowledging the actual or potential connectedness of places, polylo­ cality preserves separateness as a necessary category for accounting differences and un­ evenness between places, regardless of their status as local or global. The recognition of such differences in polylocality, I suggest, has prompted Dirlik to insist that it is neces­ sary “to reconsider relations between places, between places and transplace or supraplace organizational forms and finally, across national boundaries, to imagine alter­ native possibilities in the reorganization of spaces.”43 Toward this goal, Dirlik recom­ mends that places “project themselves into the spaces that are presently the domains of capital and modernity.”44 It follows that in addition to securing its grounding in the local and seeking translocal networking beyond its immediate borders, place-based politics must seize any opportunity that comes along and must actively intervene in the space of flows, as Castells’s grassrooting example above has verified.

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places:

Intervention: Chinese Independent Documen­ tary Near the end of his highly theoretical treatise on place-based imagination, Dirlik makes an interesting offhand remark: “The question of place is not one to be resolved at the lev­ el of theory,” because the priorities of academic discourse do not coincide with those of everyday life.45 As Dirlik admits, “The most compelling reason for speaking about (p. 328) places is that there are already many living people out there who are engaged in defend­ ing places and their lives against the encroachment of states and capital.”46 In other words, academic research should also investigate actual social practices in the everyday world of places and people, and for that purpose we return to Chinese independent docu­ mentary in this section. It is evident by now that Chinese independent documentary has grappled with many spa­ tial issues theorized in the preceding sections and has actively intervened on behalf of place and place-based identities in interrogating and resisting the space of flows engi­ neered by transnational capital and its increasingly complicit state counterparts. As a self-consciously place-based social intervention, Chinese independent documentary does not see itself as helplessly place-bound; on the contrary, it takes the local to places by filming, transmitting, and exhibiting images of local people and their experiences around the world, thereby creating a series of Thirdspaces in between flows and places. As illus­ trated in Castells’s grassrooting example, the Internet has become an important platform for circulating Chinese independent documentaries. For years, Chinese viewers have been able to download and watch independent works online and participate in online dis­ cussion forum.47 More recently, Ai Weiwei 艾未未, a high-profile Chinese artist whose cre­ ative trajectory cuts across both spaces of flows and places, made his interventionist doc­ umentaries available on YouTube.48 Schematically, at least three noteworthy tactics have been frequently deployed in Chinese independent documentary: (1) its self-positioning as marginality, (2) its advocacy of placebased imagination, and (3) its polylocal vision and translocal networking. First, it was a new space produced by the postsocialist reforms in the late 1980s that made it possible for Chinese artists to start independent filmmaking: the implementation of the market re­ form from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s produced cracks and fissures in the official system of film and television operations, and aspiring young directors like Wu Wenguang seized the rare opportunity to embark on independent works by distancing themselves from both the state sector and the emerging commercial sector.49 The immediate result was their self-acknowledged “marginal” (邊緣) position in postsocialist cultural produc­ tion. As Zhang Yuan, a pioneer in both independent fiction and documentary filmmaking, declared in the mid-1990s, “Being an independent director in China is an absolutely mar­ ginal activity.”50 Similar to what Soja observes of bell hooks’s tactics of nurturing places of resistance, marginality has provided Chinese independent documentary with “a space of radical openness” on- and off-screen.51 Operating on the margins between the state

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: and capital, Chinese independent documentarians have persistently trained their cameras on the places of social marginality and the lives of marginalized people.52 Second, as illustrated by Resisting Eminent Domain and Meishi Street, the two documen­ taries of grassroots resistance against urban development mentioned earlier, Chinese in­ dependent documentary promotes place consciousness and place-based imagination, even though in many cases the place in question is doomed to disappear. Hardly any inde­ pendent documentary work shows much interest in the space of flows where money pre­ vails; on the contrary, an antiestablishment, antisystem ethos has run (p. 329) through Chinese independent documentary in the past two decades. Not only have private spaces received much documentary attention, but public spaces have also been subject to criti­ cal reexamination, as in Zhang Yuan and Duan Jinchuan’s 段錦川 The Square (廣場, 1994).53 Parallel to urban demolition, environmental issues are also explored with intense place consciousness.54 Understandably, the world-famous Three Gorges Dam has re­ ceived close scrutiny. Like a few similar projects, Jia Zhangke’s 賈樟柯 Dong (東, 2006) ob­ serves the ruins of nature and culture specific to the Three Gorges area, and this sober documentary inspired the director’s award-winning fiction companion piece, Still Life (三 峽好人, 2006).55 Third, as illustrated by Jia Zhangke’s Dong, which follows Beijing artist Liu Xiaodong 劉小 東 at work on a series of oil paintings of male and female bodies in Fengjie, China, and Bangkok, Thailand, Chinese independent documentary has aggressively engaged in poly­ locality and translocality, crossing the national borders if necessary. Polylocality is also brought to the foreground in several works of Wu Wenguang, starting with his glimpses of migrant provincial artists struggling on the margins in Bumming in Beijing, through his follow-up with these artists trying to build new homes and identities in Euro-America in At Home in the World (四海為家, 1995), to his multiepisode China Village Self-Governance Film Project (中國村民自治影像傳播計畫, 2006), which features ten amateur villagers shoot­ ing their native communities around China. Initially funded by the European Union and administered by China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, this grassroots documentary project rep­ resents Chinese independent documentarians’ willingness to enter the space of flows and engage translocalism across the national borders. Apart from filmmaking, the preference for translocalism is likewise obvious in the exhibi­ tion of independent documentaries in China. Like a handful of similar unofficial venues in Chinese cities such as Beijing and Nanjing,56 the biannual Kunming-based Yunnan Multi­ culture Visual Festival (“Yunfest” for short) is operated through extended translocal net­ works both inside and outside China.57 Apart from exhibiting Chinese independent docu­ mentaries, the inaugural 2003 Yunfest featured a report on a photovoice project on natur­ al and cultural resources in southwest China, which was sponsored by The Nature Con­ servancy (TNC), a transnational NGO based in Virginia in the United States, as well as an in-person dialogue between Chinese documentarists and their American counterparts from the Appalshop, a Kentucky-based documentary workshop specializing in Appalachi­ an mountain culture.58 Successful in attracting further funding from the Ford Foundation, TNC and Conservation International (CI), the second Yunfest in 2005 included a program Page 10 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: on Japanese documentary and other works from the UK, the United States, Sweden, and Kazakhstan.59 The third Yunfest in 2007, funded in part by the Jan Frijman Fund and the DOEN Foundation (both in the Netherlands), showcased more works from European countries, including a section on contemporary Russia, although under official pressure the festival’s location was changed from Kunming to Dali, an ethnic tourist city a few hours of drive away from the provincial capital.60 With the participation of overseas docu­ mentaries and attendants, the Yunfest may appear (p. 330) “transnational,” but I maintain that it could be more accurately described as “translocal” because, unlike the first phase of Wu Wenguang’s village documentary project referenced above, the Yunfest operates through translocal networking across national borders but has avoided official represen­ tation at the national scale, either inside or outside China. Indeed, the avoidance of offi­ cial representation has returned to characterize Wu Wenguang’s follow-up to his village documentary project, which now operates under private funding and is based in his CCD Workstation (草場地) in the northeast outskirt of Beijing, a vibrant hub connecting inde­ pendent documentarians inside and outside China and featuring annual exhibitions of Chinese and foreign independent documentaries.61 To return to the Yunfest, its emphasis on marginality, place-based imagination, and polylo­ cality—three key elements of Chinese independent documentary elaborated above—is un­ ambiguously articulated in the preface Guo Jing 郭淨 wrote for its inaugural 2003 exhibi­ tion brochure: Precisely because we are far from the center, far from all those powerful visual languages, we are capable of independent thinking. “South of the clouds” [雲之南, Yunnan’s literal meaning in Chinese] is a region of marginality, so our documen­ taries are marginal images, belonging neither to the political nor to the commer­ cial mainstream. Independent thinking and marginal images constitute a visual space of multiplicity, where various perspectives are allowed to coexist, different voices are articulated, and real dialogue is realized.62 A translocal venue showcasing polylocal images and voices, the Yunfest has emerged as a kind of Thirdspace where critical interventions take place on and off screen in the blind spots of official surveillance and commercial domination.

As exemplified by the Yunfest, the development of Chinese independent documentary has participated in what Soja envisions as concrete spatial practices: “The exploration of Thirdspace must be additionally guided by some form of potentially emancipatory praxis, the translation of knowledge into action in a conscious—and consciously spatial—effort to improve the world in some significant way.”63 One significant way Chinese independent documentarians have improved—or at least impacted—the world is through their docu­ mentation of disappearing places and their preservation of private memories, thereby keeping alive glaring differences that continue to define the heterogeneity and polylocali­ ty of China. Guo Jing’s deliberation in this regard is worth quoting: “China is in the midst of momentous change. Documentary making serves as a kind of tool, which we may em­ ploy to influence in some small way China’s future direction. Visual records give voice to

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: the many differences within society, and preserve the memory of what would otherwise be lost.”64 Hu Jie’s 胡傑 two soul-searching, heart-wrenching documentaries are representative of Chinese independent documentary’s function as an emotionally powerful practice of re­ trieving and preserving memories and voices presumably lost or on the brink of being lost. First, Looking for Lin Zhao’s Soul (尋找林昭的靈魂, 2005) investigates a case of politi­ cal persecution in which a female university student, (p. 331) who dared to question Mao Zedong’s authorities, was executed in 1968 at the age of thirty-five and left behind a set of poems and essays written in her own blood while in incarceration. Second, Though I Was Dead (我雖死去, 2007) takes up another case of irrational violence in which Bian Zhongyun 卞仲耘, vice principal of a Beijing girls’ high school, was tortured to death in 1966 and became the first of countless teachers killed by their students during the Cul­ tural Revolution. Both of Hu Jie’s documentaries return us to the blood-stained but hither­ to covered-up pages of history, interrogate the illogical and inhuman institutions of revo­ lutionary politics, and retrieve the lost voices and images from personal interviews and testimonial documents. Another significant way Chinese independent documentarians have impacted the world is through their confrontation with contemporary natural disasters and human rights abus­ es. Shot in the immediate aftermath of the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008, both Du Haibin’s 杜海濱 1428 (2008) and Pan Jianlin’s 潘劍林 Who Killed Our Children (是誰殺死 了我們的孩子, 2008) compel viewers to think beyond the graphic images of human casual­ ties and probe deeply into thorny issues of accountability, redress, and freedom of press. Not surprisingly, under the government’s iron-clad media control, documentary investiga­ tion often turns into what Ai Xiaoming 艾曉明 calls “participatory action,” with which this university professor turned human rights activist has sought to empower the underprivi­ leged in cases of domestic violence and HIV/AIDS.65 With her expertise in documentary intervention, Ai Xiaoming helped shoot and edit Why Are the Flowers So Red (花兒為什麼這 樣紅, 2010), one of Ai Weiwei’s several recent documentaries centered on the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and its still-unfolding consequences.66 If power increases in relation to visibility in the era of globalization, Chinese independent documentary has succeeded in empowering the powerless, admittedly one small measure at a time, by placing their silenced voices, repressed memories, and lost lives—which would otherwise had become placeless or out of place in history—back on the map of me­ dia attention, both inside and outside China, through the Internet, film festivals, and arthouse theaters.67 Directly or indirectly, Chinese independent documentary questions the place of power claimed by the state and capital, and it ultimately seeks to put power back in its rightful place, in the space of places and people. In this sense, among the most im­ portant achievements of Chinese independent documentary is its disruption of the exist­ ing power geometries through translocal, placed-based politics. One may counter that all this sounds utopian or “idealistic” in terms of real politics in China, but just as Alexander Kluge reminds us, “The history of film contains a utopian strain—which is what accounts for the attraction of the cinema—but it is a utopia which, contrary to the Greek meaning Page 12 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: of ou-topos = no place, is in existence everywhere.”68 In a similar conceptual move to re­ claim omnipresence from the space of absence, we may recognize that the power of Chi­ nese independent documentary is felt not in one place but in many: precisely because it is dismissed as belonging to “nowhere” (utopia, no place), it could be anywhere if not “everywhere.”

Conclusion: In Between Performative Alter­ ations (p. 332)

We may now return to Thirdspace, which itself is a kind of utopia, an in-between space that exists nowhere in particular and yet can be anywhere. This means that Thirdspace can be conceived as Chinese independent documentary’s place of power, which links flows and places or other seemingly binary pairs together and then generates something more, something new and unanticipated, oftentimes in a place least expected. In this con­ cluding section, we may briefly draw on certain insights from performance studies, which in my view corroborate the concept of Thirdspace and further explain the operations of Chinese independent documentary. “As a field,” Richard Schechner asserts, “performance studies is sympathetic to the avantgarde, the marginal, the offbeat, the minoritarian, the subversive, the twisted, the queer, people of colour, and the formerly colonized. Projects within performance studies often act on or act against strictly ordered or settled hierarchies of ideas, organizations, or peo­ ple.”69 Much of Schechner’s characterization of performance studies applies to Chinese independent documentary, which intervenes in a globalizing China by positioning itself in the margins of the official and commercial media and concentrating on the lived experi­ ence of marginalized people in multiple places. It is perhaps not coincidental, therefore, that performance has been a recurring motif in Chinese independent documentary from the very beginning, from subjects who are engaged in stage performances, as in Jiang Yue’s 蔣樾 The Other Shore (彼岸, 1995) and Wu Wenguang’s Jiang Hu: Life on the Road (江 湖, 1999), to subjects who performatively deliver their everyday life to the camera, as in Wang Fen’s 王芬 Unhappiness Does Not Stop at One (不快樂的不只一個, 2000) and Wu Wenguang’s Fuck Cinema (操他媽的電影, 2004).70 The immediate goal of performance in documentary filmmaking is to unsettle the stability of the existing system and to create new meanings in the process, and for that matter the improvised, contingent operations of Chinese independent documentary have greatly heightened its performative quality.71 To varying degrees, then, critical thirding-as-Othering also yields performative results. As Lefebvre argues, “The third term is the other, with all that this term implies (alterity, the relation between the present/absent other, alteration-alienation).”72 Performance is pre­ cisely such a process of othering the self, rendering the self as other, making the absent present, creating or discovering new significance through alteration, alienation, alterity. Operating as a tactic of thirding, performance—in Schechner’s words—“isn’t ‘in’ any­ thing, but ‘between’”;73 for it exists between two apparently binary terms, such as the self and the other, the real and the imaginary, the actor and the role. Just as Soja intends Page 13 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Thirdspace “to capture what is actually a constantly shifting and changing milieu of ideas, events, appearances, and meanings,” the result of thirding as performance—or perfor­ mance as thirding—is a series of in-between spaces, which often tend to flaunt something that is “disorderly, unruly, constantly evolving, unfixed, (p. 333) never presentable in per­ manent constructions.”74 Like critical thirding, performance engenders a new space, a sort of utopia where power is forced to meet its alterity and the absent is made present. The logic of thirding—of othering the binary forces and opening up new in-between spaces—is as crucial to performance studies as to Chinese independent documentary, but I would argue that performative thirding, disruptive and transgressive as it may be most of the time, does not have to confine itself always to a binary function of resistance or subversion vis-à-vis the mainstream. In my opinion, alteration in Lefebvre’s sense is per­ haps more appropriate than resistance or subversion: simultaneously denoting “adapta­ tion,” “adjustment,” “modification,” and “variation,” alteration brings to the performer unexpected but satisfactory results without committing one to an absolute closure. In terms of operation, alteration actually resembles Michel de Certeau’s spatial practice of everyday life, whereby as “an art of being in between,” the tactic operates in “the space of the other” and “must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power.”75 Like the tactic, alteration as performative thirding operates under the dominant power’s strategic surveillance by poaching on the latter’s territory, grab­ bing what is denied, discovering what is suppressed, and managing to create new mean­ ings outside the purviews of official history.76 Rather than engaging at an abstract level of systematic or institutional change, alteration thrives in the in-between space of contin­ gency and incompletion—a space of fluid boundaries and intersecting existences, a space of marginality frequently dismissed or repressed by the teleological history and other to­ talizing systems of thought. Returning to Chinese independent documentary, we now see clearly that alteration is ful­ ly operational in its diverse body of works, and “alternative” has becomes its distinctive feature. To quote Chris Berry and Lisa Rofel, “Rather than label them as ‘oppositional,’ ‘underground,’ or ‘resistance’ films, we argue that ‘alternative,’ understood in a specifi­ cally Chinese context, is the most appropriate nomination.”77 Following the logic of alter­ ation and alterity, I conclude that Chinese independent documentary’s major contribution to our knowledge of spatiality and locality resides not so much in seeking a grand vision of the future oppositional or resistant to globalization as in capturing, in concrete images and sounds, a wide spectrum of anxieties, paradoxes, and contradictions in a variety of places that unmistakably mark China as a space of multiple modernities and uneven de­ velopment. Chinese independent documentary captures such inequality and multiplicity performatively: drawing on place-based imagination and translocal networking, conjuring up Thirdspace in between polylocality, and altering—one project at a time—the fortified, glorified, and harmonized image of China as a rising global power.78 Moving between macro and micro scales of spatiality in an exploration of disjunctures and in-between spaces that fall outside the master narratives of modernity and globaliza­ tion, this chapter takes Chinese independent documentary as a significant example of so­ Page 14 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: cial intervention and demonstrates that Thirdspace, polylocality, and performance studies have much to offer to our reassessment of contemporary China in relation to contending theories of modernity and globalization. In modern China studies, narratives of (p. 334) space are routinely subsumed under narratives of history. The dominant discourse of modernity is predicated on a master narrative of China as a modern nation-state, and de­ bates on globalization likewise concern China’s efforts to catch up with, outperform, and overtake the West in the near future. By elaborating Thirdspace in between polylocality, my chapter encourages scholars to continue the interrogation of linear narratives and to redirect attention to excavating, tracking, and reconfiguring multiple temporalities, spa­ tialities, localities, and subjectivities in globalizing China.

Works Cited Augé, Marc. Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1996. Bauman, Zygmunt. Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998. Beilharz, Peter, ed. The Bauman Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Berry, Chris. “Independently Chinese: Duan Jinchuan, Jiang Yue, and Chinese Doc­ umentary.” From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China. Ed. Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 109–22. (p. 340)

Berry, Chris. “When Is a Film Festival Not a Festival? The 6th China Independent Film Festival.” Senses of Cinema, issue 53, December 28, 2009. Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/festival-reports/when-is-a-film-festivalnot-a-festival-the-6th-china-independent-film-festival/. Berry, Chris. “Wu Wenguang: An Introduction.” Cinema Journal 46.1 (2006): 133–136. Berry, Chris. “Zhang Yuan: Thriving in the Face of Adversity.” Cinemaya 32 (1996): 40–44. Berry, Chris, Lu Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel, eds. The New Chinese Documentary Film Move­ ment: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Braester, Yomi. “Tracing the City’s Scars: Demolition and the Limits of the Documentary Impulse in the New Urban Cinema.” The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Zhang Zhen. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 137–80. Cai, Isabella Tianzi. “Ai Weiwei’s Documentaries Available on YouTube.” January 25, 2011. Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://dgeneratefilms.com/academia/ai-weiweisdocumentaries-available-on-youtube/.

Page 15 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Castells, Manuel. “Grassrooting the Space of Flows.” Cities in the Communications Age: The Fracturing of Geographies. Ed. James O. Wheeler, Yuko Aoyama, and Barney Warf. London: Routledge, 2000. Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. 1, The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Chernaik, Laura. “Spatial Displacements: Transnationalism and the New Social Move­ ments.” Gender, Place and Culture 3.3 (1996): 251–276. Cheung, Esther M. K. “Dialogues with Critics on Chinese Independent Cinemas.” Jump Cut 49 (Spring 2007). Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://www.ejumpcut.org/ archive/jc49.2007/chinaInt-Cheung/text.html. “Cong duli dianyingren dao guanzhong: 2009 niandu Zhongguo duli dianying niandu bao­ gao” 從獨立電影人到觀眾: 2009 年度中國獨立電影年度報告 [From independent filmmakers to the audiences: An annual report on 2009 Chinese independent films]. http:// www.docin.com/p-57453273.html. Cui, Shuqin. “Alternative Visions and Representation: Independent Documentary Filmmaking in Contemporary China.” Studies in Documentary Film 4.1 (June 2010): 3–20. Cui, Shuqin. “Working from the Margins: Urban Cinema and Independent Directors in Contemporary China.” Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. Ed. Shel­ don H. Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005. 96–119. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: Uni­ versity of California Press, 1981. Dirlik, Arif. “Placed-Based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics of Place.” Places and Politics in an Age of Globalization. Ed. Roxann Frazniak and Arif Dirlik. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. 15–51. Escobar, Arturo. “Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strate­ gies of Localization.” Political Geography 20 (2001): 155–156. Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16. 1 (1986): 20–27. Fu Ying 傅瑩. “Jiqing suo guanzhu yu shengming suo jianchi de: diliudai daoyan Wang Xiaoshuai fangtan lu” 激情所關注與生命所堅持的: 第六代導演王小帥訪談錄 [Passionate concern and lifetime pursuit: An interview with Sixth Generation director Wang Xi­ aoshuai]. Wenyi yanjiu 文藝研究 [Studies in literature and art] 2007: no. 8: 69–78. (p. 341)

Guo Jing 郭淨. Yunzhinan jilu yingxiang zhan 雲之南記錄影像展 [Yunnan multicultural visual festival]. Kunming: Yunfest, 2007. Page 16 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Guo Jing ed. Yunzhinan jilu yingxiang luntan 雲之南記錄影像論壇 [Yunnan multicultural visu­ al festival]. Kunming: Yunfest, 2005. Guo Jing. Yunzhinan renleixue yingxiang zhan shouce 雲之南人類學影像展手冊 (Yunnan mul­ ticultural visual festival brochure). Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 2003. Hubbard, Phil. “Manuel Castells.” Key Thinkers on Space and Place. Ed. Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin, and Gill Valentine. London: Sage, 2005. 74–75. Johnson, Matthew David. “‘A Scene beyond Our Line of Sight’: Wu Wenguang and New Documentary Cinema’s Politics of Independence.” From Underground to Independent: Al­ ternative Film Culture in Contemporary China. Ed. Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 47–76. Kluge, Alexander. “On Film and the Public Sphere.” New German Critique 24–25 (1981– 1982): 306–320. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Har­ vard University Press, 1993. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Black­ well, 1991. Lu, Sheldon H. “Tear Down the City: Reconstructing Urban Space in Contemporary Chi­ nese Popular Cinema and Avant-Garde Art.” The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Zhang Zhen. Durham: Duke Universi­ ty Press, 2007. 137–80. Lü Xinyu 呂新雨. Jilu Zhongguo: Dangdai Zhongguo xin jilu yundong 記錄中國: 當代中國新記 錄運動 [Documenting China: The new documentary movement in contemporary China]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2003. Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: Sage, 2005. Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place.” Marxism Today, June 1991, 24–29. Massey, Doreen. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. McGrath, Jason. “The Cinema of Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam in Feature Film and Video.” Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art. Ed. Wu Hung. Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2008. 33–46. Nakajima, Seio. “Film Clubs in Beijing: The Cultural Consumption of Chinese Indepen­ dent Films.” From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contempo­ rary China. Ed. Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 161–207. Nornes, Abé Mark. “Bulldozers, Bibles, and Very Sharp Knives: The Chinese Independent Documentary Scene.” Film Quarterly 63.1 (Fall 2009): 50–55. Page 17 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Peng Yurong and Judith Pernin. “My Work Constitutes a Form of Participatory Action: An Interview with Ai Xiaoming.” China Perspectives 2010: no. 1, 71–77. Pernin, Judith. “Film Space/Mapping Reality in Chinese Independent Documentary Films.” China Perspectives 2010: no. 1, 22–34. Robinson, Luke. “Contingency and Event in China’s New Documentary Film.” Working paper. University of Nottingham, 2007. Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http:// eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/546. (p. 342)

Robinson, Luke. “From ‘Public’ to ‘Private’: Chinese Documentary and the Logic of Xian­ chang.” The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Ed. Chris Berry, Lu Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 177–94. Robertson, Roland. “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity.” Global Modernities. Ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson. London: Sage, 1995. 25–44. Schechner, Richard, ed. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. Scott, A. O. “In China, You Can’t Fight City Hall.” New York Times, January 13, 2011. Re­ trieved October 15, 2012, from http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/movies/ 14petition.html. Soja, Edward. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Visser, Robin. “Spaces of Disappearance: Aesthetic Responses to Contemporary Beijing City Planning.” Journal of Contemporary China 13.39 (2004): 277–310. Wang, Yiman. “The Amateur’s Lightning Rod: DV Documentary in Postsocialist China.” Film Quarterly 58.4 (2005): 16–26. Zhang, Yingjin. Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China. Honolulu: Univer­ sity of Hawai‘i Press, 2010. Zhang, Yingjin. “Of Institutional Supervision and Individual Subjectivity: The History and Current State of Chinese Documentary.” Chinese Cinema at 100: Art, Politics and Com­ merce. Ed. Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 127–41. Zhang, Yingjin. “Rebel without a Cause? China’s New Urban Generation and Postsocialist Filmmaking.” The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Zhang Zhen. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 70–75. Zhang, Yingjin. “Styles, Subjects, and Special Points of Views: A Study of Contemporary Chinese Independent Documentary.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 2.2 (2004): 119–35. Page 18 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Zhang, Yingjin. “Thinking outside the Box: Mediation of Imaging and Information in Con­ temporary Chinese Independent Documentary.” Screen 48.2 (2007): 179–92. Zhang Zhen. “Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’ (Zhuanxing).” The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Zhang Zhen. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 1–45.

Notes: (1.) While Chinese and China in this chapter refer mostly to Mainland China in accor­ dance with the accepted usage of terms like Chinese independent documentary, it is worth noting that independent documentary has also been vibrant in Taiwan in the recent decades as well. For an overview of the contexts, origins, and development of Chinese in­ dependent documentary, see Chris Berry, Lu Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel, eds., The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010); Lü Xinyu 呂新雨, Jilu Zhongguo: Dangdai Zhongguo xin jilu yundong 記錄中國: 當代新記錄運動 [Documenting China: The new documentary movement in contemporary China] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2003); and Yingjin Zhang, “Of Institutional Supervision and Individual Subjectivity: The History and Current State of Chinese Documentary,” in Chinese Cinema at 100: Art, Politics and Commerce, ed. Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 127–141. A variety of up-to-date infor­ mation regarding Chinese independent films can be accessed at the Beijing-based Fan Hall Films website (Xianxiang wang): http://fanhall.com; for English, see the New York– based dGenerate Films website: http://dgeneratefilms.com/. (2.) The consensus view regarding what counts as “independent” (duli 獨立) in Chinese filmmaking is that the work in question must be financially free from the industrial sys­ tem (e.g., genres, stars), unconcerned with mass taste and market forces, and charged with critical thinking, authentic experience, and personal expression. See Esther M. K. Cheung, “Dialogues with Critics on Chinese Independent Cinemas,” Jump Cut 49 (Spring 2007), retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/chi­ naInt-Cheung/text.html. For different configurations of such independent positioning, see Chris Berry, “Independently Chinese: Duan Jinchuan, Jiang Yue, and Chinese Documen­ tary,” in From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China, ed. Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 109–122. (3.) For further discussions, see Shuqin Cui, “Alternative Visions and Representation: In­ dependent Documentary Film-making in Contemporary China,” Studies in Documen-tary Film 4.1 (June 2010): 3–20; Yiman Wang, “The Amateur’s Lightning Rod: DV Documentary in Postsocialist China,” Film Quarterly 58.4 (2005): 16–26; and Yingjin Zhang, “Styles, Subjects, and Special Points of Views: A Study of Contemporary Chinese Independent Documentary,” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 2.2 (2004): 119–135.

Page 19 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: (4.) For an analysis of Wu’s early works, see Matthew David Johnson, “‘A Scene beyond Our Line of Sight’: Wu Wenguang and New Documentary Cinema’s Politics of Indepen­ dence,” in Pickowicz and Zhang, From Underground to Independent, 47–76. (5.) Technically, it would be more accurate to use the phrase documentary film and video for most works discussed in this chapter, but for simplicity’s sake documentary is used in­ stead, with the understanding that the line between film and video is tenuous in the DV era. (6.) Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics, 16.1 (1986): 22. (7.) This section elaborates some ideas first broached in Yingjin Zhang, Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2010), 5–6. (8.) Quoted in Phil Hubbard, “Manuel Castells,” in Key Thinkers on Space and Place, ed. Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin, and Gill Valentine (London: Sage, 2005), 74–75, original em­ phasis. (9.) Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. 1, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 200. (10.) See Sheldon H. Lu, “Tear Down the City: Reconstructing Urban Space in Contempo­ rary Chinese Popular Cinema and Avant-Garde Art,” and Yomi Braester, “Tracing the City’s Scars: Demolition and the Limits of the Documentary Impulse in the New Urban Cinema,” both in The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, ed. Zhang Zhen (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 137–180; see also Robin Visser, “Spaces of Disappearance: Aesthetic Responses to Contemporary Beijing City Planning,” Journal of Contemporary China 13.39 (2004): 277–310. (11.) Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 5. (12.) Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1996), 77–78. (13.) Marc Augé, Non-places, 29, 78–79. (14.) See Roland Robertson, “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogene­ ity,” in Global Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (London: Sage, 1995), 25–44. (15.) Quoted in Peter Beilharz, ed., The Bauman Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 307. (16.) See Hubbard, Kitchin, and Valentine, Key Thinkers, 37. (17.) Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 2. (18.) Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender, 6. Page 20 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: (19.) Arturo Escobar, “Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies of Localization,” Political Geography 20 (2001): 155–156. (20.) Heed this dire warning: “there may be no places anymore” because, very often, places “come to attention at the moment of their extinction,” in Arif Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics of Place,” in Places and Politics in an Age of Glob­ alization, ed. Roxann Frazniak and Arif Dirlik (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 35. (21.) See Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). (22.) Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), p. 84. (23.) Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” Marxism Today, June 1991, 29. (24.) Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination,” 5, 41–42. (25.) The first work documents a Beijing resident who fought urban development alone, in vain, near the campus of Peking University, while the second captures ordinary citizens’ doomed opposition to the government’s demolition of their houses to clear the way for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. (26.) For exhibition venues of Chinese independent film, see Seio Nakajima, “Film Clubs in Beijing: The Cultural Consumption of Chinese Independent Films,” in Pickowicz and Zhang, From Underground to Independent, 161–207; and Zhang Zhen, “Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’ (Zhuanxing),” in Zhang Zhen, The Urban Generation, 1–45. (27.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 2. (28.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 61, original emphasis. (29.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 7. (30.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 71–74. See also Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). (31.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 60. (32.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 68. (33.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 5, original emphasis. (34.) Manuel Castells, “Grassrooting the Space of Flows,” in Cities in the Communications Age: The Fracturing of Geographies, ed. James O. Wheeler, Yuko Aoyama, and Barney Warf (London: Routledge, 2000), 21, 26.

Page 21 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: (35.) Manuel Castells, “Grassrooting,” 27. (36.) Manuel Castells, “Grassrooting,” 27. (37.) Manuel Castells, “Grassrooting,” 27. (38.) Manuel Castells, “Grassrooting,” 20. (39.) Arif Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination,” 41, original emphasis. (40.) Arif Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination,” 17; see also Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 117. (41.) Arif Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination,” 32. (42.) Laura Chernaik, “Spatial Displacements: Transnationalism and the New Social Movements,” Gender, Place and Culture 3.3 (1996): 257. (43.) Arif Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination,” 35. (44.) Arif Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination,” 39. (45.) Arif Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination,” 41. (46.) Arif Dirlik, “Placed-Based Imagination,” 41. (47.) The Fan Hall Films reports that 74.35 percent of viewers received information relat­ ed to independent films through the Internet (versus 35.71 percent through conversa­ tions with friends); 48.68 percent downloaded films from the Internet, 32.8 percent watched online, and 42.86 percent on DVD (these viewing habits overlap); and 56 percent preferred documentary films (versus 31 percent fiction films). See “Cong duli dianyingren dao guanzhong: 2009 niandu Zhongguo duli dianying niandu baogao” 從獨立電影人到觀眾: 2009 年度中國獨立電影年度報告 [From independent filmmakers to the audiences: An annual report on 2009 Chinese independent films], a 107-page PDF document was downloaded at http://fanhall.com/group/thread/17138.html. This website is now (November 10, 2012) no longer available, though the document has been archived at a number of other sites, including http://www.docin.com/p-57453273.html (48.) See Isabella Tianzi Cai, “Ai Weiwei’s Documentaries Available on YouTube,” re­ trieved October 15, 2012, from http://dgeneratefilms.com/academia/ai-weiweis-documen­ taries-available-on-youtube/. (49.) For a mapping of spaces of film production in postsocialist China, see Zhang Yingjin, “Rebel without a Cause? China’s New Urban Generation and Postsocialist Filmmaking,” in Zhang Zhen, The Urban Generation, 70–75. On marginality, see also Cui Shuqin, “Work­ ing from the Margins: Urban Cinema and Independent Directors in Contemporary Chi­ na,” in Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, ed. Lu Sheldon H. and Yeh Emilie Yueh-yu (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005), 96–119. Page 22 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: (50.) See Chris Berry, “Zhang Yuan: Thriving in the Face of Adversity,” Cinemaya 32 (1996): 42. Similarly, Wang Xiaoshuai, Zhang’s fellow independent filmmaker, thus com­ mented on his struggling young characters on screen: “Their resistance, unorthodoxy, avant-gardism, even marginality are always ignored in mainstream cinema”; see Fu Ying 傅瑩, “Jiqing suo guanzhu yu shengming suo jianchi de: diliudai daoyan Wang Xiaoshuai fangtan lu” 激情所關注與生命所堅持的: 第六代導演王小帥訪談錄 [Passionate concern and life­ time pursuit: An interview with Sixth Generation director Wang Xiaoshuai], Wenyi yanjiu 文藝研究 [Studies in literature and art] 2007: no. 8, 72. (51.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 12. (52.) Marginal people featured in Chinese independent documentary works include home­ less children, drug addicts, mental patients, prostitutes, homosexuals, as well as the new­ ly unemployed, migrant workers, and rural petitioners in the city. Examples include Li Hong’s 李紅 Out of Phoenix Bridge (回到鳳凰橋, 1997), Zhao Liang’s 趙亮 Paper Airplane (紙 飛機, 1997), Du Haibin’s 杜海濱 Along the Railroad (鐵路沿線, 2000), Ying Weiwei’s 英未未 The Box (盒子, 2001), Wang Bing’s 王兵 Tiexi District: West of the Tracks (鐵西區, 2002), Shi Runjiu’s 施潤玖 Anding Hospital (安定醫院, 2003), Du Haibin’s Beautiful Men (人面桃花, 2005), Huang Weikai’s 黃偉凱 Floating (漂, 2005), Xu Tong’s 徐童 Wheat Harvest (麥收, 2008), and Zhao Liang’s Petition (上訪, 2009). For an analysis of space and marginality, see Judith Pernin, “Film Space/Mapping Reality in Chinese Independent documentary Films,” China Perspectives 2010: no. 1, 22–34. (53.) For a discussion, see Luke Robinson, “From ‘Public’ to ‘Private’: Chinese Documen­ tary and the Logic of Xianchang,” in New Chinese Documentary Movement, edited by Berry, Lu, and Rofel, 177–194. (54.) See, for example, Hao Zhiqiang’s 郝志強 Big Tree County (大樹鄉, 1992) and Hu Jie’s 胡傑 Silent Nu River (沈默的怒江, 2006). (55.) The Three Gorges Dam also serves as the site for other independent documentaries such as Zhang Ming’s 章明 Springtime in Wushan (巫山之春, 2003), Li Yifan’s 李一凡 and Yan Yu’s 鄢雨 Before the Flood (淹沒, 2005), and Feng Yan’s 馮艷 Bing Ai (秉愛, 2006). For an analysis, see Jason McGrath, “The Cinema of Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam in Feature Film and Video,” in Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chi­ nese Art, ed. Wu Hung (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2008), 33– 46. (56.) Here are two other established independent venues: first, the China Documentary Film Festival (中國記錄片交流周) in Beijing, which, along with the Beijing Independent Film Festival (BIFF, 北京獨立電影展), is curated by Zhu Rikun 朱日坤 of Fan Hall Films, now fund­ ed by the private Li Xianting Film Fund and held at Songzhuang art village; and second, the China Independent Film Festival (CIFF, 中國獨立影像年度展) in Nanjing, curated by Cao Kai 曹凱 and others, which includes fiction films and award competitions. For the Beijing operations, see http://fanhall.com; and Abé Mark Nornes, “Bulldozers, Bibles, and Very Sharp Knives: The Chinese Independent Documentary Scene,” Film Quarterly 63.1 (Fall Page 23 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: 2009): 50–55. For the Nanjing operation, see http://www.chinaiff.org/html/en/; and Chris Berry, “When Is a Film Festival Not a Festival? The 6th China Independent Film Festival,” Senses of Cinema, issue 53, December 28, 2009, retrieved October 15, 2012, from http:// www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/festival-reports/when-is-a-film-festival-not-a-festivalthe-6th-china-independent-film-festival/. My thanks to Zhu Rikun and Cao Kao for sharing information with me, as early as 2004 and 2007, respectively. (57.) The Chinese title since the second Yunfest has been “Yunzhinan jilu yingxiang zhan” 雲之南記錄影像展; see http://www.yunfest.org/e-last.htm. (58.) See Guo Jing 郭淨, ed., Yunzhinan renleixue yingxiang zhan shouce 雲之南人類學影像展 手冊 [Yunnan multicultural visual festival brochure] (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 2003), 114–120. (59.) See Guo Jing, ed., Yunzhinan jilu yingxiang luntan 雲之南記錄影像論壇 [Yunnan multi­ cultural visual festival] (Kunming: Yunfest, 2005), 100–138. (60.) See Guo Jing, Yunzhinan jilu yingxiang zhan 雲之南記錄影像展 [Yunnan multicultural visual festival] (Kunming: Yunfest, 2007), 179–241. My thanks to Yang Kun 楊坤, an active coordinator of the Yunfest’s first three exhibitions, for providing the catalogs and other information in 2007. For the 2009 Yunfest, see Abé Mark Nornes, “Bulldozers, Bibles, and Very Sharp Knives.” (61.) For the CCD Workstation and its annual operations like the May Festival and the Crossing Festival, see http://www.ccdworkstation.com/english/homepage-e.htm. My thanks to Wu Wenguang for inviting me to lecture at the CCD Workstation’s 2010 May Festival. (62.) Guo Jing, Yunnan Multicultural Visual Festival Brochure, 3–4; my translation, added emphases. (63.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 22, original emphasis. (64.) Guo Jing, Yunnan Multicultural Visual Festival Brochure, 8. (65.) For example, see these recent titles from Ai Xiaoming: Garden in Heaven (天堂花園, dir. with Hu Jie, 2005), The Chronicle of the Central Plain (中原紀事, 2006), and Care and Love (關愛, 2007). See also Peng Yurong and Judith Pernin, “My Work Constitutes a Form of Participatory Action: An Interview with Ai Xiaoming,” China Perspectives 2010: no. 1, 71–77. (66.) An example of grassroots “citizens’ investigations” (公民調查), this documentary re­ volves around the case of Tan Zuoren 譚作人, a civil rights activist who was sentenced to a five-year prison term simply because he dared to take the government to court for con­ structing unsafe school buildings, which collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and killed thousands of students. Ai’s documentary is available on YouTube in eight segments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq1k87AjJ44&feature=player_embedded. Page 24 of 26

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: (67.) Since the early 1990s, Chinese independent documentaries has been a mainstay in international film festivals in Asia, Europe, and North America, and some titles have also made it to the art-house circuit in the West. Thanks to their exploration of sensitive sub­ jects in China, the Western media (e.g., New York Times) often cover such screenings. For instance, see A. O. Scott, “In China, You Can’t Fight City Hall,” http://movies.nytimes.com/ 2011/01/14/movies/14petition.html. (68.) Alexander Kluge, “On Film and the Public Sphere,” New German Critique 24–25 (1981–82): 310, original emphasis. Lü Xinyu describes early Chinese independent docu­ mentary artists as “idealistic”; see her “Rethinking China’s New Documentary Movement: Engagement with the Social,” in The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement, edited by Berry, Lu, and Rofel, p. 17. (69.) Richard Schechner, ed., Performance Studies: An introduction (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 3. (70.) For an analysis of performative documentary from China, see Yingjin Zhang, “Think­ ing outside the Box: Mediation of Imaging and Information in Contemporary Chinese In­ dependent Documentary,” Screen 48.2 (2007): 179–192. (71.) It is worth remembering that Chinese independent documentary, from Bumming in Beijing onward, is “largely unplanned” and “unscripted,” and its feel of improvisation is further strengthened by the persistent use of handheld camera; see Chris Berry, “Wu Wenguang: An Introduction,” Cinema Journal 46.1 (2006): 134. For further elaboration, see Luke Robinson, “Contingency and Event in China’s New Documentary Film,” working paper, University of Nottingham, 2007, retrieved October 15, 2012, from http:// eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/546. (72.) Quoted in Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 53. (73.) Richard Schechner, Performance Studies, 24. (74.) Edward Soja, Thirdspace, 2, 70. (75.) Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 30, 37. (76.) One example of such alteration through poaching is Wang Wo’s 王我 Making Fuss (折 騰, 2010), which rearranges the video clips and photographs gathered from the official and unofficial media reports of China’s eventful year of 2008 in a deliberate manner of fragmentation and juxtaposition so as to foreground and ridicule the incredible falsity and bizarreness of media operations in China. The irony of the film’s title is that the govern­ ment has always been “making fuss” (zheteng 折騰), down to tiny news details (e.g., re­ dubbing the phone call report of the Sichuan earthquake damage from “very serious” [非 常嚴重] to “relatively serious” [比較嚴重]), while repeatedly claiming that it is “not interest­ ed in it” (bu zheteng 不折騰).

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Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: (77.) Berry and Rofel, “Introduction,” in New Chinese Documentary Film Movement, edit­ ed by Berry, Lu, and Rofel, 12. (78.) Referring to the founding moment of Chinese independent documentary, Chris Berry thus evaluates Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing: “Its vision of China off the record and unplanned is totally original and exciting” (Berry, “Wu Wenguang,” 134). Lü Xinyu states that “the power of the new Documentary Movement is to reveal new, and often painful, forms of reality” (“Rethinking China’s New Documentary Movement,” 15).

Yingjin Zhang

Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at University of California, San Diego. His English books include The City in Modern Chinese Litera­ ture and Film (1996), Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (1998), China in a Polycentric World (1998), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai (1999), Screening China (2002), Chinese National Cinema (2004), From Underground to Independent (2006), Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (2010), Chinese Film Stars (2010), and A Companion to Chinese Cinema (Blackwell, 2012).

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama

From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transforma­ tion of Chinese Dynasty TV Drama   Ying Zhu The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0019

Abstract and Keywords This chapter explores the political, economic, and cultural context that has given rise to Chinese serial TV dramas set in distant dynasties, and links recent transformations in their thematic content with popular and intellectual debates concerning the path, steps, and speed of China’s ongoing economic and political reform. The chapter elaborates how the shifts in the themes and foci of these dramas mirror shifts in Chinese elite and popu­ lar attitudes and discourses of the past two decades. The focus is on the emergence of what may be called “officialdom dramas” since the early 2000s, which treats systematic corruption as inevitable. Keywords: television dramas, Chinese dynasty dramas, corruption, The Great Ming Dynasty 1566, Hai Rui

Over the past decade Chinese serial TV dramas set in distant dynasties have spurred con­ siderable popular and critical interest, particularly with respect to how they function as a form of political and cultural discourse. Here I explore the political, economic, and cultur­ al context that has given rise to these dynasty dramas and link recent transformations in their thematic content with popular and intellectual debates concerning the path, steps, and speed of China’s ongoing economic and political reform. I observe that the most pop­ ular and critically acclaimed dynasty dramas have shifted from anticorruption themes of the late 1990s, to political reform themes early in the next decade, to great empire themes in the middle of the decade, and finally to tacitly accepting the system as it stands by the end of the decade. I elaborate how the shifts in the themes and focus of these dra­ mas mirror shifts in elite and popular attitudes and discourses. I have discussed the first three shifts extensively in previous work,1 so I focus here instead on the fourth mutation, the emergence of what I call “officialdom dynasty dramas.” I should point out at the out­ set that the parallels between TV dramas and Chinese society that I seek to capture re­ flect only major trends; countercurrents and undercurrents also warrant further study.

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama

The Evolution of Chinese Dynasty TV Dramas Television drama in China has developed in tandem with the nation’s broad social and po­ litical shifts. In keeping with the Communist Party’s development goals at the time, (p. 344) the first Chinese television drama, A Mouthful of Vegetable Pancake (一口菜餅子), which debuted in May 1958, taught a lesson about frugality and class struggle.2 Roughly two hundred television dramas were aired on a handful of TV stations around the country between 1958 and 1966. The first serial drama (連續劇), Eighteen Years in the Enemy Camp (敵營十八年), appeared on Chinese television in February 1981, a time when over­ seas serials were finding their way into viewing schedules in China. Adaptations of popu­ lar classical novels such as The Water Margin (水滸傳), The Dream of the Red Chamber (紅 樓夢), and Journey to the West (西遊記) appeared on Chinese television from 1982 to 1987. Contemporary-themed dramas prevailed from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, at which point costume dramas set in the dynastic era began to emerge. This trend climaxed in the late 1990s and early in the next decade, with saturation scheduling of palace dramas set in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). In 1999, dynasty dramas accounted for 10.7 percent of all productions, by 2000 this had risen to 21.6 percent, and by following year it had risen again to 24.8 percent. In the broadcast schedules, dynasty dramas made up the largest proportion of content between 7:00 to 9:30 p.m. The only development comparable to these dynasty dramas was a surge of anticorruption dramas. In 1995, CCTV broadcast Heavens Above (蒼天在上), the first television drama about high-level official corruption in China. The following decade saw anticorruption drama sharing the stage with dynasty drama as two of the dominant genres on Chinese prime-time television, with the two gen­ res converging in 1997, in the first anticorruption dynasty drama: the blockbuster Yongzheng Dynasty (雍正王朝), directed by Hu Mei 胡玫. Playing to popular disaffection with rampant corruption and moral decay during the re­ form era, dynasty dramas from the mid-1990s to the middle of the next decade offered up exemplary emperors and patriots who struggled against internal corruption, social injus­ tice, and external threats.3 Leading the charge was the forty-four-episode prime-time blockbuster Yongzheng Dynasty, a show featuring one of the most controversial Qing dy­ nasty emperors, Yongzheng (r. 1722–1736), as an anticorruption hero. While the Qing’s first three emperors, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, provided strong leadership and a time of peace and prosperity for China, historians have traditionally critiqued Yongzheng for his brutal ruling style. Contrary to the benevolent image of Kangxi, Yongzheng was known as a cold-faced, cruel, and unrefined man with no interest in literature and art and no patience with Confucian scholars turned bureaucrats. In an effort to eradicate what he saw as a corrupt bureaucratic system, Yongzheng burned books and executed scholars, and consequently his key transitional role linking the peace and prosperity of Kangxi’s dy­ nasty and the tremendous expansion and growth of Qianlong’s empire is historically downplayed in the official Chinese annals. The historical Yongzheng’s antagonism toward Confucian scholars and his distrust of the Confucian bureaucracy reminds one of the iconoclastic Mao, whose disdain for and suspicion of scholars and intellectuals alike, along with his absolute demand for loyalty, resulted in the catastrophic Cultural Revolu­ Page 2 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama tion. The TV drama Yongzheng radically revises this record in Yongzheng’s favor.4 Deftly drawn to epitomize integrity and inner strength in a leader, Yongzheng (p. 345) in his con­ temporary incarnation has been rehabilitated, wiped clean of his previously notorious reputation. Yongzheng emerged precisely as Mao was enjoying renewed popularity from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, amid a wave of totalitarian nostalgia in China. More generally, the production of dynasty dramas is informed by the major intellectual debates of the time, chiefly Neoauthoritarianism in the late 1980s, and its mutation, New Conservatism, in the early to mid-1990s. The Neoauthoritarian thinking in vogue in the late 1980s re­ garded May Fourth intellectuals as a radical plague on China’s history. Favoring political stability in the service of economic growth over all else, Neoauthoritarians advocated a strong state and reliance on social elites to further China’s rapid market expansion. Neoauthoritarianism grew out of discussions in Shanghai in the late 1980s, with Wang Huning 王滬寧, Xiao Gongqin 簫功秦, and He Xin 何新 emerging as important figures.5 At a time when discussion of political reform by means of decentralization was fashionable, for instance, Wang Huning wrote a series of essays that advocated just the opposite—a stable and efficient central government that would make reasonable decisions based on consul­ tation with elite intellectuals.6 Wang further cautioned that political reform is part of a complex process of change and that a given political structure must fit the given histori­ cal, social, and cultural conditions. For China this meant a strong central government at the service of gradual economic and political reform. Another leading Neoauthoritarian, Xiao Gongqin, is a historically minded thinker who focuses on the late Qing to early Re­ publican period, concentrating on the problems of modernization and political transfor­ mation. He shares Wang’s vision of China’s political reform as a gradual process depen­ dent upon locating a balance between Western democratic development and Chinese cul­ tural tradition. He Xin, notorious for his affiliation with the CCP hardliners behind the Tiananmen crackdown and its aftermath, is yet another well-known Neoauthoritarian. A scholar turned government adviser and conservative cultural commentator, he was out­ spoken with his doubts about the 1989 student movement. He was not alone; the idea that social chaos or disorder is the greatest threat to economic prosperity and gradual po­ litical reform is shared by many Chinese, and many leading cultural figures were cautious about the direction in which the student movement was headed immediately before the crackdown. Even the 2011 Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo 劉曉波, then one of He Xin’s bêtes noires, was openly critical of the antigovernment slogans and increasingly hate-filled rhetoric on Tiananmen Square. Neoauthoritarianism was transformed into Neoconservatism when, at a 1990 conference titled “China’s Traditional Culture and Socialist Modernization,” Xiao Gongqin added in­ cremental political change to the Neoauthoritarian agenda. He still opposed the whole­ sale political reform pushed by liberal intellectuals sympathetic to the student movement. Xiao articulated his fear of radical change and revolutionary efforts by referring back to Chinese history, arguing that beginning with the constitutional reform of 1898, leading reformists Kang Youwei 康有為 and Liang Qichao 梁啟超 chose a radical path that ultimate­ Page 3 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama ly failed, while only the gradual reforms pursued by ranking local officials succeeded. Re­ jecting direct democracy, Xiao supported the building of indirect democracy by elite suf­ frage. Xiao maintains that democracy can only succeed in China (p. 346) if it is preceded by broad economic reforms that only an authoritarian state is capable of shepherding through in the face of popular resistance and cultural inertia.7 In arguing for gradual po­ litical and economic reforms that could eventually support limited democracy, Xiao’s view is quite different from that of He Xin, who sought to strengthen the central state. Neocon­ servatism emerged as an “intermediate” ideology for Chinese weary of the form of Marx­ ism that had been promoted during the Maoist era, but who were also wary of the call for a liberal democracy. Throughout the debate among China’s various ideological camps, history has been sus­ ceptible to revision, serving as an important battleground for defining the current state of affairs and articulating the future. Controversial figures and episodes of the past have thus been open for rehabilitation, resulting in a surge of revisionist historiography, includ­ ing a wave of revisionist Qing dynasty historiography. Long denounced for its non-Han origins, the Qing dynasty was presented in a more favorable light by the revisionist histo­ rians on account of its consolidation of China’s borders and its reign over phenomenal in­ creases in wealth and population. Qing emperors, meanwhile, became the darlings of art­ works and literary treatments. Eulogizing the Great Qing was in vogue by the late 1990s, particularly among Chinese sympathetic to a call for a stronger central government. Dy­ nasty dramas took their cues from various ideological strands while remaining close to popular views endorsed by the state. The Chinese entertainment industry’s subordinate relationship to the state imposes a selective filter on what TV dramas can remember of the past. As the left-leaning camps and the state converged on support for a strong cen­ tral government, almost every Qing dynasty emperor who worked for a strong state was made the hero of a serial drama, including the previously notorious Yongzheng emperor, who received new credit for his egalitarian economic policies and his efforts at curbing rampant corruption. The show came out at a time when the transition to a more thoroughgoing market econo­ my, primarily by converting state-operated enterprises (SOEs) into private companies, was generating widespread corruption, causing Premier Zhu Rongji 朱鎔基 to launch a se­ rious anticorruption campaign. Preceding the anticorruption dynasty dramas were anti­ corruption novels and their TV adaptations set during the reform era, all echoing the state’s official anticorruption campaign. As Jeffrey Kinkley puts it, the novels “depicted corruption as a web with protection from the top or directed from the top as part of a hi­ erarchical conspiracy,” such that solving the problem invariably required that a few courageous officials resist the temptation in order to take down the web of corruption.8 Thus, the stories frequently featured heroic party officials leading the fight against cor­ ruption. The authors took it for granted that corruption should and could be eradicated, and always by a few good officials, rather than by mass demonstrations or other popular action.

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama The rehabilitated Yongzheng with his resolve to fight corruption appealed to the Chinese public. In particular, he reminded the Chinese of Premier Zhu Rongji, who, by attempting to curb rampant government corruption, earned a reputation as a contemporary graftbuster. Zhu himself was reportedly an ardent follower of the show.9Yongzheng Dynasty also drew attention from overseas Chinese, helping to make the (p. 347) revisionist Qing drama one of the most exportable Chinese television genres throughout the Chinese dias­ pora.10 Both anticorruption novels and TV dramas set in contemporary China blossomed in the early years of the twenty-first century, with crime and a little gratuitous violence added in to spice up the plot. Contemporary anticorruption dramas eventually saturated primetime television. The proliferation of crime-driven anticorruption dramas soon attracted scrutiny from critics and official gatekeepers, precipitating an official clampdown begin­ ning in the summer of 2002 during the run-up to the Sixteenth Party Congress of the CCP, and just as the General Anticorruption Bureau was declaring victory in the fight against corruption. With the party celebrating its triumph over corruption, sales of anticorruption novels began to slip, with readers showing signs of fatigue over cheap knockoffs and mindless spin-offs. As both popular and critical outcry grew, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) announced that beginning in 2004 television pro­ grams with crime themes would no longer be allowed in prime time, which effectively put a stop to contemporary anticorruption dramas. At the tail end of the crime drama craze, another Qing drama, Zhang Li’s 張黎 Marching toward the Republic (走向共和), debuted in 2003, igniting debates about China’s political reform that had been on hold since the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Aired on CCTV, the serial depicts China at the turn of the twentieth century, with the Manchu Empire crum­ bling amid domestic uprisings and attacks by foreign powers. Republic was produced by Tongdao Film and Television Production Company, which had produced Yongzheng six years before. The story spans five decades, covering the major reforms of the late Qing and the dynasty’s eventual collapse as a result of the 1911 Revolution led by Dr. Sun Yatsen 孫中山. The show challenged the official verdicts on key historical figures of the late Qing dynasty and early Republican eras, offering radical reinterpretations of the histori­ cal struggle over China’s political direction, and provoked new discussion of political re­ form in contemporary China. Republic broke with Neoconservatism by depicting the limited reforms initiated by the Qing court as self-serving efforts to preserve an outmoded dynastic regime, which im­ plied that a grassroots political movement is the only path toward democracy. Dr. Sun even makes a speech in one episode in which he explicitly criticizes the corrupt nature of the Qing reform effort. Sun’s message that reform led by an authoritarian regime in­ evitably brings corruption becomes a running theme in the second half of the series. The show was aptly interpreted by many as an Aesopian political allegory. As Stanley Rosen has astutely observed, “The Chinese public, particularly the attentive political class, is conditioned to interpret politically widely-circulated efforts that seek to reevaluate heroes and villains long accepted by Chinese historians and political decision makers.”11 Indeed, Page 5 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama the show pushed China’s popular and intellectual discourses away from their exclusive emphasis on corruption-ridden economic reform and toward including political modern­ ization in the debate. However, the dynasty drama’s political detour was short-lived, as the show was promptly taken off the air. Even hinting about a political transformation proved too much for the party leaders to bear. As Rosen reminds us, in internal critiques of Marching toward the Republic, parallels (p. 348) were drawn with River Elegy (河殤, 1989), a show denounced by the CCP hardliners as a harbinger of the 1989 student “re­ volt.” Qing drama would disappear within a few years of the appearance of Marching toward the Republic, making way for the arrival of series depicting earlier dynasties. In particu­ lar, Hu Mei’s The Great Emperor Hanwu (漢武大帝, 2005) opted for the most opulent and prosperous period of the Han dynasty under the reign of Emperor Wu (140–87 BC), a time when China flourished domestically and extended its political and cultural influence over­ seas. The sudden change of dynasty in Chinese prime-time TV drama followed the shifting winds of discourse both within and outside China as the world began to anticipate a “Chi­ nese century.” In choosing to make a dynasty drama about a different era, Hu Mei, who also directed Yongzheng, said she wanted to inspire “people’s pride in Chinese history and China as a nation.”12 During the Han dynasty, China prospered domestically, as agriculture and commerce flourished, and the empire extended its political and cultural influence over what is now Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Central Asia. Regarded as one of China’s greatest emper­ ors, Emperor Wu is best remembered for the vast territorial expansion that occurred un­ der his reign and the strong and centralized state he organized. From Yongzheng to Em­ peror Hanwu, dynasty drama changed its tone from sorrow and tragedy to exuberance and celebration, registering the general mood of confidence and pride prevailing in China in the early twenty-first century amid the country’s growing wealth and political power. Unlike Yongzheng, a tragic figure alienated from his contemporaries, Emperor Wu is cele­ brated and embraced by all. Indeed, the new era calls for new leadership exemplified by the modern technocrat Hu Jintao 胡錦濤 and his pledge to build soft power predicated on the Confucian principle of harmony. Interestingly, it was during the Han dynasty that China officially became a Con­ fucian state. While establishing an autocratic and centralized state, Emperor Wu adopted Confucianism as the state philosophy and started a school to teach future administrators the Confucian classics. Emperor Wu himself was seen as a sage leader who ruled with wisdom and confidence, whose Confucian reforms had an enduring effect on imperial Chi­ na and an enormous influence on neighboring civilizations as well. The ancient wisdom of Confucius is now obviously seeing a new day in contemporary China as policymakers and intellectuals desperately look for solutions for social ills. With the decay of official Marx­ ist-Leninist-Maoist thought, the potential for Confucian ideals to provide a substitute code of social discipline has become increasingly attractive to the CCP. Kang Xiaoguang 康曉光, social policy adviser to Premier Zhu Rongji, is among the advocates of a Confucian re­

Page 6 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama vival. Kang argues that it is vital for China to rediscover its cultural traditions; especially the Confucian values he believes can rebuild the country’s moral and social standards.13 The call for a reappraisal of Confucianism is nothing new. A group of young philosophy teachers in Beijing set up an independent Academy of Chinese Culture in early 1985, echoing a quest among mainland intellectuals, overseas scholars, and official state inter­ ests to develop cultural resources to assist in the modernization effort. The economic suc­ cess of the “Little Dragons” of East Asia had given rise to much overseas discussion of (p. 349) the role of “Asian values” in the region’s rapid growth, contributing to China’s in­ terest in exploring its Confucian tradition. The International Confucian Association was founded in Beijing in October 1994, and ranking members of the Central Standing Com­ mittee and President Jiang Zemin 江澤民 all participated in the inauguration of the associ­ ation.14 Director Hu Mei’s backtrack to a more glorious past captures the exuberant mood of the Chinese people as the world observes China’s rise in the twenty-first century. Emperor Wu articulated a prosperous era with a sage leader who institutionalized Confu­ cian principles in the civil service and in governing. Emperor Wu was compared to Hu Jin­ tao for his tough stand against corruption, his social and economic policies sympathetic to the common masses, and his cosmopolitan outlook on foreign relations. In the meantime, mainstream political thought moved from concerns with how to build a prosperous China in the 1980s–1990s to how to regulate economic growth for a more egalitarian (“harmonious”) outcome in the next decade. In this decade, public sentiment turned skeptical about the growth-oriented market economy, as tens of millions of disen­ franchised Chinese became disaffected watching a small segment of the population gain most of the economic benefits. Debates raged over whether to stay the course of econom­ ic reform, and Hu Jintao’s administration sought to strike a middle ground by reaffirming the path of economic reform while at the same time vowing to modify the pattern of growth.15 In television, politically charged dynasty dramas have been informed by and ac­ tively engaged in the major intellectual debates of the time. Responding to these debates, television practitioners have selectively recovered relevant events and figures of bygone eras. Along the way dynasty dramas have moved from Yongzheng’s preoccupation with anticorruption and economic reform in the late 1990s, to Republic’s exploration of politi­ cal reform and a viable form of democracy early in the next decade, and finally to Emper­ or Hanwu’s spotlight on sage leadership and the return to Chinese cultural tradition middecade. The celebratory tone would soon be overtaken by pessimism, as the declaration of victory over corruption in 2002 proved premature and economic growth continued to deepen the social divide instead of bringing unity and harmony. In 2007, another influential dynasty drama, Zhang Li’s The Great Ming Dynasty 1566 (大明王朝 1566) would put the dynasty pageantry on pause and shift gears to expose the massive and systematic dysfunction of the Ming court and the extreme hardship ordinary people endured during the Jiajing era (1521–1567), a period that precipitated the downturn of the Ming dynasty. History again is seen functioning as political allegory for messy contemporary affairs.

Page 7 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama

From Anticorruption to Officialdom Drama Written by Liu Heping 劉和平, the author of Yongzheng Dynasty, The Great Ming Dynasty 1566 depicts routine abuses of power during one of the most corrupt periods in (p. 350) Chinese history, the Ming dynasty’s Jiajing era. It offers an intriguing look at the bureau­ cratic functioning of the Jiajing court, in which the emperor, immersed in an obsession with Daoism, relinquishes the day-to-day business of governing and relays his wishes through eunuchs and a few cabinet members. Corruption at all levels of the Ming court during Jiajing’s reign was rampant, similar to China in recent years, when official corrup­ tion and frequent episodes of social unrest became part of the routine, and a sense of res­ ignation prevailed as corruption came to be seen as inevitable. Instead of fighting corrup­ tion, many civil servants at all ranks in contemporary China are now joining in. The shame associated with corruption is replaced by eagerness to partake, to be part of the corrupted inner circle. As one kindergarten schoolgirl in China proudly told a Chinese re­ porter in 2009 when asked what she would like to be when she grew up, “I would like to be a corrupt official.”16 While popular and critical discourses in China mostly frame the thematic content of 1566 in anticorruption terms, I propose that the show actually gives a new treatment to official corruption, normalizing corruption as inevitable, just part and parcel of a bureaucratic system. Instead of amplifying the fight against corruption, the show delights in its display of day-to-day politicking among various political factions competing to gain favor and amass power and fortune. 1566’s narrative framework resembles that of popular Qing dynasty officialdom fiction such as Wu Jingzi’s 吳敬梓 The Scholars (儒林外史, 1750) and Li Boyuan’s 李伯元, Official­ dom Unmasked (官場現形記, 1903), which focused on the daily grind of politics and color­ fully captured the seedy dealings of scholar-bureaucrats who struggled to advance their political and economic interests by exchanging favors among themselves. Wu Jingzi’s satiric novel The Scholars targeted phony scholars together with the much-abused civil service examination and official recruitment system. Opportunistic office-seekers were not so much condemned as ridiculed. Written in the early years of the twentieth century as the Qing dynasty crumbled, Officialdom Unmasked portrayed an official class devoid of moral rectitude who routinely transgressed. From senior ministers to junior clerks, few officials were immune from taking bribes, stealing, philandering, dereliction of duty, or other shenanigans, all of which were part of the official culture at the time. The messy state of affairs in the late Qing was captured as what it was, not necessarily probed for possible remedies. 1566 offers an updated, televised take on this genre. In a sense, it is Chinese television’s first drama that takes politics as it is, showcasing the nuts and bolts of political “crafts­ manship,” with only token criticism. 1566 did not come out of nowhere. Instead, I argue, its arrival needs to be placed within the context of a revival of the officialdom fiction as a

Page 8 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama literary genre after roughly 2005, which in turn replaced the anticorruption novels of the earlier period. Officialdom novels surged around this time. In a new twist, several former or current offi­ cials tried their hand at writing novels that injected their own experiences into the world of officialdom and the circles of power, a number of which have gone on to become best sellers.17 Because the new breed of officialdom novels were written by incumbent or re­ tired government officials who weave their experiences and perceptions (p. 351) into their fiction, they carry a certain cachet, often serving as manuals for current civil servants. According to reports, civil servants constitute the largest readership of these officialdom novels, as they seek clues that could help advance their own careers. More a sociological phenomenon than a literary one, as Chinese critic Chen Fang 陳方 points out, the popular­ ity of these novels attests to people’s desire to master the unspoken rules of Party poli­ tics.18 Interestingly, these novels have recently captivated a young generation struggling to find its footing in a society still ruled by the Party establishment. In today’s China, with the CCP’s monopoly seemingly immune to internal and external pressure, college students join the Party out of a pragmatic concern for their future. Party membership leads to job security, if not social respectability. As reporter Hyejin Kim notes, “Recently even some foreign companies have started to consider the party membership status of applicants,” something that would have been inconceivable a decade ago.19 In this fashion, she sug­ gests, the Party has transformed itself from an Orwellian Big Brother into a Big Brother fraternity.20 New college students reach out to the Party not to join the power elite, which remains, to many, a distant dream, but because Party membership adds job security at a time when the unemployment rate among college graduates continues to rise. With more than a quarter of 2010’s 6.3 million Chinese college graduates unemployed or underem­ ployed in China’s increasingly expensive cities, Party membership is a valuable commodi­ ty.21 Research shows that college students are the fastest growing group of new Party members, with 8 percent of all college students becoming CCP members.22 China’s current education system can be traced back to the imperial exam system in which knowledge functioned as a means of social mobility. Designed to select the best of­ ficials for the state’s bureaucracy, the meritocratic imperial exam system had a huge in­ fluence on both society and culture in imperial China and was directly responsible for the creation of a class of scholar-bureaucrats irrespective of family pedigree. Education was valued in large part as an entrée into the structure and culture of officialdom. Officialdom novels deal precisely with the culture and structure of Chinese officialdom, from the trivialities of government affairs to the heart-wrenching struggles of the protag­ onists in their compulsive abuses of power. They also derive narrative advantage from the complexity of human relationships involved, as well as the struggles of characters with a conscience. Wang Xiaofang 王曉方, the secretary to the Shenyang deputy mayor who was executed for corruption, wrote a novel based on his experience.23 In another novel, Wang portrays the Shenyang liaison office in Beijing as a breeding ground of corruption, while Page 9 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama in yet another, he reflects on the unspoken rules governing Chinese society, lamenting the trapped condition of China’s civil servants.24 The corrupt officials in these officialdom novels are portrayed not as villains, as in the anticorruption novels, but rather as victims of the system. So endemic is corruption in China now that the moral indignation and the will to rectify it reflected in the anticorruption novels/dramas of an earlier decade have vanished, re­ placed by a sense of resignation, defeat, and passive acceptance. As Jeffrey Kinkley (p. 352) notes, prosperity has also played a role in both reducing the perceived evil of cor­ ruption and heightening the acceptance of its ubiquity.25 While the anticorruption genre tackled the issue of China’s political culture, attempting to uncover a deep-rooted political psychology, the more recent officialdom novels take as their starting point the inevitability of corruption and are lavish in their detailed display of a labyrinth of corruption. While taking a shot at an omnipresent bureaucratic power as an abstract force, the novels do not probe the causes of corruption. Is the reform context a key structural and motivational cause of surging corruption, or is China’s current politi­ cal arrangement the root of contemporary corruption? In their exclusive attention to the behaviors of individuals involved, neither do they entertain the impact of corruption at the systemic level. Does it exert negative effects on the transitional economy? Or does it bring about better economic and cultural policies? Obviously, no remedies are prescribed. The TV drama 1566 debuted against this larger social background, coming out shortly be­ fore the commencement of the Seventeenth National Congress of the CCP in October 2007, when the Shanghai Party secretary-general Chen Liangyu 陳良宇 was sacked over corruption charges and Hu Jintao delivered a stern speech at the Party Central Commis­ sion for Discipline Inspection calling for a renewed fight against corruption. The drama listed the CCP’s disciplinary branch, the CCP Central Commission for Discipline Inspec­ tion, as a coproducer. The forty-six-episode drama was approved for broadcast in only three and a half days, an unprecedented speed for approving sensitive TV dramas of sig­ nificant historical subjects.

1566 as an Officialdom TV Drama The historical subject of 1566, the Ming dynasty’s Jiajing emperor, was a devoted follower of Taoism who chose to reside outside the Forbidden City so he could pursue Taoist prac­ tices. Power in the Jiajing court vacillated between civil servants and eunuchs26 and even­ tually became concentrated in the hands of Yan Song 嚴嵩, the grand secretary and head of the Seal Office who, together with his son, ran the Ming court into an abyss of corrup­ tion and abuse. As the corruption grew, a third faction led by Crown Prince Yu fought to take back control of his father’s court. The film captures the intricate power dance between Yan Song and Prince Yu and show­ cases the convoluted process of political negotiation and power wrangling. The story de­ tails the daily grind of official maneuvering, covering a vast terrain of court politics, in­ Page 10 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama cluding espionage and internal security, military and foreign affairs, tax and tribute col­ lection, the operation of imperial monopolies, and the layout of the palace complex. In particular, the drama focuses on the final six years of Jiajing’s reign, when political infighting reached its apex and the Ming began its rapid descent. The political struggle eventually brought down the Yan family, paving the way for the transition of power to Prince Yu, who would later become the Longqing emperor. As the drama unfolds, Jiajing’s devotion to Taoism takes a financial toll on the em­ pire and elicits a political outcry across the country. A fierce debate breaks out over pos­ sible remedies for the financial distress. With the consent of Jiajing, the court reluctantly approves a proposal advanced by the grand secretary forcing farmers to convert rice crops to silk crops for a quick return on investment to support the beleaguered govern­ ment. The switch from rice to silk farming in Zhejiang province poses a great threat to the local farmers’ livelihood. The proposed crop conversion policy revives the internal power struggle among the three factions of the Jiajing court: the Yan faction, the Prince Yu faction, and the eunuchs led by the head of the Directorate of Ceremony, Lu Fang. Prince Yu foresees the potentially disastrous result of the crop conversion policy, plotting to seize the opportunity to topple the Yan father-son team. The birth of Jiajing’s grandson (p. 353)

tips power in Prince Yu’s favor, swaying the head eunuch toward allying himself with the prince. The first five episodes established the main conflict between the two main powers over how to handle the farmers’ resistance to the new policy. A pivotal figure in the drama is Hai Rui 海瑞, known historically for his courage and moral compass. Hai Rui is appointed to the position of county magistrate by Prince Yu to hold his rivals’ political force in check and is assigned to oversee a county that is heavily impli­ cated in the forced rice-to-silk conversion scheme. True to his reputation, Hai Rui listens to the grievances of the people and fights on their behalf, yet his role as the people’s con­ science is insignificant in light of the reality of his role as a pawn in the larger scheme of palace politics. With its introduction of Hai Rui as a pawn in the larger power struggle, 1566 foreshadows its deviation from the standard anticorruption formula.27 Hai’s appointment as county magistrate in episode 6 leads to a series of events that final­ ly consolidate Prince Yu’s power in episode 34. Hai Rui is then promoted to the position of censor, serving directly under the Jiajing court in Beijing—where, appalled by the emperor’s negligence of state affairs and indulgence of rampant corruption, he sends the emperor a memorial in 1565, chastising him and calling for his impeachment. Episode 41 captures the historical moment as Jiajing opens this unexpected memorial at an official ceremony celebrating his much-anticipated relocation to a new palace. As the dramatic tension builds, Hai Rui is taken to prison to await trial. Jiajing takes a personal interest in Hai Rui’s case. As a group of cabinet members gather to give speech­ es denouncing Hai Rui, the emperor pays him a secret visit in prison. The two confront each other, and Hai’s unyielding stance stuns the emperor. The confrontation, however, shows a hard-earned mutual respect developing between the two men. Hai Rui is sen­ tenced to death, but a group of like-minded local and central officials come to his aid, Page 11 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama managing to convince Jiajing that Hai Rui has the Ming court’s best interests in mind. Jia­ jing privately concurs, ordering a stop to the execution. Hai Rui is thus released after Jia­ jing passes away in early 1567, in accordance with the emperor’s will. Unlike the triumphant heroes of the earlier anticorruption dramas, Hai Rui in 1566 is de­ picted as a tragic hero, sacrificing everything for a rotten dynasty. To accept the post of county magistrate in eastern China, Hai Rui had to leave behind his elderly mother, wife, and daughter, who later languished one after another in his absence. Hai Rui’s modest lifestyle and devotion to his imperial duty at the expense of his family’s (p. 354) well-being receive ambivalent treatment in the drama, which defies an old socialist cliché that equates masochistic personal asceticism with the virtue of serving people. Incidentally, Hai Rui saw the light of the day briefly during another period in recent Chi­ nese history for a Beijing opera, Hai Rui Dismissed from the Office (海瑞罷官), adapted by Wu Han 吳晗, a historian of the Ming dynasty, from an article valorizing Hai Rui for his heroic courage in defying the emperor. The opera, which was initially endorsed by Mao, had its first performance in 1961. However, as the Cultural Revolution got under way, Yao Wenyuan 姚文元, one of the “Gang of Four,” published an article criticizing the play for be­ ing an allegory of Mao’s dismissal of Peng Dehuai 彭德懷, China’s defense minister, who had expressed reservations about Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy. Hai Rui was thus seen as representing Peng, with the emperor being Mao. Wu Han subsequently became one of the early victims of the Cultural Revolution, and Hai Rui one of its casualties. Hai Rui’s grave was destroyed, as he was deemed the enemy of the people. Hai Rui was reha­ bilitated after the Cultural Revolution, together with Wu Han, who discovered him. Hai Rui would be rediscovered in the new century, though this time a revisionist take casts Hai Rui as a tragic hero. The writer and director of this contemporary work apply the same creative license to Hai Rui as they do to the historically inattentive Jiajing, whom they convert into a wise ruler who is well informed about and directs what goes on in his court. The Jiajing in 1566 is a shrewd politician who plays various political factions against each other while advancing his own interests. As Yan Song vies for power with Lu Fang, Jiajing overrules them both, making it clear who is the real boss while retaining the loyalties of both. To justify his nonpresence as a ruler, Jiajing invokes the Taoist philoso­ phy of wuwei (無為), or “governing by doing less.” He also compares himself to Liu Bang 劉邦 (ca. 256–195 BCE), Emperor Gaozu of the Han dynasty, who similarly advocated a laissez-faire approach to governance. Hai Rui’s arrival, however, turns things upside down, breaking many of the unspoken rules that have sustained Jiajing’s grip on power over the years. As a good drama often does, the show suggests a kindred spirit shared by the protagonist and the antagonist. Enduring the same loneliness, the elusive, opaque, and ghostly Jiajing is seen as a victim of his own absolute power, while the transparent and manly Hai Rui is the victim of his absolute moral compass. Seemingly incompatible, the two nevertheless understand each other better than anyone else. Jiajing is depicted as the only person who is able to appre­ ciate the true value in Hai Rui’s memorial denouncing him, while Jiajing knows Hai Rui’s Page 12 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama memorial so well that he can recite the key portions word for word. In Jiajing’s elabora­ tion, Hai Rui was calling for shared responsibility in governing that allows for co-gover­ norship between the emperor and his ministers. He secretly protects Hai Rui, sparing his life so that his son may have Hai Rui at his service. In a sign of his deep appreciation for Jiajing’s understanding, Hai Rui is grief-stricken upon hearing the news of the emperor’s death. Here the pathos of the drama comes not from Hai Rui’s attempts to reform the sys­ tem, but rather from the defeat of both men trapped in a bureaucratic process. The focus, in other words, is on the general realm of politics rather than the narrow confines of cor­ ruption.

(p. 355)

Conclusion

From the 1990s to the end of the next decade, mainstream political thinking moved from an attention to how to build a powerful Chinese nation-state in the late 1990s, to how to put the state in check, to reluctant conformity, as the CCP’s power appears to be both en­ during and all-encompassing. This political progression has also informed the evolution of Chinese prime-time dynasty dramas. From anticorruption to officialdom, dynasty dramas have captured China’s evolving cultural milieu, responding acutely and swiftly to its shift­ ing currents. TV practitioners actively engage in the ideological and political debates of the time by selectively (re)covering the events and figures of bygone eras. Dynasty dra­ mas have moved from Yongzheng’s preoccupation with anticorruption and economic re­ form to Republic’s exploration of political reform and a viable form of democracy, to Em­ peror Wu’s celebration of a Chinese cultural renaissance, and finally to 1566’s adoption of officialdom as the very fabric of contemporary political culture. This evolution registers the shifting mood of society from widespread outrage over corruption to lust for wealth and status and thus conformity, particularly among China’s youth, as political and admin­ istrative posts continue to be the major route to power. As Herbert Marcuse points out, “Under the conditions of a rising standard of living, nonconformity within the system itself appears to be socially useless, and the more so when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole.”28 From Yongzheng to 1566, one theme that remains consistent across all of these works is the narrative of “inner-party reform,” which insists on transforming the governing structure not through destabilizing the party-state but through reforming the ruling structure and behavior from within. What is at stake is not ideology but rather a pragmatic concern for the longevity of the party-state, which calls for a conversion of state officials into civil servants. Indeed, depoliticizaton of the party bureaucracy has been the trend during the post-Mao era. As Xiaobo Lu puts it, “There have been some ef­ forts to establish a civil service system, converting state officials—but not party cadres— into civil servants who are expected to uphold high professional standards but whole po­ litical allegiance to the party is not to be changed.”29 In practice, civil servants are hardly distinguishable from Party cadres as Party membership is crucial for aspiring civil ser­ vants. As Chinese civil servants follow the path by becoming embedded in the ruling structure, the entrenched corruption and abuse are not so much confronted as acknowl­ Page 13 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama edged and even condoned. Yet Weber reminds us that the lack of a clear delineation be­ tween public and private has been a generic feature of patrimonial bureaucracy, as offi­ cials regard public offices as their private domain and seek to cash in on their regulatory power whenever opportunities present themselves.30 Privileges in the form of legitimized corruption that weds political connections with economic gains have become the very symbol of success. The feisty spirit of Yongzheng in the late 1990s gave way to the com­ placency of 1566 as Chinese society came to the realization that corruption in the form of nepotism, favoritism, and officialdom’s disregard for law (p. 356) might not be eliminated, even with a regime change. The accumulation of power and economic advantages as both goal and by-product has become part and parcel of the Chinese officialdom culture, and what Xiaobo Lu terms a “honeycomb polity” combining cellularization and feudalization has no end in sight.31

Works Cited Jin, Bo. “Facts and Flaws Make Up Epic TV Tales.” People’s Daily Online, February 2, 2005. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200502/02/ eng20050202_172639.html. Ju, Li-chyun. “The Officialdom Novel Shines Light in Dark Corners.” Want China Times, February 24, 2011. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from http:// www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx? id=20110224000006&cid=1504. (p. 358)

Keating, Joshua. “I Want to Be a Corrupt Official When I Grow Up!” Danwei.org, Septem­ ber 10, 2009. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/ 2009/09/10/i_want_to_be_a_corrupt_official_when_i_grow_up. Kinkley, Jeffrey. Corruption and Realism in Late Socialist China: The Return of the Politi­ cal Novel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Kim, Hyejin. “1 in 70 Million: Being a Student Party Member in China.” Foreign Policy, October 1, 2010. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.nyuzaishanghai.org/ features/1-in-70-million-being-a-student-party-member-in-china/. Li, Dan. “Novels about Officialdom are Hot Sellers in 2010.” Shenzhen Daily, January 11,. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.szdaily.com/content/2011-01/11/ content_5250282.htm. Lu, Xiaobo. Cadres and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Commu­ nist Party. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Macartney, Jane. “China’s Secret Row Bursts into the Open.” Times, June 6, 2006. Re­ trieved October 16, 2012, from www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,3-2212112,00.html. Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991. Page 14 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama Moody, Peter. Conservative Thought in Contemporary China, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007. Ownby, David. “Kang Xiaoguang: Social Science, Civil Society, and Confucian Religion.” China Perspectives, April 2009. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from http:// chinaperspectives.revues.org/4928. Roberts, Dexter. “A Dearth of Work for China’s College Grads: More Than a Quarter of the Class of 2010 Has Yet to Find Work.” Bloomberg Businessweek, September 1, 2010. Re­ trieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/ 10_37/b4194008546907.htm. Seno, Alexandra A. “High-Ranking Hit.” Asiaweek Online. Retrieved February 26, 1999, from www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/99/0226/feat8.html. Shirk, Susan. “The Legacy of Tiananmen for Chinese Politics.” Huffington Post, June 3, 2009. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-shirk/ the-legacy-of-tiananmen-f_b_210785.html. Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty. New York: SUNY Press, 1996. Wang, Chaohua, ed. One China, Many Paths. New York: Verso, 2003. Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. Ed. Talcott Parsons. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947. Xiao Gongqin 蕭功秦. “Dalu xinbaoshouzhuyi de jueqi—zhuangfang dalu ‘diersichao’ lilun­ jia, Xiao Gongqin” 大陸新保守主義的崛起—專訪大陸“第二思潮”理論家, 蕭功秦 [The emergence of new conservatism on the mainland: Interview with theorist of the mainland “second intel­ lectual wave,” Xiao Gongqin]. Shibao zhoukan 時報周刊 [Shibao supplement], January 26, 1992, 66–67 and February 2, 1992, 98–100. Zhu, Ying. Television in Post-reform China: Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership, and the Global Television Market. London: Routledge, 2008. Zhu, Ying. “Yongzheng Dynasty and Chinese Primetime Television Drama.” Cinema Jour­ nal 44.4 (2005): 3–17. Zhu, Ying, Michael Keane, and Ruoyun Bai, eds. TV Drama in China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008.

Notes: (1.) Ying Zhu, Television in Post-reform China: Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership, and the Global Television Market (London: Routledge, 2008).

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama (2.) For detailed discussion of the development of Chinese TV drama, see Ying Zhu, Michael Keane, and Ruoyun, Bai, eds., TV Drama in China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Uni­ versity Press, 2008). (3.) In contrast to the Qing dramas of the 1980s, which focused on the cultural and eco­ nomic decline of the late Qing, the Qing dramas of the late 1990s shifted gears, extolling the sage leaders of the early Qing who oversaw a period of exceptional prosperity and na­ tional unity as they supposedly put corruption in check while pursuing a more egalitarian economic policy. (4.) For a detailed discussion of Yongzheng’s historical legacy see Ying Zhu, Television in Post-reform China. (5.) For a thorough discussion of the history and legacy of Neoauthoritarianism see Peter Moody’s Conservative Thought in Contemporary China (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007). (6.) Incidentally, Leo Strauss and his concept of gentlemen were enthusiastically en­ dorsed by the Chinese intellectuals during the post-Tiananmen era. For the Chinese intel­ lectuals, the distinction between sages and statesmen and the idea of an elite class edu­ cated to serve the public has its roots in the Chinese political tradition. The need for a new gentry class to direct China’s affairs, to strengthen the state by making it wiser and more just, is seen as self-evident. (7.) Xiao Gongqin 蕭功秦, “Dalu xinbaoshouzhuyi de jueqi—zhuangfang dalu ‘diersichao’ lilunjia, Xiao Gongqin” 大陸新保守主義的崛起——專訪大陸 “ 第二思潮 ” 理論家, 蕭功秦 [The emergence of new conservatism on the mainland: Interview with theorist of the mainland “second intellectual wave,” Xiao Gongqin], Shibao zhoukan 時報周刊 [Shibao supplement], January 26, 1992, 66–67, and February 2, 1992, 98–100. (8.) Jeffrey Kinkley, Corruption and Realism in Late Socialist China: The Return of the Po­ litical Novel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). (9.) See Alexandra A. Seno, “High-Ranking Hit,” Asiaweek Online, retrieved February 26, 1999, from www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/99/0226/feat8.html. (10.) See Ying Zhu, “Yongzheng Dynasty and Chinese Primetime Television Drama,” Cine­ ma Journal 44.4 (2005): 3–17. (11.) See Stanley Rosen’s “Foreword” to Ying Zhu’s Television in Post-reform China, xv. (12.) Bo Jin, “Facts and Flaws Make Up Epic TV Tales,” People’s Daily Online, February 2, 2005, retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200502/02/ eng20050202_172639.html. (13.) David Ownby, “Kang Xiaoguang: Social Science, Civil Society, and Confucian Reli­ gion,” China Perspectives, April 2009, retrieved October 16, 2012, from http:// chinaperspectives.revues.org/4928. Page 16 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama (14.) Chaohua Wang, ed., One China, Many Paths (New York: Verso, 2003). (15.) Jane Macartney, “China’s Secret Row Bursts into the Open,” Times, June 6, 2006, re­ trieved October 16, 2012, from www.timesonline.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/ article2610933.ece. (16.) Joshua Keating, “I Want to Be a Corrupt Official When I Grow Up!” Danwei.org, September 10, 2009, retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/ posts/2009/09/10/i_want_to_be_a_corrupt_official_when_i_grow_up. (17.) Four titles among the top twenty popular novels at www.sina.com.cn, China’s largest news portal, are works on officialdom. (18.) Dan Li, “Novels about Officialdom Are Hot Sellers in 2010,” Shenzhen Daily, January 11, 2011, retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.szdaily.com/content/2011-01/11/ content_5250282.htm. (19.) Hyejin Kim, “1 in 70 Million: Being a Student Party Member in China,” Foreign Poli­ cy, October 1, 2010, retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.nyuzaishanghai.org/fea­ tures/1-in-70-million-being-a-student-party-member-in-china/. (20.) Hyejin Kim, “1 in 70 Million.” (21.) Dexter Roberts, “A Dearth of Work for China’s College Grads: More Than a Quarter of the Class of 2010 Has Yet To Find Work,” BloombergBusinessweek, September 1, 2010, retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_37/ b9780199765607.htm. (22.) Susan Shirk, “The Legacy of Tiananmen for Chinese Politics,” Huffington Post, June 3, 2009, retrieved October 16, 2012, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-shirk/thelegacy-of-tiananmen-f_b_210785.html. (23.) Li-chyun Ju, “The Officialdom Novel Shines Light in Dark Corners,” Want China Times, February 24, 2011, retrieved October 16, 2012, from http:// www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=97801997656076&cid=1504. (24.) See Wang Xiaofeng, The Mayor’s Secretary, The Chief of the Beijing Liaison Office (2007), and The Civil Servant’s Notebook (2009). (25.) Jeffrey Kinkley, Corruption and Realism. (26.) Shih-shan Henry Tsai, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty (New York: SUNY Press, 1996). (27.) Hai Rui was reappointed under the Longqing emperor but was forced to resign in 1570 after complaints were made about his overzealous handling of land-tenure issues. He spent fifteen years in retirement in Hainan before being brought back to the empire’s

Page 17 of 18

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From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dy­ nasty TV Drama “auxiliary capital,” Nanjing, in 1585 to serve under the Wanli emperor. Hai Rui died in of­ fice two years later, having made little impact. (28.) Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Indus­ trial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991). (29.) Xiaobo Lu, Cadres and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Communist Party (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 231. (30.) Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. M. Hender­ son and Talcott Parsons, ed. Talcott Parsons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947). (31.) Xiaobo Lu, Cadres and Corruption, 254.

Ying Zhu

Ying Zhu is Professor and Chair of Department of Media Culture at the City Universi­ ty of New York, College of Staten Island. The recipient of fellowships from the Na­ tional Endowment for the Humanities and from the American Council of Learned So­ cieties, she is the author or editor of eight books, including Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television.

Page 18 of 18

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New Media: Large Screens in China

New Media: Large Screens in China   Audrey Yue The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0020

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the large screen to consider new approaches to Chinese cinema. The first section examines the large screen as a cultural industry and social institution by introducing its technological and conceptual development using transnational examples in architecture, digital art, urban regeneration, and new media policy, and showing how it has produced new modes of spectatorships, structures of media convergence, and prac­ tices of social inclusion. The second section critically demonstrates these characteristics by examining of Zhang Yimou’s large-screen projects in his Impression Series (2004– 2010) and further considers the impact of neoliberal cultural production in shaping cul­ tural participation. Governed by China’s global reordering that has reconditioned every­ day life, this chapter suggests Chinese large screens are innovative contact zones that question how creative media globalization makes possible new conditions of the national. Keywords: large screens, new media, Zhang Yimou, Impressions Series, creative media globalization

Since the media spectacle of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, large screens have increasing­ ly become symbolic technologies in the staging of any Chinese event, big or small. At the opening of the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, for instance, the “Four-Dimensional Per­ formance” showcased kung fu and visual science using folding screen panels that seam­ lessly turned into sails, flowers, and lanterns. Around the same time, the Shanghai World Expo celebrated with outdoor performances on the Huangpu River staged around the world’s largest screen, measuring 281 meters long and 33 meters high. A year earlier, during the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Re­ public, more than 1,000 square meters of screen display were installed at each side of the Monument to the People’s Heroes at Tiananmen Square to spread the broadcasting of the national day parade. Like many buildings and plazas permanently illuminated by such technologies, the two screens outside the Forbidden City have also become landscape fix­ tures, adding new glamour to the historical icons. In Beijing’s Central Business District (CBD) by the World Trade Centre precinct, a giant overhead screen, 250 meters long, 30 meters wide and suspended six storys high, shields the famous retail street, The Place, with promotional videos and a live aquarium cam. Designed by renowned architect Jere­ Page 1 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China my Railton, who also conceived the similar canopy screen on Fremont Street in Las Ve­ gas, the Sky Screen, as it is known, has transfixed tourists and transformed the space. Beneath the epic scenes that can change from sky to ocean and day to night, shoppers jostle for space alongside tai chi practitioners and choreographed pop dancers. In the same Chaoyang District, at the roundabout on the 3rd Ring Road, drivers are also enter­ tained by moving images beamed from a large screen that adorns the front of the land­ mark Jingxin Building. At 758 square meters, this screen is more than twice the size of the Shanghai soccer field that was also lit up as a screen floor during the Olympic Games. From architecture to landscape, media event to everyday life, large screens have modern­ ized China’s urban morphology. Arguably, large screens can also be hailed as part of the new screenscape that marks China’s prominence on the world stage. Second only (p. 360) to online media sales, outdoor media in China have grown exponentially through the wide distribution of different screen platforms on buses and subways, in elevators and through the rise of large billboard signs. Outdoor advertising revenue rose by 23 percent to US$8 billion in 2010,1 making up one-quarter of the global profits from outdoor media.2 Over the past few years, China has become a leading international supplier of large-screen technology, which has been promoted as the next growth frontier.3 This chapter examines the large screen to consider new approaches to Chinese cinema. As Chris Berry and Laikwan Pang recently note in their call for new directions in Chinese film studies, “Globalization has put the topography of cinema as a cultural industry and social institution…on the research agenda again.”4 The first section examines the large screen as a cultural industry and social institution by introducing its technological and conceptual development using transnational examples in architecture, digital art, urban regeneration, and new media policy, and showing how it has produced new modes of spectatorships, structures of media convergence, and practices of social inclusion. The second section critically demonstrates these characteristics by examining Zhang Yimou’s 張藝謀 large-screen projects in his Impression Series (2004–2010) and further considers the impact of neoliberal cultural production in shaping cultural participation. Governed by China’s global reordering that has reconditioned everyday life, Chinese large screens are innovative contact zones that question how creative media globalization makes possi­ ble new conditions of the national.

Theorizing the Large Screen As new infrastructures in contemporary cityscapes, the large screen is a nascent technol­ ogy with emerging discourses and conceptual frameworks. In marketing and advertising industries, these screens are known as digital video billboards, out-of-home media, or out­ door display screens and either take the form of stand-alone sign spectaculars, are part of the pylon of roadside displays, or are integrated into a multiscreen networked system. In photonic industries, they are commonly described as architectural lighting, as opposed to the sustainable ecology of general and automotive lighting.

Page 2 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China Large screens are defined as “yard- and perch-scale displays…deployed in public spaces in urban contexts.”5 As urban screens, they are public amenities and cinematic screens. They engage multiple stakeholders, from designers, digital art producers, planners, archi­ tects, to the cultural histories of places and people and are usually embedded in the larg­ er project of urban regeneration and economic development. They are realized when stakeholder interests converge, especially among those who control the exhibition space, technology, content streams, and revenue streams.6 Ranging in size, resolution, use, and location, large screens are central to innovation in public screens, making use of technological development in liquid crystal display (LCD), plasma display (PDP), digital light processing (DLP), light emitting diode (LED), (p. 361) and Spectacolor high definition. The first Spectacolor board was installed in New York’s Times Square in 1976, and by 1986, the first large screen using the cathode ray tube was installed at Hachiko Crossing in Tokyo’s Shibuya.7 When LED developments become an affordable video format in the mid-1990s, they were rapidly deployed for a variety of pur­ poses, including projection boards, information terminals, and smart buildings and exhib­ ited diverse content, from specially commissioned digital art, movies with sound relayed through mobile portable music players, live television broadcasting, reedited television sequences, or the invitation to display private short message service (SMS) texts and im­ ages on the interactive public screen. Whether designed for entertainment, public com­ munication, art, or urban regeneration, large screens have become a universal visual cul­ ture in contemporary urban life.8 Theorizations of the large screen are emergent and derived largely from film theory, me­ dia studies, and urban geography. Common to these approaches is a concern with the ma­ teriality of the technology and its impact on the user and the space. Errki Huhtamo pro­ poses the term screenology to refer to “a hypothetical branch of media studies that would deal with the history of screens as both material realities and discursive entities”9 because, as Scott McQuire observes, large screens “belong to a paradigm shift in the place of media technologies that is rapidly altering both the ambience and the dynamics of public space in contemporary cities.”10 In his visual archaeology of large screens, Huhtamo traces their prehistory back to the late nineteenth century to show how they were imagined as discourses before materializ­ ing, through the development of projection technology, as media machines. Phantasmago­ ria such as fireworks, hot air balloons, magic mirrors, picture phones, sky projections, and searchlights were invented to use “the sky as a super-screen” for “the ultimate public display.”11 From moon clouds to aerial theaters, light machines have amused the public and even helped spread the ideology of nation-building. A precursor to the large screen, the electronic billboard was initially (and still is) widely used in stadium games. Comparing the electronic billboard to television, Greg Siegel sug­ gests it has what Weber calls a “differential quality” as a medium;12 unlike television, which makes present absent images, the billboard complements its physical environment rather than replacing that which it mediates: it “co-presents…, doubling its discourse— Page 3 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China augmenting it, supplementing it, enhancing it, accompanying it, envisioning it.”13 Following Bolter and Grusin’s seminal concept of remediation,14 Siegel shows how televi­ sual content, when broadcast on the billboard, exploits the hypermedia of form and gives a new resonance to the concept of the distracted gaze.15 Changing the spectator’s rela­ tionship to and experience of the medium, the distracted gaze is a hybrid gaze that oscil­ lates between immediacy and mediation: the viewer is both near and far, emplaced and displaced, centered and decentered. The spectator is distracted not only from, but also by, the medium itself. The concept of distraction is also mobilized by Chris Berry and Janet Harbord to discuss the quotidian quality of public screens.16 Rather than engage distraction as modernity’s negative social effects, they deploy the concept of enchantment to suggest that public screens are simultaneously enchanting and disenchanting. Walking in the city (p. 362) and encountering public screens in places least expected, Berry and Harbord discover the af­ fective experience of both wonderment and banality. They borrow the relational model of “disenchanted enchantment” from French social theorist Edgar Morin to show how the magic of cinema is brought to life when the reality of its image coexists with the recogni­ tion of its status as an illusion, arguing that it is precisely the everyday ubiquity of screen technologies in urban locations that requires screen studies to also consider the study of particular environments.17 The theorization of the large screen and its physical environment is encapsulated by scholarship centered around media convergence.18 Tore Slaatta uses the term media in­ frastructure to refer to the combination of media and infrastructure and argues that buildings are now informational and transitional objects, with changing decorative and media capacities.19 For example, with the electronic stock ticker that wraps around the cylindrical cone of the NASDAQ building in New York’s Times Square, the stock ticker, with genealogical origins to the telegraph, typewriter, and computer printing, has evolved from its sole purpose of transmitting stock prices; installed outside on the surface of buildings, stock tickers have transformed buildings as spaces of habitation into places of information. Lev Manovich describes this dynamic where data is overlaid onto physical space as the space of augmentation.20 By placing the viewer inside the object rather than the traditional cinema that creates an object where the viewer can look at, the space of augmentation has changed not only the experiences of cinema and architecture, but also the viewer. The experience of the viewer, when compared to film and televisual spectatorship, is changed by the dialectics of the screen and its relations of representation that have the ability to simultaneously display, conceal, and transmit information.21 This is especially heightened in city regeneration projects, where large screens are usually introduced; video installations and surveillance technology work hand in hand. Urban subjects are conditioned into being observed while also looking at themselves on the screens. In 2006, experimental video artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer staged the relational architecture instal­ lation Body Movies in Hong Kong to reflect on these modes of representation.22 Conceived in 2001 and first screened in Rotterdam in that year, the project involved inter­ Page 4 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China active projections measuring between 400 and 1,800 square meters that showed portraits of the people in the host city. A video surveillance tracking system triggers these por­ traits, which become visible when pedestrians walk through the building or the square and their shadows interrupt the light from the robotic projectors. The screen not only hides its panoptic implications, it simultaneously displays its narcissistic potential. For the user, the screen becomes the audience that is used to reform relationships, such as the one-to-many communications enabled by the shared spectacle. In other types of art or broadcasting that encourage mobile media interactivity where private photos and SMS messages are made public, large screens have the capacity to create “forms of public in­ teraction that promote qualities such as sharing and collaboration, negotiation, surprise and unpredictability [and]…play a vital role in challenging the dominant habitus of public space.”23 New social habits are thus structured by the way media is performed in its topography. Using the embodied metaphor of architectural skins, Vera Buhlmann suggests ar­ chitectural media literally and physically introduce a separation between inside and out­ side to create a spatialization of media where communication takes place.24 This type of embodiment can be considered a form of “cultural somatics,” a phrase used to refer to a (p. 363)

combined approach “which accounts for the imbrications of cultural specificity and con­ text, corporeality, and our somatic involvement with technologies-in-use.”25 Cultural so­ matics presents a dynamic framework to rethink the sociocultural boundaries between technology, body, community, and place. This practice is evident, for example, in the 2004 interactive digital artwork A People’s Portrait on the Reuters electronic billboard in Times Square, New York, and in other cities. Curated by Zhang Ga 張尕, a China-trained media artist, special photo booths in New York, Singapore, Rotterdam, Linz, and Brisbane en­ couraged passers-by to create their own portraits that were then instantly displayed on large screens in these cities. The telematic display of these portraits “[created] connec­ tions between people of widely varying cultural and ethnic backgrounds”26 and “[trans­ formed] the public plazas into translocal sites.”27 Large screens are key sites for assessing the quality of cultural participation, especially when located in public spaces where specific forms of expressions and practices can be nurtured and acknowledged.28 Significant here is these screens’ interactive capacity for cultivating social inclusion. In particular, by crossing platforms through mobile media convergence, the networked structure of the large screen acts as a locative medium that cuts across actual and virtual forms of communication and information and promotes the immersion of embodied interaction that combines virtual and actual spaces with a com­ munity of peer users. At once social, audio, visual, tactile, and affective, this experience shapes the material conditions of the event that actively engage place, technology, and the body, enabling a new level of communication that enhances public expression and transforms spaces into social places of shared use. Because of this, large screens are at­ tractive to governments keen to develop creative city planning that promotes cultural participation and social inclusion.

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New Media: Large Screens in China In 2002, the large screen at Federation Square, a downtown public plaza in Melbourne, Australia, opened to the public. Measuring 38.5 square meters, the screen, the first of its kind in the country, is surrounded by a complex shared by other government cultural in­ stitutions, such as a multicultural broadcaster (Special Broadcasting Services), a national art gallery, and state film theatres. When the square was conceived in the mid-1990s, Australia was in the throes of cultural revitalization spurred by the release of its first cul­ tural policy statement, Creative Nation, that promoted the development of new media technologies.29 Its strategic aims were to provide world-class facilities with a diversity of programming that would lead the country into the information age and deliver Australia to the world. Melbourne followed in this agenda with large-scale building projects, such as an interactive museum, the urban renewal of the riverside precinct, and the installa­ tion of the large screen at Federation Square. The Melbourne arts policy slogan at the time, “Victoria On the Move,” matched the zeitgeist that celebrated the new mobile expe­ riences of the global city. In the decade since opening, Federation Square (p. 364) has lived up to its potential; it is now the most visited tourist destination in the state and a central meeting hub for residents and visitors alike.30 The mediascape in Seoul, South Korea, has also been fast-tracked by new media policies. Like Tokyo, Seoul is a city of large screens. In the 1960s, South Korea adopted an opendoor policy that led to a high export-driven economic growth in the 1990s. Seoul is cur­ rently the most digitally networked city in the world, with 80 percent broadband penetra­ tion among its households.31 To reinvigorate its economy after the 1997 financial crisis, Seoul became the incubator for government cultural and industrial policies on broad­ band, fashion, culture, and consumerism. Building on ubiquitous computing and commu­ nication, its aim was to build cities as technological hubs for information flows. South Ko­ rean cyberculture has infused all aspects of everyday life, from the highly visible PC bangs—small cybercafés run by families in neighborhoods, near schools, and in shopping malls—that provide cheap and continual access, to housing precincts such as the Digital Media City, with its wired apartments and superfast broadband specially developed as media and living hubs. Large screens emerged against this ecology of urban cybercul­ ture. In a city dotted with corporate towers and outdoor advertising screens, Art Centre Nabi’s networked urban screen, COMO, provides a stark contrast. Launched in 2004 and located in the city’s SK Telecom Tower and Daejeon SK Telecom Building in the district of Ulgiro, COMO uses public programming to display artistic content. COMO is an extended media platform, consisting of three large LED screens: two located at SK Telecom Tower, and the other at SK Telecom Building. The first screen, Channel 1, measures 53 by 1 meters and is part of the exterior of the building, the second, Channel 2, is located in the lobby, while the third, Channel 3, runs along the inner ceiling and the column of the building. Programming changes on a monthly basis, and content is aimed at creating an interactive communication between the building and the public. Although Nabi is a privately funded art gallery, it uses the potential of its urban screens as what has been described as a “live

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New Media: Large Screens in China window (to present) interactive installations and networked art projects, which intervene in the commercial density of the Seoul ad-scape.”32 These screens in Australia and South Korea, two of the ten in the world permanently and continuously transmitting content in their public and civic roles, have emerged as a result of robust and regionally specific cultural policy development. At these sites, new electron­ ic landscapes mediate capital and labor both socially and spatially.33 As media is no longer bounded by national space, large-screen technologies allow media institutions such as South Korea’s SK Telecom or Australia’s Special Broadcasting Services to re­ shape their roles. Audiences are reterritorialized in new spatial relationships between the market and the public. As mediator between the natural and electronic, the screen also enhances the symbiotic relationship to creativity. Media work can be produced inside the building and seamlessly exhibited outside the building, and while it holds the potential for new creative clusters, it also potentially conceals its own neoliberal structures of produc­ tion. These considerations are especially pertinent to the new screenscape that currently char­ acterizes China. The ubiquitous public screen is most commonly used in entertainment, where its prominence is consequently indicative not only of changes in production (devel­ opments in and embrace of new media technology) and consumption (rise in (p. 365) post­ socialist consumer culture), but also of a new relationship between distribution and regu­ lation. Unlike broadcast television and official cinema theatrical releases, public screens do not require official media licenses. Focus Media, China’s leading multiplatform digital media company, uses a fleet of cyclists to cheaply update content by swapping memory cards.34 The company operates the largest network of outdoor advertising in China, with 190,000 screens installed across ninety cities, and sells fifteen-second commercials that air sixty times a day on 8,000 screens for US$41,000. Listed on the NASDAQ exchange, it is the country’s second largest media group after the state-run Chinese Central Television (CCTV) Network. In 2008, its net earnings soared to US$790 million, a jump of 179 per­ cent from 2007.35 With clients such as Armani, Motorola, and Lenovo, these screens not only reach out to the purchasing potential of urban elites; they also possess the potential to bypass state regulation. Writing on public screens in Shanghai, Chris Berry suggests they express coeval rather than glocal specificity.36 Although public screens are creative sites of tourist attractions, they are also unique places of local expressions, especially at transport or retail hubs, where regular users imbue them with everyday rituals and habits. Looking at the heavy usage of text-based screens at the entrances to shops and residential quarters, he sug­ gests this practice is derived from a genealogy of using Chinese characters (字) to demar­ cate the liminal space between inside and outside. Instead of being situated within China’s assimilation of new media in the era of rapid globalization, these public screens have evolved from the longer culture of the “walking word” (走字). In these sites, the screen’s liminality evokes their coeval development rather than the catch-up thesis domi­ nant in global studies of non-Western creative modernization.37

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New Media: Large Screens in China This section has introduced the large screen as a cultural industry and social institution. As cultural industry, the large screen has developed as the new site par excellence of me­ dia convergence. Merging media and buildings, it has transformed architecture and cine­ ma and created a new mobile and hybrid gaze that is distracted, enchanted, panoptic, and narcissistic. As social institution, it has also enabled cultural participation and com­ munity inclusion, especially through the cross-platform of mobile media, and engendered an embodied form of interaction that engages technology, people, place, and body. As an innovative site of national modernity, the large screen is central to new policies shaping media globalization and creative cultural planning. The following section critically exam­ ines these characteristics as deployed in Zhang Yimou’s recent large-screen projects.

Large Screens in China: Zhang Yimou’s Impres­ sion Series (2004–2010) Zhang Yimou’s transformation from rebel filmmaker to cultural hero reflects the shift of contemporary Chinese cinema from a cultural to creative industry. In the postsocialist (p. 366) 1990s, “cultural institutions” (文化事業) started to take shape as “cultural indus­ tries” (文化產業), and by post-WTO 2006, the concept of “creative industries” (倡依產業) was officially embraced by the government.38 Using culture as a resource, creative indus­ tries combine arts with technology for the purpose of business.39 Against “rising national­ ism and pride in China’s emergence as an economic power, and robust state support for artists,”40 the introduction of the creative industries saw the expansion of the services in­ dustry, “not just propaganda services for the government to educate and inform the mass­ es but generators of intellectual property, national cultural brands, and taxation rev­ enue.”41 China follows the worldwide trend where, in 2009 alone, at least thirty-five coun­ tries have introduced creative development plans.42 With the success of the state-funded Hero (英雄, 2002), Zhang’s transformation of the cinema into new large-screen cultures is emblematic of this shift. In 1998, Zhang began experimenting with large-screen projections in the opera produc­ tion of Turandot, in the Forbidden City of Beijing, a restaging of the same work from a year earlier in Italy that had been redesigned to suit the new site in China. On the main opera stage at the grand steps and terrace leading to the Forbidden City, Zhang superim­ posed large-image projections such as the Great Wall, a water garden, a large rock. and other buildings in the Forbidden City, in order to enhance the “exotic realism” of the pro­ duction.43 With its light projections, the Forbidden City was transformed into a media skin that augmented image stereotypes of Chinese architecture and history popular with the intended Western audience. Zhang perfected this technique in his spectacular direction of the opening and closing ceremonies in the Beijing Olympics. At the opening ceremony the entire stadium floor was made from a giant LED screen, and the famous Chinese scroll was made from another LED screen measuring 147 meters by 22 meters. It mobilized at least 15,000 performers and turned the spotlight on China into a visual extravaganza that showcased not just the theme of a harmonious society but the clear ascendency of a high­ Page 8 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China ly technologized country as a global superpower. Throughout this period, Zhang used sim­ ilar types of large-screen projections to further produce five government-commissioned outdoor dance performances, entitled the Impression Series (2004–2010). Below, I will use large-screen theory and the critical creative industry paradigm to consider the chang­ ing nature of Chinese cinema as a cultural industry and social institution. The five series share similar characteristics, in that they are all daily performances at heritage sites of popular tourism; use light, sound, and dance; employ hundreds of cast and thousands of support crew; and are jointly funded by private ventures and state gov­ ernments, including tourism boards, local municipalities, and cultural development groups. Impression Liu Sanjie (印象劉三姐, 2004), located at Guilin’s Li River in Guangxi province, consists of four color-themed episodes (red, golden, white, silver) that celebrate local fishing cultures, folk songs, and scenery. Using the river and twelve surrounding hills that lit up as large screens with light projections, the series is an intertextual en­ gagement with the popular 1961 film by Su Li, 蘇里 Liu Sanjie (劉三姐), and was produced by the Guangweiwenhua Cultural and Tourism Company together with a few entrepre­ neurs. Impression Lijiang (印象麗江, (p. 367) 2006) is located at Yunnan province’s Yulong Snow Mountain. It is a one-hour performance that showcases local farming cultures staged in an elevated large outdoor theater using the mountain as a backdrop. Like Liu Sanjie, it is also produced by the Impression Lijiang Culture and Tourism Company. Im­ pression West Lake (印象西湖, 2007) is set at West Lake in the Zhejiang province of Hangzhou. Based on the legend of West Lake, the performance takes place on a stage built on the lake and uses light, music, and dance. It is a joint production between Im­ pression West Lake Cultural Development Company, Hangzhou Municipal Government, and Zhejiang Radio and Television Group. Impression Hainan Island (印象海南, 2009) is performed at Urchin Theatre in Haikou on Hainan Island. It features mixed ballet and drama, the beach entertainment of young people, and children’s fairy tales. It is a joint production between Beijing Impression Creative Arts Centre, Haikou Tourism Investment Holding Company, Hainan Impression Culture, and Tourism Development Company. Im­ pression Dahongpao (印象大紅袍, 2010) is set at Wuyi Tea Expo Park in the Wuyi Mountain region of Fujian province. Using short films and four performance areas aptly named ver­ nacular houses, mountain, sand, and sea, these areas combined to make what codirector Wang Chaoge 王潮歌 claims to be “the largest movie theatre in the world.”44 Initiated and produced by the Impression Dahongpao Tea Company, this series includes local tea cul­ tures and architectures set against the famous mountain backdrop. These five series cost $12 million to produce and employ approximately 2,000 performers and thousands more in support staff. With tickets costing between $30 and $1,500 each, and at least one show for each series held every night, the series has generated more than $370 million in box-office profits. This is a remarkable sum, particularly when one considers that Zhang’s much more expensive blockbuster films—including Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (十面埋伏, 2004), Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (千里走單騎, 2005), Curse of the Golden Flower (滿城盡帶黃金甲, 2006), A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle

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New Media: Large Screens in China Shop (三槍拍案驚奇, 2009), and Under the Hawthorn Tree (山楂樹之戀, 2010)—have earned a total of approximately $71.6 million in the U.S. box-office market, combined.45 Large-screen technologies are deployed differently in each series. Lijiang and Liu Sanjie use lights to illuminate the mountains as large screens; West Lake uses computer-con­ trolled lighting to project a “bridge of heaven” into the sky; Hainan Island has a screen floor with a stage dimension of 754 square meters that can turn an ocean image into a beach; Dahongpao, described by one commentator as displaying the concept of landscape cinema, uses fifteen projection screens hidden in the mountains that are lit according to the plot.46 Whether they are a convergence of high-tech lighting and natural landscape, large-scale image projections, or stand-alone LED screens, these large-screen technolo­ gies tap into a contemporary global Chinese visual culture resonant with public screens. However, rather than the spectacle of disenchanted enchantment generated by the ubiq­ uity of public screens as discussed earlier, these screens, as event spectacles, have en­ chanted and disenchanted the public.47 Most online reports of the series highlight the innovative use of technology; at West Lake, the screen was a “visual feast”;48 at Dahongpao, multiscreens and the world’s first 360-degree rotating auditorium were also singled out as impressive feats.49 A quick (p. 368)

survey of audience responses at youku wang 優酷網, China’s largest video-hosting service company based in the country and listed on the NASDAQ exchange, reveals that as of September 2011, there are at least 1,725 video excerpts of the five impressions, with the most popular clip of Lijiang generating 40,515 views and forty-one comments. Of the com­ ments from members who were also live audiences, more than 70 percent of these overall responses were positive, with most praising its stunning visual effects: The blue setting is so beautiful….Zhang is brilliant. (On Liu Sanjie).50 The hills in the background are lit up so beautifully…the red cloth floating on wa­ ter, plus the light, presents a strong visual impact. (On Liu Sanjie).51 Moved to tears…deeply touched by the love scene and spectacular snow moun­ tain. (On Lijiang)52 The stage is special, spectacular setting, marvelous lighting. (On West Lake).53 Magic setting, bright colours, every scene is a surprise. (On West Lake).54 The live show is great. (On Hainan Island).55 Beautiful—a fairy land. (On Dahongpao).56 Perfect combination of sounsd, light and screen. (On Dahongpao).57 These comments reveal Zhang’s heroic status within the popular imagination, but more signifi­ cantly they highlight the ability of the large screen itself to surprise and delight. Transported by emotions and the illusion of the magic of cinema, audiences are enchanted by the spectacle of fantasy and its high modernity. In particular, the size of the screen and scale of the show confirm Page 10 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China the vision of these events as planned projects of creative development. Crucial here is how these screens combine government and industry stakeholders and exploit technological innovation, to make culture as a resource for generating revenue and agency. As sites of neoliberal cultural production and cultural participation, Zhang’s large screens challenge the politics of social in­ clusion.

At the level of production, the series can be situated along the creative industry paradigm of cultural sustainability. This framework, promoted by UNESCO for the developing AsiaPacific region, suggests local culture can be maintained through the promotion of indige­ nous creative industries that support heritage and talent and, with these, create income and sustain local communities.58 While each impression samples local heritage (land­ scape and folk craft such as tea, wood/stone carving, and farming, or ethnic lifestyles of local Naxi, Yi, Bai, and Miao peoples) and generates employment, it has the tendency to exploit the spectacle of exotic realism in the service of cultural tourism. This is evident from the use of impression in the titles, invoking how a mental image can be quickly gleaned from a surface glance. This is also evident from how these events are promoted on Chinese tourist websites for domestic and international visitors, where exotic locations are abstracted (p. 369) through advertising the technological innovation of the event and the cultural capital of pan-Asian celebrities including director Zhang and singers and musicians such as Qi Qin 齐秦, Kitaro and Wakin Chau 周華健, who have composed and popularized the theme songs. The trans­ formation of Chinese cinema into large-screen creative events has fast-tracked the devel­ opment of a new type of film-induced tourism based not on the film location as a hallmark destination59 but how new screen technologies have added value to touristic locations to suit the ancillary business of movie tourism.60 While increased movie tourism generates economic wealth and leads to increased employment and sense of pride in a place,61 the expensive tickets are mostly out of reach for the common people of the local constituen­ cies. The series’ development of tourism and heritage sites finds resonances in South Korea’s culture-led urban regeneration plan that includes nominated cities of culture such as Bu­ san, Kyongju, Jeonju, Gwangju, and Incheon. Examining how Gwangju has been stripped of its cultural heritage by massive large-scale developments, Kwang-Suk Lee argues cre­ ative policies are driven by a neoliberalism that creates incentives to reward (usually for­ eign) entrepreneurs and entice corporate investments that in turn ignore local urban ecology, bring economic exploitation, and add to the rise of ghettos. Such “economic re­ ductionism of culture,” he suggests, commodifies cultural heritage and prevents the un­ derprivileged from cultural participation.62 Similar sentiments of disenchantment are also evident in Chinese audiences’ responses to Zhang’s large-screen developments. Respondents to Hainan Island criticized its use of technology to signify empty content and deplored the show as mass calisthenics masked in special light and sound.63 One com­ mentator rebuked Lijiang for being “too vulgar and an insult to the pure snow mountain,” disclosing that “these performers put up 4 or 5 shows per day and yet are paid only 3 to 4 hundred yuan a month.”64 Similarly, responses to Liu Sanjie also censured the Page 11 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China production’s exploitation of the landscape and its people. One visitor complained, “What a big setting and also a big cost for the ordinary people!”65 Another asked, “What is Zhang doing here? It’s really no good for the river and the landscape.”66 Regarding the local ethnicities represented in the show, another poster lamented, “There’s no introduc­ tion of the performers, and we don’t know which ethnic group they come from.”67 Cultural participation calls to task the politics of access and representation. As public amenities in the agenda of urban regeneration and cultural planning, the potential of large screens lies in their capacity to revitalize the community and foster social inclusion.68 Key here, as theorized earlier, is the embodied interaction of cultural somat­ ics. Of the five impressions, only one, West Lake, demonstrates this type of mediation where audiences are required to use earphones to experience the “silent” performance. In this performance, the combination of technology, body, community, and place allows for an interactive experience that can potentially enhance collective place-making. However, as Rey Chow suggests with respect to Walkman headsets in China,69 such embodied tech­ nologization produces individualization rather than collectivization, a practice of life poli­ tics70 that has grown to befit the neoliberal desires (p. 370) of taste and upward mobility aspired by the contemporary Chinese subject.71 Against this context, Chinese large screens expose the politics of resource allocation and cultural representation. As new cul­ tural industries and social institutions, large screens are top-down monuments that rein­ force the new class hierarchies of the neoliberal economy.

Conclusion This chapter has critically introduced the large screen as part of a new approach to Chi­ nese film studies as cultural industry and social institution. As a nascent technology with emergent conceptual frameworks, the large screen has become a site for rethinking mo­ bile spectatorships, media convergence, and social inclusion. In China, the rise of the large-screen culture is exemplary of its rapid global development. As hardware, it marks a new urban morphology; as software, it exposes the politics of access and equity. Using a critical survey of Zhang’s Impression Series, this chapter has shown how large screens are contact zones that mediate creative industries and cultural participation. Not only has the cultural brokerage of Zhang added value to the new screenscape,72 film-induced tourism has the potential to encourage creative nationalism as a form of new pride engen­ dered by a nation imagined through the content of its creative industry.73 As part of the global reordering of the Chinese neoliberal state, large screens have become markers of class hierarchies that have emerged in the new economy.

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New Media: Large Screens in China Balfour, Frederik. “Catching the Eye of China’s Elite.” BusinessWeek, February 11, 2008, 55–56. Barboza, David. “Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s Close-Up.” New York Times, Au­ gust 7, 2008. Retrieved March 4, 2011, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/ sports/olympics/08guru.html. Beeton, Sue. Film-Induced Tourism. Clevedon: Channel View Publications, 2005. Berry, Chris. “Shanghai’s Public Screen Culture: Local and Coeval.” Communication and Society 21 (2012): 25–49. Berry, Chris, and Janet Harbord. “Tracking the Screen in Public Spaces: Everyday Dis/ Enchantment” (forthcoming). Berry, Chris, and Laikwan Pang. “Remapping Contemporary Chinese Cinema Studies.” China Review 10. 2 (2010): 89–108. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cam­ bridge: MIT Press, 1999. Braester, Yomi. “Chinese Cinema in the Age of Advertisement: The Filmmaker as Cultural Broker.” China Quarterly 183 (2005): 549–564. Buhlmann, Vera. “Intelligent Skin: Real Virtual.” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006), re­ trieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/ fm/rt/printerFriendly/1554/1469. Busby, Graham, and Julie Klug. “Movie-Induced Tourism: The Challenge of Measurement and Other Issues.” Journal of Vacation Marketing 7.4 (2001): 316–332. Chow, Rey. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Department of Communication and the Arts. Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cultural Policy. October 1994. Retrieved February 26, 2005, from http://www.nla.gov.au/ creative.nation/contents.html. Dietz, Steve. “Ga Zhang: People’s Portrait.” Media Art Net, 2004. Retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/peoples-portrait/. Evans, Graeme. “Creative Cities, Creative Spaces and Urban Policy.” Urban Studies 46. 5– 6 (2009): 1003–1040. Federation Square. Fed Square Annual Report. Melbourne: Fed Square Pty Ltd., June 2009.

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New Media: Large Screens in China Focus Media. Focus Media Reports—Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2008 Results. Re­ trieved October 20, 2009, from http://ir.focusmedia.cn/phoenix.zhtml? c=190067&p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=1268983&highlight. Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Mod­ ern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. Huhtamo, Erkki. “The Sky Is (Not) the Limit: Envisioning the Ultimate Public Media Dis­ play.” Journal of Visual Culture 83 (2009): 329–348. Jin, Wenlian. “The Making of Impression Dahongpao.” People.com, January 26, 2011. Re­ trieved September 8, 2011, from http://travel.people.com.cn/GB/10846562.html. Keane, Michael. Created in China: The Great New Leap Forward. New York: Routledge, 2007. Keane, Michael. “Creativity and Complexity in Post-WTO China.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17.3 (2003): 291–301. Lee, Kwang-Suk. “Questioning a Neoliberal Urban Regeneration Policy: The Rhetoric of ‘Cities of Culture’ and the City of Gwangju, Korea.” International Journal of (p. 375)

Cultural Policy 13.4 (2007): 335–347. Lester, Paul Martin. “Urban Screens: The Beginning of a Universal Visual Culture.” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006). Retrieved October 20, 2009 from http://www.uic.edu/ htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1543/1458. Lozano-Hemmer, Rafael. “Body Movies.” 2011. Retrieved September 1, 2009, from http:// www.lozano-hemmer.com/body_movies.php. MacColl, Ian, and Ingrid Richardson. “A Cultural Somatics of Mobile Media and Urban Screens: Wiffiti and the IWALL Prototype.” Journal of Urban Technology 15.3 (2008): 99– 116. Manovich, Lev. “The Poetics of Urban Media Surfaces.” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006). Retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/ index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1545/. McQuire, Scott. “Rethinking Media Events: Large Screens, Public Space Broadcasting and Beyond.” New Media and Society 12.4 (2010): 567–582. Metzger, Sean. “Ice Queens, Rice Queens, and Intercultural Investments in Zhang Yimou’s Turandot.” Asian Theatre Journal 20.2 (2003): 209–217. Morin, Edgar. The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man. Trans. Lorraine Mortimer. Minneapo­ lis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

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New Media: Large Screens in China Papastergiadis, Nikos, Scott McQuire, and Meredith Martin. “Large Screens, Cultural Creativity and the Global City.” Collection of Essays on Asian Design Cultures. Ed. W. S. Lim. Singapore: Select Books, 2009. 42–53. Plunkett Research. “Advertising & Branding Industry Overview.” Retrieved September 15, 2011, from http://www.plunkettresearch.com/ advertising%20branding%20market%20research/industry%20statistics. Research in China (RIC). China Advertising Industry Report, 2010–2011. Retrieved September 15, 2011, from http://www.researchinchina.com/Htmls/Report/ 2011/6165.html. Ritchie, Brent. “Assessing the Impact of Hallmark Events: Conceptual and Research Is­ sues.” Journal of Travel Research 23.1 (1984): 2–11. Rofel, Lisa. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Sheppard, W. Anthony. “Tan Dun and Zhang Yimou between Film and Opera.” Journal of Musicological Research 29.1 (2010): 1–33. Siegel, Greg. “Double Vision: Large-Screen Video Display and Live Sports Spectacle.” Television and New Media 3.1 (2002): 49–73. Slaatta, Tore. “Urban Screens: Towards the Convergence of Architecture and Audiovisual Media.” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006). Retrieved October 20, 2009, from http:// www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1549/1464. Struppek, Mirjam. “The Social Potential of Urban Screens.” Visual Communication 5 (2006): 173–188. Townsend, Anthony. “Seoul: Birth of a Broadband Metropolis.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 34 (2007): 396–413. UNESCO. Asia-Pacific Creative Communities: Promoting the Cultural Industries for Local Socio-economic Development—a Strategy for the 21st Century. Bangkok: UNESCO, 2005. Weber, Samuel. Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Yi Fangxing 易方興. “Yinxiang xihai: ruhe yong yi xiaoshi zhanxian yi qian nian” 《印象西 湖》如何用一小時展現一千年 [Impression West Lake: How to show a thousand years in a sin­ gle hour?]. People’s Daily (overseas version), July 18, 2008. Retrieved September 2, 2011, from http://www.gmw.cn/content/2008-07/18/content_806896.htm. Yudice, George. The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. (p. 376)

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New Media: Large Screens in China Yue, Audrey. “Urban Screens and Spatial Regeneration: Evaluation Strategies for Cultural Participation.” Urban Screens Reader. Ed. Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Nederer. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009. 261–278. Yue, Audrey. “Film-Induced Domestic Tourism in Singapore: The Case of Krrish.” Domes­ tic Tourism in Asia: Diversity and Divergence. Ed. Shalini Singh. London: Earthscan, 2009. 267–282. Yue, Audrey. “From Gatekeepers to Gateways: Pragmatism, Sexuality and Cultural Policy in Creative Singapore.” Instituting Cultural Studies: Creativity and Academic Activism. Ed. Meaghan Morris and Mette Hjort. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. 191–212. Yue, Audrey, and Sun Jung. “Urban Screens and Transcultural Consumption between South Korea and Australia.” Global Media Convergence and Cultural Transformation: Emerging Social Patterns and Characteristics. Ed. Dal Yong Jin. Philadelphia: IGI Global, 2011. 15–36.

Notes: (1.) Research in China (RIC). China Advertising Industry Report, 2010–2011, retrieved September 15, 2011, from http://www.researchinchina.com/Htmls/Report/ 2011/6165.html. (2.) Plunkett Research, “Advertising & Branding Industry Overview,” retrieved September 15, 2011, from http://www.plunkettresearch.com/ advertising%20branding%20market%20research/industry%20statistics. (3.) Anonymous, “Counting Down to Strategies in Light China: Why China Is the Next Frontier,” LEDs magazine, March 28, 2011, retrieved September 1, 2011, from http:// www.ledsmagazine.com/news/8/3/26. (4.) Chris Berry and Laikwan Pang, “Remapping Contemporary Chinese Cinema Studies,” China Review 10.2 (2010): 89–108. (5.) Ian MacColl and Ingrid Richardson, “A Cultural Somatics of Mobile Media and Urban Screens: Wiffiti and the IWALL Prototype,” Journal of Urban Technology 15.3 (2008): 99– 116. (6.) Anthony Auerbach, “Interpreting Urban Screens,” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006), retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/ index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1546/1461. (7.) Scott McQuire, “Rethinking Media Events: Large Screens, Public Space Broadcasting and Beyond,” New Media and Society 12.4 (2010): 567–582.

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New Media: Large Screens in China (8.) Paul Martin Lester, “Urban Screens: The Beginning of a Universal Visual Culture,” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006), retrieved October 20, 2009, from http:// www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1543/1458. (9.) Erkki Huhtamo, “The Sky Is (Not) the Limit: Envisioning the Ultimate Public Media Display,” Journal of Visual Culture 8.3 (2009): 329–348. (10.) Scott McQuire, “Rethinking Media Events,” 568. (11.) Huhtamo, “The Sky Is (Not) the Limit,” 330. (12.) Samuel Weber, Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media (Stanford: Stanford Univer­ sity Press, 1996). (13.) Greg Siegel, “Double Vision: Large-Screen Video Display and Live Sports Specta­ cle,” Television and New Media 3.1 (2002): 51. (14.) Jay David Bolter, and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999). (15.) Greg Siegel, “Double Vision,” 60. (16.) Chris Berry and Janet Harbord, “Tracking the Screen in Public Spaces: Everyday Dis/Enchantment” (forthcoming). (17.) Edgar Morin, The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man, trans. Lorraine Mortimer, (Min­ neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005). (18.) Audrey Yue and Sun Jung, “Urban Screens and Transcultural Consumption Between South Korea and Australia,” in Global Media Convergence and Cultural Transformation: Emerging Social Patterns and Characteristics, ed. Dal Yong Jin (Philadelphia: IGI Global, 2011), 15–36. (19.) Tore Slaatta, “Urban Screens: Towards the Convergence of Architecture and Audio­ visual Media,” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006), retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1549/1464. (20.) Lev Manovich, “The Poetics of Urban Media Surfaces,” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006), retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/ index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1545/. (21.) Anthony Auerbach, “Interpreting Urban Screens.” (22.) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Body Movies,” 2011, retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/body_movies.php. (23.) Scott McQuire, “Rethinking Media Events,” 577.

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New Media: Large Screens in China (24.) Vera Buhlmann, “Intelligent Skin: Real Virtual,” First Monday, Special Issue 4 (2006), retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/ index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1554/1469. (25.) Ian MacColl and Ingrid Richardson, “Cultural Somatics,” 100. (26.) Mirjam Struppek, “The Social Potential of Urban Screens,” Visual Communication 5 (2006): 178. (27.) Steve Dietz, “Ga Zhang: People’s Portrait,” Media Art Net, 2004, retrieved Septem­ ber 1, 2011, from http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/peoples-portrait/. (28.) Audrey Yue, “Urban Screens and Spatial Regeneration: Evaluation Strategies for Cultural Participation,” in Urban Screens Reader, ed. Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Nederer (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009), 261–278. (29.) Department of Communication and the Arts, Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cul­ tural Policy, October 1994, retrieved February 26, 2005, from http://www.nla.gov.au/ creative.nation/contents.html. (30.) Federation Square, Fed Square Annual Report (Melbourne: Fed Square Pty Ltd., June 2009). (31.) Anthony Townsend, “Seoul: Birth of a Broadband Metropolis,” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 34 (2007): 396–413. (32.) Nikos Papastergiadis, Scott McQuire, and Meredith Martin, “Large Screens, Cultur­ al Creativity and the Global City,” in Collection of Essays on Asian Design Cultures, ed. W. S. Lim (Singapore: Select Books, 2009), 49. (33.) Tore Slaatta, “Urban Screens.” (34.) Frederik Balfour, “Catching the Eye of China’s Elite,” BusinessWeek, February 11, 2008, 55–56. (35.) Focus Media, Focus Media Reports—Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2008 Results, re­ trieved October 20, 2009, from http://ir.focusmedia.cn/phoenix.zhtml?c=190067&p=irolnewsArticle_print&ID=1268983&highlight. (36.) Chris Berry, “Shanghai’s Public Screen Culture: Local and Coeval,” Communication and Society 21 (2012): 25–49. (37.) Audrey Yue, “From Gatekeepers to Gateways: Pragmatism, Sexuality and Cultural Policy in Creative Singapore,” in Instituting Cultural Studies: Creativity and Academic Ac­ tivism. ed. Meaghan Morris and Mette Hjort (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 191–212. (38.) Michael Keane, Created in China: The Great New Leap Forward (New York: Rout­ ledge, 2007). Page 18 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China (39.) George Yudice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). (40.) David Barboza, “Gritty Renegade Now Directs China’s Close-Up,” New York Times, August 7, 2008, retrieved March 4, 2011, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/ sports/olympics/08guru.html. (41.) Michael Keane, “Creativity and Complexity in Post-WTO China,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17.3 (2003): 297. (42.) Graeme Evans, “Creative Cities, Creative Spaces and Urban Policy,” Urban Studies 46.5–6 (2009): 1003–1040. (43.) W. Anthony Sheppard, “Tan Dun and Zhang Yimou between Film and Opera.” Journal of Musicological Research 29.1 (2010): 8. See also Sean Metzger, “Ice Queens, Rice Queens, and Intercultural Investments in Zhang Yimou’s Turandot,” Asian Theatre Jour­ nal 20.2 (2003): 209–217. (44.) See Impression Dahongpao Website, 2010. (45.) Internet Movie Database Pro (IMDB Pro), “Zhang Yimou: Main Details,” retrieved September 15, 2011, from http://pro.imdb.com/name/nm0955443/. (46.) Jin Wenlian 金文蓮, “Jiemi Yinxiang Dahongpao xianmu de taiqian muhou” 揭秘印象大 紅袍項目的台前幕後 [The making of Impression Dahongpao], Renmin wang 人民網 [People.com], January 26, 2011, retrieved September 8, 2011, from http:// travel.people.com.cn/GB/10846562.html. (47.) Chris Berry and Janet Harbord, “Tracking the Screen.” (48.) Yi Fangxing 易方興. “Yinxiang xihai: ruhe yong yi xiaoshi zhanxian yi qian nian” 《印 象西湖》如何用一小時展現一千年 [Impression West Lake: How to show a thousand years in a single hour?], July 18, 2008, People’s Daily (overseas version), retrieved September 2, 2011, from http://www.gmw.cn/content/2008-07/18/content_806896.htm. (49.) Anonymous, “Zhiji yinxiang dahongpao” 直擊《印象大紅袍》 [Live impressions of Da­ hongpao], Tengcent.com, April 27, 2011, retrieved September 8, 2011, from http:// fj.qq.com/a/20110427/000286.htm. (50.) Wo shi dongfang shuo 我是東方朔, “Comments to Video Clip of Impression Liu Sanjie,” 2009, retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://v.youku.com/v_show/ id_XNzI2NTAzNg==.html. (51.) Shamm, “Comments,” 31 July, 2011, retrieved September 1, 2011, from http:// www.lvping.com/attraction_review-d702-s22077-ddp1-detail.html.

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New Media: Large Screens in China (52.) K_macci, Feng Feng Mi 風風迷, Huan Cheng Huan 幻成幻, and Lzgfmb1011, 2010– 2011, “Comments,” retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://v.youku.com/v_show/ id_XMTI1MjQxMDYw.html. (53.) Onlymecl, “Comments,” August 22, 2011, retrieved September 2, 2011, from http:// www.daodao.com/ShowUserReviews-g298559-d1825795-r52603783Impression_Westlake-Hangzhou_Zhejiang.html#REVIEWS. (54.) Shajul, “Comments,” July 17, 2011, retrieved September 2, 2011, from http:// www.daodao.com/ShowUserReviews-g298559-d1825795-r50377032Impression_Westlake-Hangzhou_Zhejiang.html#REVIEWS. (55.) Anonymous, “Comments,” 2010, retrieved September 5, 2011, from http:// v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzgzNDkwMDQ=.html. (56.) 6T7, “Comments,” June 11, 2010, retrieved September 8, 2011, from http:// www.tudou.com/programs/view/iaVUk6NgsGg/. (57.) Anonymous, “Comments,” 2011, retrieved September 8, 2011, from http:// www.dianping.com/shop/4281976/review_all. (58.) UNESCO, Asia-Pacific Creative Communities: Promoting the Cultural Industries for Local Socio-economic Development—A Strategy for the 21st Century (Bangkok: UNESCO, 2005). (59.) Brent Ritchie, “Assessing the Impact of Hallmark Events: Conceptual and Research issues,” Journal of Travel Research 23.1 (1984): 2–11. (60.) Graham Busby and Julie Klug, “Movie-Induced Tourism: The Challenge of Measure­ ment and Other Issues,” Journal of Vacation Marketing 7.4 (2001): 316–332. (61.) Sue Beeton, Film-Induced Tourism (Clevedon: Channel View Publications, 2005). (62.) Kwang-Suk Lee, “Questioning a Neoliberal Urban Regeneration Policy: The Rhetoric of ‘Cities of Culture’ and the City of Gwangju, Korea,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 13.4 (2007): 336. (63.) Sina.com, “Comments by Yi Fu 伊夫 and Wuyeshengcong 午夜聖虫,” 2010, retrieved September 5, 2011, from http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_48489ba10100mr8q.html. (64.) Yuen, Sheng Tai, “Responses to Impression Lijiang,” 2011, retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTI1MjQxMDYw.html. (65.) Visiting Tudou, “Comments to Liu Sanjie,” May 17, 2009, retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/gD56dAviXww/. (66.) Hu Tu Feng Liuzai 糊涂風流仔, “Comments to Liu Sanjie,” 2009, retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjgxMzExMDA=.html. Page 20 of 21

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New Media: Large Screens in China (67.) Lu Youzy18 旅游 zy18, “Comments,” July 31, 2011, retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://www.lvping.com/attraction_review-d702-s22077-ddp1-detail.html. (68.) Audrey Yue, “Urban Screens and Spatial Regeneration.” (69.) Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Stud­ ies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). (70.) Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992). (71.) Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Cul­ ture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). (72.) Yomi Braester, “Chinese Cinema in the Age of Advertisement: The Filmmaker as Cul­ tural Broker,” China Quarterly 183 (2005): 549–564. (73.) Audrey Yue, “Film-Induced Domestic Tourism in Singapore: The Case of Krrish,” in Domestic Tourism in Asia: Diversity and Divergence, ed. Shalini Singh (London: Earth­ scan, 2009), 267–282.

Audrey Yue

Audrey Yue is Senior Lecturer in Screen and Cultural Studies at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Her recent publications include Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile (2010) and Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures (2012). She is completing an Australian Research Council funded project on transnational large screens, and early publications from this project appear in Global Media Conver­ gence and Cultural Transformation: Emerging Social Patterns and Characteristics (2011) and Urban Screens Reader (2009).

Page 21 of 21

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator

Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attrac­ tions and the Emancipated Spectator   Paola Voci The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Television Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0021

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines online small-screen cinema (i.e., movies that are viewed almost ex­ clusively on the web, are made with small recording/viewing devices, and are mostly characterized by amateur production and gifting distribution practices) and the chal­ lenges it presents for the institution of cinema in China. The author proposes that online small-screen cinema relies on pleasure-seeking but also thought-provoking brief engage­ ments with the moving image, thus departing from the concentration/absorption model developed by narrative cinema and, instead, connecting with the early cinema of attrac­ tions. Both cinematic experiences (early cinema and online small-screen cinema), it is ar­ gued, develop in fluid, unregulated environments where attraction, distraction, and inter­ vention all play crucial roles in (re)defining cinema and emancipating its spectators. Keywords: online cinema, small screens, early cinema, cinema relocation, new media, amateur, Internet, emanci­ pated spectator

This chapter examines online small-screen cinema1 and the challenges it presents for the institution of cinema in China.2 While films made for movie theater distribution, television broadcast, or DVD release also circulate widely online, I focus here specifically on movies that are viewed almost exclusively on the web, are made with small recording/viewing de­ vices, and are mostly characterized by amateur3 production and gifting distribution prac­ tices. I am interested in their brief, often fragmented, exhibitionist format that seeks, as Sean Cubitt points out in a different context, “to activate rather than absorb its audi­ ences.”4 Although some of these movies may become big Internet phenomena, the majori­ ty reaches relatively modest audiences, as interactivity and sharing, rather than atten­ dance and marketing, define their viewing and reception. Here I explore the connections between online small-screen cinema and the early cinema of attractions.5 Both cinematic experiences, I argue, develop in fluid, unregulated environments where attraction, dis­ traction, and intervention all play crucial roles in (re)defining cinema and emancipating its spectators.

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator While new technologies are certainly of critical importance in the ontological, cultural, and social definition of online small-screen cinematic practices ontologically, culturally, and socially, the novelty of these practices also invites us to reflect on what sets them against the old institution of cinema. Seeking to probe when and how cinema became a recognized institution that, more than any other cultural form of the time, embodied Chi­ nese modernity,6 I examine its “mythologized” beginning: the making and screening of Dingjun Mountain (定軍山). Following Paul Cohen’s three-key analytical model,7 the histo­ ry of Dingjun Mountain can be discussed as an event, as an experience, and as a myth. It is on this last “key” that I focus here; more than what happened (p. 378) and who viewed the film at the time, what interests me here is Dingjun Mountain’s symbolic value as a lost beginning. What was lost, I propose, has been partly refound in the online small-screen cinema that has developed in the new media environment outside the boundaries of the institution of Chinese cinema. One of the main challenges that online small-screen cinema presents to film scholars is that it is immersed—and possibly submersed—in the media convergence environment where it has found new vitality but also risks losing its specificity.8 The three major videosharing websites in China are tudou wang 土豆網 (literally, “potato web”), youku wang 優酷網 (literally, “great and cool web”), and 56 wuliu wang 五六網 (wu liu 五六 is a quasi-homophone for wo le 我樂, or literally “I have fun”). There are countless online small-screen movies, which are often characterized by amateur or anonymous authorship. They are viewed not only in those video-dedicated websites but also in blogs and other online social media, appended to e-mails, and embedded into mobile phone or smart­ phone conversations. Furthermore, media users who watch movies online may also simul­ taneously be engaging with other media activities such as online gaming and shopping, word processing, blogging, and e-mailing.9 Yet the expansion and hybridization of the cin­ ematic experience in the context of media convergence does not mean that cinema has been lost, given that many online movies directly evoke film history, reproduce stylistic conventions and genres, and pay homage to its auteurs. In this media convergence, cine­ ma is more easily found when the film texts and its producers are more directly framed into the legitimate locations where we expect to see cinema. For instance, when contem­ porary blockbuster films like Feng Xiaogang’s 馮小剛 Aftershock (唐山大地震, 2009) or clas­ sic films like Yuan Muzhi’s 袁牧之 Street Angel (馬路天使, 1937) go online, the film texts an­ chor these online movies to the institution of cinema. The circulation of narrative cinema over the Internet, however, is not the only way that cinema has been relocated. Online we can also find a different type of cultural production that exceeds Chinese cinema’s onto­ logical and social/political boundaries and takes us back to some of the lost attributes of early cinema.

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator

Rethinking Chinese Cinema: The Birth of Cine­ ma as a Myth Like its worldwide counterparts, Chinese cinema has not always been dominated by nar­ rative films produced by teams of professionals within a studio environment and screened in enclosed spaces where audiences sit quietly in front of the screen for a lengthy period of time. Instead, Chinese early cinema began as an event-based practice that aimed pri­ marily to surprise and entertain its viewers with the spectacle of a new modern technolo­ gy. The story goes that Chinese cinema began in 1905 with the filming of a local produc­ tion of the Beijing opera, Dingjun Mountain, directed and produced by Ren Qingtai 任慶泰 (the owner of the Fengtai Photography Studio) and (p. 379) filmed by Liu Zhonglun 劉仲倫 (a photographer at the studio).10 The film captured the performance of the famous opera actor Tan Xinpei 譚鑫培; none of the original three-reel film has survived, and the film’s only extant image is a photograph of Tan, presumably taken during the shooting.11 While some scholars doubt that the film ever existed,12 what interests me here is how Dingjun Mountain has become accepted as the official starting point of the national cinema’s insti­ tution. In 2006, for instance, An Zhanjun 安戰軍 released a cinematic retelling of the film, also entitled Dingjun Mountain, as part of the official celebration of the centennial an­ niversary of Chinese cinema.13 An Zhanjun’s version of the beginning of national cinema includes a representation of what happened, what may have happened, and what could have happened. On the one hand, national cinema is depicted as having been built upon the establishment of the “black box” (the dark auditorium), the separation between mak­ ers and viewers, the imperatives generated by the commercially driven structure, and the state’s support.14 On the other hand, the contemporary film also offers glimpses of what else and where else cinema could have been, beyond narrative cinema and its studiobased staged production. As a result, Dingjun Mountain becomes the symbolic location of Chinese cinema’s tension between its destiny (prophetically imagined as already en­ trenched in its genesis) of being contained and controlled by an institutionalized space and its (quasi-magical) power of producing uncontainable, unpredictable events. Such tension is particularly evident in the film’s finale that shows the lost film, emphati­ cally branding the nationalization of the foreign technology with the celebration of the lo­ cally originated art of the traditional opera.15 The screening of Dingjun Mountain turns in­ to an event comparable to contemporary screenings of the classic rock musical Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), in which the audience raucously joins the performance and sings in sync with the actors on screen. The fact that An Zhanjun’s film ends with an ap­ propriation of cinema by the audiences conveys a different, possibly unintended, symbol­ ism. The choral moment certainly fits the revival of the socialist rhetoric within neoliberal values that has characterized state-promoted “main melody” (主旋律) films;16 while the open-air screening may similarly evoke itinerant film shows of the People’s Liberation Army units. However, we can also read this finale quite differently, as the representation of an imagined cinema’s prehistory foregrounding alternative cinematic practices that were marginalized and lost in the history of Chinese cinema. In this mythological begin­ ning, not only is cinema allowed to escape the containment of the black box, it is also Page 3 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator shown to be an unpredictable, exhibitionist, interactive experience. Spectators’ agency is expanded, as viewers are granted the power to shape cinema itself, rather than just silently watching it. By showing cinema viewing as being associated with doing, An’s film does not simply celebrate the birth of cinema in China, it also illustrates some of Chinese cinema’s other potentialities. Similarly, by allowing cinema to escape containment and ex­ pand into a plethora of unpredictable, exhibitionist, and interactive spaces, contemporary online small-screen cinema has actualized some of those potentialities.

Online Small-Screen Cinema: Escaping Chinese Cinema’s Boundaries (p. 380)

Since its (mythologized) beginnings, Chinese cinema has been institutionalized and can­ onized in different historical periods. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to trace the steps through which the history of the development of Chinese cinema has defined the boundaries of cinema as a visual medium and a cultural and social practice. However, in order to better understand online small-screen cinema’s challenges to the institution of cinema in China, we need to reflect upon the often unquestioned boundaries that have de­ fined the institution—boundaries that online small-screen cinema has challenged and even ruptured. The first set of boundaries is associated with cinema as an expressive medium. Following a worldwide model, Chinese cinema has been primarily understood within the parameters that have traditionally defined narrative cinema. In its broadest sense, narrative cinema refers to films that develop a narrative (documentary or fictional, classic or experimental) that assumes a specific and unalterable duration. Closely linked to the boundaries estab­ lished by narrative cinema are the boundaries of its screening apparatus: a still space (mostly a dark enclosed public space) and a still spectator (generally assumed to be sit­ ting in front of the screen) who watches the film text, uninterrupted, in a temporal contin­ uum in which he or she is supposed to step in, with different degrees of identification and absorption. Here I take narrative cinema as a heterogeneous category referring to cinema’s development after early cinema’s “event-based”17 practices and including a plethora of film styles and genres that, in turn, engage their viewers via an equally diver­ sified variety of conventions. Within this broad understanding of narrative cinema, in Chi­ nese film studies scholarship, “feature-length films of novelistic fiction” dominate, but other film genres have also been objects of inquiry.18 For instance, the study of documen­ tary filmmaking and other experimental filmmaking practices (such as art videos) has cer­ tainly expanded the field beyond studio productions and movie theater circuits. As a social practice, Chinese cinema has developed its specific, and equally influential, in­ stitutional boundaries. I also take institutions as a heterogeneous category that encom­ passes many legitimate—that is, generally recognized and endorsed—locations where cin­ ema is made, distributed, and viewed.19 These locations include corporate, state, and in­ dependently run organizations such as large and small film studios and their multimedia distribution and marketing channels (movie theaters, television broadcast, DVDs, and oth­ Page 4 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator er online media), film festivals, academic circuits, and other screening locations such cineclubs and art galleries.20 The term legitimate therefore refers not only to mainstream and state-promoted or supported enterprises, but also many nonconforming ones such as the avant-garde milieu and underground or independent practices. Within these legiti­ mate locations, Chinese cinema is currently understood via the two dominant discourses of official and unofficial cinema—a binary that in fact splits into four (p. 381) subcate­ gories.21 The first category includes state-promoted films—that is, the inheritors of the earlier, more openly propagandistic, socialist realist films. These state-sponsored main melody films are often referred to as cultural productions that aim at repackaging social­ ist realism with narrative and formal choices directly borrowed from Hollywood. The sec­ ond category includes state-approved films, such as the profitable blockbusters that bring in international capital and transnational audiences. Moving to the more dissenting area, the third category refers to state-tolerated films that, despite their controversial content and/or unlikelihood of making profit, nonetheless circulate comparatively freely within China. Finally, there are state-banned films—a relatively small number of works that can only be viewed internally via state-defiant channels and often circulate outside China in art film or academic circuits. Online small-screen cinema challenges both the ontological and the sociopolitical bound­ aries of the institution of cinema in China. On the one hand, online small-screen movies depart from the forms, production models, and screening spaces associated with narra­ tive cinema. The movies that are conceptualized and intended for online small-screen viewing tend to be short, fragmented, and event-based. Unlike narrative cinema, online small-screen cinema does not expect a still, concentrated spectator who, even when rec­ ognized and theorized as active, watches and interprets but does not or cannot impact or alter the film. Conversely, online small-screen cinema is made for a transient and distract­ ed spectator who watches films for much shorter lengths of time. It already presupposes interruptions and alterability because it assumes a nonregulated (frequently free-of-cost) distribution, changeable (and in fact unpredictable) viewing locations, and, most impor­ tantly, potential instantaneous appropriation and even transformation from the part of the viewers. At the level of content, small-screen cinema includes works that both replicate and depart from established genres. For instance, we can find live-action and animated movies that draw inspiration from fiction, art, and documentary film traditions. While remembering and remaking those traditions, however, their fragmented and exhibitionist format seeks to attract viewers, rather than inviting them to step into a narrative and identify with its characters, or absorbing them into an extended aesthetic experience, or asking them to learn or rehearse a political lesson. I have begun to theorize this alternative type of cine­ matic experience as being defined by lightness. From an ontological point of view, online small-screen cinema’s lightness refers to its cognitive and expressive brevity, fragmented format, and condensed structure, which all contribute to capture attention and engage viewers via brief pleasures and momentary epiphanies,22 in ways that are linked to yet distinct from the large-screen film experience of institutional cinema. Page 5 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator As for its social and political location, online small-screen cinema does not insert itself in the official/unofficial binary that has framed Chinese cinema prominently in relation to the state. To the above-outlined ontology of lightness corresponds a lightness of viewing that resists industrial structures, mass discourses, and ideological taxonomies. Online small-screen cinema typically involves solo producers (mostly amateur or semiprofession­ al videomakers) who share their movies at no charge, relying on gifting (p. 382) technolo­ gies. Even though many movies produced by and for online viewers may fit the state-tol­ erated category, these movies may also openly challenge or support the state, though in ways that are better understood in the context of lightness, rather than dissent or con­ sent.23 While not deprived of political engagement, online small-screen cinema most often appears to have light—that is, nonpretentious, evocative, fragmented—content. Even when critical perspectives are conveyed, they tend to provoke, surprise, evoke, and hint, rather than attack, advocate, edify, or proselytize.

Finding Online Small-Screen Cinema in the New Media Online small-screen cinema is undoubtedly a product of new media technologies. Not only do its means of production rely on the only recently available digital technology, its distri­ bution and viewing practices also take advantage of the potentially limitless media chan­ nels offered by computer and phone interconnectivity. While in theory each video can be distributed and become available to the whole World Wide Web, and some do indeed be­ come instant hits, a majority of these works reach only very small audiences. One early example is the nonsensical Bus Uncle (巴士阿叔, May 2006), a short movie cap­ turing the interaction between a (middle-aged) man scolding a (younger) passenger for interrupting his phone call on a Hong Kong bus. The video attracted the attention not on­ ly of Hong Kong media but also of the international media. The video generated a large number of edited variations in which viewers-turned-into-makers added music, superim­ posed subtitles or other animations, redubbed the dialogues, and even marketed some de­ rivative gadgets (such as T-shirts featuring the main lines from the dialogue).24 More recently, two satirical online movies have also reached large audiences and re­ ceived both national and international media scrutiny. The first movie is the quite radical­ ly dissenting animation Little Rabbit Be Good (小兔哐眶, 2011), which began to circulate as a happy year-of-the-rabbit card in early 2011. Little Rabbit Be Good shows how peaceful rabbits, after being oppressed in a series of widely known Chinese scandalous events by the evil tigers (clearly representing the Communist leadership), eventually turn against them and start killing them.25 The second of these movies is Animal World: The Apart­ ment Dweller (動物世界—宅居動物, 2011), produced by Hu Ge 胡戈. 26 Also quite openly dis­ senting, but milder in tone, Animal World satirizes Internet censorship by means of a na­ ture mockumentary on a newly evolved animal species—the computer-relying urbanite— and its habitat. The seven-minute movie investigates the urbanite’s life and, in particular, her or his online habits that “need” to be monitored and controlled to prevent “danger­ Page 6 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator ous” self-destructive behaviors. The popular blogger Han Han 韓寒 also appears in the video, as the “thinking” apartment dweller, a subspecies damaged by a highly contagious disease that undermines its adaptation and thus threatens its survival.27 Another significant challenge for addressing online small-screen cinema comes from its largely, albeit not exclusively, amateur quality, which also unsettles expectations about cinema’s authorship. New technology (and in particular DV recording and editing equipment) has certainly played a major role in allowing a larger number of nonprofes­ sionals not only to produce but also to edit and distribute their videos at very limited costs. Nonetheless, while the number of amateur videos produced in China has exploded over just the past decade, only a few works have received scholarly attention. For in­ stance, when Jia Zhangke 賈樟柯 or Wu Wenguang 吳文光 turns to DV cameras to produce nontraditional movies that then circulate over the Internet, we recognize these works as films even though their modalities of production and distribution closely resemble ama­ teur film. When cell phone movies, flash animations, or short documentaries circulate on­ line, however, it is often harder to recognize them as films. (p. 383)

One such online small-screen cinema amateur filmmaker is Btr,28 a Shanghai-based blog­ ger, translator, cinephiliac, photographer, filmmaker, and writer, who explores an every­ day aesthetic of brevity in both his visual works and his microfictions. In his short (often under two-minute) movies, Shanghai is frequently the subject, captured in unrecogniz­ able fragments that a song29 (also a fragment) momentarily holds together. For instance, in his Night is the Tender30 (sic, no Chinese title), a blurred Shanghai by night becomes an abstract mix of colorful round shapes, floating softly on the screen. The modern, fastpaced city is thus transformed into a slow-moving, hazy image that shows an anonymous, but unmistakably urban, space. Two cinephiliac moments make this short movie intensely cinematic. The movie begins with a flickering originating from one of the streetlights in the foreground. In the background the frame is split horizontally: a white building with three lines of squared windows on the top and a dark space beneath where we can barely recognize the shape of a tree. The geometrical framing is softened and interrupted by the beam of light originating from the streetlight, flowing in small squares, top to bottom, in a straight line. A similar image recurs toward the end of the movie. This time the stream of flickering light is faster and the small squares of lights have turned into a dashed line; the background is a row of tall skyscrapers. Again, a vertical-horizontal geometry is softened and interrupted by the beam of light. Both scenes, I propose, constitute intensely cinephiliac moments.31 The lampposts (see figs. 20.1 and 20.2) become a metaphor for the cinematic apparatus, and their flickering streams of light evoke the texture of an old film­ strip going through a projector, together with the resulting intermittent beams of lights one can see on the screen. The floating circles (see figs. 20.3 and 20.4) that make up the city are therefore shown as if originating out of these two imaginary projectors. In this event-based short movie, Shanghai, or better its digitally transformed video-recorded ver­ sion, is shown as essentially a spectacle of contrasting pairs: lines and circles, lights and shadows, stillness and movements.

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator

Figure 20.1 Cinephiliac moments: the streetlights as film projectors

Figure 20.2 Cinephiliac moments: the streetlights as film projectors

Figure 20.3 Shanghai: floating circles

Figure 20.4 Shanghai: floating circles

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator Even when showing images with a higher degree of realism and featuring very minimalist narratives, the films’ elliptic, evocative, and fragmented format does not elicit narrative absorption, but rather invites temporary attraction. Most online small-screen movies seek to capture our curiosity and offer brief but intense sensory experiences. This is the case in Huang Yijing’s 黃弈璟 Lips (唇) and director JRG’s Soap (no Chinese (p. 384) (p. 385) ti­ tle). Both films were submitted to Shanghai-based Metroer 2008 cellflix online competi­ tion, the suggested theme of which was “man and woman” (男女). In Lips, several close-up and medium close-up shots of a woman putting on lipstick in front of a mirror are intercut with shots of a couple walking happily in the street (see figs. 20.5–20.8). At the start of the film, the woman is wearing casual clothing, and her hair is undone. She starts to put on lipstick, but hears an indistinct noise and turns her head away from the mirror. In the next shot we see her applying a different lipstick. Next, a long shot of a couple holding hands seems to suggest that the woman is watching the couple from a window. After a close-up of a third kind of lipstick, we see the original woman putting up her hair. The relationship between the woman and the couple is un­ clear. A possible love triangle and a betrayal are hinted at, but in the end the woman, who is now shown dressed up in an elegant qipao, smiles as if unconcerned by what she just saw, her lipstick shining on her lips.

Figure 20.5 Lips

Figure 20.6 Lips

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator

Figure 20.7 Lips

Figure 20.8 Lips

Figure 20.9 Soap

Figure 20.10 Soap

Soap shows hands caressing and squeezing each other while holding a bar of soap under the water running from a tap, in a white sink (see figs. 20.9 and 20.10). We can recognize two female hands later joined by a single male one, suggesting that the missing fourth Page 10 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator hand may be the one holding the video camera. An almost imperceptible (p. 386) (p. 387) dissolve reveals that what appears to be one take is probably several takes that have been edited together. The transfer of a wedding band from the male hand to the ring fin­ ger of one of the female ones leads to a more active interaction between the hands, fol­ lowed by the exit of the male hand. The result is a minimalist three-act narrative of en­ counter, union, and separation, with which the film attempts to activate our senses of touch and smell. Finally, the last challenge to the institution of cinema—possibly even greater than the one posed by the rise of amateur practices—comes from the online small-screen viewing expe­ rience that redefines and emancipates spectatorship, The online spectator moves in and out of the film text, is distracted and attracted, watches but does not concentrate for lengthy periods of time, seeks pleasure rather than narrative absorption.32 In other words, online small-screen cinema shares some striking similarities with the lost practice of the early cinema of attractions in both its content and context. Furthermore, in this viewing experience the spectator has the power (although not always actualized) to im­ pact the film text itself more directly. While the act of vision itself is never passive, the on­ line spectator can appropriate and even edit, change, and redistribute the film text. The online small-screen spectator is therefore ontologically (p. 388) located beyond the longrecognized and theorized active audiences. Online small-screen cinema users have been emancipated from the subordinate position, which, Jacques Rancière argues, has charac­ terized our understanding of the spectators, even when we have recognized their active and participatory roles. It is these two important traits—online screen cinema’s exhibi­ tionist nature and its emancipating value—that most significantly point to online smallscreen cinema’s contribution to both film histories and film theories.

Conclusion: The Emancipated Spectator—Back to the Future of Cinema In online small-screen cinema, spectators are attracted and distracted and can intervene to alter what they are watching. According to Francesco Casetti, in the postmedium age the spectator is not just active in watching and interpreting but has in fact become hyper­ active, busy “doing” things that seem ultimately to prevent her or him from having a filmic experience: “The effect is that the spectators become the active protagonists of the game. They are no longer asked to be present at a projection with eyes wide open; in­ stead, they act. Attendance has ceded the field to performance.”33 For this reason, specta­ tors seeking to regain the film experience that this hyperactivity has caused them to lose may “find themselves on the deepest level exactly where cinema has longest dwelled.”34 This “where” is the movie theater: “the Motherland.” Casetti argues that this return to the Motherland happens precisely because the migration of cinema toward its multiple windows “dissolves the filmic experience into a more general media experience.”35 To reestablish its unique identity over all the other media experiences, while relocating else­ where, cinema also longs for a familiar home, its long-established institution.36 Page 11 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator Casetti’s examination of the relocation of cinema can help us position online small-screen cinema within cinema’s history. On the one hand, cinema continues to reinvent itself to preserve its institutionalized identity (for instance, the rise of 3-D films, multiplex, and home theater screens all constitute an expansion of the film experience); on the other hand, it seems to have developed another identity. Online small-screen cinema, although part of the cinema’s history, offers a quite different type of film viewing experience that is at odds with its dominant ontology. As noted above, online small-screen movies do not seek the type of concentrated attendance described by Casetti. Their Motherland is else­ where, I have argued, closer to the fluid, yet-to-be-institutionalized spaces of the earlier cinema of attractions. Do-it-yourself moviemaking practices, downloading of movies, computer editing, and on­ line circulation of previously untouchable film texts have (re)created a fluid, noninstitu­ tional space where viewers can be “emancipated spectators.”37 For Jacques (p. 389) Ran­ cière, at the core of the unequal position between the spectator and the theater (includ­ ing the play, its author, as well the performance with its actors and the stage) is a bias against his or her vision (watching and listening here are ontologically fused in the act of looking at the performance on stage). Rancière notes that the spectator cannot be fully emancipated from a subordinated position as long as this act of vision is seen as being an expression of a minor intelligence, an active but nonetheless subordinate response to a preexisting, more powerfully creative act of a dominant intelligence (that of the author/ maker of the performance). In other words, what really frees the spectators from their subservient position, rather than a tangible interaction with the spectacle of theater or the establishment of a critical distance (Brecht), is the recognition that the spectator heror himself is ontologically equal to the creator, as they both are essential to the making of the performance. The fact that online small-screen cinema viewers can also be makers and distributors of the movies they watch plays an important role in why and how this emancipation takes place. It is in this potentiality, which has been traditionally denied to the active audiences in the movie theater, that we can theorize Rancière’s emancipated spectator. Cinema hap­ pens online when the viewers recognize it as such. Online small-screen viewers create the film experience with their act of viewing, separating it from all the other countless media events and practices. Furthermore, this act of viewing also involves the implicit possibili­ ty of impacting the movie directly. Even when they choose not to edit or not to produce their own movies, online small-screen viewers have roles equal, unsubordinated, and complementary to the spectacle they are watching. Outside the production and distribu­ tion configurations that have characterized the institution of cinema, what makes online small-screen cinema a cinematic experience is not only the authorial intention but also, just as crucially, the spectator’s act of viewing. We can argue that in an empty movie the­ ater, even with nobody watching it, the screening of a feature film can still be identified as cinema. Conversely, not supported by any of the attributes that traditionally have de­ fined Chinese cinema, Btr’s Night is the Tender and JRG’s Soap become cinema (that is, in Casetti’s terms, that “unique” medium experience, different from other general media ex­ perience) only in the cinephiliac intentions of their amateur/maker and in the cinephiliac Page 12 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator pleasures of its online viewers. As Rancière has argued with respect to the theater spec­ tator, “Emancipation…begins when we dismiss the opposition between looking and acting and understand that the distribution of the visible itself is part of the configuration of domination and subjection. It starts when we realize that looking is also an action that confirms or modifies that distribution, and that ‘interpreting the world’ is already a means of transforming it.”38 It is of course debatable whether these small-screen cinematic texts produced in China or by Chinese can necessarily be regarded as “Chinese” texts in their own right. As noted earlier, the dominance of narrative cinema and its institutions can be described as a worldwide reality. Conversely, the rise of online small-screen cinema in the new media en­ vironment is not a uniquely Chinese phenomenon. However, there are important specifici­ ties that distinguish both the institution of Chinese cinema and (p. 390) Chinese online small-screen cinema from other similar developments around the world. As the myth of Dingjun Mountain shows, the birth of cinema in China has a deep link with the making of the nation, more strongly than, for instance, in Europe or North America, where it is mostly associated with the making of modernity and its first pioneers, the Lumière broth­ ers and Georges Méliès. Consequently, in a Chinese context, the challenges that online small-screen cinema brings to the institution of cinema contribute to a rethinking of not only the ontology of cinema, but also a discourse on the nation. Chinese online smallscreen cinema challenges national cinema, its official/unofficial binary, and its cultural and economic “weight,” which has been historically solidified, legitimatized, and widely endorsed. Online small-screen cinema does not dismiss the relevance of the nation; in fact it is quite localized in China. On the one hand, these sorts of online small-screen movies are typically in Chinese, with no dubbing or subtitles.39 On the other hand, even when the content of the movies is not specifically Chinese (such as Night is the Tender or Soap), the linguistic and cultural location of their makers and viewers is recognizably Chi­ nese. Unlike YouTube, Chinese websites like tudou or youku are likely to be visited almost exclusively by users from China or the Chinese diaspora. Furthermore, unlike the official and unofficial Chinese cinemas that are marketed in global economies and circulated in transnational cultural spaces, this small-screen cinema possesses neither an actual mar­ ket nor significant cultural capital.40 Online small-screen cinema therefore opens up a cultural space that is both within and outside the nation. In this transient and shared space, concepts of both Chineseness and cinema are redefined outside the dominant pub­ lic discourses on the nation and instead relocated into the fragmented perspectives of in­ numerable “emancipated” subjectivities reclaiming control and agency over their creative and viewing pleasures. While positioned within a new media environment, the online small-screen cinema’s expe­ rience is linked to some of cinema’s least developed potentialities. As movies like Animal World or Night is the Tender illustrate, online small-screen cinema relies on pleasureseeking but also thought-provoking brief engagements with the moving image, departing from the concentration/absorption model developed by narrative cinema. In this sense, it addresses the spectator in ways that are different from the dominant ways of the institu­ tion of cinema and closer to the early cinema of attractions. The final scene in An Page 13 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator Zhanjun’s filmic retelling of Dingjun Mountain illustrates how, as Sean Cubitt describes in another context, “the dynamism of the cinematograph as event, rather than narrative, in­ duces its spectators not to anchor themselves as the narrated objects of a screen perfor­ mance, but to mobilize themselves as hectic and excited participants in an event that leads them not to contemplation but to sharing. It is a brief moment of innocence before the regulation of cinema into an industrial formation.”41 Similarly, online small-screen cinema’s emancipated spectators are reengaging with that participatory performance conducive “not to contemplation but to sharing” and are reviving that dynamic and un­ regulated “brief moment of innocence” during which cinema was not yet dominated by narrative cinema and not yet contained in an institutional order.

Works Cited Baudry, Jean-Louis. “The Apparatus: Metaphysical Approaches to the Impression of Reali­ ty in Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 760–778. Berry, Chris. “Facing Reality: Chinese Documentary, Chinese Postsocialism.” Reinterpre­ tation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art: 1990–2000. Ed. Wu Hung, Wang Huang­ sheng and Feng Boyi. Guangzhou: Guangdong Museum of Art, 2002. Berry, Chris. Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: The Cultural Revolution af­ ter the Cultural Revolution. New York: Routledge, 2004. (p. 395)

Berry, Chris, and Mary Ann Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Berry, Chris, Lü Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel. The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Brady, Anne-Marie. Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contempo­ rary China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Casetti, Francesco. “Back to the Motherland: The Film Theatre in the Postmedia Age.” Screen 52.1 (2011): 1–12. Chu, Yingchi. Chinese Documentaries: From Dogma to Polyphony. New York: Routledge, 2007. Cohen, Paul. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Cubitt, Sean. The Cinema Effect. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. Cui, Shuqin. “Working from the Margins: Urban Cinema and Independent Directors in Contemporary China.” Post Script 20.2–3 (2001): 77–93.

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator Cui Zi’en 崔子恩. “Yese liaoren: Zhongguo duli dianying de xiao quanjing he datexie” 夜色 撩人:中國獨立電影的小全景和大特寫 [Tantalizing night: Independent film in China in a small panorama and big close-up].” Furong 芙蓉 2002: no. 2, 70–80. Curtin, Michael. Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Dai Jinhua 戴錦華. Wuzhong fengjing 霧中風景 [A scene in the fog]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2000. Fang Fang 方方. Zhongguo jilupian fazhan shi 中國紀錄片發展歷史 [A history of the develop­ ment of Chinese documentaries]. Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2003. Fowler, Catherine, and Paola Voci. “Brief Encounters: Theorizing Screen Attachments out­ side the Movie Theatre.” Screening the Past 32 (2011), http:// www.screeningthepast.com/2011/11/brief-encounters-theorizing-screen-attach­ ments-outside-the-movie-theatre/. Gaudreault André. “From ‘Primitive Cinema’ to ‘Kine-Attractography.’” The Cinema of At­ traction Reloaded. Ed. Wanda Strauven. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006. 85–104. Ge Congmin. “Photography, Shadow Play, Beijing Opera and the First Chinese Film.” Eras Journal 3 (2002), http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/publications/eras/edition-3/ ge.php. Gong, Haomin. “Digitized Parody: The Politics of Egao in Contemporary China.” China In­ formation 24.1 (2010): 3–26. Gong, Qian. “A Trip Down Memory Lane: Remaking and Rereading the Red Classics.” TV Drama in China. Ed. Ying Zhu, Michael Keane and Ruoyon Bai. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008. 157–171. Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant Garde.” Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative. Ed. Thomas Elsaesser. London: BFI Pub­ lishing, 1990. 56–62. Huang Dequan 黄德泉. “Dianying chudao Shanghai kaoti yao” 電影初到上海考提要 [When movies first came to Shanghai]. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 3 (2007): 102–109. Huang Dequan 黄德泉. “Xiqu dianying Dingjun shan zhi youlai yu yanbian” 戲曲電影《定軍 山》之由來與演變 [The origins and development of the opera film Dingjun Mountain]. Dang­ dai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary film] 2 (2008): 104–111. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence.” International Journal of Cul­ tural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43.

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator Jenkins, Henry. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2006. (p. 396)

Keathley, Christian. Cinephilia and History, or the Wind in the Trees. Bloomington: Indi­ ana University Press, 2006. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, Myspace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today’s User-Generated Media Are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Val­ ues. Rev. ed. London: Nicholas Brealey, 2008. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2005. Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. New York: Vintage Books, 2002. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Lon­ don: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. Lu, Sheldon H. China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001. Lu, Sheldon H. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997. Lü Xinyu 吕新雨. Jilu Zhongguo: Dangdai Zhongguo xin jilupian yundong 紀錄中國: 當代中國 新紀錄片運動 [Recording China: Contemporary Chinese new documentary movement]. Bei­ jing: Shenghuo dushu xinzhi sanlian shudian, 2003. Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Morley, David. Media, Modernity, and Technology: The Geography of the New. New York: Routledge, 2007. Morley, David. Television, Audiences, and Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Intro­ ductory Readings. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 833–844. Pickowicz, Paul, and Yingjin Zhang. From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Rancière, Jacques. “The Emancipated Spectator.” Artforum, March 2007, 271–280.

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator Reynaud, Bérénice. “Dancing with Myself, Drifting with My Camera: The Emotional Vagabonds of China’s New Documentary.” Senses of Cinema, September 3, 2003. http:// sensesofcinema.com/2003/feature-articles/chinas_new_documentary/. Robinson, Luke. “Contingency and Event in China’s New Documentary Film Movement, University of Nottingham Eprints.” 2007. Retrieved September 28, 2009, from http:// eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/546/. Shan Wanli 單萬里. Zhongguo jiludianyingshi 中國紀錄電影史 [A history of Chinese documen­ tary filmmaking]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2005. Shen Lu 沈魯. “Duochong shiyu zhong de ‘zhuxuanlü’ dianshiju” 多重視閾中的主旋律電視劇 [Main melody television shows from multiple perspectives]. Zhongguo dianshi 中國電視 [Chinese television] 7 (2004): 54–58. Strauven, Wanda, ed. The Cinema of Attraction Reloaded. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Uni­ versity Press, 2006. Su, Wendy. “New Strategies of China’s Film Industry as Soft Power.” Global Media and Communication 6.3 (2010): 317–322. (p. 397)

Voci, Paola. China on Video: Smaller-Screen Realities. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Voci, Paola. “Dal Grande Al Piccolo Schermo: Nuovi Sviluppi Del Documentario Cinese” [From silver screen to small screen: New developments in Chinese documen­ tary]. Ombre Elettriche. Cento Anni Di Cinema Cinese 1905–2005 [Electric shadows: 100 Years of Chinese cinema 1905–2005]. Ed. Marco Mueller and Elena Pollacchi. Venice: Venezia Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, 2005. 158–167. Voci, Paola. “From the Center to the Periphery: Chinese Documentary’s Visual Conjec­ tures.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 16.1 (2004): 65–113. Wang Weici 王蔚慈. Jilu yu tansuo: Yu Dalu jilupian gongzuozhe de shiji duihua 紀錄與探索: 與大陸紀錄片工作者的世紀對話 [Recording and exploring: Conversations with documentari­ ans from Mainland China]. Taibei: Yuanliu chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 2000. Wang, Yiman. “The Amateur’s Lightning Rod: DV Documentary in Postsocialist China.” Film Quarterly 58.4 (2005): 16–26. Zhang Xianmin 張獻民. Kanbujian de yingxiang 看不見的影像 [Unwatchable films]. Shang­ hai: Sanlian shudian, 2004. Zhang Xianmin 張獻民. “Liangge pinghang de yuzhou” 兩個平行的宇宙 [Two parallel univers­ es]. Disan Zhongguo duli dianxiang nianduzhan 第三中國獨立影像年度展 [The third China in­ dependent film festival]. Ed. Cao Kai 曹愷 and Zou Jing 左靖. Nanjing: Museum of Modern Art, 2006. 38–42.

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator Zhang Xianmin 張獻民 and Zhang Yaxuan 張亞璇. Yi ge ren de yingxiang: DV wanquan shouce 一個人的影像: DV 完全手冊 [Personal images: A complete DV handbook; English title in the inside cover: All about DV: Works, making, creation, comments]. Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 2003. Zhang, Yingjin. “Styles, Subjects, and Special Points of View: A Study of Contemporary Chinese Independent Documentary.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 2.2 (2004): 119–135. Zhang Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zhang Zhen, ed. The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

Notes: (1.) Online (and/or on-the-phone) cinema is a creative practice that has developed within what I broadly call smaller-screen realities. See Paola Voci, China on Video: SmallerScreen Realities (New York: Routledge, 2010). Smaller screens characterize the record­ ing/viewing devices (i.e., a DV camera’s LCD screen, the computer monitor, the cell phone display) that have taken cinema out of studio production and movie theater or TV broad­ cast distribution. (2.) I note the geopolitical and cultural complexity of Chinese cinemas (which include na­ tional, transnational, and diasporic authors, texts and audiences), but in this chapter I mostly limit my analysis to examples framed within the PRC context. (3.) In the participatory culture context, amateur has become a polarized term. In particu­ lar, there is an ongoing controversy over its contribution (or threat) to what we might call, paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, the work of art in the age of digital reproduction. For instance, Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons, values the amateur as a form of creative practice contributing to the development “free culture.” See Lessig Lawrence, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity (New York: Penguin, 2005), The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008). Andrew Keen, on the other hand, sees this culture as an unoriginal, parasitic, and destabilizing practice. See Keen, The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, Myspace, YouTube and the Rest of Today’s User-Generated Media Are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values (London: Nicholas Brealey, 2008). (4.) See Sean Cubitt, The Cinema Effect (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005). Tom Gunning has developed the concept of “cinema of attractions” to describe early (prior to 1906) film’s exhibitionist format, based on the spectacle of the new medium, rather than a particular film narrative. For more on the cinema of attractions, see Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant Garde,” in Early Cinema: Space, Page 18 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator Frame, Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser (London: BFI Publishing, 1990), 56–62; and Wan­ da Strauven, ed. The Cinema of Attraction Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006). (5.) Whereas in Western film studies early cinema is generally used to refer to film history’s first decade (1895–1905), in Chinese film studies the term is often used to refer to films of the silent era produced from 1905 up until the 1920s and 1930s. Since my fo­ cus is on a cinema that had not yet been institutionalized, I here refer to the earlier (roughly middle and late 1890s to early in the second decade of the twentieth century) developments of cinema that took place after its initial introduction in China. An in-depth examination of this earlier period may be found in Zhen Zhang, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). (6.) In China, not unlike Europe and North America, the process leading to the creation of the institution of cinema occurred between the early 1900s and late in the second decade of the twentieth century. See André Gaudreault, “From ‘Primitive Cinema’ to ‘Kine-Attrac­ tography,’” in The Cinema of Attraction Reloaded, ed. Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam: Ams­ terdam University Press, 2006), 87. (7.) Paul Cohen analyzes the Boxers first by constructing a narrative history of their movement/revolution, and then including an ethnographic historian perspective that fo­ cuses on how the participants to this event experienced it (e.g., mass spirit possession, magic practices, female pollution, etc.). Finally, he looks at both the mythological past from which the Boxers took inspiration and the mythological revival of Boxerism as a pa­ triotic/anti-imperialist spirit during the Cultural Revolution. See Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). (8.) On this topic, see Henry Jenkin’s work on media convergence and participatory cul­ ture in Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2006). (9.) The two most popular activities for both computer Internet users and mobile phone Internet users are accessing web music and web news, followed by information acquisi­ tion (via search engines), instant messaging, and web gaming. Web video comes sixth fol­ lowed by e-mail, blogging (CNNIC twenty-seventh report, “Statistical Report on Internet Development in China,” 2011 available at http://www1.cnnic.cn/IDR/ReportDownloads/ 201209/P978019976560788544497.pdf). (10.) An excellent overview of this topic can be found in Ge Congmin, “Photography, Shad­ ow Play, Beijing Opera and the First Chinese Film,” Eras Journal 3 (2002). (11.) Liu Zhongming 劉仲明, an apprentice at the Fengtai Studio, was interviewed in the 1950s and provided details about how the film was shot. Huang Dequan 黄德泉, “Xiqu di­ anying Dingjun shan zhi youlai yu yanbian” 戲曲電影《定軍山》之由來與演變 [The origins and Page 19 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator development of the opera film Dingjun Mountain], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary film] 2 (2008): 104–111. (12.) According to Huang Dequan, the existence of the film is hardly a proven fact. By carefully digging out documented evidence, Huang exposes a significant number of con­ tradictions within the overwhelmingly accepted version of the making of the film, as well as the fallacious nature of the many recounts used as supporting evidence, which, he ar­ gues, do not amount to more than hearsay. See Huang Dequan, “Origins and Develop­ ment of Dingjun Mountain.” Huang has also written another revisionist article concerning the first film showings in Shanghai: Huang Dequan 黄德泉, “Dianying chudao Shanghai kaoti yao” 電影初到上海考提要 [When movies first came to Shanghai], Dianying yishu 電影藝 術 [Film art] 3 (2007): 102–109. (13.) In 2000, the U.S.-based director Ann Hu 胡安 also released a readaptation of the film: Shadow Magic (西洋鏡). (14.) The state’s involvement plays an important role. After the accident, both Ren and Liu are imprisoned and tortured until a sympathetic official, Prince Qing (慶王爺) and Tan Xinpei manage to have them released. If cinema presents a threat to the state, it will nec­ essarily encounter firm opposition and even violent punishment. However, cinema can re­ gain the state’s favorable endorsement if the benevolent leadership is reassured that cin­ ema does not in fact intend to threaten its authority. (15.) Besides the phantasmagoric power of film itself, a major role in the 2006 film Dingjun Mountain is played by the equally phantasmagoric world of Beijing opera and its famous star, Tan Xinpei (who is played here by the actor’s grandson, Tan Yuanshou 譚元 壽). Furthermore, the character in the film corresponding to Ren Qingtai is himself an opera fan and an amateur singer and sees in cinema a new means to celebrate this tradi­ tion. (16.) The conceptualization and actualization of main melody cultural productions devel­ oped in the economic reforms era or, as Anne-Marie Brady defines it, in the new “market­ ing dictatorship” context. See Brady Anne-Marie, Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). Besides films such as The Founding of a Republic (2009), TV dramas have also been a privileged location for main melody narrative strategies to dismantle and promote the old socialist system of meanings and integrate it in the general discourse of neoliberalism in China’s postsocialist context. (17.) As Sean Cubitt has noted, early cinema offered an “event” to share, rather than a narrative to contemplate. See Cubitt, The Cinema Effect, 15. (18.) Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 19.

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator (19.) Elsewhere, I argue that it “is quality- and quantity-oriented endorsement-giving enti­ ties, rather than high vs. lowbrow or mainstream vs. non-mainstream divisions, that cre­ ate the most basic cultural hierarchy in which what is not (or cannot) be endorsed be­ comes immaterial.” See Voci, China on Video, 12–13. (20.) All the above categories—corporate, state, and independent—are of course partly overlapping. In particular, the term independent, which is generally used to refer to pri­ vately funded (often low-budget) filmmaking that tends to have an “underground,” nonof­ ficial distribution, has a very porous meaning. In fact, independence neither necessarily excludes commercial goals nor precludes some compromise or negotiation with the state. (21.) See Zhang Xianmin’s 張献民 discussion of the parallel universes of official and unoffi­ cial Chinese film culture: “Liangge pinghang de yuzhou” 兩個平行的宇宙 [Two parallel uni­ verses], in Disan Zhongguo duli dianxiang nianduzhan 第三中國獨立影像年度展 [The third China Independent Film Festival], ed. Cao Kai 曹愷 and Zou Jing 左靖 (Nanjing: Museum of Modern Art, 2006), 38–42. For more on this divide and its gray areas, see Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang, From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Con­ temporary China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). (22.) For a theorization of the moment in cinematic experiences outside the movie theater, see Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci, “Brief Encounters: Theorizing Screen Attachments outside the Movie Theatre,” Screening the Past 32 (2011) http:// www.screeningthepast.com/2011/11/brief-encounters-theorizing-screen-attachments-out­ side-the-movie-theatre/. (23.) For specific examples of light small screen’s political activism, see Voci, China on Video, 136–143. (24.) For more on the Bus Uncle video and its popular cultural ramifications, see the web­ site at http://www.busuncle.com/. The term is included in the online urban dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bus%20uncle and has a Wikipedia en­ try at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bus_Uncle. (25.) For more on this video see http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/01/“little-rabbit-begood”-a-subversive-new-years'-video-card/. (26.) Hu Ge is a blogger and videomaker who rose to fame with his egao entitled Yige mantou yinfade xue’an 一個饅頭引發的血案 [The bloody case that started from a steamed bun, aka, “A Murder Caused by a Mantou”], a spoof of Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 The Promise (無極, 2006). The Animal World video as well as all the other Hu Ge’s movies are widely available on video-sharing websites such as tudou, youku, and YouTube. (27.) Han Han is a professional car racer, writer, and an immensely popular blogger. His blog (http://blog.sina.com.cn/twocold), which he started in 2006, is the most-read blog in China. His critical perspectives can be described as sharp and common sense-based rather than radically dissenting, but, overall, he is considered an independent thinker who is not afraid to critique government’s corruption and social injustices. While some of Page 21 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator his controversial posts are regularly deleted by the cyberpolice, he has not (yet) been more directly prosecuted or persecuted (as other prominent online and offline dissenters have been). An interview with Han Han is available at http://chinadigitaltimes.net/ 2011/09/conversation-with-han-han/. (28.) I first stumbled upon Btr’s videos in 2006 while browsing for Chinese cellflix. He has produced only about a dozen videos—all of them very short, evocative, and cryptic movies. He is mostly interested in photography and is a prolific short-story writer. Btr’s acronym comes from Milčo Mančevski’s renowned feature film Before the Rain (1994). Btr’s blog is at http://btr.blogbus.com/; Btr also has a YouTube channel, btrshanghai at http://www.youtube.com/user/btrshanghai#p/u. (29.) Btr often chooses European (mostly French, but also Portuguese) female singers for the sound tracks of his movies. (30.) The video is available in several sites, such as youku http://v.youku.com/v_show/ id_XMTM1MTY5MjQw.html, Vimeo http://vimeo.com/6766244, and YouTube http:// www.youtube.com/user/btrshanghai#p/u/11/owUwfZZVUvc. (31.) For more on the cinephiliac moment as a defining, albeit overlooked, element in film ontology and history, see Keathley Christian, Cinephilia and History, or the Wind in the Trees (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). (32.) Besides online small-screen cinema, gallery film viewing also departs from the IMA (institutional mode of attention) that characterizes movie theater. See Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci, “Brief Encounters.” (33.) Francesco Casetti, “Back to the Motherland: The Film Theatre in the Postmedia Age,” Screen 52.1 (2011): 11. (34.) Francesco Casetti, “Back to the Motherland,” 8 (emphases added). (35.) Francesco Casetti, “Back to the Motherland,” 11. (36.) For Casetti, besides the institutional attribute, cinema’s specificities include a need for territoriality and a need for domestication (Francesco Casetti, “Back to the Mother­ land,” 10). (37.) I am here referring to Jacques Rancière’s examination of spectatorship in the con­ text of theater performances that he elaborates in his lecture on “The Emancipated Spec­ tator,” Artforum, March 2007, 271–280. (38.) Jacques Rancière “The Emancipated Spectator,” 277. (39.) With few exceptions, like Little Rabbit Be Good or Animal World, these movies have no large fan basis, which could help to make them more global in their reach. For in­

Page 22 of 23

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Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emanci­ pated Spectator stance, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean TV dramas are regularly subtitled (in various lan­ guages) by fans and posted online. (40.) Online small-screen cinema is also more localized than the Chinese unofficial cine­ ma that finds both translation and distribution in international independent festivals and academic events, via organizations like Fanhall in China and dGenerate in the United States. (41.) Sean Cubitt, The Cinema Effect, 15–16.

Paola Voci

Paola Voci is Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago. Her research focuses on Chi­ nese cinemas and, in particular, documentary videomaking. Her work appears in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Screening the Past, Senses of Cinema, and Bianco e Nero and in several edited collections of essays. She is the author of China on Video (Routledge 2010), a book that analyses movies made and viewed on smaller screens (i.e., the DV camera, the computer monitor—and, within it, the Internet win­ dow—and the cellphone display).

Page 23 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film

Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Per­ formance in Chinese Silent Film   Jason McGrath The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0022

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the critical discourse on acting in early Chinese cinema, and par­ ticularly the ways in which the contrast of film acting with stage acting exemplified broader rhetorics of realism, modernity, and scientism in semicolonial China following the May Fourth Movement. An emphasis on realism and mimesis in cinema rather than the formalism and semiosis of traditional Chinese art forms was part of a broader contempo­ rary interest in the idea of objective representation. At the same time, the close-up in par­ ticular was thought to demand a new style of “interior performance” in which character emotions were felt by the actor and conveyed through the eyes and face with the purpose of “moving” modern audiences with authenticity. Nonetheless, claims for the unique real­ ism of the film medium must be viewed in light of the growing dominance of realism in all the arts, including theater. Keywords: realism, formalism, mimesis, semiosis, theater, scientism, objectivity, acting, performance

In the first book written in English on Chinese cinema, Jay Leyda asserts of Chinese silent film star Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 that “any one of her films, even one of her worst, will support my opinion that here was one of the great actresses of film history, as perfectly and pecu­ liarly adapted to film as we recognize Greta Garbo to be.”1 Many of Ruan’s contempo­ raries, including actors and directors with whom she worked closely, had similar views that Ruan embodied the essence of great cinematic acting.2 But what exactly does it mean to describe a performance style as being perfectly adapted to the medium of film? What constellation of ideas about art, performance, medium, and modernity led to the standards by which Ruan’s peers in the 1930s—as well as Western film scholars decades later—evaluated her work so highly? If Ruan represented great cinematic acting, what performance styles were not felt to be appropriate to film, and why? In particular, how was film acting related to stage acting? An exploration of these questions will prompt a discussion of both the claims for an intrinsic realism of cinema, made by both Western film theorists and their Chinese counterparts, and the much broader discourses of real­ ism in Republican China. The cinematic medium will be seen not as provoking entirely Page 1 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film new ideas about the nature of representation, but rather as uniquely embodying new ide­ ologies of mimesis, objectivity, and scientism circulating in Chinese culture at the time.

Figure 21.1 Shadowplay Magazine cover

These issues are evident in what is generally considered to be the first work of Chinese film theory, the April 1921 introduction to the inaugural issue of Motion Picture Review, or literally “shadowplay magazine” (影戲雜誌; see fig. 21.1). The Chinese word for film used here—yingxi 影戲 or “shadowplay”—alerts us to the fact that the “prehistory” of cine­ ma varies across cultures because of different preexisting dramatic forms and optical en­ tertainments (including, in China, shadow puppetry), and the intermedial relationships that result may vary accordingly. The word shadowplay was a shortening of two earlier terms for cinema—Western shadowplay and electric shadowplay—and film commentators in China tended to see film both as an extension of existing dramatic (p. 402) forms and as a significant departure from them. In fact, as in the West, early Chinese film theory often revolved around the question of just how film distinguished itself from theater, and argu­ ments for cinema’s medium specificity served to justify both its artistic value and its wider social function. The introduction to Shadowplay Magazine (I use the more literal translation of the journal title to underscore the connotations of the original), written by chief editor Gu Kenfu 顧肯 夫, a drama actor who would soon go into film production, describes the “raw materials” of cinema as being of three types: technique, literature, and science. Under the rubric of technique, Gu emphasizes performance style, and while in some passages he treats cine­ ma as simply another form of drama, after a discussion of how the dominant trend in “world drama” is the “realist school” (寫實派), with its emphasis on being “true-to-life” (逼 真), he asserts that film is the dramatic art most capable of verisimilitude.3 Traditional dramatic forms such as Beijing opera (京劇) are particularly deficient in this regard, espe­ cially in comparison to cinema. Gu describes Beijing opera as “stylized” (圖案式的), and

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film film in contrast is perceived as “lifelike” (寫生式的), without any “exaggerated expression.”4 Gu illustrates the problem of China’s tradition of exaggerated or overly stylized acting through the specific example of the Beijing opera The Drunken Concubine (貴妃醉酒), in which the main character acts out intoxication in an acrobatic manner, striking the pose known as the “reclining fish” (臥魚; see fig. 21.2).

Figure 21.2 Acting drunk in “Reclining fish” pose

Gu complains that, no matter where one is in the world (and the global consciousness here is significant), in real life one will never find anyone who acts drunk in this particu­ lar manner. He goes on to list several other standardized Beijing opera conventions that he (p. 403) also views as irredeemably unrealistic—indeed, as nothing less than “jokes.”5 It is no doubt true that the reclining fish pose does not represent drunkenness as directly and mimetically as, say, the slapstick performances of silent film stars of the time such as Harold Lloyd (see fig. 21.3), whose face had graced the cover of that first issue of Shad­ owplay magazine in 1921. The relatively conventionalized and stylized nature of Beijing opera may be seen from the fact that one can look up the “reclining fish” pose in a recent encyclopedia of traditional Chinese drama with over 650 pages of specialized opera terms (see fig. 21.4).6 The entry describes the pose and then explicitly mentions The Drunken Concubine as one of the standard repertoire performances in which it is featured.

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film

Figure 21.3 Lloyd acting drunk in High and Dizzy (1920)

Figure 21.4 Chinese opera encyclopedia entry on “reclining fish” pose

As the entries in such comprehensive dictionaries make clear, traditional Chinese opera performance tends toward semiosis, or the inscription of symbolic meaning by conven­ tion, rather than mimesis, or real-life resemblance. The performers’ poses, actions, make­ up, and costumes follow highly codified sign systems shared by performers and specta­ tors, and while the world depicted is of course in some sense still (p. 404) mimetically re­ lated to human reality, it is a highly stylized version of that reality, with narrative events that demand semiotic reading from a culturally literate audience. Silent cinema, on the other hand, had aspirations to universal intelligibility, and the mimetic directness of, say, Harold Lloyd’s slapstick comedy or D. W. Griffith’s melodramatic rescue sequences in­ deed seemed to allow engaged viewership from peoples of vastly different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Of course, as I use them here, semiosis and mimesis are relative and inescapably intertwined terms; just as traditional Chinese opera has mimetic ele­ ments, cinema always engages any number of social, cultural, technical, and artistic con­ ventions. Nonetheless, a photograph or film shot of, for instance, an actual mountain is

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film typically more immediately and universally recognizable as such than is a chair on a Bei­ jing opera stage that is being used to represent a mountain. Gu’s point regarding naturalistic rather than conventionalized acting was in keeping with his overall goal of enlightening his readers about the ostensibly world-dominant “realist school” and the utmost importance of verisimilitude. Such a concern would be reiterated by a variety of Chinese filmmakers, actors, and critics throughout the 1920s (p. 405) who felt that cinema called for a drastic change in performance style. Exaggerated acting must be replaced by subtle performance, stylized gestures must give way to realistic body language and facial expressions, and the practice of having men play women’s roles must be put to an end. This latter point was emphasized by many critics in the 1920s because Chinese-made films in the previous decade had followed the traditional convention in Chi­ nese drama of separating the gender of a character from the sex of the performer. In fact, almost without exception, films from this period still followed the Qing dynasty’s ban on female actors, even though by this point the Qing had fallen and the ban had been offi­ cially lifted. Thus the films of the second decade of the century had featured all-male casts playing both male and female roles.7 However, it is interesting to note that, with the exception of filmed performances of traditional Chinese operas, most of the film actors of the time were drawn from the burgeoning “new drama” (新劇) theater movement that had been inspired by the Japanese shingeki (the same characters as the Chinese term), a selfavowedly “modern” form of drama inspired by Western theater. It was thought that new drama performers had a more realistic performance style than actors in traditional Chi­ nese drama and thus were more suited to the new medium of film. By the 1920s, further developments in acting practices were also motivated by the medium’s perceived demand for realism. First, women’s roles began to be played by fe­ male actors, partly because it was believed that film made male actors look ridiculous in female roles. This change was explicitly connected to the realism that was viewed as re­ quired by the new medium.8 Second, new drama actors fell out of fashion in film roles, in favor of actors in the even more “modern” movement of “spoken drama” (話劇), which was supposed to be the equivalent of vernacular plays in the modern West. That is, spo­ ken drama actors now appeared to be more “realistic” than new drama ones—just as the latter had appeared more realistic than, say, Beijing opera ones—and thus more suited to cinema.9 These developments were tied in particular to cinema’s variable shot distance, and espe­ cially to the spread of the close-up to Chinese filmmaking in the 1920s. In a 1925 essay, pioneering Chinese filmmaker Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋 discussed the issue of how actors needed to adjust to such differences if they wished to make the leap from new drama act­ ing to film acting. Drama, he asserted, “is made for exaggeration rather than subtle per­ formance” due to the relatively distant stage in a theater that is often crowded, noisy, and filled with distractions. In film, however, “the situation is completely different”; whereas drama actors remain on the stage at a more or less set distance from the audience, in film “the camera can move and magnify in close-up with ease.” Even “extreme long shots that resemble stage distance” are different because of the magnification of scale in screen Page 5 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film projection. Thus, while stage actors must move about in an exaggerated manner, “it is in­ appropriate to overact on screen, as everything is big and close,” an injunction that ap­ plies even to “extremely subtle expressions such as frowning eyebrows or a smiling face,” not to mention to bodily movements. “Hence,” Zheng concludes, “film and drama are completely different things.”10 In the same year, new-drama-turned-film actor Feng Xizui 鳳昔醉 also emphasized the dif­ ference in the type of performance required by the two media, outlining what he called the “interior performance” (内心表演) called for by cinema. In this type of (p. 406) perfor­ mance, actors must first feel the emotions of their characters, whereupon this interior feeling will be communicated to the spectator through facial expressions.11 In another 1925 essay with the same title, “On Interior Performance,” actor-director Wan Laitian 萬籟 天 confirmed that “the film actor’s eyes are equivalent to the stage actor’s mouth.”12 The idea of interior acting and the importance of the eyes in communicating feelings again was related to the closer proximity of spectator to actor afforded by variable camera dis­ tance as well as to the broader rhetoric of the increased need for realism in modern act­ ing. A decade later, in a 1935 article drawing on Soviet filmmaker and theorist Vsevolod Pudovkin, the actor and later director Zheng Junli 鄭君里, who had costarred with Ruan Lingyu in her final two films, argued that on stage exaggerated acting inevitably would turn into a sort of “formalism” (圖式主義) and that stage acting could not resolve “the con­ tradiction between the rich content of real life and the cramped spatial and temporal ca­ pacities of the stage,” whereas film, with the help of such techniques as the close-up and editing, could solve this problem and thus genuinely capture reality.13

Figure 21.5 Zhang Sheng shows his interest.

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film

Figure 21.6 Yingying reciprocates in close-up.

Film techniques such as editing and variable shot distances had already reshaped cinema as a dramatic form in China by the end of the 1920s. In fact, the transition from stage to film acting is readily evident even in films based on traditional drama. In the classic play Romance of the Western Chamber (西廂記), for example, there is a key scene in which the young scholar Zhang Sheng meets the beauty Cui Yingying on the grounds of a Buddhist temple. In the original Yuan dynasty play, the chance encounter is rhapsodized through lengthy and redundant prose descriptions and verses about Yingying’s beauty and the ef­ fect she has on Zhang Sheng.14 In a stage performance, this meeting would be represent­ ed through stylized bodily gestures in addition to the sung verses, though in Hou Yao’s 侯 曜 1927 film adaptation, one finds neither singing (the film is of course silent) nor tradi­ tional Chinese dramatic gestures or poses, and instead there is a series of shots that largely follow the conventions of classical Hollywood. Zhang Sheng’s initial interest in Yingying is clearly signaled by medium shots of his enamored gaze (see fig. 21.5). His at­ tention is noted by the monk who is guiding him in his tour of the temple, with close shots of the monk’s face pivoting sideways to trace the line of sight from Zhang Sheng to (p. 407) Yingying.15 Finally, Yingying, who initially had responded to Zhang Sheng’s atten­ tion with the appropriately modest gesture of averting her gaze and covering her face, just before leaving the area through a gate turns around to throw a flirtatious glance back to Zhang Sheng (see fig. 21.6). This final quick glance, accentuated by the scene’s only close-up, not only establishes for the viewer Yingying’s reciprocation of amorous in­ terest but also fully employs the unique capacity of cinema to make a brief, subtly expres­ sive performance the bearer of crucial narrative information by means of closer shot dis­ tance. In tracing the particular powers of film to the close-up and noting the different style of acting the medium thus called for, Chinese critics and filmmakers articulated an incipient Chinese film theory that was not far from many of their much more widely acknowledged contemporaries in the West. The Hungarian critic Béla Balázs, for example, declared that “close-ups are film’s true terrain” through which film is uniquely able to create “the mi­ crodrama of the moment.”16 Walter Benjamin identified the close-up as one of the means through which photography and film reveal the “optical unconscious”—the “scientific” function of the film image, which, through techniques such as magnification and slow mo­ tion, allows the viewer to register aspects of the filmed reality that might otherwise have Page 7 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film escaped conscious notice.17 In China, as in the West, the close-up was a privileged em­ blem of cinema’s medium specificity, an example of how its art was—could, even should, be—fundamentally its own, rather than an imitation or extension of stage drama or any other art form. The specific implications of the close-up for acting for these Chinese com­ mentators also resembled the conclusions of their Western counterparts. In their empha­ sis on the importance of the eyes and facial expressions for film acting, enabled by the use of the close-up, Zheng Zhengqiu, Feng Xizui, Wan Laitian, and Zheng Junli again ap­ pear in sync with Balázs, and particularly his rhapsodic celebration of “the play of facial expressions” allowed by film in contrast to theater.18 Theoretical and critical speculation aside, an actual transition to a new acting style to suit the new medium already had occurred relatively early in Western cinema. Roberta Pear­ son has traced how the performance style in the early Biograph films of D. W. Griffith shifted over five years or so beginning in 1908, transforming from a “histrionic” style (p. 408) with roots in nineteenth-century stage melodrama to a more subtle and film-spe­ cific “verisimilar” style.19 Griffith’s unprecedented reliance on closer shots accompanied the shift in performance styles.20 The director himself denigrated stage performance and advocated “real acting” and the use of close shots to capture the emotional states of per­ formers, whom he believed felt the emotions they were acting and externalized them through their faces and bodies.21 This movement toward a more realist style of acting to suit the new medium, in China as in Hollywood (and no doubt heavily influenced by the latter), provided the framework through which Ruan Lingyu was judged to be a model of naturalistic performance. Ac­ cording to Zheng Junli, for example, “The characters created by Ruan Lingyu in her films nearly all had a high degree of authenticity and persuasiveness. Each character seemed like an authentic person in reality.”22 Like Griffith’s muse Lillian Gish, whom Balázs cele­ brated for the “crazy rapidity” with which emotions played across her face, Ruan seemed to have the uncanny ability to communicate contradictory emotions almost simultaneous­ ly.23 Indeed, apparently utilizing what Balázs called “the microphysiognomy of the camera close-up,” allowing us to see “the face beneath the play of expressions,”24 Ruan was skilled at conveying both a seemingly fake surface emotion and an apparently genuine un­ derlying one—most often taking the form of an inner sorrow to which the audience could bear witness even as the other diegetic characters were fooled by a surface smile. The Goddess director Wu Yonggang praised Ruan’s “astonishing natural gift for acting. Ruan Lingyu was like a highly sensitive piece of ‘fast’ film: whatever you required, you just had to explain it to her and she would immediately produce it in her performance—in the proper manner, and with great precision.”25 Later film scholars have echoed these high assessments. Katherine Hui-ling Chou describes Ruan as being ahead of her time in de­ veloping a naturalistic style that approximated Stanislavskian method acting, even though the latter was unknown in China until the late 1930s and did not predominate un­ til the 1950s.26 We thus here take Ruan Lingyu not just as an exceptional example of act­ ing skill but more importantly as the apparent epitome of a broader valuation of verisimil­

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film itude in acting that began many years earlier and would continue as part of an overall dis­ course of realism. To sum up the discussion so far, filmmakers and critics in China, no less than many of their Western counterparts from Griffith to Balázs, laid claim to a distinctively cinematic realism that formed the basis of film art and called for a naturalistic or verisimilar perfor­ mance style that made stage acting inappropriate for cinema. Such arguments are crucial for understanding not just the nature of cinema as perceived by early twentieth-century practitioners and thinkers, but also the self-positioning of those same figures as they at­ tempted to establish the cultural capital of film, and by extension themselves, within the social, cultural, and artistic arenas of the time. In particular, their claims must be under­ stood in the context of a much broader discourse on realism in China that began in the late nineteenth century, intensified during the New Culture movement from 1915 into the 1920s, and became increasingly politicized by the 1930s. Indeed, assertions of a uniquely realist aesthetic for the cinema only gained their effectiveness in the context of a cultural ecology in which virtually all the arts in (p. 409) China were scrambling to reestablish themselves on a new foundation of realism that was largely imported from abroad. In this sense, the realism of film, like that of all the arts, rests not just on medium-specific tech­ nologies like the camera and techniques like the close-up, but also on a response to the aggressively imposed modernity of semicolonial capitalism and the epistemic violence that went along with it, sweeping away other modes of thought, art, and culture and im­ buing Chinese artists and intellectuals with both an inferiority complex and a determina­ tion to catch up with the West and Japan—culturally and artistically as well as politically, economically, and militarily—as a precondition for national survival. In the field of modern Chinese literary studies, for example, the importance of realism is so much a given that its hegemony must occasionally be challenged by any scholar who wishes to assert the significance of almost any literary mode other than realism to mod­ ern China.27 As in the arts in general, in literature one sees a shift from the advocacy of Western-style bourgeois realism dating to nineteenth-century European fiction to a selfconsciously proletarian “new” realism among leftists in the late 1920s and 1930s. This new realism would eventually become ensconced as the official aesthetic of the Commu­ nist Party—the Chinese variant of international socialist realism—but in the period we are examining it had yet to overcome a more broadly defined critical realism based on models from Tolstoy to Dickens. Going back to reformers such as Liang Qichao 梁啟超 before the fall of the Qing dynasty, Chinese intellectuals had been calling on a representationally re­ alistic and linguistically vernacular fiction to aid in the project of building a modern na­ tion. Such efforts accelerated significantly during the May Fourth Movement, particularly with the calls for literary reform and revolution in the pages of the journal New Youth (新 青年) beginning in 1915.28 In painting as well, the late Qing and Republican periods saw a tidal wave of experimen­ tation and a struggle to define a new, cosmopolitan mode of realism that, for leading fig­ ures such as artist and curator Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻 in the 1920s, had to replace the outdat­ ed aesthetics of China’s indigenous artistic traditions. The modern approach of “inscrib­ Page 9 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film ing the real” (xieshi 寫實) was explicitly contrasted with the traditional value of “inscrib­ ing the essence/meaning” (xieyi 寫意). The former term is a relatively direct translation of Western “realism,” whereas the latter, which describes a distinctively Chinese aesthetic, is more difficult to translate into English, having been variously rendered as “conceptual­ ism” or “expressionism.”29 As Eugene Wang explains, for example, in Chinese literati ink painting, forms are “evoked rather than depicted,” with a few highly expressive brush­ strokes capable of capturing the artist’s subjective experience of the spirit of the object being valued over representational detail or a verisimilitude that provides the illusion of the object’s actual presence.30 In the post–May Fourth era, in contrast, there was, as David Der-wei Wang describes, increasingly a “shared notion among contemporary Chi­ nese literati and artists that the foundation of artistic merit would necessarily be the au­ thentic representation of the Real.”31 The effort to establish Western-style mimetic real­ ism as the new national style for a modern China would proceed in tension, in the 1920s and over the next several decades in various ways, with the countervailing desire to as­ sert a Chinese cultural identity through a distinctive Chinese style. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in relation to film, successive waves of re­ forms in Chinese stage drama belied any notion that cinema was unique in its concern for (p. 410)

realism, even if filmmakers with roots in theater insisted on the radical difference of film acting from stage performance. As mentioned above, in the early twentieth century new dramatic forms based on Western influences were introduced—first the new drama, or “civilized play” (文明戲), from which much Chinese cinema of the second decade of the century was derived, and then the even more “modern” (i.e., Westernized) “spoken dra­ ma” that became a respected literary form and also an increasing influence on film in the 1920s. In 1918, New Youth devoted an entire issue to drama reform.32 As was the case with much Chinese literature and painting of the period, new dramatic forms sought to adopt a Western-style realism and thereby set themselves apart from the various “tradi­ tional” Chinese operatic forms such as Beijing opera.33 As we saw in the case of Gu Kenfu’s early essay on cinema, ostensibly “traditional” dra­ matic forms were taken by the cinematic realists as the ultimate theatrical other of film and the very emblem of what in traditional Chinese aesthetics needed to be transcended. The contrast in drama between traditional formalism and modern realism was summa­ rized above as that between semiosis—in which a sign points toward a meaning—and mimesis—in which an image directly resembles reality itself. In fact, this distinction is not far from what we have seen in the case of painting, where Chinese conceptualism (xieyi or “inscribing the meaning”) confronted the modern alternative of Western realism (xieshi or “inscribing the real”). Nonetheless we must bear in mind that these are relative terms, and just as even the most stylized traditional Chinese painting and drama had mimetic el­ ements, even the most realist or verisimilar style of painting or acting has elements of semiosis insofar as it employs artistic conventions—including conventions of realism. The question of the status of mimesis in traditional Chinese aesthetics is a thorny one, and the answer depends largely on how one defines the term, as well as whether it is con­ sidered to be the function of art or simply one aspect of artistic representation. In a study Page 10 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film of Chinese literary thought, for example, Ming Dong Gu argues that “expressionism” was “the mainstream,” but that “mimetic representation” nonetheless was long present as “an undercurrent.”34 Gu points out that in addition to “primary imitation”—or art directly imi­ tating nature or “reality”—traditional Chinese aesthetics certainly put a high value on “secondary imitation”—in which previous works of art, rather than reality itself, are imi­ tated.35 Indeed, such a conception of mimesis would collapse “convention” into “realism” insofar as conventions themselves can be the object of mimesis. For present purposes, however, it is useful to maintain a strategic distinction between semiosis and mimesis, with the former being more characteristic of Chinese opera and other “traditional” art forms and the latter characterizing the new transmedial practice of realism. In fact, in an illustration of how compulsory this idea had become in Republican China, even Beijing opera underwent a major reform movement just as it was being elevated to the status of national form; the great actor and cultural ambassador Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 may have in­ spired Bertolt Brecht with the stylization and ostensible alienation effect of traditional Chinese drama, but the same actor met, praised, and absorbed the lessons of (p. 411) none other than the pioneering naturalistic actor and director Konstantin Stanislavsky in the Soviet Union. Under the influence of the drama reformer Qi Rushan 齊如山, Mei put increased emphasis on facial expressions in his opera acting, and Mei and Qi subscribed to the notion that only when actors lose themselves in their characters can those charac­ ters be fully realized.36 All of this would suggest that even a “traditional” dramatic form such as Beijing opera was reforming to reflect the priorities of modern realism such as visual mimesis and “in­ terior performance.” However, it would be more accurate to say that the distinction be­ tween modern realism and traditional formalism was itself a product of modernity. Indige­ nous Chinese drama did in fact posit a correspondence between the fiction of the theater and the truth of life, and some of the modern realists’ claims for a radical rupture with traditional theater aesthetics appear to be overstated. The seventeenth-century theater impresario Li Yu 李漁 emphasized that an aria must be sung not just with the mouth but with the heart, and that it should be reflected in facial expressions and bodily movements.37 Indeed, the notion that performers should feel the emotions of their charac­ ters and then convey them through facial expressions was by no means foreign to pre­ modern Chinese drama aesthetics. According to Qing dynasty scholar Ji Yun 紀昀, an actor in 1747 once explained, “When I impersonate a woman on stage, I not only try to look like a woman in my physical appearance; I also try to feel like a woman in the depth of my heart….I always put myself in the shoes of my characters, completely identifying with their emotions: happiness, anger, sorrow, or joy as well as kindness, resentment, love, or hate.”38 It is true that this actor was claiming to be the exception rather than the rule —“The reason I am the best on the stage is because I am different from the other female impersonators, who may look and move like their female characters but do not feel like them”—but his remark nonetheless suggests that “interior performance” was not a com­ pletely alien concept in the premodern theater.39 What was new in the early twentieth century was an idea of mimesis that emphasized not the subjective state of the performer in capturing the emotional meaning of the character, but rather the connection of this Page 11 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film state to the ideology and technologies of modernity, including cinema with its apparently objective visual verisimilitude. Here the fascination with cinema, and the attempt to elevate cinema over premodern dra­ matic forms, is closely tied to the overwhelming concern for science among Chinese intel­ lectuals of the early twentieth century. Recall that in 1921, Gu Kenfu called science one of the three bases of film (the other two being literature and technique). His emphasis on science is certainly in keeping with the spirit of the contemporaneous May Fourth Move­ ment, in which young students, artists, and intellectuals in particular called for the intro­ duction of “Mr. Science” (along with “Mr. Democracy”) into China. Here science repre­ sented not just a set of theories or laboratory procedures, but a whole new way of being in the world, a mode of existence in which the arbitrary biases of ancient opinions would be dropped in favor of an “objective” view of the world. Thus, according to Shu-mei Shih, science “was not so much a system of knowledge for the study of physics, biology, or tech­ nology, as an ideology promising a new theory and praxis of culture.”40 Extending beyond the hard sciences to “the studies of society, politics, ethics, and morality” as well (p. 412) as “humanistic studies such as literary, historical, and philosophical research,” science became “a cultural ideology necessary for the enlightenment of the mind, while a broad understanding of the experimental method as a daringness to rebel against the old and to try something new was applied to all realms of cultural practice and discourse.”41 Indeed, as Wang Hui 汪暉 has analyzed in detail, a comprehensive “scientism” (惟科學主義) pervaded the thought of the intellectuals and artists who were most crucial to the May Fourth and New Culture movements that dominated Chinese arts and humanities late in the second decade of the century and into the early 1920s and had repercussions for decades beyond.42 For these thinkers, science was an overall “spirit of the age” that Chi­ na must learn in order to catch up with the West, and its principles had to be applied to virtually all aspects of life. For example, Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, the editor of New Youth and later a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party, believed that science held the key to understanding the material basis of all life. In an early New Youth essay on educa­ tion reform, Chen used the term xianshizhuyi 現實主義—which would become the accepted translation of realism for generations of artists—to describe the overall spirit of the age under the sway of scientific objectivity. This spirit, according to Chen, would manifest it­ self in every realm of human thought and activity under different guises—in philosophy as empiricism and materialism, in morality as utilitarianism, in religion as atheism, and so on. In the realm of literature and the fine arts, it would be expressed as realism (xieshizhuyi 寫實主義, based on the translation of realism mentioned earlier—“inscribing the real”) or as naturalism (ziranzhuyi 自然主義, referring to the Western successor to and extension of literary realism).43 In each case, one puts one’s faith only in the material world: “Within the real world [xianshi shijie 現實世界] there is merit; outside the real world there is no hope.”44 Human individuals are transient, but the material world of which they are part is an ever-evolving reality. As Wang Hui put it, “Chen Duxiu thus came to believe that the signal feature of science was the search for the pure objective causality underlying reality and completely negating the subjective role of human be­ ings.”45 Such an ideal of objectivity, in turn, called for a new mode of subjectivity whereby Page 12 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film objective reality would determine human thought and behavior; recognition of scientific truth would remold the human subject and allow human society to progress rationally.46 This presented a challenge to any aesthetic philosophies that emphasized artistic truth as a subjective, perhaps even emotional experience—as seen, for instance, in the premodern aesthetics of expressionism (xieyi), authenticity (zhen 真;), or passion (qing 情;). In a 1921 lecture entitled “The Scientific View of Life,” activist/intellectual Yang Quan 陽泉; cau­ tioned that aesthetic philosophies ranging from those of traditional China to those of Vic­ torian poet Matthew Arnold tended to be based on emotion, whereas the scientific world­ view was based on objectivity.47 In this context, then, realism—whether translated as xieshizhuyi, a modern term with ancient sources, or xianshizhuyi, a neologism imported from Japan—became the aesthetic ideology that would bridge the gap between modern scientism on one hand and literature and the arts on the other, inoculating the latter against the potential irrationality and emotionalism to which they had been prone and setting them firmly within the broader parameters of the realist worldview of science it­ self. It is thus no surprise that Gu Kenfu, in his essay introducing Shadowplay Maga­ zine (which appeared in the same year as Yang Quan’s lecture “The Scientific View of (p. 413)

Life”) attempted to link cinema closely with science. His views on the superior verisimili­ tude of film as compared to other modes of drama were implicitly tied to the ability of photography to directly capture the real world. He notes that theater, “when it encoun­ ters a reality it cannot perform, resorts to supplementary narration or indirect methods of depiction. Only film can show [reality] immediately and directly,” replacing the inert or “dead” stage with real locations.48 Similarly, in his discussion of acting technique Gu notes that actors in cinema, unlike those in traditional drama, actually have to master such skills as swimming, riding a horse, driving a car, or even flying an airplane.49 The re­ alism of the medium demanded it, as these activities could be filmed in reality rather than represented by semiotic convention as in traditional theater—a prop such as a tasseled whip representing horseback riding, for instance. Film did not just represent the real world but actually showed it, thus potentially superseding the other arts in its ability to manifest the objective, scientific spirit of the modern age. The linking of a new faith in objectivity to photographic media echoed that of modern Western scientists, particularly in the mid- to late nineteenth century, when scientists stopped using drawings of ideal types in favor of photography and other more mechanical means of representing specimens—not only because photography seemed better for the task, but because scientific knowledge itself was being redefined in a way that empha­ sized the elimination of the vagaries of human agency. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, in their fascinating study Objectivity, trace a shift from a scientific ideal of “truth-to-na­ ture” to one of “mechanical objectivity” in the course of the nineteenth century through the example of imaging for scientific atlases.50 Earlier scientists had sought to produce images which were true, with the understanding that the scientist’s own knowledge and judgment were instrumental in producing this truth. This resulted in the practice of rep­ resenting ideal types through sketching and painting: “The type was truer to nature—and therefore more real—than any actual specimen.”51 Later, however, partly through the Page 13 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film testing of such representations of ideal types against the instantaneous automated im­ ages of photography, scientists became doubtful of their ability to reason out the truth without distorting it through the interference, however unintended, of their own subjec­ tivity, thus producing “a paradoxical contrast between truth and objectivity, between rea­ soned and objective images.”52 Thus, as early as the mid-nineteenth century, an “argu­ ment was advanced in favor of photography as a distinctly scientific medium. The automa­ tism of the photographic process promised images free of human interpretation—objec­ tive images, as they came to be called.”53 In fact, mechanical observation in general be­ came favored, but “one type of mechanical image, the photograph, became the emblem for all aspects of noninterventionist objectivity,” largely because “the camera apparently eliminated human agency.”54 Here the scientific reliance on photography brings to mind similar claims made in classi­ cal film theory and its successors, from Bazin’s ontology of the photographic image to Benjamin’s optical unconscious to the cinematic “automatisms” explored by Stanley Cavell and more recently elaborated by David Rodowick.55 The mechanical nature of (p. 414) the photographic image—the fact that it can capture aspects of reality not neces­ sarily noticeable to the naked eye or intended by the photographer—not only appears to be essential to its art but also puts it in a privileged relationship to the discourses of sci­ entism and objectivity in both China and the West. As we have seen, in May Fourth–era China realism was an all-pervasive master signifier that affected all of the arts, and cinema’s claims to a medium-specific realism must be un­ derstood at least partly as the jockeying of the new art form for cultural capital through the languages of science and realism that were hegemonic at the time. If we return again to the rhetoric of Gu Kenfu’s 1921 essay, however, it is notable that his claims for cinema’s relation to science actually do not rest simply on arguments about the mimetic fidelity of the photograph or other such contentions that could fall under the rubric of “in­ dexical” realism (though such claims are implicit elsewhere in the essay, as described above). Instead, in the explicit discussion of film and science, it is the illusion of move­ ment produced by the film projector that is said to provide cinema’s scientific credentials: “Film in essence is a phenomenon of science. That a series of frames passing in front of a projector can produce a moving image is a phenomenon that makes use of optics—film is a product of science.”56 Gu’s essay thus not only reveals a concern with the ontological, mimetic realism of film in a manner consistent with classical Western film theorists such as Bazin; it also lends support to Tom Gunning’s recent argument that the movement of the image itself provides film (or animation, or digital video) with a compelling phenome­ nological realism that engages the viewer.57 For Gu as well, the movement of the image is not just a matter of mimetic fidelity of the image to reality. Of equal or even greater importance is the audience’s response to film’s shadowplay, or to any other form of drama. The first sentence of his essay notes the pow­ er of drama to elicit sympathetic tears of sadness or belly laughs of pleasure from specta­ tors. In fact, Gu carefully connects realism and verisimilitude to our capacity to be swept away by an unfolding drama and respond reflexively to the characters we watch, and it is Page 14 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film on this basis that he asserts the superiority of cinema. Positing that the goal of acting should be a verisimilitude in which both actors and spectators identify fully with and are moved by the emotions of the fictional characters, Gu concludes that, of all the dramatic arts, film can best approach this standard.58 He thus suggests that there is a connection between the mimetic realism of the “moving” (huodong 活動) image at the heart of cinema’s science and its ability to make the audience feel “moved” (gandong 感動). The unprecedented verisimilitude of film is put in the service of transporting the audience in­ to a realm of feeling to a degree that Gu thinks no previous dramatic arts could match (and here the artist/critic Gu arguably departs from the strict scientism of the intellectu­ als mentioned earlier, insofar as he encourages emotional engagement rather than simply objectivity). In the mimetic response of the spectator to the filmed drama, we begin to approach not just the claims made for the realist nature of the medium by early film commentators in both China and the West, but also the more recent conception of popular cinema as a “vernacular modernism” that provided “a sensory-reflexive horizon for the experience of modernization and modernity.”59 In their embodied responses to cinema—the (p. 415) laughter and tears mentioned by Gu—spectators publicly and collectively found in the strikingly “real” presence of the actor a means of reflecting on their own experiences of both the perils and the promise of modernity. Ruan Lingyu herself, in her wrenching per­ formance of the ultimately fatal double bind in which the glamorous “new woman” was caught, provided a convincing and moving reflection—however larger-than-life and melo­ dramatized—for the contradictions experienced daily by countless women in urban China at the time. However, the tension between the semiosis of traditional drama and the mimetic realism of cinema would play out in Chinese film history in ways that go beyond the simple story of a global proliferation of Hollywood realism as emblematic of modernity. Not only would a more culturally specific “operatic mode” of Chinese filmmaking persist in the form of traditional opera films, revolutionary opera films, and related genres such as the martialarts or wuxia 武俠 film,60 but drama itself would continue to serve as a convenient whip­ ping boy for broader phenomena such as the overpoliticization and overstylization of film aesthetics under communism.61 Gu Kenfu’s staging of the tension between realism and convention as that between film and theater thus would echo through several decades of Chinese cinema history.

Works Cited Anderson, Marston. The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Balázs, Béla. B é la Balá zs: Early Film Theory: “Visible Man” and “The Spirit of Film.” Ed. Erica Carter. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. New York: Berghan Books, 2010. Bazin, André. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” What is Cinema? Vol. 1. Berke­ ley: University of California Press, 1967. 9–16. Page 15 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility: Se­ cond Version.” Selected Writings. Vol. 3, 1935–38. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. Berry, Chris, and Mary Farquhar. “Operatic Modes: Opera Film, Martial Arts, and Cultur­ al Nationalism.” China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 47–75. Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film. Cambridge: Har­ vard University Press, 1971. Chang, Michael G. “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Movie Actresses and Public Discourse in Shanghai, 1920s–1930s.” Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922– 1943. Ed. Yingjin Zhang. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 128–129. Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀. “Jinri zhi jiaoyu fangzhen” 今日之教育方針 [Today’s educational policy]. Xin qingnian 新青年 [New youth] 1.2 (October 15, 1915). Ch’en, Li-li. Master Tung’s Western Chamber Romance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Chou, Katherine Hui-ling. “Staging Revolution: Actresses, Realism and the New Woman Movement in Chinese Spoken Drama and Film, 1919–1949.” Ph.D. diss., New York Uni­ versity, 1997. Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2007. Denton, Kirk A., ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893– 1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Feng Xizui 鳳昔醉. “Tan neixin biaoyan” 談內心表演 [On interior performance]. Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent film]. Ed. Dai Xiaolan 戴小蘭 et al. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996. 914–915. Gu Kenfu 顧肯夫. “Yingxi zazhi fakanci” 《影戲雜誌》發刊詞 [Introducing Shadowplay Maga­ zine]. 20 Shiji Zhongguo dianying lilun wenxuan 20 世紀中國電影理論文選 [Selected works of twentieth-century Chinese film theory]. Vol. 1. Ed. Luo Yijun 羅藝軍 Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2003. Gu, Ming Dong. “Is Mimetic Theory in Literature and Art Universal?” Poetics Today 26.3 (Fall 2005): 459–498. Gunning, Tom. “Moving Away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality.” The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments. Ed. Marc Furstenau. New York: Routledge, 2010. 255–269. Hansen, Miriam Bratu. “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Films as Vernacular Modernism.” Film Quarterly 54.1 (Fall 2000): 10–22. Page 16 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film Ji Yun. “Actor and Character.” Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance. Ed. and trans. Faye Chunfang Fei. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. 89–90. Leyda, Jay. Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China. Cam­ bridge: MIT Press, 1972. Li Yu. “From Li Liweng on Theater.” Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance. Ed. and trans. Faye Chunfang Fei. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. 77–87. Link, Perry. Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early TwentiethCentury Chinese Cities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. (p. 420)

Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 and Xu Jichuan 許姬傳. Wutai shenghuo sishi nian 舞台生活四十年 [Forty years of stage life]. Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1987. Pearson, Roberta A. Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Rodowick, D. N. The Virtual Life of Film. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Shih, Shu-mei. The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917– 1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Wan Laitian 萬籟天. “Tan neixin biaoyan” 談內心表演 [On interior performance]. Zhongguo wusheng dianying《中國無聲電影》 [Chinese silent film]. Ed. Dai Xiaolan 戴小蘭 et al. Bei­ jing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996. 916. Wang, David Der-wei. Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Wang, David Der-wei. Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Wang, David Der-wei. “In the Name of the Real.” Chinese Art: Modern Expressions. Ed. Maxwell Hearn and Judith Smith. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001, 28–59. Wang, Eugene Y. “Sketch Conceptualism as Modernist Contingency.” In Chinese Art: Mod­ ern Expressions, ed. Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith. New York: Metropolitan Mu­ seum of Art, 2001. 102–161. Wang Hui. “Discursive Community and the Genealogy of Scientific Categories.” In Every­ day Modernity in China, ed. Madeleine Yue Dong and Joshua L. Goldstein. Seattle: Univer­ sity of Washington Press, 2006. 80–120. Wang Hui. “The Fate of ‘Mr. Science’ in China.” positions: east asia cultures critique 3.1 (Spring 1995): 1–68.

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film Wu Yonggang 吳永剛. “Ruan Lingyu Remembered.” Griffithiana 60–61 (October 1997): 141. Originally published in Wu Yonggang, Wode tansuo he zhuiqiu 我的探索和追求 [My quest and search] (China Film Publishing Co., 1986). Xia Hong. “Film Theory in the People’s Republic of China: The New Era.” Chinese Film: The State of the Art in the People’s Republic. Ed. George Stephen Semsel. New York: Praeger, 1987. 35–62. Yu Handong 余漢東 ed. Zhongguo xiqu biaoyan yishu cidian 中國戲曲表演藝術詞典 [Chinese opera performance art dictionary]. Taipei: Guojia, 2001. Zheng Junli 鄭君里. “Ruan Lingyu he ta de biaoyan yishu” 阮玲玉和她的表演藝術 [Ruan Lingyu and her performance art]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese film] 1957: no. 2. Reprinted in He Keren 何可人 et al., Ruan Lingyu zhi si 阮玲玉之死 [The death of Ruan Lingyu] (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1986), 160. Zheng Junli 鄭君里. “Zai tan yanji” 再論演技 [Another discussion about acting]. Lianhua huabao 聯華畫報 [Lianhua pictorial] 5.9, 6.5 (1935). Reprinted in Shiji Zhongguo dianying lilun wenxuan 20 世紀中國電影理論文選 [Selected works of twentieth-century Chinese film theory], ed. Luo Yijun 羅藝軍 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2003), vol. 1, 181. Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋. “Xinjujia bu neng yanxi ma?” 新劇家不能演戲嗎? [Can xinju actors not act in film?]. Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent film]. Ed. Dai Xiaolan 戴小蘭 et al. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996. 906–907.

Notes: (1.) Jay Leyda, Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), 87. (2.) See notes 22 and 25 for examples. (3.) Gu Kenfu 顧肯夫, “Yingxi zazhi fakanci” 《影戲雜誌》發刊詞 [Introducing Shadowplay Magazine], in 20 Shiji Zhongguo dianying lilun wenxuan 20世紀中國電影理論文選 [Selected works of twentieth-century Chinese film theory], ed. Luo Yijun 羅藝軍 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2003), vol. 1, 4–5. Hongwei Thorn Chen has completed a draft trans­ lation of the essay, some of which I have borrowed here. (4.) Gu Kenfu, “Introducing Shadowplay Magazine,” 6. (5.) Gu Kenfu, “Introducing Shadowplay Magazine,” 5–6. (6.) Yu Handong 余漢東, ed. Zhongguo xiqu biaoyan yishu cidian 中國戲曲表演藝術詞典 [Chinese opera performance art dictionary] (Taipei: Guojia, 2001). (7.) The one notable exception was the 1913 film Zhuangzi Tests His Wife 莊子試妻, in which director Li Minwei 黎民偉 had his own wife, Yan Shanshan 嚴珊珊, play the minor

Page 18 of 23

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film role of a maid—though the main female role, that of Zhuangzi’s wife, was still played by a male actor. (8.) See, for example, Michael G. Chang, “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Movie Ac­ tresses and Public Discourse in Shanghai, 1920s–1930s,” in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 128–129. (9.) For a more thorough discussion of these developments, see Katherine Hui-ling Chou, “Staging Revolution: Actresses, Realism and the New Woman Movement in Chinese Spo­ ken Drama and Film, 1919–1949,” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1997. (10.) Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋, “Xinjujia bu neng yanxi ma?” 新劇家不能演戲嗎 ? [Can xinju actors not act in film?], in Zhongguo wusheng dianying 中國無聲電影 [Chinese silent film], ed. Dai Xiaolan 戴小蘭 et al. (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996), 906–907. Translation adapted from Jessica Ka Yee Chan. (11.) Feng Xizui 鳳昔醉, “Tan neixin biaoyan” 談內心表演 [On interior performance], origi­ nally published in Mingxing gongsi tekan “Feng da xiaoye” 明星公司特刊《馮大小爺》 [Mingxing company special issue on “Master Fung”] (1925), reprinted in Dai Xiaolan et al., Chinese Silent Film, 914–915. (12.) Wan Laitian 萬籟天, “Tan neixin biaoyan” 談內心表演 [On interior performance], origi­ nally published in Mingxing Company Special Issue on “Master Fung” (1925), reprinted in Dai Xiaolan et al., Chinese Silent Film, 916. (13.) Zheng Junli 鄭君里, “Zai lun yanji” 再論演技 [Another discussion about acting], origi­ nally published in Lianhua huabao 聯華畫報 [Lianhua pictorial] 5.9, 6.5 (1935), reprinted in Luo Yijun, Twentieth-Century Chinese Film Theory, vol. 1, 181. (14.) For an English translation, see Li-li Ch’en, Master Tung’s Western Chamber Ro­ mance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 14–19. (15.) Even this detail is well within the norms of classical Hollywood continuity. For exam­ ple, in To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944), an early shot / reverse shot ex­ change between the Bogart and Bacall characters is mediated by an inserted shot of the club owner Frenchy, who stands in the doorway between them and traces with his own gaze their smoldering first looks. (16.) The first quote comes from his Visible Man (1924) and the second from The Spirit of Film (1930), both of which are collected in Bé la Balá zs: Early Film Theory, trans. Rodney Livingstone (New York: Berghan Books, 2010), 38, 109. (17.) Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version,” in Selected Writings, vol. 3, 1935–38 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 117.

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film (18.) Walter Benjamin, “Work of Art,” 33–37. The section ends with a contrast between theater, in which “even the most important face is never more than one element in the play,” and film, in which “face becomes ‘the whole thing’ that contains the entire drama for minutes on end” (37). (19.) Roberta A. Pearson, Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). (20.) By the 1920s–1930s, many film critics in both China and the West were crediting Griffith with having “invented” the close-up. This is, of course, not strictly accurate, since filmmakers such as George Albert Smith had begun experimenting with the technique as early as the late 1890s. Nonetheless, Griffith’s reliance on closer shots of actors (though not necessarily close-ups per se) during his Biograph years, and in particular the corre­ spondence between shot distance and performance—with closer shots employed to cap­ ture significant emotions—was unprecedented and became a building block of the classi­ cal Hollywood style. (21.) Roberta A. Pearson, Eloquent Gestures, 92–95. (22.) Zheng Junli, “Ruan Lingyu he ta de biaoyan yishu” 阮玲玉和她的表演藝術 [Ruan Lingyu and her performance art], originally published in Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese film] 1957: no. 2, reprinted in He Keren 何可人 et al., Ruan Lingyu zhi si 阮玲玉之死 [The death of Ruan Lingyu] (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1986), 160. (23.) Béla Balázs, Early Film Theory, 35. (24.) Béla Balázs, Early Film Theory, 104. Emphasis in original. (25.) Wu Yonggang 吳永剛, “Ruan Lingyu Remembered,” Griffithiana 60–61 (October 1997): 141, originally published in Wu Yonggang, Wode tansuo he zhuiqiu 我的探索和追求 [My quest and search] (China Film Publishing Co., 1986). (26.) Katherine Hui-ling Chou, “Staging Revolution,” 194–195. (27.) For definitive book-length studies of realism in modern Chinese literature, see Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and David Der-wei Wang, Fictional Real­ ism in Twentieth-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). For examples of explorations of possible Chinese literary moder­ nities other than realism, see Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), and David Der-wei Wang, Fin-de-siè cle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). (28.) For translations of many of the primary documents in these movements, from the late Qing through the May Fourth Movement and beyond, see Kirk A. Denton, ed., Mod­

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film ern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945 (Stanford: Stanford Uni­ versity Press, 1996). (29.) Interestingly, though xieyi or expressionism was a premodern concept, the binary opposition of xieyi to xieshi was a twentieth-century development. Previously, the opposite of the literati amateurism of xieyi had been the detailed court painting known as “meticu­ lous brush” (gongbi 工筆) painting. (30.) Eugene Y. Wang, “Sketch Conceptualism as Modernist Contingency,” in Chinese Art: Modern Expressions, ed. Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 133. In this indispensable essay, Wang notes the irony that Xu Bei­ hong was most vociferously advocating Western-style realism as the path to modernity in Chinese art at precisely the time when cutting-edge European art was abandoning “mimetic illusionism” during the height of the 1920s modernist avant-garde (103). (31.) David Der-wei Wang, “In the Name of the Real,” in Maxwell Hearn and Judith Smith, Chinese Art, 29–30. (32.) Xin qingnian 新青年 [New youth] 5.4 (October 1918). (33.) It should be noted, first, that Beijing opera was in fact a relatively modern develop­ ment in the history of Chinese drama (having emerged only in the eighteenth century and become widespread only in the nineteenth) and, second, that it was not elevated to the status of a “national” art form until the twentieth century, before which it was just one re­ gional style among many—though one with growing popularity. (34.) Ming Dong Gu, “Is Mimetic Theory in Literature and Art Universal?” Poetics Today 26.3 (Fall 2005): 475. (35.) Ming Dong Gu, “Mimetic Theory,” 477. (36.) Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 and Xu Jichuan 許姬傳, Wutai shenghuo sishi nian 舞台生活四十年 [Forty years of stage life] (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1987), 149–155. (37.) Li Yu, “From Li Liweng on Theater,” in Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance, ed. and trans. Faye Chunfang Fei (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 83. (38.) Ji Yun, “Actor and Character,” in Faye Chunfang Fei, Chinese Theories, 89–90. Trans­ lation revised. (39.) Ji Yun, “Actor and Character,” 90. (40.) Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 85. (41.) Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern, 85. Emphasis in original.

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film (42.) See Wang Hui, “The Fate of ‘Mr. Science’ in China,” positions: east asia cultures cri­ tique 3.1 (Spring 1995): 1–68; and Wang Hui, “Discursive Community and the Genealogy of Scientific Categories,” in Everyday Modernity in China, ed. Madeleine Yue Dong and Joshua L. Goldstein (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 80–120. (43.) Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, “Jinri zhi jiaoyu fangzhen” 今日之教育方針 [Today’s educational policy], Xin qingnian 新青年 [New Youth] 1.2 (October 15, 1915): 4. (44.) Chen Duxiu, “Today’s Educational Policy,” 3. (45.) Wang Hui, “Fate of Mr. Science,” 33. (46.) Wang Hui, “Fate of Mr. Science,” 38. (47.) Wang Hui, “Discursive Community,” 106. (48.) Gu Kenfu, “Introducing Shadowplay Magazine,” 6–7. What I have translated here as “to show” is actually xiechulai 寫出來, or literally “to write out”—using the same character for write or inscribe as in the term for realism, “inscribing the real,” mentioned earlier. (49.) Gu Kenfu, “Introducing Shadowplay Magazine,” 5. (50.) Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007). (51.) Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, 60. (52.) Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, 63. Daston and Galison present, for example, the case of Arthur Worthington, who for two decades attempted to sketch the exact geometrical patterns made by the splashes of droplets hitting a liquid surface by observing the phenomenon with a quick flash of light and then drawing what he thought he saw—beautiful, perfectly symmetrical splash shapes. Only when he finally pho­ tographed the same phenomenon in 1894 did he discover to his horror that the “real” splashes captured by the camera looked nothing like his drawings but were instead al­ ways significantly marred by unpredictable asymmetries and irregularities. Lorraine Das­ ton and Peter Galison, Objectivity, 11–16, 154–163. (53.) Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, 130–131. (54.) Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, 187. (55.) André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” in What is Cinema? trans. Hugh Gray, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 9–16; Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); and D. N. Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film (Cambridge: Harvard Universi­ ty Press, 2007). (56.) Gu Kenfu, “Introducing Shadowplay Magazine,” 7.

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Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film (57.) Tom Gunning, “Moving Away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality,” in The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments, ed. Marc Furstenau (New York: Routledge, 2010), 255–269. (58.) Gu Kenfu, “Introducing Shadowplay Magazine,” 4–5. (59.) Miriam Bratu Hansen, “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Films as Vernacular Modernism,” Film Quarterly 54.1 (Fall 2000): 10. (60.) See Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, “Operatic Modes: Opera Film, Martial Arts, and Cultural Nationalism,” in their China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 47–75. (61.) This is especially notable, for example, in the immediate post–Cultural Revolution period, when “dropping the walking stick of drama” became a proxy slogan for opposing the socialist-realist aesthetic in cinema. For a good summary of these debates, see Xia Hong, “Film Theory in the People’s Republic of China: The New Era,” in Chinese Film: The State of the Art in the People’s Republic, ed. George Stephen Semsel (New York: Praeger, 1987), 35–62.

Jason McGrath

Jason McGrath is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Lit­ eratures at the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, where he also serves on the graduate faculty of Moving Image Studies. He is the author of Postsocialist Moderni­ ty: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age, and his essays on Chinese film have appeared in journals such as Modern Chinese Literature and Cul­ ture and The Opera Quarterly as well anthologies including Chinese Films in Focus, The Urban Generation, The Chinese Cinema Book, and China’s Literary and Cultural Scenes at the Turn of the 21st Century. His current projects include an anthology of translated Chinese writings on film and a book manuscript entitled “Inscribing the Real: Realism and Convention in Chinese Film from the Silent Era to the Digital Age.”

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs

Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs   James Tweedie The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0023

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the cinema of Edward Yang, especially his 1985 film Taipei Story, within three crucial contexts: first, the development of auteur theory in film criticism and then film studies; second, the cultivation of a director-centered production strategy in the Taiwanese film industry in the 1980s; and third, the reconstruction of Taipei during the East Asian economic boom. Yang's work reveals the intimate connections among these phenomena because it reemphasizes the fundamental but overlooked relationship be­ tween the cinematic auteur and mise-en-scène, or the staging of bodies, objects, and set­ tings on screen. This relationship is particularly evident in a series of city films created in East Asia over the past three decades. Rather than view Yang's work through the frame of its formal experiments, this chapter argues that it is best understood through the materi­ al engagements made visible in his staging of urban life. Keywords: Edward Yang, Taiwan, art cinema, auteur, film theory, architecture, set design, urban cinema

Since the 1980s, and especially after the publication of the New Cinema Manifesto in the China Times in 1987, the critical and scholarly reception of Taiwanese film has tended to focus, for better or for worse, on its auteurs—though in recent years, after a nearly twodecade decline in production and domestic box-office receipts, the tide has turned against them. Taiwan’s New Wave began with the momentary flowering of a domestic film indus­ try, lasted for less than a decade, and culminated in a period of seemingly endless stagna­ tion in Taiwanese film production and persistently sparse attendance. It was a period when directors flourished, at least for a while, and the major film studios and institutions declined. For that reason, the respect, and even reverence, generated by the films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien 侯孝賢, Edward Yang 楊德昌, and Tsai Ming-Liang 蔡明亮 is usually tempered by an awareness that their accomplishments constituted a historical anomaly rather than a paradigm that other filmmakers might adapt. Even with the benefits of hindsight, it’s difficult to determine whether Taiwan’s age of auteurs should be viewed as a creative tri­ umph that came to a premature end or as a cautionary tale in which commerce eventually

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs prevails, a transient intrusion of an anachronistic conception of cinema before the conclu­ sive triumph of the global market in goods and images. Coming at the end of a three-decade cycle of new waves in Europe and Asia, Taiwan’s film culture in the 1980s helped reinvent an aesthetic and industrial phenomenon with an im­ mense influence on the development of film criticism and academic cinema studies. In the post–World War II heyday of criticism and with the development of the discipline of film studies in the 1960s and 1970s, the director occupied a central position in both journalis­ tic writing about film and the nascent field of “cinematology.”1 From André Bazin’s de­ tailed examination of Renoir, Chaplin, Welles, and de Sica to the quasi-official policy of auteur worship at Cahiers du Ciné ma in the 1950s, from the popularization of biographi­ cal and stylistic criticism in the work of Andrew Sarris to the institutionalization of this paradigm in college courses and book series devoted to individual filmmakers, the direc­ tor was one of the key organizing principles for decades of intellectual work on cinema. The influence of auteur-centered criticism has waned in the past two (p. 422) decades, largely through the influence of cultural studies and the seemingly obvious but once radi­ cal notion that films are collaborative works—the product of many hands and the conjunc­ tion of social and economic forces that extend beyond any single artist. Cinema studies could dispense with the author because the film industry itself was never dominated by a master artist commanding the set like a painter in his atelier or a writer at his desk. But for at least two decades after the establishment of the “Birmingham school” in 1964 and after Barthes proclaimed the death of the author in 1967, the film auteur survived in vari­ ous atavistic forms, especially in art-house and festival films that still tenaciously aspired to the condition of art. The auteur also remains a major component in the production sys­ tems, most of them independent and artisanal, that supply films for those circuits. And on rare occasions, such as during the emergence of the New Cinema in Taiwan in the early and mid-1980s, a mode of big-studio art cinema also prospered. If the auteur period in Taiwanese film history has been relegated to the past, it neverthe­ less continues to haunt film criticism and a new generation of artists, both in Taiwan and abroad. Some of the best recent writing on Taiwanese cinema has focused on individual directors or the prototypical auteur industry that developed in the 1980s.2 As Darrell Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh argue, a crisis in domestic film production at the end of the 1970s resulted in policy measures aimed at reviving the industry by nurturing a new gen­ eration of filmmakers, and for much of the 1980s the industry was inseparable from its most prominent directors. In an ironic twist, however, this government policy produced a system in which “directors…take precedence over national cinemas and the nationstate.”3 With the possible exception of Ang Lee, a figure now associated as much with Hollywood as with his native Taiwan, Hou Hsiao-Hsien has best exemplified this East Asian version of a politique des auteurs. Over the past three decades Hou has served as an emissary for Taiwanese cinema, and his oversized presence on the art-house and festi­ val circuit has obscured the very real struggles of contemporary filmmakers to finance and distribute their pictures, even with the financial backing of Hou himself acting in an increasingly powerful role as producer and power broker. Hou’s larger-than-life persona and his semiautobiographical early films open themselves to the protocols of auteur criti­ Page 2 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs cism, though his prominence has resulted in a partial eclipse of his slightly less charis­ matic near-contemporary, Edward Yang. And, as Jean-Michel Frodon suggests, according to the pragmatic programming logic at increasingly globalized festivals, at a moment when the presentation of a quasi totality of world cinema was the overriding ambition, one director from Taiwan was enough. If auteur theory situates a singular figure at the center of the process of film production, it also has the unintended consequence of pitting these filmmakers against each other for the diminishing money and attention allocated to the artist-director. By the end of the millennium the auteur industry in Taiwan had been reduced to a brief roster of active filmmakers, now including Chang Tso-Chi 張作驥, Lin Cheng-Sheng 林正盛, and a handful of younger directors, none of whom enjoyed the do­ mestic and international reputation of their predecessors, and especially of Hou. By the early 1990s and in the years leading up to his death in 2007, even Edward Yang found himself on the margins of Taiwanese cinema and the artistic movement he helped launch. Between his early financial and critical success with the television drama Floating (p. 423) Weeds (浮萍, 1981), his stunning contribution to the omnibus film In Our Time (光 陰的故事, 1982), and his later epics of historical and contemporary Taiwan, A Brighter Summer Day (牯嶺街少年殺人事件, 1991) and Yi Yi (一一, 2000), Yang became an emblem of the collapse of Taiwan’s director-centered film industry. The catastrophic four-day exhibi­ tion run of Taipei Story (青梅竹馬, 1985) was one of the low points in New Cinema’s brief history, and Taiwan’s new mode of filmmaking, its aspiration toward a popular art cine­ ma, appeared to be a glorious failure. Published in the aftermath of these diminishing box-office returns, the New Cinema Manifesto, much of which was drafted at Yang’s house in Taipei, reflected not the audacious claims of triumphant artists buoyed by their success as festivals overseas, but a group of like-minded filmmakers addressing a shrink­ ing domestic audience with tastes that quickly diverged from the aesthetic avant-garde. In 1991 the publication of The Death of the New Cinema, a book as polemical in style and ambition as the manifesto, amounted to the funeral rites for an era when auteurs like Hou and Yang occupied the center of Taiwan’s industrial strategy and film culture.4 Like most modes of art cinema, this book suggests, Taiwan’s New Wave was obsessed with the intri­ cacies of form and was inadequately attentive to the commercial realities of the film world and the modernization of Taiwan that occurred in tandem with it. Yet Edward Yang’s career, exhibit A in the case against the excessively director-centered cinema in Taiwan, also helps illustrate the limits of auteur criticism as habitually applied, especially in the context of Taiwanese directors like Yang, Hou, and Tsai. What I want to suggest below is that auteur theory—especially as practiced since the 1960s, under the influence of a selective and distorted reading of François Truffaut, particularly in the work of Andrew Sarris—has discarded the most productive dimensions of the discourse of film authorship as it developed in the 1950s, and that critical understanding of Taiwanese cinema has suffered as a result. The most relevant omission is the tenet, paramount in the criticism of Truffaut and other Cahiers critics, that the vision of the film auteur can be glimpsed primarily in the mise-en-scène, or the presentation and movement of bodies and objects in space. This was particularly true of their elaborate interpretation of the theatri­ cal dimensions, the props and set design, the actors and their gestures, of Hollywood cin­ Page 3 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs ema at its most profound and idiosyncratic. As Thomas Elsaesser writes, “Given the fact that in Hollywood the director often had no more than token control over choice of sub­ ject, the cast, the quality of the dialogue, all the weight of creativity, all the evidence of personal expression and statement had to be found in the mise-en-scène.”5 Although it eventually ascended into rarefied, romantic interpretation of the vision of Antonioni, Kurosawa, or Hou, auteurist criticism in its earliest stage was also an insistently material­ ist practice obsessed with objects and architecture, with the physical world and the hu­ man body depicted on screen. The work and biography of Edward Yang lend themselves to a more nuanced reading of the auteurist moment in Taiwanese cinema because of his problematic relationship to a commercially disastrous auteur-centered policy and be­ cause of his personal fascination with (and professional training in) one of the key ele­ ments of mise-en-scène, architecture. What distinguishes Yang’s work is the fact that his individual vision as a filmmaker is inextricably linked to the most physical of phenomena, to cities and buildings, to domestic space and its cherished objects, to (p. 424) bodies in motion and especially at rest. An auteurist approach to Edward Yang—and, I maintain, to all of Taiwanese art cinema—must therefore begin not with the artist himself but with the mise-en-scène of a modern and increasingly globalized Taiwan. The same is true of much art cinema created under the partial but significant influence of the “master shot” school of filmmaking that emerged from Taiwan and subsequently be­ came a favorite for festival programmers, though, again, not necessarily for domestic au­ diences. The work of mainland directors like Jia Zhangke 賈樟柯, Zhang Lu 張律, and Wang Chao 王超 also reflects this fascination with the possibilities of staged interactions within actual locations and recorded with a long-shot/long-take aesthetic. The films of Liu Jiayin 劉伽茵, with their minimalist storytelling and editing but almost impossibly elaborate stag­ ing, represent the contemporary apotheosis of this long-standing trend in East Asian art cinema. In Liu’s Oxhide (牛皮, 2005) and its sequel, Oxhide II (牛皮 II, 2009), a series of scenes unfolds in a single take with a fixed focal point, as the gaze of the camera concen­ trates on a seemingly irrelevant space that—as time passes, objects circulate, and bodies drift through the frame—becomes a site of comic relief and even revelation. Although each of these directors and their Taiwanese predecessors laces his films with autobio­ graphical elements, the concept of the author in cinema is virtually useless without a pro­ tocol for understanding his or her relationship to the material world arrayed before the camera. Not merely a “directorial autobiography”6 made manifest in signature themes and stylistic devices, the author is at once more enigmatic and concrete than that com­ monplace variation on auteur theory suggests. The concept of the auteur is rooted in the historical development of cities in the aftermath of World War II and under the influence of a burgeoning consumer society; and it charts the appearance of new (and most often young) men and women within these historically new cityscapes. As much as any director and film of Taiwan’s New Cinema, Edward Yang and his Taipei Story embody this concep­ tion of the film auteur and his relationship to the material conditions of capitalist moder­ nity. Although he drifted to the margins of the Taiwanese film industry over the last two decades of his life, Yang’s work belongs at the center of any discussion of art cinema in Taiwan and East Asia more generally because, like so many directors from the region, it Page 4 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs deploys the reality of the cinematic image to document the elaborate staging of contem­ porary urbanization and globalization.

Windows onto Taipei

Figure 22.1 Taipei Story

Figure 22.2 Taipei Story

Figure 22.3 The Terrorizer

Taipei Story begins with a concrete illustration of the act of mise-en-scène (or the place­ ment and staging of objects and figures before the camera). A three-minute credit se­ quence opens in a virtually empty interior, the shell of an apartment that a young profes­ Page 5 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs sional woman (Ah-Chin, played by Tsai Chin 蔡琴) is planning to decorate and make her home, and that void is slowly filled with the props that will begin to constitute her world. In the first shot, the woman and her childhood sweetheart (Lung, played by Hou HsiaoHsien) stand before a sliding glass door and gaze out at other buildings and (p. 425) what­ ever is shielded from the camera’s view by a wall (see fig. 22.1). She suggests that they install shelves in the bedroom to hold a television, stereo, and VCR; they discuss the fi­ nancing for this substantial and expensive project; he tests out the light switches and wiring; she rubs her foot on the wooden floor. The camera then returns to the same setup in the first shot, an image that seems to gesture toward a vista unfolding outside while withholding that view and remaining confined within the apartment walls (see fig. 22.2). The final shots in the credit sequence show the already decorated apartment with a cur­ tain blocking the window, along with an assortment of objects that fill the previously emp­ ty space: framed pictures, the stereo and television, a dresser, a mirror, and sunglasses. Although the Chinese title of the film, qingmei zhuma 青梅竹馬, is borrowed from an apho­ rism that literally means “green plum and bamboo horse” and is conventionally used to describe the innocent affection of young lovers, the work itself is (p. 426) as much the sto­ ry of a city and its paradigmatic spaces as a tale of exuberant then failed romance. To un­ derstand human relationships and urban life in Taiwan in the 1980s, the film suggests, we must begin with the basic elements of cinema: with objects and space and the bodies that circulate among them. If the film seems jaded from the opening moments, its title ren­ dered ironic by the fact that the lovers had split up long before their awkward and formal meeting in the apartment, the one aspect of modern life still endowed with exuberance and vitality is the New Cinema itself. The image that brings this credit sequence to a close echoes a similar composition and ef­ fect in Yang’s The Terrorizer (恐怖份子, 1986), as the characters again stand on the brink of the inside and the outside, while the camera maintains its distance from whatever they see and experience. This almost contemporaneous film also displays Yang’s interest in mise-en-scène, especially in the narrative and cinematography focused on the fragmenta­ tion of urban experience (a dimension of the film famously analyzed by Fredric Jameson), and in the act of, again literally, decorating an apartment, this time with photographs rather than props, or rather with images that are now interchangeable with the concrete shell that surrounds them, with pictures that recall fashion photography and spectacular image-making practices but also provide evidence that a crime has been committed (see fig. 22.3).7 In the Taipei of the mid-1980s, photographic and moving images are at once the highest form of commodity reification, to use Debord’s phrase, and a mode of witness­ ing that recalls cinema’s most sincere realist movements, including the paradigmatic Ital­ ian case of the mid-1940s and extending to Mainland Chinese artists like Jia Zhangke in the 1990s. While Yang’s films of the 1980s recount a series of exhausted or failed roman­ tic relationships, they also reflect the earnestness of the manifesto for a new cinema, which begins by expressing its suspicions about existing film institutions but concludes with a flurry of statements outlining the possibilities for film in Taiwan, many introduced by the phrase “We hope…” And while the films’ location is often a city confronted by a thoroughgoing aesthetic and spatial transformation, the camera remains at once encapsu­ Page 6 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs lated within and protected from the city, fascinated (p. 427) and energized but not cap­ tured by the excesses of the epoch. Love and the romantic allure of the city die quickly in these films, but cinephilia is alive and well. In both Taipei Story and The Terrorizer, it would be difficult to characterize these signa­ ture shots of a thin, glass barrier between the home and the city through habitual, short­ hand references to an interior or exterior; they instead explore the threshold between these two commonplace divisions of space, between the domestic and the public, and be­ tween interior design and architecture or urban planning. These sites exist at the border between, on the one hand, the studio-like setting of the apartment, a virtually vacant set­ ting that the characters will then decorate, creating their own collection and arrange­ ment of domestic objects; and, on the other hand, the urban environment that exists on the other side of that glass, the reality that extends and endures beyond the interventions of filmmakers on the scene, the city transformed into a stage for the historical drama of globalization. In other words, this scenario and this category of shot introduce a conflict between cinema viewed as mise-en-scène, as the construction of space and the manipula­ tion of objects and orchestration of bodies within it, and cinema viewed as a realist, ob­ servational medium in the Bazinian mode. Like the characters in this sequence, the film­ makers of Taiwan’s New Cinema explore the verges of these two conceptions of space and two modes of filmmaking, the threshold where one spills over into the other. In a dis­ cussion of his 1996 film Mahjong (麻將), Yang suggests that contemporary “urban society is itself a stage,” with people wielding character-defining objects like “fax machines and telephones” and with space organized by “a huge network of telephone cables and flight routes.”8 Yang’s achievement as a filmmaker was to compose a realism attuned at once to the ethereal and the material in the objects and environments of his time, to communica­ tions technology that constructs transnational networks, and to the abstractions of global­ ization that nonetheless manifest themselves in the everyday existence of city streets, apartment blocks, and the props inside them.

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs

Taipei Story, or the Interior

Figure 22.4 The Boys From Fengkuei

Yang is not the only filmmaker in the era of Taiwan’s New Cinema to explore the complex and changing interface between interior and exterior space. Hou Hsiao-Hsien has always been attentive to the intricacies of the interior, especially in the keenly remembered fami­ ly home in A Time to Live and a Time to Die (童年往事, 1985), the location where the dra­ ma of living and dying actually takes place. As Dai Jinhua 戴錦華 remarks, the often unstat­ ed ambitions of the parents to return to the mainland are evidenced not through dialogue or other obvious textual markers, but through their furniture, whose build and materials suggest that the object world, usually a repository of family memories, is as eminently disposable as the bamboo chairs scattered around their otherwise sparsely decorated house.9 And in Good Men, Good Women (好男好女, 1995) a series of almost aggressive fax­ es confront a young woman with excerpts from her stolen diary, disturbing the ostensible peace of her domestic space through a communication technology (p. 428) imagined as an invasive force that threatens to transform her private life into public information. But his most dramatic formulation of this relationship between inside and outside is the memo­ rable scene in The Boys from Fengkuei (風櫃來的人, 1983) when the young men stand in the concrete shell of an ongoing development project, a structure too speculative and un­ finished to have an interior and an exterior; and from their perch high above the city, they look out at an expanding Gaoxiong, itself viewed as a similarly tentative and incomplete project (see fig. 22.4).

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs

Figure 22.5 The Hole

In Vive l’amour (愛情萬歲, 1994), Tsai Ming-liang presents the tale of a real-estate agent, her lover, and a squatter, all of whom wander in and out of a vacant apartment and be­ come partners in a virtual ménage à trois. The interior of the apartment always contains an unseen third player who disrupts and challenges the illusion of domestic bliss provid­ ed by this provisional home. In The Hole (洞, 1998), Tsai examines the slow destruction of a self-contained private space, the infection of that jealously guarded interior by a myste­ rious disease, and the eventual revitalization of that environment as it becomes a shared rather than a solitary domain. The Hole proposes an allegorical model of the relationship between interiors and exteriors, as the relentlessly enclosed space of the home is men­ aced by surveillance and infiltration, but the characters are eventually liberated when the walls and floors begin to crumble (see fig. 22.5). And Tsai’s 2009 feature Visage (臉) again reveals the director’s obsession with enclosed and crumbling spaces, with the simultane­ ous and contradictory desire for isolation and visitation from outside (see fig. 22.6). Vis­ age revolves almost exclusively around a series of elaborately staged scenes, with the mu­ sical performances giving way to tableaux and brief reenactments of the myth of Salome. In Visage, the elaborately staged musical numbers featured in The Hole have broken free from their narrative and spatial enclosure, a housing block in Taipei, and become almost the entirety of the film. With very few analogues in contemporary cinema, the film’s clos­ est reference (p. 429) point is perhaps Matthew Barney’s Cremaster cycle (1994–2002) rather than any other semicommercial art film. As in Barney’s work, with its assiduous at­ tention to the production of sculptural objects, with film reinvented as a document of bod­ ies at work and play, Visage focuses not on the story but on the creation of images through the interaction of bodies, props, and architectural settings, often in a backdrop of renowned but in this context underutilized Parisian landmarks. Instead Tsai treats us to the pipes and service walkways of the Louvre and an immense superhighway whose re­ flection is layered onto the windows of a nearby hotel, overwhelming the space of the ho­ tel with its concrete lanes and painted lines, virtually eliminating the interior and its illu­ sion of refuge. Like so many of the directors in the New Taiwan Cinema, Tsai’s film treats everyday objects—cleavers and cutting boards, refrigerators and fish tanks, windows and walls—like the centerpieces of a work of art, like things of immense value, not in mone­ tary terms like Barney’s million-dollar sculptures, but as repositories of a society’s materi­

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs al history, as props in the theater of quotidian gestures, as reminders of other concep­ tions of value itself.

Figure 22.6 Visage

While the work of Mainland Chinese directors like Jia Zhangke and Liu Jiayin sug­ gests that this fascination with the interior and its mise-en-scène should be framed in re­ gional and industrial terms—as a practice of a particular mode of art cinema currently prevalent in East Asia—rather than under the aegis of national cinema, the most notable recent practitioners of this art of mise-en-scène have been Taiwanese, especially Edward Yang. His penchant for showing the interior through a reflective glass curtain wall, most notably in Taipei Story and Yi Yi (2000), suggests that his exteriors serve not as establish­ ing shots designed to present basic facts about a location and therefore to orient the viewer, but as a radical reconsideration of the relationship between inside and outside, with the surface of the image, the structure of the building, and the depths of an open of­ fice space compressed onto a single plane. The camera focuses on these two categories of space at once, and the viewer’s wandering attention brings the eye back and forth be­ tween the interior and the exterior. To be inside the home or an office block is not to in­ habit a retreat or a sanctuary, but to stand on the verge of a social space beyond those thin, fragile, or even nonexistent walls. (p. 430)

In his famous essay on nineteenth-century Paris, in a section called “Louis-Philippe, or the Interior,” Walter Benjamin describes the burgeoning market in interior design during the ascendancy of the French bourgeoisie and links this aesthetic sense to a broader econom­ ic and social tendency toward privatization. He writes, “For the private person, living space becomes, for the first time, antithetical to the place of work. The former is consti­ tuted by the interior; the office is its complement. The private person who squares his ac­ counts with reality in his office demands that the interior be maintained in his illusions.”10 He adds that the development of a personal “sanctuary” or “refuge”—and these escapist metaphors appear in Benjamin’s work and in the literature of the period— is antithetical to the broader cultural and political concerns of the masses.11 Benjamin writes that for the individual bent on retreating within a carefully crafted interior, the de­ sire for solitude “is all the more pressing since he has no intention of extending his com­ mercial considerations into social ones. In shaping his private environment he represses both. From this spring the phantasmagorias of the interior. For the private individual the private environment represents the universe. In it he gathers remote places and the past. Page 10 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs His drawing room is a box in the world theater.”12 In Benjamin these phantasmagorias give way to phenakistoscopes, kinetoscopes, and other precinematic devices: the interior is also a camera obscura, a technology that makes one world visible and hides another. With their insistent return to spaces at the boundary between the private and the public realm, the filmmakers of Taiwan’s New Cinema pose a challenge to this bourgeois con­ ception of interior space; and the images at the beginning of Taipei Story suggest that the “world theater” imagined by Benjamin, with its allusion to box seats and a stage, has been replaced by other media technologies and art forms that better capture the late twentieth-century relationship between the interior and publicity. Hollywood blockbusters like Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) devote enormous resources to the creation and destruction of CGI cities, the tantalizingly real illusion of an exterior world. The interior, I would like to suggest, has become the domain of “world cinema,” a cinema that lavishes attention on the object world, the body, the (p. 431) architecture that reflects and struc­ tures social practices: in short, a cinema devoted to the material and corporeal that bear traces of the local or national past and the global future. If Benjamin wrote about the private individual and his characteristic space in the after­ math of the French Revolution, the New Cinema approaches the problem of the interior in the context of the radical and unsettling privatization of housing that occurred in Tai­ wan in the 1980s and 1990s, a period marked by the feverish intensity of its speculative cycles, as well as moments of stagnation and precipitous collapse. The development of Taiwan’s cities over the past three decades has largely been determined by its position as a manufacturing and then service hub in the global economy and by the more fundamen­ tal need for adequate housing, especially when immigrants from the mainland began to relinquish the dream of triumphant return and settled in permanently, most notably in Taipei. Although many of these waishengren (外省人) had been occupying unsatisfactory temporary dwellings for decades, the official response to this pressing problem was de­ ferral. In 1976, only 1.8 percent of the citizens of Taipei inhabited government-provided apartments, reflecting the minimal government outlays in this area, and only 46 percent of homes were owner-occupied dwellings.13 Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the encouragement of a culture of home ownership became one of the principal strategies of urban development in Taipei, and as a result home ownership rates soared to 65.2 per­ cent in 1985 and 80.2 percent in 2000, one of the highest levels in the world.14 This in­ crease corresponds with an equally dramatic increase in the wealth of the urban popula­ tion and with government policies, especially mortgage deductions, designed to promote this investment; but it also amounts to a rapid and radical reinvention of the concept of home as both the site of domestic life and a valuable and vulnerable financial asset, with its fragility exposed above all during the cyclical but increasingly frequent economic busts. Yomi Braester, Lin Wenchi, and others have written about the impact of the trans­ formation in the idea of the city on Taiwan’s new cinema, and Braester has concentrated in particular on the destruction of “provisional” veteran’s villages (眷村) and their repre­ sentation in film.15 But I would like to shift the focus from the grand scale of the city—the site of government and corporate investment and monumental construction—or the slightly more manageable domain of the neighborhood—the realm of urban planners and Page 11 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs civic activists—to the intimate environments of the interior because the drama of privati­ zation plays itself out in that historically new and charged domain. Yang’s films offer a paradigmatic view of the interior during a period when the vulnerability of housing to broader economic shocks clashes with the celebratory rhetoric of ownership and control. Thinking about the interior in cinema is a surprisingly complicated task, not because of a paucity of examples in actual films but because the classical studio picture consists pri­ marily of interior spaces. In fact, in films produced on a soundstage, the entire world is an interior, even the painted landscapes and skylines. The auteurist critics and filmmak­ ers of the French New Wave, and especially the cohort linked to Cahiers du Ciné ma, re­ peatedly identified mise-en-scène as the key, almost the definitional act of filmmaking be­ cause within a studio system focused relentlessly on stars and screenplays, the director could oversee the placement of objects and choreograph the movements of (p. 432) actors, placing this vast range of quotidian and habitually overlooked activities under his control. But how are the interiors of the postwar new waves, especially Taiwan’s New Cinema, dif­ ferent from the classical paradigm? The key distinction lies in the films and images allud­ ed to above, and especially in the opening sequence of Taipei Story, with its refusal of a clear separation between interior and exterior space, or more precisely in Edward Yang’s constant attention to the threshold between the two. The seminal essays by David Bordwell and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh on Hou Hsiao-Hsien and the more comprehensive recent book by Jim Udden provide crucial aesthetic and industri­ al accounts of the role of cinematic staging for this key Taiwanese filmmaker, and many of their observations are relevant to a discussion of other New Cinema directors, including Yang.16 But as much as any other recent filmmaker, Yang’s work provokes a philosophical discussion of the relationship between the filmed interior in recent Taiwan cinema and the transformation of its material culture into consumer-oriented environment that Jean Baudrillard calls the “system of objects.” Writing during a series of “economic miracles” in Western Europe and the burgeoning of American economic power during the 1950s and 1960s, Baudrillard develops a theory and taxonomy of the ephemeral object. He pens a long meditation on the historically new ways that “objects are experienced, what needs other than functional ones they answer, what mental structures are interwoven with—and contradict—their functional structures, or what cultural, intracultural or transcultural system underpins their directly experienced everydayness.”17 He explains that “our ‘tech­ nological’ civilization, as foreshadowed by the American model, is a world at once system­ atized and fragile. The system of objects is the embodiment of this systematization of fragility, of ephemerality, of the ever more rapid recurrence of the repetition compulsion; the embodiment of satisfaction and disillusion; the embodiment of the problematical exer­ cise of the real conflicts that threaten individual and social relationships. With the advent of our consumer society, we are seemingly faced for the first time in history with an irre­ versible organized attempt to swamp society with objects and integrate it into an indis­ pensible system designed to replace all open interaction between natural forces, needs and techniques.”18

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs Contrary to the logic of classical narrative cinema, the world is no longer driven by the actions of human agents who wield objects like simple props on a stage. As Baudrillard argues, “indeed, a genuine revolution has taken place on the everyday plane: objects have now become more complex than human behavior relative to them. Objects are more and more highly differentiated—our gestures less and less so. To put it another way: objects are no longer surrounded by the theatre of gesture in which they used to be simply the various roles; instead their emphatic goal-directedness has very neatly turned them into actors in a global process in which man is merely the role, the spectator.”19 For Bau­ drillard the paradigmatic modern material is glass because it creates the illusion that “everything communicates,” though it reverses the commonsense relationship between the interior and the exterior: “Indeed, the modern ‘house of glass’ does not open onto the outside at all; instead it is the outside world, nature, landscape, that penetrates, thanks to glass and its abstractness, into the intimate or private realm inside, and there ‘plays freely’ as a component of atmosphere. The whole world thus becomes integrated into the domestic universe.”20 In Yang’s films the (p. 433) interior appears to be protected by slid­ ing glass doors and glass curtain walls, but perhaps his many images of apartment and of­ fice windows represent not an aperture onto the cityscape outside but the realization that despite their care and vigilance, the interior is nothing more than a mirror image of the world outside. Yang shows us the thin glass curtains that separate private and public space because his characters never retreat into a secure personal domain; they instead transition from the city, with stories unfolding on a monumental scale, to the home, with its equally charged drama between people and the system of objects.

Window Screens

Figure 22.7 Taipei Story

The most privileged object within Taipei Story’s various interiors is the television set, the glass surface of which appears in close-up in several key scenes. While it follows the un­ raveling of the relationship between Lung and Ah-Chin, the film associates these two characters with very different worlds and their seemingly incompatible systems of eco­ nomic and social value. Ah-Chin surrounds herself with a cohort of other professionals and indulges in the consumerist pleasures made possible by the relative affluence of a globalizing economy. Mired in the past, Lung runs a fabric business and longs for the glo­ Page 13 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs ry days when he played baseball in his youth. The television exists at the threshold be­ tween those two social spheres and between past and present: first, when we see Lung watching a videotape of a baseball game and recalling his own career as an accomplished Little League player; then when Ah-Chin’s sister watches the commercials interspersed between the action of a baseball game, fast-forwarding past the balls, strikes, and home runs and concentrating on the ad for a fragrance called Because; and finally, in the film’s second-to-last sequence, as Lung slowly bleeds to death on an empty street, beside a pile of discarded household items, including a large television set. He spends his final living moments amid the refuse of a domestic interior now littered on the sidewalk. As Lung stares at the blank screen of this trashed and disconnected TV, he begins to fill the small screen, and then the frame of Taipei Story itself, with grainy footage of his own fantasy, a news broadcast that covers a victory parade for triumphant Little Leaguers returning home from Williamsport and reports on the highlights of their victory in the champi­ onship game (see fig. 22.7). The strong, silent type, Lung breaks from his usually re­ served demeanor and reveals his most intimate fantasy—a combination of utopian inter­ nationalism of Little League baseball tinged with the tragedy of lost youth and unrealized potential—but instead of conjuring it up within his own imagination he appropriates it from the quasi-public domain of the airwaves and the television screen. Like the window opening onto the city, the enchanted glass of the television screen appears to provide a privileged perspective on the world viewed on screen, as we see events unfolding outside or elsewhere without being seen. At Lung’s most intimate and emotionally charged mo­ ment, as he sits near death and recalls his childhood, his body and consciousness are re­ placed by a completely mediatized version of his cherished memories. And he presents that jubilant vision not in vibrant, saturated color and deafening sound, but in a (p. 434) fuzzy, grayed picture of 1970s television and the crackling sound that accompanies it. What we see in this scene is the near total destruction of the barrier between interior and exterior conceived as psychological metaphors, as a relationship between the spectator and the image, and as discrete physical and architectural spaces. Yang’s film begins with an attempt to claim, cultivate, and wall off a private space, but it concludes with a radical reversal of that opening gambit: while the television set, a domestic object among many, has been abandoned on the side of the road, Lung has internalized its images to such a degree that when his life flashes before his eyes, all he sees is television.

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs

Figure 22.8 Taipei Story

Taipei Story’s final scene shows Ah-Chin discussing the layout and design possibilities of a new office, though the space remains completely empty, aside from a regular array of structural columns (see fig. 22.8). And as she gazes out at the city, her own face merging with the building, the reflections of passing cars begin to glide by on an ornamental glass strip whose dimensions suggest the frame of a cinematic image. What is cin­ ema in this age of privatization and in the eyes of the new Taiwanese directors who devel­ (p. 435)

op in parallel with that process? Is cinema a director’s medium that reflects the personal vision of an individual artist, the private property of the auteur? Or is the camera distinct from the objects it records? Is it a technology capable of producing authentic documents of a particular time and place? Or do the films play with a more postmodern notion of cin­ ema and television as mere images, as simulacra among shadows? If, as Baudrillard sug­ gests, we have all become spectators in the new system of objects, are the characters at the beginning of Taipei Story watching an intimate film within the theater of the city, or are they about to draw the curtain and consume the necessarily public images of televi­ sion within their privacy of their own homes? The opening sequence and denouement of Taipei Story suggests that Yang always operated at the margins of the spaces and media he explored, playing one off the other, viewing each in the process of becoming some­ thing else. He shows us images circulating on television but anchored to an object and encased in plastic and glass; monumental buildings that reflect a cinematic spectacle of light and motion; and the at once privatized and mediatized interiors of the new Taiwan. While Yang has been justifiably characterized by Leo Chen as an architect manqué, his establishment of a production company, Miluku Productions, specializing in animated films and television programs, suggests that graphic design, the image drawn by hand or with software and not recorded by the camera, was also central to his vocation. Yet in re­ cent years and particularly with the advent of computer-aided design and drafting, archi­ tecture itself has been transformed into the end result of animation rather than the real­ ization of the scaled-down model in its miniaturized materiality. And as storyboard and CGI films have virtually eliminated the need for architecture, exteriors, and cities, block­ buster cinema has once again retreated into an interiorized domain. The studio has be­ come a world theater that opens onto entirely digital cities and landscapes. But perhaps the more accurate way of understanding this transition in Yang’s career, a transition trag­ Page 15 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs ically interrupted by his early death, is not as a movement away from realist cinema and the physical spaces of Taipei but as a continuation of this career-long fascination with mise-en-scène. What is animation, after all, but staging in its purest and least encum­ bered form, without the limitations imposed by photography, the human body, and actual, historical, material, contingent spaces? The environments glimpsed outside the newly decorated apartment and the brand-new structures viewed from architect’s office in Taipei Story, these material manifestations of fascination and regret, can be sketched on the storyboard and rendered in CGI. The world envisioned from those windows and bal­ conies was undergoing a process of continual redesign and reconstruction, with that cy­ cle now its quasi-natural condition rather than the narrative of roots-seeking so promi­ nent in the earliest pictures of Hou or the cool modernism of Yang. And Taipei Story’s tale of fading youthful romance can now be retold without any physical connection to Taipei at all; if his career had not been foreshortened, perhaps Yang himself would have been its author. On the other hand, Yang was among the most important filmmakers of the space and the era before the interior was everywhere and the camera served as an adjunct to the art of animation. For Yang, being an auteur in the (p. 436) late twentieth century meant occupying that liminal zone pictured so frequently in his films, with the interior spilling out onto the streets to Taipei and cinema occupying a temporary but revelatory position between the stage and the world.

Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. Trans. James Benedict. London: Verso, 2006. Bordwell, David. Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Braester, Yomi. Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Chen, Yi-Ling. “Provision for Collective Consumption: Housing Production under Neolib­ eralism.” Globalizing Taipei: The Political Economy of Spatial Development. Ed. Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok. New York: Routledge, 2005. Chiao, Peggy Hsiung-ping. “Edward Yang: Mahjong, Urban Travails.” Cinemaya 33 (1996): 24–27. Dai Jinhua. “Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Films: Pursuing and Escaping History.” Trans Zhang Jingyuan. Inter-Asian Cultural Studies 9.2 (2008): 239–250. Elsaesser, Thomas. European Cinema Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amster­ dam University Press, 2005. Frodon, Jean-Michel. Le cinéma d’Edward Yang. Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, 2010. Grieveson, Lee and Haidee Wasson. “The Academy and Motion Pictures.” Inventing Film Studies. Ed. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Page 16 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs Hsu, Chu-Tzu. “Urban Dwelling Environments: Taipei, Taiwan.” Master’s thesis, MIT, 1976. Jameson, Fredric. “Remapping Taipei.” The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System. London: BFI, 1992. Lin Wenchi 林文淇. “Taiwan dianying zhong de Taibei chengxian” 台灣電影中的台北呈現 [The emergence of Taipei in Taiwan cinema]. Xunzhao dianying zhong de Taibei 尋找電影中的台 北 [Seeking Taipei through cinema, 1950–1990]. Ed. Robert Ru-Shou Chen 陳儒修 and Gene-Fon Liao 廖金鳳 Taipei: Wanxiang tushu gufen youxian gongsi, 1995. Mi Zou 迷走 and Liang Hsin-hua 梁新華 eds. Xindianying zhi si: Cong Yiqie wei mingtian dao Beiqing chengshi 新電影之死: 從「一切為明天」到「悲情城市」 [Death of New Cinema: From All for Tomorrow to A City of Sadness]. Taipei: Tangshan, 1991. Sarris, Andrew. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968. New York: Dutton, 1968. Udden, James. No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu. “Poetics and Politics of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Films.” Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. Ed. Sheldon Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, and Darrell William Davis. Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Zhang, Yingjin. Chinese National Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Notes: (1.) Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson, “The Academy and Motion Pictures,” in Inventing Film Studies, ed. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), xi. (2.) See, for example, Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis, Taiwan Film Direc­ tors: A Treasure Island (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Yingjin Zhang, Chi­ nese National Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2004); and James Udden, No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009). (3.) Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis, Taiwan Film Directors, 6. (4.) See Mi Zou 迷走 and Liang Hsin-hua 梁新華, eds. Xindianying zhi si: Cong Yiqie wei mingtian dao Beiqing chengshi 新電影之死: 從「一切為明天」到「悲情城市」[Death of New Cinema: From All for Tomorrow to A City of Sadness] (Taipei: Tangshan, 1991).

Page 17 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs (5.) Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: Ams­ terdam University Press, 2005), 244. (6.) Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968 (New York: Dutton, 1968), 30. (7.) Fredric Jameson, “Remapping Taipei,” in The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (London: BFI, 1992). (8.) See Yang’s interview with Peggy Chiao Hsiung-ping, “Mahjong: Urban Travails,” Cine­ maya 33 (Summer 1996), 24. (9.) Dai Jinhua, “Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Films: Pursuing and Escaping History,” trans Zhang Jingyuan, Inter-Asian Cultural Studies 9.2 (2008): 243. (10.) Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” in Reflections, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Peter Demetz (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), 154. (11.) The reign of Louis Philippe I was also a formative period for Marx, who spent much of the 1840s in Paris. (12.) Walter Benjamin, “Paris,” 154. (13.) Chu-Tzu Hsu, “Urban Dwelling Environments: Taipei, Taiwan,” MA thesis, MIT, 1976, 4. (14.) Yi-Ling Chen, “Provision for Collective Consumption: Housing Production under Ne­ oliberalism,” in Globalizing Taipei: The Political Economy of Spatial Development, ed. Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok (New York: Routledge, 2005), 109. European and North Ameri­ can rates of home ownership usually fall in the 60 to 70 percent range and rarely fluctu­ ate more than a few percentage points. (15.) See Yomi Braester, Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); and Lin Wenchi 林文淇, “Taiwan dianying zhong de Taibei chengxian” 台灣電影中的台北呈現 [The emergence of Taipei in Taiwan cinema], in Xunzhao dianying zhong de Taibei 尋找電影中的台北 [Seeking Taipei through cinema 1950– 1990], ed. Robert Ru-Shou Chen 陳儒修 and Gene-Fon Liao 廖金鳳 (Taipei: Wanxiang tushu gufen youxian gongsi, 1995), 78–89. (16.) See David Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging (Berkeley: Uni­ versity of California Press, 2005); Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, “Poetics and Politics of Hou Hsiaohsien’s Films,” in Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, ed. Sheldon Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 163–85; and James Udden, No Man an Island. (17.) Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (London: Verso, 2006), 2.

Page 18 of 19

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Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs (18.) Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 143–144. (19.) Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 59. (20.) Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 44.

James Tweedie

James Tweedie is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Washington. His essays have appeared in Cinema Journal, Cultur­ al Critique, Public Culture, Screen, SubStance, and other journals, edited volumes, and anthologies, and he co-edited Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Net­ works in East Asia (with Yomi Braester; Hong Kong University Press, 2010). His book on global new wave cinemas is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Page 19 of 19

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies

A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chi­ nese Movies   Darrell William Davis The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0024

Abstract and Keywords This chapter begins with reflections on the musical “event,” as primary attraction to early film viewers, and potential destabilizer of narrative aims. This is followed by a brief overview of music in 1930s Shanghai, with the rehabilitation of popular music in a time of occupation. The marriage metaphor is used to engage dilemmas that Chinese cinemas faced in using music, sound, and images. When uniting distinct expressive registers—as storytelling waxes musical and music comes to a narrative function—integration becomes key. Integration seeks a mosaic of story, setting, and musical performance, yielding a per­ fect blend of camera, movement, and song. Yet integration has different meanings and functions. When a film offers songs or musical sequences that disregard “the integrated ideal,” it is seen as lacking. Songs may have their own inclinations, distinct from—but not necessarily in conflict with—the dramatic goals of the film itself. The chapter concludes with some brief examples of musical moments in contemporary Taiwan films. Keywords: integration, synchronization, popular music, patriotism, musicals, shidai qu (Mandarin pop)

In his discussion of the period before the introduction of cinematic sound, Rick Altman us­ es a marriage metaphor to describe the relationship between cinema and song: “It is too often forgotten that films shared the nickelodeon program with illustrated songs. This marriage of convenience had an enormous influence on film accompaniment practice in nickel theaters.”1 Altman here is dedicated to outlining alternatives, the roads not taken in silent film history, reconstructing exhibition contexts like the nickelodeon. Prior to 1910, American film exhibitors offered music and sound events, and Altman discusses three D. W. Griffith shorts from 1909—The Voice of the Violin, Schneider’s Anti-Noise Cru­ sade, and The Lonely Villa—all of which privilege the act of listening, with “sound” used virtually to construct narrative and spatial relations.2 Altman notes that works from this pre-1910 period retained practices from earlier modes of live entertainment, such as il­ lustrated slides for sing-alongs, improvised piano, live sound effects, or off-screen com­ mentary—all of which subsequently fell by the wayside with the arrival of industrial cine­ ma. Nickelodeon musicians were not just accompanists but effects-men and reporters on Page 1 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies the characters, or even the film itself. Altman notes that “in 1908 it was simply not possi­ ble to make the neat separation between music and sound effects that we take for grant­ ed today.”3 Altman’s phrase marriage of convenience, however, has a dubious ring, confirmed by his discovery of trade press accounts describing brazen mismatches between film and live music that threatened to undermine the work itself. Examples include a little girl saying her prayers to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw”; Pathé’s magnificent Bible story Samson and Delilah (F. Zecca, 1903), cued with “Honey Boy”; and a man mourning his dead wife, accompanied by “No Wedding Bells for Me.”4 In these gaps between expectation and ex­ perience, there emerges a problem of sound-image fidelity. As David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson put it, “fidelity is thus purely a matter of expectation.”5 In the second decade of the twentieth century, long before mechanical recording, film sound had to conform to new industry demands: accompaniment must enhance the film’s narrative and emotional content. Picture palaces and epic productions of the era were enshrined as new instruments, along with music-publication activities, and a new style of film music created to go with it. Great features such as D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), and Broken Blossoms (1919), with full symphonic (p. 439)

scores, replaced his earlier silent works like Schneider’s Anti-Noise Crusade (1909). Film music would henceforth become an integral part of the film experience rather than adver­ sary, and new forms of cinema sound would favor accompaniment that worked in concert with storytelling. This raises another sense of integration, with humor, mockery, or irony derived from sometimes absurd linkages of images with improvised music. That is, integration in the classical comedic sense, with all misunderstandings and chaos of the first two acts, re­ solved in a joyous marriage celebration.6 Ultimately community is restored, along with traditional social roles and hierarchies, young newlyweds at center, and all together enjoy a final dance or ball or feast. This is a utopian conception of musical comedy, and integra­ tion is its hallmark.7 This chapter begins with some reflections on the musical event, followed by a brief overview of music in the crucial years of 1930s Shanghai and the rehabilitation of popu­ lar musical forms in a time of crisis. The marriage metaphor is used to engage dilemmas that Chinese and foreign cinemas faced with respect to music, sound, and images. When faced with the prospect of uniting distinct expressive registers—as storytelling waxes mu­ sical and music comes to a narrative function—integration becomes key.

Song Primacy Consider for a moment a time when musicals were common, and musical interludes were a typical aside in many genres. For viewers, songs were the main attraction. Movie sto­ ries, themes, directors, and even characters retire into the background. Songs are sta­ ples, priority items, with vibrant lives of their own at least on par with their cinematic or Page 2 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies karaoke avatars. Here the real theme is music, while the variation is movies, which lend pictorial accompaniment. Online music fans are transfixed by musical numbers much the same way movie audiences once were. Here we find a reversal of assumptions made about accompaniment, and the supporting roles music and sound are supposed to play. The film is one of many platforms, or just a supporting wing, and capitalizes on a musical event outstripping a single film, a series, or even entire genre. The term event does not mean a musical event is necessarily singular or unique, and instead a musical event may be ongoing and diachronic—an intertext stretching over years or even decades, audible on film, radio, television, recordings, and other media. Like American films such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Graduate (1967), American Graffiti (1973), and The Rocky Hor­ ror Picture Show (1975), movies with music are parasitic, contextual, multimediated, (p. 440) and distill prevailing moods or zeitgeist. Such works help popularize songs, musi­ cal motifs, or audiovisual combinations and propel them into wider circulation. It is appropriate, then, to emphasize music as an event—or special event—just as audi­ ences did in the heyday of musicals. Movies may well have songs punctuated occasionally by narrative, rather than the other way round. In early sound films, singing, music, and speech were interesting novelties in themselves. Not only did the soundtrack carry tunes, you could even see the player or singer bringing them to life, realized in real time. Films such as Lianhua Symphony (聯華交響曲, 1937) sometimes feature a series of modular num­ bers, like episodes or variety acts. Songs and musical sequences could be a main attrac­ tion, even taking precedence over storytelling. This kind of performance interlude is not usually central to film analysis, which instead tends to privilege narrative structure and development. The film text is a discrete work usually thought to contain and constrain performing interludes. But the interlude is cru­ cial when it involves music, and especially so in the context of Chinese film history. This is partly because of a delay in the conversion to sound.8 As Zhang Zhen argues, “the slow transition to sound in China, roughly between 1930 and 1936, was characterized by the cohabitation of different temporalities as well as cultural imaginaries and practices.”9 In American musicals and other genres, songs were expected to pull their own weight and contribute to exposition, narrative development, causality, and character. In other traditions, especially commercial Hindi movies, song is the primary formal and thematic element of the work. If Western viewers expect the story to be put on hold by musical numbers, commercial Indian movies, as Corey Creekmur observes, are “best understood and appreciated as the presentation of songs which are occasionally ‘interrupted’ by a narrative.”10 In this tradition there are long-standing conventions such as song “picturization” (fantasy) and playback singers (lip-synching to famous voices), together with great fluidity between musical styles. Musicologist Anna Morcom notes that songs in Hindi films function as “para-narrative” units alongside story, dance, comedy, fights, and other stock elements.11 It is through music, therefore, that Hindi movies are able to offer emotional sublimation such that the songs signal priorities superseding the strictly narra­ tive concerns that predominate in conventional Hollywood films. Page 3 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies In Hollywood musicals, song defers to story, with the story playing a dominant husband role and song serving as loyal wife. In Indian popular film, by contrast, music, song, and dance are allowed a para-narrative place and thus promote a wider field, with perfor­ mances sown throughout the text. In Hindi films it is not story above all else, but rather story balanced with songs, alongside conventional expressive means. Anna Morcom, cit­ ing Ravi Vasudevan, notes that songs, dances, lyrics, dialogues, and fights often function as “items in themselves within the film text.”12 This is something like the cinema of at­ tractions in early film. Tom Gunning has argued that early cinema functioned as a “cinema of attractions” by us­ ing exciting, arresting shocks to help lure in audiences not yet exposed to extended nar­ ratives. He later recast his initial thoughts on attraction, proposing a more flexible, di­ alectical relation between narrative integration and the attractions it was once thought to (p. 441) upset, arguing that “rather than seeing attractions as simply a form of counternarrative, I have proposed them as a different configuration of spectatorial involvement, an address that can, in fact, interact in complex and varied ways with other forms of in­ volvement.”13 Similarly, the up-front commercialism of the Hindi musical attraction is sometimes embarrassing to critics, who might perceive it as a “not-yet-cinema.”14 Hindi musicals were opposed to Hollywood films and to Indian art cinema, both of which rely more on linear causality and psychological realism. While there are significant differ­ ences between Hindi and Chinese movies, such as motivation, length, conventions, im­ pact, industrial vigor, cultural visibility, and so forth, some similar functions were carried by songs and music in both, including emotional sublimation that can suspend plot and characterization for musical expression; pleasure to be taken in and outside the text in performance for its own sake; songs and/or dances that carry otherwise unexpressible meanings.

Lily White to Loyal Red Interwar Shanghai was an exciting place, an emblem of urban form caught between colo­ nial, imperialist, and nationalist urges. In 1930s Shanghai there was firm attachment of screen to metropolitan context, with music as commercial adhesive. Sue Tuohy writes, “Spilling out of the bounds of the screen…the music linked the actions taking place on the screen to those on the streets.”15 She and others recover Shanghai’s audiovisual stimula­ tion, whose impact was augmented—overdetermined—by overlapping music, movies, bal­ lyhoo, and the big city. Shanghai’s musical, film, and urban style threw a more vivid, even documentary, flash due to multiple, synchronic channels. As now, sounds of that era were trade-based, capitalist connections, with potent crossover and confluence of film produc­ tion and recording industry. A brisk trade in radio, sheet music, and live performance in the city’s clubs and cabarets aided this multimediation. Some call this context symbiotic, because it involved a mass media loop running through various commercial platforms.16 Songs in Chinese movies have resonance that is both specific and sweeping. Leo Ou-fan Lee claims that songs function in a special way in classic movies like Yuan Muzhi’s 袁牧之 Page 4 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies Street Angel (馬路天使, 1937). He compares the rhythm and pace of Street Angel with American musicals and finds it slower, more variable, and more attuned to the singing style of Zhou Xuan 周璇, who virtually stops the story with her numbers. As Lee observes, “the narrative tempo fluctuates precisely because the Chinese film is made to contain di­ verse elements from different film and cultural genres.”17 In this Lee perceives not a lack of integration, but rather a case of hybridity wherein Chinese audiences embraced musi­ cal interludes, not expecting the “smooth, natural rhythm” of Hollywood movies and re­ ceptive to story interruptions by musical devices.18 Songs as part of film “composites”19 were welcomed by Shanghai audiences, who were not distracted or annoyed, but rather were already accustomed to songs in cabarets and radio broadcasts of the era. This is un­ doubtedly different from songs that work like Hindi song (p. 442) picturization, sensation­ al music-and-dance fantasies born of high emotional states. Song sequences in Shanghai films from the 1930s are related instead to the extracinematic milieus of radio and enter­ tainment offerings. Singers like Zhou Xuan, Wang Renmei 王人美, Li Lili 黎莉莉, Bai Guang 白光, Gong Qiuxia 龔 秋霞, Zhou Manhua 周曼華, and Li Xianglan 李香蘭 all had careers that straddled music and cinema, fashion and advertising, allowing them to burnish their star images as well as their latest hits and live appearances. Films in this regard were instruments within musi­ cal star commerce. Quintessentially seductive and modern, Shanghai offered pleasure packages consumed with relish and sophisticated, decadent pride. Epicureanism abound­ ed in the display and indulgence in conspicuous consumption. Shanghai was often pic­ tured as musical siren or femme fatale,20 with a distinctive, flamboyant, but also ephemeral and melancholic, sensibility. Much of its flavor was exported and later re-cre­ ated nostalgically in Hong Kong, Singapore, and other Asian cities. That movement abroad, away from the origin of Shanghai modern, would accentuate and exaggerate its features, forging a Shanghai mystique. Any film starring Zhou Xuan, epitome of the songstress, would share these qualities, giv­ en the crossover between her roles as popular singer and actress, as in Yuan Muzhi’s Street Angel, Wu Cun’s 吳村 Wandering Songstress (天涯歌女, 1940), Zhang Shichuan’s 張 石川 Romance of the West Chamber (西廂記, 1940), and Fang Peilin’s 方沛霖 Songs of Har­ mony (鸞鳳和鳴, 1944) and Songs of the Phoenix (鳳凰于飛, 1945). Zhou becomes a singing patriot in He Zhaozhang’s 何兆璋 An All-Consuming Love (長相思, 1947), songs from which were subsequently reused by Wong Kar-Wai 王家衞 for In the Mood for Love (花樣年華, 2000). Films about musicians, composers, singers, and music teachers were also promi­ nent, including Cai Chusheng’s 蔡楚生 New Woman (新女性, 1935), Yuan Muzhi’s City Scenes (都市之光, 1935), Xia Yan’s 夏衍 A New Year’s Coin (壓歲錢, 1937), Zheng Junli 鄭君 里 and Qian Qianli’s 錢千里 Nie Er (聶耳, 1959), Yi Wen’s 易文 It’s Always Spring (桃李爭春, 1962), and Inoue Umetsugu’s 井上梅次 King Drummer (青春鼓王, 1967). As Tuohy observes, these works all had “musicians as central characters or music as central framing device.”21 The topic of music, or performance, provides a pretext for creative emotionalcultural reconciliation, as in Inoue’s Hong Kong Nocturne (香江花月夜, 1967), which was a remake of the Japanese picture Inoue had directed for Shochiku.22 Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love and his English-language My Blueberry Nights (2007) are music-carried Page 5 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies movies, building melody into their look, sound, and feel. Of the latter, Giorgio Biancorosso notes that popular “songs impart to the sequences in which they appear the quality of ‘musical numbers,’ that is, modular, detachable segments of representation that while propelling the action forward can be contemplated as self-contained entities (like set pieces in opera or musical sequences in a musical).”23 We can return now to song primacy, songs as basic material, and recognize their multi­ form, redundant dissemination from radio, records, dance halls, and formal renditions on­ stage, as forms of public space, and in films. We can make out the musical idiom, espe­ cially shidai qu 時代曲 (Mandarin pop songs), through which Shanghai shaped its persona. In a 1934 issue of the magazine Liangyou (良友畫報), for instance, there appears a picture entitled “Intoxicated Shanghai,” featuring a photo-collage of dancing (p. 443) girls, beer ads, jai alai, and dog races, with a Chinese caption that reads, “In saying that there is a second Paris in China, we really don’t know whether to rejoice or to lament.”24 A showgirl feigning false modesty before a roomful of flashbulbs and outthrust bouquets, the “Shanghai Lily,” whose stock-in-trade was crooning songs of love and yearning in smoky lounges, became a stock character, an enduring type.25 But this was not just a floating world of languid tunes and lax sentiments. There was a turn to “red” expressions, musical form that resisted invaders and called for patriotism. At that time many concerned artists, alarmed at China’s vulnerability, rehabilitated popu­ lar culture and used it to serve the nation. Li Jinhui’s 黎錦輝 Bright Moon Song and Dance Company (明月歌舞團) was excoriated, cast as decadent vendor of unhealthy impulses that undermined China.26 Nie Er, Tian Han 田漢, and other leftists attacked Li and appropriat­ ed folk and pop songs to serve nationalist aims. Examples include Sun Yu’s 孫瑜 The Big Road (大路, 1935), which features a performance of the Anhui ballad “Song of Fengyang” (鳳陽花鼓). New Woman, starring Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉, recuperated the stan­ dard “Taohua jiang” (桃花江), where the song is mentioned as just the kind of popular tune whose meaning requires adjustment, to make it uplifting and noble. Because these songs were already popular, with recognizable melodies and simple lyrics, they were ripe for appropriation by patriots intent on mobilizing—not anesthetizing—the public awareness.27 In Street Angel, the famous “Song of Four Seasons” (四季歌) is bor­ rowed from a popular Suzhou song, “Cry for Double Seven.” As the former Bright Moon trouper Zhou Xuan sings, a montage of war footage from the northeast appears on screen, providing a strong counterpoint to the sweet melody. Zhou Xuan herself was ini­ tially discovered when practicing a radio jingle, an advertisement for tooth powder.28 This sort of musical “detournement,” to borrow Guy Debord’s term for radical repurposing of a commodity form, is also evident in the song “Wandering songstress” (天涯歌女), for which Tian Han composed lyrics and put them to a Suzhou ballad.29 This latter song was reap­ propriated decades later by Ang Lee 李安 in the geisha house scene of Lust, Caution (色, 戒, 2007); while in Street Angel the song was used in an attempt to replace the old “vul­ gar” connotations of shidai qu with feelings of nationalist awareness, in Lust, Caution it

Page 6 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies served as a defiant expression of Chinese shidai qu under the noses of Japanese imperial­ ists. In these musical transactions we find not only intertexual disseminations, but also a bold­ ly political process of what Homi Bhabha calls “dissemiNation.” In the mid-1930s this process redirected certain sorts of meanings and toward committed, anti-imperialist ges­ tures, sometimes under pressure from censors. It was the very popularity of “soft” shidai qu that was harnessed to do the hard work of consciousness-raising and resistance.30 Nie Er described Li Jinhui’s songs as sensual and amorous “soft tofu.”31 Another case is A New Year’s Coin, whose initial “Dance Hall Song” is later turned into the patriotic “Song of Saving the Nation,” with the same melody, but transformed from a sweet lullaby to rousing march.32 Tuohy describes this recontextualization: “Film musicians drew upon music of the time, detaching it from previous contexts and reconstituting it in the new context of the film.”33 It serves as an illustration of the malleability of songs and music, like a freely convertible currency, especially the popular kinds. Because of these songs, both commercial and patriotic, the Mandarin-language film industry was promoted across a wide region. Popular shidai qu came first and were transmitted and reshaped by the movies, carried over great distances. Movie popularity (p. 444)

in turn depended on the number and quality of their songs, and their singers—who were nearly always female. Here is another instance of song primacy. It would be fair to say that the songs’ popularity was the foundation for the film industry’s success, as movies took off from songs and gave them dramatic force, narrativized and put them in new con­ texts. Thanks to shidai qu, the production slates of film companies were greatly expand­ ed. Audiences around the region, especially Southeast Asia, demanded songs in their movies, the more the better. Though the mainland was closed after 1949, shidai qu and Mandarin-language cinema continued to find a rich, irresistible market in Hong Kong, whose uprooted audiences eagerly awaited songs from local composers, Taiwan, South­ east Asia, and even China itself. Heartland songs were harvested in the People’s Republic of China too. Note the Mainland Chinese term for Party-approved propaganda films, zhu xuanlü 主旋律, or “main melody” pictures—a musical term that conveys the idea of “correct” ideology, the proper tune de­ livered by films. Su Li’s 蘇里 Liu Sanjie (劉三姐, 1961) is more correct than most, while at the same time is an inventive folk musical that draws on a huangmeidiao 黃梅調 (literally, “yellow plum melody”) opera tradition. (See Stephen Teo’s chapter in this volume.) Based on earthy folk songs rather than conventional opera melodies, its folk elements give the work strong ethnographic, even documentary, quality as it dramatizes the clash of rural folk practice with bureaucratic elite. With mischievous humor, the film mobilizes folk singing as a socialist challenge. The film was successful and was especially embraced in Southeast Asia. The Zhuang ethnic group of the Guangxi region is romanticized with its landscape, river life, fishing, and tea farming. Conflict between the nature-loving commu­ nity and venal officials is resolved firmly in the common people’s favor. Folklorist Hai­ wang Yuan writes that Liu Sanjie was a legendary figure:

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies The legend of Liu Sanjie was originally an oral tradition and later found itself in romance, drama scripts, and county annals in Guangxi….Liu Sanjie leaves a trail of her songs wherever she travels. In no time, they spread all over the region where the Zhuang people live.34 Liu Sanjie appropriates this folk custom on behalf of a socialist uprising against petty officials. Like Disney cartoons, the filmmakers employ mimicry and stereotype to animate characters, us­ ing what are called playback singers in Hindi film to put words, voices, and attitudes into their mouths through dubbing. Mary Ann Doane calls this result a fantasmatic body, splitting record­ ed voice from filmed figures, in order to better recombine them into ideal, synthetic composites.35

More than this superimposition, there is an overpowering of official hypocrisy with au­ thentic, vital sounds of the people’s voice, the elemental folkways of the countryside. Chi­ nese folk music is put to work on behalf of the revolution, making (p. 445) ethno-communi­ tarianism in the field speak back to a tyrannical, impotent regime. Likewise, leftist artists of the 1930s mobilized shidai qu to compose songs that would spur Chinese listeners to greater nationalist resolve. Liu Sanjie’s folk musical appropriation anticipates the revolu­ tionary model operas (樣板戲) of the Cultural Revolution. Liu Sanjie is an active, defiant figure laughing in the faces of the local authorities, who don’t have a chance against her. In its muscular musicality, Liu Sanjie stands in stark contrast to the resignation of songstresses suffering tragically in the cruel city of Shanghai. Consistent with the emphasis on the masses, the proletariat, and the peasants in the 1960s, Liu Sanjie gives common people a heroic stature, using music as a powerful ex­ pression of unity, binding people not only in their collective endeavor but also their con­ nection with the land. In Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 Yellow Earth (黃土地, 1984) songs are used to tie people to the ancient land, but Liu Sanjie is more direct, straightforward, and didactic in its musical heroism. Liu herself is a legendary force of nature, typifying landscape, sea­ sons, dazzling beauty, and this figure is a powerful, appealing invocation of the land, fiercely opposing the effete literati.

Integration, the Marriage Circle With the advent of sound, the perennial issue that preoccupied the industry and filmmak­ ers was the synchronization of sound and image, the matching of aural and visual cues. Similarly, another important issue in sound studies is that of integration, or the folding of music into film and vice versa. As we have seen, integration is a salient notion in ap­ proaching cinema-musical contact, as the prospect of consummation of different expres­ sive registers into a single, organic whole. Chinese-language films from the midcentury, for instance, have often been criticized for appearing disunified and disintegrated, with music and story serving different aims.36 In particular, the criticism is that Chinese musical inserts are simply dropped into the sto­ ry flow, rather than being patterned numbers designed to further the plot, reveal charac­ ter, and link scenes. In such cases music is seen as an interruption, even an obstacle, to Page 8 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies the point that the musical parts of these Mandarin films appear segregated, operating un­ der different rules. The film thus wavers or alternates between the main storytelling sec­ tions and those distracting, inserted musical intervals. Hong Kong film historian Law Kar notes that “musical numbers in Mandarin films usually appear as insertions and without narrative functions. Sometimes the insertions were made casually, without definite pat­ terns.”37 Stephen Teo similarly observes that many Chinese musicals were hyphenated— karaoke-musicals—whose song sequences were “compact episodes having little or noth­ ing to do with the plots.”38 Integration is a goal or standard based on the artificiality of musical interludes inserted as spectacle, without working to build them naturally into the dramatic premise at the heart of the work.39 Though musicals are among the most non­ mimetic of genres, we still expect them to become as natural as possible by motivating and mobilizing their musical parts. This is a Hollywood ideal, whose mode of production and representation aimed for a seamless mosaic of story, setting, and musical performance, yielding a perfect blend of voice and dance capering with camera movement, lighting, costume, and editing. The re­ sult is something thoroughly integrated, a pledge of (musical) allegiance: lively, indivisi­ ble, with harmony and surplus for all. When a film offers songs or musical sequences that (p. 446)

do not conform to what I call “the integrated ideal,” it is seen as somehow lacking, letting music go astray like a wayward dog. Yet songs may have their own inclinations, distinct from—but not always in conflict with—the dramatic goals of the film itself. Without a doubt, Hollywood cinema is narrative-driven, though Hollywood musicals may not be as story-centered as we might assume. They might run on a scale from modular, serial re­ vues, whose numbers queue up in no particular order, such as The Show of Shows (1929), The Broadway Revue of 1929 (1929), and King of Jazz (1930), to works in which music, drama, and spectacle are combined into a seamless whole, as in A Star Is Born (1954), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), and The Sound of Music (1965). Peter Wollen points to three subgenres of musical theatre: nondramatic revue, mainstream musical comedy, and op­ eretta, with tighter dramatic integration at each level.40 How does this relate to Chinese films’ musical capacity? Each film is bound to occupy a place, like any other musical film, on a scale from serial, modular succession to seamless narrative integration. We must of course be cautious in using and reinforcing a continu­ um that rests firmly on integration, which in turn assumes the hegemony of narrative. There are many virtues boasted by films, narrative design among them, with narrative not always the most important. Also, music’s prominence in Chinese cinemas indicates its deep emotional appeal, its synesthesia and even kinesthetic power.41 These features may have little to do with integration into narrative purpose. Discussing the theme song of Ma-Xu Weibang’s 馬徐維邦 Song at Midnight (夜半歌聲, 1937), Zhang Zhen argues for its emblematic status as a fulcrum, linchpin, or nodal point in a Chinese remake of Phantom of the Opera.42 Not only is this theme song textually em­ blematic, it also helped draw audiences from outside the cinema, even becoming a hit

Page 9 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies “single” that people heard on records, on the radio, or over public PA systems. Zhang writes, The theme song, stemming from the marriage between the visual art of the cine­ ma and the auditory (as well as performative) art of the theater became a “transi­ tional region” in which such a spatial and temporal division collapsed. As an au­ diovisual experience that exceeded the confines of the movie theater, it was mapped onto the multiple temporalities manifested in its various incarnations and extensions.43 Here we find again the marriage idea, “tying the knot” between sight and sound, and between body and voice in the cinema, and even between cinema and theater, with their respective spec­ tatorial configurations. This indicates a trajectory toward full “presence,” transcending the par­ tial, limited vehicles of seeing and hearing toward something more organic.

The 1930s press frequently used the phrase “matrimony of sound and image” (聲色聯姻) to entice audiences to the novelty of sound pictures. Zhang Zhen pushes this (p. 447) metaphor of romance and marriage from uniting different sense modes of vision and hearing, toward a union between human senses and technologies that carry them.44 Almost cybernetic, film technology strains to become a kind of proxy, a double for human perception and therefore modernity, capable of simulating and packaging the senses into commodity form. Moreover, Zhang compares the visual transformation of film in the 1920s with sonic changes of the 1930s, finding parallels and moving in similar ways from “self-reflexive experimentation to integration.”45 Integration is paired with another part­ ner term, experimentation, that reflexively calls attention to the work’s construction.

Coda, by Way of Taiwan Many contemporary films from Taiwan take music deep into their design, but also more abstractly, not as directly and straightforwardly as musicals proper. They offer a signa­ ture tune with vocal renditions, delivery, and performance, but not necessarily about mu­ sical events or careers. We may call these works “melody films.” Wei Te-sheng’s 魏德聖 Cape No. 7 (海角七號, 2008), the giant hit from Taiwan, would be a good melody film, be­ cause it proposes harmonies and resonance across ethnic, linguistic, class, and historical divides. Granted it has musical material: a failed guitarist/songwriter who wants to trans­ plant musical vision in a country town, far from his artistic habitat in the city. But the cen­ tral theme and style go beyond the topic of music, or even musical performance. The ap­ pearance of Japanese pop singer Atari Kousuke in a duet with his Taiwan counterpart on the beach is a touching reconciliation of postcolonial resentments. It is rarely mentioned that Atari is not just a Japanese pop star, but a folk singer from a remote Ryukyu island off Okinawa, just a few hundred miles from the coast of Taiwan. Atari is not only playing himself; he’s also cast as the damaged Japanese outcast, returned by force to the Home Islands after the war when his love remains in Taiwan.

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies Another melody film is Edward Yang’s 楊德昌 Yi Yi (一一, 2000). Yang wanted to transpose the rhythms of jazz and other musical forms to storytelling. Yi Yi uses many parallels, echoes, and rhymes across generations that could be seen (or heard) as counterpoint, a father-daughter call and response, unbeknownst to each other. Many of Yang’s films are emphatically musical, a kind of melody cinema. As a polymath, Yang was inspired by both classical and popular musicians, including Beethoven, Brahms, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Maria Callas, and Renata Tebaldi.46 Like Yi Yi, Yang’s masterpiece, A Brighter Summer Day (牯嶺街少年殺人事件, 1993), is musical in concept, borrowing its English title from an Elvis Presley hit. Its most haunting, ironic moments are the lip-synched performances with Little Cat covering the soulful hits of Elvis, Frankie Avalon, and even Rosie and the Originals.47 Yang was inspired by what he called a new wave in music that rose alongside Taiwan New Cinema. At this time Taiwan’s popular music took cues from protest songs in the West, like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, prompting musicians, directors, and artists of all kinds to pursue their craft, share with (p. 448) like-minded mates, and ignore officialdom, whether government censors or commercial interests.48 Not only did Yang love music, he also drew and followed comics, architecture, literature, and sports. Like other vanguard filmmakers, Yang was interested in cinema as a synthetic, orchestrated art form that crosses and binds generations.49 Finally, we find another model of cinematic musicality in the works of Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明 亮. Tsai is known for a minimalist style in which actors are directed not to speak, but just to stand as mute objects within the composition. Here silence is balanced with musical in­ serts of actors lip-synching or singing along with a jukebox/karaoke mixer. These musical moments may seem like a layer of gaudy, surrealist plasticity, but more importantly, they function too like contrapuntal phrasing, complementing if not contradicting the cool, poised statuary. Tsai Ming-liang’s films, especially his affectionate parody of Grace Ge Lan’s 葛蘭 songs in The Hole (洞, 2000), resemble Michael Powell’s “composed” film (wordless orchestration), even in its other connotation of repose and perhaps repression. Visage (臉, 2009) is another Tsai film that seems saturated with musical modulations, from Europe as much as Asia. Inspired by Bible stories and paintings, Visage (which was commissioned and funded by the Louvre) is carried along by pictorial rhythms, more than conventional, anthropocentric narratives with three or four acts. Dialogue is often dis­ carded in favor of sly, impish designs that behave like tableaux and invite off-center recognition. In another work, Emilie Yeh and I used theories of camp to analyze Tsai’s films, but this overlooks his aesthetic of subtle indirection, of playful, contrapuntal pat­ terning.50 There is something quietly musical in this, even if it concludes with only an eerie fade-out.

Works Cited Altman, Rick. Silent Film Sound. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Biancorosso, Giorgio. “Global Music/Local Cinema: Two Wong Kar-wai Pop Compilations.” Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image. Ed. Kam Louie. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Page 11 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies Bordwell, David. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. 2nd ed. Madison, WI: Irvington Way Press, 2011. Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 7th ed. New York: Mc­ Graw Hill, 2004. Creekmur, Corey. “Popular Hindi Cinema and the Film Song.” Traditions in World Cinema. Ed. Linda Badley, R. Barton Palmer, and Steven Jay Schneider. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni­ versity Press, 2006. 193–202. Davis, Darrell William, and Emilie Yueh-Yu Yeh. “Inoue at Shaws: The Wellspring of Youth.” The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. Ed. Wong Ain-ling. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003. 255–271. Doane, Mary Ann, “The Voice in the Cinema: Articulation of Body and Space.” Film Sound. Ed. Elisabeth Weis and John Belton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. 163–176. Dyer, Richard. “Entertainment and Utopia.” Only Entertainment. Ed. Richard Dyer. Lon­ don: Routledge, 1992. 17–34. Field, Andrew. “Selling Souls in Sin City: Shanghai Singing and Dancing Host­ esses in Print, Film and Politics, 1920–49.” Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922– (p. 451)

1943. Ed. Zhang Yingjin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 99–127. Frodon, Jean-Michel. Le cinema d’Edward Yang. Paris: Editions de l’eclat, 2010. Jones, Andrew. Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Ho, Sam. “The Songstress, the Farmer’s Daughter, the Mambo Girl and the Songstress Again.” Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s. Hong Kong: 17th HKIFF, 1993. 59– 66. Laing, Heather. The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Law Kar. “Epilogue: Beginning and End of an Era.” Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s. Hong Kong: 17th HKIFF, 1993. 79–80. Morcom, Anna. Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2007. Ng Ho. “Songstresses of the World.” Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s. Hong Kong: 17th HKIFF, 1993. 24–25. Ng, Stephanie Yuet-wah. “Characteristics of Cantonese Youth Musical Movie Songs.” Hong Kong Cinema: Nostalgia and Ideology. Hong Kong: International Association of The­ atre Critics, 2007. 1–53. Page 12 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies Teo, Stephen. “Oh, Karaoke! Mandarin Pop and Musicals.” Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s. Hong Kong: 17th HKIFF, 1993. 32–36. Tuohy Sue. “Metropolitan Sounds: Music in Chinese Films of the 1930s.” Cinema and Ur­ ban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943. Ed. Zhang Yingjin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 200–221. Wollen, Peter. Singin in the Rain. London: BFI Publishing, 1992. Wong Kee-chee. “Two or Three Things about Mandarin Pop.” Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s. Hong Kong: 17th HKIFF, 1993. 18–20. Yeh, [Emilie] Yueh-yu. “Historiography and Sinification: Music in Chinese Cinema of the 1930s.” Cinema Journal 41. 3 (2002): 78–97. Yeh, [Emilie] Yueh-yu. “Wall-to-Wall: Music in the Films of Tsui Hark.” The Swordsman and His Jiang Hu: Tsui Hark and Hong Kong Film. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002. 70–83. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu. “Elvis, Allow Me to Introduce Myself: American Music and Neocolo­ nialism in Taiwan Cinema.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.1 (2003): 1–28. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, and Darrell William Davis. Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Yuan, Haiwang. “Liu Sanjie—A Fearless Folk Song Singer.” September 10, 2008. Re­ trieved October 22, 2012, from people.wku.edu/haiwang.yuan/China/tales/ liusanjie_b.htm. Zhang Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1897–1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Notes: (1.) Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 220, emphasis added. (2.) Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound, 214. (3.) Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound, 210. (4.) Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound, 221. (5.) David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004), 365. (6.) Classical comedic theory, such as Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: The Holly­ wood Comedy of Remarriage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies (7.) Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia,” in Only Entertainment, ed. Richard Dyer (London: Routledge, 1992), 17–34. (8.) [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh, “Historiography and Sinification: Music in Chinese Cinema of the 1930s,” Cinema Journal 41.3 (2002): 86–87. (9.) Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1897–1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 81. (10.) Corey Creekmur, “Popular Hindi Cinema and the Film Song,” in Traditions in World Cinema, ed. Linda Badley, R. Barton Palmer, and Steven Jay Schneider (Edinburgh: Edin­ burgh University Press, 2006), 201. (11.) Anna Morcom, Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publish­ ing, 2007), 12. (12.) Anna Morcom, Hindi Film Songs, 12. (13.) Tom Gunning, “Attractions: How They Came into the World,” in The Cinema of At­ tractions Reloaded, ed. W. Strauven (Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 37. On attrac­ tions in contemporary films, see [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh, “Wall-to-Wall: Music in the Films of Tsui Hark,” in The Swordsman and His Jiang Hu: Tsui Hark and Hong Kong Film (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002), 70–83. (14.) M. Madhava Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (Oxford University Press, 1998), cited in Anna Morcom, Hindi Film Songs, 2. (15.) Sue Tuohy, “Metropolitan Sounds: Music in Chinese Films of the 1930s,” in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Stanford: Stanford Uni­ versity Press, 1999), 200. (16.) Andrew Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 96. (17.) Leo Lee, Shanghai Modern (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 108. (18.) Leo Lee, Shanghai Modern, 112, 114. (19.) Peter Wollen, Singin’ in the Rain (London: BFI Publishing, 1992), 60. (20.) Heather Laing, The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman’s Film (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2007). (21.) Sue Tuohy, “Metropolitan Sounds,” 203. (22.) Darrell William Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, “Inoue at Shaws: The Wellspring of Youth,” in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), 262.

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies (23.) Giorgio Biancorosso, “Global Music/Local Cinema: Two Wong Kar-wai Pop Compila­ tions,” in Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image, ed. Kam Louie (Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 2. (24.) For a reproduction and discussion of this image, see Leo Lee, Shanghai Modern, 150ff. (25.) Bai Guang 白光 sings “Awaiting You” (我等著你回來), a song for any sultry occasion, but welcome too at the university symposium where this talk was delivered. (26.) Andrew Jones, Yellow Music; Sue Tuohy, “Metropolitan Sounds,” 211–212, 218. (27.) See [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh, “Historiography and Sinification,” 88–91, for an informa­ tive discussion of composer He Lüting’s rearrangement of Chinese folk music. (28.) Ng Ho, “Songstresses of the World,” in Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s (Hong Kong: 17th HKIFF, 1993), 24. (29.) [Emilie] Yueh-yu Yeh, “Historiography and Sinification,” 88. (30.) Zhang Zhen, Amorous History, 82–83. (31.) Sue Tuohy, “Metropolitan Sounds,” 212. Cf. “Mao mao yu,” the infamous Drizzle Song, sung by Li’s daughter Minghui. (32.) Andrew Field, “Selling Souls in Sin City: Shanghai Singing and Dancing Hostesses in Print, Film and Politics, 1920–49,” in Yingjin Zhang, ed., Cinema and Urban Culture, 121–122; Sue Tuohy, “Metropolitan Sounds,” 217–218. (33.) Sue Tuohy, “Metropolitan Sounds,” 204. (34.) Yuan Haiwang, “Liu Sanjie—A Fearless Folk Song Singer,” September 10, 2008, re­ trieved October 22, 2012, from people.wku.edu/haiwang.yuan/China/tales/liusanjie_b.htm. (35.) Mary Ann Doane, “The Voice in the Cinema: Articulation of Body and Space,” in Film Sound, ed. Elisabeth Weis and John Belton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 163–176. (36.) Several contributors to the volume Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s (17th HKIFF, 1993) remark on the films’ departure from ideals of integration, where mu­ sical sequences need to work in harmony with storytelling and mise-en-scène. (37.) Law Kar, “Epilogue: Beginning and End of an Era,” in Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s (Hong Kong: 17th HKIFF, 1993), 79. (38.) Stephen Teo, “Oh, Karaoke! Mandarin Pop and Musicals,” in Mandarin Films and Popular Songs: 40s–60s (Hong Kong: 17th HKIFF, 1993), 32. (39.) Peter Wollen, Singin in the Rain (London: BFI Publishing, 1992), 58. Page 15 of 16

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A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies (40.) Peter Wollen, Singin in the Rain, 60. (41.) David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment, 2nd ed. (Madison, WI: Irvington Way Press, 2011), 6. (42.) Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History, 312. (43.) The term transitional region is borrowed from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1994), 44–45, cited in Zhang, Amorous History, 408 n. 39. (44.) Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History, 318. (45.) Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History, 318. (46.) Jean-Michel Frodon, Le cinema d’Edward Yang (Paris: Editions de l’eclat, 2010), 166. (47.) Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, “Elvis, Allow Me to Introduce Myself: American Music and Neo­ colonialism in Taiwan Cinema,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.1 (2003): 1– 28. (48.) John Anderson, Edward Yang (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 103–104. (49.) Hou Hsiao-hsien noted that it was Edward Yang who introduced him to the idea of counterpoint, with music running along but not subordinate to the image. Yang also sug­ gested to Hou the idea for scoring Boys from Fengkuei (風櫃來的人, 1983) with Vivaldi, reaching a new level of resonance. See Jean-Michel Frodon, Le cinema d’Edward Yang, 183. (50.) Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis, Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Is­ land (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), chap. 6.

Darrell William Davis

Darrell William Davis is Honorary Associate Professor in Visual Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is the author of Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film (1996), co-author of Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island (2005) and East Asian Screen Industries (2008), and co-editor of Cin­ ema: Taiwan: Politics, Popularity and State of the Arts (2007).

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923

Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905– 1923   Zhiwei Xiao The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0025

Abstract and Keywords By focusing on film policing in early twentieth-century China and the shifts in official ap­ proaches to controlling cinematic representation, this chapter shows that when motion pictures were first introduced into China, there were competing views and visions about the potential use and proper social functions of this new medium. These contestations among the different cultural groups and political actors for control of film exhibition helped shape the aesthetic styles and narrative strategies of pre-1949 Chinese cinema. Keywords: Chinese film, history, censorship, cultural politics, cinematic representation

Scholarship on Chinese cinema in the English-speaking world has developed dramatically in the last two decades, as evidenced by the wide range of subjects, perspectives, and re­ search methodologies and approaches found in recent academic publications. Although there is much to admire about this scholarship, which has significantly improved our un­ derstanding of the cultural politics and aesthetic principles of Chinese cinema, it is re­ grettable that most published work to date manifests a tendency to privilege close read­ ing of individual film texts at the expense of careful empirical studies of institutional con­ text in which film production, distribution, and exhibition take place. For instance, gov­ ernment control of the film industry through regulation and censorship have played a cru­ cial role in shaping the legacy of Chinese filmmaking and profoundly impacted Chinese filmmakers’ choice of subject matter, narrative strategy, thematic orientation, and repre­ sentational style. While censorship is an important part of film history anywhere, in coun­ tries like China, where freedom of expression and the legal protection for such freedom do not exist, official intervention has an even stronger influence on how films are pro­ duced and exhibited. In this context, the way in which film is policed by the state de­ serves special attention from students of Chinese film studies. Motion pictures were first introduced into China in 1896, only a few months after their first screening in the West. In China, as elsewhere, the mass appeal of the new medium led to intense efforts on the part of the authorities to control film exhibition and produc­ tion. Political and cultural elites in China quickly realized that movies were not just enter­ Page 1 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 tainments, but also a political and ideological battlefield. Hence, the struggle for control over what kinds of cinematic images could and could not be displayed on screen has much to tell us about the broader cultural and political issues. From the late nineteenth century to the mid-1920s, as a novel mass medium newly intro­ duced into China from abroad, cinema went through a process of “identity formation.” Ev­ idence from contemporary sources makes it clear that issues concerning (p. 453) cinema’s proper social functions and its relationship to other well-established forms of mass enter­ tainments, such as the traditional opera, remained extremely fluid and ambiguous during this period. There were many competing demands from various directions on what cine­ ma should do and how it should position itself. Subsequently, the official response to the emergence of cinema was also tentative and even “experimental.” Yet, precisely for these reasons, this formative period in the history of cinema and the official efforts to control it are crucial to our understanding of the later developments because they show us the his­ torical linkage between the early period and the later decades. In short, the system of film censorship put in place in the late 1920s was built on the trials-and-errors of the ear­ ly period, and therefore without an adequate understanding of these early experiments with film regulation we can’t fully comprehend the particular emphases and approaches in the regulatory practice of the 1930s and 1940s.

Early Debates about Film Exhibitions in China After motion pictures were introduced into China and the number of film exhibitions in­ creased, officials became increasingly concerned about this new medium, culminating in a series of debates among high-ranking officials in Beijing between 1905 and 1907. These debates reveal the official anxiety over the new mass medium as well as the ambiguous position cinema occupied in China’s cultural geography after its introduction into the country. It should be remembered that despite the importance of Shanghai in the history of Chi­ nese cinema, the city’s leadership position in the early years of the twentieth century was not uncontested. Film exhibition was also extremely popular in places like Beijing, where even the Imperial Palace held regular movie showings to entertain the royal family and high-ranking officials. If the number of cinemas is any indication, Shanghai actually fell behind several other cities in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Theater hous­ es specifically designed for the exhibition of motion pictures first emerged in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, but not Shanghai, which did not see its first movie house, the Hongkou Theater, until 1908.1 In terms of film production, it is well known that the first Chinese experiment with filmmaking also took place in Beijing in 1905, several years be­ fore Shanghai. The popularity of the motion picture shows prompted Qing officials to take actions to bring the exhibition of motion pictures under official control. In 1907, the Beijing Police Department issued Eleven Rules Governing the Showing of Motion Pictures in the Page 2 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 Evenings, which represents the first Chinese government regulation specifically aimed at movies (see the Appendix 24.1 at the end of this chapter). Of the eleven stipulations in this document, six deal with the physical aspects of the the­ ater and management-related issues—registration, safety provisions, observation of seat­ ing capacity and show time limits; and three relate to audience behavior—segregation (p. 454) of the sexes, prohibition of gambling activities and carrying firearms. Only one clause in the document deals with the content of films—no “racy” pictures. It is interest­ ing to note that one of the eleven rules explicitly prohibits Chinese theater owners from renting films and projection equipments from foreigners.2 Overall, however, as the first government regulation aimed at the movies, the Eleven Rules is more concerned with is­ sues external—rather than internal—to the films themselves. In many ways, the 1907 regulation highlights some of the most critical issues in early offi­ cial responses to film exhibition. At one level, the technical dimension of film shows pre­ sented a new challenge to the authorities because the old established rules that had gov­ erned cultural and entertainment activities in the past were inadequate to deal with the problems brought forth by the movies. For instance, theatrical performances traditionally were staged during the day because before the age of electricity it was extremely difficult to stage shows in the evenings, and furthermore, for safety reasons, the Qing government prohibited theaters from presenting shows after sunset. The projection of motion pic­ tures, on the other hand, required total darkness to ensure the visual quality of the image on the screen, and therefore, until there were custom-built cinema houses, most movie screenings had to take place in the evenings. As a number of film historians have pointed out, the Chinese, in their initial response to motion pictures, generally emphasized two attributes of this new medium: the theatrical and the technical. As the Chinese neologism for movies, yingxi 影戲 (literally, “shadow­ play”), suggests, the Chinese initially perceived the projection of moving images to be largely theatrical (xi 戲), aided by and distinguished from traditional theater with its use of technologies of projection (ying 影). Not surprisingly, early movie shows frequently took place in venues where traditional operas had been staged.3 However, this practice violat­ ed the existing official prohibition against theaters staging shows after sunset, and al­ though the authorities took into consideration film projection’s technical requirement and made an exception by allowing theaters to show movies in the evenings, they continued to feel uneasy about the implications of unsupervised audiences in dark auditoriums. In fact, early opposition to movie shows often derived from this anxiety. In early 1906, an official named Bi Shou 俾壽 submitted a memorial to the emperor and proposed to ban film exhibition in the capital. Bi argued that movie shows violated two existing rules governing theatrical activities, namely, the prohibition against theaters op­ erating after dark and the ban on admitting women into the theaters. Citing a recent acci­ dent at the Sanqing Yuan Theater wherein a generator used for film projection exploded during the show, Bi postulated that the combination of a dark auditorium and the pres­ ence of women would breed criminal activities and corrupt public mores. He went on to Page 3 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 accuse the police department of taking bribes from theater owners and tolerating the latter’s violations.4 There are two observations to be made about Bi’s memorial. First, his concern was clear­ ly not the content of the films so much as the manner in which they were shown. What underlined his opposition to movie screenings was his uneasiness about the potential problem of men and women mixing in the dark, which he perceived as an affront to tradi­ tional notions of social propriety. Second, it is also clear that Bi did not (p. 455) make any distinction between movie shows and traditional theatrical performances. In his insis­ tence on applying the existing regulations on theaters to movie shows he seemed to align film with other traditional entertainment. In response to Bi’s accusation, an official representing the Police Department, Shen Zhao­ jian 沈兆堅, submitted a rebuttal calling the emperor’s attention to the fact that the San­ qing Yuan Theater was only one of many theaters that had received permission from the Bureaus of Industrial Enterprises and Public Health to show films. Shen suggested that Bi’s opposition to movie shows and his accusation against the Police Department had an ulterior motive, given that he had not similarly accused other government agencies that endorsed such violations. Shen went on to defend movie shows by arguing that film was a useful educational tool and would contribute to China’s modernization, and that the con­ ventional ban on theatrical performances in the evenings was dictated by the fact that, prior to the formation of a modern police force in China, there was no adequate official supervision of audience behavior in the theaters. However, with the government’s estab­ lishment of the police, it was now possible for the authorities to enforce law and order and to ensure public safety in the theaters, thereby rendering the ban on evening shows outdated. Addressing specific concerns about the content of the film programs and the congregation of men and women in the auditoriums, Shen pointed out that the audience was in fact segregated by gender, and that all theaters were required to have designated separate doors for men and women. In addition, the presence of police officers ensured that no indecent pictures would be screened and no inappropriate behavior would be tol­ erated. Finally, Shen linked movie shows to nationalism, arguing that the government should promote the growth of film exhibition business by the local theater establishment, lest the film exhibition market be completely dominated by foreign interests.5 Although both sides resorted to rhetorical strategies, framing their arguments in terms of morality, modernity, and national interest, their opposing views had a lot to do with fac­ tionalism, political rivalries, and financial stakes. As another opponent of the movies ob­ served, the police had an economic motive in supporting the nightly movie shows, since they received a handsome payment from the theaters for police protection. Why other­ wise would the police be so keen on promoting something this trivial in the name of re­ form when a great number of more serious, substantial, and urgent changes were needed for China’s modernization?6 The ulterior motives in this exchange between opponents and proponents of the movie shows aside, the terms of their argument are interesting to historians because the rhetor­ Page 4 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 ical strategies they employed reflected commonly accepted values and social norms. For instance, the police, despite its promovie position, never questioned the view that men and women should not be seated together in the audience. Instead, their counterargu­ ment hinged on enforcing segregated seating and better supervision in the theaters. To prove the police were serious about maintaining order in the theaters, Shen attached the Eleven Rules Governing the Showing of Motion Pictures in the Evenings to his rebuttal. His purpose was to show that there had been official guidelines in place since 1905, prov­ ing that his department had taken a responsible approach to movie shows. By (p. 456) pre­ senting themselves as the responsible guardians of social morality and public order, the police hoped to undercut the attacks by the conservative officials. Interestingly, the emperor did not endorse Bi’s proposal to ban movie shows but instead reaffirmed the government’s prohibition on women attending theaters, a position consis­ tent with the Qing’s long-standing policy restricting the intermingling of men and women in public places.7 However, the ban on women in the theaters was seldom rigorously en­ forced. In the wake of the crackdown on the Boxer Uprising and the introduction of a new series of reforms by the government, this rule was completely ignored. Women might still have to sit separately from men, but their presence in theaters became common and rou­ tine.8 Since Chinese filmmakers’ efforts to produce motion pictures remained sporadic until the early 1920s, most of the movies exhibited in China in the first two decades of the century were of foreign origin. It is difficult to know with any certainty exactly what Chinese moviegoers saw in those days, but evidence suggests that as the popularity of movies in­ creased, so did the authorities’ efforts to police exhibition sites. As Grieveson and others have shown, in the early days of cinema, government officials, the police, and the church in many countries worried about the social implications of the congregation of men, women and children for the purpose of viewing moving pictures.9 In this regard, the Chi­ nese official response is no different. However, there are two elements in the Chinese ef­ forts to regulate the movies that reflect a unique local concern: nationalism and modern­ ization. Over time, the official control over the showing and watching of films expanded into the content of film, and sexual transgression in the movies was the first target of police ac­ tion. In September 1907, the police received complaints about a film entitled Jian se chimi (見色痴迷) (which could be translated as “Obsession with women”) and responded by ban­ ning the film’s public screening. In its report, the police justified their actions by arguing that “despite the fact that the film is meant to discourage amorous behavior, the graphic portrayal [of sexual activity] may actually lead to the exact opposite.”10 It is interesting to note that after the police banned the film, the exhibitor defied the rul­ ing by moving the show from a temple fair where the film was originally screened to a theater in Beijing. In this case, the police were lucky and managed to catch up with him, but the incident, which may very well be the first film censorship case in China, exposes the ineffectiveness of regulation in this period. Apparently, many exhibitors could get Page 5 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 away with showing controversial films simply by moving to different locations. It seems that the police were either unwilling or unable to catch up with the violators. It is also in­ teresting to note that from very early on the notion of “injury to social mores” (有傷風化) featured prominently in censors’ decisions. Nationalistic concerns also figured prominently in late Qing regulations on film. The po­ lice not only supported domestic film exhibition on the grounds that film was too impor­ tant to be left to a foreign monopoly, they also specifically prohibited Chinese theater owners from leasing equipment and films from foreigners. The temporal coincidence of the promulgation of the Eleven Rules and the emergence of the Fengtai Studio (p. 457) raises the possibility of collusion between Chinese business interests and official policy­ makers. To date, the activities of Fengtai Studio remain a mystery. Current scholarship suggests that a man named Ren Qingtai 任慶泰 (aka Ren Jingfeng 任景豐) opened a photog­ raphy shop in Beijing in 1892 after returning from an extended stay in Japan. Ren’s suc­ cess in operating the photography studio led to many other business ventures, including a department store, soft drinks, furniture, and herbs. A shrewd businessman, he saw the great commercial potential in movies and built the first and the most popular movie the­ ater in Beijing, called The Great Spectacle (大觀樓). In fact, it was because of a shortage of films that Ren decided to begin making his own.11 In 1905 Ren filmed fragments of the stage performance given by the well-known Beijing opera actor Tan Xinpei 譚鑫培, and the result is recognized as the first Chinese endeavor at filmmaking.12 Because of the place that Ren’s photography studio occupies in the histo­ ry of Chinese film, some historians have referred to Fengtai Studio as the “cradle of Chi­ nese filmmaking.” When the Eleven Rules was announced, Ren was one of the few Chi­ nese in town who had both projecting equipment and film programs in their possession, and it is tempting to speculate that the regulation may have resulted from Ren’s close ties to high-ranking government officials.13 Outside the capital, some provincial governments were also involved in regulating film-re­ lated activities. In 1906, a group of traveling exhibitors from Greece, Austria, Italy, and Russia went to northeastern China and screened films there without prior approval. The Qing officials in Jilin province, offended by the affront, closed down the shows and fined the showmen. The foreign exhibitors subsequently appealed to the Russian authorities to pressure the Chinese officials to return their confiscated equipment and money. In a move that added insult to injury, the Russians told the Chinese officials that the exhibitors had received an endorsement from the Russian government to show films in China. In a series of diplomatic exchanges, the Qing government remained adamant about asserting its ju­ risdiction in the region, refusing to return the confiscated equipment or permit the for­ eign showmen to continue their exhibition activities in the region. Although the Qing offi­ cials in the area did not oppose film exhibition itself, they took a hard line in this case be­ cause they saw the issue as directly related to China’s national sovereignty.14 In any event, the Beijing Police Department’s Regulation helped set the stage for these subsequent debates, controversies, and legislative attempts, and echoes the ruling elite’s Page 6 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 emphasis on the propriety of audience behavior in public places. It is clear that although the Beijing 1907 Regulation was a response to local events, its main thrust was never-the­ less consistent with the policies of the Qing government, which emphasized official super­ vision of the theater, appropriate conduct on the part of the audience, guarding against sexual transgression in film programs, and protecting China’s national interests through film regulation. However, the most fundamental flaw in the late Qing official control of the movies was the absence of a government agency specifically in charge of enforcing of­ ficial regulations, meaning that the police ended up assuming those responsibilities by de­ fault. By and large, the enforcement of film regulations in the final years of the Qing re­ mained sporadic and inconsistent, and this ineffectuality explains the early (p. 458) Repub­ lican regime’s focus on establishing institutions specifically charged with supervising film production and exhibition.

Early Republican Period The 1911 Revolution resulted in the abdication of the Qing monarch and accelerated the political disintegration of the country. The political disunity following the fall of the Qing dynasty is a key to understanding the diverse approaches to film censorship during the early Republican period. However, one common theme found in most efforts to censor films during this period is the contestation between the police and the educators. Al­ though the objectives of these two groups were not necessarily mutually incompatible, the police seemed to be more concerned with the possibility that “bad” movies might pro­ duce undesirable audience behavior, whereas the educators were more worried about the power of the movies to corrupt people’s minds. This difference in priority was reflected in their respective approaches: the police tried to minimize audience exposure to bad films (or at least, bad elements in a film), whereas the educators tried to direct people’s atten­ tion to good ones. It must be noted that in the early days when cinema was still viewed as a novelty, govern­ ment officials were often not sure what to make of this new medium. There seemed to be a great deal of confusion as to which agency should be responsible for supervising the production, distribution, and exhibition of motion pictures. In 1918, a businessman named Cheng Che 程澈 applied to the Beiyang government for a permit to set up a film studio in Shanghai. In his application, Cheng declared that his primary interest was to make documentaries rather than feature films because his objective was “to enlighten the public and transmit knowledge.” Cheng submitted his application to the Ministry of Edu­ cation, but the ministry rejected his application on the grounds that the production and distribution of films were economic and commercial issues and hence should fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministries of Agriculture and Commerce. It went on to say that al­ though the business license should be issued by the Ministries of Agriculture and Com­ merce, the finished film should be reviewed by the Ministry of Education prior to its dis­ tribution. Cheng was disappointed and made an appeal, arguing that his films would have

Page 7 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 plenty of captions that should qualify them as cultural and educational products, but the ministry upheld its earlier decision.15 The case highlights the unsettled identity of the motion pictures in China in the second decade of the century. Without an adequate institutional framework in which to situate movies, early official efforts to control this new medium were inevitably inconsistent, and even often incoherent. While some agencies were in charge of the business and commer­ cial aspect of the film operation (the Bureau of Industry issued business licenses, the Of­ fice of Tax collected fees, and the Department of Public Safety ensured sanitation and fire safety), others were in charge of the content aspects of the works themselves. Documentary evidence suggests that the police were more proactive in promoting film censorship during the second and third decade of the century. For instance, in 1921, the Beijing government’s police department proposed a set of new regulations to govern the exhibition of movies. The regulations clearly indicate that the government had previ­ ously tried to control the motion picture industry without great success. The new propos­ al was an attempt to improve the effectiveness of official control by placing heightened emphasis on theater management, which included registration with the police, separate seating for men and women, daily submission of the program to the police for inspection, (p. 459)

regular reports of ticket sales, and the payment of taxes and fees. As for the contents of the films, the new rules only stated in general terms that no racy, bizarre, or superstitious films would be allowed. The new rules also reiterated the prohibition on theaters renting film equipment from foreigners, which had been part of the 1905 Eleven Rules Governing the Showing of Motion Pictures in the Evenings.16 It is clear that, as in the late Qing peri­ od, the police were both the champions of film censorship and the chief enforcers. The rules and regulations continued to be more oriented toward the cinema houses than the movies themselves. To the extent that government officials were concerned with the screen images at all, their attention was consistently focused on sexual transgressions. For instance, in one case, the censors required a film titled Fu hua lang die (浮花浪蝶, which could be translated as “The playboys”) to “cut the scene in which a man and a woman swim in the pond.” In another, the police faulted a film entitled Shen gong qing lü (深宫情侶, which could be translated as “The forbidden lovers”) for having two long pas­ sionate kissing scenes and asked the proprietor to delete them. A third film, entitled Daili kuoshao (代理闊少, which could be translated as “The surrogate son”), aka Wu chou nü er (無愁女兒; literally, “Carefree daughter”), was banned because of its allegedly lewd na­ ture, although the censors did not specify exactly which part of the film they found offen­ sive.17 In contrast to the Beijing model of film censorship, wherein the police played a key role in regulating film, the Jiangsu Board of Film Censors, organized in 1923, placed film censor­ ship squarely in the hands of the educator-elite. As the first government agency in China specifically established to regulate films, the board’s official policy was to limit its inter­ vention by focusing on the “extremes”—both negative and positive. As stated in its mani­ festo, the board’s job was to recommend the extremely good films (good defined as hav­ ing educational value or serving a positive social function) and to ban extremely bad films Page 8 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 (bad defined as being injurious to social mores) while leaving alone the majority of films that fell between those two extremes.18 Indeed, the Jiangsu board recommended a num­ ber of films for official awards because, in the view of the board members, those films “exemplified the best of Chinese ethics” and “inspired righteous behavior among the au­ dience.”19 The board also banned two controversial films, Ren Pengnian’s 任彭年 Yan Ruisheng (閻瑞生, 1921) and Zhang Shichuan’s 張石川 Zhang Xinsheng (張欣生, 1922).20 In yet another significant development in the history of film censorship in China, the Film Censorship Guidelines drafted by the Mass Education Department of the Chinese govern­ ment in 1926 progressed considerably beyond its predecessors. For instance, the (p. 460) guidelines paid more attention to sanitizing film content than regulating film exhibition sites. Even more significantly, the guidelines singled out films deemed offensive to Chi­ nese dignity. For the first time, Chinese resentment toward racist images in foreign films was articulated in censorship regulation. Whether this stipulation was effectively en­ forced or not, the fact that it was written into the official regulations signals a heightened Chinese sensitivity toward this issue, adding a new dimension to Chinese film censorship. Another interesting aspect of the 1926 guidelines is that they took issue with the produc­ tion quality of the movies by requiring films deemed poorly crafted and technically raw to be submitted for revisions before an exhibition permit could be issued. Finally, the guide­ lines included an incentive component by offering rewards for excellent films. In order to qualify for such rewards, films had to meet certain criteria, such as employing realism, having a moral, encouraging scientific inquiry, and serving educational purposes.21 Obviously, the exercise of censorial power involved more than deciding which films to ban and which to promote. Without the police to enforce the board decisions, the regulations were meaningless. As a contemporary commentator commented: “Since the Board of Film Censors can’t do much about problematic films, the filmmakers are rarely bothered by the board.”22 Simply put, the educators needed the cooperation of the police in order to carry out their decisions. This lesson was taken to heart when the Education Department of the Zhejiang provincial government organized a film censorship committee in February 1926. The Zhejiang educators invited the police to join their cause. The initial members of the Zhejiang Film Censorship Committee included sixteen participants from both the Edu­ cation Department and the Police Department. However, representatives from the educa­ tion bureau outnumbered those from the police bureau by a ratio of three to one, thereby guaranteeing the educators’ control of the committee.23 There were some liberal intellectuals who worried about allowing the government to con­ trol what could and could not be seen on-screen. Some questioned whether the few gov­ ernment-appointed censors could represent the whole spectrum of “public interest and tastes.”24 Others proposed to adopt the film censorship models practiced in the United States and England because control in these places was exercised “by the people, not by the government.”25 The critics’ distrust of the government may have been well founded, but for the majority of people in the film industry, the more urgent and immediate problem was not govern­ Page 9 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 ment intervention, but rather the need for the government to play the roles of regulator, coordinator, and referee in a field characterized by lawlessness and fierce competition. Not surprisingly, industry leaders called for government intervention to root out the cheaters and spoilers. As one observer commented, if everybody played by the rules, there would be no need for the government to set up censorship mechanisms.26 The film industry’s advocacy of censorship must be understood in the context of the ab­ sence of an effective central authority in the 1920s. With the rising popularity of the movies and a seemingly insatiable market demand, film studios blossomed in the urban areas in the early to mid-1920s. Shanghai alone boasted over 140 studios by the (p. 461) mid-1920s.27 However, most of these studios were looking only for a quick profit and were not very concerned with the quality of their products. In fact, the majority of these studios never finished any films. Yet they siphoned off venture capital and human talent and brought people of questionable reputation into the industry. Scandalous stories about movie stars’ lives only fueled public disdain for the film industry. Ding Ling 丁玲, one of modern China’s most accomplished woman writers, recalled how she had once contem­ plated entering the film world but was appalled by the filmmakers’ vulgar and promiscu­ ous behavior.28 The major studios all felt threatened by the damage these smaller studios did to the repu­ tation of the entire industry and proposed that, in the absence of government regulation, the industry set up an agency to supervise member studios as well as individual filmmak­ ers. Studios without sufficient funds or qualified personnel be banned from operating, and filmmakers guilty of “indecent conduct” would be disciplined or expelled from the in­ dustry.29 The fact that most films made in the 1920s have not survived makes it impossible for us to make a fair evaluation of their artistic and technical quality. According to various con­ temporary reports, however, a great many “trash” movies were churned out by hastily as­ sembled and small-scale operations. Of course, one has to be aware of the bias inherent in the criticism disseminated in movie magazines and newspapers, which were largely controlled by the major studios. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that the artistic and technical quality of the films of produced by these jerry-built studios was indeed infe­ rior, as the technical quality of a film was usually closely related to the financial re­ sources of the studio. While the production branch of the film industry welcomed government regulation, the film exhibitors strongly opposed film censorship. He Tingran 何挺然, a leading film ex­ hibitor in Shanghai, denounced government censorship by stating: “It is rather unfortu­ nate that the Chinese film industry should be subject to government censorship when the industry is still in its infancy. What the government should do is support, not restrict, the industry.”30 In fact, film exhibitors and producers would continue to have a divided view of film censorship. For the producers, especially the major establishments, regulations benefited the industry. If the government paid more attention to the industry, reduced the number of foreign films, and eliminated fly-by-night studios, investors would take the in­ Page 10 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 dustry more seriously. However, there was little for the exhibitors to gain from govern­ ment intervention. Both producers and exhibitors based their views of film censorship on economic concerns, rather than on ideological or moral principles. At any rate, all the film censorship institutions that came into existence in the 1920s were, without exception, government bodies. Yet on the whole, governmental control of film during this period was minimal, so much so that some people complained that the of­ ficial policy of “no support, no interference” was responsible for the Chinese film industry’s “backwardness.”31 There are at least three explanations for the laxity of gov­ ernment film policy during this phase. First, the warlord regimes during the 1920s had other priorities. Preoccupied with their political and military survival, military leaders had little time to worry about cinema. Second, when warlord governments did get (p. 462) in­ volved in regulating movies, their control was confined to the specific region under their jurisdiction, and therefore filmmakers and audiences frequently complained that a film might be approved in one region but banned in another. Third, the film era had only just begun in the 1920s, and hence regulatory efforts were necessarily provisional and incom­ plete.32 Nevertheless, this first phase of film censorship in China reveals a basic orientation that would continue into later decades. The emphasis on and encouragement of the education­ al value of film, the educator’s prominent role in regulatory institutions, the dual ap­ proach of prohibiting bad films and promoting good ones, and, finally, the general accep­ tance and support for film censorship in society, and especially within the film industry, all remained important components in the official efforts to establish a more systematic and elaborate film censorship apparatus in the years to come.

The Ban on Yan Ruisheng and the Legacy of Early Film Censorship Few films in the first half of the twentieth century received as much adverse publicity and were as widely banned in China as Yan Ruisheng. Hence, a closer look at this controver­ sial film will illustrate some of the key issues relating to film censorship in the early Re­ publican period. It should be noted that, because the film has not survived, much of the discussion about it has necessarily been based on print materials and not the work itself. The first feature-length film produced in China, Yan Ruisheng was based on a murder that had taken place a year earlier. The protagonist, Yan Ruisheng, attended a school operated by Catholics and spoke good English. But the income from his employment at a foreign firm could not keep up with his gambling losses. In a desperate attempt to pay back his creditors, Yan murdered a prostitute named Wang Lianying 王蓮英 and stole her jewels. He was later captured in Suzhou and executed along with one of his accomplices. The case was widely reported in Shanghai’s press: Yan was tried in the foreign concession court, and all the proceedings were made public. Film historian Zhang Zhen has noted the connection between “vernacular press” and the “emergent film culture.”33 But in this Page 11 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 case, it was the theater world that first capitalized on the sensationalism of the case and adapted the story into a number of popular dramatic performances. Inspired by the commercial success of these plays, the Chinese Cinema Study Society (中 國影戲研究社) decided to make a film about the murder case. With borrowed money and leased equipment, a group of amateur filmmakers set things in motion.34 Some of the members of the Society who participated in the film project knew Yan personally and were familiar with many details about his life that were unknown to the public. In fact, one of the members of the society played Yan in the film. Although Yang Xiaozhong 楊小仲 was credited as the scriptwriter and Ren Pengnian was identified as (p. 463) the director, the film was a collective product of all the participants who had tried to present Yan’s life as realistically as possible. They cast a former prostitute bearing a physical resemblance to the murder victim to play Wang; they shot film on the exact locations where Yan and Wang had interacted and where the murder had taken place; and they even used the very car that Yan had driven. The filmmakers’ meticulous attention to detail in their efforts to represent Yan’s story realistically on-screen add an ironic twist to Yan’s tragedy given that, in his courtroom confession, Yan attributed his idea for the crime to watching Ameri­ can films.35 The realism of Yan Ruisheng was one of the key factors that contributed to its spectacular box-office success when it was released in July 1921. For the first time, a domestic film was premiered in one of Shanghai’s first-run movie houses, Olympic Theater. The audi­ ence response was enthusiastic, and despite the high admission price—regular seats cost one to two yuan and balcony seats twenty yuan—tickets sold out in advance. This film challenged the popular perception that Chinese-made films could not make a profit.36 The moviegoing public may have embraced the film, but critics were divided. While some praised the work for its cohesive narrative structure and realistic acting, others faulted it for its choice of subject matter and its decision to make a prostitute and a murderer the central roles.37 Underlying this criticism was the view that the proper social function of film was to provide wholesome characters for the audience to emulate. However, despite the critics’ harsh words, there was no hostile official reaction to the exhibition of this film. The fact that the film was both produced and exhibited in Shanghai’s foreign concessions is at least partially responsible for the silence on the part of the Chinese authorities, which had no jurisdiction there. It was not until 1923, when another controversial film was produced and released, that the Chinese cultural and political elite became alarmed by the potential harmful effects of motion pictures and reacted with attempts to ban all films deemed injurious to social mores. Also based on a real murder case, Zhang Xinsheng (1922) is a story about a young man who killed his father for his inheritance. The film was produced by the Star Motion Pic­ ture Company, which seemed to be trying to reduplicate Yan Ruisheng’s box-office suc­ cess. Shortly after the release of the film, the Jiangsu Board of Film Censors wrote to the film company and voiced the board’s unhappiness with the film. In response, the Star Mo­ tion Picture Company invited the censors to a private screening and deleted several se­ Page 12 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 quences with which the censors had issues. However, the studio made it clear that the changes were made as courtesy to the board, not out of an obligation to obey its authori­ ty. In truth the Chinese censors had no legal authority over the studio, which fell under the jurisdiction of the foreign concession governing body known as Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC).38 Apparently, the censors were not satisfied with the cuts and continued to voice their condemnation of the film in the press.39 The studio decided to ignore the censors’ criticism and went ahead with distributing the film outside Shanghai. The con­ troversial nature of the film’s subject matter and the studio’s defiance of the censors prompted Chinese civic leaders to take a firmer stance toward films that challenged tradi­ tional moral tenets. They appealed to both the foreign SMC and the Chinese military regimes to ban not only Zhang Xinsheng, but also Yan Ruisheng. This turn of events (p. 464) explains why Yan Ruisheng, which was initially released in 1921, was not banned until two years later. Led by the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, a group of self-proclaimed moral guardians of public decency submitted a petition letter to the concession authorities, in which they singled out Yan Ruisheng and requested that concession authorities ban the film from be­ ing screened in cinema houses: Young men in the business world are still very impressionable. Their ability to tell the morally right from wrong is weak in the first place. If they are constantly ex­ posed to the corrosive influence of this kind of film, their moral character, which takes years to cultivate, will be ruined in no time.40 The rhetoric about public morality and paternalistic posture withstanding, what the Chamber of Commerce was really concerned about was the damage this film might do to the image of Shanghai’s business community as a whole, given that the work’s villain was a white-collar busi­ nessman. However, concession authorities refused to do anything about the two films, so the Chamber of Commerce turned to the Chinese military governor for help. The governor then ap­ pealed to the Shanghai Municipal Council again on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce. In the end, the SMC did issue a ban on the film, albeit reluctantly.41

The negative reaction to Yan Ruisheng and Zhang Xinsheng was not limited to Shanghai. Taking a position similar to their colleagues in southern China, officials in the Mass Edu­ cation Department of the Beijing government also requested that authorities there ban the two films. They argued that Yan and Zhang, on whose lives the two works were based, had both committed hideous crimes against humanity and were condemned by law, and therefore there was little merit in romanticizing their stories in movies.42 The controversies over Yan Ruisheng and Zhang Xinsheng reveal some basic patterns in the early development of film censorship. First, censorship was not rigorously and effec­ tively enforced during this period. As sensational and controversial as Yan Ruisheng was, the film could still be released and publicly screened, which suggests that government control at the time was relatively relaxed. In fact, many salacious films were screened. For instance, several sources from the early 1920s mention films that included nudity.43 One of the reasons for this laxity has to do with the political disintegration in China at the time. Regional governments were preoccupied with their own political, economic, and Page 13 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 sometimes military survival, and therefore could not give priority to film censorship. An­ other factor is that most films were shown in the foreign concessions, where the Chinese authorities had no jurisdiction. Apparently, the police in the International Settlement and French Concession, perhaps insensitive to films undermining the privilege and racial su­ periority of the Europeans, took a more liberal approach to films such as Yan Ruisheng that posed no threat to Westerners’ colonial authority. It was not until after the Chinese elite repeatedly requested and the military governor intervened that they finally shut down the film. In addition, the institutional makeup of the censoring agencies circum­ scribed the censors’ authority. In places like Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, the film censorship boards and committees were all located in the education (p. 465) departments of the government and were comprised of educators. These agencies did not have the ability to execute their own decisions. If they found a certain film too problematic for pub­ lic screening, they had to request that the police take appropriate action. Simply put, dur­ ing much of the 1920s, the educators were secondary to the police, whereas in the follow­ ing decade the relationship would be reversed. Second, informal politicking played an important role in determining which films would play in the theaters and which ones would not. For example, the Jiangsu Board of Film Censors’ misgivings about Yan Ruisheng did not stop it from being released, and the cen­ sors’ recommendations for revision were completely ignored. In fact, the film continued to circulate for two years despite the opposition from the censor and was banned only when Shanghai’s Chamber of Commerce campaigned against it. For the filmmakers, the real power of certain civic organizations became a force to be reckoned with, even though these agencies were not official censors. This delicate relationship between for­ mal and informal power and influence would continue to be an important factor in film censorship for years to come.44 Third, a dualistic approach to film censorship was developed during the 1920s. Film cen­ sors never focused exclusively on prohibition, recognizing film’s great potential for social good. Censors explored ways to utilize the medium of film to promote education, scientif­ ic knowledge, and nationalism. Consequently, from the very beginning, film censors in China used rewards and punishments to control the filmmakers. From a comparative per­ spective, the inclusion of a film’s technical and production quality as a criterion for ap­ proval stands out as a unique Chinese practice, reflecting the cultural and political elite’s concern over the healthy growth of the native film industry. For this reason, protection­ ism featured prominently in Chinese efforts to regulate the film market. One of the dri­ ving forces behind film censorship during this period was the desire to curtail foreign dominance and protect the native film industry. Finally, the development of a film censorship apparatus and control mechanism during this period calls into question the simplistic view of censorship as a symbol of political an­ tagonism and oppression. In many ways, the rise of film censorship in 1920s China demonstrates an alliance between the government and the cultural elite. It was not the government but the cultural elite who pushed for state control of the film industry. In con­ trast to their American counterparts, who viewed federal legislation with suspicion, Chi­ Page 14 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 nese filmmakers regarded the government as a potential partner and wanted to enlist its cooperation and sponsorship. This basic pattern of relationship between the film industry and the government would continue to play out during the Nanjing decade, and even in the postwar years.

Conclusion In some ways, the early history of film censorship in China reminds us of what film histo­ rian Yingjin Zhang, in a different context, has characterized as “discontinuity, (p. 466) fragmentation and diversity.”45 Nevertheless, we can discern three major trends. First, of­ ficial control over motion pictures shifted from a concern with the physical condition of the exhibition site to the contents of the exhibition programs. In other words, attention gradually turned from what was off-screen (e.g., fire safety and sanitation standards in the theater) to what was on-screen (e.g., racy images, problematic portrayal of some groups, and sensitive subjects). Second, the ambiguities regarding film’s proper social function and the subsequent confusions about which government agency should have ju­ risdiction over film production and exhibition gave rise to fierce contestation over the control of this mass medium among several interest groups. While educational agencies across the country stressed film’s potential as an educational tool and justified their in­ volvement in regulatory efforts on that ground, police departments in different parts of the country generally viewed film production and exhibition as a commercial operation and a public entertainment. The different emphasis and the resulting lack of cooperation between the educators and the police rendered film censorship during this period spo­ radic and uncoordinated. This tension was never resolved and would continue to play out during the Nanjing decade. Finally, the power to control and regulate film exhibition and, later, production and distribution gradually shifted away from the local regimes and to­ ward central authorities. These important transitions must be understood in the context of both changes in the Chinese understanding of cinema and its social functions, and China’s political history in the early decades of the twentieth century. Needless to say, each of the transitions discussed above involves a messy process that de­ fies clear-cut periodization. For instance, the focus of film-related policing activities may have shifted from the late Qing officials’ preoccupation with audience behavior in the au­ ditorium to sanitizing the contents of filmic programs during the early Republican era, but attempts to regulate moviegoers’ conduct in public space never disappeared. Indeed, it continued to manifest itself in the reformers’ promotion of movie theater etiquette.46 Nevertheless, the overall orientation and trends in the early developments of film policing are clear, and the trajectory corresponds with both modern Chinese political history in general and early Chinese film history in particular.

Page 15 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923

Appendix 24.1 Eleven Rules Governing the Showing of Motion Pictures in the Evenings, 1907 1. Borrowing or renting films and film equipment from foreigners for the purpose of propagandizing against the government is prohibited. Violation will result in confis­ cation of equipment and heavy fines up to one thousand silver dollars for the viola­ tors. 2. Payment of taxes and fees in the amount of three yuan per day for police protec­ tion must be made in advance each month. The exhibition permit is valid for a month, after which, if the exhibitor wishes to continue showing the film, an application must be resubmitted to the police department. (p. 467) 3. Neither explosives nor inflammable materials are allowed in the theaters. The theater owner is liable for damages resulting from accidents. In the event that movie patrons are injured the police will become involved. 4. The admission price must be clearly posted and submitted to the authorities for approval. Theater owners should not make arbitrary changes to admission prices. 5. The total number of seats in the theater must be reported to the authorities and should not exceed 800 seats. Ticket sales should not exceed the seating capacity. Of­ ficials are authorized to stop the show if they find violations of the regulations during their inspections. 6. Gambling is strictly prohibited in the movie theaters. 7. No indecent pictures may be exhibited. 8. Men and women must be seated separately. A penalty will be imposed on theaters that violate this prohibition. 9. Theaters must obey any orders from the Police Department on short notice. 10. All shows must end before midnight. 11. Once a Chinese-owned energy company opens for business, theaters should stop using their own generators for electricity.47

Works Cited Cao Yuankai 曹元恺. “Sheli dianying shencha hui de tiyi” 設立電影審查會的提議 [A proposal for establishing film censorship]. Yingxi chunqiu 影戲春秋 [Film forum] 12 (1925): 12–13. Chen Zhuomin 陳卓民. “Xian gei quan guo dianying jiancha hui” 獻給全國電影檢查會 [A trib­ ute to the NFCC]. Dianying yuekan 電影月刊 [Movie monthly] 6 (January 1931): 18. Chen Zuiyun 陳醉雲. “Guanyu dianying shencha hui de ganxiang” 關於電影審查會的感想 [My thoughts on film censorship]. Shenzhou tekan 神州特刊 [Special bulletin of Shenzhou Com­ pany] 4 (1926), n.p. Cheng Bugao 程步高. Yingtan yijiu 影壇憶舊 [Memories of early Chinese cinema]. Beijing: China Film Press, 1983. Page 16 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 Cheng Shuren 程樹仁 ed. Zhonghua yingye nianjian, 1927 中華影業年鑑, 1927 [The year­ book of the Chinese film industry, 1927]. Shanghai: Dadong shuju yinshuasuo, 1927. Chong 沖. “Dianying wei zao huofu zhi meijie” 電影為造禍福之媒介 [Film is a medium of both good and evil]. Dianying zhoukan 電影周刊 [Movie weekly] 3 (1924): 1–3. Feldman, Charles Matthew. The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pic­ tures, 1909–1922. New York: Arno Press, 1977. Grieveson, Lee. Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Hong Shi 弘石. “Ren Qingtai yu diyipi guochanpian kaoping” 任慶泰與第一批國產片考評 [Ren and the first wave of Chinese-made films]. Dianying xinshang 電影欣賞 [Film appreciation] 9.4 (1991): 46–51. Hou Xisan 侯希三. Beijing lao xiyuanzi 北京老戲園子 [Old theaters in Beijing]. Beijing: Chengshi chubanshe, 1996. Huang Xuelei and Zhiwei Xiao. “Shadow Magic and the Early History of Film Exhibition in China.” The Chinese Cinema Book. Ed. Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward. New York: Pal­ grave Macmillan, 2011. 47–55. Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Shanghai Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. Li Shaobai 李少白 and Hong Shi 弘石 “Pinwei he jiazhi” 品味和價值 [Taste and values]. Dang­ dai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 4 (1990): 58. Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊彬 Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國無聲電影史 [A history of Chinese silent cinema]. Beijing: China Film Press, 1996. Shu Ping 舒平. “Hong Shen yi jiu er liu nian de Beijing zhi xing” 洪深1926年的北京之行 [Hong Shen’s trip to Beijing in 1926]. Dazhong dianying 大眾電影 [Popular cinema] 3 (1991): 29. (p. 471)

Song Jie 宋介. “Dianying yu shehui lifa wenti” 電影與社會立法問題 [Film and social

legislation]. Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌 [Eastern miscellany] 22.4 (1925) ： 79–94. Wang Yue 王躍. “Zhongguo dianying de yaolan” 中國電影的搖籃 [The cradle of Chinese film]. Yingshi wenhua 影視文化 [Film and television culture] 1 (1986): 295–301. Wen Xian 文憲. “Yi zhounian de huiyi he zuijin de ganxiang” 一周年的回憶和最近的感想 [Reflecting on the past year and thoughts about recent experiences]. Zhongguo dianying zazhi 中國電影雜誌 [China screen] 12 (1928). Reprinted in Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國無聲電影史 [A history of Chinese silent cinema], ed. Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊 彬 (Beijing: China Film Press, 1996), 1030. Xi Xing 奚行. “Guanyu shencha de hua” 關於審查的話 [A few words on film censorship]. Di­ anying zhoukan 電影周刊 [Film weekly] 27 (1925). Page 17 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 Xiao, Zhiwei. “Movie House Etiquette Reform in Republican China.” Modern China 32.4 (October 2006): 513–536. Xiao, Zhiwei. “Social Activism during the Republican Period: Two Case Studies of Popular Protests against the Movies.” Twentieth Century China 25.2 (April 2000): 55–74. Xu Chihen 徐恥痕. “Zhongguo yingxi daguan” 中國影戲大觀 [An outline of Chinese cinema]. Shanghai, 1927. Reprinted in Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國無聲電影史 [A history of Chinese silent cinema], ed. Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊彬 (Beijing: China Film Press, 1996), 1327. Yang Xiaozhong 楊小仲. “Yi Shangwu yinshuguan dianyingbu” 憶商務印書館電影部 [Reflections on the Commercial Press’s film department]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1 (1957): 81. Ye Longyan 葉龍彥. Taibei Ximenting dianying shi, 1896–1997 台北西門町電影史 [A history of the cinema in Taibei’s Ximenting district]. Taibei: National Film Archives, 1997. Zhang, Yingjin. “National Cinema as Translocal Practice: Reflections on Chinese Film His­ toriography.” The Chinese Cinema Book. Ed. Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 17–25. Zhang Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zhong Dafeng 鐘大豐. “Lun yingxi” 論影戲 [On shadowplay]. In Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao 北京電影學院學報 [Journal of the Beijing Film Academy] 1985: no. 2, 54–66.

Notes: (1.) Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 and Hu Jubin 胡菊彬, Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中國無聲電影史 [A history of Chinese silent cinema] (Beijing: China Film Press, 1996), 8, 17; Ye Longyan 葉龍彥, Taibei Ximenting dianying shi, 1896–1997 台北西門町電影史 [A history of the cinema in Taibei’s Ximenting district] (Taibei: National Film Archives, 1997), 36. (2.) Beijing Municipal Archive (hereafter BMA), 1509–385 (7), “Guanli dianying ye xi guize shi yi tiao” 管理電影夜戲規則十一條 [Eleven rules governing the showing of motion pic­ tures in the evenings]. (3.) For a discussion of early Chinese understanding of the motion pictures, see Zhong Dafeng 鐘大豐, “Lun yingxi” 論影戲 [On shadowplay], Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao 北京 電影學院學報 [Journal of the Beijing Film Academy] 1985: no. 2, 54–66; for early film exhi­ bition in China, see Huang Xuelei and Zhiwei Xiao, “Shadow Magic and the Early History of Film Exhibition in China,” in The Chinese Cinema Book, ed. Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 47–55. (4.) BMA, 1507–385-2. There is no date on Bi’s memorial, but the emperor’s comment on the memorial is dated February 23, 1906. Page 18 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 (5.) BMA, 1507–385-2. (6.) BMA, 1509–385(5), dated April 1907. (7.) BMA, “Shangyu dang jiaopian” 上諭檔膠片 [Memorials on microfiche], reel no. 293. The document indicates that the Qing government took an identical stance on public gatherings at a temple fair in 1852. (8.) Hou Xisan 侯希三, Beijing lao xiyuanzi 北京老戲園子 [Old theaters in Beijing] (Beijing: Chengshi chubanshe, 1996), 121. (9.) Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). (10.) BMA, 1509–570, dated the thirty-second year of Guangxu’s reign (1907). (11.) Xiao 曉, “Beijing dianying shiye zhi fada” 北京電影事業之發達 [The development of the film industry in Beijing], Dianying zhoukan 電影周刊 [Film weekly] 1 (1921), reprinted in Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Chinese Silent Cinema, 177. (12.) Hong Shi 弘石, “Ren Qingtai yu diyipi guochanpian kaoping” 任慶泰與第一批國產片考評 [Ren Qingtai and the first wave of Chinese-made films], Dianying xinshang 電影欣賞 [Film appreciation] 9.4 (1991): 46–51. (13.) Wang Yue 王躍, “Zhongguo dianying de yaolan” 中國電影的搖籃 [The cradle of Chinese film], Yingshi wenhua 影視文化 [Film and television culture] 1 (1986): 295–301. (14.) Jilin provincial archive, “Qingmo Jilinsheng dianying fangying shiliao” 清末吉林省電影 放映史料 [Historical documents concerning the history of film exhibition in Jilin during the late Qing period], Lishi dangan 歷史檔案 [Historical archives] 2 (1995), 53–58. My thanks to Ye Wa for bringing my attention to this source. (15.) BMA, 1001 (2) 732–1, “Cheng wei shechang zhizao tongsu jiaoyu huodong yingpian qing lian you” 呈為設廠制造通俗教育活動影片 [The case concerning an application to set up a film studio and make educational films], dated August 3–15, 1918. (16.) “Jingshi jingcha ting xiuding qudi dianying yuan guize zhi neiwu bu cheng” 京師警察 廳修訂取締電影院規則致內務部呈 [A proposal from the police department on revising the reg­ ulations governing the movie theaters], in No. 2 Historical Archive, ed., Zhonghua minguo dangan ziliao huibian, di san juan 中華民國檔案資料匯編, 第三卷 [Selected archival docu­ ments from the Republican period], vol. 3 (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chuban she, 1991), 174. (17.) No. 2 Historical Archive, Selected Archival Documents, document 1057–553. The document does not specify whether these are foreign films or domestic productions. How­ ever, since none of them is listed in Chinese studio production records, it is reasonable to assume that they are foreign films.

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 (18.) “Sheng jiaoyuhui shenyue Mingxing pian zhi pingyu” 省教育會審閱明星片之評語 [Comments on Star Motion Picture Company’s films by the censors from provincial government’s Education Department], Shenbao 申報, July 5, 1923. (19.) “Dianying shenyue weiyuanhui xiaoxi” 電影審閱委員會消息 [News from the film censor­ ship committee], Mingxing tekan 明星特刊 [Special issue, Star Motion Picture Company] 16 (September 1926). (20.) Li Shaobai 李少白 and Hong Shi 弘石, “Pinwei he jiazhi” 品味和價值 [Taste and values], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 4 (1990): 58. (21.) “Tongsu jiaoyu yanjiu hui wei jinzhi shangyan bu liang yingju cheng bing jiaoyu bu ling” 通俗教育研究會為禁止上演不良影劇呈並教育部令 [The Mass Education Department ap­ pealed to the authorities to ban harmful films and the Ministry of Education’s response], in No. 2 Historical Archive, Selected Archival Documents, vol. 3, 176–177. (22.) Zhou Jianyun 周劍雲, “Dianying shencha wenti” 電影審查問題 [The question of film censorship], Dianying yuebao 電影月報 [Film monthly] 5 (1928). (23.) See “Zhejiang jiao jing liang ting he zu dianying shencha hui” 浙江教警兩廳合組電影審 查會 [The bureaus of education and police in the Zhejiang provincial government jointly formed a film censorship committee], Shenbao, February 8, 1926. See also the committee’s rules and regulations in Cheng Shuren 程樹仁, ed., Zhonghua yingye nianjian, 1927 中華影業年鑑 , 1927 [The yearbook of the Chinese film industry, 1927] (Shanghai, 1927). (24.) Chen Zuiyun 陳醉雲, “Guanyu dianying shencha hui de ganxiang” 關於電影審查會的感想 [My thoughts on film censorship], Shenzhou tekan 神州特刊 [Special bulletin of Shenzhou Company] 4 (1926). (25.) See Song Jie 宋潔, “Dianying yu shehui lifa wenti” 電影與社會立法問題 [Film and social legislation], Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌 [Eastern miscellany], 22.4 (1925). For a more de­ tailed discussion of the history of People’s Institute, see Feldman Charles Matthew, The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pictures, 1909–1922 (New York: Arno Press, 1977). See also Ruan Yicheng 阮毅成, “Yingxi yu shehui daode” 影戲與社會道德 [Film and social morality], in Changcheng gongsi teken, “Langnu qiongtu” hao 長城公司特刊《浪 女窮途》號 [Great Wall’s special bulletin on The Demise of a Loose Woman], 1927, reprint­ ed in Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Chinese Silent Cinema, 543. (26.) Xi Xing 奚行, “Guanyu shencha de hua” 關於審查的話 [A few words on film censor­ ship], Film Weekly 27 (1925). (27.) Cheng Shuren, Yearbook of the Chinese Film Industry; Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), chap. 3. (28.) Shu Ping 舒平, “Hong Shen yi jiu er liu nian de Beijing zhi xing” 洪深1926年的北京之行 [Hong Shen’s trip to Beijing in 1926], Dazhong dianying [Popular cinema] 3 (1991): 29. Page 20 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 (29.) Cao Yuankai 曹元愷, “Sheli dianying shencha hui de tiyi” 設立電影審查會的提議 [A pro­ posal for establishing film censorship], Yingxi chunqiu 影戲春秋 [Film forum] 12 (1925). (30.) “He Tingran jun zhi dianying tan” 何挺然君之電影談 [Mr. He Tingran view on film], Shenbao, August 8, 1926, reprinted in Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Chinese Silent Cinema, 99–100. (31.) See Chong 沖, “Dianying wei zao huofu zhi meijie” 電影為造禍福之媒介 [Film is a medi­ um of both good and evil], Film Weekly, 3 (1924). (32.) Chen Zhuomin 陳卓民, “Xian gei quan guo dianying jiancha hui” 獻給全國電影檢查會 [A tribute to the NFCC], Dianying yuekan 電影月刊 [Movie monthly] 6 (January 1931): 18. (33.) Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896– 1937, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 72. (34.) Yang Xiaozhong 楊小仲, “Yi Shangwu yinshuguan dianyingbu” 憶商務印書館電影部 [Reflections on the Commercial Press’ film department], Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema] 1 (1957): 81. (35.) Cheng Bugao 程步高, Yingtan yijiu 影壇憶舊 [Memories of early Chinese cinema] (Bei­ jing: China Film Press, 1983), 35–50. (36.) Xu Chihen 徐恥痕, “Zhongguo yingxi daguan” 中國影戲大觀 [An outline of Chinese cin­ ema] (Shanghai: 1927), reprinted in Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Chinese Silent Cinema, 1327. See also Li Shaobai and Hong Shi, “Taste and Values,” 53–64. (37.) Yan Fusun 嚴復蓀, “Wo zhi yan xi tan” 我之閻戲談 (My view on Yan Ruisheng), Shenbao, July 26, 1921, cited in Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Chinese Silent Cinema, 56. (38.) See the letter from the commissioner of the police to the secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Council, dated May 1923, Shanghai Municipal Archive (hereafter SMA), U1-3-2401. (39.) “Sheng jiaoyuhui shenyue Mingxing pian zhi pingyu” 省教育會審閱明星片之評語 [Remarks on Star Company pictures by the provincial censors], Shenbao, July 5, 1923. (40.) Xinwen bao 新聞報, March 18, 1923, quoted in Cheng Shuren, Yearbook of the Chi­ nese Film Industry, 45. (41.) SMA, U1-3-2401, dated May 1923. (42.) No. 2 Historical Archive, Selected Archival Documents, document 1057–553 (2), “Qing jinzhi dianying Yan Ruisheng, Zhang Xinsheng yingpian yi an” 請禁止電影閻瑞生張欣生 影片一案 [A proposal to ban Yan Ruisheng and Zhang Xinsheng]. (43.) See the comments on Pan si dong 盤絲洞 [The spider cave], in Beiyang huabao 北洋畫 報, 2:65 (February 1927); article on a French film titled Oriental Secret, in BYHB, 9:406 (December 1929); Wen Xian 文憲, “Yi zhounian de huiyi he zuijin de ganxiang” 一周年的回憶 Page 21 of 22

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Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923 和最近的感想 [Reflecting on the past year and thoughts about recent experiences], Zhong­ guo dianying zazhi 中國電影雜誌 [China screen] 12 (1928), reprinted in Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Chinese Silent Cinema, 1030. (44.) Zhiwei Xiao, “Social Activism during the Republican Period: Two Case Studies of Popular Protests against the Movies,” Twentieth Century China 25.2 (April 2000). (45.) Yingjin Zhang, “National Cinema as Translocal Practice: Reflections on Chinese Film Historiography,” in Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward, The Chinese Cinema Book, 18. (46.) Zhiwei Xiao, “Movie House Etiquette Reform in Republican China,” Modern China 32.4 (October 2006): 513–536. (47.) Source: BMA, 1509-385, dated March 1907.

Zhiwei Xiao

Zhiwei Xiao is Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Mar­ cos, research interests focus on Chinese film and popular culture, major publications include Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (co-authored with Yingjin Zhang, Routledge, 1999) and journal articles/book chapters on Chinese film.

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China

Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China   Laikwan Pang The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0026

Abstract and Keywords This chapter investigates the development, institutions, and specificities of the PRC’s film policy and related actions in the period of 1949 to 1951, a period when a new socialist cinema was developed to replace the existing capitalist one. This chapter demonstrates that the new state, in spite of its dedication to ultimately nationalize the industry, took a multifaceted mechanism in shaping the film community. On the one hand, the party worked to build an egalitarian and idealist culture, encouraging policymakers and film­ makers, who often belonged to the same community, to discuss and develop a new cine­ ma together. On the other hand, the state was committed in putting together a new infra­ structure of production, distribution, reception, and, most importantly, criticism, which could bring about a propaganda machine. Instead of assuming socialist film policy as nec­ essarily coercive, this chapter identifies the complexity of cultural governance in the first years of the PRC, exploring how cinema was important to the state in many, sometimes contradictory, ways. Keywords: policy, socialism, censorship, community, propaganda

We have taken for granted the perception that in 1949 the vigor of 1930s and 1940s Shanghai cinema abruptly evaporated, with Chinese cinema becoming instead a sub­ servient part of the planned economy and the state’s propaganda machine. While there are certainly defensible reasons for dividing Chinese film history between a pre-1949 ur­ ban capitalist cinema and a post-1949 national socialist cinema, we nevertheless cannot brush aside the intricate policies and politics involved in this transition. Most of the film­ makers in China at the dawn of the People’s Republic were the same ones who had been active in Shanghai cinema in the 1940s. Although most of them had been left-wing in in­ clination and always identified with the revolutionary regime, in 1949 they still had to adapt to an entirely new film system. At the same time, many left-wing filmmakers also entered the state system and became policymakers, and this was a period when officials and filmmakers rubbed shoulders and actively willed a new socialist cinema into being. Film policy became a site where politics, aesthetics, and social issues confronted and en­ Page 1 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China gaged one another, and where the new state considered the political and cultural values of movies and put forward concrete plans for realizing a new cinema. I do not wish to romanticize the early Maoist government as egalitarian, but we must rec­ ognize that the understanding of film policy as a system of regulatory rules does not fully explain the PRC’s relationship to cinema. The early years of the PRC were in general a period of optimism, and many filmmakers actively cooperated with the government in de­ veloping a new cinema. Before the Republic’s first purgation movement was instigated in 1952 and the First Five-Year Plan was launched in 1953, the period from 1949 to 1951 was one in which new ideas were developed and tested, and a completely new social role for cinema was envisioned. The film policy of the period must be studied under a wider (p. 473) framework acknowledging the dynamic relationships between censorship and nurture, coercion and negotiation.

A Brief Overview of the State Structure In general, socialist states take a more interventionist approach than liberalist ones with respect to cultural governance, as socialism considers politics and culture inseparable. There is usually a coherent ideological agenda behind socialist cultural policy, but in prac­ tice cultural control is often delivered in a diffuse and excessive manner, based on shift­ ing political purposes rather than sound philosophical principles. It is true that if we study Maoist film policy in its actual operation, we find that filmmakers were given little room to exercise their artistic freedom. However, under the CCP’s “paternalistic” gover­ nance, the state’s overall nurturing efforts surpassed those of oppression, particularly in the first years of the Republic. The period from 1949 to 1951 was a time of experimenta­ tion and appeasement, and while radical changes were not preferred, neither was a monolithic culture favoured by the new regime. The new socialist film industry/apparatus was to be constructed jointly by filmmakers and policymakers. As Paul Pickowicz writes: “given its often expressed interest in the cultural and intellectual spheres and its strong desire to consolidate its rule in urban centers, the party was in desperate need of the mass media expertise of urban filmmakers.”1 Ideologically and structurally, the influences of the Soviet Union on the early Republic were enormous, as CCP members had been systematically sent to the Soviet Union since the Yan’an period to learn how to run a socialist country. In the area of cinema, Yuan Muzhi 袁牧之, who had been a shining left-wing actor and director in the 1930s and would become the PRC’s chief officer in cinema in the 1950s, stayed in the USSR from 1940 to 1946, and he brought back not only Soviet management methods and filmmaking prac­ tices but also the conviction that cinema was the most important of the arts in a socialist society. Immediately after China was liberated, Soviet films were rapidly introduced, and Soviet experts were recruited by the Ministry of Culture in the early 1950s to work on the Proposal for Cinema for the PRC’s First Five-Year Plan.2 Kristin Thompson notes that in the 1920s, Soviet film policy was one in which the government tried “to create a central organ which could regulate and coordinate the activities of the various private and re­ Page 2 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China gional film companies and which could itself make and distribute films with the type of ideology desirable for the new Soviet society….[T]he goal was for the Soviet film industry to become self-supporting and to make a profit.”3 We could say that the new Chinese state was also trying to build its cinema apparatus with a similar vision, and the newly es­ tablished film studios also strived for both propagandistic effectiveness and self-sufficien­ cy. But the new Chinese cinema also developed its own characteristics. First, rather than a single central organ,4 two state bodies responsible for Chinese cinema were established (p. 474) between 1949 and 1950: the Central Film Bureau (中央電影局) and the Film Guid­ ance Committee (電影指導委員會). The Central Film Bureau was first established in April 1949 under the direction of Central Propaganda Unit and was then placed under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture in November of the same year. The director of the Bureau was Yuan Muzhi, with his wife Chen Bo’er 陳波兒 heading its art department, which was responsible for all filmmaking activities. Both of them were active in Shanghai’s left-wing film circles in the 1930s, and they left Shanghai for Yan’an in the late 1930s to develop filmmaking in the Liberation Area. As the leader of the new Film Bureau, Yuan Muzhi was close to both Party leaders and Shanghai filmmakers. The bureau was the official state apparatus responsible for cinema, covering the entire spectrum of filmmaking, including production, distribution, reception, and censorship. The bureau also introduced new in­ centives, such as proposing the new Film Village in Beijing, and developing a research in­ stitute and two film journals. The bureau, therefore, was where the blueprint of the new Chinese socialist cinema was designed and executed. While the Central Film Bureau was a state apparatus, the Film Guidance Committee was set up in May 1950 under the instruction of Premier Zhou Enlai 周恩來, partly in response to a controversy over minority policy issues raised by the film Scenes of Inner Mongolia (內蒙風光, 1950).5 It was clear to Zhou that ideology needed to be addressed by an institu­ tion separate from the Film Bureau. The regulating committee was composed of thirtyfive members, including Party leaders and representatives from all walks of life, to reflect the close connection between the Party and the people in the new socialist cinema. The official role of the committee was to “raise the intellectual and artistic level of national films.”6 But more specifically it was the responsibility of the Party agent to supervise and instruct the development of cinema. Considering the inefficacy of the bulky thirty-fivemember committee, in 1951 an executive committee was set up to carry out the core tasks.7 Its members included Yuan Muzhi, Shen Yanbing 沈雁冰 (aka Mao Dun 茅盾), Zhou Yang 周揚, Ding Xilin 丁西林, Jiang Qing 江青, Yang Hansheng 陽翰笙, Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生, Xiao Hua 蕭華, and Shi Dongshan 史東山. Among these nine committee members, five had been active in filmmaking since the 1930s. According to their minutes, the executive com­ mittee meetings gave discrete ideological advice to filmmakers and also censored film materials when needed. Cai Chusheng recalled in 1954 that in 1951 and 1952 the com­ mittee banned more than four hundred proposals, eighty finished films, and forty scripts.8 The Film Guidance Committee was disbanded in July 1952, and replaced by the Film Unit under the Central Propaganda Department, whose regulative role was even stronger. Page 3 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China Although not explicitly stated, the Film Bureau and the Film Guidance Committee repre­ sented the state and the Party in operation and ideology, respectively. While the bureau was both a state department and an enterprise, responsible for all matters related to film production and reception, the committee was an advisory and monitoring unit, ensuring the direct infiltration of the Party’s views from Beijing to the filmmakers. But this supervi­ sion was not coercive. First, many of the key figures of the bureau and the committee, as I have noted, were filmmakers who had been active in the left-wing cinema movement in the 1930s and 1940s. These policymakers understood very well the (p. 475) actual opera­ tion of the film industry, and most of them were still tightly embedded in film circles. When cinema was to begin anew in 1949, the CCP entrusted cinema to filmmakers in­ stead of bureaucrats. Second, there was a strong connection between Beijing, where policy was designed, and Shanghai, in which most filmmaking activities continued to take place in the first years of the Republic. The Shanghai Film Studio, one of the first national film studios, was headed by Yu Ling 于伶, while Xia Yan 夏衍 coordinated the CCP’s campaign to take control of Shanghai’s studios in mid-1949, and later directed its City Propaganda Department. Yu and Xia served as the Party representatives in Shanghai, and they actively discussed with filmmakers their daily operations, from revising their scripts to plans for national screen­ ings.9 While there were plans to move the nation’s film center to Beijing, Shanghai’s film industry continued to operate in full gear until the mid-1950s. In general, while it is true that a dynamics of stability and new opportunities was certainly in play during this period of China’s film history, these two forces were not necessarily in tension, and on occasion they could be productively employed for mutual nourishment.

Nationalization of the Film Industry The two sets of institutionalized dynamics—between the Film Bureau and the Film Guid­ ance Committee, and between Beijing and Shanghai—constructed and reflected a rather pluralistic film culture. Most importantly, the film industry had not been completely na­ tionalized before 1952, and the preceding “capitalist” film industry had not been simply crushed. Instead, state-owned and private film studios coexisted and produced a relative­ ly wide spectrum of films. An elaborate plan for the state to take over the film industry was already in place before Shanghai was liberated, and it took only half a year for the Shanghai Film Studio to be es­ tablished in November 1949.10 Xia Yan recalls that, because left-wing thinking had been infiltrating the city’s film industry since the 1930s, the CCP was therefore welcomed en­ thusiastically in 1949 by many filmmakers, including those working in Nationalist, or Guomindang (GMD), studios.11 In fact, the popularity of many left-wing films made in the 1930s and 1940s had contributed to the success of the CCP in winning the support of the urban population, and consequently the CCP did not have the urgency to uproot the exist­ ing film structure, and the priority of the new regime was to sustain the current support.

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China There were altogether twenty-one private studios still operating during this initial post-1949 period,12 and their business could continue largely because of the support of the new regime. As Yuan Muzhi demonstrated, in the budget preparation for the fiscal year of 1950, about 70 percent to 80 percent of the total budget of the Ministry of Cul­ ture was allotted to the Film Bureau and the three national studios,13 despite the fact that the productions of these three studios only occupied a small portion of the national mar­ ket at the time (see table 25.1 below). It was clear that the new regime was not able to bear (p. 476) the financial burden of nationalizing the entire industry, and some private studios had to continue their operation to support the national market. But supporting the private studios also incurred financial obligations. Most of the film companies in the late 1940s engaged in low-budget quick-turnaround commercial productions, and the overall commercial environment deteriorated quickly in 1948 and 1949 during the civil war.14 Many of the smaller film companies did not survive into the socialist period, be­ cause of political as well as financial difficulties. Those that did survive, including larger studios such as Wenhua 文華, Cathay 國泰, Datong 大同, Daguangming 大光明, Da Zhonghua 大中華, and Huaguang 華光, were also in dire financial straits, with the PRC needing to provide considerable financial assistance to maintain their operations. As documented in a government report of the time, the state helped these private film companies get pri­ vate loans from the banks in the amount of 8.3 billion yuan in 1950, and 4 billion in 1951.15 In other words, the new regime did not merely permit these private companies to continue operating, it actively helped them survive. But it is also clear that the main task of the private studios was to support socialist cine­ ma, of which national studios would be the leader. Northeast Studio was established in 1946 as the CCP’s first film organ, and it was relocated to Beijing in 1949 as the new regime’s first national studio. Two other national studios were quickly developed, Beijing and Shanghai, and the three studios were directly under the supervision of the Film Bu­ reau. They not only produced feature-length dramas but also newsreels, documentaries, and coproductions with the Soviet Union; they were also responsible for dubbing Soviet films for Chinese screening.16 It was stated that the primary mission of the three national studios was to serve workers, peasantry, and soldiers, who were both the target audience and the subjects of representation. The urban petite bourgeoisie was encouraged to at­ tend these films, but their views could not dominate the works themselves.17 The two kinds of studio were meant to complement each other, with the private compa­ nies acting as subsidiaries for the national studios. Yuan Muzhi believed that it was diffi­ cult for existing Shanghai filmmakers to suddenly change their subject matters and val­ ues for the new audiences. Yet it was essential to maintain a steady production of films (the estimate was four hundred works per year) to replace Hollywood works and spread the good image of the new regime. So, the Shanghai filmmakers were committed to keep­ ing the existing studios running, provided that they supported the new regime.18 The plan was to gradually shift the economic and cultural power from private studios to national ones,19 but there was no indication that the private studios would be seized in the near future. Instead, what was clearly emphasized was that both the business environment and Page 5 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China the ideological level of the private studios needed to be improved in order to strengthen the structure in which national studios took the lead. Ironically, precisely because of the subsidiary and marginal position given to private com­ panies, the range of films they were allowed to produce remained relatively wide. As Xia Yan noted in a workshop for Shanghai’s filmmakers in 1949, “Our yardstick for private companies is very lenient. Our basic requirement for them is to make films not harmful to the people, and not offending the policies of the people’s government. Of course, our biggest hope is to educate the people, to reform people’s thinking, and to (p. 477) encour­ age production.”20 Altogether, the private companies made sixty-one films from 1949 to 1952, forty-seven of which had been screened by the end of 1951. These films, moreover, dealt with a wide range of subject matter. Let us further explore the role played by private studios in the overall blueprint. In 1951, the Shanghai Municipal Government categorized films into five groups: films made by na­ tional studios, imported films from the USSR, imported films from other liberated coun­ tries, progressive films made by private studios, and regressive films made by private stu­ dios.21 It is not certain, according to the information I have, how exactly progressive and regressive were defined, but the municipal government clearly acknowledged the exis­ tence of regressive films, whose actual number was the second highest in all categories, exceeded only by Soviet films. But the government was also proud to present the fact that its attendance was much smaller than that for films made by national studios or progres­ sive films made by private studios (table 25.1). The data clearly suggested that while the government allowed all kinds of films to be screened in the city, audiences were free to choose the good ones from the bad. Beyond the public and the private models, two major pre-Liberation studios, Kunlun 崑崙 and Changjiang 長江, were chosen to receive direct investment from the state to become public-private joint-venture companies, forming the third model.22 While the Film Bureau was the major investor, the collaboration was entirely contractual, and Kunlun and Changjiang were able to retain their own identities and styles of operation. A contract dated on July 8, 1950, stated clearly that the bureau and Changjiang agreed to coproduce four films. The budgetary limits of the first three were two billion dollars per film, while the production of the fourth would not begin until the investments in the first three had been recouped. Among the total state investment, 12 percent was based on the mortgage of its studio assets, and the rest was offered without any security. The total profits of the four films would be shared equally by the studio and the bureau.23 Changjiang was re­ sponsible for the production, and it reportedly also retained a dominant role in the joint venture.24 This contractual relationship indicated the state’s respect for Changjiang as an independent company, which theoretically was free to choose to continue or not its collab­ oration with the bureau after the expiration of the contract. (p. 478) In the end, only three films were made, Spring of Two Families (兩家春), Protest (控訴), and March of Couples (夫 婦進行曲), and Changjiang subsequently merged with Kunlun to become Changjiang-Kun­ lun Joint Studio in late 1951, which ultimately was absorbed into the national Shanghai Film Studio. The period between 1949 and 1951, therefore, marked a unique threshold in Page 6 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China Chinese film history in which the capitalist and the socialist systems operated alongside each other in a variety of ways. Table 25.1 Types of Films Screened in Shanghai in 1951* Film Categories

No. of films

No. of screenings

No. of audi­ ence

National Studio Films

50

13933

7,688,628

Soviet Films

91

13741

5,854,599

Films from New De­ mocratic Countries

5

471

234,913

Private Progressive Films

36

14438

6,199,545

Private Regressive

71

7492

3,915,512

253

50075

23,892,197

Films Total

(*) Table compiled from the data collected in Mao Zedong, “Speech for the Chinese Communist Party National Propaganda Work Meet­ ing.” In 1952, all private companies were combined to form the national Shanghai United Stu­ dio 上海聯合製片廠, and in 1953, the United Studio was acquired by the Shanghai Studio, completing the nationalization process of China’s film industry. While a “national capital­ ism” developed vigorously from 1950 to 1953 in China, and the state did not engage in the large-scale nationalization of the private sector until 1956, the film industry became entirely state-run in the beginning of 1952. This was a time when the private sector flour­ ished, and significant portions of the national economy remained capitalist. As Maurice Meisner documents, “By 1953 the number of privately owned industrial establishments increased from 123,000 to 150,000 and the number of workers in private firms grew from 1,644,000 to 2,231,000, accounting for 37 percent of China’s industrial output.”25 The state considered the first three-year period of the new Republic as the “bourgeois-democ­ ratic” phase of development that necessarily preceded the socialist one. But cinema hap­ pened to be nationalized ahead of other industries in this schedule. The reasons, I be­ lieve, mainly resided in the lack of a corresponding finance, market, and distribution in­ frastructure, which the operation of private film studios had to rely on.

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China First, most of the private studios faced financial difficulties. According to state records, by 1951 most private film companies were facing financial, equipment, and personnel problems,26 which therefore set the stage for the state takeover of the entire industry. The same set of records also indicated that most productions of private companies in the year of 1950 failed at the box office.27 Most of these companies had already been suffer­ ing from the great depression during the civil war, and the situation did not improve in 1950. Although inflation was under control and the private companies received state sup­ port in one way or another, box office did not improve, and revenues were not able to sup­ port productions. According to Xu Sangchu 徐桑楚, who was the studio head of Changjiang at that time, the financial situation of the private studios was grave, and most studios fa­ vored nationalization.28 Second, the priority of the new regime was to nurture village audiences instead of the ur­ ban population, which the private companies were much more familiar with. Providing service to workers, peasants, and soldiers was ratified as the most important mission of cinema; and the making of documentary and educational films was listed as a top priority.29 In order to promote cinema in the villages, the state established and coordinat­ ed many traveling film exhibitions around the country, which in turn required a self-suffi­ cient national industry of film projectors and film-developing centers, as well as a large number of professional exhibitors.30 The number of traveling exhibition teams increased from around a hundred in 1949 to fifteen hundred by the end of 1951.31 For the first time the cultural rights of the masses in the village, who had previously had no access to cine­ ma, were emphasized. Yet the private companies were not familiar with (p. 479) this new audience and did not—or were not allowed to—make village films and education films. For the urban markets, the private studios were relegated to a marginal position; for the newly developing rural markets, they had no role at all. Their room for development was minimal. Third, while the new state discriminatorily supported certain private companies, it was determined to monopolize distribution and directly control what films the population could watch. Directly under the Ministry of Culture, China Film Distribution Company (中 國電影發行公司) was established in January 1951 and assumed responsibility for national film distribution. The nationalization and monopolization of film distribution also marked a complete break with imported Hollywood films and the rapid introduction of Soviet Union films to China. While Hollywood films quickly disappeared from the market, there were fifty Soviet films screened in China in 1950 alone,32 and the number increased to ninety-one in 1951, as shown in table 25.1. Last, top leaders discovered that the Shanghai film industry did not function as they had expected, which was particularly evident in the case of The Story of Wu Xun (武訓傳, 1950). The film was made by the private company Kunlun, and its ideological problems prompted the state to annex all the private studios quickly. The private companies were in no position to know in advance and therefore could not adapt to the changing winds of

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China the political climate, and they found themselves particularly vulnerable in such environ­ ments. We need to explore this new criticism culture in more detail.

Censorship and The Story of Wu Xun The primordial form of PRC film censorship could be found in the document “Instruction for Northeast Propaganda Unit Related to Film Work” (關於電影工作給東北宣傳部的指示), is­ sued by Central Propaganda Department on October 26, 1948, in which stringent censor­ ship was seen as destructive to the new film industry developing in the Liberated Area. On the assumption that exerting harsh control over socialist filmmaking would give old and harmful films room to succeed in the market, the document suggested that “for those films with political messages, as long as they serve the tasks of anti-imperialism, anti-feu­ dalism, anti-bureaucratic capitalism, and not anti–Soviet Union, anti-communism, and an­ ti-people’s democracy, they can be made. For those without strong political relevance, as long as they are not harmful to our propaganda, and have artistic values, they can also be made.”33 This leniency was a result of careful deliberation after the strenuous competi­ tions not only with Shanghai films but also with Hollywood. Entering 1949, when film import and distribution were quickly nationalized, Hollywood retreated from the market, and the more urgent issue was to ensure enough progressive socialist films were made. Filmmakers also demanded clear instructions from the govern­ ment to guide their productions. Accordingly, the Central Film Censorship Committee (中 央電影局審查委員會) was established in 1950 under the Film Bureau. (p. 480) The first film regulations of the PRC, the “Five Temporary Methods of Administrating the Film Industry Issued by the Ministry of Culture” (文化部關於電影業五個暫行辦法), were also issued.34 On paper, the reasoning and vocabulary of these first film censorship regulations displayed no apparent deviation from those of the Republican government. In reality, film censor­ ship during this period was not very strict. As I have mentioned, the forty-seven Chinese films made by the private studios featured a wide variety of themes and genres—many were comedies, quite a few were period films, some concerned ghosts, while most involved romance and bourgeois lives. The Central Film Censorship Committee was primarily responsible for American films rather than lo­ cal films,35 and the Film Guidance Committee took its advising duties quite liberally. It was lamented that the committee was unclear on exactly how films should be censored and how official advice should be given, which particularly perplexed the private film companies.36 We may observe this relatively plural film culture from a criticism published in January of 1952, that “among the 47 films made by private studios already screened [by 1951], most of them are problematic, flawed, or without positive educational values.”37 According to the author of this essay, these forty-seven films could be grouped into three categories. The first, which including works like A Story of Film Fans (影迷傳, 1950), Thresholds between Human and Spiritual Realms (陰陽界, 1950), and Story of a Wandering Hero in Jiang Village (江村游俠傳, 1950), was considered the worst, because the works were absurd, vulgar, low-class, and trivial. The second category was described Page 9 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China as including those works concerned with “exposure and transformation,” and which claimed to reflect the dark side of old society. But according to the author, these films made it too easy for intellectuals to transform themselves, also exaggerating the impor­ tance of intellectuals in contemporary society. The third category focused on workers, peasantry, and soldiers, but most of these films misrepresented them through the per­ spective of the petit bourgeois, and in general these films produced by private studios on­ ly reflected the regressive components of existing society.38 This criticism, which could be seen as part of the developing purgation movement, might be exaggerated, but it does re­ veal the diversified film culture of the time. In spite of the diligent work of the Film Guidance Committee, the censorship carried out in 1949 and 1950 was not as stringent as it seemed, and a good part of the Shanghai commercial film culture of the 1940s sailed through the revolution and did not come to a halt until 1952. Although left-wing filmmakers and critics applauded the dawn of the new age in 1949 and urged that a brand-new film policy replace GMD oppressing censorship,39 in reality nothing drastically different was introduced legally. While the Film Bureau’s Censorship Committee replaced the GMD’s Film Inspection Committee as the state’s official censorship body, film censorship did not seem to take any new direction in institutional terms. It was not until the end of 1951, when a more elaborate three-step film censorship process—focusing on the creative plan, script, and film—was proposed, that film censorship become institutionalized.40 Below the institutional level, however, a new practice of film censorship evolved, posi­ tioned mostly outside the official apparatus. Filmmakers in the new socialist country were invited or coerced into entering a national but evanescent ideological apparatus, (p. 481) whose stance was supposed to be collectively shaped, particularly by the filmmakers themselves. Instead of censorship, it was self-censorship that was the pronounced mode of operation. Despite the existence of the Film Bureau and Film Guidance Committee, the nation’s main “censorship” body was not composed of officially appointed members or supported legally by related statutory regulations, yet it could be directly engineered by top leaders and encompassed the entire national propaganda system. A case in point was the nationwide criticism of the film The Story of Wu Xun in 1951. Sun Yu 孫瑜, the director, was introduced by his friend Tao Xingzhi 陶行知 in 1944 to the story of the late Qing character Wu Xun, who spent his whole life begging around the country to raise funds to establish schools. Sun was moved by the story, and in 1947 he began to make it into film under the GMD-supported China Film Studio (中國製片廠), which however had to close down its business at the end of 1948 because of financial troubles.41 The production was subsequently taken up by Kunlun, and it was discussed, shot, and completed around the restless period when Shanghai was liberated, when the nation’s sovereignty changed hands. Although Sun Yu was committed to the production, he nevertheless felt pressured to align with the new policy and tried to discuss the film’s political adequacy with his progressive colleagues at Kunlun, such as Chen Liting 陳鯉庭 and Zheng Junli 鄭君里, together with other senior CCP members such as Xia Yan and Yu Ling, and the script was altered many times in the process. When the work was screened Page 10 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China in February 1951 it was widely admired, and it also had a special screening in Zhongnan­ hai specifically for top officials such as Zhou Enlai and Zhu De 朱德.42 But in late March negative criticisms began to emerge, culminating in an official purgation that began on May 20 when the People’s Daily published an editorial, penned by Mao himself, criticizing the film for spreading feudal messages and denying class struggles. The large-scale criticism mobilized against the film is generally considered to be the first CCP-lead attack against cultural workers since the founding of the PRC in 1949. Howev­ er, I think the real significance of the film resides in the national cultural criticism appa­ ratus that was established along with it; or, the film was chosen largely to substantiate a new criticism culture. As shown in the entire two-year purgation process, the criticism was directed less to the filmmakers involved than to the CCP members who had support­ ed the film. In the May 20 People’s Daily (人民日報) editorial, Mao painstakingly listed forty-three essays and three books—including a total of forty-seven different authors, many of them CCP members—who had complemented the film. Listing such a long inven­ tory of purgation targets in a People’s Daily editorial was unprecedented, unseen even during the Cultural Revolution.43 Another column published on the same date in the same newspaper stated that all CCP members should participate in criticizing the film. Whoev­ er had committed the mistake of praising the film should issue a self-criticism publicly, and it was claimed that this nationwide discussion would substantially help elevate the political level of all Party members. The enlightened Party members then had the obliga­ tion to educate the people about the vision of the great nation.44 Mao also ordered that the life story of Wu Xun, who was widely respected in the country at the time, to be rein­ vestigated in order to expose the feudalist and reactionary dimensions of this historical character.45 (p. 482)

This incident indicated that Mao was determined to shape up the cultural elites

before a new socialist culture, as he believed, could come into being. In fact, many film policymakers, such as Xia Yan, Yu Ling, and Cai Chusheng, had to submit to self-criticism. If it were not for Mao, no one, including Zhou Enlai, who also had endorsed the film, would have recognized the grave political mistakes this film had supposedly committed. Criticisms of the film would later develop into a large purgation movement impacting the entire national film structure, and even Yuan Muzhi himself would be demoted. This pur­ gation therefore set itself as the first successful national movement that directly linked the highest echelon of the Party (Mao himself) to the masses without any mediation of in­ termediate officers, and the efficacy and power of this criticism culture would culminate in the Cultural Revolution. We should also recognize the conciliatory dimension of this purgation. In a top CCP meet­ ing on March 24, 1951, when major officials dealing with cultural matters met and decid­ ed that The Story of Wu Xun should be selected as a “typical” problematic case that can turn into a propaganda program to educate filmmakers, cultural cadres, and audiences, it was also resolved that all criticisms of the film should be communicated to and discussed with Sun Yu before they were made public.46 The term used in the minutes of the meeting was tantong 談通, implying not only that Sun Yu should be informed, but that he was also Page 11 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China invited to discuss and shape these criticisms, to the extent that ideally he should give his own endorsement before the purgation were carried out. Sun Yu in his autobiography re­ counts that Premier Zhou Enlai himself had wanted to talk to him in March about the film, but Sun declined the opportunity to travel to Beijing because of another film project he was undertaking. However, Yu Ling, director of Shanghai’s Film Bureau, did speak to him in May in private to prepare him for the nationwide criticism. According to Sun Yu, Yu Ling told him that the criticism was not directed at him personally but to raise people’s awareness of culture’s political dimension.47 In spite of the ferocity of the subse­ quent media bashing of the film, immediately after The Story of Wu Xun Sun was given the chance to codirect another key national production, Song Shijing 宋詩景 (1955), al­ though in the end he left the crew because of his illness. As Sun admitted in his autobiog­ raphy four decades later, he was sincerely grateful for the care given to him by the state’s top leaders, and his identification with the new regime did not subside after the Wu Xun incident.48

The Historical Threshold What I have described above is a budding moment of potentiality in which different kinds of cultural and political concerns operated in dissonance, but which also reflects how the new regime developing the meanings of cinema for its own advantage. Mao Zedong com­ mented that intellectuals could not be changed by pressure. They need to be reeducated, because they are charged with the obligation to educate the people; but they have to be convinced and won over, so that they learn voluntarily instead of being coerced into something they do not believe in.49 It is true that throughout the Maoist period ac­ tions suggesting otherwise abounded, but the relationship between the state and intellec­ (p. 483)

tuals was never just antagonistic. Particularly during the first few years of the PRC, many intellectuals and cultural workers found themselves identifying with the new state unre­ servedly. At a time when the Liberation Army was fiercely engaged in the Korean War, and the news of the massive executions of counterrevolutionaries continued to be head­ line news, 1949 to 1951 was in general a time of respite and planning for most intellectu­ als. While cultural workers tried their best to adapt to the new political milieu, they also began, consciously or unconsciously, to take on different projects to test the baseline of the regime. Rereading this chapter from China’s film history, we find it impossible to assign a coher­ ent characteristic to film policy from this period, but we acknowledge a number of differ­ ent concerns and tensions at play. We have no reason to doubt the new regime’s earnest hope in building a thriving film industry, but the way culture developed also caught the Party off guard, which had to engage in fierce political criticism to regain control. In oth­ er words, neither the government nor the film communities had a clear blueprint for the new socialist cinema, and the historical threshold of the years 1949 to 1951 was rich with inquisitive acts, blunt confrontations, and indecisive moments. The particular develop­ ments in the film culture of this period also help us understand Maoist cultural gover­ nance in general, in which guiding principles were upheld, yet different kinds of quick re­ Page 12 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China sponses to changing situations were the norm. It is true that governance always operates along the dynamic relationship between theory and practice, but the Maoist cultural gov­ ernance was extreme in both ends: socialist principles were held supreme, yet these prin­ ciples could be reinterpreted liberally to suit new political purposes. Whether intentional­ ly or not, most of the political happenings in the first years of the Republic already took place outside the confines of policy, and the tensions between institutionalization and change would continue to grow. In general, film policy did not serve the mere function of repression but had to be understood also in its productive dimension.

Works Cited Chen Bo’er 陳波兒. “Gushipian cong wu dao you de biandao gongzuo” 故事片從無到有的編導 工作 [The making of dramatic films from scratch]. January 1950. Zhongguo dianying yan­ jiu ziliao 中國電影研究資料 [Chinese cinema research materials]. Vol. 1 (1949–1979). Ed. Wu Di 吳迪. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. 58–66. Cheng Jihua 程季華. “Zuowei Zhongyang Dianying Ju Juzhang—Yuan Muzhi tongzhi piand­ uan” 作為中央電影局局長—袁牧之同志片斷 [As the director of the Central Film Bureau— glimpses of Comrade Yuan Muzhi]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 1999: no. 5, 25–31. Cheng Jihua. ed. Xia Yan dianying wenji 夏衍電影文集 [Collection of film essays by Xia Yan]. Vol. 1. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2000. Di Di 狄翟 “Fengyu shiqi nian—fang Xu Sangchu” 風雨十七年—訪徐桑楚 [Seventeen years of wind and rain—an interview with Xu Shanchu]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 1999: no. 4, 77–82. Dianying zhidao weiyunhui 電影指導委員會 [Film Guidance Committee]. “Dianying zhidao weiyuanhui disici huiyi (changweihui) jilu” 電影指導委員會會議 (常委會) 紀錄 [Minutes of Film Guidance Committee (Executive Committee)]. October 3, 1951. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao 中國電影研究資料 [Chinese cinema research materials]. Ed. Wu Di 吳迪. Beijing: Wen­ hua yishu chubanshe, 2006. 224–226. Dianying zhidao weiyunhui 電影指導委員會 [Film Guidance Committee]. “Guanyu guoying dianying de shencha wenti (jielu)” 關於國營電影的審查問題 (節錄) [Regarding censorship is­ sues of national films (excerpt)]. October 3, 1951. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao 中國電 影研究資料 [Chinese cinema research materials]. Ed. Wu Di 吳迪. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. 226–227. Ding Yaping 丁亞平. Yingxiang Zhongguo 1945–1949 影像中國 1945–1949 [Vision China, 1945–1949]. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1998. Gu Qian 顧茜. “Jianguo chu siying yingye zhuangui zhi gaiguan” 建國初私營影業轉軌之概觀 [A general view of the changing course of the private film industry in the beginning of the Republic]. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film arts] 2004: no. 4, 39–48.

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China Guo Xueqin 郭學勤. Qianbai rensheng—Yuan Muzhi zhuan 千百人生—袁牧之傳 [A life of thousand turns: The biography of Yuan Muzhi]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 2005. (p. 488)

Hong Hong 洪宏 “Lun ‘shiqinian’ Zhong-Su dianying guanxi” 論“十七年”中蘇電影關係 [Discussing the Sino-Soviet film relation during the “seventeen year” period], Film Arts 2006: no. 3, 35–42. Hu Jubin 胡菊彬 and Yao Xiaomeng 姚曉濛. “Xin Zhongguo dianying chengze ji qi biaoshu, shang” 新中國電影政策及其表述, 上 [New Chinese film policy and its articulation, part I]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 1989: no. 1, 7–15. Jie Zhixiu 解治秀. “Yuan Muzhi yu ‘dianyingcun’” 袁牧之與“電影村” [Yuan Muzhi and “Film Village”]. Ningbo daxue xuebao (renwenkexueban) 寧波大學學報人文科學版 [Journal of Ning­ bo University (liberal arts edition)] 1818.1 (2005): 41–43. Mao Zedong 毛澤東. “Zai Zhongguo gongchandang quanguo xuanchuan gongzuo huiyi shang de jianghua” 在中國共產黨全國宣傳工作會議上的講話 [The speech for the Chinese Com­ munist Party National Propaganda Work Meeting], March 12, 1957. Jianguo yilai Mao Ze­ dong wengao 建國以來毛澤東文稿 [Manuscripts by Mao Zedong since the establishment of the nation]. Vol. 6. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1990. 378–395. Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic. New York: Free Press, 1999. Ouyang Yuqian 歐陽于倩 et al. “Dianying zhengce xianyi” 電影政策獻議 [Our suggestions on film policy]. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao 中國電影研究資料 [Chinese cinema research materials]. Ed. Wu Di 吳迪. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. 5. Pickowicz, Paul G. “Acting Like Revolutionaries: Shi Hui, the Wenhua Studio, and PrivateSector Filmmaking, 1949–52.” Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Re­ public of China. Ed. Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 256–287. Qi Zhi 啟之. Mao Zedong shidai de renming dianying (1949–1966) 毛澤東時代的人民電影 (1949–1966) [People’s cinema during Mao’s era (1949–1966)]. Taipei: Showwe Info, 2010. Shen Yanbing 沈雁冰. “Zhongyang wenhuabu guanyu dianying gongzuo de baogao (jielu) 中央文化部關於電影工作的報告 (節錄) [Central Ministry of Culture film report (excerpts)], De­ cember 8, 1950. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao 中國電影研究資料 [Chinese cinema re­ search materials]. Ed. Wu Di 吳迪. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. 76. Shi Chuan 石川. “Shuzui yu xinsheng: Shanghai dianying zhipian chang de chuangjian” 贖 罪與新生:上海電影製片廠的創建 [Redemption and newborn: The establishment of Shanghai Film Studio]. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film arts], 2010: no. 5, 112–121. Sun Yu 孫瑜. Dalu zhige 大路之歌 [Song of The Big Road]. Taipei: Yuanliu, 1990. Page 14 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China Sun Yu. “Wo biandao dianying Wu Xun zhuan de jingguo” 我編導電影《武訓傳》的經過 [My experience in producing the film The Story of Wu Xun]. Wenshi jinghua 文史精華 [Literature and history essences], 1995: no. 2, 12–17. Thompson, Kristin. “Government Policies and Practical Necessities in the Soviet Cinema of the 1920s.” The Red Screen: Politics, Society, Art in Soviet Cinema. Ed. Anna Lawton. New York: Routledge, 1992. 19–41. Wu Di 吳迪 ed. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao 中國電影研究資料 [Chinese cinema research materials]. Vol. 1 (1949–1979). Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. Xia Yan 夏衍. Lanxun jiumeng lu 懶尋舊夢錄 [Too lazy to look for old dreams]. Beijing: San­ lian shudian, 2000. Yuan Xi 袁晞. Wu Xun Zhuan piping jishi 武訓傳批評記事 [Record of criticisms of The Story of Wu Xun]. Wuhan: Zhangjiang wenyi chubanshe, 2000. Zhong Dafeng 鍾大豐. “Yuan Muzhi tongzhi yu Xin Zhongguo dianying shiye de chuchuang shexiang yu shishi” 袁牧之同志與新中國電影事業的初創設想與實施 [Comrade Yuan Muzhi and the ideas and implementation of the new Chinese film industry]. Dangdai di­ (p. 489)

anying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 1999: no. 5, 32–38. Zhong Dafeng 鍾大豐. “Xin Zhongguo dianying gongye: chuchuang shexiang jiqi shishi” 新 中國電影工業:初創設想及其實施 [New Chinese film industry: Ideas and implementation]. Zhongguo dianying: Miaoshu yu chanshi 中國電影: 描述與闡釋 [Chinese cinema: Description and interpretation]. Ed. Lu Hongshi 陸弘石 Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2002. 272–292. Zhou Enlai 周恩來 et al. “Dianying gongzuo de lingdao deng wenti” 電影工作的領導等問題 [Questions related to film leadership and others]. Special Meeting of Party Leaders at Xi­ huating, March 24, 1951. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao 中國電影研究資料 [Chinese cine­ ma research materials]. Ed. Wu Di 吳迪. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006. 83–84. Zhou Yong 周涌. “Tizhihua: 1949 nian hou Zhongguo dianying shengcan tixi de chong­ gou.” 體制化: 1949 年後中國電影生產體系的重構 [Institutionalization: The reconstruction of post-1949 Chinese filmmaking]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2009: no. 10, 77–82.

Notes: (1.) Paul G Pickowicz, “Acting Like Revolutionaries: Shi Hui, the Wenhua Studio, and Pri­ vate-Sector Filmmaking, 1949–52,” in Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China, ed. Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz (Cambridge: Har­ vard University Press, 2007), 260.

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China (2.) Jie Zhixiu 解治秀, “Yuan Muzhi yu ‘dianyingcun’” 袁牧之與 “ 電影村 ” [Yuan Muzhi and the “Film Village”], Ningbo daxue xuebao (renwenkexueban) 寧波大學學報 人文科學版 [Journal of Ningbo University (liberal arts edition)] 18.1 (2005): 43. (3.) Kristin Thompson, “Government Policies and Practical Necessities in the Soviet Cine­ ma of the 1920s,” in The Red Screen: Politics, Society, Art in Soviet Cinema, ed. Anna Lawton (New York: Routledge, 1992), 23. (4.) In the Soviet Union, cinema had been under a single line of government control. The Moscow Cinema Committee and the Petrograd Cinema Committee were formed in early 1918. The Moscow Cinema Committee was later transformed into VFKO, or All-Russian Photographic and Cinematographic Section of Narkompros, which was then reconstruct­ ed in 1922 into Goskino. Goskino became Sovkino in 1924. (5.) The film tells the story of a feudal Mongolian aristocrat brutally oppressing his peo­ ple, who was ultimately murdered by GMD officers. The film was warmly received when it was released in Shanghai, but Party leaders worried it would affect the CCP’s current ne­ gotiations with ethnic minority leaders, and therefore they ordered that the film be reed­ ited and rereleased under the name of The Triumph of the Inner Mongolian People (內蒙人 民的勝利). (6.) Editorial, “Tigao guochan yingpian de sixiang yishu shuiping, Wenhuabu chengli Di­ anying zhidao weiyuan hui” 提高國產影片的思想藝術水平,文化部成立電影指導委員會 [To raise the philosophical and artistic values of national films, the Ministry of Culture established Film Guidance Committee], Renmin ribao 人民日報 [People’s daily], July 12, 1950. (7.) Zhou Yong 周涌, “Tizhihua: 1949 nian hou Zhongguo dianying shengcan tixi de chong­ gou,” 體制化: 1949 年後中國電影生產體系的重構 [Institutionalization: The reconstruction of post-1949 Chinese filmmaking], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2009: no. 10, 77–78. (8.) Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生, “Zai dianying ju 1954 nian di san ci zhipianchang changzhang huiyi shang de jianghua” 在電影局1954年第三次製片廠廠長會議上的講話 [Speech in the Third Studio Heads Meeting in the Film Bureau], quoted in Qi Zhi 啟之, Mao Zedong shidai de renming dianying (1949–1966) 毛澤東時代的人民電影 (1949–1966) [People’s cinema during Mao’s era (1949–1966)] (Taipei: Showwe Info, 2010), 163–164. (9.) The Chinese National Film Art Workers Association (中華全國電影藝術工作者聯合會) was established on July 25, 1949, with Yang Hansheng as chair and Yuan Muzhi as associate chair. Beginning as a professional organization with voluntary membership, the associa­ tion was not particularly active in the first few years of the Republic, but it would soon as­ sume greater power after the mid-1950s. (10.) Shi Chuan 石川, “Shuzui yu xinsheng: Shanghai dianying zhipian chang de chuangjian” 贖罪與新生:上海電影製片廠的創建 [Redemption and newborn: The establishment of Shanghai Film Studio], Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film arts] 2010: no. 5, 112. Page 16 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China (11.) Xia Yan 夏衍, Lanxun jiumeng lu 懶尋舊夢錄 [Too lazy to look for old dreams] (Beijing: Sanliang shudian, 2000), 408. (12.) For the complete list of these studios see Gu Qian 顧茜, “Jianguo chu siying yingye zhuangui zhi gaiguan” 建國初私營影業轉軌之概觀 [A general view of the changing course of the private film industry in the beginning of the Republic], Film Arts 2004: no. 4. 48. (13.) The New Year speech given by Yuan Muzhi to the colleagues of Beijing Film Studio, Northeast Film Management Company, and Central Film Bureau, January 10, 1950. Quot­ ed in Guo Xueqin 郭學勤, Qianbai rensheng—Yuan Muzhi zhuan 千百人生—袁牧之傳 [A life of thousand turns: The biography of Yuan Muzhi] (Jiejiang renmin chubanshe, 2005), 223. (14.) Ding Yaping 丁亞平, Yingxiang Zhongguo 1945–1949 影像中國 1945–1949 [Vision Chi­ na, 1945–1949], (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1998), 109–113. (15.) Shanghai Municipal People’s Government Department of Culture. (16.) Wenhuabu 文化部 (Ministry of Culture), “Wenhuabu 1950 nian quanguo wenhua yishu gongzuo baogao yu 1951 nian jihua yaodian” 文化部1950年全國文化藝術工作報告與 1951年計劃要點 [Ministry of Culture 1950 national culture and artwork report and 1951 planning main points], April 1951, in Wenhua gongzuo wenjian ziliao huibian 文化工作文件 資料彙編 [Collected documents related to cultural works], ed. Wenhua bu bangongting 文化 部辦公庭 [Office of Ministry of Culture], vol. 1 (1949–1959) (Beijing: Ministry of Culture, 1982), 1–11. (17.) Chen Bo’er 陳波兒, “Gushipian cong wu dao you de biandao gongzuo” 故事片從無到有 的編導工作 [The making of dramatic films from scratch], January 1950, in Zhongguo diany­ ing yanjiu ziliao 中國電影研究資料 [Chinese cinema research materials], ed. Wu Di 吳迪, vol. 1 (1949–1979) (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006), 58–66. (18.) Zhong Dafeng 鍾大豐, “Yuan Muzhi tongzhi yu Xin Zhongguo dianying shiye de chuchuang shexiang yu shishi” 袁牧之同志與新中國電影事業的初創設想與實施 [Comrade Yuan Muzhi and the ideas and implementation of the new Chinese film industry], 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 1999: no. 5, 32–38. (19.) According to Zhong Dafeng, this idea was raised by Yuan Muzhi in a report he sub­ mitted to the Central Government in September 1948. See Zhong Dafeng, “Xin Zhongguo dianying gongye: chuchuang shexiang jiqi shishi” 新中國電影工業:初創設想及其實施 [New Chinese film industry: Ideas and implementation], Zhongguo dianying: Miaoshu yu chan­ shi 中國電影:描述與闡釋 [Chinese cinema: Description and interpretation], ed. Lu Hongshi 陸弘石 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2002), 281. (20.) Cheng Jihua 程季華, ed., Xia Yan dianying wenji 夏衍電影文集 [Collection of film essays by Xia Yan], vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2000), 339–340. (21.) These films clearly included those made before 1949. Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu wenhuaju dianying shiye guanlichu 上海市人民政府文化局電影事業管理處(Municipal People’s Page 17 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China Government Ministry of Culture Film Enterprises Management Office), “Shanghai shi yingyuan fangying yingpian tongji ziliao” 上海市影院放映影片統計資料 (Shanghai City film exhibition statistic data), 1951. Shanghai City Archive (B172-1-35). (22.) Shen Yanbing 沈雁冰, “Zhongyang wenhuabu guanyu dianying gongzuo de baogao (jielu) 中央文化部關於電影工作的報告 (節錄) [Central Ministry of Culture film report (ex­ cerpts)], December 8, 1950, in Wu Di, ed., Chinese Cinema Research Materials, 76. (23.) “Wenhuabu dianying ju yu Changjiang Yingye Gongci shengcan zong hetong” 文化部 電影局與長江影業公司生產總合同, collected in Shanghai Municipal Archive, quoted in Shi Chuan, “Redemption and Newborn,” 115. (24.) Shi Chuan, “Redemption and Newborn,” 115. (25.) Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic (New York: Free Press, 1999), 84. (26.) Dianying zhidao weiyunhui 電影指導委員會 [Film guidance committee], “Dianying zhi­ dao weiyuanhui disici huiyi (changweihui) jilu” 電影指導委員會會議(常委會) 紀錄 [Minutes of Film Guidance Committee (Executive Committee)], October 3, 1951, in Wu Di, Chinese Cinema Research Materials, 224–226. (27.) Film Guidance Committee, “Minutes of Film Guidance Committee,” 224–226. (28.) Di Di 狄翟, “Fengyu shiqi nian—fang Xu Sangchu” 風雨十七年—訪徐桑楚 [Seventeen years of wind and rain—an interview with Xu Shanchu], Contemporary Cinema, 1999: no. 4, 78. (29.) Ministry of Culture, “Wenhuabu Guanyu jiaqiang dianying faxing yu fangying gongzuo de zhishi” 文化部關於加強電影發行與放映工作的指示 [Instructions from Ministry of Culture on strengthening film distribution and exhibition], July 3, 1952, in Office of Min­ istry of Culture, Collected Documents Related to Cultural Works, 82–85. (30.) Zhengwu yuan 政務院 [Executive Council], “Zhengwuyuan Guanyu jianli dianying fangyingwang yu dianying gongye de jueding” 政務院關於建立電影放映網與電影工業的決定 [Decisions of the Executive Council related to the construction of film screening network and the film industry], December 24, 1953, in Office of Ministry of Culture, Collected Doc­ uments Related to Cultural Works, 148–150. (31.) Wenhuabu dianyingju 文化部電影局 [Department of Cinema in Ministry of Culture], “1952 nian dianying zhipian gongzuo jihua (caoan)” 1952 年電影製片工作計畫(草案) [1951 film production plan (draft)], January 1952, in Wu Di, ed., Chinese Cinema Research Ma­ terials, 231. (32.) Hong Hong 洪宏, “Lun ‘shiqinian’ Zhong-Su dianying guanxi” 論 “ 十七年 ” 中蘇電影關係 [Discussing the Sino-Soviet film relation during the “seventeen year” period], Film Arts 2006: no. 3, 36. Page 18 of 20

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China (33.) Quoted in Hu Jubin 胡菊彬 and Yao Xiaomeng 姚曉濛, “Xin Zhongguo dianying chengze ji qi biaoshu, shang” 新中國電影政策及其表述, 上 [New Chinese film policy and its articulation, part I], Contemporary Cinema 1989: no. 1, 11. (34.) Ministry of Culture, “Wenhua bu guanyu dianyingye wuge zanxing banfa” 文化部關於 電影業五個暫行辦法 [Five temporary methods of administrating the film industry issued by the Ministry of Culture], 1950, in Office of Ministry of Culture, Collected Documents Re­ lated to Cultural Works, 78, 81. (35.) Cheng Jihua, “Zuowei Zhongyang Dianying Ju Juzhang—Yuan Muzhi tongzhi piandu­ an” 作為中央電影局局長—袁牧之同志片斷 [As the Director of Central Film Bureau—glimpses of Comrade Yuan Muzhi], Contemporary Cinema 1999, no. 5, 26. (36.) Film Guidance Committee, “Minutes of Film Guidance Committee.” (37.) Yao Fangzao 姚芳藻, “Shi congtou zuo qi de shihou liao—jiesuan siying dianying ye liangnian lai suofan de cuowu” 是從頭做起的時候了—結算私營電影業兩年來所犯的錯誤 [It is time to do it all over again—settling the faults committed by private film studios in the last two years], Wenhui bao 文匯報, January 27, 1952, quoted in Qi Zhi, People’s Cinema during Mao’s Era, 96–98. (38.) Yao Fengzao, “It is Time to Do It All Over Again,” quoted in Qi Zhi, People’s Cinema during Mao’s Era, 96–98. (39.) A total of sixteen famous left-wing filmmakers and film critics wrote a collective statement in January 1949 to suggest a new set of film policy. See Ouyang Yuqian 歐陽于倩 et. al., “Dianying zhengce xianyi” 電影政策獻議 [Our suggestions on film policy], in Wu Di, Chinese Cinema Research Materials, 5. (40.) Dianying zhidao weiyunhui, “Guanyu guoying dianying de shencha wenti (jielu)” 關於 國營電影的審查問題(節錄) [Regarding censorship issues of national films (excerpt)], October 3, 1951, in Wu Di, ed., Chinese Cinema Research Materials, 226–227. (41.) Sun Yu 孫瑜, “Wo biandao dianying Wu Xun zhuan de jingguo” 我編導電影《武訓傳》的 經過 [My experience in producing the film The Story of Wu Xun], Wenshi jinghua 文史精華 [Literature and history essences], 1995: no. 2, 12–17. (42.) Sun Yu, Dalu zhige 大路之歌 [Song of The Big Road] (Taipei: Yuanliu, 1990), 179–196. (43.) Yuan Xi 袁晞, Wu Xun Zhuan piping jishi 武訓傳批評記事 [Record of criticisms of The Story of Wu Xun] (Wuhan: Zhangjiang wenyi chubanshe, 2000), 13. (44.) Editorial, “Gongchandang yuan yingdang canyu guanyu ‘Wu Xun Zhuan’ de piping” 共產黨員應當參與關於「武訓傳」的批評 [Communist Party members should participate in crit­ icizing The Story of Wu Xun], People’s Daily, May 20, 1951.

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Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China (45.) The investigation team was composed of Jiang Qing 江青, Yuan Shuipai 袁水拍, and Zhong Dianfei 鍾惦棐, and the report was published in a series of articles in People’s Daily, July 23–28, 1951. (46.) Zhou Enlai 周恩來 et al. “Dianying gongzuo de lingdao deng wenti” 電影工作的領導等問 題 [Questions related to film leadership and others], Special Meeting of Party Leaders at Xihuating, March 24, 1951, in Wu Di, ed., Chinese Cinema Research Materials, 83–84. (47.) Sun Yu, Song of The Big Road, 200. (48.) My approach here is slightly different from Pickowicz’s, whose elaborate analysis of the works and experiences of Shi Hui in 1949 to 1952 is anchored around the trust and distrust of the Party with respect to Shi Hui as an individual, while I believe the new film censorship apparatus developing at the time was more structural than personal, and it was meant to teach all individual artists to subject oneself to the official ideology instead of identifying and punishing the rebellious ones. See Pickowicz, “Acting Like Revolution­ aries,” 256–287. (49.) Mao Zedong, 毛澤東, “Zai Zhongguo gongchandang quanguo xuanchuan gongzuo huiyi shang de jianghua” 在中國共產黨全國宣傳工作會議上的講話 [The speech for the Chinese Communist Party National Propaganda Work Meeting], March 12, 1957, in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao 建國以來毛澤東文稿 [Manuscripts by Mao Zedong since the establish­ ment of the nation], vol. 6 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1990), 378–395.

Laikwan Pang

Pang Laikwan is now teaching Cultural Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The books she wrote include Creativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses (Duke University Press, 2012), The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), and Cultural Control and Globalization in Asia: Copyright, Piracy, and Cinema (Rout­ ledge, 2006). She is currently working on a new research related to the tensions and mutual conditioning between politics and aesthetics of China's Cultural Revolution.

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema

Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema   Rey Chow The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0027

Abstract and Keywords Since the 1920s and 1930s, commodified screen presences of "woman" have fascinated Chinese film audiences. When communism became the reigning ideology in the People’s Republic, Chinese cinemas elsewhere continued to thrive by investing in the power of women as fetishized objects. In the new era of prosperity since the 1980s, Mainland Chi­ nese filmic representations, now often reflecting the influences of Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as Hollywood, seem to have returned to such fetishism with a vengeance, with fe­ male superstars cannibalizing attention not only as actresses but also as screen goddess­ es promoting high-end merchandise. By juxtaposing key moments in Chinese cinema’s ap­ proach to "woman" with critiques of the (hetero)sexual politics of representation in 1970s Anglo-American feminist film theory, this chapter asks how relations among film, "woman," and commodity fetishism might be rethought in a transcultural context in which the rhetoric of particularism has become hegemonic. Keywords: commodity fetishism, communism, sexual politics, Anglo-American feminist film theory, particularism

The use of the word woman in this essay is singular by intention. As will become clear, my interest in the question of woman has to do with her representational status in film; such a status is not independent of women’s empirical social existence, but it cannot be re­ duced to it either. By woman, what I seek to describe is a kind of representational posi­ tioning characteristic of modern and contemporary cultural politics—one may call it a sign, a placeholder, or a form of particularism—a positioning that may, at certain histori­ cal junctures, be associated with actual women but that can also be claimed by other identities, other occupants.

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema

Woman as Commodity and Fetish: Some Obser­ vations about Chinese Cinema Although it was produced over three-quarters of a century ago, Wu Yonggang’s 吳永剛 The Goddess (神女, 1934) remains one of the most memorable portrayals of woman in Chinese film history. This is often attributed to its sociologically notable theme of prostitution. As the film historian Paul Clark has noted, this film “was perhaps the first in world cinema to examine prostitution directly and without moralistic overtones as an occupation in which women tried to make a living.”1 The film tells the story of a young woman who is raising her son as a single parent by working as a prostitute. Owing to a series of unforeseen cir­ cumstances, she is forced to have sex with a villain, who then becomes her pimp and keeps extorting money from her for his gambling addiction. She wants to give her son a proper education, only to see him dismissed from his school on (p. 491) account of her pro­ fession, the subject of malicious gossip among the other parents. She attempts to move with the boy to a different place, only to discover that her hard-earned savings have been stolen by her pimp. As she confronts this nasty persecutor in rage, she kills him by acci­ dent and is sentenced to twelve years in prison. The sympathetic headmaster of her son’s school pays her a visit and promises to raise the boy properly. As she wants her son’s fu­ ture to be untainted by her reputation, she asks the headmaster to tell him she is dead.2 Much as the sociological connotations of prostitution are incontrovertible, The Goddess at the same time exceeds the strictly empirical in its controlled use of the specifics of film language, a use I have highlighted in a previous analysis as a consciously styled minimal­ ism. I have also suggested that the role of the prostitute, so remarkably played by the ac­ tress Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉,3 conjures both Marx’s and Freud’s senses of the term fetish, which the theorists adopted from European anthropological accounts of non-European cultural practices.4 The purpose of the present chapter is to elaborate the significance this latter perspective, so as to demonstrate how the question of woman in Chinese cine­ ma partakes of a larger modern theoretical discourse about femininity and mediatized vi­ suality. In his famous analysis of commodity fetishism at the beginning of Capital, Marx provides the influential conceptual framework for thinking about capital’s inhumane appropriation of human labor. Although their contribution is essential to the production of commodities, Marx writes, workers are typically alienated from their own labor by being denied the profits derived from the sales of such commodities, which go instead to enrich capitalists. Marx cautions that the attractive, seemingly spontaneous appearances of commodities are a kind of deceptive surface that belies the reality of the workers’ alienated condition. By invoking fetishism, Marx aims to bring attention to this exploitative state of affairs. The fetish in Marxist analysis, in other words, has the status of a cover-up, of something that necessitates exposure. The figure of the prostitute complicates Marx’s analysis by foregrounding the dimension of (hetero)sexuality. On the one hand, the prostitute’s alienated situation is unmistakable: Page 2 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema even as she provides the labor and markets herself as the kind of goods demanded by so­ ciety, she is condemned to living her life in shame, on the lowest rungs of the social lad­ der. If the commodity stands for the alienation of human labor in industrialized society, the prostitute, by being at once the commodity and the worker, is arguably the paradig­ matic case of a commodity-fetish in human form. On the other hand, the prostitute needs to be sexually attractive in order to do her work: this means that a further dimension, sex­ uality, must be added to the classic Marxist equation of commodity and fetish. Turning to Freud, we notice that sexuality has been theorized in relation to fetishism, but in a manner distinct from Marx’s emphases. Rather than linking the fetish to commodifi­ cation, an economic process that conceals class exploitation, Freud sees the fetish as an artificial repository of the sexual desires that a so-called civilized society cannot afford to admit to be its own and must divert elsewhere. In the Freudian sense, fetishism (p. 492) is thus much less a morally suspect façade (as it is for Marx and Marxist analysis in gener­ al) than it is a psychic survival tactic. Comprised as it is of the twin mechanisms of dis­ avowal and displacement of impermissible wishes, Freudian fetishism is a productive form of libidinal perversion and often a key to aesthetic innovation. Along these lines, it is possible to understand why the figure of the prostitute so aroused the romantic imagina­ tion of modern avant-garde thinkers such as Walter Benjamin. Combining the insights of both Marx and Freud, Benjamin saw the prostitute as the allegory of a type of transgres­ sion that is at once class-based and libidinally charged. A lower-class pretty woman mak­ ing a living by selling herself as goods: for upper-middle-class heterosexual men in the age of Freud and Benjamin, this formula seemed to carry an irresistible erotic appeal.5 Often captured in the medium of film, the fetishistic connotations of these class-bound, psychic-aesthetic transactions are amply evident as well in The Goddess. Director Wu as­ tutely grasped the fact that although the prostitute figure is considered despicable by her society, her very embodiment of forbidden desires is exactly what holds fascination for modern spectators. Thus, even as the film narrative develops in such a way as to tell how unfortunate and miserable the woman’s life is, the film’s camerawork takes pains to show her to be a physically attractive object (even when impoverished and distraught), replete with seductive smiles, fashionable hairdos and makeup, shapely arms and legs (as re­ vealed by her qipaos), and charming gestures of smoking and holding cigarettes.6 As a composite cinematic signifier, the prostitute conjures the sensual pleasure, rather than simply the moral deplorability, occasioned by commodity fetishism. The Goddess is, of course, only one of a considerable number of films from the 1930s that have women as their foci,7 but the spotlight it gives to a prostitute amplifies in a unique manner the epistemic contradiction that accompanies the status of woman in film. This is the contradiction, perhaps more peculiar to the media involving visuality, of presenting socially debased subject matters or characters in a cultural form whose effects tend to be spectacular and glamorous. To put this in the languages of both Marx and Freud, the problem of the filmic representation of woman is the problem of portraying the wretched­ ness of modern life (such as human trafficking) in a medium in which females, even when they personify disease, vulnerability, oppression, maternal self-sacrifice, or political resis­ Page 3 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema tance, must look like marketable commodities.8 As Kristine Harris puts it in the case of The Goddess: “On the one hand, Ruan [Lingyu] was a mother herself, and had attained public acclaim by playing tragic, suffering women in films….This element of Ruan’s star persona translated into The Goddess well, generating sympathy for this solitary woman striving to maintain maternal virtue. On the other hand, the image of actresses was high­ ly commodified, and at this peak period of her career, pictures of Ruan adorned advertise­ ments for perfume, soap and other consumer products. These images played into the pop­ ular notion that female movie stars, like prostitutes, were merchandise for public display and consumption—making Ruan seem even more plausible in the role of the goddess.”9 Not surprisingly, in the fictional works produced in the mid-twentieth century in the People’s Republic of China, during the height of communist orthodoxy, woman as (p. 493) such did not occupy a privileged representational place, which went instead to the lower classes such as peasants, workers, and soldiers. A number of feminist literary and film critics have pointed out how, in socialist Chinese cinema, the tendency was to downplay the gendered or sexualized specifics of women’s agency, so that differences and tensions between women and men became consistently invisible, or were at least made negligible, under a genderless collectivity.10 As Shuqin Cui describes it, “A conventional pattern of [socialist] film narrative unfolds in the following manner: a conflict between the proletari­ at and corrupt overlords arises, and an idealized character arrives to champion the cause of the poor and prevail against the rich. If the relationship between the hero and his working-class followers appears to reach an impasse, a background power, either the Communist Party’s current policy or a political event, will issue a solution to the crisis, ensuring that the hero triumphs and the cause of the proletariat advances.”11 Even as re­ cently as the late 1970s and early 1980s, when films featured well-known, good-looking actresses such as Liu Xiaoqing 劉曉慶, Joan Chen 陳沖, Pan Hong 潘虹, and Lü Liping 呂麗 萍, the representational focus was often much less on femininity as such than on the con­ structive roles women could play in their historical and political milieus. Although this kind of deployment of women characters, whereby they are narratologically subordinated to other social relations, is nowadays considered outmoded, it nevertheless stands as an interesting instance of the artistic attempt, in a noncapitalist regime, at re­ solving the epistemic contradiction embedded in the fetishistic status of woman I just de­ scribed, a contradiction that has stemmed, arguably, from the logic of exchange and sub­ stitution characteristic of capitalism. Following the Marxist critique of commodity fetishism, then, Chinese communist artistic practices specialized in what may be called defetishizing. Whereas fetishism typically converts something or someone into an object (such as a commodity) whose mystical appeal lies in its mute natural appearance and lack of volition, communist films, in accordance with the direction laid down by early Maoist film classics such as White-Haired Girl (白毛女, 1950) and The Red Detachment of Women (紅色娘子軍, 1961), tended instead to depict women as determined subjects with wills and voices—even as the latter were redirected and reincorporated into the social and commu­ nal fabric. Instead of spectacle and splendor (which depend on a commercial discursive network of multiple media for its impact),12 these films offered collectively purposeful narratives of class struggle and social revolution, wherein the individual woman (or man) Page 4 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema could not be objectified into an independent or self-sufficient ontological entity. If any­ thing was being fetishized, it was the (self-generative potency and permanence of the) Chinese Communist Party itself. Outside the Chinese mainland during the parallel period (the two to three decades after World War II), Chinese filmmaking took a decidedly different direction. Although exten­ sive in-depth research is only beginning to be undertaken on the films produced in major centers such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, it is possible to advance the general point that many of these films, regardless of their genres, tended to continue—and intensify—the fetishization of woman that was clearly already an emergent strategy in the Mainland Chinese films of the silent period. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, there (p. 494) were abundant film productions from studios such as Guolian 國聯 and Central 中影 in Taiwan, together with Dianmao 電懋, Cathay 國泰, Shaw Brothers 邵氏兄弟, and Golden Harvest 嘉 禾, as well as the leftist Fenghuang 鳳凰 and Changcheng 長城, in Hong Kong, all of which produced mainly Mandarin films. There were also smaller companies such as Kong Ngee 光藝, Ling Kwong 嶺光, Hing Fat 興發, Kin Sing 堅城, and numerous others in Hong Kong that produced Cantonese films. These film productions were part of a diversifying com­ mercial media establishment that also included dime novels, radio, television, daily news­ papers with their movie news sections, entertainment periodicals, tabloids, and picture calendars, all of which collaborated in the systemic objectification of woman. Outside Mainland China, in other words, the highly visible sign of woman in the Chinese film industry was part and parcel of the processes of modernization and urbanization. As many examples under the rubric “modern/urban costume film” (時裝片) indicate, such modernization and urbanization were often thematized as narrative content: many Man­ darin and Cantonese films of this period told stories about urban middle and lower middle classes, typically embroiled in conflicts of family, romance, professional life, youth, and crime. But modernization and urbanization were, of course, also forces structural to the rapidly expanding and intersecting mediatized circuits.13 In this instance, rather than ef­ forts at defetishizing woman, as seen in the People’s Republic, there was an exponential acceleration of such fetishization both on and off screen. Accordingly, this was a period that saw a large number of immaculate-looking actresses, many of whom became house­ hold icons in Taiwan and Hong Kong, with a visibility that extended well beyond the silver screen. In the decades since, the stylish physical presences of Li Lihua 李麗華, Bai Yan 白 燕, Hong Xiannü紅線女, Fang Yanfen 芳艷芬, Mei Qi 梅綺, Zi Luolian 紫蘿蓮, Le Di 樂蒂, Lin Dai 林黛, You Min 尤敏, Ge Lan 葛蘭, Ye Feng 葉楓, Lin Cui 林翠, Ling Bo 淩波, Li Jing 李菁, Jiang Qing 江青, Hu Yanni 胡燕妮, He Lili 何琍琍, Qin Ping 秦萍, Zheng Peipei 鄭佩佩, Fang Ying 方盈, Tang Baoyun 唐寳雲, Zhang Meiyao 張美瑤, Wang Mochou 王莫愁, Zhen Zhen 甄珍, Jia Ling 嘉玲, Nan Hong 南紅, Lin Feng 林鳳, Bai Luming 白露明, Jiang Xue 江雪, Ding Ying 丁瑩, Chen Baozhu 陳寳珠, Xiao Fangfang 蕭芳芳, Feng Baobao 馮寶寶, Miao Jinfeng 苗金鳳, Lin Qingxia 林青霞, Hu Yinmeng 胡茵夢, Hu Huizhong 胡慧中, Mei Yanfang 梅艷芳, and their contemporaries have remained the stuff of local myths and legends and nostalgic trips. We see something of the epochal impact of these actresses in a film such as Wong Karwai’s 王家衛 In the Mood for Love (花樣年華, 2000), in which he sought to re-create the au­ Page 5 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema ra—the look—of the 1960s woman movie star through the female protagonist’s hairstyle, makeup, dress code, and bodily gestures and movements. In the mid-1980s, when the world-famous Fifth Generation directors of the People’s Re­ public such as Chen Kaige 陳凱歌 and Zhang Yimou 張藝謀 undertook to radicalize Chinese filmmaking by breaking off from the melodramatic, plot-driven conventions of their pre­ decessors, woman became once again a prominent (if controversial) figure of representa­ tion. The two directors’ approaches, as I have argued elsewhere, are quite different.14 Beginning with Yellow Earth (黃土地, 1984), all of Chen’s films up to Life on a String (邊走 邊唱, 1991) featured critiques of communist indoctrination and efforts to (p. 495) reflect on the foundations of Chinese culture. Whereas potentially subversive, subaltern figures such as illiterate peasants, mute children, male social outcasts, or inhospitable land­ scapes often appear in Chen’s stories, women seldom do, and when they do they are typi­ cally sacrificed (the most famous being Cuiqiao in Yellow Earth). By casting women in this nonexistent or vanishing position (whereby they ultimately become invisible on screen), Chen may be seen, I believe, to have assigned to them the utopian significance of what is beyond this world (and what is still to come). In keeping with Chen’s philosophical and lit­ erary leanings, woman as such seems to represent a kind of difference that can only be evoked but never directly or concretely shown. Since the making of Farewell My Concu­ bine (霸王別姬, 1993), however, Chen has clearly abandoned this nonprofitable view to­ ward femininity. His adaptation to a commercially viable approach is borne out in later, large-budget works such as Temptress Moon (風月, 1996), The Emperor and the Assassin (荊軻刺秦王, 1999), The Promise (無極, 2005), and Forever Enthralled (aka Mei Lanfang 梅蘭 芳, 2008). Zhang, by contrast, has consistently adopted a pragmatic—and popular—method. In his earlier films such as Red Sorghum (紅高粱, 1987), Judou (菊豆, 1990), Raise the Red Lantern (大紅燈籠高高掛, 1991), The Story of Qiuju (秋菊打官司, 1992), and Shanghai Triad (搖啊搖, 搖到外婆橋, 1995), woman—as performed by Gong Li 鞏俐 and others—is without exception the site of a cinematic exhibitionism. In Zhang’s hands, women’s stories, in­ cluding in particular the physical abuses and misfortunes they suffer, are a means of putting on display both the glorious and the barbarous aspects of Chinese culture. Unlike the early Chen, Zhang does not idealize woman to the point of making her invisible and incorporeal; instead, he specializes in instrumentalizing her as a central stage prop. In the sumptuous visual and corporeal qualities of the young woman—young being a prereq­ uisite here—Zhang has found an attention-grabbing way of telling—and selling—Chinese stories to the entire world. Zhang’s success, to put it somewhat differently, consists in his rediscovery and reanima­ tion of the conventions of fetishism that had been evident in early Chinese filmmaking and fully developed in the Taiwan and Hong Kong films of the postwar years, but that were temporarily suspended and censured under communist orthodoxy. Indeed, as in the case of The Goddess, what Zhang reinforces is a cinematic style that capitalizes exactly on the epistemic contradiction (and capitalist substitution logic) I mentioned, whereby material deprivation and social oppression are typically dramatized on screen with Page 6 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema breathtakingly adorable female faces and bodies, as well as with opulent colors, cos­ tumes, architectural layouts, and screen designs. Above all, by interweaving the focaliza­ tion on feminine suffering with the advanced technologies of cinematography and film editing, Zhang has reignited the place of woman in mainland filmmaking with an insup­ pressible power of objectification, in full responsiveness to the libidinal tendencies of a postmodern, corporatist globalism with its preference for glitzy, flawless packaging. Un­ der his direction, in blockbuster films such as Hero (英雄, 2002), House of the Flying Dag­ gers (十面埋伏, 2004), and The Curse of the Golden Flower (滿城盡戴黃金甲, 2006), actress­ es such as Maggie Cheung Man-yuk 張曼玉, Zhang Ziyi 章子怡, and Gong Li have literally become screen goddesses, embodying the profane (commoditizing) as well (p. 496) as reli­ gious connotations of the Chinese term shennü 神女 (“goddess”). Together with their con­ temporaries such as Carina Lau Kar-ling 劉嘉玲, Faye Wong 王菲, Kelly Chan Wai-lum 陳慧 琳, Sammi Cheng Sau-man 鄭秀文, Michelle Yeoh 楊紫瓊, Michele Reis 李嘉欣, Shu Qi 舒琪, Zhou Xun 周迅, Zhao Wei 趙薇, Tang Wei 湯唯, Li Bingbing 李冰冰, Fan Bingbing 范冰冰, and others, these screen goddesses have brought the fetishized status of “Chinese woman” to a new threshold of ostentation in the realms of Asian and international media.15 At this juncture, it would seem that the conventional Marxist critique of commodity fetishism needs to be put aside to make way for a kind of cultural analysis that is more at­ tuned to the multivalent cathexes (including critical and scholarly cathexes) resulting from the commodification and fetishization of woman in cinema. Is this really so? As a way to explore this point, let me place Chinese cinema in relation to the theoretical con­ text of the feminist controversy over woman and visuality.

Anglophone Feminist Film Theory and the Moral High Ground of Particularism In film theory, one of the groundbreaking events is the critique, made collectively in the 1970s and 1980s by feminists of the Anglo-American world, of the conventional modes of objectifying woman in cinema. In the decades since, few scholars who write in English on the question of woman in cinema have been able to bypass this critique. Those who study women and gender politics in the relatively new subfield of Chinese cinema are no excep­ tion: whether or not authors explicitly acknowledge the influence of Anglophone feminist film theory, they fully partake of a generally skeptical attitude toward filmic representa­ tions of women, especially those by male directors.16 The British critic Laura Mulvey’s work remains a landmark in this regard. In her renowned essay of 1975, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey asks us to think about the cinematic image as the result of a particular kind of storytelling, one that, as she argues, is marked by (hetero)sexual difference.17 Rather than treating it as an un­ problematic presence, Mulvey deconstructs the cinematic image by making explicit in it a hidden narrative. To the part of the narrative that, while remaining invisible, determines how specific images should be looked at, Mulvey gives the name gaze. To the differential between the gaze and the image, Mulvey gives the name patriarchy, so that, in the case of Page 7 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema classic Hollywood melodrama at least, it is, she writes, masculinist scopophilia that moti­ vates and empowers the act of gazing, while women are cast as passive, fetishized ob­ jects, as mere pretty images to be looked at. By thus retracing, restoring, and bringing to light the cultural imprints inscribed by (hetero)sexual difference, Mulvey succeeds in pry­ ing the filmic image open and away from its hitherto reified status and reinserts in it the drama of the ongoing struggles between men and women, the drama of ideological as­ sumptions and gendered coercions.18 In its distrust of the spontaneous-looking cinematic image as a deceptive object— a kind of distrust that reminds us of Marx’s critique of the spontaneous-looking commodi­ ty—and in its attempt to forge a politics that would prevent the woman spectator from completely collapsing, at her peril, into the cinematic image of femininity as produced by men, was the feminist film theory pioneered by Mulvey iconophobic? I tend to think so, but it is crucial to add that this iconophobia was theoretically and institutionally produc­ tive.19 It was precisely its negating or defetishizing intention, manifested in the charge that the spontaneous-looking cinematic image is somehow distorting or silencing a cer­ tain reality existing behind it, that supplied the momentum with which the study of film and women has since then spread, from film studies to feminist/gender studies, and to the (p. 497)

studies of so-called global media in social science as well as humanities programs across the university. By discrediting the male gaze and defetishizing its image of women, femi­ nist film theory inaugurated the institutional dissemination of film studies and film-relat­ ed cultural studies in the Anglo-American world with something akin to what Michel Fou­ cault calls the repressive hypothesis, by which the conceptualization of what is deemed repressed (such as sex or, in this context, woman) is, paradoxically but systemically, rein­ forced by the multiplication and proliferation of discourses about it.20 Because it was underwritten with the force of the repressive hypothesis, the paradigm shift from a focus on the (positivity of the) image to a focus on narrative and ideology has consequences that go considerably beyond the study of film. In the decades since Mulvey’s essay was first published,21 film and cultural critics have been extending the im­ plications of her work (often in simplified terms) by making the problematization of (the naturalness of) the film image their first and foremost task. Rather than focus on the im­ age itself, film analysis has become increasingly a matter of identifying and querying the narrative and ideological processes that have gone into the image’s making. Bill Nichols succinctly describes this shift in critical attitudes: “The visual,” he writes, “is no longer a means of verifying the certainty of facts pertaining to an objective, external world and truths about this world conveyed linguistically. The visual now constitutes the terrain of subjective experience as the locus of knowledge, and power.”22 Whereas Mulvey and oth­ er feminist critics went on to refine feminist modes of interrogating patriarchy, other crit­ ics would complicate that differential—and ever widening chasm—between gaze and im­ age by introducing issues of class, race, ethnicity, nation, and sexual preference. Think, for instance, of the popular move, often made by but not limited to scholars of Chinese film, of attacking Western and orientalist (mis)representations—that is, repressions—of so-called Chinese or other ethnic “reality.” Concurrently, critics also theorize the ambigui­ Page 8 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema ties inherent in various forms of spectatorship and, by implication, in various modes of seeing/watching. As every group of spectators comes to the filmic image with its own set of demands, inter­ rogations, and political agendas, one can no longer speak of the image as such but must become willing to subject the image to processes of reviewing, renarrativizing, and re­ assembling. This is perhaps the reason there are so many publications on the practice and reception of film in different cultures. At the same time, in this culturally pluralized (p. 498) way of approaching the filmic image, one cannot help but feel that a certain pre­ dictability has set in, and that despite the potentially limitless, indeed inexhaustible, local differences or specificities arrayed, the theoretical gestures adopted by different cultural groups vis-à-vis the cinematic image often follow the same kind of critical prerogative. Again borrowing from Nichols, we may describe this critical prerogative as follows: “The rise of distinct cultures to a condition of visibility accompanies a radical shift away from democratic ideals of universalism (equality under the law for all regardless of gender, col­ or, sexual orientation and so on) toward a particularism that insists on equality precisely in relation to differences of gender, color, sexual orientation and the like.”23 The legitimization of woman as a category of film investigation therefore needs to be seen in perspective, as stemming from this cross-cultural history of the shifting attitudes to­ ward the ontological self-sufficiency of the visual image. Once the image’s naturalness is contested and decoded, and once the ideology “behind” the image is brought (back) into the picture, as it were, scholars inevitably arrive at a situation in which the kind of partic­ ularism mentioned by Nichols seems, by default, the most acceptable approach to film culture. In many respects, it is exactly this historic ascendancy of particularism that has shaped the wide-ranging studies of Chinese cinema springing up in the Anglophone world within the past couple of decades. Such insistence on particularism has also, if I may add to Nichols’s insight, taken on the strategic value of a moral high ground, accompanied by various forms of correction exercises. Accordingly, not only has it become necessary to give attention to woman but even the use of woman in the singular has rapidly become suspect. For—or so goes the logic of particularism—aren’t there always further particulars to any given particulars? Aren’t there different groups of women in the world, and shouldn’t woman be pluralized as women? And yet, no sooner is “women” asserted than it becomes necessary to realize that the plural form of any particular identity, too, tends over time to turn into an exclu­ sionary unit barring other others from admission. What about gay men and lesbians, transgendered folks, social outcasts, ethnic minorities, children, disabled people, environ­ mentally endangered communities and species, and so on?24 Again, readers will recog­ nize that the boundlessness, or madness, of this inclusionist pluralism (in the form of in­ cessantly multiplying particularisms) is exactly one in which the studies of Chinese cine­ mas have been developing also.25

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Fetish Power Unbound Historically speaking, when Anglophone feminist film theory alerted us to the fetishized— that is, object-like and mystically empowered—status of women on screen, its iconopho­ bia shared important affinities with the moral charges accompanying the political ac­ tivism of the 1960s and 1970s in the West. Among other things, this was a political ac­ tivism that idealized alternative political regimes such as Mao Zedong’s 毛澤東 China and demanded an end to Western imperialism and military occupation (p. 499) and the granti­ ng of civil rights to disenfranchised populations. And yet, precisely also because, like so many of the mass demonstrations so self-consciously staged during that period, feminist film theory was deriving its energy from a certain repressive hypothesis, it was, despite its own moral claims and intentions, delivering another type of message. This was the message that the politics of gender and sexuality (together with the politics of race, class, ethnicity, and other emergent particularisms) was itself none other than the politics of media spectacles. As Nancy Armstrong, referring to the general cultural ambience of the industrial West in the 1960s, writes: “the sixties saw an important shift in the theater of political activism from the plane of physical action and conflicts that we persist in desig­ nating as real to the plane of discourse, representation, and performance, where conflicts determine how we imagine our relation to the real.”26 Indeed, the determination with which feminist critics sought to subvert the widespread representations of women suggests that, notwithstanding feminist film theory’s de­ fetishizing logic, the politics of the fetishized image was rapidly assuming center stage: the mechanically and eventually electronically generated simulacrum—on what Arm­ strong calls “the plane of discourse, representation, and performance”—was henceforth going to be the actual, ubiquitous political battleground and arena of competition. In retrospect, it seems fair to say that feminist film theory of the 1970s and 1980s was confronted from the outset with a contradictory set of tasks. On the one hand, feminist film theory had to dislodge the cinematic image (or the visual field) as it was produced on the unequal basis of the phallocentric gaze; on the other hand, it had to reappropriate— that is, refill and recharge—the cinematic image (or the visual field) with an alternative set of gazes, histories, and purposes. As it tried to negate the agency of one group of im­ age makers, such theory must at the same time engage in a conversion and substitution process, turning the agency it repudiated over to another group of people, women, who had been previously denied it. If the cinematic image, like Marx’s commodity, was a false representation of women, it was nonetheless by actively seizing rather than abandoning the space of this false representation—by assuming the right to own, manage, and direct the visual field; by making woman the predominant commodified image in a transformed public consciousness—that feminist film theory could fulfill its political obligation of emancipating women.27 Once it set this process in motion, however, feminist film theory (and feminism in general) must face up to the fact that other plaintiffs (other women, oth­ er races, and other excluded or misrepresented social groups) could similarly come for­ ward, as women once did, to stake their particularist claims on the image. In order to stay competitive in its claim to discursive legitimacy, feminist particularism, despite its begin­ Page 10 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema nings as a project to defetishize, could not, over time, avoid participating substantially in the business of fetishizing.28 This is the point at which a rethinking of Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism is in or­ der. Its conventional reception notwithstanding, Marx’s analysis in fact teaches us some­ thing quite remarkable: namely, that it is precisely as a mysterious, veiled, spectral, and deceptive object that the commodity achieves its greatest power. Against the grain of the obvious, iconophobic renunciation of fetishism that is normally taken to be (p. 500) the gist of Marx’s argument, we can therefore venture a different kind of reading. What Marx is describing, we can argue, is nothing short of the reversal, as human society progresses through late capitalism, of a traditional semiotic hierarchy. This is a reversal by which what is hitherto presumed to be a mere image and representation, secondary and inferior to the authentic something (reality, history, body), steadily overtakes society with the force of repetition and contagion. Rather than simply denouncing the commodity on moral grounds, the legacy of Marx’s observations lies in his grasp of a future in which the logic and potency of the commodity—precisely in the form of repeatable, contagious sim­ ulacra—will usurp the significance of the original that is human labor. In this future, it fol­ lows, even the most precious truths about humans, such as their bodies, their life histo­ ries, their multiple identities, and their survival as a species in the ecosphere will need to strive for legitimacy as commodities and as fetishes. In this light, the endeavor, characteristic of but not unique to feminist particularism, to ensure that one is properly imaged, mirrored, and represented (on the screen as well as off) may be understood anew as a (cultural-politically) fetishistic practice in an ever-ex­ panding visual field. Notably also, the fetish of woman and its various simulacra, in the form of the belief in the struggle for group identity, history, agency, solidarity, and so forth, are no longer confined to the realm of gender politics but reproduced widely across the disciplines, in which the rebuke of incorrect images often goes hand in hand with the massive generation and circulation of more and more images, be those images about classes, races, nations, religions, or persons of different sexual orientations. As China enters an era of economic and social prosperity in the 1990s and beyond, Chi­ nese media representations of woman, now often amalgamating the influences of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Hollywood, as well as the People’s Republic, seem to have returned to an embrace of fetish power with a vengeance.29 While their on-screen roles may still fea­ ture them as oppressed victims of patriarchal abuse, poverty, disease, or other social malaise, contemporary female film stars such as those mentioned above, some of whom began their careers in beauty contests, have been cannibalizing attention not only as ac­ tresses in film alone. Increasingly, they are mega-queens of the highly lucrative and pro­ fessionalized domain of advertising, in which they can be paid millions of dollars for their “work”—that is, for their images to be used—to promote everything from shampoo and skin care products to luxury jewelry, household appliances, weight-loss programs, and high-end real estate. How should we understand this process of fetish power becoming unbound, advancing from the world of film to the realm of commercial multimedia, a process in which the much-coveted role and status of an actress is precisely that of being Page 11 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema the impeccable image, being the commodity in human form, on display in public, from shopping malls to gigantic wall-screens on skyscrapers? This medially migratory dimension of fetishized femininity—of woman becoming not only high-tech simulacra but also elite conduits of finance capital—should be made part of any future discussion of woman and Chinese film and media studies. Such a discussion will likely need to come to terms with this basic question: do our conventional deconstructions of phallocentric, ori­ entalist, and heterosexist gazes still suffice as viable modes of critical intervention?

Works Cited Apter, Emily, and William Pietz. Fetishism as Cultural Discourse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni­ versity Press, 1993. Armstrong, Nancy. “Who’s Afraid of the Cultural Turn?” Differences 12.1 (2001): 17–49. Bao, Weihong. “From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927–1931.” Camera Obscura 60 (2005): 193–231. Benjamin, Walter. Berlin Childhood around 1900. Trans. Howard Eiland. Cambridge: Har­ vard University Press, 2006. Berry, Chris, ed. Special issue “Chinese Women Directors.” Camera Obscura 18 (1988). Berry, Chris, and Mary Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Colum­ bia University Press, 2006. Callahan, William A. Cultural Governance and Resistance in Pacific Asia. New York: Rout­ ledge, 2006. Cheung, Esther M. K., and Chu Yiu-wai, eds. Between Home and World: A Reader in Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2004. Chow, Rey. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chi­ nese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Clark, Paul. “Chinese Cinema Enters the 1990s.” China Briefing, 1992. Ed. William A. Joseph. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993. 125–147. Cui, Shuqin. Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cine­ ma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Freedman, Estelle B. No Turning Back? The History of Feminism and the Future of Women. New York: Ballantine, 2002. Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism” (1927). The Standard Edition. Vol. 21. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1961. 149–157. Page 12 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema Freud, Sigmund. “Splitting of the Ego in the Defensive Process” (1938–40). The Standard Edition. Vol. 23. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1964. 273–178. Freud Sigmund. “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” (1905). The Standard Edition. Vol. 7. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1953. 123–245. Fu, Poshek. Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas. Stan­ ford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Gubar, Susan. Critical Condition: Feminism at the Turn of the Century. New York: Colum­ bia University Press, 2000. Harris, Kristine. “The Goddess: Fallen Woman of Shanghai.” Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes. Ed. Chris Berry. London: British Film Institute, 2003. 111–119. Ho, Elaine Yee Lin. “Women on the Edges of Hong Kong Modernity: The Films of Ann Hui.” Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. Ed. May­ fair Mei Hui Yang. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 162–187. (p. 505)

Humm, Maggie. Feminism and Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Leung, Helen Hok-sze. “Queerscapes in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema,” positions: east asia cultures critique 9.2 (2001): 423–447. Leung, Ping-kwan. “Urban Cinema and the Cultural Identity of Hong Kong.” The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. Ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser. Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2001. 227–251. Lim, Song Hwee. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contem­ porary Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006. Lu Le 魯勒 Xi Shanshan 奚姗姗, and Zhang Zhenqin 張震欽 eds. Caozong yinmu de nüxing: Zhongguo nüdaoyan 操縱銀幕的女性—中國女導演 [Women in control of the silver screen: China’s female directors]. Changchun: Beifang funü ertong chubanshe, 1989. Martin, Fran. Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Public Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Ed. Frederick Engels. Trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Revised and amplified by Ernest Untermann. New York: Mod­ ern Library, 1906. Meng Yue. “Female Images and National Myth.” Gender Politics in Modern China. Ed. Tani E. Barlow. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. 118–136. Meng Yue 孟悦 and Dai Jinhua 戴錦華. Fuchu lishi dibiao 浮出歷史地表 [Surfacing onto the horizon of history]. Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1989.

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema Meyer, Richard J. Ruan Ling-yu: The Goddess of Shanghai. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Uni­ versity Press, 2005. Modleski, Tania. Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a “Postfeminist” Age. New York: Routledge, 1991. Mulvey, Laura. “Changes: Thoughts on Myth, Narrative, and Historical Experi­ ence” (1985). Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. 159–76. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. 14–26. Nichols, Bill. “Film Theory and the Revolt against Master Narratives.” Reinventing Film Studies. Ed. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams. London: Arnold, 2000, 34–52. Pang, Laikwan. Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-Wing Cinema Move­ ment, 1932–1937. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Segal, Lynne. Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism. Lon­ don: Virago, 1987. Segal, Lynne. Why Feminism? Gender, Psychology, Politics. New York: Columbia Universi­ ty Press, 1999. Shih, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific. Berke­ ley: University of California Press, 2006. Wang, Lingzhen. “The Female Cinematic Imaginary: History, Subjectivity, and Ma Xiaoying’s Gone Is the One Who Held Me Dearest in the World.” Chung Wai Literary Monthly 34.11 (2006): 28–52. Wiegman, Robyn. Object Lessons. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012. Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Yau Ching. Filming Margins: Tang Shu Shuen, A Forgotten Hong Kong Woman Film Director. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. (p. 506)

Yu Muyun 余慕雲. Xianggang dianying shihua 香港電影史話 [A historical account of Hong Kong cinema]. Vols. 1–5. Hong Kong: Ciwenhua tang, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001. Zhang Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zhu, Ying. Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform: The Ingenuity of the System. West­ port, CT: Praeger, 2003.

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema

Notes: (1.) Paul Clark, “Chinese Cinema Enters the 1990s,” in China Briefing, 1992, ed. William A. Joseph (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 126. (2.) For a sensitive reading that provides much relevant historical information on the ide­ ological issues structuring both the film’s production and reception, see Kristine Harris, “The Goddess: Fallen Woman of Shanghai,” in Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes, ed. Chris Berry (London: British Film Institute, 2003), 111–119. (3.) For a study of the actress’s life and works, see Richard J Meyer, Ruan Ling-yu: The Goddess of Shanghai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005). (4.) Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 23–26. For Marx and Freud on fetishism, see the chapter “Commodities” in book 1, part 1 of Marx Karl, Capi­ tal: A Critique of Political Economy, ed. Engels Frederick, trans. Moore Samuel and Avel­ ing Edward, revised and amplified by Ernest Untermann (New York: Modern Library, 1906), 41–96; Freud Sigmund, “Fetishism,” in The Standard Edition, vol. 21, trans. and ed. Strachey James (London: Hogarth, 1961), 152–157; and Freud, “Splitting of the Ego in the Defensive Process” (1938–40), in The Standard Edition, vol. 23, trans. and ed. Stra­ chey James (London: Hogarth, 1964), 275–278; also the section “Unsuitable Substitutes for the Sexual Object—Fetishism” (“Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” [1905], The Standard Edition, vol. 7, trans. and ed. James Strachey [London: Hogarth,1953], 153– 155). For a study of the genealogies and problems of fetishism, see Apter Emily and Pietz William, Fetishism as Cultural Discourse (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). (5.) On such a woman he once encountered in a public park, Benjamin bestows a sense of aura by giving her the mythic and generic name Ariadne; see Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900, trans. Howard Eiland (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 54. (6.) These fetishized details of glamorized femininity are consciously re-created and am­ plified in the Hong Kong film Centre Stage/Actress (aka Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉, 1992), direct­ ed by Stanley Kwan 關錦鵬. (7.) Other notable examples from the 1930s include films such as Small Toys (小玩意, 1933), The Queen of Sports (體育皇后, 1934), and The Big Road (大路, 1934), all directed by Sun Yu 孫瑜, together with New Woman (新女性, 1935), directed by Cai Chusheng 蔡楚 生. For a historical study of the films of this period, see Pang Laikwan, Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-Wing Cinema Movement, 1932–1937 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). For more specific discussions of the rise of a star culture in Shanghai in the 1930s and of how women characters, including the ones played by fe­ male stars such as Ai Xia 艾霞, Hu Die 胡蝶, and Ruan Lingyu, were used by male directors to forge an intellectually leftist politics, see Pang, Building a New Cinema, 113–135 and 141–164. For an account of the relations between gender relations and film representa­ tion in Chinese cinema up to the late 1940s, see Cui Shuqin, Women through the Lens: Page 15 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003) 3–29; especially 15–18, for discussions of The Goddess. (8.) For a copiously researched cultural history of the relations between Mainland China’s urban modernity and early cinema, see Zhen Zhang, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). See also Zhu Ying, Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform: The Ingenuity of the System (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 175–209, for an informative account of Mainland Chinese cinema’s first entertainment wave and institutional restructuring during the mid-1920s to the early 1930s. For a study of the (commercially) mediatized evolution of a particular kind of female figure during the silent cinema period, see Weihong Bao, “From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nü xia in Chinese Silent Cine­ ma, 1927–1931,” Camera Obscura 60 (2005): 193–231. (9.) Kristine Harris, “The Goddess,” 115; my emphasis. See also Laikwan Pang, Building a New China, 155–158, for descriptions of the popular uses of female stars such as Hu Die to promote consumer products such as cigarettes and cosmetics. (10.) Meng Yue 孟悦 and Dai Jinhua 戴錦華, Fuchu lishi dibiao 浮出歷史地表 [Surfacing onto the horizon of history] (Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1989); Meng Yue, “Female Images and National Myth,” in Gender Politics in Modern China, ed. Tani E. Barlow (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 118–136. (11.) Shuqin Cui, Woman Through the Lens, 52. (12.) There were also multiple media (such as radio, film, posters, ballet, musical compo­ sitions, comic books, and so forth) operating during the orthodox socialist era of the 1950s to 1970s in China, but the ideological effects such media produced were quite dis­ tinct from those of the commercial media in Taiwan and Hong Kong. (13.) For an informative discussion, see, for instance, Ping-kwan Leung, “Urban Cinema and the Cultural Identity of Hong Kong,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong; History, Arts, Iden­ tity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 227–251. See also Yu Muyun 余慕雲, Xianggang dianying shihua 香港電影史話 [A historical account of Hong Kong cinema], vols. 1–5 (Hong Kong: Ciwenhua tang, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001). (14.) Rey Chow, Primitive Passions, 44–48. (15.) Faye Wong and Kelly Chan Wai-lum are singers by profession, but they have also ap­ peared in some films. (16.) As an alternative, some critics have turned their attention instead to women direc­ tors, their films, and their perspectives on women. See, for instance, the following works: Chris Berry, ed. special issue of Camera Obscura 18 (1988); Lu Le 魯勒, Xi Shanshan 奚姗 姗, and Zhang Zhenqin 張震欽, eds., Caozong yinmu de nü xing: Zhongguo nü daoyan 操縱 銀幕的女性—中國女導演 [Women in control of the silver screen: China’s female directors] Page 16 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema (Changchun: Beifang funü ertong chubanshe, 1989); and Wang Lingzhen, “The Female Cinematic Imaginary: History, Subjectivity, and Ma Xiaoying’s Gone Is the One Who Held Me Dearest in the World,” Chung Wai Literary Monthly 34.11 (2006): 28–52. See also Ho Elaine Yee Lin, “Women on the Edges of Hong Kong Modernity: The Films of Ann Hui,” in Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China, ed. Yang Mayfair Mei Hui (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999) 162–187. (17.) Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Visual and Other Plea­ sures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 14–26. Mulvey was not alone in her effort to theorize narrativity in relation to film. Among her fellow travelers were male scholars such as Jean-Louis Baudry, Christian Metz, Stephen Heath, and Paul Willemen, who were each doing substantive work with film narrative during the same period, but Mulvey was the one who raised the issue of sexual politics. (18.) For an account that places Mulvey’s essay in its historical context of the United Kingdom in 1960s and 1970s, when the British intellectual Left encountered the burgeon­ ing of feminist theory, see Humm Maggie, Feminism and Film (Bloomington: Indiana Uni­ versity Press, 1997). (19.) Many criticisms of Mulvey’s polemic piece, including feminist criticisms of the 1980s, center on her point about the need to destroy pleasure and, as a counterargu­ ment, attempt to recuperate the positive value of pleasure especially for women specta­ tors. My argument here is quite different in that it is about the intellectually and institu­ tionally generative—that is, reproducible—nature of Mulvey’s original negative move of defetishizing. (20.) Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hur­ ley (New York: Pantheon, 1978). (21.) Mulvey herself, too, has, with historical hindsight, critiqued the binarism of her ear­ lier polemical argument and revised her observations. See Mulvey, “Changes: Thoughts on Myth, Narrative, and Historical Experience,” in Visual and Other Pleasures, 159–76. (22.) Bill Nichols, “Film Theory and the Revolt against Master Narratives,” in Reinventing Film Studies, ed. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (London: Arnold, 2000), 42. (23.) Bill Nichols, “Film Theory,” 40; my emphasis. (24.) For an instructive critique of the ambitions, trajectories, and impasses characteristic of identity discourse formations in the post-civil rights North American academy, see Wiegman Robyn, Object Lessons (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). (25.) Apart from books, articles, and book chapters on women and gender, for instance, there is a growing number of studies devoted to same-sex relationships. For some notable examples, see Helen Hok-sze Leung, “Queerscapes in Contemporary Hong Kong Cine­ ma,” positions: east asia cultures critique 9.2 (2001): 423–447; Martin Fran, Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Public Culture (Hong Page 17 of 19

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003); Lim Song Hwee, Celluloid Comrades: Repre­ sentations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (Honolulu: Universi­ ty of Hawai‘i Press, 2006). For discussions of ethnicity/ethnic minorities in Chinese films, see Berry Chris and Farquhar Mary, China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (New York: Co­ lumbia University Press, 2006), 169–194; Shih Shu-mei, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). There is also an increasingly elaborate subdivision of Chinese cinema into Mainland Chinese, Tai­ wan, and Hong Kong cinemas, as well as the subdivision into Mandarin, Cantonese, Chaoyu, and Xiayu films. Chinese-language periodicals such as Dianying shuangzhoukan 電影雙週刊 [Film biweekly supplement], 中外文學 [Chung-Wai literary monthly], Dangdai di­ anying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema], Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art], Dianying xin­ shang 電影欣賞 [Film appreciation journal], and Dianying xinshang xuekan 電影欣賞學刊 [Film appreciation academic journal] serve as useful sources for some these ongoing trends. (26.) Armstrong Nancy, “Who’s Afraid of the Cultural Turn?” Differences 12.1 (2001): 42; my emphasis. (27.) The controversy over heterosexual pornography, which participated in the origins of film and its fetishization of female bodies for commodified ends, is the paradigmatic in­ stance of the challenge that the politics of representation continues to pose to feminist theory. For an astute analysis, see Williams Linda, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). (28.) A symptom of this (inevitable) fetishizing is that some seem to have taken an alarmist or defensive stance about feminism in recent years. See, for instance, Segal Lynne, Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism (London: Vi­ rago, 1987); and Why Feminism? Gender, Psychology, Politics (New York: Columbia Uni­ versity Press, 1999); Modleski Tania, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a “Postfeminist” Age (New York: Routledge, 1991); Gubar Susan, Critical Condition: Femi­ nism at the Turn of the Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Freedman Estelle B., No Turning Back? The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine, 2002). (29.) For related interest, see the discussion of the return in Mainland China of the Miss China Pageant in 2002—the first since 1949—and its political ramifications in Callahan William, Cultural Governance and Resistance in Pacific Asia (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1–4.

Rey Chow

Rey Chow is Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature at Duke University (US), and serves on the board of around forty journals, book series and research centres world­ wide. Her scholarly writings, which have appeared in ten languages, include The Rey

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Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema Chow Reader (2010) and Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture (2012).

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres

Ethnographic Representation Across Genres   Louisa Schein The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0028

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines ethnographic content across several categories of contemporary Chinese media. Visual/aural constructions of alteric cultural space, or the culture trope, have persisted over several decades in China, in part because of their common logic of counterpointing urban modernity. Only sometimes have these imaginings been associated with minzu or “minority nationalities,” although their representational logics are co-impli­ cated with recent patterns of minzu representation. Most examples are drawn from re­ search on the Miao/Hmong in relation to cultural production both in and beyond China since the early 1980s. The chapter begins with a relatively mainstream film, then puts it into conversation with several forms of nonelite media production: music videos, grass­ roots event videos, TV travel diaries, and transnational ethnic videos. Considered togeth­ er, these various types of media reveal an emergent, perhaps “postperipheral,” social imaginary that is developing in tandem with a diversification of media production. Keywords: ethnographic, grassroots media, Miao, minorities, minzu, culture, alterity, cultural production

This chapter examines ethnographic content as it appears across several categories of contemporary Chinese media, from feature film to documentary to MTV to home video. Visual and aural constructions of alteric cultural space within China have been strikingly consistent over the past several decades, due in part to their common logic of counter­ pointing urban modernity. Only sometimes have these imaginings been associated with minzu 民族 or “minority nationalities,” although their representational logics have been closely co-implicated with recent patterns of minzu representation.1 I begin with a rela­ tively mainstream film followed by several less recognized categories of works and put them into conversation. Considered together, these various types of media reveal an emergent social imaginary that is developing in tandem with a diversification of media production. Most of my examples are drawn from research I have been conducting since the early 1980s, and concern the Miao or Hmong ethnic minority in relation to cultural production both in and beyond China.2 With elaborate clothing styles and their location in extremely Page 1 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres photogenic Guizhou, Miao have been prime material for visual representation throughout the post-Mao period. While Miao have not been showcased in mass circulation texts,3 I examine several forms of nonelite media production that intersect with and depart from the conventions of elite film, including music videos, grassroots event videos, TV travel di­ aries, and transnational ethnic videos, both documentary and narrative.

(p. 508)

China as Ethnographic Object

It is possible to generalize that much Fifth and Sixth Generation and independent film in China features what might be called an ethnographic sensibility. A construct of “cul­ ture”—either the high culture of history or the struggling cultures of the underprivileged under reform—recurs in the representational logics of these films. What I stress here is the way in which cultural details, from the workings of kin relations to the banality of everyday living standards, come to be metonymic for China itself. That is, these images and storylines are fragments that are taken to reflect the whole, or perhaps some kind of essence, of China. There is a tacit assumption that if a work is made by and is about Chinese, it is somehow ethnographic. Does this mean, by extension, that what is being produced in China should unequivocally be considered “national” cinema? What are we taking for granted when we assume that the films of the last decade or two—feature and documentary—coming out of China function to give us insight into some aspect of Chinese essence? We contrast the more contemporary, gritty, verité, urban Sixth Generation and independent documentary with the aestheticized rural nostalgia of the Fifth Generation as well as with fictional nar­ rative and more imaginative work. But what might be foreclosed in the projects of these filmmakers if we take their most salient contribution to be “conveying” something about China? Is conveying “China” what they would avow as their most important agenda? Is it possible that these expectations upon reception interface with filmmakers’ self-presenta­ tion, hailing them as specifically “Chinese” auteurs? (In which case they would become auteurs of China, since their films come to have such a heavy brokering function in por­ traying China abroad). One of the key questions I’d like to raise, then, is what are the stakes when we work with the construct of “Chinese media”? Critics who have written on “Chinese” film, even those striving to destabilize the con­ struct, cannot seem to wriggle out of some measure of dialogue with the China paradigm. Chris Berry suggested, following Judith Butler, that China comes into being, in part, as an artifact of ongoing citations that are produced through film statements—or performa­ tives.4 By contrast, Yingjin Zhang and Sheldon Lu, in their respective ways, pluralized what is thought of as China, reframing it as a compound of multiple regions and dialects —but not departing from its centrality as a problematic.5 Rey Chow entered at a more postcolonial level, indicating how the hegemony of the West, which centers itself as the site of universal theorizing and universal film texts, casts China as merely an “ethnic sup­ plement.” Chinese cultural producers, in turn, respond according to the “logic of the wound,” in her account, proffering Chinese cultural integrity and cultural essentialism in Page 2 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres an unabashedly chauvinistic sinocentrism. It is the ethnographic that is offered up as a kind of salve to the wound of standing for the West’s other.6 I focus here on a notion of “ethnography” that takes some kind of cultural practice or iconography as its object of representation. This somewhat circumscribed and far from comprehensive sense of ethnography is by no means exclusive, and my emphasis on cul­ ture is intended to capture the zeitgeist of post-1979 cultural production in an era of (p. 509) national identity quest.7 Frequently the ethnographic stands for folk, peasant, or minzu content and themes and connotes images and stories that portray the practices of nonurban others. 8 Indeed, it is this otherness or subalternity that is, in many cases, what anchors ethnography as such.9 So-called ethnographic material has often been conflated with treatments of the past. In­ deed, culture in ethnographic treatments becomes that vestige of the past which is being destroyed or left behind by China’s “development.” Ethnography, then, has been regard­ ed as a nostalgic salvage of the “backward” (落後), primitive, and antimodern from the on­ ward progress of Chinese society beyond “culture” and toward “modernity.” Tellingly, this cluster of valences also regularly comes to be grounded in notions of the authentic, which was be tied to the question of a Chinese nation whose corrosion is an inevitable result of processes of reform, marketization, urban drift, and globalization. Anxiety over loss dri­ ves the project of filmically recording China and its precious past in what Rey Chow calls a national project of “autoethnography.”10 I propose that a kind of dialectic has been in play in recent decades, in which certain im­ ages and themes have become regularized, in keeping with broader currents in the Chi­ nese social imaginary, while stabilizing semiotic conventions within a Chinese thematic lexicon. Susan Blum’s Portraits of Primitives evidences this kind of synergy by offering ethnographic findings on Chinese social attitudes toward rural minorities that coincide with prevailing textual treatments.11 Dominant notions of primitivity and barbarism (蠻荒) that have stuck to rural folk and ethnic minorities continue to be signifiers, but have gath­ ered some new valences as minzu commodification proceeds apace.12 It is noteworthy that ethnographic elements are so regularly and rigidly associated with the archaic and the rural, despite a rising current in work that might be considered to have ethnographic overtones—the work of a huge range of recent documentarians, and the inclusion of verité evocations of urban life in fictional films. As Yingjin Zhang catalogs in his chapter in this volume, this includes “documenting the fast-changing landscape of globalizing China” and “intervening in cases of social injustice.”13 If Chinese film content becomes sociological or urban-themed, does it thereby cease to be “ethnographic”? Or is it that ethnography ceases to be structured around spectacularizing the alteric and, as Zhang suggests with respect to independent documentary, comes to represent instead the “heterogeneity and polylocality of China”? Here I would like to incorporate a notion of “relations of representation” and push further on issues of the control of technologies of production. During the 1990s many of us chart­ ed a hierarchical/vertical mode of mainland cultural production in which privileged ur­ Page 3 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres banites and minority elites monopolized cultural production while rural folk and ethnic minorities were rendered as objects for exoticist consumption in a dynamic that I de­ scribed as “internal orientalism.”14 Relations were, at the most literal level, material: the human objects of the ethnographic gaze had no access to media technologies or to cir­ cuits of distribution. In this unilateral relationship, the represented had no control over the means of representation and instead were muted if not distorted in the process of their imaging by others. Indeed, their silencing was constitutive of the relation many of us described at that time. However, what happens when the binarized structure that underpins notions of exoticization and objectification no longer holds? And was it precisely a notion of ethnog­ raphy that was originally smuggled in through this bipolar relation? How might we ex­ pand the concept of ethnography to better account for the diversity of contemporary pro­ ductive modes and relations? Four themes will be explored here: (1) cocreation by per­ formers involved in making media products; (2) nonelite production and circulation of film and video material in a range of genres, including at a transnational scale; (3) pro­ duction of ethnographic film concerning one’s own people; and (4) the presence of im­ ages of what I call the “postalteric” in mainstream film. (p. 510)

Postmen on Vacation The production of alterity is another way of talking about this internal othering, a prac­ tice that has doubled as incorporation into the Chinese polity. Whether it is through the camera lens, brushstrokes, or stories of mainstream cultural producers, non-Han cultures seem not to have been able to avoid their historical role as colorful elements adorning a Chinese whole. This trope has been reproduced incessantly in Chinese cultural produc­ tion ranging from elite film to tourism and advertising. In Huo Jianqi’s 霍建起 stunning 1999 feature film Postmen in the Mountains (那山那人那狗), this configuration is re­ hearsed, but with a twist. Set and shot in the rugged mountains of west Hunan, a region familiar to audiences through Shen Congwen’s 沈從文 copious literary oeuvre,15Postmen features a father-son coming-of-age narrative. An aging man who for decades has delivered the mail on foot to the surrounding region by hiking a 115-kilometer circuit has decided to retire. His son, el­ igible to take up his post, has reluctantly elected to give it a try. The younger man, played by actor Liu Ye 劉燁 (who has enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom since his debut in Post­ men), narrates his discoveries as he learns the ropes and becomes familiar with the rural spaces beyond his town walls. The pair undergo encounters and adventures, then sudden­ ly enter a different world when they reach a Dong minority village. Abruptly, there is strange song in the air, dancing in the village square, ritual, and, of course, erotic attrac­ tion. The interlude begins with a young woman in the rice fields welcoming the approaching postmen. She announces that there is a wedding under way and that they should drink as much as they like that night in the village. The camera pulls back for a spectacular shot of Page 4 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres the three traversing a flat expanse of brown rice fields toward the village, then lingers on a fiery sunset for a few moments before ushering in the transition into a highly escapist and exotic sequence. The village is shot in rich reds and browns that are otherwise absent from the bluishgreen hue of the rest of the film. Images and action are highly resonant with tourism and tourism promotion media. The first shot when the protagonists arrive at the village’s edge is of a huge Dong-style bridge, emblem of the Dong people in national codifications. The (p. 511) sound of girls singing harmoniously in Dong language comes up, replacing the more generic instrumental new age music that is woven throughout the rest of the film. We see youth dressed in minzu attire walking with parasols, a collection of red lanterns, women drinking out of rice bowls, and a large group of people playing lushengs (bamboo reed pipes) and dancing on the village square. The dancing is perfectly choreographed and, to my eye, is of a style developed beginning in the 1980s for professional performers and eventually for tourist entertainment throughout minority areas in China. Yet it is presented as genuine and naturally occur­ ring, reinforcing the perennial image of minorities as characteristically singing and danc­ ing. The scenes do the same thing that hosts do in actual villages that receive tourists: conjure a chimera of ethnic cultures as flowing spontaneously through daily life, a coun­ terimage to the labor that is emphasized in the Han villages. The ambiance is a cross be­ tween Fifth Generation nostalgia and ethnic tourism promotion videos. Cultural traits, customs, femininity, eroticism, color. The young man is drawn by his girlish host into dancing, drinking, and flirting, while the scenes are intercut with the elder postman drunkenly recalling his own romantic courtship. One wonders if the minority village serves simply as a plot ornament with minimal signifi­ cance other than to add visual richness to the film. It is a starkly anomalous sequence me­ diated by an opposite-sex love interest that appears almost tangential to the homosociali­ ty that characterizes the rest of the story. The son clearly relishes his time with the Dong girl, including a repartee alone in the kitchen in which she giggles and teases him relent­ lessly. But when it’s time to go, he departs effortlessly and does not look back, stepping almost magically back into the contemporary world of Han peasant villages. I offer Postmen, then, as exemplifying a version of what we might call the minzu alterity genre, but at the end of this discussion I return to the film and read it for the presence of something I will call the “postalteric.” First, however, we proceed to questions of author­ ship and cocreation as a way of questioning relations of alterity.

A You Duo Coauthoring the Mainstream A hometown girl from the prefecture of Southeast Guizhou, A You Duo 阿幼朵, is a per­ forming artist whose personal ambitions dovetailed with the latest wave of Chinese main­ stream fascination with minzu culture and the boom in domestic tourism. Through the fig­ ure of this Miao pop singer, I pose some questions about the agency behind the creation Page 5 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres of her image and for whom it matters. In particular, I mobilize my ethnography of her pro­ duction process in order to illuminate the complexity of producers, consumers, and their range of identity politics. From humble peasant roots, A You Duo worked her way to fame by training herself and singing standard pop fare in restaurants where she waited tables as a “migrant laborer” (dagongmei 打工妹).16 In 1999, she entered a singing contest in Guizhou and won first (p. 512) prize, whereupon her reputation skyrocketed. As soon as she began to garner recognition, she stopped singing mainstream pop songs. She now sings in both Mandarin and the Hmu dialect of Miao language, has won the First Chinese New Artists Interna­ tional Competition Gold Medal for Pop Music and the Chinese Nationalities Song Compe­ tition Best New Folk Singer Prize, and has even performed at Vienna’s Golden Hall. Undeniably cute, and with a huge dose of stage charisma, A You Duo reaches multiple fan sectors with an unprocessed voice quality that is all the rage in the recent valorization of everything folk, often denoted as yuanshengtai (原生态). At the same time, she also has a huge fan base among her coethnics in the Hmong diaspora. Young viewers thirsty to find themselves in mass-circulating culture have located A You Duo on the Internet and re­ posted her to YouTube. Her overseas fans watch and listen to her obsessively, imbibing her rich costumes, her picturesque backdrops, and mostly the beauty of her voice and vis­ age. Meanwhile, within China, the fact that she is Miao and from the Southeast Guizhou hinterlands is seen as having positive potential for Guizhou’s economic development. A You Duo gives Guizhou good press; her success makes the province, and her home re­ gion, more visible in a Chinese cultural economy where regions are vying to be “on the map” for ethnic tourism, joint venture investment, and national prestige. Beyond concert touring and promotional culture, the placement of A You Duo at the cen­ ter of Guizhou’s publicity campaign was amplified in 2008 when she was selected as a representative of Guizhou to the National People’s Congress. Amid the sea of nearly 3,000 darkly suited representatives to the Congress, A You Duo adorned herself in full Miao festival costume for the formal sessions, garnering media attention as a novelty and a photo opportunity against the homogenous spectacle of political decorum. The dispatching of A You Duo to Beijing as a political actor could be seen as an assertion that what in other contexts is a faraway and exotic novelty beckoning to escapist tourists or media consumers, when staged in the context of Beijing, refuses that distance and dis­ plays the legitimacy of minzu color as constitutive even of the center. My emphasis here, however, is on the way that A You Duo coauthors this statement. Not simply an object of dominant consumption, nor a tool of her home region, she is both a cultural spectacle and a producer of culture. This was evident in an MTV shoot I documented in summer of 2009. In honor of the sixtieth anniversary of the PRC, A You Duo worked with Guizhou TV to create a video to be submitted to CCTV as part of a Guizhou hour of programming. The production embodies the confluence of Guizhou’s deployment of its ethnic resource with A You Duo’s own self-promotion as distinguished ethnic artist.

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres In the following, I adopt Jing Wang’s notion of a “production-centered methodology” which, “when coupled with cultural analysis,” avoids reduction to the “authorial ‘text,’ flattened out for content analysis,” and allows us to attend to the constitutive character of specific production practices in the fabrication of images.17 I explicate production details to convey the extreme artifice involved in creating a performance video. This is an in­ triguing genre in that the singer is, in fact, often performing a performance. Music videos have many styles, but typically they include some sound and image of an actual perfor­ mance, intercut with other visuals. In A You Duo’s shoot, like many music videos, there were multiple takes of each shot and no pretense of a live audience of spectators. (p. 513) Artifice was deployed to create not the verisimilitude of a narrative as lived but a simu­ lacrum of an event as staged. In the case of the sixtieth-anniversary video, A You Duo’s ethnic artistry coupled with dazzling visuals of Guizhou topography would be one of many “gifts” forwarded to the center as a tribute to the fatherland. It is 2009, a hot August day in the Thousand Household Miao village of Xijiang in South­ east Guizhou province. Tourism is buzzing and the streets through town are clogged with visitors from all over China, as well as a handful from abroad. They stroll up and down, shop for handicrafts, and eat vaguely regional cuisine at open-air restaurants. They hop on sightseeing carts that zip them up the hills to photograph the panorama of local archi­ tecture across the ridge-ringed valley. A You Duo’s recorded songs championing the charms of Miao country, extolling its scenery and its cultural curiosities, its intoxicating alcohol culture and its delectable dishes, serenade the crowd before and after cultural performances. What many tourists don’t know is that there is another buzz in town today. Every resident is whispering: “A You Duo is coming.” A team of perhaps ten arrives in Xijiang to prepare. A female director has spent days scouting locations in town and scenic spots around the village, and the “best cameraman” at Guizhou TV will shoot the video. Both belong to the majority Han ethnic group. Sup­ porting them are multiethnic personnel from Southeast Guizhou Prefectural Television. The Propaganda Department of the county of Leishan provides backup dancers from their ethnic performing troupe. All have put up resources. Why would they do so? Each level is expected to buy into the idea that investing in A You Duo is investing in their region’s de­ velopment, whether at the level of the province, prefecture, county, or township. The shoot will start before dawn, the director tells us, to catch the sublime beauty of the sunrise. We rise at 5:00 a.m. and board vehicles, arriving at first light at the top of the vil­ lage, where there is a famous view of the spread of Miao houses adorning the opposite mountain slope. Cameras are positioned and angles are assessed. Pans of daybreak scenery across the mountains are shot as cutaways. A You Duo arrives last, leading her mother by the hand, and begins the involved process of donning Miao festival attire for the shoot. Her look bears the signature of her family. Her mother helps her put on an em­ broidered Miao skirt and jacket layered with a silver waistband and several silver neck­ laces. An iconic embroidered headpiece and silver headdress is carefully mounted on her

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres head. Her nephew carefully touches up her makeup, with her pink lipstick, pink eye shad­ ow, and demure false eyelashes giving her a youthful look. The song A You Duo is to perform has been prerecorded in Beijing. The lyrics are partly in Chinese and partly in Miao, with the latter having been written by A You Duo herself. The song extols the wonders of Miao country and the attractions of Guizhou province with lyrics such as “Birds are singing on the branches / Miao songs are ringing from the rice terraces / the Miao Ling has a great harvest this year / People and birds are laughing heartily together.” The sounds are mixed, with the cries of Miao traditional song blended with more pop beats and vocals and a grandiose instrumental element that was created with a live orchestra. Long before the sun has broken over the mountain ridge, two cameras are rolling. A You Duo stands in a newly built rustic-style wooden gazebo with the ethereal light of first (p. 514) dawn beginning to illuminate the blue mountain ranges behind her. Most artistic decision-making—including the choice of locations, choreography, camera angles—re­ mains in the hands of Guizhou TV, but in consultation with A You Duo. As she runs through the song repeatedly, she deploys a repertory of gestures she has evidently used thousands of times. She stretches her arms out wide, brings them in to her face and head­ dress, and turns her head from side to side while her smile brims and then softens. She knows exactly how to vary her facial features for emphasis and how to convey enthusi­ asm, even bliss. This is a particular, localized Guizhou bliss. Her performance needs to encapsulate and inspire passion for the Miao mountains. It needs to produce desire. A na­ tional appreciation of Guizhou and the Miao is being cultivated through this medium. The finale to the day’s shooting takes place on the large square built for dance perfor­ mances. The director begins choreographing. A large group has been summoned, going beyond the county troupe and drawing upon Xijiang locals. They encircle A You Duo in a complex configuration of concentric rings. On the command “Music!” from the camera­ man, the familiar melody begins rolling across the square from speakers in the opendoored van where the CD is being played. The dancers begin moving around A You Duo, with shouts and instructions from the director: “One, two, three, one, two, three…” No actual sound will be used from the shoot, so she has the luxury of being able to direct them even when the camera is rolling. “Smile!” she reminds them, “Look at the camera!” After several renditions of the song, the group is told to stand together facing the camera in a posed shot. Over and over, the director bids them to shout, while smiling: “Zuguo wansui!” (祖國萬歲!) [Long life to the fatherland!]. A You Duo stands in their midst, a mod­ el of enthusiasm. Decades-old tropes of minzu cultural production are reflected in this Guizhou TV produc­ tion.18 Both the shoot locations and the camera angles meld nature with minority culture, a stock-in-trade motif for at least a half a century and more recently for tourism market­ ing. Far from being objectified as nature, however, A You Duo actively cultivated ethnic authenticity by feeling herself a part of the Miao country with which she was identified. Not solely a powerless and exotic performer at the behest of a presumptively Han produc­ Page 8 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres tion team, A You Duo actually had input into the production at various different levels. She decided her costumes herself, crafting a blend of actual heirloom clothing with con­ temporary fashion. The most “exotic” of the costumes was in a trendy style of her own de­ sign, executed by her sister and incorporating typical Miao clothing motifs but using bright synthetic fabrics and an arresting asymmetry. Her personal assistants included her mother, who would ensure that she would get the Miao look right, and her nephew, who would ensure that her makeup would look as good as possible. She choreographed her own movements, particularly hand gestures and facial expressions, and was given no di­ rection except when backup dancers were used, in which case the director told everyone where to be and what to do. She collaborated with the cinematographer in picking loca­ tions that would most effectively complement her beauty, and together they mobilized tropes of Miao country that were consonant with the semiotics of intelligibility in China’s mediated ethnic terrain. Meanwhile, another logic, one that goes way beyond her role as cocreator of mainstream videos, comes into play when we consider A You Duo’s local reception. Even as (p. 515) her music circulates through centers of visibility, it simultaneously enlivens the TVs of vil­ lagers throughout her home regions. For her Miao fans, A You Duo is far from exotic. She has shared with them a life of peasant hardship and of migrant labor struggle. They con­ sume her with fascination, but as a successful sister, a source of pride, and a model of self-love—a hometown girl made big. Here I delve into a much-ignored genre—the grassroots productions that have a vibrant market in the rural regions of Guizhou and all over China. Many of these works are “event” videos that document a discrete episode outside of everyday life such as a wed­ ding, a funeral, a festival, a bullfight, and so forth. Anthropologist Jenny Chio, who has been mapping this field of cultural production and reception, refers to these as “village videos,” which are produced by local semiprofessional videographers and are marketed within the region.19 While these products resemble home videos, they are introduced into the local economy as commodities, but often without promotional packaging. They are the handiwork of self-taught videographer-entrepreneurs with negligible budgets working with affordable digital technology and home-editing programs. One such video in VCD format appeared for sale on the streets of Kaili, the prefectural capital of Southeast Guizhou, in the fall of 2009.20 Without credits, amateur in style and “backstage” in content, it is a record of A You Duo’s Miao hometown reception of a bus­ load of presumptively Han visitors and the cultural interchange between the two groups. The video’s cachet is that it gives rare glimpses of a star singer offstage in her natal home. This is an almost transgressive premise, as the singer’s public persona is, not sur­ prisingly, otherwise walled around with the veneer of a dignitary since she has multiple imbrications with the highest levels of the state. The very existence of the video, not to mention its contents, challenges many convention­ alized formulas for how voyages of Han urbanites to minority spaces are represented and imagined. Marketed as “A You Duo Welcomes You,” the hourlong VCD resembles a home Page 9 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres video documenting the course of events in a single day, but it may also be seen as a form of autoethnography, creating a record of local Miao singing and dancing. The camera­ work has a handheld look and uses random framings that often include images of record­ ing devices in the foreground. As a nonnarrative film, it has no storyline, only the chronological sequence of events syn­ opsized here: A You Duo appears in a light pink Miao style outfit dancing with kids to recorded music that sounds strangely amped. She coaches and choreographs other vil­ lagers. A bus arrives. Local women in full costume appear playing lusheng pipes. Cantonese-speaking Han guests in dressed-down tourist garb disembark from the bus with cameras. Women with lushengs or clacking small stools lead the group up the hill into the village. The guests are led through the fields and then offered liquor at the village entrance. A You Duo appears in frame with a handheld video camera….A shaman sits shaking his legs, but clearly performing rather than actu­ ally in trance. A You Duo intervenes to tell him to veil his face as an actually prac­ ticing shaman would do….After dark, A You Duo appears in the frame with one of the Han men, who is possibly drunk, singing a love song in dialogue. At one point A You Duo breaks into (p. 516) laughter around a “Wo ai ni” 我愛你 [I love you] line in the song. Eventually the screen goes to black, and the characters “Zaijian” 再見 [good-bye] appear in hot pink with a date: “2008.8.20.” The video departs from the more formal event genre in that, rather than unreflexively go­ ing about their cultural activities, the Miao subjects in front of the camera clearly know they are producing culture and that their activity to that end is part of what is being cov­ ered. This is not a rupture, but rather a corollary content. Culture has a certain double­ ness—it is the lovingly rendered song and dance and drinking customs as well as their staging for nonlocal guests. A You Duo’s presence intensifies this double quality, for here we breach her usual celebrity distance. We not only see her holding a video camera, we also see her directing others’ activities. The coaching of the respected shaman to achieve greater verisimilitude is an apt illustration of this melding of ethnography with locally constructed showmanship. The video proffers a kind of behind-the-scenes intimacy, an almost stolen glimpse into a space that purports to be less commodified, as signaled by the informality and lack of per­ formance-style packaging. The wearing of costume presents itself as voluntary, an expres­ sion of reqing (熱情), the warmth of hospitality, rather than the polished veneer of ethnic beauty crafted for visual entertainment. This duality is also subtly intimated by the set­ ting when the singers are indoors. The interior shots are in a parlor where A You Duo’s photographic images grace every wall. Village singers appearing spontaneous and rela­ tively informal counterpoint with the posed glamour shots of A You Duo—in Miao costume and urban fashion—that clutter the walls. The contrast is striking—the allure of the im­ peccable surface of A You Duo’s glamorized beauty is disrupted by less groomed and less staged villagers, who are nonetheless performing. We don’t know, of course, whether the Page 10 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres state is remunerating the locals for hosting this group of visitors, but that is beside the point. What the video conveys is a kind of externality in relation to the more contractual exchange in which minzu culture is bought and sold. This nonprofessional video released to a local market is also intriguing, precisely because so much of A You Duo’s commodification has been sponsored by the state. That a behindthe-scenes VCD—showing her as producing media, not only posing for it—would be mar­ ketable, intimates that a more reality-styled participatory medium has also become con­ sumable. This nonelite production, in turn, begins to suggest the porous boundary be­ tween state, market, and minzu that has come to characterize the recent era.

Minority Authorship as Autoethnography? If we go beyond A You Duo’s cocreatorship both in front of and behind the camera, the question of minority authorship becomes more acute in instances of producers who con­ trol the camera, script, direction, and even the definition of the projects themselves. (p. 517) In my next three examples, these producers are situated in Beijing and the United States respectively, and their metropolitan locations belie the bifurcation of the minority/ folk object and the urban subject. These doubled identities suggest a confounding of me­ dia categories. Wei Yanyan 韋燕燕, for instance, is a thirty-something Miao woman from Southeast Guizhou, who produces her own ethnographic programs as a permanent director for CCTV. Wei has been making documentaries for years, in serials such as Villages (寨子), in which she researched and chose destinations, traveled with her crew to rural areas, then conceptualized a kind of human interest story and used it to bring the village and local culture alive. Wei directed the shoots, then returned to Beijing to edit and write the nar­ ration. The programs are slick productions with heavy authoritative narration, high pro­ duction values, and a smattering of artistic moves in the cinematography and editing. The Chinese term xuanchuan (宣傳) might be translated as either “propaganda” or, more neutrally, as “publicity.” In some respects, Wei’s work might fit the first, more pejorative, translation, as being precisely that against which independent documentary practices have traditionally defined themselves. On the other hand, we might also view this ardent young Miao woman as an example of xuanchuan in the more neutral sense of “publicity.” To my eye, Wei functions not so much as a vehicle for the government’s articulation of its policy on ethnic minorities, but rather as an impassioned cultural producer who is using her placement at the center to raise visibility for marginal ethnic groups and regions whose obscurity does nothing to enhance their standing in the polity. There may be social issues that she is compelled to omit from her treatments, but her own passion fixes on precisely the figuring of (multi)cultures as constitutive of contemporary China. What, then, does her programming do? One explicit aim is to increase the flow of tourists to the regions being documented. The dynamics of this kind of xuanchuan, in the name of the market, bear consideration as well. Interestingly resonant with the reality appeal of Page 11 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres the VCD of the A You Duo event, Wei told me about her personal blog on which she writes accounts of her field trips for shoots. Readers appreciate the image of a savvy Beijinger “going down” to the countryside. It was her anecdotes about what it was like to visit the village for the shoot, rather than the resulting programs, that compelled travelers to fol­ low her footsteps. A similar set of considerations arises if we turn from Miao productions from China to Hmong works from the global diaspora. While China is one of the key nodes in the circu­ lation of Miao media, the global diaspora was created out of the American war in Vietnam and Laos, which was responsible for creating political refugees among the Hmong of Laos, who now have resided in the United States for up to thirty-five years. Their acute longings for homeland include not only their country of personal origin—Laos—but also China, their country of collective origin. These longings are highly culturalized: Hmong overseas tend to perceive China nostalgically as a site of ancient and authentic cultural heritage that has in turn spawned a robust industry of grassroots videomaking by ama­ teur and semiprofessional Hmong diasporic producers who travel (p. 518) back to Asia to capture lush homeland images on screen.21 These video products are narrated in Hmong and reproduced in the United States to be sold through mail order, ethnic festivals, and ethnic shops. In an early set of video travelogues, Fresno-based senior filmmaker Su Thao introduced China, and specifically the Miao of China, to eager viewers. His China Part 3 (1995), the third in a series of commercially successful videos marketed to the Hmong American community, exemplifies the semiotics of an orientalist gaze from the vantage point of the diaspora. A delegation of Hmong Americans, primarily men, in business suits and trench­ coats, sample the pleasures of a New Year celebration among the Miao in Yunnan. It is a narrative of rediscovery. They mingle with the crowds, converse with the locals, watch dancing, bullfighting, and traditional sports, and enter into the ball toss, a game histori­ cally used for actual courtship. The visuality of the film reinforces this titillating fauxcourtship scenario: shot after shot pans the crowd, then makes ample use of the zoom lens to linger close in on the faces of younger women wearing ornate headdresses and smiling bashfully. For refugees, such videos with homeland themes palliate the melan­ cholic sense of loss, the desire for return, for union with the disappearing past as iconized by scenes of Asia, especially those elements of “culture” embodied in the young, cos­ tumed woman, object of both male desire and female nostalgic identification. In what might be called autoethnotourism, it is precisely the doubleness of China’s difference and identity that makes it so consumable. In Wei Yanyan’s and Su Thao’s productions, we find a reiteration of the many tropes of the minority/folk ethnographic genre. Yet they are authored by impassioned minority film­ makers who connect with their material in identitarian ways. With unabashed autoexoti­ cism, Su Thao is in the business of displaying his own people, in their China variant, to Hmong in the diaspora. His video texts are both socially and economically significant in their cultivation of transnational identification between Hmong in the West and Miao in China, a connection that has been actively forged in the last two decades after a century Page 12 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres of mutual isolation. Cultural iconography forms the basis for this alliance, which in turn eventuates in a plethora of material exchanges. In Wei Yanyan’s case, the identity base is less strictly defined, but it is not absent. Deeply invested in a Chinese version of multiculturalism, she brings the folk to the center, mak­ ing visible their lives and mores, as a way of repeatedly rehearsing the value of “diversi­ ty” (多樣化) in China’s modernizing process. Wei’s work reveals something about the way that ethnorural inclusion is currently lived in China, in contradistinction to the canons of Western multiculturalism. Her ardor about her work suggests that the Maoist ideal of a “unification of nationalities” (minzu tuanjie 民族團結), combined with a legacy of Maoist valorization of the peasantry, perdures as a mode of celebration quite distinct from the ur­ ban-centrism that marks Western multiculturalism. That the cultural exotic can be encapsulated in a rural minzu other paraded colorfully be­ fore the camera is complicated by the scales of transnational production that render Chi­ na the object of the gaze. But is the gaze from abroad simply an orientalizing gaze? What is the axis of alterity when not only are minzu or diasporic minorities behind the (p. 519) camera, but the gaze is turned on China proper, as seen in the next example? Another transnational small-scale production, this one confounds classification not only because of its crossborder production model, but also because of the way it inverts Han-minority ex­ oticization. Yengtha Her was a young aspirant to the Hmong American film industry when he broke through by making the first original Hmong narrative film to be set in China. Based in the Twin Cities, Her had produced a couple of low-budget local movies in which he’d acted and which had received little notice among the Hmong viewership. In 2003, he was intro­ duced by an uncle to a young woman in Kunming, a Miao from the China-Vietnam border who had taught herself the American Hmong dialect and pop styles of the diaspora so that she could record albums to send to the United States and sell through her uncle in California. She and Her began courting through long-distance telephone. Eventually, Her proposed that they make a movie together, and they agreed to collaborate. They used their own story and fashioned it into a written script over long-distance telephone. She would dictate the story line and he would input it in Hmong orthography into the comput­ er. Three to four months later they had a screenplay, and Her asked her to find some ac­ tors in China while he assembled a crew of two other Hmong American young men. They convened in Yunnan, where they shot in locations all over the province. The story, Overseas Romances (Nplooj siab hlub hla ntuj, 2005), is one of nested relation­ ships and a kind of strange recursivity between the narrative and the lives it reflects and conjures. The narrative charts two long-distance courtships that culminate in euphoric marriages when the young Hmong American men arrive in China. Soon afterward, as the story goes, the protagonists hatch the idea of starring in a film together. However this time the romance is set in old world China, no longer particularly Miao, where they play epic lovers riding horseback across the landscape in ancient Chinese-style costumes. The final product is temporally double. Nested within the contemporary and personal story of Page 13 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres transnational romance is another romance, one evoking a membership in dynastic Chi­ nese history with all its trappings of costume, custom, and manners. Overseas Romances garnered immediate wide attention among Hmong American audi­ ences. The reason for the film’s popularity was not so much that it was set in China per se, but that it included much-admired techniques and special effects drawn from timehonored Asian martial-arts genres. Indeed, the young filmakers, hailing from Minnesota and Yunnan, contracted with major studios in Beijing and Shanghai for space and instruc­ tion to be able to capture that highly marketable ambiance of ancient China. They ac­ cessed costumes and sets, learned wire and horseback-riding techniques, all in keeping with the martial-arts genre but never before seen in a Hmong movie. Through a striking reversal, then, the exotic object has become ancient China itself as gazed upon by Asian diasporic, but non-Han, audiences in the West. It is tantamount to a complete inversion of the logic of Postmen, in which Han consumers are filmically trans­ posed into the minzu past. For these diasporic audiences, it is archaic China proper that becomes the colorful ornament in a film that otherwise plays out within the ethnic purview of the Hmong and Miao present. Hierarchies of the gaze become increasingly (p. 520) muddled as the vagaries of grassroots videomaking gnaw at the boundaries of genres and of nations.

Unraveling Alterity: Another Reading of Post­ men in the Mountains I will conclude by returning to Postmen in the Mountains—which, despite its episodic traf­ ficking in minzu exoticization, suggests an emergent social imaginary, or what I call the “postalteric,” and which further complicates the long-standing divide between predomi­ nantly Han urban centers and the culturally demarcated minzu remote. Postmen hints, in other words, that social and cultural binaries may not be such a clearly transacted cur­ rency as they appeared earlier. The construction of state-free and Han-free zones of nonmodernity had a long genealogy in films about the practice of “going down to the countryside.” Postmen articulates with the going-down legacy of Zhang Nuanxin’s 張暖忻 Sacrificed Youth (青春祭, 1985) and per­ haps Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 Yellow Earth (黃土地, 1984) as well as Dai Sijie’s 戴思杰 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (巴爾扎克與小裁縫, 2002). However, one of the things I want to look at here is how “going down to the countryside” might be transmuted into “going out,” and what this horizontalizing shift might indicate about changes in the social imaginary regarding the remote countryside. Postmen is an interesting hybrid, in that it transports the viewer to the picturesque and nostalgic remote through a more grounded evocation of the labor and material textures of a rural life. Importantly, the postmen are both of and apart from this space. Far from being urban, they come from what appears to be a small town nestled right there among the mountains, whose people they so devoted­ ly serve. In many ways the two cadres are completely embedded in this landscape. This Page 14 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres place is their home, too. For them, the topography, vegetation, rugged walking paths, physical labor, and rolling vistas are all unremarkable, even intimately familiar. The cam­ era lingers lovingly on this landscape, portraying it with painstaking aesthetic attention as one of ethereal beauty, misty with blues, grays, and muted greens, lush but accurately deforested and scrubby. The bluish gray resonates with the color of faded indigo that is seen on elderly women still wearing their hand-dyed clothing. In certain ways the film recalls the iconic images of earlier films in which the state cadre or PLA soldier brought some benefit to a rural site and was showered with love by the vil­ lagers, winning over their political loyalty through selfless service. In Postmen, the ser­ vice is all about the characteristics of the space those villagers inhabit. It is a space apart from civilization, in that it lacks roads and modern transport. How, then, do the father and son signify as figures potentially representing some kind of state? Tellingly, state presence is woven throughout, and the landscape is peopled with a variety of other cadres as well. Porousness is a recurrent theme. Both the state and the Han majority are naturalized in Postmen as constitutive parts of this rural landscape, embodied in the form of none other than the loving protagonists rather than presented as an external force.22 (p. 521)

Postmen works hard, then, to portray interpenetrations. While the evocation of

rural landscape and livelihood may gesture to the nostalgic, the film is saturated with re­ minders that we are firmly in the modernizing postsocialist era. Pop music, some even in English, accompanies certain scenes. The son listens to a transistor radio as he treks. Per­ haps Postmen is a document of normalization; what the film portrays is the routinization of cosmopolitanism and state presence in that wild space that had earlier signified a pe­ ripheral site of state imperial and communist conquest. In this way, the film might also be considered a postimperial narrative, one that actively depolarizes state and remote popu­ lace through its recasting of space. Meanwhile, the postmen’s own parlance is shot through with references to “mountain people” (山裡人). Here it is a more vertical aspect of space, rather than culture, that avowedly separates the protagonists from the people they encounter on their walking tour. The concept of mountain people functions in the film as a social construction that is strikingly social, not physical, marking off something like a status rather than a spatial lo­ cation. What is most intriguing is that this appellation flags the mountains rather than ethnicity as that which distinguishes these people. As the two men trek across the dis­ trict, they go up, down, and across in apparently random sequence. Defying centuries of spatialized imaginary, there is no feeling of decisive ascent to more isolated mountain fastnesses. Even in the scenes of the Dong village where culture is on colorful display, there is no indication that there is any particular altitude to this venue; instead, impor­ tantly, as the girl ushers the two men into the village, the camera frame lingers on a wide swath of level rice paddies easily accessible to the village and perfectly, perhaps pointed­ ly, flat. These visuals of horizontality undercut what otherwise sounds like a slur, mountain peo­ ple, indicating the lowest status and spatially most remote people in a variegated social Page 15 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres landscape. Boundaries are blurred in more ways than one throughout the film. Are the postmen’s rural counterparts mountain people or minorities? Are the postmen state cadres or locals? Why can’t the young man marry a mountain girl, as his father had? In some ways it appears that one of Postmen’s most important interventions is to conjure an environment that holds out a chimeric space of alterity, but one that is mysteriously no longer simply constituted out of the timeworn binaries of minority-Han, and state-masses. The double signals of the film—the visuality of an exotic minzu interlude crosscut by the de-ethnicized “mountain people” lexicon and the horizontality of the landscape—may be considered indexical of an emerging postalteric imaginary. Reinforcing just these realign­ ments of space and difference, it is interesting to revisit Postmen’s refusal of mountaingirl marriage against the emergence of a transnational marriage possibility in Overseas Romances, whose axes of alterity appear almost upside down, as constituted by the inter­ national border and by the way the non-Han ethnic identification of the protagonists in turn exoticizes ancient Chineseness. My final reading of Postmen, then, reveals specific features and images that make up a more recent visioning of the space of cross-ethnic engagement, one that troubles conven­ tional binaries, commingling Han and minority spaces and lives such that their bound­ aries become once again sites of (re)construction. This imaginary is far from one of meld­ ing or assimilation, but neither is it one of contrast or conflict per se. And it is not (p. 522) only about crosscultural interactions. It is about the presence of the state and the dimin­ ishing degree to which that state is imaged as alteric to the minzu, folk, or rural space. When culture is either exoticized at the hands of minority authors or downplayed by mainstream media, what difference does this make to the politics of alterity and identifi­ cation? Perhaps the pluralization of authorship and genres that we’ve seen here dovetails with, even accounts for, the less clear-cut demarcation of minzu culture as exotic object of consumption, of the ethnographic gaze. Notably, culturalist interludes and settings recur —as the durable trope they represent—in a multitude of formats and genres, but increas­ ingly delinked from a time-honored minzu remote. In tandem, a proliferation of media technologies and authorial opportunities have delinked the position behind the camera from that of the elite/Han/state/center. Perhaps a notion of the “postperipheral” is also called for, as that center-as-apex becomes more difficult to hold constant with the realign­ ments of space reflected in the multidirectional crossings embodied in the works of, say, Miao women directing productions in Beijing, Hmong diasporic filmmakers accessing Chi­ nese studios, or iconic pop stars displaying themselves holding a camcorder. Small won­ der that media categories continue to fissure, yielding such below-the-radar products as grassroots minzu-content VCDs popping up in street markets for sale to local audiences or refugee returnee video documentations of the chimeric Chinese homeland for sale in the United States. Any risks of prematurely celebratory takes on prospects for pluraliza­ tion should be mindful of this market context. Perhaps an analysis that privileges the way content is organized for the purpose of saleability might help illuminate the consistency in appearances of the culture trope.

Page 16 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres Where does this leave us in terms of the links between the ethnographic, the trope of cul­ ture, and the shoring up of Chinese authenticity? As we’ve seen, the multifarious fashion­ ing of the construct of Chineseness becomes particularly slippery when the content, and even the creators, of the films are themselves China’s “alteric” minorities. Is it tenable, then, to aver that minorities have become coproducers of Chineseness, not only by consti­ tuting one of its elements, but as one of its creators? Would this plurally authored Chine­ seness in turn become more complex, or more hybridized? Here a notion of diversifica­ tion would need to go beyond its glib valences as multicultural inclusion of colorful ingre­ dients in film and video contents and move to a focus on the actualities of production rela­ tions. And it might necessitate a hard reconsideration of the extent to which it is in any way China that is the discursive effect of this lush productive domain.

Works Cited Berry, Chris. “If China Can Say No, Can China Make Movies? Or, Do Movies Make China? Rethinking National Cinema and National Agency.” boundary 225.3 (1998): 129–150. Blum, Susan D. Portraits of Primitives: Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation. Ox­ ford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Chio, Jenny. “‘Village Videos’ and the Visual Mainstream in Rural, Ethnic Guizhou.” Map­ ping Media in China: Region, Province, Locality. Ed. Wanning Sun and Jenny Chio. Lon­ don: Routledge, 2012. 79–93. Chow, Rey. Sentimental Fabulations: Contemporary Chinese Films. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Chow, Rey. “Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem.” Boundary 225.3 (1998): 1–38. Chow, Rey. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contempo­ rary Chinese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. (p. 525)

Diamond, Norma. 1988. “The Miao and Poison: Interactions on China’s Southwest Fron­ tier.” Ethnology 27.1 (1988): 1–25. Diamond, Norma. “Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing and Contemporary Views.” Cultural En­ counters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers. Ed. Stevan Harrell. Seattle: University of Washing­ ton Press, 1995. 92–116. Gladney, Dru. “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identi­ ties.” Journal of Asian Studies 53.1 (1994): 92–123. Harrell, Stevan. “Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them.” Cultural En­ counters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers. Ed. Stevan Harrell. Seattle: University of Washing­ ton Press, 1995. 3–36.

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres Litzinger, Ralph A. Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Lu, Sheldon H. “Tear Down the City: Reconstructing Urban Space in Contemporary Chi­ nese Popular Cinema and Avant-Garde Art.” The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Zhang Zhen. Durham: Duke Universi­ ty Press, 2007. 137–160. Lu, Sheldon H. Transnational Chinese Cinema: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997. Schein, Louisa. “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China.” Modern China 23.1 (1997): 69–98. Schein, Louisa. “Homeland Beauty: Transnational Longing and Hmong American Video.” Journal of Asian Studies 63.2 (2004): 433–463. Schein, Louisa. “Mapping Hmong Media in Diasporic Space.” Media Worlds: Anthropolo­ gy on New Terrain. Ed. Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin. Berkeley: Uni­ versity of California Press, 2002. 229–244. Schein, Louisa. Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Schein, Louisa. “Negotiating Scale: Miao Women at a Distance.” Translocal China: Link­ ages, Identities and the Reimagining of Space. Ed. Tim Oakes and Louisa Schein. London: Routledge, 2006. 213–237. Shen, Congwen. Imperfect Paradise: Twenty-Four Stories. Ed. Jeffrey Kinkley. Trans. Jef­ frey Kinkley et al. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1995. Wang, Jing. Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Zhang, Yingjin. Chinese National Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2004 Zhang, Yingjin. “Rebel without a Cause? China’s New Urban Generation and Postsocialist Filmmaking.” The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Zhang Zhen. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 49–80. Zhang Zhen. 2007. “Introduction: Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation.’” The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Zhang Zhen. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 1–48.

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres

Notes: (1.) The full designation for “minority nationalities” would be shaoshu minzu 少數民族, but in this chapter I use the shorthand minzu in keeping with mainland convention, which leaves Han unmarked and uses this ethnicizing term almost exclusively for the non-Han. (2.) While Miao is the conventional usage within China, Hmong is the conventional desig­ nation for coethnics anywhere beyond China’s borders. Hmong refers to one of the three major dialect groups of Miao in China and represents a linguistic group that extends be­ yond southernmost China to Southeast Asia and the diaspora. (3.) I believe, however, that the old medicine woman in Ang Lee’s 李安 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍, 2000) is modeled on the Miao, as signified by her Miao-looking costume, and her purveying something resonant with the famed Gu poison linked to Miao in dominant lore. See Diamond Norma, “The Miao and Poison: Interactions on China’s Southwest Frontier,” Ethnology 27.1 (1988): 1–25. (4.) Chris Berry, “If China Can Say No, Can China Make Movies? Or, Do Movies Make Chi­ na? Rethinking National Cinema and National Agency.” boundary 2 25.3 (1998): 132. (5.) Yingjin Zhang, Chinese National Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2004), and Sheldon H. Lu, “Tear Down the City: Reconstructing Urban Space in Contemporary Chinese Popu­ lar Cinema and Avant-Garde Art,” in The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, ed. Zhang Zhen (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 137–160. (6.) Rey Chow, “Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem.” boundary 2 25.3 (1998): 1–38. (7.) Culture in this arena denotes those domains referred to as fengsu 風俗 and xiguan 習慣 not wenhua 文化, which is more tied to notions of education and civilization. (8.) Notably, while there is not to date a clear linguistic convention for the term ethno­ graphic film in Mainland China, two of the most common words are based on the notion of minzu: minzu zhi dianying 民族志电影 and minzu zhi yingpian 民族志影片. (9.) For instance, one mainland interlocutor, who has worked in the Beijing and New York film scenes, described his sense of ethnographic as “any movies with ethnic minority sto­ ry lines or characters” and “something to do with a particular group of people.” (10.) Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). (11.) Susan Blum, Portraits of Primitives: Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres (12.) Of note here is Ning Jingwu’s 寧敬武 2008 independent feature Lala’s Gun (滾拉拉的 槍), which is set, and shot, in a Miao region in which characters, all played by locals, ap­ pear in Miao costume and in which the story is adorned throughout with performances of culture lovingly presented in a highly ethnographic style. As director Ning told me, one of his explicit agendas was to make the case for preserving diversity in China’s modernizing process. (13.) Rey Chow charts this from its inception and forward into the new millennium: “In the 1980s, when cultural introspection took shape in the aftermath of the Cultural Revo­ lution, film offered the Fifth Generation directors and their contemporaries the exciting possibility of experimenting with technological reproducibility and artful defamiliariza­ tion. As China’s economy took off at astounding rates at the turn of the twenty-first centu­ ry, the anthropological-ethnographical impulses of the 1980s films have given way to a so­ ciological one.” See Chow Rey, Sentimental Fabulations: Contemporary Chinese Films (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 163–164. (14.) Schein Louisa, “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China,” Modern China 23.1 (1997): 69–98. For more on portrayals of minorities in the internal orientalist vein, see Di­ amond Norma, “Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing and Contemporary Views,” in Cultural En­ counters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Harrell Stevan (Seattle: University of Washing­ ton Press, 1995), 92–116; Gladney Dru, “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities,” in Journal of Asian Studies 53.1 (1994): 92–123; Harrell Ste­ van, “Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them,” in Stevan Harrell, Cul­ tural Encounters, 3–36; and Litzinger Ralph, Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of Na­ tional Belonging (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). (15.) See, for instance, Shen Congwen, Imperfect Paradise: Twenty-Four Stories, ed. Jef­ frey Kinkley, trans. Jeffrey Kinkley et al. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1995). (16.) For a discussion of the larger phenomenon of minority women and ethnic opportuni­ ties as migrant laborers, see Louisa Schein, “Negotiating Scale: Miao Women at a Dis­ tance,” in Translocal China: Linkages, Identities and the Reimagining of Space, ed. Tim Oakes and Louisa Schein (London: Routledge, 2006), 213–237. (17.) Jing Wang, Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), xi–xiii. (18.) For extended discussion of these tropes, see Louisa Schein, Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). (19.) Jenny Chio, “‘Village Videos’ and the Visual Mainstream in Rural, Ethnic Guizhou,” in Mapping Media in China: Region, Province, Locality, ed. Wanning Sun and Jenny Chio (London: Routledge, 2012), 79–93. (20.) I am indebted to Jenny Chio for bringing this video to my attention and, indeed, ac­ quiring it for me in Kaili. Page 20 of 21

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Ethnographic Representation Across Genres (21.) See Louisa Schein, “Mapping Hmong Media in Diasporic Space,” in Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, ed. Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 229–244; and “Homeland Beauty: Transnational Longing and Hmong American Video,” Journal of Asian Studies 63.2 (2006): 433–463. (22.) Indeed, there is a way in which Postmen is in conversation with much earlier social­ ist realist genres in its glorification of the selfless service and human dedication of the rural cadres, their willingness to eat bitterness as they travel out to remote villages to connect with peasants. This resonance is further intensified by the scenario of the son be­ ing willing to accede to his father’s post, even though it represents a hardship and a for­ feiting of other more upwardly mobile possibilities for his life.

Louisa Schein

Louisa Schein teaches Anthropology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is author of Minority Rules: The Miao and the Femi­ nine in China’s Cultural Politics (Duke), co-editor with Tim Oakes of Translocal Chi­ na: Linkages, Identities and the Reimagining of Space (Routledge) and co-editor with Purnima Mankekar of Media, Erotics and Transnational Asia (Duke). Her articles have appeared in Journal of Asian Studies, positions, Cultural Anthropology, Social Text, Modern China, and American Quarterly and she is currently completing a book on Hmong transnational media, “Rewind to Home: Hmong Media and Gendered Dias­ pora.” With Peter O’Neill, she directed a documentary Better Places: Hmong of Provi­ dence a Generation Later (2012), and is working with filmmaker Va-Megn Thoj on a documentary on Hmong worlds of health and healing. She has been involved most re­ cently in anti-racist activism and publishing around the Eastwood film Gran Torino in collaboration with lead actor Bee Vang.

Page 21 of 21

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film

Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film   Andy Rodekohr The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0029

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the ideological and technological means of representing the crowd in four Mainland Chinese films, The Big Road (1934), Prairie Fire (1962), The Big Parade (1986), and Aftershock (2010). Summoned on-screen in order to interpellate and galva­ nize the off-screen audience, the figure of the crowd resonates not just with the narra­ tives of collectivity each of these films espouses to varying degrees, but also epitomizes a uniquely cinematic mode of reproduction and propagation. At the same time, the filmic projection that connects collective spectatorship to mass spectacle also produces a sense of the ghostly: the presence of the film crowd constantly confronts its own passing and disappearance. Each of the four films examined in this chapter is engaged with the imagi­ nation and ultimate spectrality of the crowd in different ways and helps us to rethink the interaction of historical narrative, cinematic technology, and movie audiences in China. Keywords: crowd, spectator, spectacle, specter, mass medium, technology, ideology, narrative, projection

The visual representation of a crowd notoriously became an object of modern critical re­ flection in Lu Xun’s 魯迅 famous 1923 preface to A Call to Arms (吶喊). Lu Xun recalls how, at the end of one of his microbiology classes in Japan, the instructor showed a lantern slide depicting the execution by the Japanese of a Chinese man accused of spying for the Russians during the Russo-Japanese War. Horrified by the apparent apathy on the faces of the spectators visible within the image, Lu Xun decided to quit his medical studies in or­ der to focus instead on trying to heal the spirit of China through literature. Reading the crowd as synecdochically representative of the Chinese populace in general, Lu Xun con­ cludes, “An ignorant and backwards citizenry, no matter how strong and healthy their bodies may be, can only serve as the materials and onlookers of such meaningless public spectacles.”1 The scene of a shizhong 示眾 (literally, “public warning” or “spectacle”) appears repeated­ ly in Lu Xun’s fiction, serving as a leitmotif as well as an exhortation. Lu Xun admonishes the crowd by revealing it in the mirror of his fiction, effectively refiguring the transitive sense of the verb-object binome (“remonstrating the crowd [by exposing someone to it]”) Page 1 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film into a passive one (“making the crowd visible”).2 The visual dynamic at work in Lu Xun’s utilization of the term shizhong, which situates the crowd simultaneously as both the sub­ ject of exposure (the “materials” [材料]) and the object of demonstration (the audience of “onlookers” [看客]) would become the crucial contradiction embedded in the visual depic­ tion of crowds in Chinese cinema over the coming decades. Taking this tension between spectacle and spectator as a starting point, this chapter looks at how the crowd is sum­ moned on-screen to interpellate, produce, and galvanize crowds off-screen. To this end, I will use an examination of the technological means and cinematic modes of their depic­ tion, while introducing an additional element of the spectral to complicate this estab­ lished duality. Rey Chow’s valuable reading of the lantern slide incident brings focus to the dis­ orienting power of the “technologized visuality.”3 The shock that Lu Xun recounts is not merely a crystallization of his despair over his country’s plight, she argues, but also a consequence of “the process of magnification and amplification that is made possible by the film medium.”4 In 1896, a decade before Lu Xun’s encounter with the projected crowd image, Gustave Le Bon, in his famously paranoid and prophetic treatise on crowd psy­ chology, The Crowd, similarly finds in the magic lantern an ominously powerful medium (p. 527)

for transmitting ideas to the masses due to the crowd’s innate ability to uncritically ab­ sorb images: “Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images. It is only images that terrify or attract them and become motives of action.”5 Le Bon’s foreboding sense of the coming “era of crowds,”6 as with the urgency in Lu Xun’s task of reforming the Chinese crowd, is inextricable from the emerging technolo­ gies of the projected image. The same year of Le Bon’s treatise, the Lumière brothers began screening projected mo­ tion pictures, and over the course of the next several decades, cinema would be trans­ formed from a popular and novel entertainment to a full-fledged mass medium. This transformation would also spur the proliferation of crowd images, from the spectacular and crowded Hollywood battle scenes of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) to the di­ alectical and heroic collective forms found in Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (1925).7 Anxiety and enthusiasm over film’s potential as an object of collective spectator­ ship precipitated a discourse of a mass politics that conceives of the crowd not merely as a visible element in film, but also as a collective—and collectivizing—compulsion on- and off-screen. The relationship here is more than coincidental; from the visual and narrative content of many films, to the technical apparatus of projection, to the architectural space of the theater that allows for collective reception, crowds are an effect of film as much as they enable the cinematic experience itself. At the level of the visible, the crowd as on-screen motif projects a particular historio­ graphic vision; embedded in its image is a specific historical rendering of the crowd, from the egalitarian union struggling for revolution, to the unruly mob threatening to throw so­ ciety into the tumult of a darker, more barbaric past, to the masses of capitalist consump­ tion, dreaming of the technology of bourgeois living. The apparatus, as well, mirrors the proliferation of crowds at the turn of and in the first decades of the twentieth century. Page 2 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film Cinematic technology that processes still images through the operations of mechanical reproduction and spectacular projection may also be thought of as a procedure for social transformation through the introduction and mobilization of the modern “technology” of the masses. Walter Benjamin, in a footnote to his famous essay on the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, traces the connection between the developing technolo­ gies of photography, sound recording, and most importantly film (in which “the masses are brought face to face with themselves”), stating plainly, “Mass reproduction is aided especially by the reproduction of the masses.”8 Benjamin’s keen pronouncement figures the crowd as audience into the reception of film. Spectator theory has primarily argued for an individual, isolated viewer whose response to the film has at most a “cellular” rela­ tionship to the rest of the audience—given that, as (p. 528) Vanessa Schwartz reminds us, “it is necessarily among a crowd that we find the cinematic spectator,”9 this premise does little to account for the potential for mass persuasion or the production of mass fantasies that so many film theorists and cultural critics saw in film’s early decades. The anxious excitement expressed by filmmakers, critics, and politicians is rooted in film’s ability to incite its audience. Perhaps most powerfully, it is in the interaction of these three structural levels of content, form, and apparatus that something resembling a crowd is produced; here I am thinking of something like what early French film theorists called photogé nie, referring to the uncanny sense of aesthetic possibility in film that marks it as an art rather than just a mechanical novelty.10 That is, based on a mechanical system of reproduction, film’s latent potential for the enhancement of vision is bound to­ gether with its capacity as a mass medium. Photogé nie in this sense constitutes a form of aesthetic engagement that corresponds to a collective subjectivity rather than an individ­ ual one, and even, as Nina Lara Rosenblatt writes, renders “mass itself as a kind of tech­ nological form, a machine whose energies could similarly be directed toward the appre­ hension of specific objects and images.”11 Yet the experience of this “afterimage” in film, similar to the psychological workings of a crowd in the way that it unites the perspectives of its individual members, is produced at the most basic level by difference and invisibili­ ty: the spaces between the frames that comprise the magical effect of movement also con­ fer on film a sense of the spectral, a haunting reminder of what Raymond Bellour calls “the stop of death.”12 The cinematic doubling that occurs here, the sense of reality trans­ posed into the phantasmagoria of the film, does not simply animate the audience in the model of the crowd it depicts on the screen; rather, film becomes, as Gilberto Perez puts it, “a dream that reclaims reality,” creating an imaginary of the crowd already ghosted.13 The production of the sense of unity in a crowd is, therefore, projected. Represented onscreen, the crowd in film can become a mirror through which the audience recognizes it­ self as a collective. The identification process, however, reproduces the sense of collectiv­ ity as a spectacular dreamworld: “They know themselves not only as the subject, the audi­ ence, but as the object, the spectacle, the movie,” writes Rey Chow.14 In this way, the cin­ ematic image of the crowd mediates the relationship between the body politic as such, and as it is imagined. The medium of film and how it connects to its audience have helped make cinema a pivotal arena for the production of the crowd, in the senses of both its col­ lective reception and its reproducibility. A genealogy of the figure of the crowd in history Page 3 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film should not only focus on how it has come into existence within discursive categories at the junction of the historical and the political, but also must account for the collective compulsions embedded in the media of film itself. The development of modernity in China has been tightly correlated with the construction of a “new people,” a crucial effort, as illustrated in Lu Xun’s anecdote about the lantern slide, in intellectual and artistic activities since the beginning of the twentieth century. From the politically conscious movies of the Left-Wing Cinema Movement (左翼電影運動) that emerged in the 1930s, to the socialist realist propaganda of the Maoist era, to the apex of the visual imaginary of the crowd during the Cultural Revolution, we (p. 529) can trace a trajectory of the crowd image that follows a narrative of collective enlightenment and emancipation, from the backward group of spectators drawn to the cruel theater of corporeal punishment in Lu Xun’s slideshow to the sublime union of the masses under the banner of Mao Zedong Thought (毛澤東思想). But it would be a mistake to assign a linear course of evolution to the concept of “the people” in Chinese aesthetic discourse. Ques­ tions such as who belongs to “the masses,” how they are imagined and envisioned, and who holds the authority to speak on their behalf, are constantly subject to the political vi­ cissitudes and historical contingencies of specific points in time. My approach to the crowd seeks to complicate and undermine the received narrative of Chinese film history, rather than to confirm it. I choose to foreground the figure of the crowd rather than that of the people or the masses precisely because of the productive slippage between these terms; whereas the latter terms imply a totalizing (and politically reified) abstraction of national ethos, the “crowd,” through its indeterminate and even dangerous volatility, lays bare the contestations and struggles entailed in the ongoing process of collectively defining China. Moving the crowd from Lu Xun’s object of remon­ stration to Mao’s heroically manifested subject on the film screen is a process in which the spectacular image invariably projects a kind of afterimage. The crowd, as conceived in this chapter, is a cinematic effect, in the fullest sense of the term: making use of the technological elements of film, it is a virtual representation on-screen that also seeks to produce off-screen collectivities. In this chapter I look at four films from Mainland China, each produced at a different piv­ otal moment in the history of Chinese cinema. These four works are not meant to com­ prise an exhaustive, or even representative, list of movies with spectacular crowd scenes, but rather to illuminate the political implications of the crowd image, as well as the im­ plicit assumptions of film as a mass medium. In this way, the cinematic technology com­ pels us to reckon with the crowd itself as a kind of projection, a filmic presence continual­ ly confronting its own disappearance. The first example, the ghostly resurrection of the revolutionary crowd at the end of Sun Yu’s 孫瑜 The Big Road (大路, 1934), marks the emergence of a socially progressive film consciousness in the 1930s. In the second film, Gu Eryi’s 顧而已 and Zhang Junxiang’s 張駿祥 Prairie Fire (燎原, 1962), the glory of the originary myth of workers’ solidarity at Anyuan is displaced by the volatility of contempo­ rary turf wars in the political arena. Next, Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 Fifth Generation classic, The Big Parade (大閱兵, 1986) shows how crowd formation endures in films of the 1980s Page 4 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film not only as a powerful reminder of an ongoing fascination with the construction of the crowd as part of national mythology, but as an aesthetic dilemma of the postrevolutionary era as well. By way of conclusion, I discuss Feng Xiaogang’s 馮小剛 recent blockbuster, Af­ tershock (唐山大地震, 2010), and specifically its reconstruction of a collective memory from the remnants of national trauma. By analyzing the emergence and exhibition of collective displays in film and considering film’s role as a mass medium, I want to rethink the interaction between historical narra­ tive, cinematic technology, and movie audience. Of course, countless more instances of the crowd image in Chinese cinema exist, many of which would appear to fit neatly into an established narrative, both in the PRC and in the West, about the crowd’s (p. 530) role in Chinese society and history. I, however, would like to focus on how crowd images have a way of not only evoking their own historical antecedents, but also projecting their own erasure in an undercurrent of violence and potential annihilation. The four films dis­ cussed below each illustrate the possibility (or inevitability) of the dissolution and erasure of the crowd, thereby summoning crowds as a kind of effect rather than merely a motif, whether through revolutionary sacrifice, ideological reification, reflective alienation, or popular catharsis.

The Big Road (1934): The Crowd’s Filmic Res­ urrection The emergence of the crowd in Chinese cinema coincides with a concerted effort among some filmmakers and studios in the early 1930s to produce more socially and ideological­ ly engaged works. Depicting the lives of the lower classes and arousing national patriotic sentiment as resistance against the Japanese invasion were key elements in the campaign for national salvation and the advancement of the cause of class struggle. Unlike similar efforts in literature and drama—such as the concurrent movement for literary massifica­ tion (文學大眾化運動), which sought to address a particular lack of popular appeal on the part of the literary word and modern stage15—mass-mediated and mass-consumed film seemed ideally suited to become the “sharpest ideological weapon of class struggle.”16 The retrospectively labeled Left-Wing Cinema Movement was inaugurated within an insti­ tutional framework and supported by the Chinese Communist Party, but a lack of funds, in addition to the strictly enforced censorship guidelines of the ruling Nationalist Party, meant that in order to succeed their films had to perform well at the box office.17 Cinema at that time was primarily a commercial enterprise more concerned with attracting crowds than mobilizing them. Laikwan Pang attributes the success of leftist-oriented films in the early 1930s to their ability to turn profits for the struggling Shanghai studio, noting their “success in ideological terms was necessarily conditioned to the films’ popularity among the mass.”18 Picturing the crowd on-screen in this context is thus already marked with ambivalence; the revolutionary masses are a subject of films and object of filmic in­ terpellation as much as they are paying customers to a spectacle, wanting to be enter­ tained. Page 5 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film Also relevant here is the fact that, in stylistic terms, most of these films borrow more from the Hollywood melodramas that dominated the Shanghai film market at the time, rather than more theoretically collective forms of Soviet dialecticalism. Ironically, Hollywood’s 1930s Hays Code, notorious for requiring that married couples never be shown sharing a bed, clearly reflected an awareness of film’s collectivizing impact on the­ ater audiences in its specification that “Psychologically, the larger the audience the lower the moral mass resistance to suggestion.”19 Film scholar Michael Tratner, in his book Crowd Scenes, shows how Hollywood’s response to film’s inherent political potential (p. 531) actually shares much of the crowd rhetoric with the collectivist cinemas of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, but “redirects” the passion that fuels mass politics into private romance. Rather than escaping the crowd through romance (as Freud would have it in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego), the inherently unwholesome lustfulness of crowds, stimulated and conditioned by film’s collective experience, can be funneled into more edifying and socially benign forms of love.20 In Chinese films of the 1930s, the com­ petition between these notions of film as sensational melodrama or ideological weaponry produced a stylistic hybridity in the crowd image, a call to revolution marked with the al­ lure of spectacle. The Big Road was filmed in July of 1934 and released during the Spring Festival in early 1935. Sun Yu, one of the few Chinese directors of the time to have received formal train­ ing in the United States, had explored nationalist and revolutionary themes in his previ­ ous films for the Lianhua 聯華 Film Company, but to meet the demands of the plot of The Big Road he needed more than just that the leads to be stars, he also needed an ensemble cast of stars to ensure that the film’s collectivizing message came across clearly.21 The film follows a group of six male friends who embark on a road-building project that would serve as a crucial supply line for the Chinese army in its fight against the Japanese. The motley group, which includes an ambitious intellectual, a former ruffian, a brooding ro­ mantic, and so on, is led by Brother Jin (played by Jin Yan 金焰), who has spent nearly his entire life as part of a road-building crew and even witnesses the death of his own father in the midst of the strenuous labor. Brother Jin has a unique ability to rouse crowds into action whenever the need arises, as well as to bring new members into his ever-growing group. His talent at rallying the crowd and channeling its violent instincts into a healthy desire for national service is manifested several times in the film, including key scenes in which he musters the assembly of road builders and later convinces the fearful mob try­ ing flee an impending attack from the Japanese army to stay and fight. These crowd scenes typically alternate from eye-level, or even low-angle, shots that stress Brother Jin’s heroism (further highlighted by his righteously glowing and often shirtless physique), to high-angle crane shots that make visible the crowd in the midst of formation. This por­ trayal of the crowd as an alluring, exhilarating force reminds us more of a carnival than a revolution: an elation in the spectacle of upturned hierarchies rather than ideological propagation. The carnivalesque egalitarianism in the revolutionary crowd that heightens the sense of filmic spectacle on display would become a common motif in leftist films of the 1930s, perhaps most memorably in the parade of misfits that opens Yuan Muzhi’s 袁牧 之 1937 classic, Street Angel (馬路天使), or the uproarious mob of children that save the Page 6 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film day in Cai Chusheng’s 蔡楚生 “Five Brothers” (小五義) segment for the 1937 omnibus project Lianhua Symphony (聯華交響曲). Rallying cries for the downtrodden and appeals to national and class camaraderie are the most obvious way that the collective is invoked in The Big Road. Contemporary criticism of the film has primarily focused on its treatment of the characters’ sexuality (mostly by reading one particular scene in which the two restaurant girls daydream about each of the six workers while sharing a cuddle), and whether the deferral of sexual (p. 532) desire constitutes a sublimation of desire to the political work of revolution.22 Rather than follow the psychoanalytical reading that assumes an antagonism between sex and revolution, I would agree with Laikwan Pang, who argues that in the film “sexual urges are not avoid­ ed but indeed fulfilled through political participation, although the libidinal is ultimately satisfied in a destructive way through death.”23 As intriguing as the suggestion of a kind of collective romance or sexuality in the film might be, I will focus instead on the final death scene, which provides not only an apt counterpoint to the earlier daydream se­ quence, but also a uniquely cinematic rendering of the phantasmagoric nature of the crowd imagination.

Figure 28.1 Using superimposition, the ghosts of the road workers rise up from their corpses in the final scene of The Big Road

Figure 28.2 The final shot of The Big Road superimposes Dingxiang’s face over the crowd of workers in the background

Page 7 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film Following the overthrow of a villainous traitor, the crew redoubles its efforts to finish building the road so that the Chinese forces can defend against Japanese aggression. Just as they achieve success, a Japanese plane cuts down every member of the road crew as they work, save for the younger girl from the restaurant, Dingxiang (played by Chen Yanyan 陳燕燕). Dingxiang’s father laments that everyone has been killed, but Dingxiang refuses to accept this, and defiantly exclaims, “No! They are not dead!” On-screen we then see the shimmering ghosts of the road workers rise from their corpses and happily get right back to work (see fig. 28.1).24 The film’s final shot of a close-up of Dingxiang’s face layered over images of soldiers and workers along the road in the background seems to confirm that this phantasmal resurrection is but a subjective “vision,” as Chris Berry claims, but also makes clear the message of internalizing their collective spirit (see fig. 28.2).25 The special effect that superimposes the semitransparent ghosts of the workers over their corpses produces a palimpsest: the ghostly visualization of wholeness that the crowd compels carries its own double of the specter and even conditions the anticipation of its dissolution, extinction, and disappearance. The crowd is caught up in the represen­ tational and filmic dynamic that engenders and sustains it, negatively pictured in absence through this very system of coming-into-being. Even (and especially) within (p. 533) the revolutionary crowd, we find a haunting recurrence of violence, sacrifice, and martyr­ dom. In this way, every crowd is always already doubled and every mass bears the possi­ bility of massacre.

Prairie Fire (1962): Disappearing the Crowd in­ to Myth The communist triumph that culminated with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 brought about a thorough reorganization, nationalization, and expansion of China’s film industry, as well as its assumption of the most prominent role in figuring a mass, national culture under the direction of the Party leadership. One of the primary tasks for filmmakers and the government in the 1950s and 1960s was that of increasing viewership. While only five hundred or so movie theaters were in operation in 1949, most­ ly in major cities, by the end of that year there were over a hundred additional projection teams bringing newsreels, Soviet features, and recent domestic productions to rural vil­ lages, military bases, and industrial centers.26 By 1960, the number of projection teams would increase more than a hundred-fold, reaching every corner of China.27 Tina Mai Chen’s important research into film’s role after 1949 as an essential element in establish­ ing Maoist modernity shows how filmic practices articulated a sense of national belong­ ing and played a pivotal role in the construction of “the people.”28 Beyond merely deter­ mining the content on display in films, CCP policies took the collective nature of film viewership as their basis for expanding the collective subject of the nation. Following the collapse of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the PRC in the late 1950s, Chinese filmmakers sought to create new works that departed from (p. 534) Soviet formulas, reenvisioning China’s own revolutionary past as an integral, ac­ Page 8 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film tive part of the construction of the nation’s socialist future. Xudong Zhang writes that the complex experience of Chinese socialism “is deeply embedded in the utopia and ideology of the collective effort to create not only history, but its narration, its narrativity, its cul­ ture.”29 Film’s role in constructing an indigenous revolutionary tradition necessarily fea­ tured the image of the crowd, projected and reimagined into the past as antecedents of the contemporary masses. Lineage is itself another kind of crowd image that connects present movements to a legitimating history, but it crucially depends on these predeces­ sors’ sacrificial absence to arouse motivation and compel commitment in the present. The 1962 film Prairie Fire—the title alludes to Mao’s famous revolutionary crowd metaphor in his slogan, “A single spark can start a prairie fire” (星星之火, 可以燎原)—ex­ plicitly establishes this kind of imagination of the crowd lineage. Beginning in 1905 with a depiction of a failed attempt by workers to negotiate for unpaid wages at an unnamed Jiangxi mine, the film concludes with the triumph of a successfully organized strike. The Qing officials operating in the mine murder the workers’ representative and send troops to massacre the unarmed miners waiting outside. The climactic scene, set in 1922, eerily recalls, right down to the shot arrangement, the earlier sequence that ended in disaster. Through the educational and ideological training brought by the Communist Party, how­ ever, the miners are able to secure a major victory. What’s more, the film ends with a chant that projects their achievements into a timeless future, “Long live the workers!” (工 人萬歲). The temporal arrangement that frames the film, therefore, assumes the nature of the crowd imagination in CCP ideology: from suffering, sacrifice, and death are forged the immortal bonds of class consciousness and the promise of utopia.

Figure 28.3 Lei Huanjue addresses the victorious workers at the climax of Prairie Fire

This sort of ideological reading of the crowd image in the film is limited, however, and a different sort of haunting crowd is evident in the historical context of the film’s produc­ tion and release, as well as the legacy of the subject of the film itself. Based on the victo­ rious workers’ strike at Anyuan four decades earlier (and filmed on location), Prairie Fire was released in late 1962, coinciding with efforts within the CCP to mythologize the Great Strike of Anyuan, as well as fierce intra-Party leadership struggles over control of the revolutionary narrative. Elizabeth Perry notes the ways in which venerating Anyuan in the historical memory in the 1950s and 1960s had more to do with “the current objective Page 9 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film of regime consolidation” following the nation’s founding than with establishing a factual record of what actually happened there.30 The teacher Lei Huanjue (played by Wang Shangxin 王尚信), the protagonist of Prairie Fire who travels to the mine to set up a night school for workers, is explicitly modeled after Liu Shaoqi 劉少奇, who took the reigns of power from Mao in the wake of the disastrous Great Leap Forward. Mao, who had in­ structed Liu to go to Anyuan in 1921, and Li Lisan 李立三, who was the primary organizer of the workers there and who implemented Mao’s instructions to establish the school, are left unmentioned in the film.31 The work’s attribution of heroic leadership to only one per­ son evidences a politically motivated construction of a cult of personality around Liu Shaoqi in the early 1960s, but also foregrounds the problem of “how to depict the ideo­ logically correct relationship between the leader and the masses.”32 Just a (p. 535) few years later during the Cultural Revolution, the visually reciprocal, mutually constitutive relationship hinted at in Prairie Fire would become of utmost importance in the deified image of Mao, at the expense of the then-disgraced Liu.

Figure 28.4 The workers sing as the camera starts a slow pan across the crowd in Prairie Fire

At the film’s climactic moment during Lei’s negotiation with the mine’s iron-fisted man­ agement, Lei reveals the throngs of striking workers to the owners in an arresting display of the crowd’s power. Overwhelmed by the number of workers that descend from all an­ gles, the cowed mine owners beg Lei to calm them and promise to negotiate (see fig. 28.3). Amassed outside the balcony of the owner’s cushy offices, the workers sing in uni­ son, “We are not beasts of burden, we are human!” (我們不是牛馬, 我們是人), as the craned camera pans dramatically across the assembled masses (see fig. 28.4). The rallying cry for the dignity of workers stresses that the process of becoming human necessarily means working collectively in solidarity. Lei is shown in this scene not merely (p. 536) as the clever representative of the workers, but as their cinematic director. On his signal, the workers are unveiled to the mine owners from the panoramic perch of the balcony, shout­ ing and singing the slogans he has provided them. The historical lesson in the film, predictably, upholds the heroic leader’s ability to bring the crowd into being. Equipped with the Communist gospel, Lei Huanjue (that is, Liu Shaoqi) is presented as a savior of the masses who arms them with the correct ideologi­ cal training that lets them overcome their previous annihilation and physically manifests Page 10 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film their spectacular visual presence. What at first may seem to be a triumphant vanquishing of the crowd’s ghostly double that has haunted it, however, is complicated by the film’s own history of erasure. Not long after the film’s release, Li Lisan—who may have sensed which way the political winds were blowing—penned a review of the film, “After Watching Prairie Fire,” which criticizes the work’s lack of emphasis on Mao Zedong Thought.33 But even this bit of political genuflection was not enough to save Li, who was cited in Jiang Qing’s 江青 denunciation of the film as a “poisonous weed” (大毒草).34 Chairman Mao’s ex­ clusive appropriation of the legacy of Anyuan was, over the next few years, immortalized in another myth of origins, the epic The East Is Red (東方紅, 1965) and one of the most re­ produced images in history, the oil painting Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan (毛主席去安源, 1967). The short-lived personality cult of Liu Shaoqi that Prairie Fire was a part of would lead to his downfall, as he became one of the most frequent targets of the Red Guards, even after his death under house arrest in 1969.35 In May 1967, the magazine Red Flag (紅旗) published a scathing critique of the film, accusing it of “falsifying history” (篡改歷史) and linking it to Liu’s own unpardonable position as the “Khrushchev of China.”36 Underlying the political machinations and ferocious contestations over the claim to the revolutionary tradition of Anyuan, however, is the disappearance of the 14,000 or so workers that participated in the great strike. Perry quotes a recent interview of an Anyuan miner, who comments on the worsening working conditions of the mines: “These days our Anyuan workers’ slogan goes like this, ‘in the past we were beasts of burden, and now we are still not human.’”37 The fleeting wholeness of emancipated humanity spectacularly projected in Prairie Fire has continued, it seems, along a trajectory of disap­ pearance that continues to haunt the present day. The repeated and contradictory efforts to glorify the individual leadership of the strike are implicitly foreshadowed in the film’s ending. As the miners cheer, “Long live the workers!” one of them wonders, “Isn’t the call for long life only for the emperor?”

The Big Parade (1986): Deconstructing the Crowd in Ritual The Cultural Revolution was in many ways the pinnacle of the crowd image in China. De­ pictions of the crowd in the process of coming into being gave way to ones of (p. 537) spectacular immanence—an unambiguous and sublime realization of the revolutionary mass. During the Cultural Revolution, the crowd image became inextricably bound to Mao’s notion of “perpetual revolution,” appearing not only in theatrical and film produc­ tions, but also in the mass rituals of struggle sessions and political rallies. The bold visual language of the model operas (樣板戲), featuring elaborate routines of choreographed as­ semblages of dancers and actors moving in unison and forming enough repeated patterns to rival a Busby Berkeley musical, was matched by the fantastic imagery of the era’s pro­ paganda posters, nearly always highlighting the unity and strength of the crowd through stylized trademarks such as the use of uniform gestures, a unidirectional gaze, and, per­ haps most significantly, an open-ended capacity to grow beyond the frame of the picture. Page 11 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film The extension of the crowd image and its powerful pull into nearly all facets of social and visual life by means of technologies of mass reproduction during the Cultural Revolution is surpassed in imagistic magnitude and sublimity only by the figure of Mao himself, in looming singularity and transcendent wholeness. For Fifth Generation filmmakers, forging a new aesthetics for Chinese film meant not on­ ly challenging the master narrative of revolutionary Maoist ideology, but also dismantling the visual dynamic of the crowd image. In response to the radical profusion of crowds and crowd images of the Cultural Revolution, these Fifth Generation films featured both a vig­ orous renewal of the engagement with individuality and nature as well as a deconstruc­ tion of the revolutionary myth, but a close look at the visual and cinematographic style developed in these works also exhibits a persistent fascination with the crowd image. Di­ rector Chen Kaige remarked of the drum dance scene in his 1984 film Yellow Earth (黃土 地) that “the unified way people dress up and dance is a thing all in itself.”38 How the Fifth Generation and their films picture this “thing all in itself” in the wake of the Cultur­ al Revolution thus manifests the crowd as an uncanny, haunting compulsion, a hollow ges­ ture toward the utopia it once promised. Maurice Meisner uses the term “ritualization of utopia” to describe the persistence of forms that follows the fulfillment of revolution; emptied of their revolutionary corporeality, these rituals suggest “not the simple failure of revolution but rather a process of degeneration which seems inherent in its very suc­ cess.”39 Integral to the Fifth Generation’s much-ballyhooed expression of an individualist, critical cinematic subjectivity, the haunting presence of the crowd constantly intervenes in its formation, premising it upon an uncannily similar process of sublimation that under­ lay nearly all cultural production in China in the Maoist era. Instead of arousing the view­ ers’ fervor for revolution, the films instead provide a reminder of the essential artifice that overlays both politics and film. The Big Parade was the second collaboration between director Chen Kaige, cinematogra­ pher Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, and art director He Qun 何群 following the remarkable success of Yellow Earth. Filmed over a summer in Hubei province in sweltering heat, the film was designed to commemorate the 1984 National Day parade through Tiananmen Square that marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the PRC. It follows a division of ser­ vicemen enduring the physically and mentally grueling training required to participate in the parade. On the training ground, collectivity (p. 538) and uniformity of action are in­ stilled into the soldiers, systemizing every aspect of the group from their posture to the height of each of their steps. Zhang’s cinematography in The Big Parade deconstructs both the crowd as a mass unit and the ritual of its formation. Slow pans across assembled torsos, arms and legs as doctors taking careful stock of each soldier’s height, shoulder width, and relative position of their knees reveal some of the visual tricks involved in the Party’s aesthetics of the masses. The intensity of the discipline drilled into the soldiers, which Zhang shoots in a way that Eugene Wang calls a “formalizing impulse toward bodi­ less geometry,” produces the impression of a singular entity, emphasized by the repeated use of long shots and overexposed takes that merge bodies together in the shimmering heat waves rising from the tarmac.40 Page 12 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film Over the course of the film, the soldiers originally chosen on the basis of their physical similarities and visual cohesiveness are gradually differentiated through characterization. Each struggles with his own personal tribulations, and the strict training regiment taxes them physically and emotionally, as the visual tension implicit in their individuality and occasional isolation in the barracks contrasts with the highly regulated scenes of the training ground (see fig. 28.5). Placing the characters’ internal psyches at stake effective­ ly breaks down the unified crowd into its individual components; or, as Yingjin Zhang puts it, “performing in state-sponsored events inevitably fragments the unified subjectivity (people as ‘pedagogic object’—the nation-people).”41 Near the end of the film, the squad leader Li Weicheng (played by Wang Xueqi 王學圻, who also played the communist soldier in Yellow Earth) gives a moving speech highlighting both the futility and nobility of their task; after walking nearly ten thousand kilometers in preparation for just ninety-six steps before the rostrum at Tiananmen Square, Li asks, “Is this not a Long March?” evoking the crucial event in Chinese communist historical mythology before he concludes by reciting a line from the national anthem, “March of the Volunteers” (義勇軍進行曲): “Let our flesh and blood forge our new Great Wall!” Each of these statements not only appeals to a revo­ lutionary genealogy, but also presents a problem of visualization of how the collective whole can be pictured and realized.

Figure 28.5 A disillusioned, individual soldier in the barracks creates a contrast with the idealized image of the crowd in The Big Parade

The latter image is particularly resonant in Chinese revolutionary culture, and harks back to the leftist classic in which the song first appeared, Xu Xingzhi’s 許幸之 1935 film, (p. 539) Children of Troubled Times (風雲兒女), which concludes with a young couple tak­ ing up arms and joining the masses in song as they march against the invading Japanese. The famous marching sequence dialectically builds the masses through a series of closeups on faces and marching feet and suggests a sense of unity through unidirectional movement and rousing music. Like Children of Troubled Times, The Big Parade concludes with “March of the Volunteers,” this time matched with footage shot at the 1984 National Day Parade. However, what seems at first to be standard, newsreel-like coverage of the marching units in front of rostrum takes a more contemplative turn during the final minute or so of the film, as the rousing march, accompanied by sounds of footsteps in lockstep, segues into a more somber, nostalgic melody while various military units pass by in slow motion (see fig. 28.6). These plaintive shots, filmed in a highly ritualistic man­ ner and edited together through slow fades, are protracted in a way that emphasizes the

Page 13 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film overwrought ideological formality of their action, as well as the ephemeral nature of such rituals. The release of The Big Parade was delayed by more than a year because of disagreements with the Film Bureau. Director Chen Kaige’s original intention was to end not with the pa­ rade, but with a series of shots of a deserted Tiananmen Square. The bureau’s objection to the overly ambivalent connotations of this image of an empty Tiananmen, and its insis­ tence that the ending instead include footage from the parade, demonstrates the bureau’s apprehension at the crowd’s erasure. In other words, The Big Parade explores the ghostly dimensions of the crowd, either in its absence or as a cinematic effect of ritualization. The final shot of The Big Parade, of an unidentifiable, silhouetted shot of a soldier’s head facing the red sun, foreshadows the final shot of Zhang Yimou’s directorial debut, Red Sorghum (紅高粱, 1987). The regeneration of the body politic in that film, in contrast to the deconstruction of the crowd through the excavation of its desolate ritualization in The Big Parade, is celebrated as a cultural myth predating the ruptures of history. The acces­ sible, commercial appeal of Red Sorghum, the way it “announces to the people the contin­ uation of history,”42 also signaled a new era of filmmaking for the masses, based on the crowd not so much as an object of ideological interpellation (or aesthetic deconstruction in the films of the Fifth Generation), but as a viewing and consuming audience.

Figure 28.6 The Big Parade closes with ritualized marching in slow motion

Conclusion: Aftershock (2010)—The Crowd Is Missing (p. 540)

Feng Xiaogang’s 2010 blockbuster Aftershock marked an unprecedented achievement in Chinese cinema. The first Chinese film to be financed in partnership with the Canadian IMAX Corporation, which specializes in high-resolution film and huge-screen projection, Aftershock attracted audiences in droves, becoming the most successful film ever pro­ duced in China up to that point.43 The triumph of Feng’s film not only speaks to the enor­ mous appetite for movies, and especially blockbusters, in contemporary China,44 it also testifies to the remarkable growth in the last two decades that has made China an eco­ nomic and technological powerhouse. The gargantuan scale of the film is matched by its epic scope. The timeframe of Aftershock, beginning at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 and concluding in the Olympic year of 2008, may suggest a chronicle of the Page 14 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film “new” China whose reforms and development have shifted the global paradigm, but by bookending his narrative with two catastrophic earthquakes Feng suggests that recent history may be more complex than the linear, triumphalist narrative found in other main­ stream films (such as the same year’s film it displaced as the biggest domestic box-office draw in the PRC record books, Huang Jianxin’s 黃建新 and Han Sanping’s 韓三平 The Founding of a Republic [建國大業]). Aftershock constantly reminds viewers of the massive loss of life that underscores the lived experience of this reform through repeated use of crowd imagery. These images, rather than serving as the medium of nationalist rituals (exemplified in the Zhang Yimou–directed opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games) are an abstracted and ghostly presence perceived in the remnants and memories that have survived. Aftershock, therefore, not only incorporates the crowd image, it uses the image to open up a reading of history at the level of the human. That is, the disembodied multiplicity that haunts Feng’s film reminds us of the masses’ disappearance in contemporary China. While the plot of the film concerns the tribulations of a single family, their personal loss and private memory are collectivized in Aftershock, and with it the possibility of reform­ ing social bonds on the basis of the responsibility owed to those lost. At the same time, Af­ tershock is quite unabashedly a commercial product and embraces fully the idea of film as a mass medium. Feng’s talent for tapping into popular sentiment is what has made him one of the most successful film directors in China, but he is also keenly aware of the limi­ tations of political filmmaking. In Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Deleuze writes that while in classical cinema the idea is that “the people are already there, real before being actual, ideal without being abstract,” in modern political cinema “the people are what is miss­ ing.”45 To the extent that these “missing people” are figured in the midst of “becoming… in new conditions of struggle,”46 the persistence of the crowd image in Feng’s film speaks to the struggle over the collective memory of the Chinese masses.

Figure 28.7 The rows of the names of victims in­ scribed onto the Tangshan earthquake memorial form another kind of visualization of the crowd in Feng Xiaogang’s Aftershock

Even before the title frame of the film, we are carried into the setting by a swarm of drag­ onflies that portend not just the impending catastrophe, but also the proliferation (p. 541) of crowd images throughout the film. The majority of the film’s crowds, however, take an abstracted form in death and memorial—from the countless corpses of the earthquake’s victims, to the fires burning in remembrance of those lost, to the names of the dead in­ scribed on the Tangshan memorial wall (see fig. 28.7). Feng Xiaogang mobilizes these crowd images to make the fullest use of the cinematic form and also to maximize the col­ Page 15 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film lectivity embedded in the film-watching experience. In this sense, the use of CGI technol­ ogy that overwhelms with the spectacle of destruction and extends the procession of troops, refugees, and gravestones to the horizon recalls Sun Yu’s exploration of the crowd’s particularly cinematic resonance in The Big Road seven and a half decades earli­ er. Unlike Sun’s film, which filmically projects a revived crowd into the dream of revolu­ tion, the abstractions of multiplicity in Aftershock evoke its particular postrevolutionary absence. Shelly Kraicer asks if the teary melodrama of the family’s struggles and ultimate reunion in Aftershock may also signal the sentimental release of “a country that recog­ nizes the emotional patterns of its own experiences in the film?”47 As the melodramatic intensity of spectacle overtakes the first half-hour’s disaster, the sense of loss and trauma are drawn from a deep repository of popular memory. Those who saw the film in the the­ ater often testify to the contagious nature of weeping during the film, and the collective catharsis proved a strong attraction to Chinese audiences. The film serves, therefore, as not just an excavation of the catastrophe at Tangshan, but a collective mourning ritual over the repeated historical ruptures of China’s recent past. The cinematic palimpsest suggested in the ghostly resurrection of the crowd in The Big Road finds its echo in After­ shock, but with a twist: rather than the masters of history, the very idea of the masses is born from the shared memory of loss, suffering, and sacrifice.

Figure 28.8 Director Feng Xiaogang recycled docu­ mentary footage of the national memorial service for Chairman Mao Zedong in his film Aftershock

The national and collective nature of the catastrophic trauma is further reinforced by two additional historical moments: The first is the death of Chairman Mao, which occurred only a few months after the Tangshan earthquake. Mao is not mentioned by name in Feng’s film and is pictured only briefly. Instead, his death is represented through a mon­ tage of mourning ceremonies, beginning with historical footage of crowds of mourners filling Tiananmen Square (see fig. 28.8).48 These shots of Mao’s funeral signal the demise not only of the Great Helmsman, but also of the exhibition of spectacular crowds as a dominant aesthetic mode of national representation. The ordered way the (p. 542) soldiers lower their heads at the moment of silence also brings to mind the ceremonial context of The Big Parade. As in Chen Kaige’s film, while the ornamental figure of the crowd con­ jures the mythical, revolutionary possibilities they have inherited, its belatedness, appear­ ing at a distinctly postrevolutionary moment, promises not plentitude, but spectral, and spectacular, absence.

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film The second traumatic event evoked in Aftershock is the catastrophic earthquake centered in Sichuan’s Wenchuan county in May 2008. In Aftershock, the outpouring of empathy that drives the brother and sister to volunteer reunites them, providing the narrative with an impossibly neat closure while also connecting the two disasters in the filmic imagina­ tion. Critics have noted that while there is the potential for a critical interpretation in Feng’s rendering of the Tangshan earthquake, the scenes in Sichuan hue closely to the government-sanctioned narrative of the heroic devotion of the People’s Liberation Army in the rescue efforts. The differences in style, however, may also provoke questions con­ cerning this official version of history. Like The Big Parade, Aftershock concludes with a gesture to a wall as a metaphor of the collectivity that binds China together as a nation. Rather than the nationalist appeal to the Great Wall, however, the Tangshan memorial wall somberly symbolizes the bonds, not just of victimhood, but of memory. The film’s overall theme of fragmented histories and its repeated use of crowd imagery are ways of inscribing the past onto the present yet also show the politics of erasure. In this way, Af­ tershock participates in the same dynamic of history-making and erasure as Prairie Fire, and both films can be seen as origin myths. Whereas Prairie Fire writes the crowd as a mythical figure of coming-into-being, Feng’s film confronts this myth through the subtle imagery of its disappearance. Aftershock is unquestionably a product of the commercial, transnational, mass culture that dominates mainstream film production in contemporary China, and its combination of epic sweep, melodramatic tension, and nationalist appeal played (p. 543) a huge role in its unprecedented box-office success. But in the way that it conjures the memories of an­ other, invisible crowd, the film is also writing a different kind of mass history, a collective history of fragments. Each of the four films examined in this chapter accede to the domi­ nant narrative of mass politics in modern China—one in which the crowd is endowed with qualities that project the collective imagination of a nation. At the same time, the repre­ sentational practices and cinematic effects of these images also produce a haunting effect that may complicate, or even undermine, that presumed trajectory.

Works Cited Anderson, Marston. The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Barnes, Brooks. “Imax to Open 75 New Theaters in China.” New York Times, March 24, 2011. Retrieved August 23, 2011, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/business/ media/24imax.html? Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illumina­ tions. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schoken Books, 1969. 217–251. Berry, Chris. “The Sublimative Text: Sex and Revolution in The Big Road.” East-West Film Journal 2.2 (June 1988): 66–86. Brownlow, Kevin. The Parade’s Gone By… New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Page 17 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film Chen, Tina Mai. “Propagating the Propaganda Film: The Meaning of Film in Chinese Communist Writings, 1949–1965.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.2 (Fall 2003): 154–193. Chow, Rey. Primitive Passions; Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chi­ nese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Clark, Paul. Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1987. Dai Jinhua. “Severed Bridge: The Art of the Sons’ Generation.” Trans. Lisa Rofel and Hu Ying. Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jin­ hua. Ed. Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow. New York: Verso, 2002. 13–48. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Dittmer, Lowell. “Liu Shaoqi’s Rehabilitation and Contemporary Chinese Politics.” Journal of Asian Studies 40.3 (May 1981): 455–479. Epstein, Jean. “On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie.” Trans. Tom Milne. Afterimage 10 (Autumn 1981): 20–23. Freud, Sigmund. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1922. Huang Xizhang 黃錫章. “Fandong dianying Liaoyuan yu Zhongguo de Xialuxiaofu” 反動電影 《燎原》與中國的赫魯曉夫 [Oppose the movie Prairie Fire and China’s Khrushchev]. Hongqi 紅旗 [Red flag] 1967: no. 7, 33–44. Kaes, Anton. “Movies and Masses.” Crowds. Ed. Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Tiews. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 149–157. Kraicer, Shelly. “Tremors and Trauma: Notes on Three Chinese Earthquake Movies.” dGenerate Films. September 14, 2010. Retrieved August 23, 2011, from http:// dgeneratefilms.com/shelly-kraicer-on-chinese-film/shelly-on-film-tremors-andtraumas-notes-on-three-chinese-earthquake-movies/. Laing, Ellen Johnston. The Winking Owl: Art in the People’s Republic of China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. New York: Macmillan, 1896. Liang Zhu 梁柱. Shengsi juelian: Li Sha yu Li Lisan de kuaguo hunyin 生死絕戀: 李莎與李立三 的跨國婚姻 [Undying devotion: The transnational marriage of Li Sha and Li Lisan]. Beijing: Zhonggongdangshi chubanshe, 2008. Lu Xun 魯迅. “Na Han zixu” 《吶喊》自序 [Preface to A Call to Arms]. Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 [Lu Xun’s complete works]. Vol. 1. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981. 415–421. Page 18 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film Meisner, Maurice. Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. (p. 547)

The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. “The Motion Picture Produc­ tion Code of 1930.” The Movies in Our Midst: Documents in the Cultural History of Film in America. Ed. Gerald Mast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. 321–333. Mulvey, Laura. Death 24× a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Pang, Laikwan. Building a New China in Cinema: The Left-Wing Cinema Movement, 1932– 1937. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Perez, Gilberto. The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Perry, Elizabeth. Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Perry, Elizabeth. “Reclaiming the Chinese Revolution.” Journal of Asian Studies 67.4 (No­ vember 2008): 1147–1164. Rosenblatt, Nina Lara. “Photogenic Neurasthenia: On Mass and Medium in the 1920s.” October 86 (August 1998): 47–62. Schwartz, Vanessa R. Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-siècle Paris. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Semsel George. “Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou: Fifth Generation Director and Cinematog­ rapher.” Chinese Film: The State of Art in the People’s Republic. Ed. George Semsel. New York: Praeger, 1987. 134–141. Shen, Vivian. The Origins of Left-Wing Cinema in China, 1932–37. New York: Routledge, 2005. Sun Yu 孫瑜. Yinhai fanzhou: Huiyi wo de yisheng 銀海泛舟: 回憶我的一生 [A drifting boat on silver seas: Remembering my life]. Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1987. Tratner, Michael. Crowd Scenes: Movies and Mass Politics. New York: Fordham Universi­ ty Press, 2008. Xia Yan 夏衍. “Zhuinian Qu Qiubai tongzhi” 追念瞿秋白同志 [Recollecting Comrade Qu Qi­ ubai]. Yi Qiubai 憶秋白 [Remembering Qiubai]. Beijing: Remin wenxue chubanshe, 1981. 313–316. Yau, Ka-Fai. “‘Zhong’: Chinese.” Crowds. Ed. Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Tiews. Stan­ ford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 262–264.

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film Zhang, Xudong. “The Power of Rewriting: Postrevolutionary Discourse on Chinese Social­ ist Realism.” Socialist Realism without Shores. Ed. Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Do­ brenko. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. 282–310. Zhang, Yingjin. Screening China: Critical Interventions, Cinematic Reconfigurations, and the Transnational Imaginary in Contemporary Chinese Cinema. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 2002.

Notes: (1.) Lu Xun 魯迅, “Na Han zixu 《吶喊》自序 ” [Preface to A Call to Arms], in Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 [Lu Xun’s complete works], vol. 1 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981), 417. (2.) See Ka-Fai Yau, “‘Zhong’: Chinese,” in Crowds, ed. Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Tiews (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 262–264. (3.) Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 4–11. (4.) Rey Chow, Primitive Passions, 6. (5.) Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (New York: Macmillan, 1896), 57. Le Bon’s monograph was translated into Chinese in 1920 as Qunzhong xinli 群 眾心理 by Wu Xuchu 吳旭初 and Du Shiye 杜師業. (6.) Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd, xv. (7.) For readings of these two films in these terms, see Michael Tratner, Crowd Scenes: Movies and Mass Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). (8.) Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illumi­ nations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schoken Books, 1969), 251. (9.) Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-siè cle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 179. (10.) See Jean Epstein, “On Certain Characteristics of Photogé nie,” trans. Tom Milne, Af­ terimage 10 (Autumn 1981): 20–23. (11.) Rosenblatt Nina Lara, “Photogenic Neurasthenia: On Mass and Medium in the 1920s,” October 86 (August 1998): 55. (12.) Raymond Bellour, quoted in Laura Mulvey, Death 24 × a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 32. (13.) Gilbert Perez, The Material Ghost (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 27. Page 20 of 24

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film (14.) Rey Chow, Primitive Passions, 33. For an intriguing reading of crowd transformation from revolutionary to commoditized in Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis, see Anton Kaes, “Movies and Masses,” in Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Tiews, Crowds, 149–157. (15.) On the massification of literature, see Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chi­ nese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 69–70. (16.) Xia Yan 夏衍, “Zhuinian Qu Qiubai tongzhi” 追念瞿秋白同志 [Recollecting Comrade Qu Qiubai], in Yi Qiubai 憶秋白 [Remembering Qiubai] (Beijing: Remin wenxue chubanshe, 1981), 315. (17.) See Laikwan Pang, Building a New China in Cinema: The Left-Wing Cinema Move­ ment, 1932–1937 (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 37–43. (18.) Laikwan Pang, Building a New China, 8. (19.) The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, “The Motion Picture Pro­ duction Code of 1930,” in The Movies in Our Midst, ed. Mast Gerald (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 323. (20.) See Michael Tratner, Crowd Scenes: Movies and Mass Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 1–11. (21.) Sun Yu 孫瑜, Yinhai fanzhou: Huiyi wo de yisheng 銀海泛舟: 回憶我的一生 [A drifting boat on silver seas: Remembering my life] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1987), 110–111. (22.) Chris Berry’s article “The Sublimative Text: Sex and Revolution in The Big Road,” East-West Film Journal 2.2 (June 1988): 66–86, in particular, has provoked numerous criti­ cal responses. See Laikwan Pang, Building a New China, 98–102; Shen Vivian, The Ori­ gins of Left-Wing Cinema in China, 1932–37 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 126–133; and Zhang Yingjin, Screening China: Critical Interventions, Cinematic Reconfigurations, and the Transnational Imaginary in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 2002), 120–125. (23.) Laikwan Pang, Building a New China, 101. (24.) Georges Méliès used this technique as early as 1898 in his short story “The Four Troublesome Heads” [Un homme de têtes], and Abel Gance used it in his 1919 master­ piece J’Accuse to create the ghostly effect of the march of dead soldiers of World War I. In a bit of tragic irony, the actors Gance used in that scene were soldiers on a short leave, and only days after the filming most had been killed at the front. See Brownlow Kevin, The Parade’s Gone By… (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 532–537. (25.) See Chris Berry, “The Sublimative Text,” 83.

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film (26.) These figures come from Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 36. (27.) Paul Clark, citing The People’s Daily, notes 10,000 projection units in 1958 and 14,565 in 1960. See Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema, 61–62. (28.) See Chen Tina Mai, “Propagating the Propaganda Film: The Meaning of Film in Chi­ nese Communist Writings, 1949–1965,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.2 (Fall 2003): 154–193. (29.) Xudong Zhang, “The Power of Rewriting: Postrevolutionary Discourse on Chinese Socialist Realism,” in Socialist Realism without Shores, ed. Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 282. (30.) See especially chapters 5 and 6 in Elizabeth Perry, Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolu­ tionary Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). (31.) Elizabeth Perry, citing a handbill from the Pingxiang City Library, notes that the script for the film originally included more than twenty references to Mao, but all were removed in the subsequent rewrites that were overseen by the vice minister of culture, Xia Yan (who had previously led the League of Left Wing Dramatists in the 1930s). See Elizabeth Perry, Anyuan. (32.) From a discussion of the famous Hou Yimin 候一民 painting Liu Shaoqi and the Anyuan Miners (劉少奇同志和安源礦工), completed in 1961 and displayed prominently in the Museum of the Chinese Revolution before it was destroyed by Red Guards in 1968. See Laing Ellen Johnston, The Winking Owl: Art in the People’s Republic of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 38–39. (33.) Li Lisan 李立三, “Kanle Liaoyuan yihou” 看了《燎原》以後 [After seeing Prairie Fire]. Li’s essay appeared in the People’s Daily in the summer of 1963 and is reprinted in Liang Zhu 梁柱, Shengsi juelian: Li Sha yu Li Lisan de kuaguo hunyin 生死絕戀: 李莎與李立三的跨國 婚姻 [Undying devotion: The transnational marriage of Li Sha and Li Lisan] (Beijing: Zhonggongdangshi chubanshe, 2008), 191–196. (34.) Under severe criticism in 1967, Li wrote to Jiang Qing directly with a self-criticism for having been incomplete in his essay, even admitting the “serious error” of not detail­ ing Liu Shaoqi’s “anti-Party, antisocialist, anti–Mao Zedong Thought” crimes. He commit­ ted suicide two weeks later. His letter is reprinted in Liang Zhu, Undying Devotion, 188– 191. (35.) For a detailed account of Liu’s persecution and posthumous rehabilitation, see Dittmer Lowell, “Liu Shaoqi’s Rehabilitation and Contemporary Chinese Politics,” Journal of Asian Studies 40.3 (May 1981): 455–454.

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film (36.) See Huang Xizhang 黃錫章, “Fandong dianying Liaoyuan yu Zhongguo de Xialuxiao­ fu” 反動電影《燎原》與中國的赫魯曉夫 [Oppose the movie Prairie Fire and China’s Khrushchev], Hongqi 紅旗 [Red flag] 1967: no. 7, 33–34. (37.) Quote from Yu Jianrong’s interview in Elizabeth Perry, “Reclaiming the Chinese Rev­ olution,” Journal of Asian Studies 67.4 (November 2008): 1161. (38.) Interview with George S. Semsel, “Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou: Fifth Generation Director and Cinematographer,” in Chinese Film: The State of Art in the People’s Republic, ed. George Semsel (New York: Praeger, 1987), 139–140. (39.) Maurice Meisner, Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays (Madison: Uni­ versity of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 214. (40.) See Eugene Wang’s chapter in this volume. (41.) Yingjin Zhang, Screening China, 173. (42.) Dai Jinhua, “Severed Bridge: The Art of the Sons’ Generation,” trans. Lisa Rofel and Hu Ying, in Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua, ed. Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow (New York: Verso, 2002), 34. (43.) Aftershock was quickly surpassed by Jiang Wen’s 姜文 Let the Bullets Fly (讓子彈飛, 2011). (44.) In 2011 IMAX announced a deal that will result in three hundred theaters in China by 2016, compared to the fourteen on which Aftershock premiered. See Brooks Barnes, “Imax to Open 75 New Theaters in China,” New York Times, March 24, 2011, retrieved August 23, 2011, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/business/media/24imax.html? (45.) Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Gale­ ta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 216–217. (46.) Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2, 216–217. (47.) Shelley Kraicer, “Tremors and Trauma: Notes on Three Chinese Earthquake Movies,” dGenerate Films, September 14, 2010, retrieved August 23, 2011, from http:// dgeneratefilms.com/shelly-kraicer-on-chinese-film/shelly-on-film-tremors-and-traumasnotes-on-three-chinese-earthquake-movies/. (48.) The montage in Aftershock crosscuts between several scenes of mourning, mimick­ ing the editing of the national moment of silence in the official film produced after Mao’s death, Eternal Glory to the Great Leader and Teacher, Chairman Mao Zedong (偉大的領袖 和導師毛澤東主席永垂不朽).

Andy Rodekohr

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Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film Andy Rodekohr is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Wake Forest University. He completed his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University on the figure of the crowd in modern Chinese literature and visu­ al culture in 2012.

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions

The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions   Kwai-Cheung Lo The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0030

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines how the idea of Asia(ism) as an abstract form seeks its own con­ tent through the representations in Chinese cinemas. It looks at some historical instances in Chinese cinematic productions, including the occupation cinema of Shanghai, the wartime Chongqing cinema, the leftist films of the Chinese Communist Party during the Sino-Japanese War, the PRC’s movies about the Korean War and the Cold War, and Hong Kong’s trans-Asian productions during the Cold War, in which the idea of Asia has been played out for utopian vision or ideological manipulation. With the visibility of alluring im­ ages on display via the signification of the cinematic apparatus, Asia as an intangible, transcendental idea generates certain affective or cognitive functions that may rupture or conceal the interpellating role of the film medium. Keywords: Asia, Asianism, ideology, Chinese cinemas, occupation cinema, Shanghai, Chongqing, Sino-Japanese War, Korean War, Cold War, Hong Kong, trans-Asian production

Although the idea of Asia is an abstraction in the sense of being a form that seeks its own content, it nevertheless must rely on historically concrete reincarnations—be they geopo­ litical, economic, civilizational, cultural, or religious. As a trope, Asia may represent an as­ piration, a concept, or perhaps even a political desire. As a utopian vision or a naked ideo­ logical manipulation, the idea of Asia could have compelling implications for actual prac­ tices and social relations, precisely because no singular definition or perspective of it can ever be satisfactory. We have witnessed how this idea has been taken over and controlled by state apparatuses and other organized institutions all too keen on appropriating it for their hegemonic ventures. To rescue the notion from being a mere tool used by dominant groups, we need to take seriously the possibility of its reinvention, and to approach it from new directions. Nevertheless, the retrieval of the historical may only render the past a collage of heterogeneous elements that can never generate any stability or long-lasting coherence. An uncertainty muddled with hearsay, lacunae, and gaps could be a transgres­ sion that wrests a different meaning to be mobilized in the present conjuncture, although its narrative would only be fragmented and fractured.

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions When the idea of Asia is embedded within a plural term such as Chinese cinemas, what was originally vague or excluded may again become meaningful and relevant and may even contain some unexpected power. If the plurality of Chinese cinemas (including films made in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and throughout the Chinese diaspora) can pose challenges to the monolithic and singular cultural landscape of China, what role does Asia as an idea play in helping us understand the complexity of these separated identities and their interconnectedness, or to detect any potential liberating power? With the visibility of alluring images on display via the signification of the cinematic apparatus, Asia as an intangible, transcendental idea generates certain affective or cognitive func­ tions that may rupture or conceal the interpellating role of (p. 549) the film medium. The way the idea of Asia is grasped, however, has always been very diverse, if not contradicto­ ry and conflicting, in the cultural and historical contexts of (trans)national cinemas in dif­ ferent Chinese communities, within other Asian societies, and beyond. For the United States and many European countries, Asia1 is a category that may be used to group films from a wide range of places, cultures, and ethnicities, based on a geographical notion of the West as dominant. Although the self-definitions or self-conceptions of the peoples of Asia are still very much bounded by Western forms of knowledge production, some efforts have been made to try to construct a sort of “Asian idea of Asia” (or “Asia for Asians”)— which is to say, to reclaim a concept imposed by the West, and to search for a nonderiva­ tive kind of epistemology and self-recognition. The nation most possessive of this latter idea of Asia has probably been Japan. Modern Japan sought to develop a new relationship to (East) Asia, and especially to China, in or­ der to highlight its exceptional status within the region.2 As the only independent mod­ ernized state in East Asia and a new imperialist power, Meiji Japan had every reason to pursue a different imagining of Asia—not simply to challenge Western global taxonomies, but also to manifest its own ambition for leadership in what had traditionally been a Chi­ na-centered arena. The Japanese imperial idea of Asia was a discursive political frame­ work that combined an emphasis on the ethnicity of the “yellow race” (ō shokujinshu 黃色 人種)3 with a sense of Japanese entitlement. Calling for a pan-Asian ethnic national identi­ ty in response to a common experience of oppression by Western colonial powers and as a way to displace the cultural hegemony of traditional China, Japanese ideologues and im­ perialists endeavored to blend Japanese, Han Chinese, Koreans, Mongols, Tibetans, and Manchus into a single transnational Asian collectivity in order to lay the groundwork for empire building and to legitimize the nation-state of Manzhouguo/Manshū-koku (滿洲國, 1932–1945). And it was the Manchurian Motion Picture Corporation (better known as Man’ei 滿映)—established in 1937 in Changchun, the so-called Xinjing (literally, “new capi­ tal”) of Manzhouguo—that helped spread the Japanese idea of Asia via film. Given the historical backdrop of Japan’s ideological discourse on Asia, it comes as no sur­ prise that Chinese filmmakers remained suspicious of the term Asia when applied to film, although Japanese Asianism did mobilize many Chinese intellectuals to pursue politically radical engagements. The increasing challenges posed by European powers since the nineteenth century have stripped many Chinese elites of their sense of self-assurance, complacency, and indifference to the world outside the Middle Kingdom (although histori­ Page 2 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions cally Han Chinese have been alert to the prowess of and danger posed by ethnic peoples in Central Asia). China’s growing sensitivity toward its Asian neighbors was actually moti­ vated by a desire to know the modern Western powers, which constituted a major threat to the Qing empire, in order to understand the source of their strength and the extent of their power. During the mid- to late Qing, there was an increase in academic study of the histories and cultures of the regions of Manchuria,4 Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Taiwan, and the Ryūkyū islands, together with other regions traditionally under Chinese cultural and political influence, such as modern-day Korea and Vietnam—not only be­ cause the Qing dynasty significantly expanded China’s territorial reach, but also because these areas at the empire’s margins (p. 550) were increasingly threatened by foreign pow­ ers from the nineteenth century onward. The Western invasion of southern and south­ western Asia made China more aware of the presence of its neighbors: British-occupied India was the birthplace of Buddhism and the source of the opium trade, and the diaspora of overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia gradually attracted more attention from Mainland China. Indeed, overseas Chinese, or huaqiao 華僑, can be considered a sig­ nificant “force from Asia” that had a real impact on modern Chinese history and the de­ velopment of its cinema. Japan had successfully undergone Europeanization and began to loom ominously on the horizon. In the face of these new threats penetrating its surround­ ing areas, China started accepting the European way of naming the world and learning to see itself, as Madhavi Thampi observes, as “situated in the southeastern part of the great continent [Asia], one of several continents of the world, rather than as being at the centre of the world.”5 The Chinese term for Asia, Yaxiya 亞細亞—a phonetic transliteration introduced in the sev­ enteenth century by Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci and Julio Aleni—was short­ ened in the late nineteenth century to Yazhou 亞洲, a term that, Rebecca Karl suggests, “implicitly indicated a region that was part of a multi-continental globe, in which there were several zhou (continents), of which yazhou (Asia) was one.”6 However, China’s recognition of its marginal position within this European mapping of the world did not necessarily transform the Chinese intellectuals’ sinocentric belief that Chinese civiliza­ tion was still the most significant in the East and superior to all (non-Western) others in the vicinity. With the growth of nationalist sentiments in the face of imperialist encroach­ ments from the West, many Chinese intellectuals, from those immersed with classical learning to Western-influenced or Marxist liberals, did develop a sense of belonging to Asia or the East.7 Wang Tao 王韜, Kang Youwei 康有為, Sun Yat-sen 孫中山, Zhang Taiyan 章 太炎, Liang Qichao 梁啓超, Yang Du 楊度, Liu Shipei 劉師培, Li Dazhao 李大釗, and many oth­ ers have reflected on China’s relationship with Asia. They have discussed what the libera­ tion of China from European oppression would mean for the emancipation of Asia, or even of the world. For most of these figures, China was the natural center of Asia, al­ though they often employed the political rhetoric of solidarity among all Asian peoples. When Japanese imperialists saw cinema, and specifically “Greater East Asian film” (Daitō a eiga 大東亞映画), as a major propaganda tool to promote the so-called Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (Daitō a Kyō eiken 大東亞共栄圏)8 in order to subdue Chinese nation­ al sentiments and began to create Chinese coproductions for the war effort of the 1930s, Page 3 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions these efforts only led to the countercurrents of resistance among Chinese filmmakers or to their exodus to the unoccupied interior cities and other maritime places not yet taken by the Japanese military, such as colonial Hong Kong. The filmmakers who stayed and even worked with the Japanese were generally demonized for being collaborators, or trai­ tors who were “selling the nation” to serve the “illegitimate” puppet regime. However, it was precisely the occupation cinema of Shanghai that has constituted, in a historically specific Chinese context, a provocative meaning of “Asianism” in contrast to the “Greater East Asia” aggressively promoted by Japanese occupation forces and the Wang Jingwei 汪 精衞 regime at Nanjing, and to (p. 551) the denunciations by the anti-Japanese nationalist discourse from China’s unoccupied interior. It should be noted that, while condemning the Japanese military’s version of Asianism, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD) also endorsed its own form of pan-Asianism in the name of “New Asia” (新亞細亞)9 and Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People (三民主義). Although condemned by Chi­ nese nationalists as unpatriotic and treasonable (even film professionals constantly re­ ceived death threats), Shanghai’s occupation cinema was ambivalently connected with the Chinese version of Asianism and was in a paradoxical position in that it was, as Poshek Fu observes, “both within and outside the state apparatus of the occupying power, and both (unwittingly) supported and subverted the occupation.”10 How could the cinema of occupation be understood as “Asian” at a time when nationalist tensions had reached a boiling point and national conflicts were at stake? What role did the idea of Asia play in the very struggle of nationalist antagonism? Kawakita Nagamasa 川喜多長政, the founder of Tōwa Shōji Eiga-bu 東和商事映画部, a film company that distributed European movies in interwar Japan, had been offered a job by the Japanese military in the 1930s to set up a film company to propagate Japanese influ­ ence in China. Kawakita studied in Beijing and Germany in his youth and was described as someone who envisioned working for the peace and unity of Japan and China. When Shanghai fell to Japan in late 1941, the film industry was instructed to carry on its sym­ bolic operations to normalize the new order introduced by occupying forces. Kawakita, who had connections to Shanghai’s major film studio heads such as Zhang Shankun 張善 琨, was able to persuade the Chinese to continue filming with Japan-supplied film stock and technologies and promised that there would be no direct Japanese intervention.11 During that time, not only did the Japanese military attempt to make political use of the Shanghai film industry, Japanese filmmakers saw Shanghai cinema as a way to reach a wider Asian audience, given that at the time Shanghai productions could appeal to South­ east Asian markets, particularly the overseas Chinese communities there. While Japan in­ tended to make use of Shanghai cinema to open up Asian markets for Japanese films and to improve the overall quality of Asian cinema so that it might compete with Hollywood, the Shanghai film industry complied with the Japanese project for more mundane reasons and realistic demands, although pan-Asianism did constitute a major component in the ideology of Chinese collaborators such as the Wang Jingwei faction at Nanjing.12 Asserting itself as the successor to and custodian of Sun’s political will so as to justify col­ laboration with the Japanese, the Wang group also defended the general cause of collabo­ ration, in the postwar trial, as a devious way to stop the war in order to protect the peo­ Page 4 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions ple in occupied areas and preserve the vitality of the nation, since the Chongqing govern­ ment had failed to fulfill such duties. Although the collaborators’ claims could be selfserving and should not be taken at face value, their ideological motives have certainly dis­ tinguished “the state from the nation.”13 Such differentiation may coincide with an ideal of Asianism. Not surprisingly, many Shanghai film professionals used similar rationales, like the need to save the nation’s film industry from Japan’s total control,14 to justify themselves when accused of treason after the war, although most of them might (p. 552) not have had any inner conviction in Asianism. In daily life, wartime Shanghai was not a place of romantic heroes and villainous traitors, and most residents were neither ready to sacrifice their lives for some abstract political or nationalist cause nor willing to cooper­ ate with the enemies. Arguing that they were forced to collaborate with the conqueror in order to preserve their livelihood or even to safeguard the vitality of the nation’s cinema, Chinese filmmak­ ers and professionals in Japanese-ruled Shanghai maintained their active production line during the period of 1941–1945 to finish more than one hundred films, given that the film industry—unlike cinematic apparatuses in Manchuria and Taiwan—was not directly under Japanese control. And, indeed, direct Japanese involvement was limited to a handful of these films. The most prominent were Bu Wancang’s 卜萬蒼 Toward Eternity (萬世流芳, 1943), Fang Peilin’s 方沛霖 Myriad of Colors (萬紫千紅, 1943), and Yue Feng’s 岳楓 Remorse in Shanghai (春江遺恨, 1944). These Mandarin-language features were either coproduced by Shanghai film companies and the Manzhouguo-based Man’ei or were mainly Shanghai productions with significant numbers of Japanese cast and crewmembers. At the level of plot, these Sino-Japanese productions remained within the framework of melodrama rather than conveying the propagandized messages of the Greater East Asia War (Daitō a Sensō 大東亞戰爭) or of liberating Asian peoples from Western imperialism and colonial­ ism. Ambivalence undoubtedly dominated wartime Shanghai. Shanghai film professionals might have a very different view from the way Japanese occupying forces and the Chinese nationals at Chongqing or other unoccupied areas looked at their cinematic productions of the time. When Chinese nationalist discourse simply dismissed these films as disloyal or treasonous, and the Japanese found the same works irrelevant to the ideological mis­ sion of Asianism, the Shanghai film professionals, by contrast, considered their commer­ cially oriented movies to passively defy the Japanese and even sustain the growth of Chi­ nese national cinema. The sharp divisions in perceptions point to a fundamental antago­ nism that the dominant power and the dominated group in wartime Shanghai could not come to terms with. It is precisely a radical noncoincidence of the two that designates the hard kernel of antagonism in that world. The split, or irreducible gap, between them seemingly cannot be closed by the idea of pan-Asianism. In fact, the very idea of Asia brings forth not only the antagonism between Chinese people and Japanese invaders, but also the inherent contradictions within the Chinese politics that prevented the community from forming a harmonious and homogeneous whole. The different perceptions are sim­ ply mutually exclusive attempts to deal with a traumatic antagonism that still endures in today’s political divide.

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions The entertainment orientation of wartime Shanghai cinema (with its fondness for roman­ tic weepies, melodramas, costume dramas, action films, musicals, horror films, and other sentimental or sensational genres) at first glance represents a collective escapism or day­ dreaming fantasy in the midst of national crisis, wartime hardships, and relentless vio­ lence. This “apolitical” tendency has been interpreted by Poshek Fu as a deliberately sub­ versive, if passive, means of depoliticizing the Japanese propaganda imposed on it, there­ by generating some political significance that has been entirely (p. 553) ignored by the dominant discourses of that time and even afterward. Another sympathetic critic, Li Daoxin 李道新, also defends wartime Shanghai cinema by arguing that these films should not be dismissed as “reactionary tools,” but rather should be recognized as having played a key role in the continued development of Chinese cinema.15 However, in a universe in which we look for deeper meaning and complexity beneath the surface, the convoluted truth perhaps resides precisely at the level of the façade. No matter how far Shanghai oc­ cupational cinema attempted to stray from Japan’s ideological mission, it did legitimize the brutal regime and weaken the will to resistance with the illusive success and glamour that a flourishing entertainment industry can bring. But the success the entertainment in­ dustry was able to achieve also gave rise to an almost unbearable tension of enjoyment. This “enjoyment” should not simply be taken literally as the war-weary, suffering masses having an illicit pleasurable break via the unreal fantasies constructed on-screen, al­ though the popular films produced in occupied Shanghai did articulate certain desires to invent forms of mass liberation outside the conventional logic of state power. The more il­ legitimate bliss the Shanghai film industry did attain was that of beneficial support—in terms of technologies, resources, and distribution—from the Japanese. Although Japan’s real intention behind improving the quality of Shanghai filmmaking was to elevate its own cinema’s status and to use Shanghai as a channel to open Asian markets for Japanese productions, the drive for Greater East Asian films subsided after 1943, by which point the filmmakers could openly employ notions of “Chinese motion picture development” and “independent and indigenous film style.” Shanghai filmmakers and film critics were enthusiastic about building up fundamental theories of film and exploring film art and technique.16 In short, the Shanghai film industry under Japanese rule simply appropriated resources from Japan to nurture the development of Chinese cinema, which partially ful­ filled the Asianist ideal of having the stronger Asian nations help the weaker ones. It can also be argued that whereas the vision of Asianism connotes a united front against both Japanese and Western imperialism, rather than a rejection of (Western) modernity, Shang­ hai cannily used Japan—the most modernized Asian country—as a vehicle to develop its own model of modern filmmaking. The authentic meaning of Sino-Japanese cooperation (i.e., the “kingly way” [王道] of Asianism) that Sun Yat-sen had been seeking throughout his career was ironically and unintentionally realized in pan-Asian cinematic production.17 Cinema in occupied Shanghai as an ideological state apparatus was first abandoned by the GMD government under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石, and then misman­ aged by the invading Japanese force and the collaborationist government at Nanjing. In other words, the cinema of occupied Shanghai failed to perform its assigned role as an Page 6 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions ideological apparatus for the state; it “betrayed” not one state government, but two. In a time of brutal national struggles when almost no politics could be conceived beyond the logic of state power, Shanghai cinema seems to have had the potential to invent politics in a more egalitarian manner outside the realm of state governance. The conspicuously com­ mercial rather than overtly political nature of wartime Shanghai cinema created the kinds of affect that temporarily liberated its mass audiences from a life that had been entirely demarcated and delimited by state politics. Its commercial drive (p. 554) also exceeded the rigid boundaries set by nations, regions, and classes and constituted a broader tran­ sregional and transnational spectator market. That the Shanghai films were using Japan’s material resources and technological advancement to entertain the Chinese masses as well as overseas viewers was an apparent embodiment of a populist, nonstate version of Asianism. Whereas the state always monopolizes claims of acting in the best interests of the working masses, the commercialization mechanism has separated the masses from the ideological appropriation of the state and opened up a different path of politics. How­ ever, Japan’s Asianist film campaign in China cannot be seen as a total failure. Actually, there was a sensational success embodied in a trans-Asian star created by the wartime Japanese propaganda machine—Japanese actress and songstress Yamaguchi Yoshiko 山口 淑子, who was born in Manchuria and whose Chinese name was Li Xianglan 李香蘭. Li Xianglan’s star quality may not have encouraged the Chinese in wartime Shanghai to be more amenable to the imposition of Japanese ideological control, but her popularity did endure among her diasporic Chinese fans even after the war. Several popular Hong Kong features made in the 1950s cast her as the female lead. Perhaps it is true that all nations and empires eventually fade and collapse, but it is their cultural triumphs—including the film and other popular entertainment industries—that remain the most enduring testa­ ment to who the people were and what they hoped to become. Indeed, the commercializa­ tion model, or the extensive capitalist modernization, of postwar trans-Asian cinematic productions may no longer carry any liberatory potential, even though rigid traditional barriers cannot hold in a world “where everything solid melts into air.” A more proactive kind of Asianism also appeared on the Chinese side. Although the war provided a fertile ground for the development of Shanghai commercial films, it was also the same war of resistance against Japan that encouraged Chinese nationalist filmmakers in the unoccupied inland to look for a more encompassing and universal cinema in order to accommodate the tastes of uneducated, rural mass audiences in the service of war mo­ bilization. Many filmmakers exiled to Chongqing and used to making films for city dwellers conversant with Hollywood and European film conventions suddenly found them­ selves faced with a rural audience with diverse backgrounds and sundry dialects. Wartime Chongqing films were also shown in the cities and designed for export in order to cover production costs. Differentiating local audiences from global ones remained a major challenge for the wartime filmmakers working in the service of nationalism. The audience-oriented innovation of wartime Chongqing cinema aesthetics endeavored to forge the broadest political community; in this, the works uncannily resemble commercial films in their aim for a universal reception. Thus, as Weihong Bao puts it, “nationalism speaks the rhetoric of transnationalism.”18 In other words, the aesthetics of wartime Page 7 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions Chongqing cinema also deployed the appeal of Asianism to shape itself as a transnational cultural force. But, like many Asianist discourses, its transnational dimension is always subordinated to the national, and the purported universality or commonality was used to strengthen national legitimacy and address national problems. The Light of East Asia (東亞之光, 1940) was one anti-Japanese movie that attempted to reach a larger popular audience with its documentary style and emphasis on (p. 555) nar­ rativity.19 Adapting the antiwar theater performance by the “League of Anti-war Japanese in China” (在華日人反戰同盟), director-cum-scriptwriter He Feiguang 何非光, who spoke Japanese because of his Taiwanese birth and Japanese education,20 unprecedentedly cast Japanese prisoners of war to play themselves in his film. The film put considerable em­ phasis on the shared interests of the Chinese and Japanese, underscoring how Japan’s warmongers manipulated and exploited the Japanese people to fight an unjust war against China. The story sensationally narrates how the captured Japanese soldiers were reformed by the benevolence of the Chinese people, and how they decided to go to the front lines in order to propagate antiwar messages among their compatriots. The realistic setting (the film was shot on location at Chongqing’s camp for prisoners of war) and the casting of Japanese prisoners of war (resulting in the film’s extensive use of Japanese dia­ logue with Chinese subtitles) drew significant public attention and helped boost the film’s box-office returns. Ironically, when the Chinese film academy restored the film (its open­ ing sequences had been lost), they mistakenly replaced the footage with that from a film with the same Chinese title—a Japanese documentary that promoted the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.21 Meanwhile, the GMD and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—which shared nationalist sentiments and anti-imperialist impulses—formed a fragile and short-lived united front af­ ter the Xi’an Incident.22 If the so-called united front was only a platform on which the two parties competed for supremacy during the national crisis (through which the CCP sought to preserve and expand its power while the GMD looked for any opportunity to annihilate the CCP), the ideological notion of Asianism also provided another such arena. Hostilities between the GMD and CCP gave rise to a new kind of “Asian” film about China’s non-Han people, made during the war by leftist filmmakers. Interwar Asianism was informed by and indebted to Marxist worldviews—especially in its powerful critique of the Westerndominated world system, global capitalism, and imperialism. However, nationalistic im­ pulses in the Chinese Marxist milieu had been identified with the most radical tendencies in the sense that proletarian class struggle for world revolution was proceeding along racial lines between white oppressors and nonwhite oppressed peoples, although Chinese Marxists also found Japanese imperialism and its pan-Asianist discourse a greater evil even than European imperialism. The CCP’s cofounder Li Dazhao had used the term New Asianism (新亞細亞主義) as early as 1919 to denote his vision for an Asian federation as a step toward ultimately constructing a united world of federation for the happiness of all mankind.23 Under the influence of the Soviet regime at Moscow, the CCP in the 1920s supported non-Han minorities’ rights to national self-determination and proclaimed that these peoples at China’s frontier regions should first establish their own democratic, selfgoverning states and then join a democratic Chinese republic in forming a Chinese feder­ Page 8 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions ation. Although in the war against the Japanese the concept of a “Chinese nation” (中華民 族) was desperately needed to justify China’s right to survive as a nation and to summon a united resistance effort, the CCP maintained a different political stance toward non-Han minorities from the repressive, high-handed, assimilation-oriented ethnicity policies of the ruling GMD.24 Although, retrospectively speaking, the Chinese communist struggle remained a politics of seizing state power, there were some brief historical moments marked by en­ deavors to constitute political spaces other than those entirely organized by the state, and the communist politics with China’s non-Han peoples could be considered one of them. Unlike the official position taken by the GMD, which dismissed the concept of eth­ nic minorities and stressed that all ethnic groups came from the same ancestor and be­ longed to the same Chinese blood, the CCP insisted on the ethnic peoples’ status as be­ longing to distinct “nationalities.” That explains why, as purely rhetorical as it may sound, in the language of Chinese communists ethnic minorities are called “minority nationali­ ties” (少數民族). Accusing the GMD of practicing “Han chauvinism” (大漢主義), the CCP of the early 1930s endorsed the non-Han minorities’ complete political equality and their rights to self-determination. Engaging the ethnic groups in class struggle and encourag­ (p. 556)

ing the laboring minority masses to make political choices of their own free will, the CCP at first did not aim to organize the state along national lines. Instead, an ideal communist country would be established without any national barriers. Such idealism and striving for equality of all ethnic nationalities (corrupted when the CCP gained real state power)25 were pervasive in the minds of Chinese intellectuals and film professionals prone to pro­ gressivism even during wartime. Based on a stage play that premiered in 1937, Ying Yunwei’s 應雲衞 Storm on the Border (塞上風雲, 1942) was a progressive film about how Han Chinese and Mongols joined in the fight against the invading Japanese. Before shooting on location in Inner Mongolia, the film crew traveled from Chongqing to Yan’an in order to get the blessing and endorse­ ment of Mao Zedong 毛澤東 and other communist leaders. The film also began the tradi­ tion of Han impersonation of ethnic minorities, and the Han cast spent several months in Mongolia to learn from the Mongols about their customs and dress (the entire production took two years because of inadequate resources during the war and GMD intervention).26 Although there were no Mongol personnel involved in the film production, Storm on the Border revealed an unprecedented kind of Han Chinese “Asian consciousness” with this ethnic group from Central Asia; it was the Han Chinese who needed the united front and support from the Mongols, not the other way around. The patronizing attitude of needing to conduct “civilizing mission” toward the ethnic peoples, which was widespread in many of China’s later movies about non-Han peoples, is hardly in evidence in this particular work. Given that the Mongols once conquered and ruled China, it might make more sense to consider the Chinese film about Mongols as not “Chinese,” but rather “Asian.” Indeed, half of Mongolia, now known as Outer Mongolia, had become a Soviet-oriented socialist state in the early 1920s, and while the new nation strongly desired a united Mongolia, Page 9 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions neither the GMD regime under Chiang nor the communist government led by Mao gave up hope of reintegrating it with China. Meanwhile, an autonomous movement led by Mon­ gol princes in Inner Mongolia sought help from the Japanese, who presented themselves as defenders of the traditional faith by using Buddhism and Mongolian values to appeal to the Mongols to fight against the Russian and Chinese communists, and attempted to woo the Mongols outside their sphere of influence to (p. 557) the Japanese imperial model by demarcating a special Mongol-governed region called Xing’an province in Manzhouguo. Strategically, Inner Mongolia could serve as a buffer zone between Japanese-occupied China and Soviet Russia. From the 1930s to the 1940s, Inner Mongolia was politically di­ vided into three regions: the far west that was still under the control of the GMD, the cen­ tral region that was pushing for autonomy movement under Japanese influence, and the eastern region that was already part of Manzhouguo. These circumstances help explain why Chinese leftists, in accordance with the ideal of Asianism, were in favor of an equal and united front between Han and Mongol ethnics against Japanese imperialism. The CCP’s rhetoric of a united Asian front against an imperialist power was invoked again in the Korean War, with the “Resist America and aid Korea; protect the homeland and de­ fend the nation” (抗美援朝 保家衞國) campaign. Apparently the slogan was more nationalis­ tic than Asianist. Even if the defensive war was launched for the sake of the North Korean people, the CCP successfully mobilized wide domestic support for the newly born People’s Republic in the face of a potential invasion of American forces via the Korean Peninsula. The state-sponsored nationalist mass mobilization movement against Western powers was seemingly destined to be confined to the surge of nationalist passions and to serve the state’s interests only. However, despite the tremendous economic and human losses, the early Chinese military success over a Western army and its ability to fight U.S. armed forces, the strongest in the world, to a stalemate had made a significant impression on many Asians and other third-world peoples who might not even support communism; and the resulting ability to transcend conventional political lines could be seen as comparable to the effects of the Japanese victory over Russia in 1905.27 In his renowned speech on pan-Asianism, Sun Yat-sen declared that the morale of Asian peoples had been boosted by Japan’s triumph in the Russo-Japanese War: “For the first time in the past several hun­ dred years, an Asiatic country has defeated a European power. The effect of this victory immediately spread over the whole of Asia, and gave new hope to all Asiatic peoples.”28 Sun recalled how he witnessed the Arabs celebrate Japan’s victory when his boat passed through the Suez Canal; the Arabs regarded the Russian defeat by Japan as the defeat of the West by the East. In a Cold War context, within which Asia has been divided by the ideological rift between communism and capitalism, the response among Asian peoples to the Korean War, in which an Asian country without an air force and heavy artillery with­ stood attacks by the United States and its allies, however, could not be in an entirely har­ monious accordance. When the Chinese military—called the “Chinese People’s Volunteers”—crossed the Yalu River into Korea in October 1950, they were accompanied by the crew from the Beijing Film Studio and the August First Film Studio, which were making a series of war docu­ mentaries. Since World War II, governments and motion picture industries have used the Page 10 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions moving images in newsreels, documentaries, and feature films to help promote wars and mobilize people for support. But the first Chinese feature film about the Korean War was not made until three years after the cease-fire. Sha Meng 沙蒙 and Lin Shan’s 林杉 Shang­ gan Ridge (上甘嶺, 1956) depicts the Chinese soldiers with short supplies and poor weapons holding ground against the advances of American forces (p. 558) and their supe­ rior machinery. The movie was promoted as depicting the proud Chinese nationalist victo­ ry over the invading Americans and heroic Chinese sacrifice for the motherland. Other films that portrayed Chinese and Koreans working together to resist the American ene­ mies include Li Jun’s 李俊 Friendship (友誼, 1959), Xu Youxin’s 許又新 Qixi (奇襲, 1960), Wu Zhaoti’s 武兆堤 Heroic Sons and Daughters (英雄兒女, 1964), and Hua Chun’s 華純 Fighting the Invaders (打擊侵略者, 1965). Although these films may not be able to point to an alter­ nate society, their ideational and even “utopian” play in the political imagination suggests a certain distance from the dominant global institution created by the military clout and economic power of capitalist Western imperialists. Projecting a conventional kind of patri­ otism informed by the guiding interest of the party-state, they also generated a restricted sense of Asian united front against the Western powers—it is restricted in that it was no longer a vehicle maneuvered by the Japanese Asianist discourse in which Asia stands for an ethnic driving force for capitalist modernization in order to survive and compete with the Western model. For China, Asia constituted a new meaning of socialism that ex­ pressed and defined social relationships within China and China’s relationship to the re­ gion and the world. It was also in the mid-1950s Cold War context that the new Beijing regime endeavored to open up more space for itself in Asia in the face of the containment policy of the United States and its client states. The landmark 1955 Bandung Conference, in which twentynine postcolonial Asian and African countries participated, was described as a historic event—the first world summit of the former colonized Asian and African nations without interference from any Western force—in the third-world liberation movement, and it of­ fered an opportunity for the new Chinese Republic to make its diplomatic breakthrough and promote its principles of peaceful coexistence and mutual noninterference. At Ban­ dung, PRC premier Zhou Enlai 周恩來 used his personal charm to take the spotlight at the conference and successfully presided over communist China’s much-desired debut in Asia. However, China’s diplomatic accomplishments at Bandung only revealed its increas­ ingly global aspiration, which extended beyond Asia. Following the recent disclosure of more classified documents about the event, a documentary and a feature film about the events were released in China: Wei Lian’s 韋廉 2003 documentary, Zhou Enlai in Bandung (周恩來萬隆之行) and Jiang Ning’s 江寧 2005 film, Bandung 1955 (萬隆 1955). Although they attempt to capture the convoluted politics of the Cold War and the inherent contradic­ tions among Asian nations in their cinematic language, both films are imbued with strong heroic and nationalistic tropes, demonstrating that the state apparatus’s discourse on Asia was very much ideologically confined to a sinocentric position. Since the establish­ ment of the socialist Republic in 1949, emancipation politics has not gone anywhere (let alone outside Asia). What has been left(over) is the party-state, which became the fetish object of patriotic worship and probably has constituted the chief obstacle for any future Page 11 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions liberation movement. But the question remains as to whether there is any Asianist dis­ course that can exist without nation-centric thinking and the interests of the state behind it. The Cold War–era U.S.-Soviet division of the world and both nations’ active involve­ ment in the region has determined the Chinese perception of Asia in the postwar period. From the perspective (p. 559) of communist China, many of the nation’s Asian neighbors were just pawns controlled by the American military in an effort to contain China’s growth. It is revealing that although there were few coproductions in Hong Kong under the Japan­ ese occupation because Hong Kong filmmakers refused to collaborate with the Japanese government, it was the British colony’s film industry that initiated cooperative schemes with Japan from the mid-1950s onward—with an eye to acquiring Japan’s advanced skills and technologies so as to improve production quality and expand its market once the mainland market was no longer open. A little-mentioned historical fact is that during the 1950s, the British colonial power had decided to abandon the city because of its indefen­ sibility against communist China and the heavy burden created by the huge influx of refugees from the mainland. It was the United States, under Eisenhower, that convinced Britain to retain the colony, given its strategic location.29 The United States regarded Hong Kong as a valuable site for gathering intelligence about China, producing anticom­ munist propaganda materials, and providing its military a location for rest and recre­ ation. It turned out some freedom was allowed to Hong Kong pro-China leftists, whom the British colonial government kept under close surveillance. Although the Beijing regime did not recognize the colonial status of Hong Kong, it preferred that the colony’s status remain unchanged, so that they might use it as a conduit for trade with the West. The Cold War and the threat of the state-socialist model of development, along with the rising nationalisms in Asia, were the incentives for colonial-style modernization. As a symbol of the “free world” during the Cold War, Hong Kong began its capitalist mod­ ernization along the lines of the Western model. The United States–led allies perceived the East Asian region—including South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan—as a line of defense against communist influence and assault, and these areas obtained large amounts of eco­ nomic and military aid. Although Britain never directly involved itself in the Hong Kong film industry other than to hold fast to its censorial authority, the city did have a cultural role to play in the Cold War.30 Throughout the 1950s, Hong Kong converted itself from an entrepôt under the shadow of the Korean War embargo into a fast-growing industrial economy. Its economic achievement does not designate the triumph of East Asia but rather the smooth articulation of Hong Kong into the capitalist narrative, within which Euro-American values are globally dominant. However, the Hong Kong film industry was not entirely a passive actor with regard to Cold War politics. From the 1950s on, many Hong Kong film companies (including Shaw Brothers 邵氏, Cathay 國泰, and Kong Ngee 光 藝) initiated cooperative schemes with their counterparts in other Asian countries—in­ cluding Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand—in order to help make their productions more appealing, gain superior technology, and build up distribution net­ works.31 Among these, the collaboration and interaction between Hong Kong and Japan was the most prolific.32 Meanwhile, several Japanese film industry leaders who had been Page 12 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions charged with war crimes were able to return to their positions in the industry (it could not have happened without the permission of American forces). They actively promoted the development of Asian film networks by setting up various inter-Asian organizations and film festivals33—which could be considered a way of resurrecting the concept of “Greater East Asian film,” although this time (p. 560) it did not only serve Japan’s national interests. In fact, Cold War Asian coproductions were primarily organized along politicalideological lines. In the postwar era, Hong Kong has played an active role in organizing different Asian countries for collaborative filmmaking.34 Transnational coproduction in the film indus­ tries of Asia could be understood as a way of commercially competing with Hollywood—a regional economic bloc, but not necessarily in any ideological sense. Yet these postwar Asian collaborations were mostly pro-Western culture in the way that modernization, or Westernization, has always been valorized, although its “evil” outcomes sometimes are re­ vealed cinematically. The undeniable fact is that these trans-Asian productions in the “free capitalist world” were rendered possible by the military protection of the United States in the Cold War. The conventional early twentieth-century notion of Asianism as an ideology of solidarity and a pan-nationalist movement among Asians against Western im­ perialist and colonial forces had been reshaped and remolded—if not contorted—in post­ war transnational Asian movies. The rise of a capitalistic China, however, has complicated the notion of Asia(nism) and might reshuffle post–Cold War relations in the region. Mean­ while, the Hong Kong film industry’s business-oriented cooperation with other Asian countries has been rapidly overshadowed by its relentless drive to integrate itself into Mainland Chinese markets. Whether future Chinese-language films will be mobilized for the state apparatus or for the movement of other nonstate agencies remains to be seen, but the vision of Asianism (including the search for the Asian national model of develop­ ment) may not only place a rising China on a par with Western powers, but also imply a possible vanguard position that either justifies domination in a pan-Asian guise or con­ tributes to real human progress. However, there is still a long way to go before Asianism in the new context of a rising China can be grasped as a narrative of the progress of free­ dom.

Works Cited Bao, Weihong. “In Search of a ‘Cinematic Esperanto’: Exhibiting Wartime Chongqing Cin­ ema in Global Context.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 3.2 (2009): 135–147. Baskett, Michael. The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008. Chen Mo 陳墨. “Dongya zhi guang: He Feiguang rensheng yingshi chutan” 東亞之光: 何非光 人生影事初探 [The light of East Asia: On the life and films of He Feiguang]. Dangdai diany­ ing 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2 (2009): 84–92.

Page 13 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions Fu, Poshek. “The Struggle to Entertain: The Politics of Occupation Cinema, 1941–1945.” Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 93–132. Horne, Gerald. Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire. New York: New York University Press, 2003. (p. 564)

Huang, Donglan 黃東蘭. “‘Yazhou’ de dansheng: Jindai Zhongguoyujingli de ‘yazhou’ gain­ ian” 「亞洲」的誕生: 近代中國語境裡的「亞洲」概念 [The birth of “Asia”: The concept of “Asia” in the context of the modern Chinese language]. Xinshixue: gainian, wenben, fangfa 新史 學: 概念、文本、方法 [New historiography: Concepts, texts, and methods]. Vol. 2. Ed. Sun Jiang 孫江 Beijing: Zhonghua, 2008. 27–46. Hwang Dongyoun. “Wartime Collaboration in Question: An Examination of the Postwar Trials of the Chinese Collaborators.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6.1 (2005): 75–97. Law Kar 羅卡 ed. Border Crossing in Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services, 2000. Law Kar. “Fang Tong Yuejian tan Zhang Shankun” 訪童月娟談張善琨 [Interview with Tong Yue-chian on Zhang Shankun]. Xianggang—Shanghai: Dianying shuangcheng 香港—上海: 電影雙城 [The cinema of two cities: Hong Kong and Shanghai]. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1994. 110–112. Karl, Rebecca E. “Creating Asia: China in the World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century.” American Historical Review 103.4 (1998): 1096–1118. Li Daoxin 李道新. “Lunxian shiqi de Shanghai dianying yu Zhongguo dianying de lishixushu” 淪陷時期的上海電影與中國電影的歷史敘述 [A historical approach to Chinese and Shanghai films during the Japanese occupation]. Beijing dianying xueyuanbao 北京電影學院 學報 [Journal of the Beijing Film Academy] 2 (2005): 1–9. Li Dazhao 李大釗. “Da yaxiyazhuyi yu xin yaxiyazhuyi” 大亞細亞主義與新亞細亞主義 [PanAsianism and New Asianism]. Li Dazhao quanji 李大釗全集 [The complete works of Li Dazhao]. Vol. 2. Beijing: Renmin, 2006. 269–271. Li Lili 黎莉莉. “Yingpian Saishang fengyun de shezhilicheng” 影片《塞上風雲》的攝制歷程 [The production process of Storm on the Border]. Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 5 (1980): 59–63. Liu, Xiaoyuan. “Communism, Nationalism, Ethnicism, and China’s ‘National Question,’ 1921–1945.” Chinese Nationalism in Perspective: Historical and Recent Cases. Ed. C. X. George Wei and Xiaoyuan Liu. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001. 121–147. Lo, Kwai-Cheung. “Ethnic Ghosts in the Asian Shell: Racial Crossover and Transnational Cinema.” Excess and Masculinity in Asian Cultural Productions. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. 25–57. Page 14 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions Lu Hongshi 陸弘石 and Shu Xiaoming 舒曉鳴 Zhongguo dianying shi 中國電影史 [History of Chinese cinema]. Beijing: Wenhuayishu, 1998. Mark, Chi-Kwan. “Defence or Decolonisation? Britain, the United States, and the Hong Kong Question in 1957.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 33.1 (2005): 51– 72. Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic. 3rd ed. New York: Free Press, 1999. Schwab Raymond. The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880. Trans. Gene Patterson-Black and Victor Reinking. New York: Columbia Uni­ versity Press, 1984. Sun Yat-sen 孫中山. “Dui Shenhu shangyehuiyisuo dengtuanti de yanshuo” 對神户商業會議所 等團體的演說 [A speech to the Chamber of Commerce at Kobe]. Sun Zhongshan quanji 孫中 山全集 [The complete works of Sun Yat-sen]. Vol. 11. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981–1986. 401– 409. (p. 565)

Tay, William. “Colonialism, The Cold War Era, and Marginal Space.” Chinese Liter­

ature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey. Ed. Pang-Yuan Chi and David Der-wei Wang. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. 31–38. Thampi, Madhavi. “China’s Construction of Asia.” Narratives of Asia: From India, Japan and China. Ed. Brij Tankha and Madhavi Thampi. Calcutta: Sampark, 2005. 77–119. Yau, Kinnia Shuk-ting. Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries: Understanding the Ori­ gins of East Asian Film Networks. London: Routledge, 2010. Yau, Kinnia Shuk-ting. “The Early Development of East Asian Cinema in a Regional Con­ text.” Asian Studies Review 33 (2009): 161–173.

Notes: (1.) This use of terms such as Asia, Orient, and the East, originated, according to Ray­ mond Schwab, “with Roman empire which, true to its Hellenistic heritage, placed two blocs in opposition, ‘our world’ against some vague Asia.” Schwab Raymond, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880, trans. PattersonBlack Gene and Reinking Victor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 1. (2.) As Meiji Japan became successful in its modernization, the nation increasingly identi­ fied itself with Western powers and looked down on its Asian neighbors. The nineteenthcentury Japanese thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi 福沢諭吉 (1834–1901) even called for Japan to “leave Asia” (datsu-A 脫亞) in order to incorporate itself into the ranks of Western powers. (3.) With the expansion of the Japanese Empire in the twentieth century, the concept of the yellow race has been combined with Japanese exploitations of antiwhite sentiments and extended to cover those with darker skin colors, in order to play the nonwhite race Page 15 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions unity card to fight against the Europeans. See Horne Gerald, Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2003). (4.) Manchuria and Manshū -koku were, of course, terms created by Westerners and Japanese with imperialistic ambitions. The Chinese government did not accept these terms, and they could not be found on any Chinese maps. (5.) Madhavi Thampi, “China’s Construction of Asia,” in Narratives of Asia: From India, Japan and China, ed. Brij Tankha and Madhavi Thampi (Calcutta: Sampark, 2005), 93. (6.) Rebecca E. Karl, “Creating Asia: China in the World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” American Historical Review 103.4 (1998): 1101. It should be noted that Yaxiya and Yazhou were used concurrently until Yazhou became standard after the 1950s. See Huang Donglan 黃東蘭, “‘Yazhou’ de dansheng: Jindai Zhongguoyu jingli de ‘yazhou’ gain­ ian” 「亞洲」的誕生: 近代中國語境裡的 「亞洲」概念 [The birth of “Asia”: The concept of “Asia” in the context of the modern Chinese language], Xinshixue: gainian, wenben, fangfa 新史 學: 概念、 文本、方法 [New historiography: Concepts, texts, and methods], vol. 2., ed. Sun Jiang 孫江 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2008), 31. (7.) The irony is that Chinese intellectuals became more aware of Asian commonality only after the traditional grounds for their connection—such as the tributary system and Con­ fucian values—had collapsed and a new competition had sprung up among Asians. (8.) For a historical study of the Japanese imperialist use of film to attract Asian as well as Japanese audiences, see Baskett Michael, The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Cul­ ture in Imperial Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008). (9.) Founded and led by GMD politicians like Dai Jitao 戴季陶, the New Asia Society pub­ lished its official journal Xinyaxiya yuekan 新亞細亞月刊 [New Asia monthly] from 1930 to 1937. The journal specialized in studying China’s borderlands (particularly focusing on the northwest), ethnic minorities, and other Asian regions as a way to rejuvenate the na­ tion. (10.) Poshek Fu, “The Struggle to Entertain: The Politics of Occupation Cinema, 1941– 1945,” in Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 132; emphasis in the original. (11.) See Poshek Fu, “The Struggle to Entertain,” 95–100; Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau, Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries: Understanding the Origins of East Asian Film Networks (London: Routledge, 2010), 20–28. (12.) The Japanese-supported collaborationist government headed by Wang Jingwei at Nanjing (1940–1945) used Sun Yat-sen’s idea of pan-Asianism to justify its actions. Sever­ al official journals such as Dayazhouzhuyi 大亞洲主義 [Great Asianism], Dongya lianmeng yuekan 東亞聯盟月刊 [East Asia Federation monthly], and Dadongya yuekan 大東亞月刊 [Great East Asia monthly] were published to advocate their ideology. According to Dongy­ Page 16 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions oun Hwang, a shared idea of “Asia” “formulated by Asian intellectuals and radicals in such East Asian metropolitan cities as Tokyo and Shanghai, where most collaborators had met other fellow Asians in the early twentieth century, must also be considered as an im­ portant element for their predisposition to the Japanese message of peace in Asia.” See Hwang Dongyoun, “Wartime Collaboration in Question: An Examination of the Postwar Trials of the Chinese Collaborators,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6.1 (2005): 93 n. 6. (13.) Dongyoun Hwang, “Wartime Collaboration in Question,” 86. (14.) In an interview, Tong Yue-chian 童月娟 used such reasons to defend her husband, Zhang Shankun. She even claimed that Zhang secretly worked for the GMD government at Chongqing. See Law Kar 羅卡, “Fang Tong Yuejian tan Zhang Shankun” 訪童月娟談張善琨 [Interview with Tong Yue-juen on Zhang Shankun], in Xianggang—Shanghai: Dianying shuangcheng 香港 —— 上海: 電影雙城 [The cinema of two cities: Hong Kong and Shanghai] (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1994), 110–112. (15.) Li Daoxin 李道新, “Lunxian shiqi de Shanghai dianying yu Zhongguo dianying de lishixushu” 淪陷時期的上海電影與中國電影的歷史敘述 [A historical approach to Chinese and Shanghai films during the Japanese occupation], Beijing dianying xueyuanbao 北京電影學院 學報 [Journal of the Beijing Film Academy] 2 (2005): 1–9. (16.) Li Daoxin, “A Historical Approach,” 3. (17.) Before the success of the Republican Revolution of 1911, Sun Yat-sen sought Japan­ ese help for the revolutionary cause by emphasizing their shared yellow race. In 1913, Sun first mentioned the term pan-Asianism in a speech delivered at Osaka, in which he stressed the common civilization of China and Japan. After 1919, as he became more and more aware of Japan’s aggression toward China, Sun started criticizing Japan’s imperial­ ist policy. In his famous Kobe speech in 1924, Sun used the occasion of speaking to his Japanese audience on Japanese soil to question the Japanese predatory concept of panAsianism modeled on European hegemony. While praising Japan as the leader of Asian re­ generation, Sun pointed out that pan-Asianism was about the conflict between Western and Eastern civilizations, and highlighted the ethical kingly way of Asian virtues. In con­ clusion, he urged the Japanese to reflect on whether they wanted to follow the kingly way or the way of the hegemon. (18.) Weihong Bao, “In Search of a ‘Cinematic Esperanto’: Exhibiting Wartime Chongqing Cinema in Global Context,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 3.2 (2009): 135–147. (19.) Lu Hongshi 陸弘石 and Shu Xiaoming 舒曉鳴, Zhongguo dianying shi 中國電影史 [History of Chinese cinema] (Beijing: Wenhuayishu, 1998), 74–75. (20.) He Feiguang, who directed and wrote five anti-Japanese films during the war, had not been trusted by the Communist regime and was not allowed to participate in the film industry after the war—primarily because of his Taiwanese origin and his history of work­ ing for the GMD government. His complicated background led him to suffer further dur­ ing the Cultural Revolution. See Chen Mo 陳墨, “Dongya zhi guang: He Feiguang ren­ Page 17 of 19

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions sheng yingshi chutan” 東亞之光: 何非光人生影事初探 [The light of East Asia: On the life and films of He Feiguang], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2 (2009): 84–92. (21.) Chen Mo, “Light of East Asia,” 90. (22.) The Xi’an Incident of December 1936 took place during the civil war between the GMD and the CCP, before the official outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. GMD leader Chiang Kai-Shek was kidnapped by GMD general Zhang Xueliang 張學良, who urged Chiang to make peace with the CCP in order to form a united front against the Japanese threat. After Chiang’s release, the two parties agreed to end their civil war and joined forces to resist the Japanese invasion in 1937. (23.) Li Dazhao 李大釗, “Da yaxiyazhuyi yu xin yaxiyazhuyi” 大亞細亞主義與新亞細亞主義 [Pan-Asianism and New Asianism], Li Dazhao quanji 李大釗全集 [The complete works of Li Dazhao], vol. 2 (Beijing: Renmin, 2006), 269–271. (24.) Xiaoyuan Liu, “Communism, Nationalism, Ethnicism, and China’s ‘National Ques­ tion,’ 1921–1945,” in Chinese Nationalism in Perspective: Historical and Recent Cases, ed. C. X. George Wei and Xiaoyuan Liu (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001), 121–147. How­ ever, Liu concluded that there was “a fundamental consensus [on ethnic issues] between the CCP and the KMT [GMD] reached in the war years. From a historical point of view, the consensus dwarfed the lingering differences” (139). (25.) The sharp reversal of CCP policy from encouraging self-determination and self-gov­ ernment among minorities to the support of a unitary, multiethnic nation-state has been justified with some “objective” realities. For example, it was claimed that a federation sys­ tem of different nationalities in China was not practical since territorial boundaries among ethnic groups could not be clearly demarcated. Furthermore, China identified it­ self as a victim of imperialism, and therefore unlike other imperialist states that had to recognize the independent status of its former colonies after the war, the CCP liberated Chinese people—including minorities—from foreign imperialism and, thus, built a unitary nation-state. (26.) For more details, see the memoir of the female lead, Li Lili 黎莉莉, “Yingpian Sais­ hang fengyun de shezhilicheng” 影片《塞上風雲》的攝制歷程 [The production process of Storm on the Border], Dianying yishu 電影藝術 [Film art] 5 (1980): 59–63. (27.) Meisner has made such a comparison. See Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic (New York: Free Press, 1999), 70. (28.) Sun Yat-sen 孫中山, “Dui Shenhu shangyehuiyisuo dengtuanti de yanshuo” 對神户商業 會議所等團體的演說 [A speech to the Chamber of Commerce at Kobe], in Sun Zhongshan quanji 孫中山全集 [The complete works of Sun Yat-sen], vol. 11 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981– 86), 402.

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The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions (29.) See Chi-Kwan Mark, “Defence or Decolonisation? Britain, the United States, and the Hong Kong Question in 1957,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 33.1 (2005): 51–72. Mark argues that considerations of giving up Hong Kong in 1957 were due more to Britain’s own imperial decline than to a genuine Chinese threat. (30.) U.S. agencies had financially supported some Hong Kong publishing houses to carry out its ideological mission against Communist China. See Tay William, “Colonialism, The Cold War Era, and Marginal Space,” in Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey, ed. Chi Pang-Yuan and Wang David Der-wei (Bloomington: In­ diana University Press, 2000), 31–38. (31.) For details, see Law Kar, ed., Border Crossing in Hong Kong Cinema (Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services, 2000). (32.) For examples, see Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau, Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries, 73–108. (33.) Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau, “The Early Development of East Asian Cinema in a Regional Context,” Asian Studies Review 33 (2009): 161–173. (34.) On the role of Hong Kong cinema in the representation of Asian identity, see KwaiCheung Lo, “Ethnic Ghosts in the Asian Shell: Racial Crossover and Transnational Cine­ ma,” in Excess and Masculinity in Asian Cultural Productions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 25–57.

Kwai-Cheung Lo

Kwai-Cheung Lo is Director of Creative and Professional Writing Program at Hong Kong Baptist University, and is the author of "Excess and Masculinity in Asian Cultur­ al Productions" and "Chinese Face / Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong." Currently he is working on a book manuscript of ethnic minority cinema in China.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation

Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Re­ mediation   Eugene Wang The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0031

Abstract and Keywords China in the 1980s China is memorable on many fronts. Among them are the breakout of the new Chinese films (the Fifth Generation) and the surge of avant-garde art movement. While a bold experimental impulse fuels both, how are these two kinds of visual media re­ lated? Tracing the trajectory of the evolving media of film and other visual arts, the essay outlines discernible patterns therein. Painting became the model for film in the initial phase, prompted by the post-Mao impulse to break out of the monologic narrative; then, sometime in the mid-1980s, film became the model for avant-gardist art making. While one medium’s appropriation of formal properties from other media is nothing new, it is demonstrated that the distinct cultural dynamics of the 1980s drove re-mediation. Mile­ stone works—such as the film Big Parade (1986) and Xu Bing’s installations—are shown to resonate with each other in unexpected ways. Keywords: Maple, Luo Zhongli, The Father, Yellow Earth, Black Canon Incident, The Big Parade, Samsara (Lunhui), Zhang Dali, Xu Bing, Book from the Sky

1980s China was, in many respects, an era of invention and transformation, of reinvent­ ing the wheel. This was particularly true of film and other visual media. Remediation, or the process by which a medium is partially reinvented through an appropriation of formal properties and expressive potentials of other media, was one of the most notable cultural phenomena of this period.1 Although there is nothing particularly striking about a medium’s self-renewal, the specific circumstances of 1980s China—the first reform-dri­ ven long decade—made cinema’s remediation process particularly notable.

Painting as a Model for Cinema The question of what is cinema became a point of contention in China in 1980.2 The chal­ lenge came from a group of reform-minded critics who lamented Chinese cinema’s long­ time bondage to theater and argued instead for its medium independence.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation What drove this inquiry, however, were not pure philosophical concerns, but rather cul­ tural-historical ones. Four years after the death of Mao in 1976, large-scale revisionism began to sink in. To the extent that the medium of film formalizes a certain way of con­ ceptualizing and organizing visual experience and reinforces a specific viewing habit, re­ thinking the nature of film amounted to questioning the codified modes of perception formed in previous decades. This turning point is commonly traced to the introduction of Bazin’s film theory (which emphasized depth of field, the long shot, and so forth) to Chi­ nese film circles in the early 1980s. The explanatory pattern premised upon the impactand-response model belies the actual dynamics of the time. (p. 567) The matter ought to be formulated more aptly the other way round: there was a pressing need to organize vi­ sual experiences differently from the entrenched modes of the previous decade. Bazin’s theory answered that need. Interestingly enough, though, this quest for an alternative cinematic mode is evidenced not through the film medium per se, but rather through pic­ torial art, and more specifically the graphic novel. In 1979, three young artists—Chen Yiming 陳宜明, Liu Yulian 劉宇廉, and Li Bin 李斌— cre­ ated a graphic novel entitled Maple (楓). The work, together with five critical essays, was first published in the number 8 issue of the pictorial Lianhuanhua (連環畫) and became an instant hit. It was also very controversial, though for reasons that now appear absurdly ir­ relevant. Over time, art historians have come to recognize the work as marking a water­ shed point in contemporary Chinese art. In fact, it should also be remembered as the launching point of contemporary Chinese film just as well, except that it is a “film” that was conceptualized and more successfully delivered in the print medium. The work’s eponymous film, released in 1980, pales in comparison. In many ways, it was the graphic novel version Maple that anticipated the Fifth Generation filmmakers’ works, which are now commonly seen as marking the beginning of the avant-garde Chinese films. Based on Zheng Yi’s 鄭義 short story by the same title, the graphic novel Maple consists of thirty-two compositions, each accompanied by a brief caption. The story is set in the early years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), as opposing factions of the Red Guards en­ gaged in bloody battle, with each side convinced they were each fighting for the revolu­ tionary cause launched by Mao. The narrative centers around two high school sweet­ hearts who are drawn into a conflict between two opposing sides, and eventually they meet in a deadly gunfight between the two factions. Following a brief renewal of their emotional attachment, each of the two protagonists attempts to persuade the other to change sides. With neither character willing to yield, the reunion ends in a tragedy, and the young woman throws herself off a tall building. The graphic novel Maple amounts to a “film” in print medium. The creators conceived the narrative in cinematic terms, for which they hired a model and took numerous pho­ tographs of her. The work marks the first major departure from the pictorial-narrative conventions that had become dominant in the 1970s. Its sixth and seventh frames, for in­ stance, appear to form a shot-reverse-shot sequence showing the heroine’s front and back images. A similar effect also derives from a striking juxtaposition of clashing color schemes: the uniform cold blue in the first frame contrasts sharply with the hot-blooded Page 2 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation orange palette of the third and fourth frames, all displayed on the same page (see fig. 30.1).

Figure 30.1 From Maple, graphic novel illustrated by Chen Yiming, Liu Yulian, and Li Bin, based on epony­ mous work by Zheng Yi, published in Lianhuanhua 1979: no. 8

Montage alone, however, does not explain the thoroughly refreshing visual impact of the work. More significantly, the graphic novel version of Maple, judged in cinematographic terms, is a study in mise-en-scène. Individual frames often open up into depth of field, in­ cluding figures and objects only tangentially related to the narrative drive (see fig. 30.2). The viewer’s perception of the visual field is thus diffused from the single-mindedness of the narrative linear thrust. This distractive and diffusive mise-en-scène allows for a sub­ ject formation freed from the tyranny of imposing editorial regimentation. Maple thus simulates a subjective viewing stance true to the period sensibility, (p. 568) unaided by a post-Mao hindsight. The viewer’s experience of the visual world unfolding in front of his eyes is one of immersion and participation. He is thrust back into a confusing moral cos­ mos that had not yet gained clarity, a cosmos fueled by consuming passions exemplified by the permeating color schemes of red, orange, and so on. The pictorial narrative rejects the established moralizing practice of demonizing or caricaturing the villains. Lin Biao 林 彪 and the Gang of Four, blamed at the time for having caused the disastrous Cultural Revolution, appear in the pictorial narrative in their normal dignified photographic like­ nesses. The frames enwrap the viewer in the space of action and make him complicit in the scenes of excess and violence. The emerging subjectivity is further intensified by the highly expressive “shots” that alternate with the aforementioned mise-en-scène: the odd angle of the tall building as the background for the heroine’s leap, the sympathetic figura­ tion of the heroine’s vertigo (see fig. 30.3), and so forth.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation

Figure 30.2 From the graphic novel Maple

Ironically, the pictorially simulated film effect animating the graphic novel Maple works best in the print medium. The 1980 film adaptation of the story3 fails to preserve this dy­ namic, though it does exhibit notable departures from 1970s Chinese cinematic conven­ tions, including the use of natural light (especially backlighting), emotionally (p. 569) col­ ored scenery shots, the occasional deployment of a handheld camera, and incorporation of newsreel footage for flashbacks. These techniques anticipate the experimental cinema that surged in mid-1980s, though in general the film remains deeply entrenched in the highly manipulative editing to facilitate excessive theatrical staging and actors’ operatic mannerism of delivering lines. The montage traffics in its omniscient authorial visual regi­ mentation. The failure of the film adaptation of Maple highlights the success of the earlier graphic novel version, which inadvertently enacts a scenario André Bazin once envi­ sioned: the triumph of the observant mise-en-scène that shapes participatory subjectivity over the manipulative montage that induces passivity.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation

Figure 30.3 From the grapic novel Maple

This was no coincidence. Bazin’s film theory was translated into Chinese beginning in 1980,4 whereupon Sergei Eisenstein’s montage theory and practice, hitherto prevalent in Chinese filmmaking, gradually ceded its dominance to Bazin’s aesthetics of mise-enscène. (p. 570) The implications of this shift are significant. While both modes of filmmak­ ing may be conceived as mere formal dispositions, their divergent ideological overtones were not lost on the Chinese filmmakers and critics. Bazin’s mise-en-scène theory favors a spatial realism that encompasses a variety of elements, not all of which are in service of an authorial film narration. The burden of selecting significant details from a random ar­ ray of images falls squarely on the viewer, who is thus made part of the meaning forma­ tion. By contrast, assertive editing—associated with Eisenstein’s montage and much prac­ ticed in Chinese films—dissects and orders the filmic reality along the purposeful lineartemporal thrust of a narrative, thereby rendering the viewer a passive recipient of a pack­ aged story-line and predisposing the viewer toward a definitive set meaning. Bazin’s film theory thus answered the post-Mao need for pluralism and for an expanded range of intel­ lectual freedom, unhinged from any unitary meaning. The graphic novel version of Maple preceded the Chinese translation of Bazin by a year, and the near coincidence of these two works is (p. 571) instructive. Had Bazin’s theory of mise-en-scène not been readily available in the 1980s, Chinese filmmakers and theorists undoubtedly would have invent­ ed one to wrest Chinese films from the 1970s’ mode. Meanwhile, the medium of painting also cued another major breakaway from the mon­ tage-inflected narrative viewing as photorealism became a source of inspiration for the Fifth Generation filmmakers. One year after the publication of Maple, Luo Zhongli 羅中立, an art student from Sichuan, produced a colossal oil painting entitled Father (父親, 1980).5 Executed in the manner of Chuck Close’s photorealism, Luo’s painting depicts a weather-beaten winkled face of an old peasant (see fig. 30.4).

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation Luo’s initial impulse was to put an ordinary peasant in the august format of the iconic head portrait of Mao. The portrait format alone, however, does not account for the work’s total effect. The work is more optical than pictorial, an effect made possible by photoreal­ ism. Much has been made of Luo’s indebtedness to Chuck Close, though in reality Close served only as a minimal—albeit decisive—cue. Luo had never seen a single reproduction of any Chuck Close’s work. Instead, it was an essay by a Japanese author containing a vivid description of Chuck Close’s photorealism that caught and fired Luo’s imagination. To approximate what he imagined to be the effect of photorealism, Luo purchased a pair of binoculars, and through the lens he observed the skin texture of his own hand.6 The in­ tense optical view aided by the binocular lens registers a heightened observational mode of painting—it in fact completely eliminates any display of pictorial touches.

Figure 30.4 Luo Zhongli, Father (1980). Oil on can­ vas, 227 × 154 cm. Courtesy of National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

The resulting head portrait amounts to a cinematic close-up. The photorealist close-up un­ hinges the image from any conventional narrative settings or discursive contexts. It cre­ ates a world onto itself. Two forces combine to make it efficacious: physiognomy and (p. 572) “photogeneity.” The suggestiveness of physiognomy and the contingency of photo­ geneity (i.e., “the non-deliberate, the non-artificial, the non-conscious, and the non-labori­ ous”)7 disarticulate the burden of signs and discursive commonplaces that conventionally accrue to images in medium shots. In its initial conception, Father registered the artist’s desire to restore the real, to come to terms, emotionally and psychologically, with authentic rural subjects. Glorified as radiant socialist subjects, workers and peasants in the Maoist era had been typecast in generic ways, and Luo’s photorealism is among the first attempts to break away from this type­ casting. The observational mode of Father was a timely delivery of portraiture from the entrenched glorifying portrayal of peasants and workers as radiant socialist subjects. Luo’s peasant, with his deep wrinkles, toothless mouth, and a nondescript expression, is a study in ambiguity, resolutely defying easy characterization. Yet the image’s physical im­ Page 6 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation mediacy and pressing sense of the real struck a chord with the viewers of the time. Dur­ ing its exhibition in Beijing, many visitors wept in front of the canvas, reading their pri­ vate thoughts, memories, associations into the painting.

Figure 30.5 Father in Yellow Earth (1984). Still en­ largement. Courtesy of Harvard Film Archives.

It is no surprise that Father became a model for filmmakers. When Father was exhibited at the China Art Gallery, those who were to establish themselves as the Fifth Generation filmmakers were still studying at the Beijing Film Academy, but they attended the exhibi­ tion and found the painting awe-inspiring. Chen Kaige 陳凱歌, Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, and He Qun 何群—the director, cinematographer, and art designer of Yellow Earth (黃土地, 1984), respectively8—all openly acknowledged their indebtedness to Father.9 Indeed, the camera’s stationary shot of the young heroine Cuiqiao’s motionless father in the dark cave interior in Yellow Earth (see fig. 30.5) decidedly recalls Luo’s Father. The borrowing is not just iconographic. Father presumes an observational and experiential mode of view­ ing. The visual ambiguity is pushed to the extreme; the painter’s autho (p. 573) rial expres­ sivity is reduced nearly to an opaque zero-degree. No preconceived idea is operative; all that fills the canvas is the nonsignifying face. In the early 1980s, the critical rallying cry was the urge to divorce the medium of Chinese film from its long bondage to theatricality. To this end, the photorealist shot became an effective device to facilitate such a “divorce,” with the close-ups of the subject’s highly textured face producing the effect of a “polyphony of life” that allows for different impuls­ es to play out at the same time.10 When the Fifth Generation filmmakers renewed their search for the rural subject in the mid-1980s, however, the probe deepened. If the beginning of the 1980s was to refocus on the blind spots outside of the 1970s’ official dogmatic narratives, by the mid-1980s the at­ tention had turned to the deeper roots of culture. The interest was now more of an ethno­ graphic kind favoring a mode more observational than preconceived. The photorealist close-up form established in Luo’s Father anticipated the ethnographic observational mode that was to gain currency in the 1980s.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation

Cinematic Rehearsal of Other Visual Mediums Much as pictorial and other mediums contain cues for cinematic modes, many Chinese films of the 1980s appropriated and even foregrounded elements and formal properties from other visual media for expressive purposes. Huang Jianxin’s 黃建新 1985 film The Black Cannon Incident (黑炮事件), for instance, is often painterly in its color schemes. Indi­ vidual shots are frequently treated as tonally unified canvas with single allover color satu­ ration: white, red, orange, and so forth. Most notable is the final sequence of the film, in which the protagonist, Zhao Shuxin (played by Liu Zifeng 劉子楓), is finally cleared of sus­ picion that he may have engaged in subversive activities. After showing Zhao watching some kids in a playground knocking over a row of bricks as though they were dominos, the work concludes with a sequence of compositions reminiscent of abstract paintings—a cartoonish montage of geometric forms. The sequence can be construed as a wry com­ ment on the absurdity of the preceding narrative contents. The abstraction registers both the yearning for a less complicated world of simple forms and a reflection on the contin­ gent alignments of incidents, often bordering on hints of black comedy or theater of the absurd. Similarly, Huang’s Samsara (輪回, 1988) ends with a sequence featuring an experimenta­ tion with a variety of different media.11 Shi Ba, the antihero, is engaged in illegal dealings while in love with an angelic ballerina. The film builds on the promise of finally revealing Shi Ba’s true self: his association with the shady world of gangsters appears to belie his real integrity. Toward the end of the film, however, his beloved wife accuses him of loving no one except himself. Shi Ba flares up and slaps her on the face, then shuffles into anoth­ er room. What ensues is a highly unusual sequence. Shi Ba first walks toward (p. 574) the camera, whereupon, seized by a sense of self-loathing, he stares at his mirror image and smashes it with his cane. He then proceeds to the living room, where he lies down on a couch and gazes at a photograph of himself as an infant. Accidentally knocking over a lamp, he then poses like a bodybuilder with his skinny frame, such that the slanting light projects his profile onto the wall. He then goes up to the wall to trace out a similar figure on the wall with his cane (see fig. 30.6). Stepping back, he studies the drawing on the wall, then walks out to the balcony, where he gazes up at the moon and then at the night street scene below. Finally, there is a cut to the reverse shot of Shi Ba on the balcony, as he climbs over the railing and out of the frame. The end. A military march blares on the sound track. The sequence references, stages, and thematizes a succession of visual media. The cumu­ lative effect is one of repeated acts of discontent with—and eventual renunciation of—a given medium. First, the long shot of Shi Ba walking up to the camera, showing selfloathing, and smashing what turns out to be a mirror presents a transposition between the film camera and the mirror image. Smashing the image destroys both the subject’s mirror image and the physical medium of the mirror that sustains the optical illusion. Next is the photograph. Earlier in the film, Shi Ba’s lover (and later wife) had asked him for a photograph, and while he initially told her that no photograph represents him prop­ erly, he nevertheless produced a photo of himself as a baby. The obvious implication is Page 8 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation that infantile innocence represented his true self; or, at least, he wants us to believe so. In light of his frustration with his wife’s final accusation that he loves no one else except himself, it is apparent that the visual fiction accrued to his baby photograph unravels. So the medium of photography is pressed into service and finally rejected. Next is the lamp­ light projection of Shi Ba’s shadow and his subsequent act of tracing it on the wall—a double reference to both cinematic and pictorial media. What this demonstrates is the de­ ceptive nature of yet another visual fiction. Both the shadow and the drawing yield a larg­ er-than-life profile of the individual, but since neither of them is ultimately convincing, they are both cast aside.

Figure 30.6 Shiba draws his own figure on the wall in Samsara (1988). Still enlargement.

The sequence therefore invokes a succession of visual media, including a mirror, a photo­ graph, a shadow projection, and a drawing. It presents what amounts to a cinematic stag­ ing of the formal properties of other visual media. All of them are commonly (p. 575) de­ ployed to stage the drama of self, but in the end none appears capable of capturing the real dynamics in the frustrating search for the true self in the post-Mao era. This film sequence also turns out to be remarkably prescient. The staging of the wall drawing and projection anticipates some experimental art practices in years to come. One notable example is Zhang Dali’s 張大力 drawing on the wall in the early 1990s. Trained as a student of ink painting, Zhang found the ink-painting medium limiting in conveying his sensibility in the new urban environment, and while living in Italy between 1989 and 1995 he came to switch media. Frustrated by his inability to communicate verbally with the locals, he discovered graffiti as an extralinguistic mode of communication and pro­ ceeded to use it in an attempt to engage the local residents in dialogue. After returning to China in 1995, Zhang began spray painting similar profiles of bald heads—presumably modeled on his own—on walls slated for demolition (see fig. 30.7). Meanwhile, he also photographed these drawings and had collaborators photograph or make a video of him while drawing them.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation

Figure 30.7 Zhang Dali spray-paints a big head on a wall to be demolished. Early 1990s. Photograph cour­ tesy of the artist.

The extent to which Zhang’s wall drawing resonates with the scenario rehearsed in Sam­ sara is striking. Both dramatize a frustrated attempt to capture the making and unmaking of the self in a volatile age. Both yield abstract profiles on the wall. Both stage the draw­ ing as a makeshift form of representation and an ephemeral medium to be eventually dis­ carded. Both artists couple drawing with projection. Huang Jianxin and Zhang Dali book­ end a historical development in which the quest for an authentic self is staged as a search for a proper medium. Just as old notions of a self embedded in social relationships began to unravel, so the certainty of medium specificity began to be (p. 576) eroded. Distrust of old notions of the self translated into distrust of the visual medium used to anchor and fa­ cilitate such notions. The initial transmedial impulse manifested in Huang Jianxin’s Sam­ sara was played out fully in Zhang Dali’s spray-painted head profiles on the wall. Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 The Big Parade (大閱兵, 1984) is another paradigm-setting milestone.12 The story line is a relatively conventional paean to military stoicism. The un­ usual twist to the narrative is a dilemma: the austerity appears uncalled for in a peaceful situation. This results in an insistence on stoicism for the sake of stoicism. An airborne squadron drill for eight months on a sun-starched airport tarmac in preparation for the 1984 parade on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the PRC. One soldier questions the sanity of drilling for thousands of miles in order to march for minutes across Tiananmen Square, though he later recants. Most, however, bear the brutal hardship in a noble spirit, often at the expense of their own well-being. The narrative moral is simple: the nobility of forbear­ ance and the primacy of collective cause trump individual interests.13 The story line is obligatory. For a state-owned film studio project subject to the watchful eyes of the gov­ ernment censorship, the story line is almost a perfunctory nod to the baseline of the so­

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation cialist ideology, particularly insofar as the subject pertains to the most visible state cere­ mony of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the PRC.14 The primary interest of the film, however, is its striking exercise in formalism. The visual mechanism betrays a somewhat different impulse. The film’s formal disposition was not lost on critics, despite their reservations regarding the the story line. One critic acknowl­ edged the work’s “riveting, stark cinematography,”15 another noted its “fields of helmets and boots, ranks of expressionless profiles, orderly patterns of trucks and rifles, a mili­ tary band at the ready, a snappy mass salute,”16 while a third was struck by the “uniforms and set jaws, precise ordered ranks, synchronized marching feet.”17 These reports of what the critics saw testify to a key quality in abundant display in the film—namely, the impulse of formalism, which stresses “fields,” “ranks,” “orderly patterns,” and “precise ordered ranks,” synchronization at the expense of living bodies. The visual drama is about the machine-like formation versus free-roaming bodies, the geometrical patterns of disci­ plined figures versus the after-hours bodies—at times shown in their bare torsos—of flesh-and-blood men.

Figure 30.8 Soldiers stand still in formation on an airport tarmac under scorching heat in Big Parade (1986). Still enlargement.

The visual narrative, therefore, tells a story of the tension between living bodies and a formalizing impulse toward bodiless geometry. Zhang Yimou’s camerawork acts out the formal drama in its own way. The film alternates between extreme close-ups of head shots and remote views of military formations. The camera appears to delight in reducing for­ mations of human bodies into pristine geometric patterns. To heighten this effect, the camera, at times deliberately positioned at a distance from the drilling soldiers, pulls the figures into the frame through the technological mediation of the telephoto lens. In other words, the cinematographer often turns his filmic frame into a canvas whereupon he paints with his camera. In the spirit of a modernist painter, he forcefully reduces full-bod­ ied figures into a surface of flat formations bordering on becoming a nonfigural field (see fig. 30.8). The process is one of abstraction. The camerawork unwittingly resonates with the abstract geometry once achieved by Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, and other (p. 577) Russian Formalists through their oil and canvas. What makes their affinity meaningful is not just the similarity in formal quality and effect, but their shared vision of discovering elation in the utopian possibilities in the straight-line forms and abstractions, solidarity that erases the unruly elements of human bodies.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation This formalism is a utopian vision for Zhang Yimou and his generation in the 1980s. It telegraphs a sketchy glimpse or window into an uncluttered utopian futurity whose pris­ tine contours held appeal but whose content remained vague and elusive to the reformminded Chinese in the mid-1980s. There is little empirical ground to claim Russian For­ malism was Zhang’s source of influence. Instead, there is a good reason to believe that Zhang and his generation reached their formalism independent of the Russian Formalist model. Nevertheless, Russian Formalism remains a relevant frame of reference in view of their comparable ideological contexts and the special Sino-Soviet link. The imprint of the Soviet political and artistic models on the formation of PRC institutions and culture is well known. The indebtedness is, however, selective. The Chinese following of the Soviet model is often inflected and nuanced, due to different cultural dispositions. China did in­ deed follow the Soviet script of heavy industrialization and agricultural collectivization. The Soviet Russian drive toward the utopian futurity of technology (communism equals Soviet electrification and more) also became the blueprint for Chinese socialist dream. One would thus expect that the transfer of the Russian model to China should include the Russian Constructivism that turned industrial structures such as chimneys, cranes, scaf­ foldings into pristine abstract formations. It did not happen. The high-minded aesthetic aspiration toward the formalist utopia of abstraction that fueled the early Soviet Russian artistic imagination never had its Chinese following. China followed the industrialization blueprint all right. The dream of industrialization that crystallizes into the abstract for­ malism in the early decades of twentieth-century Russia took on different complexions in China during the first three decades of the PRC. By the mid-1980s, however, the situation had changed. Zhang Yimou and his generation were apparently fascinated by the formal beauty of aligning figures and objects in straight-line geometrical orders and abstract formations. It is significant that the release of The Big Parade closely followed that of Huang Jianxin’s Black Cannon Incident, a blackhumor comedy set in a factory. Narratively, Huang’s film exposes (p. 578) the absurdity of a hardened and rigid bureaucratic culture that has no use for private individuals’ eccen­ tricities and sensibilities. To this end, the film self-consciously and liberally deploys a tele­ photo lens to compress factory structures and machines into geometrical shapes with their hardened straight-line contours and flat surfaces of primal colors. The narrative moral aside, the film clearly betrays a fascination with the new expressive means and aes­ thetic possibilities derived from the geometrical orders of the industrial landscape. It is the same fascination that drives the camerawork in The Big Parade. Michelangelo Antonioni may have provided a visual grammar. In 1984, China Film Archives in Beijing held a retrospective of Italian cinema that included Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964).18 The Italian master’s cinematic infatuation with geometrical orders of in­ dustrial landscapes and the painterly use of swaths of colors may have left an indelible imprint in the Chinese Fifth Generation filmmakers’ imagination. It may account for the bold use of geometrical abstractions in their works.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation In the Black Cannon Incident, the geometrical formalism fueled by this techno- aesthetics harmonizes with the industrial landscape of the film. In The Big Parade, the formalism’s inherent link to industrial and technological utopia is implicit. The military exercise is on­ ly a narrative trapping. The real visual drama comes down to a disciplining of the body and the ultimate reduction of bodies into formations or production lines through a heavyhanded use of telephoto lenses that hints at the austere reality of technological moderni­ ty. That utopian futurity, all abstractions, potentially excludes human bodies. In the film nar­ rative, the soldiers fret about who is going to be cut for the final parade. Indeed, the elim­ ination of bodies is unavoidable. Similarly suggestive is the film’s ending. The work origi­ nally closed with a surreal sequence, with the screen showing a vast, empty Tiananmen Square while the sound of marching steps reverberates on the sound track. Under the studio authorities’ pressure, however, the filmmakers had to settle for the current ver­ sion, in which we are given the documentary footage of the actual parade. Still, the marching steps dissolve into a surreal slow motion, and we are left to ponder its implica­ tions. In retrospect, the 1984 parade and Zhang’s 1986 cinematic re-creation share an identical vision of modernity. For Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平, it was technological modernity that out­ strips the preindustrialized or traditional Maoist overreliance on human labor. For the makers of The Big Parade, it is the formalist geometry achieved through both pristine choreography of human figures and the self-conscious use of visual technology that re­ duce human bodies into formal elements. Both the political leader and experimental film­ makers were “avant-garde,” in that they were both forward-looking, envisioning a techno­ logically heightened futurity. They thus both diagram a future with a clean and unclut­ tered blueprint. While the filmmakers of The Big Parade exult in the technologically mediated formal or­ ders of geometrical formations, they are just as mindful of the downside of the disciplin­ ing of the body. Even though the film is about a military exercise rather than an industrial production, it foregrounds the body and labor as a pressing concern. (p. 579) A high-mind­ ed young soldier who dreams of going to military academy openly voices his skepticism about the meaning of putting bodies to such a relentless toil: What are we doing here all these days? We keep ourselves busy from the minute we open our eyes in the morning till the bedtime blackout. What are we busy with? Kicking up our feet thirty centimeters above the ground, turning our head at a forty-five-degree angle, keeping the distance from the next man at 1.2 meters, and marching 116 steps per minute! So that we form a line sideways, diagonally, and straight ahead! …

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation What era are we in now? Who doesn’t have some individuality? Look at those four hundred soldiers, spending day and night together. What are they busy doing? Walking! Like robots! The Taylorist automation, the quantified precision of bodily movement, the mechanical trope of robots are by no means accidental. The protest here resonates with the revived discourse on alienated labor and human nature in the post-Mao years. Alienation was a key concept bandied about in the intellectual discourse at the time. The concept is derived from Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and it posits an essential human nature and regards a variety of hu­ man activities as a process of alienation from his true nature. Chief among such activities is the alienated labor in the capitalist production in which bodily activity no longer serves the basic hu­ man nature.

Already in the early 1960s, Chinese intellectuals began to excavate this part of Marxism.19 The discussion died out as the ideological stricture tightened in the mid-1960s, but the topic was revived in the post-Mao era. The heated discussion of alien­ ation laid the ground for a reaffirmation of the primacy of humanism in the early 1980s— with humanism, in this context, meaning the care for the individual human sensibility that had been subjugated to larger collective causes in the Maoist years. This intellectual im­ pulse pulsates through The Big Parade. Even though the moral of self-sacrifice and stoicism remains the main tenor of the narra­ tive, the “visual unconscious” of the film suggests a yearning for the preindustrial pas­ toral freedom and the return of the body to its natural habitat. Excessive drilling and hardship causes a young rookie to develop a high fever. In a fit of delirium, he plays tru­ ant from the relentless regimentation and wanders into the countryside. Narratively, the soldier is going astray, and the film delights in this visionary idyllic escapade. The film shows sweeping swaths of golden wheat fields and haystacks. The farmers are harvest­ ing. The young soldier finds water and drinks it to quench his thirst, then joins the farm­ ers in reaping the wheat. During a break, he is mesmerized by the sight of young peasant women. A sense of interiority runs through the episode. The four-minute, twelve-second sequence is presented virtually in the mode of silent films. People speak, but their voices are mut­ ed. Meanwhile, the sound track also contains an array of other sounds: the gurgling of water, the swish of sickles, and the chirping of birds. The effect is intensified by a deliri­ ously unmodulated high-pitched techno-sound drifting on the sound track, (p. 580) thereby lending an air of interiority to the frame. A lonesome, serene flute melody floats into the soundscape, giving the scene a decidedly idyllic mood. Panoramic views of the golden fields are followed up by extreme close-ups of the peasants’ bodies. Significantly, the cam­ era trains on the sweaty back of peasant engaged in harvesting (see fig. 30.9). We then have a pastiche of shots of a boy mesmerized by the sight of a peasant girl, who demurely refrains from glancing in the direction of the soldier. The peasant women’s giggles, mut­ ed in the sound track, register only as fragments of silent-film footage. The effect is simi­ lar to that of an old newsreel featuring a pastoral scene of a harvest—the kind familiar

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation from Chinese films of 1950s and 1960s. In other words, it is a piece of celluloid memory appropriated by the film, a world of the past recollected. The free-roaming body—or rather, the wandering soul in an out-of-body condition—is pitched against regimented formations (see fig. 30.8). Relaxed, rustic, agricultural pas­ toral counterbalances the relentless austerity of drilling the body. It is apparent that the filmmakers—as well as their surrogate, the young soldier—are at home in this familiar rustic world. The tantalizing future of modernity of streamlined regimentation puts them out on a limb. The body looms large in the heroic rhetoric. The stirring national anthem, played by the military band, was the ceremonial theme music that started the 1984 National Day pa­ rade, and the sacrificial body is one of its central tropes: With our very flesh and blood, Let us build our new Great Wall! The lyric of the anthem fits the parade situation. It ends with the lines Arise! Arise! Arise! Millions of hearts with one mind, Brave the enemy’s gunfire, March on! Brave the enemy’s gunfire, March on! March on! March on, on! The imaginary scenario is poignant. Building the Great Wall with “our flesh and blood” means self-sacrifice and lends the relentless march some emotional force of pathos.

Figure 30.9 A peasant reaping in a wheat field as seen from the point of view of a wandering soldier straying away from the regimented drilling in Big Pa­ rade (1986). Still enlargement.

For a film that puts bodies in lines, it is no coincidence that The Big Parade evokes the national anthem, first in words and finally in the parade sequence. At the close of the training camp, a squadron leader addresses the soldiers: (p. 581)

How many miles have we walked all these months? I’ve calculated that each of us has walked 9,993 kilometers. To be more precise, it is as if we had walked in goose steps all the way from the northernmost tip of our motherland to the south­ ernmost tip, and back. I’ve heard that our parading troops used up six tons of shoe-nails. Six tons! Is it not the Long March?…How far are we are going to walk in front of Tiananmen? Ninety-six steps. Not even one minute! Ten thousand kilo­ Page 15 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation meters for one minute’s walk—that is the ratio. Do we need any rhetoric? Let me ask you: if we are not good men, can we bear such hardship?…I’m thinking of our national anthem: we build our Great Wall with our flesh and blood.20 As he speaks, the film cuts to a stationary shot in yet another distant view of the formation of the standing soldiers: an unmoving rectangle (fig. 30.8). The sight-and-sound correlation hints at the trope of the Great Wall built with human bodies. In view of the growing techno-aesthetics at the time that increasingly denigrated the “flesh and blood,” the rhetoric sounds hollow. Neverthe­ less, the march has to go on.

This tension in The Big Parade establishes a paradigm for one continuous impulse of the subsequent avant-garde art in China. The willful, or even foolhardy, persistence in the austerity of repetition and hard labor presents a challenging process. The foolhardiness and the absurdity of the futile effort that goes nowhere are redeemed by the staging of the ritual. The ceremonial grandeur and the formalist sublime make the meaningless toil meaningful. A strong sense of purpose counteracts the sense of purposelessness. To bor­ row from Rosalind Krauss, the “reflexive condition…about nothing but its maker’s own persistence in continuing to produce something that, in its resistance to instrumentaliza­ tion, its purposive purposelessness, must be called art.”21 This paradigm thus brings together two otherwise unrelated artworks from the 1980s: The Big Parade and Xu Bing’s 徐冰 well-known installation Book from the Sky (天書, 1987– 1991). It is striking that the two works are only a year apart, as they share a deeper grammar of motifs and formal impulses. For starters, Xu Bing spent countless hours in the late 1980s carving graphs on two thousand woodblock pieces of an identical size. These pseudo-sinographs look like Chinese characters in configuration, but are not. He used them to print out pages, which were then bound into books. The page layout and the book binding both follow the traditional Chinese book format. Finally, these pseudobooks, titled Book from the Sky, were arranged in a perfect geometrical formation for display in exhibition spaces (see fig. 30.10).

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation

Figure 30.10 Xu Bing, Book from the Sky (1987). In­ stallation. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

The Book from the Sky made Xu Bing one of the most widely recognized Chinese avantgarde artists in the world. The work’s visual dynamics and richly suggestive conceptual overtones have spawned critical exegesis of every conceivable kind. Indeed, no discursive formulation can claim to have the last word on the ultimate “meaning” of the open book— for there is no “meaning” therein except an inherent mechanism to inspire thoughts. To the extent that it is a mechanism, what matters most is to ascertain how it (p. 582) works rather than what it means. Its modus operandi is a controlled theatricality that thrives on the dialectics of playing determined purposefulness against deliberate purposelessness. The senselessness of such a massive assemblage of nonsensical texts is as striking as the sheer ceremonial gravity and almost foolhardy persistence of the artist’s relentless labor of love in manual execution. Much has been made of the studied nonsensical pseudocharacters as the most salient as­ pect of the work and the cognitive block they cause in the educated beholder. That invari­ ably becomes the cue for further interpretation. From there, one could then talk about the work’s subversion of traditional Chinese culture. The validity of this now-standard ac­ count, however, is increasingly suspect. The son of a history professor and a librarian, and having grown up in an academic environment, Xu Bing relishes and even fetishizes the Chinese writing system and the traditional culture embodied therein. This accounts for the extraordinary ardor he brought to the work. How do we then explain the seeming­ ly wayward and “subversive” act of making nonexistent Chinese characters? The answer is simple. They are lovingly constructed utopian characters: they neither exist nor have currency in the real world. If the writing system of Chinese characters is already an ab­ straction of the phenomenal world and (p. 583) our experience, the pseudocharacters are twice abstracted. Like the American abstract expressionist painters’ dream of a pure state of autonomy weaned from the traditional reliance on literary references,22 Xu Bing’s Page 17 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation pseudotext aspires toward the same utopian condition. However “subversive” one may characterize it, its force is forward-looking and, hence, avant-garde. The crux is not in the individual pseudocharacters, but rather in the effect of the work de­ rived from the architectonic formal assemblage as a whole. Aligned pseudocharacters form lines, pages, books, and a rectangular formation, thereby establishing a geometric visual order (see fig. 30.10). It is a thoroughly chastened and purified empire of signs of literary nothingness. The formalist emancipation from language avoids chaos through a geometrical order and regimentation. The project is not destructive; it is constructive. The pristine visual order is sublime, yet at the same time it also belies massive labor. It took Xu Bing countless hours of drudgery and repetitive hard work to arrive at this utopi­ an state of formalist geometrical sublime. It is where the orderly arrangement of the Book from the Sky inadvertently resonates with the regimented march of bodies on the tarmac rehearsed in The Big Parade. The parade preparation amounts to a rehearsal of Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky: hours and hours of labor spent on a “meaningless” project. The for­ mal order aesthetically sublimates—or reifies—the routine labor. Comparing the two works is mutually illuminating. The spirited quotation from the na­ tional anthem in the film—“building our Great Wall with our flesh and blood”—sounds eerily out of place. Composed in 1934, the song that was subsequently designated the na­ tional anthem arose from wartime urgency, and its reiteration for a parade in a peaceful time sounds theatrical and remotely relevant.23 That, however, is precisely the point. The displacement of the revolutionary wartime sublime to the postrevolution situation that no longer calls for such a stirring rallying call works out a good effect. The drive to moderni­ ty in the post-Mao era still retains the previous decades’ rhetorical trappings. It comes as no surprise that the 1980s’ modernization drive was emphatically and repeatedly charac­ terized as the “the Long March in the New Era,” evoking the Red Army’s historical Long March. The march trope provides the template to envision a drive toward the imaginary horizon of futurity.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation

Figure 30.11 Xu Bing, Ghosts Pounding the Wall (1991). Installation. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

The Big Parade and Xu Bing’s works also form yet another alliance. The film’s call to “build our Great Wall with our flesh and blood” resonates uncannily with Xu Bing’s Ghosts Pounding the Wall (鬼打牆, 1990), for which the artist led a group of art students in a labo­ rious effort to make ink rubbings of the surface of the Great Wall. The rubbings were then assembled and mounted in an architectonic manner to create a paper version of the Great Wall (see fig. 30.11). Hard labor translates into a monolithic visual order. Its sheer formal sublime registers the reified traces of labor but excludes human presence. In other words, it is another rehearsal of alienated labor. Its architectonic formalization—the mounted spreads of the ink-rubbing of the wall—creates a formal sublimity that masks the hard labor. This setup sheds light on that cool and distant shot of the rectangular for­ mation of standing soldiers on the tarmac in The Big Parade. Xu Bing’s ink-paper wall res­ onates with the architectonic figural formation in The Big Parade that reduces round bod­ ies into flat and integrated formal elements. “We build our Great Wall (p. 584) with our flesh and blood”—yet the Great Wall can no longer serve as the rallying call in a changed situation. Not only do flesh and blood no longer apply; their routine toil is lost in the utopian structure of technological modernization.

Conclusion What I’ve sketched out here is an alternative narrative of Chinese cinema of the 1980s. The narrative may leave one with the impression that we are dealing with yet another set of instances of intermediality or remediation—that is, how one medium appropriates, re­ cycles, and repurposes other media to create more complex affects and visual experi­ ences. Technically, that is true, except that the kind of remediation we have observed in Chinese visual culture of the 1980s is often inadvertent and subliminal rather than inten­ Page 19 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation tional strategic repurposing. While the Fifth Generation filmmakers indeed consciously emulated and simulated the photorealist effects cued by Luo Zhongli’s oil painting Father, there is no evidence that the formal and technological sublime played out in The Big Pa­ rade inspired Xu Bing’s works. Our story therefore is not one of influence; rather, it is one of significant coincidence and suggestive convergence. There is a (p. 585) good reason why the filmmakers and Xu Bing converged on the geometrical sublime in the 1980s. Likewise, the filmmakers’ indebtedness to Luo’s photorealism is not to be explained as merely a matter of influence. Had Luo not provided the cue, the makers of the Yellow Earth would have still come up with a largely similar kind of film. In other words, medi­ um-based or technological determinism does not account for the fresh development in 1980s Chinese cinema.24 The force of the historical circumstances was the engine driving the intermedial processes and remediation. Two large cultural-historical impulses drove the intermediality and remediation as part of the story of Chinese cinema in the 1980s. The first impulse was to go beyond and reject narrative constraints. Received narratives inherited from the Maoist years bear most hardened ideological imprints. The first post-Mao revisionist urge was therefore to find ways of breaking out of narrative straitjackets; which is to say, to wrest free from en­ trenched ideological strictures. Resort to techniques of close-ups and training attention on pure visual textures rather than narrative contours was among the effective ways of getting unhinged from the ideological anchorage. This accounts for both filmmakers’ yearning for pure cinema and painters’ preoccupation with hyperrealism of texture in the early 1980s. Perfection of their respective media was not the primary concern. Rather, their shared drive was to be rid of narrative clichés. Hence their shared antinarrative dis­ position. The second impulse grew out of the sentiments simmering in second half of the 1980s. The impulse stems from a combination of two contextual forces: one was an increasing sense of disorientation at a time when the old “self” long tethered to the state was losing its mooring and the new “self” was yet to be conceived; the other was the widely shared aspiration for a utopian futurity growing out of the national modernizing drive. These forces translated into some radical remediation in cinema and other media, symptomatic of a discontent with the constrains of received mediums. The final sequence in Samsara exemplifies a growing frustration with the inadequacy of existing mediums in staging new experiences. The Big Parade, as an example of remediation incorporating abstract paint­ ing techniques or architectonic order, is a study in visualizing modernization. The same aspiration also found its sublimation in Xu Bing’s works. The story presented above argues for a methodology that takes mediality as the primary focus in our study of Chinese cinema of the 1980s.25 All important films of the period are interesting not because of their narrative content. A story line of an army “art worker” collecting rural folk songs cannot begin to describe what the film Yellow Earth is all about; nor can we hang the massive cinematic weight of The Big Parade on the thin narra­ tive thread of soldiers drilling on an airport tarmac. Rey Chow has long noted the weak­ ening of “plot” and the “heightening of effects” in the Fifth Generation films of the 1980s. Page 20 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation This cinematic disposition suggests a “distrust of storytelling as a means of arriving at the truth; it is the distrust of a convention because it is too conventional, because it has already been used by too many people and has thus become uninteresting.” Chow rightly notes a distinct “kind of attentiveness” demanded by the 1980s experimental films, the kind that can be attributed not to the “plot,” but to the medium effects.26 Marshall McLuhan’s startling assertion that “the content of any medium is (p. 586) always another medium” may be an overstatement, but it is not too wide of the mark.27 It remains a pow­ erful corrective to our often narrative-biased approach to cinema, a practice more preva­ lent in the study of Chinese cinema. Not that narrative or storytelling is the albatross around the neck of the study of Chinese film. What often gets in our way in addressing films is the notion of language-based nar­ rative that reduces films into verbal affairs (the script, the plot, the story line, etc.). We are better off subscribing to a medium-based cognitive narrative that derives its force from the complex visual experience (close-ups and so forth). The innovative edge of the Chinese films of the 1980s stems largely from their visual narratives. Remediation played a big part in reinventing the wheel.

Works Cited “Andongni’auni de muguang” 安東尼奧尼的目光 [Antonioni’s eye]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2007: no. 6, 20. Bai, Jingsheng. “Throwing Away the Walking Stick of Drama.” Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to a New Era. Ed. George S. Semsel, Xia Hong, and Hou Jianping. New York: Praeger, 1990. 1–5. Balázs, Béla. Béla Balázs: Early Film Theory: “Visible Man” and “The Spirit of Film.” Ed. Erica Carter. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010. Bao, Weihong, “Diary of a Homecoming: (Dis-)Inhabiting the Theatrical in Postwar Shang­ hai Cinema.” Forthcoming. Bolter, Jay D., and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Chow, Rey. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chi­ nese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. “Dui ren de ziwo yihua de lijie” 對人的自我異化的理解 [An explanation of human self-alien­ ation]. Wenshizhe 文史哲 1962: no. 5. Gargan, Edward A. “China’s Cultural Crackdown.” New York Times, July 12, 1987. Goodman, Walter. “Big Parade, Celebration by the Chinese Military.” New York Times, March 15, 1988.

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation Gunning, Tom. “Fritz Lang Calling: The Telephone and the Circuits of Modernity.” Alle­ gories of Communication: Intermedial Concerns from Cinema to the Digital. Ed. John Fullerton and Jan Olsson. Rome: John Libbey, 2004. 19–37. Guo, Yuezheng 郭月爭. “Makesi zaoqi zhuzuo zhong de yihua sixiang he zichanjieji dui ta de lijie” 馬克思早期著作中的異化思想和資產階級對它的理解 [The concept of alienation in Marx’s early writings and the capitalist class’ understanding of it] Jianghuai xuekan 江淮學刊 1964: no. 11. Hung, Chang-Tai. “The Politics of Songs: Myths and Symbols in the Chinese Communist War Music, 1937–1949.” Modern Asian Studies 30.4 (1996): 910–929. Huo Weiguang 霍偉光 and Fang Keli 方克立. “Ruhe lijie Makesi guanyu ‘ren de ziwo yihua’ de sixiang” 如何理解馬克思關於人的自我異化的思想 [How to understand Marx’s thoughts on human self-alienation]. Guangming ribao 光明日報 [Guangming daily] November 1, 1963. Kaldis, Nick. “Huang Jianxin’s Cuowei and/as Aesthetic Cognition.” positions: east asia cultures critique 7.2 (Fall 1999): 421–457. Krauss, Rosalind. “Reinventing the Medium,” Critical Inquiry 25.2 (Winter 1999): 289– 305. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: New Amer­ ican Library, Times Mirror, 1964. Ni, Zhen 倪震. Beijing dianying xueyuan diwudai dianying qianshi gushi 北京電影學院第五代 電影前史故事 [Stories from the Beijing Film Academy: The genesis of Fifth Generation films]. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 2002. Ni, Zhen. Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China’s Fifth Genera­ tion. Trans. Chris Berry. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Silbergeld, Jerome. China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chi­ nese Cinema. London: Reaktion Books, 1999. (p. 589)

Vacche, Angela Dalle. Visual Turn: Classical Film Theory and Art History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Wang, [Eugene] Y. “Anxiety of Portraiture: Ancestral Image-making in Post-Mao China.” Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China. Ed. Kang Liu and Xiaobing Tang. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. 243–272. Wang, Eugene. “Samsara and the Crisis of Visual Narrative.” Narratives of Agency: SelfMaking in China, India, and Japan. Ed. Wimal Dissanayake. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 35–55. Xiao Kuntao 蕭焜燾. “Kexue de lijian, geming de haojiao—du Makesi jingjixue-zhexue shougao” 科學的利劍革命的號角—讀馬克思經濟學哲學手稿 [The sharp blade of science and the Page 22 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation bullhorn of revolution: A reading of the Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844]. Jianghuai xuekan 江淮學刊 1964: no. 5. Yau, Esther. “Yellow Earth: Western Analysis and a Non-Western Text.” Film Quarterly 41.3 (Winter 1987–1988): 22–33. Zhang, Jia-Xuan. “The Big Parade.” Film Quarterly 43.1 (Autumn 1989): 57–59. Zhang, Nuanxin, and Li Tuo. “The Modernization of Film Language.” Chinese Film Theo­ ry: A Guide to a New Era. Ed. George S. Semsel, Xia Hong, and Hou Jianping. New York: Praeger, 1990. 10–20.

Notes: (1.) Jay D. Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media. (Cam­ bridge: MIT Press, 2000). (2.) The initial polemics are developed in a series of essays, including Bai Jingsheng, “Throwing Away the Walking Stick of Drama,” in Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to a New Era, ed. George S. Semsel, Xia Hong, and Hou Jianping (New York: Praeger, 1990), 1–5; Zhang Nuanxin and Li Tuo, “The Modernization of Film Language,” also in Chinese Film Theory, 10–20. For a well-informed critical assessment of this debate in historical per­ spectives, see Weihong Bao, “Diary of a Homecoming: (Dis-)Inhabiting the Theatrical in Postwar Shanghai Cinema” (forthcoming). (3.) The film was produced by the Emei Film Studio in 1980. Zheng Yi was the scriptwriter and Zhang Yi the director. (4.) Cui Junyan’s 崔君衍 translation of Bazin, “Evolution of Film Language,” appeared in Shijie dianying 世界電影 [World cinema] 1980: no. 2, 3–19. (5.) The painting was published on the cover of Meishu 1981: no. 1. Li Xianting was the executive editor who made the decision. For a detailed study of the painting, see [Eu­ gene] Wang Y., “Anxiety of Portraiture: Ancestral Image-making in Post-Mao China,” in Politics, Ideology, and the Literary Discourse in Modern China, ed. Liu Kang and Tang Xi­ aobing (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 243–272. (6.) Based on my interview of Luo Zhongli, March 2011. (7.) Observation made by Louis Delluc, cited from Visual Turn: Classical Film Theory and Art History, ed. Angela Dalle Vacche (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 136. (8.) For studies of Yellow Earth, see Esther Yau, “Yellow Earth: Western Analysis and a Non-Western Text,” Film Quarterly 41.3 (Winter 1987–1988): 22–33; Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 79–107; Jerome Silbergeld, China into Film: Page 23 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 15–52. (9.) Ni Zhen 倪震, Beijing dianying xueyuan diwudai dianying qianshi gushi 北京電影學院第 五代電影前史故事 [Stories from the Beijing Film Academy: The genesis of Fifth Generation films] (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 2002): 92. For an English translation of Ni’s book, see Zhen Ni, Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China’s Fifth Genera­ tion, trans. Berry Chris (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). (10.) Balázs Béla, Béla Balázs: Early Film Theory: “Visible Man” and “The Spirit of Film,” ed. Carter Erica, trans. Livingstone Rodney (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 38. (11.) For studies of the film, see Eugene Wang, “Samsara and the Crisis of Visual Narra­ tive,” in Narratives of Agency: Self-Making in China, India, and Japan, ed., Wimal Dis­ sanayake (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 35–55; and Jerome Sil­ bergeld, China into Film, 86–89. Silbergeld translates the title of the film as Transmigra­ tion. (12.) Jia-Xuan Zhang, “The Big Parade,” Film Quarterly 43.1 (Autumn 1989): 57–59. (13.) One could make an argument about the subversive impulse. The lone soldier—the conscience of the film—who questions the senseless drilling is given a proper hearing and an airing of his nonconformist opinion. (14.) The friction between the filmmakers and the government censors has been duly not­ ed. Gargan Edward A., “China’s Cultural Crackdown,” New York Times, July 12, 1987. (15.) Edward A. Gargan, “China’s Cultural Crackdown.” (16.) Walter Goodman, “Big Parade, Celebration by the Chinese Military,” New York Times, March 15, 1988. (17.) David Dalgleish, review of Big Parade, April 3, 1999, retrieved October 24, 2012, from http://www.imdb.com/reviews/176/17607.html. (18.) “Andongni’auni de muguang” 安東尼奧尼的目光 [Antonioni’s eye], Dangdai dianying 當 代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2007: no. 6, 20. (19.) Huo Weiguang 霍偉光 and Fang Keli 方克立, “Ruhe lijie Makesi guanyu ‘ren de ziwo yihua’ de sixiang” 如何理解馬克思關於人的自我異化的思想 [How to understand Marx’s thoughts on human self-alienation], Guangmin ribao 光明日報, November 1, 1963; Guo Yuezheng 郭月爭, “Makesi zaoqi zhuzuo zhong de yihua sixiang he zichanjieji dui ta de li­ jie” 馬克思早期著作中的異化思想和資產階級對它的理解 [The concept of alienation in Marx’s early writings and the capitalist class’s understanding of it], Jianghuai xuekan 江淮學刊 1964: no. 11; Xiao Kuntao 蕭焜燾. “Kexue de lijian, geming de haojiao—du Makesi jingjix­ ue-zhexue shougao” 科學的利劍革命的號角—讀馬克思經濟學哲學手稿 [The sharp blade of sci­

Page 24 of 25

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Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation ence and the bullhorn of revolution: A reading of the Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844], Jianghuai xuekan 江淮學刊 1964: no. 5. (20.) The last line echoes Deng Xiaoping’s 1984 call to “restore our Great Wall.” (21.) Rosalind Krauss, “Reinventing the Medium,” Critical Inquiry 25.2 (Winter 1999): 295. (22.) Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 9. (23.) The PRC national anthem was originally a theme song from the film Children of Troubled Times (風雲兒女, 1935). The lyrics were by Tian Han 田漢 and the composition by Nie Er 聶耳. See Hung Chang-Tai, “The Politics of Songs: Myths and Symbols in the Chi­ nese Communist War Music, 1937–1949,” Modern Asian Studies 30.4 (1996): 910–929. (24.) As Tom Gunning aptly points out, the affinity of film to modern technology is to be explained by the determining condition of modes of modern experience, not technology it­ self. See Gunning Tom, “Fritz Lang Calling: The Telephone and the Circuits of Modernity,” in Allegories of Communication: Intermedial Concerns from Cinema to the Digital, ed. Fullerton John and Olsson Jan (Rome: John Libbey, 2004), 19–37. (25.) The advocacy has indeed been repeatedly made. Nick Kaldis, for instance, argues for the “aesthetic cognition [that] allows cinematic form to elucidate experience and to contribute to the ways in which we formulate, engage, and incorporate theoretical in­ sights.” Kaldis Nick, “Huang Jianxin’s Cuowei and/as Aesthetic Cognition,” positions: east asia cultures critique 7.2 (Fall 1999): 424. (26.) Rey Chow, Primitive Passions, 161–162. (27.) Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: New American Library, Times Mirror, 1964), 23–24.

Eugene Wang

Eugene Y. Wang is Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard Uni­ versity. He received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 and the Academic Achieve­ ment Award from Japan in recognition of his book Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (2005). He is the art history associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Buddhism. His extensive publications range from the ancient to con­ temporary Chinese art and visual culture, which have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Art History, Critical Inquiry, and elsewhere.

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema

Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenact­ ment and the Founding of PRC Documentary Cinema   Ying Qian The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0032

Abstract and Keywords This chapter studies a Sino-Soviet coproduced color documentary film entitled Victory of the Chinese People, directed by the Soviet war filmmaker Leonid Varlamov and completed in 1950. The film mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers and spent a large amount of am­ munition to reenact four “great battles” in the Chinese civil war, despite the fact that all these battles had been recorded in real time by Chinese filmmakers just months before. By comparing this film’s reenactment of the battles with Chinese filmmakers’ actuality footage, and by examining the translation of Soviet discourses on documentary cinema at the time, this chapter argues that the making of this film and the adoption of Soviet theo­ ries and practices of documentary dramaturgy in the early 1950s constituted a critical learning moment for Chinese filmmakers and helped lay the foundation for a PRC docu­ mentary cinema. Keywords: documentary, actuality, reenactment, war, Soviet influence

In October 1949, soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Fourth Field Army, who had just recently arrived and settled in their new station near Tianjin, were told that they would again be transferred back to the northeast, where their battalions had fought dead­ ly but victorious battles against the Nationalist army a year before. Cannons, tanks, and tens of thousands of soldiers were swiftly loaded onto trains. Soon the open plains near Jinzhou, where the dust of war had barely settled, were shaken again by cannons and gunfire. In the eight-month period between autumn 1949 and summer 1950, four battles marking PLA’s most important turns to victory during its war against the Nationalists were re-enacted by the same army units who had fought in them.1 Also reenacted were numerous celebratory scenes of the PLA soldiers marching into liberated cities such as Tianjin, Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai. The result was a bill of millions of RMB for the young PRC’s state budget, a Stalin Prize in cinema, and the CCP’s first-ever color “docu­ mentary,” Victory of the Chinese People (中國人民的勝利, 1950), directed by Leonid Varlam­ ov, the prize-winning Soviet war cinema specialist.2

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema This cinematic event was a high-profile undertaking. The making of the film had been suggested by Stalin himself, shortly before the founding of the PRC, when it became clear that the CCP’s triumph in the civil war was only a matter of time.3 The whole venture en­ joyed maximal support from the new Chinese state. Liu Shaoqi 劉少奇 was put in charge of the film’s overall planning, and Mao Zedong 毛澤東 was involved as well: he took upon himself to personally write to General Lin Biao 林彪, asking Lin and his troops to offer every help to the Soviet filmmakers in the reenactment of the Battle of Liaoshen, which the troops had fought victoriously in the autumn of 1948. The army also generously per­ mitted the Soviet filmmakers to use real cannonballs and bullets, which had cost lives to acquire from the retreating Nationalist army on battlefields and (p. 591) were precious for the young and resource-limited People’s Republic. Wu Benli 吳本立, a veteran filmmaker from the CCP’s Yan’an era who assisted the making of Victory of the Chinese People, con­ fessed that he had shed tears watching these real cannonballs and bullets being used for nothing but cinematic effects.4 Reenactments of battle scenes were not uncommon in the history of documentary cine­ ma, particularly in instances when the actuality, filmed on location during the battle, proved too difficult to produce. However, all four of these reenacted battles had also left real-time film footage: CCP filmmakers associated with the Yan’an Film Troupe (延安電影 團), the Northeast Film Studio (東北電影製片廠) and the Central North Film Team (華北電影 隊) had filmed them in real time and on the actual battlegrounds. The Battle of Liaoshen, for example, was covered by more than thirty filmmakers, including Wu Benli, the Chi­ nese filmmaker who collaborated with Varlamov on Victory of the Chinese People in 1949. Among these thirty filmmakers, three were killed while documenting the battle. The Bat­ tle of Crossing the Yangtze, in which the PLA crossed the Yangtze River in thousands of small ferryboats en route to take over Nanjing and Shanghai, was covered by a team of ten cameramen led by Wu Benli.5 Footage from these battles had been edited into actuali­ ty films and, according to Wu Benli, the Soviet filmmakers had watched these films when preparing to film their reenactments.6 Given the fact that actuality footage of the battles had been filmed less than a year before, it is perhaps puzzling why costly reenactments were considered necessary for the making of Victory of the Chinese People. Was Wu Benli shedding tears for the wasteful use of real cannons and guns; or was he, instead, weeping for his fellow filmmakers who had fallen on battlefields, and whose precious footage would soon be replaced by a more masterful, dramatic, yet fictitious rendition? In this chapter, I examine the reenacted film Victory of the Chinese People together with the original documentary film Million Heroes Crossing the Yangtze (百萬雄獅下江南, 1949), filmed by Wu Benli and other Chinese filmmakers during the actual battle between April and June 1949. I argue that these two films embodied two different visions of war and two distinct documentary practices defined by their openness to contingency and their rela­ tionship to theater. The massive cinematic reenactment to make Victory, and the simulta­ neous importation of Soviet film theory, practice, and organization, constituted one of the founding moments of PRC newsreel and documentary practice. Enforcing a fundamental distrust of the contingent visible world and consolidating film’s bond to theater through Page 2 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema the practice of documentary dramaturgy, this pair of works marked a turning point where a Yan’an cinema gave way to a PRC cinema.

Visions of War and Cinema between Battle Ac­ tualities and Reenactments Battlefield filmmaking is almost as old as cinema itself. As early as the 1898 SpanishAmerican War, both battle actualities and reenactments were made.7 The first (p. 592) cin­ ematic images of war from China were the numerous actualities and reenactments made of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, including actualities by Raymond Ackerman of the Ameri­ can Mutoscope & Biograph Company and by the Japanese filmmaker Shibata Tsunekichi,8 together with reenactments such as James Williamson’s Attack on a China Mission, filmed in Hove, England, in 1900,9 and the Edison Company’s Bombardment of the Taku Forts [by the Allied Fleets] (1900).10 These early battlefield films testify to the popularity of war images for turn-of-the-century audiences, whose imagination and curiosity were shaped by a zeitgeist of industrial modernity and imperialism. In cinema’s early years, battle actualities and reenactments coexisted, and the distinction between them went largely unnoticed. Richard Abel shows that before 1908 the French film company Pathé placed actualities and reenactments in the same category for distrib­ ution purposes, with there being no evidence that contemporary audiences saw any meaningful distinction between the two.11 According to Miriam Hansen, the same was true of early American cinema.12 For the audiences, what was more important was the distinction between a representation of “historical” event and that of a purely “fictive” or imaginary event. In other words, the actuality and reenactment belonged to the same family of films reviving “historical scenes,” considered real for the historical referents they depicted. Actuality and reenactment not only shared a family resemblance in cinema’s earliest years, they also engaged in the same pursuit to render modern warfare visible on cinema. Few battlefields automatically yielded spectacular views. Paul Virilio argues that war de­ pends on concealment rather than visibility, as a target can be destroyed much more easi­ ly if it can be seen.13 Working with letters and diaries written by U.S. soldiers fighting in the Spanish-American War and a memoir of a filmmaker filming the British soldiers on battlefields of the Boer War, Kristen Whissel shows that as weapons and soldiers were camouflaged in the vast landscape, the visual terrains of modern warfare were constantly shifting, inherently unstable, and full of self-erasure.14 The battle reenactments, on the other hand, were filmed in a controlled environment, with multiple takes. They offered filmmakers a laboratory setting to work out the most effective representations of war. The modes of vision developed in reenactments then helped filmmakers to navigate and docu­ ment actual battlefields.15 In other words, reenactments not only served as a substitute when battlefields were too difficult or dangerous to film physically, but were also part of a

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema dialectical process in which direct observation and reenactment together generated rep­ resentational modes of war. In China, no distinction was made between actuality and reenactments in film catalogs, either in the Republican or the PRC period. Both were labeled “news film” (新聞片) or “current affairs documentary” (時事紀錄片) in the Republican period, or “newsreel and documentary” (新聞紀錄片) in the PRC. Chinese filmmaking on the battlefields began as early as during the 1911 Revolution. The earliest known such film was The Battle of Wuhan (武漢戰爭, 1911), by the world-renowned magician Zhu Liankui 朱連奎 (aka Ching Ling Foo), which he produced in the wake of the Wuchang uprising of October 10, 1911, and showed as part of his travel acts.16 Another early battlefield filmmaker was Li Minwei 黎民偉 (aka Lai Man-wai), whose passionate promotion of (p. 593) cinema as a propaganda tool for China’s revolution earned him the position of the official cinematographer for Sun Yat-sen 孫中山 from 1921 to 1925. Li filmed many actualities of Sun’s political activities as well as the Nationalist army’s military actions. After Sun Yat-sen’s death in 1925, Li com­ piled years of actuality footage into a nine-reel compilation documentary entitled The Na­ tional Revolutionary Army’s War on Sea, Land, and Air (國民革命軍海陸空大戰記, 1927). Both Zhu and Li had been influenced by cinematic images of war from America and Eu­ rope. Zhu encountered war newsreels when performing overseas in America and Europe. Li became a film lover when growing up in Hong Kong, and among the first films he watched was a work about the Russo-Japanese War, most likely one of the reconstructions made by the Biograph Company (Battle of Chemulpo Bay, 1904), the Edison Company (The Battle of the Yalu, 1904), or Pathé.17 At the same time, both Zhu and Li were influ­ enced by the understanding of cinema in China as a form of theater and shadow play. An advertisement on Zhu Liankui’s The Battle of Wuhan, put out by a teahouse in Beijing in 1911, called the film “moving photography” (活動寫真) and an “electric shadowplay” (電光 影戲) and praised it for putting together “real scenes” (真影) of battles, such that a chronology of the revolution, its spectacular scenes and glorious heroes such as Sun Yatsen and Huang Xing 黃興, could all “play out, one after another” (一一演出).18 Similarly, Li Minwei placed equal stress on cinema’s photographic ability and its dramatic potential. He began his artistic career in theater and made battlefield actualities as well as fiction films, perceiving both as equally valid ways of educating and mobilizing the Chinese pop­ ulation for patriotic and revolutionary causes. This particular understanding of cinema may have been the reason that Li Minwei, a pio­ neering filmmaker at the front of cinematic innovations, never theorized the distinction between actualities and reenactments, nor did any of his contemporaries. In the Soviet Union, however, heated debates erupted on this topic. Since the mid-1920s Dziga Vertov had been advocating a particular approach to filmmaking that he called kinopravda, that is, seeking truth with an objective “kino-eye” and filming “life caught unawares.” Calling theatrical performances and film dramas “surrogates for life,” Vertov believed that actual­ ities by definition were superior to reenactments, because only footage from unrehearsed everyday life could serve as “a thermometer or aerometer of our reality, and its signifi­ cance is unquestionably higher than the inventions of individual authors, individual writ­ Page 4 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema ers, or directors.”19 According to Vertov, a film must be led by footage from everyday life, rather than by a predetermined theme. “Newsreel is organized from bits of life into a theme, and not the reverse,” he wrote. “Kinopravda doesn’t order life to proceed accord­ ing to a writer’s scenario, but observes and records life as it is, and only then draws con­ clusions from these observations.”20 Vertov’s insistance on kinopravda, or the “cinematic truth,” was indicative of the anxieties experienced by filmmakers in the early years of the USSR, when theatrical reenactments became one of the ways in which the new Soviet state fostered collective experience of foundational narratives to consolidate its political legitimacy. Immediately after the found­ ing of the USSR, theatrical reenactments of the “storming of the Winter Palace” were or­ ganized by radical dramatists to transform large numbers of citizens (p. 594) from onlook­ ers into revolutionaries. While the original attack on the Winter Palace was relatively small, involving only about a hundred people, the largest reenactment at the actual loca­ tion of the Winter Palace mobilized eight thousand amateur actors and a hundred thou­ sand spectators in 1920, achieving what Frederick C. Corney called “the apotheosis of the October Revolution.”21 In 1927, Sergei Eisenstein made October, a cinematic reenact­ ment of the October Revolution, to commemorate the revolution’s tenth anniversary. Learning from the previous dramatic reenactments, Eisenstein’s cinematic reenactment mobilized thousands of local residents and presented a far more spectacular act of “storming the Winter Palace” than the actual event.22 The film received severe attacks from Vertov, who criticized it as a “complete flop,” despite the immense government fund­ ing behind it, “because the method of the theatrical fiction cannot sustain any significant theme, and this theme is squandered for fictional, toy-shop trivia.”23 Other like-minded filmmakers joined the debate. In 1927, the same year Li Minwei compiled the actuality footage he had shot earlier and finished his cinematic tribute to Sun Yat-sen, the Soviet filmmaker Esfir Shub finished work on her well-known trilogy, Fall of the Romanov Dy­ nasty. Together with Vertov, Shub expressed a strong belief in the ontological authenticity of actuality footage. Her use of a large quantity of actuality footage from eclectic sources to compose a historical narrative greatly influenced documentary practice in Europe and in the United States in the 1930s as well as during World War II.24 In 1927, Li Minwei and Esfir Shub, drawing inspiration from a common international cir­ culation of actuality films as well as from their respective cultural contexts, produced re­ markably similar works. Yet soon afterward, Chinese and Soviet cinematic practices di­ verged. Between 1928 and 1932, the Soviet Union underwent a “cultural revolution” in which socialist realism was established as the guiding principle for the arts, and both Ver­ tov and Shub were sidelined.25 Meanwhile, the use of reenactment and dramatization in nonfiction films became a common practice. Eisenstein’s reenactment of the October Rev­ olution, for instance, was deemed so superb that “it was for many years passed off by the Soviet leadership as the authentic newsreel footage of this historical event.”26 By 1932, skillful and seamless reenactment and staging had become a point of pride among film­ makers. At a 1932 conference of filmmakers in the USSR, a participant reported that one of his film studio’s reconstructions was so successful that “there is not a single shot that has not been staged. Everything, right down to the most distant long shot was staged yet Page 5 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema at numerous screenings no one noticed….Since we organized the facts ourselves, we were able to impart a certain dynamism, we could choose what to include, and so the work acquired a dramatic spine.”27 In China, on the other hand, there occurred no such “cultural revolution” favoring drama­ tization over actuality. Filmmakers continued making actualities, following Li Minwei’s legacy, and comforming to an international practice of war propaganda, influenced by early Soviet documentarians such as Vertov and Shub, as well as practices from Ameri­ can, Japanese, German, and Italian cinematic traditions.28 In the 1930s and 1940s, as Chi­ na was shaken by the Sino-Japanese conflict and then the war, many war documentaries were produced, initially by commercial film companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong in the early 1930s, and after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai by the state-run (p. 595) Cen­ tral Film Studio (中央電影攝影場) and the China Motion Picture Corporation (中國電影製片 廠).29 In 1938, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) founded the Yan’an Film Troupe, which made numerous battlefield actuality films during the civil war between the CCP and the Nationalist armies. The Yan’an Film Troupe received material support from the Soviet Union, such as film stock, projectors, and power generators, and Soviet films were sent to Yan’an for screening, which influenced Yan’an filmmakers stylistically.30 However, there was no indication that Yan’an filmmakers were aware of the changing conceptions of documentary in the Soviet Union. Yan’an filmmakers, including Yuan Muzhi 袁牧之, Wu Yinxian 吴印咸, and Xu Xiaobing 徐肖冰, gained their experiences working for years in Hol­ lywood-influenced film studios in Shanghai. Some had also worked for China’s Central Film Studio and the China Motion Picture Association. Therefore, stylistically and concep­ tually the Yan’an practice of documentary was largely undistinguishable from that of the rest of China, though Yan’an filmmaking was severely limited by shortage of equipment and film stock. While reenactments in the first decade of the twentieth century had helped filmmakers overcome technical difficulties and develop a cinematic template to navigate real battle­ fields, improvements in film technology helped make on-location filming easier, and the number of battle reenactments declined sharply in Europe and America between 1907 and 1908, after which most battle newsreels were actualities filmed on location.31 However, reenactment as a technology of creating templates for new vision, this time a distinctively Socialist one, was revived in the USSR in the 1920s, and consolidated in the 1930s. In 1949, the making of Sino-Soviet reenactments of the Chinese civil war battles brought this particular template of vision from the USSR to the new PRC. In the next sec­ tion, I examine the differences between the actuality film produced by the CCP and the reenactment film coproduced by the Soviet Union and China, to understand what this template was and why reenactment was deemed necessary.

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema

From Million Heroes to Victory of the Chinese People A comparison of Million Heroes and Victory reveals differences between the CCP’s own battlefield documentary practice prior to the founding of the PRC and the practice of doc­ umentary cinema in the USSR at the time. Most obvious was that Victory was in color, while Million Heroes was black-and-white, and the scale of action was consistently larger in Victory. The bigger scale was achieved by mobilizing a larger number of people, more frequent use of unobstructed and continuous panorama shots, and the commentator’s verbal reminders of the fact that what was on the screen was only one of the many simi­ lar scenes happening simultaneously along the Yangtze River. The second difference in­ volved the overall emotional tone: Victory of the People was far more joyful and optimistic than Million Heroes, creating celebrative emotions with folk music fanfares and (p. 596) bright and upbeat color schemes. Third, compared to Million Heroes, Victory was more attentive to collective action and interested in representing leadership and hierarchy. Fi­ nally, Victory and Million Heroes had different temporal structures. Million Heroes followed a strictly chronological timeline, though willing to stop the forward thrust of the narrative of the combat to allow digressions and interruptions, if events in real life called for them. Victory on the other hand reorganized the order of events, and the cinematic time it created was further removed from a historical timeline. Consider how the two films portrayed the activities leading up to the Battle of Crossing the Yangtze. In Victory, on the last day before the battle a massive oath-taking rally is held in a big plaza. PLA soldiers line up, raise their arms, shout slogans, and vow bravery. The camera films from a high angle, emphasizing the geometry of the soldiers’ lineup and the large area it covers, and abstracts from individualizing characteristics of each soldier in the frame. Meanwhile, shots taken at the front and from behind are intercut to show an undivided collective of soldiers acting in unison. The army officials stand on a large and elevated platform adorned with huge portraits of Mao Zedong and Zhu De 朱德 at the front of the plaza. A clear visual hierarchy is created by the physical division of the sol­ diers and their top officers, and the portraits of Mao Zedong and Zhu De looming above as the ultimate location of power to which the soldiers’ vows are directed. The oath-taking ceremony is followed by two other scenes. The first scene depicts the ar­ rival of villagers sending food and water to the soldiers. Accompanied by vibrant folk mu­ sic of the Yangtze region, the camera portrays congenial interactions between the sol­ diers and the masses, singling out representatives of villagers, old and young, men and women, and framing them in intimate medium-distance shots with the soldiers as they of­ fer the soldiers bowls of water. Two performances of drum dances follow. “Propaganda workers” dressed in folk costumes beat waist-drums and dance for a plaza of attentive soldiers sitting on the floor. The last shot of the sequence is a close-up of the lead actor beating a big red drum. The camera zooms onto the actor’s face, which appears full of in­ tensity, dynamism, and ecstasy. Meanwhile, the commentator speaks on the sound track: “Tomorrow is the day of the battle. Let today’s joyful drums beat even louder; they antici­ Page 7 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema pate tomorrow’s victory.” The oath-taking ceremony and the two scenes that followed were filmed with a consistently celebrative, joyful, and optimistic emotional tone. Million Heroes also features an oath-taking ceremony, though the scale is much smaller and it takes place at the army’s military base, rather than by the river on the day before the battle. The camera is mostly positioned at eye level, prioritizing individualization over abstract geometry of collective forms. There is no platform and no portrait of Mao Ze­ dong or Zhu De. Officers and soldiers can’t be easily differentiated, as they stand on the same level. There are no folk dances, villagers sending food, or grand oath-taking cere­ mony. The voice-over describes soldiers signing up for the dangerous task of crossing the river in the first dispatch of boats, while the camera shows dozens of soldiers lined up, looking relaxed and wearing worn-out military outfits and helmets tilting to all directions. The camera frames these soldiers at eye level in a medium-long shot, (p. 597) panning slowly from left to right, revealing a multitude of facial expressions: some apprehensive, some indifferent, and others relaxed and confident. Compared to the order and magni­ tude of the oath-taking ceremony in Victory, these relaxed shots are much more mun­ dane. The next shot features numerous fishing boats parked at the riverbank in a long shot. The voice-over notes that the boats belong to local fishermen who volunteered to ferry the sol­ diers across the river. Then the comments break off, and a moment of silence ensues. On the boats, villagers are waiting. No one seems particularly excited, and instead they ap­ pear contemplative. The Yangtze River was considered one of the toughest natural de­ fense-lines in the country, and the Nationalist army, though at the time weakened signifi­ cantly by previous CCP victories, had good weaponry and a formidable air force. Even though the PLA had already won crucial battles, and many anticipated it would triumph in the end, the outcome of this particular battle was not clear. In Million Heroes the pensive and private moments before the battle reflected this grave uncertainty. Both soldiers and fishermen withdrew into themselves, taking a moment of respite from collective actions, lighting a cigarette, and getting lost in thought. They were, at that moment, neither sol­ diers nor heroes, but rather ordinary people facing the possibility of violent death. The battle begins in Million Heroes with a melodic sound of a single trumpet playing the tune signaling the start of action. With the trumpet playing on the sound track, a single cannon slowly raises its long dark barrel, and a white sail is slowly raised from the bot­ tom of a boat and flutters in the air. In the next few shots, these movements are repeated by a large number of cannons and sails, raising their barrels and sails at the same time, getting ready for the battle. Juxtaposing the solidly dark, firm, and pointed iron tubes of the cannons with the softly white, translucent, and expansive sails, beginning with an in­ dividual action and expanding into a collective endeavor, this montage is masterfully di­ alectical. The soft and vulnerable fabric of the sails and the human lives beneath them are put into direct confrontation with the violent potentials of the cannons. As soldiers and fishermen begin to row away from the riverbank and the cannons begin to fire, a group of about fifteen people, mostly villagers and some soldiers, stands by the river and shouts slogans. With the explosive noise from the cannons in the background, these human voic­ Page 8 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema es shouting revolutionary slogans beside the Yangtze sound vulnerable, slight, yet musi­ cal, adding forlornness and sorrow to the otherwise grand departure, and at one point quoting from the classic historical text Records of the Historian (史記): “Wind blows and sighs, and the Yi River is cold. The hero leaves and will not return” (風蕭蕭兮易水寒，壯士一 去兮不復還). Compared to the loud, assured, and unified beatings of the drum in Victory, this scene from Million Heroes is all the more pluralistic: military might and human vul­ nerability, sanguine hopes for collective victory and sorrowful premonitions of individual demises, all find their place in this rich tapestry woven by none other than the battle it­ self. The management of time in the two films differs greatly. This can be seen clearly in the scenes immediately after the PLA crosses the river. After the first group of soldiers and (p. 598) boats fords the river, destroys the enemies’ defenses, and wins the battle, Million Heroes goes into a long sequence depicting horses, tanks, and heavy weaponry being transported across the river on large boats. The camera captures the horses happily walk­ ing off the boats, using no less than five shots from various angles (including a comic an­ gle from the horses’ rear). A comparable number of shots is devoted to the tanks as they roll off boats onto the riverbank. Even though the commentator speaks objectively of the necessity of transporting the horses and weapons across the river, the playful composi­ tion of shots reveals the cameraman’s subjective joyful and comic state of mind. Victory, on the other hand, allows no such moment of respite and play. Instead, the army is por­ trayed marching forward without a moment of rest. The voice-over states that “there is no time to waste. We must move forward, move forward fast, to give the enemies no time to react. We must move forward to liberate Nanjing and Shanghai.” While the moment of victory is savored in Million Heroes, the dedication to the next target overwhelms the present moment in Victory. At the level of narrative structure, Million Heroes is more open to interruptions and di­ gressions if the real timeline of events calls for them. The temporal structure of Victory, on the other hand, corresponds less to the real timeline than to one determined by the film’s internal logic and aesthetic requirements. For example, when PLA soldiers and civilians are busy making preparations for crossing the Yangtze, the CCP begins a peace negotiation with the Nationalist Party. In Victory, the war preparation is never interrupt­ ed. On the screen, soldiers and villagers continue to dig canals and prepare the boats and weapons. The peace negotiation has no visual representation and instead is only de­ scribed by the voice-over: “The American imperialists supported Li Zongren 李宗仁 and at­ tempted to cheat the Chinese people with a fake peace negotiation. However, led by Chairman Mao, the Chinese people exposed the enemies’ conspiracy and were firmly de­ termined to carry out the revolution to the end.” This not only prevents digressions from the narrative thrust, but also erases other possible alternatives in historical development. It builds into the narrative a time structure of preknowledge, as if from the very begin­ ning Mao and the “Chinese people” had already known that the peace negotiation was a mere conspiracy.

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema In the case of the peace negotiation, Million Heroes cuts from the war preparations to im­ ages of meetings between the two parties’ high officials. The film shows the arrival of the Nationalist delegation, and the congenial meeting between them and the CCP representa­ tives who had been waiting at the Beiping airport, with both parties behaving more like friends than enemies. Then the film cuts to the negotiation table, where the delegates and CCP leaders spent twenty days and finally arrived at the “Agreement of Domestic Peace.” The negotiation is depicted quite economically. The camera films the two parties sitting at an oval table, with speeches by Zhou Enlai 周恩來. Yet details such as a smile on one participant’s face, a long handshake, and a vase of carefully arranged fresh-cut flowers convey a sense of normalcy and a friendliness and seriousness with which the CCP lead­ ership approached the negotiation. They complicate the mise-en-scène, allowing viewers to imagine potential multitudes inherent in any historical moment.

(p. 599)

From a Yan’an Cinema to a PRC Cinema

The fact that the CCP had filmed actualities for each of the “Four Great Battles” testified to its growing filmmaking capacity prior to 1949. As I showed in the previous two sec­ tions, this capacity came from a long tradition of filmmaking in the first half of the twenti­ eth century and bore influences from an international circulation of war images. While Chinese filmmakers had not developed major theorization on the distinction between ac­ tualities and reenactments, and anecdotal evidence suggests that battle reenactments ex­ isted sporadically, most of the battle newsreels were filmed as actualities.32 Coproduction with the Soviet Union on Victory was the beginning of a major Sovietization campaign where Chinese filmmakers learned to adopt the Soviet practice of documentary dramatur­ gy and reenactment by reading translated Soviet film criticism and through direct experi­ ence working with Soviet filmmakers. Soviet film theory, organization, and practices were introduced to the new China through translation. In 1951, a volume of Soviet film theory entitled Party on Cinema (黨論電影) was published in the PRC, with a preface by Yuan Muzhi, then the head of the State Film Bureau. Yuan recounts how he discovered the book’s original 1938 Russian edition (enti­ tled Lenin, Stalin, Party on Cinema) in a bookstore in Moscow in 1941.33 A filmmaker and actor who had founded the Yan’an Film Troupe after many years of experience in Shanghai’s film studios, Yuan Muzhi was at the time in Moscow on a mission to complete the postproduction of Yan’an Film Troupe’s first documentary film, Yan’an and the Earth Route Army (延安與八路軍). This trip proved disastrous: the precious film reels were lost in Soviet territory following German attacks in 1941. Both Yuan and Xian Xinghai 冼星海, the talented composer who had gone to Moscow with Yuan to compose for the film, got stuck in the Soviet Union, unable to return to China, and Xian Xinghai died of illness in Moscow in 1945.34 When Yuan finally made his way back to China, he was carrying little more than this worn-out book, which he deemed crucial for the development of Chinese cine­ ma.35

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema While the theory and practice of Soviet cinema had already been introduced to China in the 1920s, and Lenin’s famous line, “Remember, of all the arts for us, the most important is cinema,” had been widely circulated, Party on Cinema was the first comprehensive doc­ ument appearing in China that offered a systematic overview of Soviet filmmaking and film criticism under Party leadership.36 It established cinema as the most important art form for mass propaganda and cited the development of cinema as “a measure of socialist achievement of a country,” as Stalin proclaimed at the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934.37 The volume also established the central importance of documentary and newsreel films. Among different kinds of cinema, Lenin particularly favored the “serious and educa­ tional” genre of documentary and newsreel. Newsreel and documentary, for Lenin, were visual newspapers and illustrated public lectures, serving similar functions as the best Party newspapers.38 They were more (p. 600) likely to be “imbued with Communist ideas and reflecting Soviet reality,” in contrast to “useless picture of the more or less usual type,” namely feature and other films for entertainment purposes.39 The volume’s editor, Lebenov, also considered rapid development of documentary and newsreel cinema as among the most important achievements of Soviet cinema.40 Party on Cinema praised film as a “great” art form yet also warned of the danger of its falling into hands of the enemies. “In the hands of banal opportunists, film would often lead people to a path of decadence,” warned Lenin as early as 1907; “only in the hands of the masses and true socialist cultural workers would film become most powerful tool to educate the masses.”41 Cinema was powerful, and therefore it must remain securely in the hands of the Party. Party on Cinema included a rich collection of Party directives con­ cerned with day-to-day management of cinema: nationalizing film productions, cultivating politically correct film cadres and scriptwriters, developing the USSR’s own industrial ca­ pacity for filmmaking technology and film stock, and setting up extensive networks of film production and exhibition throughout the USSR, especially in the Far East republics and rural areas. Building the film industry had been repeatedly cited in the USSR’s five-year plans, and these directives became models of emulation for post-1949 China. In 1953, as China initiated its First Five-Year Plan with help from Soviet Union, it began building the nation’s own film industry, and many of its priorities seemed identical to those outlined in Party on Cinema.42 Party on Cinema provided ideas on how to macromanage the budding film industry in the young PRC; other translations of Soviet film literature offered insights into the microman­ agement of film styles. In February 1952, a new bimonthly film magazine, Film Art Re­ sources (電影藝術資料叢刊), was founded by the China Film Bureau, and the introduction of Soviet film theory and practice became the magazine’s central task. As the articles were mostly translations of Soviet film theory and practice, the name of the magazine was changed to Film Art in Translation (電影藝術譯叢) in 1953. Between 1952 and 1953, this magazine published numerous translated essays by Soviet filmmakers and critics on doc­ umentary cinema, focusing on issues of documentary dramaturgy, reenactment, and au­ thenticity. Originally published in Soviet film journals in 1950 and 1951, these essays were more up-to-date than the 1938 publication Party on Cinema and reflected the domi­ Page 11 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema nant discourses on documentary in the Soviet Union around the time when Victory of the Chinese People was made.43 The most important target of criticism in these essays was “on-the-spot realism” or “docu­ mentalism” (紀實主義). In an article entitled “Authenticity in Documentary,” I. Nazarov ob­ serves, “In the debate on documentary, there used to be a very incorrect, careless point of view that newsreel filmmakers must not conceptualize, but rather must return to the principle of documentalism, as if only this principle could guarantee the authenticity of documentary cinema.”44 On-the-spot realism would lead filmmakers to “photograph reali­ ty with a cold and detached naturalism, superficially gliding over the appearance of reali­ ty,” he warned, and the result would be the exact opposite of the intention. What was meant to be “objective” would in the end distort reality, in a way “no less toxic than fabri­ cation.”45 Why was documentalism so detrimental? Nazarov gave a few examples. Criticiz­ ing one scene in Y. M. Bliokh’s documentary Fishermen of the Caspian (1949), in which a fishermen’s team is awarded a red flag for winning a productivity competition, for in­ stance, Nazarov wrote, “The scene was shot with low light, as if it had been something very common, meaningless, and ordinary. The narration was vague and hurried…without (p. 601)

profoundly showing the essence of this event, and the great meaning of socialist competi­ tion, which, as we know, is the basis of labor relations in the Soviet society.”46 The biggest flaw of this scene was its lack of luster, which betrayed the filmmakers’ lack of passion and Party spirit and hindered the expression of the “essence of the matter.” In another ex­ ample, a leader of a collective farm made an arrogant appearance in a documentary, be­ having in a boastful and self-centered way. Nazarov reasoned that even though this cadre might indeed have been a bit arrogant, this would not have been his “essential” charac­ ter, but rather merely an “accidental and secondary one that only became manifest be­ cause of the particular environment created by the act of filming.”47 In both cases, the ac­ tual appearance of things captured by the camera was considered inadequate in reveal­ ing the essential nature of things and people. It was inadequate because the contingen­ cies during the filmmaking—including inadequate light and people’s “accidental” behav­ ior in front of the camera—distracted the audience from events’ true meaning and people’s essential character. In Nazarov’s essay, one may discern a fundamental distrust of the visible world. The visi­ ble world was considered superficial, messy, and full of contingencies that would confuse and mislead. It was a world where the “essential” and the “accidental” coexist, and it would be difficult to tell them apart. Documentalism, which Nazarov defined as indiscrim­ inate recording of the visible world, would inevitably distort “reality,” because the visible world—or visuality itself—was a source of confusion and distortion, able to either hide or reveal the underlying reality. Facing such a world, filmmakers could not be detached record-keepers; instead they should be “artists and propagators” with a political aware­ ness that would allow them “to go deep into the essence of phenomena, reveal the total meaning of a fact, call people to rush toward the future, and manifest the future in the ac­ tivities of today.”48 For Nazarov, the task of the filmmaker was to reorder the visual world: Page 12 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema to discern the important from the trivial, grasp the essential as distinct from the contin­ gent, understand the hierarchies of meaning and temporality, so that the films they pro­ duced would render visible a reality more real than the observed world. To aid filmmakers in the task of ordering the visible world and rendering visible its ob­ scured and invisible essentials and dynamics, the documentary script was of great impor­ tance, as the film critic R. Grigoriev argued in “On Documentary Screenplay,” published in June 1952, in the third issue of Film Art Resources. Writing was considered a pathway to make order and art out of the raw materials of the physical world. Grigoriev cited two great Soviet writers to prove his point. “Why we can’t stand it when a newsreel is screened?” Mayakovsky asked in 1927, and answered: “Because our newsreels are acci­ dental collections of various shots and discrete events. Newsreel should be edited, and become a system of its own. Such newsreels will not bore people; instead, one will not be able to live without them.” Gorki similarly observed that “facts are not the entirety (p. 602) of truth, they are just raw materials. One must distill, pull real artistic truth from these raw materials. We cannot fry the chicken with its feathers. If we worship facts, it will lead us to confuse accidental and unessential things with fundamental and typical things. We must learn to pluck out the feathers of unessential facts, and be good at lifting thoughts from facts.”49 Writing a script for a documentary beforehand would provide a basis for the film, argued Griogoriev, “as it would subject our work to a unified intellectual and artistic vision.” Us­ ing examples from Soviet documentary screenwriting, Griogoriev showed how a good script could create scenes with an overall unified aesthetics and poetics and could help filmmakers think through the sound treatment, montage rhythm, composition, and arrangement of colors before the event. This would allow directors to better manage the actual filming. This process of scripting, imagining, and staging was what Nazarov called “conceptualization” (概括). Nazarov argued that documentary reenactments and staging were legitimate because they were a form of “conceptualization” and were fundamentally different from fabrication, which either had no basis in the material world or was a mis­ taken conceptualization.50 Leonid Varlamov, director of Victory, was identified by Grigoriev as one of the Soviet Union’s most skillful documentary scriptwriters.51 Indeed, during the filming of Victory, Varlamov put many of the ideas expressed in these essays into practice, which exerted much influence on the Chinese filmmakers with whom he worked. Those who collaborat­ ed with Soviet filmmakers on these two films were all from the newly established Beijing Film Studio,52 and according to the studio’s end-of-year report of 1950, they believed that their experiences working with the Soviets had “improved production quality in the stu­ dio as a whole.”53 Chen Bo 陳播, a filmmaker who participated in the filming of Victory, wrote in a 1957 arti­ cle, “I was deeply in awe of Comrade Varlamov’s talent and creativity in the artistic cre­ ation of documentary films.”54 Varlamov impressed Chen not only with his written script, which for Chen showed great knowledge about the Chinese revolution, but also his Page 13 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema “sharp political vision,” which endowed the film with “a rich power of visual expression.” In the examples provided by Chen, Varlamov’s “political vision” had to do with his ability to find or stage revolutionary symbols in the visual environment. When filming the grand entry of PLA troops into liberated Beijing, Varlamov chose to film the closed gate of the American Embassy at the moment when PLA soldiers passed by, so that the rifles on the shoulders of the soldiers pointed right at the American national crest on top of the gate. In Shanghai, inspired by the red flag flying on top of colonial style buildings, Varlamov staged a scene in which the old Nationalist flag was torn down by PLA soldiers and thrown from the top of a government building. The camera followed the discarded flag’s dramatic descent from the rooftop, following its twists and turns, until it landed onto the pavement below, to be swept into the dustbin of history. The two PLA soldiers selected for the task of tearing down the Nationalist flag were model soldiers for whom the chance of appearing in cinema was a great honor and pride. At the same time, Varlamov’s “imagina­ tive reenactment” impressed his Chinese colleagues deeply. Chen wrote, “Comrade Varlamov’s sensitive political vision and his ingenuous artistic (p. 603) imagination com­ bined to create a documentary. These great, moving, and authentic (真實的) scenes used to excite countless hearts of Chinese and foreign audiences and left me—a beginner in filmmaking—with indelible impressions. If I could claim to have some ideas about docu­ mentary-making later, it all came from experiences with this teacher….From his creative work, I began to understand the creative strategies of socialist realism in film art.”55

Conclusion The Sino-Soviet coproduction Victory of the Chinese People, being one of the first cases of reenactment and staging in PRC’s documentary film history, helped establish the legiti­ macy of reenactment and documentary dramaturgy and paved the way for even bolder documentary staging in later periods. Even though China in the late 1950s attempted to rid itself of Soviet influence and sought a more “national” approach in revolutionary art, documentary reenactment and staging remained in practice. Following Mao Zedong’s call to combine “revolutionary romanticism” with “revolutionary realism,” documentary and newsreel filmmakers were even encouraged to engage in a practice of “documenting the future,” to stage aspirations of people as if they were already realities on screen. In October 1958, at the height of the Great Leap Forward, which film studios across the country enthusiastically documented, the journal Film Art published a series of articles espousing the application of “revolutionary romanticism” in documentary production. The critic Ding Jiao 丁嶠 recounts a discussion that had taken place in April 1958 at the Cen­ tral Film Bureau among a number of filmmakers, writers, and critics, following screen­ ings of several documentary films on the Great Leap Forward. During the discussion, the poet and dramatist He Jingzhi 賀敬之 observed that while some films featured monumental scenes of collective labor, they seemed to depict the fruits of that labor in an unsatisfacto­ ry fashion: “After watching the film Spring in the Mountainous Region (山區的春天) and witnessing the touching scenes of people’s hard work…I felt very unsatisfied with just seeing a few small trees and a small patch of irrigated rice field at the end of the film.” In Page 14 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema his eyes, another documentary entitled Split Open Mountains to Bring in Water (劈山引水) had the same flaw: while the film depicted an amazing feat to transform nature, the new irrigation system shown at the end of the work only produced “a small stream of water, flowing toward us all too modestly.” Expressing his dissatisfaction with these films, He Jingzhi requested that the filmmakers “give us more splendid sceneries of the spring and bigger waves of water.” Anticipating objections from those who believed documentaries had to portray reality, He asked, “why can’t documentaries document tomorrow?” The an­ swer he proposed was, “Even if we show in the end of the films the spring sceneries from the Yangtze region, the audience wouldn’t deem it unreal, as we could add voice-over to clarify that this is what the tomorrow will be like. Wouldn’t such a film give us more en­ couragement?”56 After recounting He Jingzhi’s observations and requests, Ding Jiao expressed his agreement. Yes, documentary could also document the future, he affirmed, and those who believed that revolutionary romanticism could not be applied to documentary were wrong, because documentary realism and revolutionary romanticism were both rooted in social reality. “Our people are bold in thinking and courageous in action. Their unceasing energy for perpetual revolution and progress has placed new demands on the art of to­ (p. 604)

day,” he concluded. Revolutionary romanticism was “realistic,” as it reflected the zeitgeist of the day and registered the passion and energy of the people. Hence, reenactments of past victories of the Chinese people made way for cinematic enactments of future victo­ ries, moving not only the documentary genre but also real life further into the realm of fiction.

Works Cited Abel, Richard. “The Cinema of Attraction in France: 1896–1904.” The Silent Cinema Reader. Ed. Lee Grieveson and Peter Krämer. New York, Routledge, 2004. 63–76. Abel, Richard. Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2005. Chen Bo 陳播. “Huiyi Wa’erlamofu zai zhongguo” 回憶瓦爾拉莫夫在中國 [Recalling Varlamov in China]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema], November and December 1957. 106. Corney, Frederick C. Tell October: Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Ding Jiao 丁嶠. “Xinde tansuo: geming xianshi zhuyi yu geming langman zhuyi xiang jiehe de chuangzuo fangfa ruhe zai xinwen dianying zhong tixian” 新的探索：革命現實主義與革命 浪漫主義相結合的創作方法如何在新聞電影中體現 [New explorations: How to manifest the cre­ ative method of combining revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism in news films]. Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema], January 1958. 5–7. Fang Fang 方方. Zhongguo jilupian fazhan shi 中國紀錄片發展史 [The historical development of the Chinese documentary]. Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2003. Page 15 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema Gao Weijin 高維進. Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi 中國新聞紀錄電影史 [A history of Chi­ nese documentary filmmaking]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2003. Gillespie, David C. Early Soviet Cinema: Innovation, Ideology and Propaganda. London: Wallflower Press, 2000. Grigoriev, R. “Lun jilupian de juben” 論紀錄片的劇本 [A discussion of documentary filmscripts]. Dianying yishu ziliao congkan 電影藝術資料叢刊 [Film art resources] 1952: no. 3, 10–30. (p. 608)

Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. Hicks, Jeremy. Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007. Johnson, Matthew. “International and Wartime Origins of the Propaganda State: Motion Picture in China, 1897–1955.” PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 2008. Lebenov, N., ed. Danglun dianying 黨論電影 [Party on cinema]. Trans. Xu Guming 徐谷明. Beijing: Shidai chubanshe, 1951. Li Minwei 黎民偉. “Shibaizhe zhiyan—Zhongguo dianying yaolan shidai zhi baomu” 失敗者 之言－中國電影搖籃時代之保姆 [Words of a man who has failed: The nanny of Chinese film in its infancy]. Li Minwei: ren, shidai, dianying 黎民偉: 人，時代，電影 [Li Minwei: The person, the times, and cinema]. Ed. Luo Ka 羅卡 and Li Xi 黎錫. Hong Kong: Mingchuang chuban­ she, 1999. 169. Lin Danqiu 林淡秋. “Xinzhongguo renmin dianying shiye de shengli” 新中國人民電影事業的勝 利 [The victory of the enterprise of people’s cinema in new China]. Renmin ribao 人民日報 [People’s daily], March 7, 1951. Liu Nianqu 劉念渠. “Lüetan sulian dianying” 略談蘇聯電影 [A brief discussion of Soviet cine­ ma]. People’s Daily, October 30, 1949. Liu Yuqing 劉玉清. Zhongguo dianying de lishi shensi yu dangxia guancha 中國電影的審視和 當下觀察 [Historical reflections and contemporary observations on Chinese cinema]. Bei­ jing: Zhongguo chuanmei daxue chubanshe, 2009. Musser, Charles. Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Manufacturing Compa­ ny. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, Musser, Charles. Edison Motion Pictures, 1890–1900: An Annotated Filmography. 602. Catalog no. 837. Musser, Charles. The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Page 16 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema McKernan, Luke. “C. Frank Ackerman.” Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema: A Worldwide Survey. Ed. Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan. London: British Film Institute, 1996. Retrieved October 24, 2012, from http://www.victorian-cinema.net/ackerman.htm. McKernan, Luke. “Shibata Tsunekichi.” Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema: A Worldwide Survey. Ed. Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan. London: British Film Institute, 1996. Retrieved October 24, 2012, from http://www.victorian-cinema.net/shibata.htm. Re­ trieved October 24, 2012, from http://www.victorian-cinema.net/shibata.htm. Nazarov, I. “Jilupian zhong de zhenshixing” 紀錄片中的真實性 [The realism of documen­ tary]. Dianying yishu yicong 電影藝術譯叢 [Film art in translation] 1953: no. 1, 51–61. Roberts, Graham. Forward Soviet! History and Non-fiction Film in the USSR. London: I.B. Tauris, 1999. Shanghai dianying zhi 上海電影志 [Shanghai film chronicle]. Shanghai: Shanghai difangzhi bangongshi, 1999. Sopocy, Martin. James Williamson: Studies and Documents of a Pioneer of the Film Narra­ tive. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. Vertov, Dziga. “The Essence of Kino-Eye” (1925). Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Trans. Annette Michelson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. 45–50. Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Trans. Patrick Camiller. Lon­ don: Verso, 1989. Whissel, Kristen. “Placing the Spectator on the Scene of History: The Battle Reenactment at the Turn of the Century, from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West to the Early Cinema.” (p. 609)

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 22.3 (2002): 225–243. Wu Zhuqing 吳築清 and Zhang Dai 張岱, eds. Zhongguo dianying de fengbei: Yan’an diany­ ingtuan de gushi 中國電影的豐碑：延安電影團的故事 [Monument of Chinese cinema: Story of the Yan’an Film Troupe]. Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2008. Zhongguo dianying tu zhi 中國電影圖志 (1905–2005) [A pictorial history of Chinese cinema 1905–2005]. Beijing: Zhongguo chuanmei daxue chubanshe, 2007. Zhongyang renmin zhengfu zhengwuyuan guanyu jiaqiang dianying zhipian gongzuo de jueding 中央人民政府政務院關於加強電影制片工作的決定 [Decision by the Administration Coun­ cil of the Central People’s Government to strengthen film production]. Renmin ribao 人民 日報 [People’s daily], January 12, 1954.

Notes: (1.) The four battles that were reenacted were the Battles of Liaoshen 遼瀋, Huaihai 淮海, Pingjin 平津, and Crossing the Yangtze 渡江.

Page 17 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema (2.) Leonid Varlamov was a multiple winner of the Stalin Prize, and his World War II docu­ mentary Moscow Strikes Back won an Oscar in 1943. (3.) Victory of the Chinese People was one of the two “documentary” films produced in collaboration with the Soviet Union in 1949 and 1950. The other was entitled Liberated China (解放了的中國, 1950), directed by Sergei Gerasimov. The latter work focused on the beginning of socialist constructions in postwar China and didn’t require expensive reen­ actments of battle scenes. (4.) Interview with Wu Benli, in Fang Fang 方方, Zhongguo jilupian fazhan shi 中國紀錄片發 展史 [The historical development of the Chinese documentary] (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2003), 215. (5.) Fang Fang, Historical Development, 164,5. (6.) Fang Fang, Historical Development, 215. (7.) For a discussion of films depicting the Spanish-American War, see Musser Charles, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (Berkeley: University of Califor­ nia Press, 1990), 255–261, and Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Manufac­ turing Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 126–137. For early films on the Boer War, see Abel Richard, Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2005), 7. (8.) McKernan Luke, “C. Frank Ackerman,” and “Shibata Tsunekichi,” in Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema: A Worldwide Survey, ed. Herbert Stephen and McKernan Luke (Lon­ don: British Film Institute, 1996). Entries retrieved October 24, 2012, from http:// www.victorian-cinema.net/ackerman.htm and http://www.victorian-cinema.net/ shibata.htm. Quoted in Johnson Matthew, “International and Wartime Origins of the Pro­ paganda State: Motion Picture in China, 1897–1955,” PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 2008, 48–50. Ackerman’s actualities probably circulated in America under the title The War in China. (9.) Sopocy Martin, James Williamson: Studies and Documents of a Pioneer of the Film Narrative (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998). Quoted in Matthew Johnson, “International and Wartime Origins,” 50. (10.) Charles Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890–1900: An Annotated Filmography, 602 (catalog no. 837). Quoted in Matthew Johnson, “International and Wartime Origins,” 50. (11.) Richard Abel, “The Cinema of Attraction in France: 1896–1904,” in The Silent Cine­ ma Reader, ed. Lee Grieveson and Peter Krämer (New York: Routledge, 2004), 71. Also see Richard Abel, Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, 7. (12.) Hansen Miriam, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 30–31. Page 18 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema (13.) Virilio Paul, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Verso, 1989), 4. (14.) Whissel Kristen, “Placing the Spectator on the Scene of History: The Battle Re-en­ actment at the Turn of the Century, from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West to the Early Cinema,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 22.3 (2002): 234–236. (15.) Kristen Whissel, “Placing the Spectator.” (16.) Weijin Gao 高維進, Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi 中國新聞紀錄電影史 [A history of Chinese documentary filmmaking] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2003), 9. (17.) Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 273. For Li Minwei’s early cinema experi­ ence, see Li Minwei 黎民偉, “Shibaizhe zhiyan—Zhongguo dianying yaolan shidai zhi bao­ mu,” 失敗者之言－中國電影搖籃時代之保姆 [Words of a man who has failed: The nanny of Chi­ nese film in its infancy], Dianying shuangzhoukan 電影雙周刊 [Film bimonthly], nos. 375– 376 (Hong Kong, 1993), reprinted in Li Minwei: ren, shidai, dianying 黎民偉: 人，時代，電影 [Li Minwei: the person, the times, and cinema], ed.Law Kar 羅卡 and Li Xi 黎錫 (Hong Kong: Mingchuang chubanshe, 1999), 169. (18.) Reprinted in Zhongguo dianying tu zhi 中國電影圖志 (1905–2005) [A pictorial history of Chinese cinema 1905–2005] (Beijing: Zhongguo chuanmei daxue chubanshe, 2007), 15. (19.) Vertov Dziga, “The Essence of Kino-Eye” (1925), in Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, trans. Michelson Annette (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 50, 48. (20.) Dziga Vertov, “On Kinopravda,” in Kino-Eye, 45. (21.) Corney Frederick C., Tell October: Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolu­ tion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 76. (22.) Gillespie David C., Early Soviet Cinema: Innovation, Ideology and Propaganda (London: Wallflower Press, 2000), 45. (23.) Yuri Tsivian, Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties (Bloomington: Indi­ ana University Press, 2005), 152. (24.) Yuri Tsivian, Lines of Resistance, 76. (25.) Vertov was denounced as following a “documentalism” that was too naturalistic and dispassionate to be revolutionary. (26.) For the campaign against “documentalism” targeting Vertov and other filmmakers, see Graham Roberts, Forward Soviet: History and Non-fiction Film in the USSR (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999), 93–104. For Eisenstein’s October serving as historical footage, David C. Gillespie, Early Soviet Cinema, 45. (27.) Hicks Jeremy, Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 88. Page 19 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema (28.) Matthew Johnson, “International and Wartime Origins,” 157–255. (29.) Matthew Johnson, “International and Wartime Origins,” 114. (30.) Fang Fang, Historical Development, 96–99, 105. (31.) Richard Abel, Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, 8. (32.) In 1928, Bai Chongxi 白崇禧, a general in the National Revolutionary Army, commis­ sioned The Chronicle of the Completion of the Northern Expedition (北伐完成紀, 1928), a cinematic reconstruction of one of the major battles that led to the successful completion of the Northern Expedition, and lent his soldiers to play both themselves and the enemy army. See Shanghai dianying zhi 上海電影志 [Shanghai film chronicle] (Shanghai: Shanghai difangzhi bangongshi, 1999). Retrieved January 15, 2012, from http://www.shtong.gov.cn/ node2/node2245/node4509/node15254/node16773/node63939/userobject1ai11747.html. (33.) The Russian version of the book was produced in two stages. In 1925, a year after Lenin’s passing, the Soviet filmmaker Grigori Boltyansky edited a book collection of Lenin’s thoughts on cinema, entitled Lenin and Cinema (Lenin i kino). In 1938, to pay trib­ ute to Stalin’s love of cinema and affirm his status on a par with Lenin, the book was reedited by the film critic Nikolai Alekseevich Lebedev to include Stalin’s thoughts as well as Party directives on cinema. The new edition was named Lenin, Stalin, Party on Cinema (Lenin, Stalin, Partiia o kino) (Moscow: Gos. izd-vo “Iskusstvo,” 1938). The Chi­ nese edition can be found in N. Lebenov, ed., Danglun dianying 黨論電影 [Party on cinema], trans. Xu Guming 徐谷明 (Beijing: Shidai chubanshe, 1951). All subsequent references to this work will be to the Chinese edition. (34.) Wu Zhuqing 吳築清 and Zhang Dai 張岱, eds. Zhongguo dianying de fengbei: Yan’an dianyingtuan de gushi 中國電影的豐碑：延安電影團的故事 [Monument of Chinese cinema: Story of the Yan’an Film Troupe] (Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2008), 93–101. (35.) Yuan Muzhi 袁牧之, preface to N. Lebenov, Party on Cinema, 7. (36.) Soviet film theory was first introduced by the playwright Hong Shen, who translated the collective statement on sound cinema by Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Alexandrov and Ver­ tov, for the December 1928 issue of Dianying yuebao 電影月報 [Film monthly]. In 1930, the dramatist Tian Han edited a special issue on Soviet cinema for Nanguo yuekan 南國月刊 [Nanguo monthly], introducing Lenin’s idea on the place of cinema as well as Anatoly Lunacharsky’s writings. Liu Yuqing 劉玉清, Zhongguo dianying de lishi shensi yu dangxia guancha 中國電影的審視和當下觀察 [Historical reflections and contemporary observations on Chinese cinema] (Beijing: Zhongguo chuanmei daxue chubanshe, 2009), 63. Early PRC publications on Soviet cinema include Liu Nianqu’s 劉念渠 article “Lüetan Sulian diany­ ing” 略談蘇聯電影 [A brief discussion of Soviet cinema], Renmin ribao 人民日報 [People’s daily], October 30, 1949; and Lin Danqiu 林淡秋, “Xinzhongguo renmin dianying shiye de shengli” 新中國人民電影事業的勝利 [The victory of the enterprise of people’s cinema in new China], People’s Daily, March 7, 1951. Page 20 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema (37.) N. Lebenov, Party on Cinema, 62. (38.) N. Lebenov, Party on Cinema, 51. (39.) N. Lebenov, Party on Cinema, 50. (40.) N. Lebenov, Party on Cinema, 11. (41.) N. Lebenov, Party on Cinema, 24. (42.) “Zhongyang renmin zhengfu zhengwuyuan guanyu jiaqiang dianying zhipian gongzuo de jueding” 中央人民政府政務院關於加強電影制片工作的決定 [Decision by the Admin­ istration Council of the Central People’s Government to strengthen film production], People’s Daily, January 12, 1954. (43.) For the evolution of documentary and newsreel cinema in the Soviet Union, see Gra­ ham Roberts, Forward Soviet! (44.) I. Nazarov, “Jilupian zhong de zhenshixing” 紀錄片中的真實性 [The realism of docu­ mentary], Dianying yishu yicong 電影藝術譯叢 [Film art in translation] 1953: no. 1, 53. (45.) I. Nazarov, “The Realism of Documentary,” 53. (46.) I. Nazarov, “The Realism of Documentary,” 58. (47.) I. Nazarov, “The Realism of Documentary,” 57. (48.) I. Nazarov, “The Realism of Documentary,” 53. (49.) R. Grigoriev, “Lun jilupian de juben” 論紀錄片的劇本 [A discussion of documentary filmscripts], Dianying yishu ziliao congkan 電影藝術資料叢刊 [Film art resources] 1952: no. 3, 10. (50.) I. Nazarov, “The Realism of Documentary,” 59. (51.) R. Grigoriev, “Discussion of Documentary Filmscripts,” 11. (52.) The Beijing Film Studio was established in 1949, after incorporating equipment and staff from the Nationalists’ No. 3 Central Film Studio. (53.) Beijing dianying zhipianchang xingzheng chu 北京電影制片廠行政處 [Beijing Film Stu­ dio Administrative Unit], ed., Yijiuwuling nian gongzuo zongjie ji yijiuwuyi nian gongzuo fangzhen yu renwu 一九五零年工作總結及一九五一年工作方針與任務 [Work summary of year 1950 and direction and tasks for year 1951] (Beijing, 1951), 3. Quoted in Matthew John­ son, “International and Wartime Origins,” 409. (54.) Chen Bo 陳播, “Huiyi Wa’erlamofu zai zhongguo,” 回憶瓦爾拉莫夫在中國 [Recalling Var­ lamov in China], Zhongguo dianying 中國電影 [Chinese cinema], November and December 1957, 106. Page 21 of 22

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Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Found­ ing of PRC Documentary Cinema (55.) Chen Bo, “Recalling Varlamov in China,” 106. (56.) Ding Jiao 丁嶠, “Xinde tansuo: Geming xianshi zhuyi yu geming langman zhuyi xiang jiehe de chuangzuo fangfa ruhe zai xinwen dianying zhong tixian” 新的探索：革命現實主義與 革命浪漫主義相結合的創作方法如何在新聞電影中體現 [New explorations: How to manifest the creative method of combining revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism in news films], Chinese Cinema, January 1958, 5.

Ying Qian

Ying Qian is a post-doctoral fellow at the Australian Center for China in the World, Australian National University. She has a PhD from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, specializing in Chinese cultural his­ tory and film studies. She has published on Chinese independent documentary cine­ ma, and is working on a book manuscript on newsreel and documentary Cinema of China's Mao-era.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age

Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age   Yiman Wang The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0033

Abstract and Keywords This chapter studies two contemporary Chinese-language remakes of American films— Zhang Yimou’s remake of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple and Benny Chan’s remake of Cellular—in relation to the dapian (Chinese blockbuster) phenomenon. By analyzing the ways in which the remakes’ apparent “localization” speaks to the dapian logic, I argue that the remakes signal the emergence a cinema with “Chinese elements.” In this cinema, the very term Chinese no longer designates a geopolitical identity, but rather becomes an ungrounded iconic culture that is produced by transnational capital and market and in turn feeds back into Chinese filmmakers’ production of Chinese-language cinema. Keywords: dapian (Chinese blockbuster), remake, cinema with “Chinese elements, ” localization, globalization, transnational Chinese cinema

Film history begins with remaking.1 In China, filmmaking was inspired by Euro-American imports, which inevitably led to various forms of borrowing and imitation, including re­ making—a more thoroughgoing narrative and stylistic adaptation of a single Western film, often intermixed with other intertextual references. Widely practiced as it was, such imi­ tative filmmaking was often harshly criticized by early twentieth-century intellectuals for slavishly fetishizing the West and disregarding native cultures and traditions. Inherent in this critique was a desire to build an independent China-specific or “Chinese cinema” (國 片), even if it inevitably entailed appropriating and learning from Western film technology. In this sense, the early twentieth-century construction of Chinese cinema hinged on a paradoxical process of “becoming” Chinese through imitating Western cinema. This para­ dox determines the fluctuation of the very meaning of Chineseness that percolates through filmmaking practices and surrounding discourses. Stemming from China’s economic, cultural, and political subjugation under the global colonialism in the early twentieth century, Chinese filmmaking and remaking (and bor­ rowings in a broader sense) served as a stage and a trope for enacting a new subject posi­ tion through remediating foreign technology, aesthetics, narrative strategies, and themat­ ic concerns. This process of remediation involved the dual operation of reprisal and varia­ Page 1 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age tion that resulted from complex aesthetic and cultural-political considerations. Whereas these considerations and the correlated strategies of remaking did not all explicitly point to or comment on the concept of “China” (however it was defined), the translational process inscribed in each remake necessarily evoked what Benedict Anderson calls the “spectre of comparison,” or the “restless double-consciousness” produced by the tele­ scope that forces a perspective that is simultaneously far away and close up.2 This means that to remake a film and to interpret a remake both turn upon a perspective that oscil­ lates between two reference frameworks—namely, what is perceived as the foreign and what is perceived as the self. This continuous enactment of the self vis-à-vis the foreign other through film re­ making and moviegoing activities fostered a locus of self-positioning and identification, while leaving the specific meaning of this “self” indeterminate. Since the sense of self in semicolonized China was often developed through and toward China-specific qualities or Chineseness, the latter became an ineluctable reference point that nonetheless remained simultaneously undeterminable and overdetermined.3 (p. 611)

Now, let us fast forward to our contemporary era of the blockbuster, or dapian 大片 (literally, “big picture”), and consider the role of film remaking in reconfiguring today’s Chinese cinema in relation to the engulfing global capitalism. The term blockbuster now commonly refers to Hollywood’s megaproductions that feature major stars, target a mass market, and usually generate associated merchandizing and ancillary markets. Starting from 1994, ten foreign films per year were imported into China as representatives of “worldwide cultural achievement and contemporary film art as well as techniques.”4 These films planted the seed for the Chinese dapian. Facing the Hollywood “wolf,” which later multiplied into “packs of wolves” occupying a majority of the Chinese market,5 some Chinese filmmakers strive to make their own versions of these blockbusters. Zhang Yimou’s 張藝謀 Hero (英雄, 2002), budgeted at US$31 million, became the first Chinese dapian to successfully vie with imported blockbusters for box-office revenue. The domes­ tic and international commercial success of Hero triggered a Chinese dapian phenomenon that gave rise to films such as Zhang’s House of Flying Daggers (十面埋伏, 2004) and Curse of the Golden Flower (滿城盡戴黃金甲, 2006); Feng Xiaogang’s 馮小剛 A World with­ out Thieves (天下無賊, 2004), Night Banquet (夜宴, 2006), and Aftershock (唐山大地震, 2010); together with Chen Kaige’s 陳凱歌 The Promise (無極, 2006). All of these films fol­ lowed the Hollywood blockbuster model, with a high production cost, megastars, publici­ ty blitz, and mass market appeal. The dapian phenomenon, catalyzed by imported Hollywood blockbusters, has triggered intense debate among Chinese critics, filmmakers, media policymakers, and ordinary moviegoers. Criticized for monopolizing resources and market share while relinquishing the local and historical consciousness of Chinese cinema,6 the dapian, as a “cinema of spectacle” (景觀電影), also becomes an eye-catching spectacle in itself, often desired by filmmakers for the very reasons it is condemned by critics. This phenomenon, combined with the fact that very few Chinese directors can actually afford to make a dapian, means that the very term becomes a tantalizing symbol of commercial success in the global and Page 2 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age domestic markets. Indeed, one way to aspire for such success is to make films that may not require a huge budget yet nevertheless manage to deliver a blockbuster-esque effect and revenue. Such films are not technically dapian but are designed and evaluated in the spirit of dapian. It is in the context of the prevailing dapian complex that I examine two recent Chinese-language remakes of American films as attempts to produce cinema with “Chinese elements.” Today’s Chinese remaking of American films taps into ready-made and market-tested ideas of spectacle construction. In so doing, it refashions “Chineseness” as a recognizable (if not necessarily easily digestible) icon culture that feeds into the global commercial me­ dia culture. This iconic Chineseness caters to transnational and transregional (p. 612) au­ diences by flexibly investing in a wide spectrum of “Chinese elements” (中國元素) that per­ meate the linguistic, visual, cultural, economic, political, as well as national dimensions of Chinese cinema. These dimensions do not converge and may even contradict each other, since the Chinese elements pertaining to each are dislodged from specific historical or geopolitical anchor points and dissociated from each other. In other words, the iconic Chi­ neseness on the audiovisual level may veer from, and even undermine, its counterpart on the national and other levels. This iconic turn undermines our habitual understanding of Chineseness as a designation of the origin of production, an identifiable aesthetics or style, a particular sentiment, a distinct set of issues, and a set of viewer expectations. Indeed, what these new Chineselanguage blockbusters demonstrate is precisely not an integral national cinema, but a dis­ aggregated iconic cinema that showcases Chinese elements or ingredients. This is borne out in recent Chinese-language remakes of two American films: Hong Kong director Ben­ ny Chan’s 陳木勝 Connected (保持通話, 2008), which was a remake of David Ellis’s Cellular (2004), and Zhang Yimou’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (三槍拍案惊奇, 2009), which was a remake of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple (1984). These examples illustrate the reconfiguration of Chinese cinema into cinema with Chinese elements, the cultural political ramifications of which demand serious interrogation.

The Gun, the Cellphone, and the Car Zhang Yimou and Benny Chan hail from different cultural and production backgrounds. Zhang started out as a pioneering figure of Mainland Chinese Fifth Generation iconoclas­ tic cinema, which, paradoxically, was made possible in part by the lack of market pres­ sure in the early 1980s, allowing recent graduates from the Beijing Film Academy such as Zhang Yimou to develop a daring new film language. Benny Chan, on the other hand, be­ gan his career in the 1980s as a scriptwriter and assistant director at Hong Kong’s two major TV companies—Television Broadcasting Ltd. (TVB) and Rediffusion Limited (RTV)— where he honed his skills by participating in a number of martial-arts and action dramas. Facing the mass market from the very beginning, Chan has developed a spectacular and gripping aesthetic that caters to mainstream commercial expectations. Interestingly, the first decade of the new millennium saw the convergence of these two directors in choos­ Page 3 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age ing to remake an American film, each in his own style, yet combining to signal the emer­ gence of a cinema with Chinese elements. To formulate this idea of cinema with Chinese elements, we must first discuss what has happened to the “local,” especially insofar as the strategy of remaking in both cases has been described as localization of the thriller genre, according to the Chinese-language re­ views. Here, instead of assuming a shared understanding of the local, I take a step back and ask what exactly constitutes the local in the two remakes. I suggest that the produc­ tion of the local is contingent upon the specific context of production and reception. Fur­ thermore, the translation from the foreign to the local is by no means simply a (p. 613) question of replacing one a priori coding system with another, but rather involves the two systems intertwining with and cross-referencing each other, so that the local operates on­ ly as part of an intertextual nexus and gains meaning precisely in relation to that nexus. This is encapsulated in the remakes’ redeployment of technology inherited from their pre­ decessor films (which analogizes Chinese cinema’s heavy reliance on and remediation of Western film technology). Zhang’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, for instance, changes the setting from the drab, rough contemporary Texas in Blood Simple to the emp­ ty dusty desert area in northwest China in an unspecified premodern era. This premodern setting is coded by the characters’ loud-colored costuming and nondescript hairstyles that deliberately defy realism. Furthermore, the film is teeming with anachronistic refer­ ences to present-day entertainment shows and popular sayings. In this nominally premod­ ern northwest China, the sword-wielding Chinese characters need to be exposed to firearms, which propels the narrative of Blood Simple and also represents modern West­ ern technology. Thus, in the opening sequence set in the Chinese noodle shop—pictured as an isolated speck in the vast desert landscape—a Persian merchant is pitching his “most state-of-art, ergonomic technology” (a pistol) to his potential Chinese buyers: the shop owner’s wife, her extramarital lover who works in the shop, a waiter, and a waitress. Unsurprisingly, the premodern Chinese characters’ exposure to the Western technology elicits the expected reactions of shock, admiration, and eager adoption. What is surprising, though, is that the apparently straightforward narrative of China’s Westernization takes on a playfully anachronistic twist when the supposedly premodern Chinese are shown to be already de-sinicized. The wife readily haggles with the Persian merchant by throwing out a couple of English words, and the waiter attempts to translit­ erate the Persian merchant’s English phrase must die into Chinese as ma sidekuai 馬死得快 (literally, “the horse dies quickly”). This anachronistic linguistic mixture is undoubtedly meant to be humorous, but it also inadvertently suggests that what is seen as locally Chi­ nese always already exists at the crossroads of different currents and influences. There­ fore, the narrative of Westernization (or the adoption of Western weaponry in this case) must be prefaced by a recognition that there is no isolated, pristine Chineseness to begin with. The adoption of Western technology does not simply mean straightforward replacement of what is considered Chinese with what is considered Western, but rather a continuous Page 4 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age jostling of the two systems that reconfigures the parameters of both. Just as the gun bought by the wife subsequently passes through different hands with different results, the Western technology comes to serve different purposes and agendas for the Chinese users. In other words, the introduction of the gun into China transforms both China and the gun, endowing them with different meanings. In this respect, the opening sequence featuring the Chinese characters’ calculating adoption of the gun may be read as an alle­ gory of Zhang’s remaking of the Coen brothers’ thriller. It cues us to examine not only where the remake reproduces or changes the original film’s narrative twists and signa­ ture camera framing and shots, but also to scrutinize the ways in which the (p. 614) reprisal of the narrative twists from Blood Simple works to completely reorient the latter film’s dark psychic trepidation through exaggerated acting, costuming, makeup, and ulti­ mately, a reinflection of a dark thriller into what Zhang Yimou calls “thriller plus comedy.”7 If Zhang’s thriller-comedy set in premodern China necessarily stages the contrast be­ tween the Chinese sword and the Western gun, Hong Kong director Benny Chan’s Con­ nected readily participates in the global cell phone culture from the home base of Hong Kong. Given the leading role Hong Kong plays in the mobile phone industry and culture, it is no longer possible to see the portable communication technology in Connected as a sign of Westernization. Rather, the fact that the cell phone-based narrative can be readily transplanted from Southern California to Hong Kong demonstrates their coevalness and the global continuity of metropolitan culture. Both Cellular and Connected privilege the infusive wireless telecommunication signal that randomly connects two strangers, forging a growing relationship between them. That is to say, precisely because of its randomness and omnipresence, the cell phone signal can serve to reenchant the urban space from what German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies calls Gesellschaft to Gemeinschaft, with the former referring to a modern society predi­ cated on industrialization and urbanization, where individuals relate to each other imper­ sonally and take part in the group out of self-interest, and the latter connoting a cohesive premodern, rural social formation consisting of members who share a “unity of will.”8 What Cellular and Connected dramatize is precisely the reversal of a metropolitan Gesellschaft into Gemeischaft through the magic power of cell phone communication. Additionally, both films deploy the cell phone as not only a tool of telecommunication, but also a versatile gadget that can take pictures and record videos. The latter function is crucial to preserving and publicizing the audiovisual evidence of the crime scene that shows the police shooting drug dealers in private. The fact that this scene is accidentally captured by the female protagonist’s husband in the American version (or by her brother in the Hong Kong remake) precipitates the kidnapping of her and her family. This in turn triggers her desperate call to any outside stranger she can reach from a phone that her kidnappers have smashed, but which she has managed to reconstruct just well enough to make one single call.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age The riveting narrative hangs on the desperate effort to maintain the female protagonist’s phone connection with the person she has accidentally reached (a young man eager to prove his sense of responsibility to his ex-girlfriend in the American version, or a divorced male debt collector trying to fulfill his promise of getting to the airport to see off his son in the Hong Kong remake). While the woman waits for her rescue at one end of the line, the man at the other end must interrupt his previous plans and hurl himself into a series of action-packed, spectacular car chase sequences in an effort to rescue this stranger in distress. The dual suspense in the narrative—a random phone connection that must not be dropped, and the car chase sequences from which the male hero must emerge victorious —easily travels from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. This is due to two reasons. First, both metropolises have served as the popular setting for the thriller genre that tends to (p. 615) revolve around intense action mediated by modern technologies. Second, even be­ fore making Connected, Benny Chan had already established a fast-paced and cliff-hang­ ing style that perfectly matches the scenario provided by Ellis’s thriller. Curiously, despite such border-crossing generic continuity and intertextual connections, Chan’s remake is generally considered a homegrown Hong Kong action genre in its “orig­ inal flavor” (原汁原味).9 This invites us to explore the following questions: What, exactly, is the “original flavor” of this China–Hong Kong coproduced film based on a Hollywood thriller? To whom is this flavor supposed to appeal? How is such flavor produced? And what implications does it have for our understanding of the apparent Hong Kong–ness or Chineseness of China–Hong Kong coproductions in the new millennium?

The “Original Flavor” of Hong Kong Action Cinema Equals a Hollywood Concept Plus a Chinese Market The appreciation of the “original flavor” of Chan’s remake emerges from many Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong reviewers’ agreement regarding Chan’s successful localization of Cellular, with many reviewers defining success in terms of the film’s blockbuster-esque effect at a low local expense. For instance, reviewers praise the remake for managing to deliver a blockbuster punch with a meager HK$45 million budget (roughly US$6 million), claiming that it not only offers more thrilling spectacles than its American predecessor (which had a budget of US$25 million), but also features a more convincing and meaning­ ful plot, better characterization, more compelling character interactions, and more credi­ ble plot twists.10 In terms of the film’s technical execution, Benny Chan explains that the car chase sequences had to be simulated on computer because of the very limited street space in Hong Kong, and that the male protagonist’s first car is very small because it must fit into the narrow dry space in Hong Kong’s underground sewage system.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age All of these localizing adjustments, combined with the blockbuster-esque effect, helped make the remake a “sleeper hit.” Hitting the theater during China’s National Day holiday week in 2008, the film topped the Hong Kong box office within four days while also gar­ nering considerable critical acclaim and commercial success in Mainland China. While this result might appear to have a David-and-Goliath quality, such premature optimism nevertheless fails to attend to another dimension of the film’s local “original flavor,” namely, its non-local or border-crossing production based upon the targeted audience, the budgetary constraints, and Hong Kong’s specific circumstances. In addition to the American film on which Connected is based, a major nonlocal element in Chan’s remake is the transregional cast. Taiwan’s Barbie Hsu 徐熙媛 cries (p. 616) pro­ fusely as the kidnapped mother; Mainland China’s Liu Ye 劉燁 sports a head of silver hair as the evil Interpol agent-kidnapper-killer; Hong Kong’s Louis Koo 古天樂 plays the di­ vorced father turned ordinary hero; and another Hong Kong actor, Nick Cheung 張家輝 assumes the role of good cop who helps resolve the cliff-hanging case. This transregional cast is further mirrored in the film’s characters. Barbie Hsu’s character, for instance, is presented as being originally from Mainland China, thereby justifying the actress’ use of Mandarin (albeit Taiwan-accented) Chinese, which in turn serves a crucial narrative func­ tion when the stark difference between Hsu’s accent and that of the kidnapper’s accom­ plice (played by the Chinese-German actress Ankie Beilke) leads the good cop to suspect a crime, which culminates in his participation in the last-minute rescue. Similarly, Liu Ye stands out as the evil kidnapper speaking in a northern Chinese accent mixed with Eng­ lish, with a silver hairstyle reminiscent of Andy Lau’s 劉德華 drug ring leader in Derek Yee’s 爾冬陞 Proté gé (門徒, 2007). Given this interaction between Hong Kong, mainland, and Western elements, we might ask, why is this film seen as a Hong Kong action film in its original flavor? Does bordercrossing production actually enhance the local flavor? One way to address this question would be to say that nonlocal, especially Western, elements have been constitutive of Hong Kong cinema since its inception. Yet, in this case, we also need to understand that the Mandarin and Mainland Chinese elements in Chan’s film are important precisely be­ cause of Hong Kong cinema’s realignment with the Mainland Chinese market. Historical­ ly, the relationship between the Chinese and Hong Kong film industries has been tensionridden and co-implicating. Since the late twentieth century, the relationship has been go­ ing through drastic permutations due to Hong Kong’s 1997 Handover to China, together with China’s increasingly active participation within global capitalism. If the Handover anxiety triggered a mass emigration from Hong Kong to North America, Europe, and Aus­ tralia from the mid-1980s to the 1990s, then China’s subsequent participation in the glob­ al media industry as well as its proactive support for Hong Kong during the late 1990s fi­ nancial crisis lured a number of Hong Kong film workers to reengage with Chinese-lan­ guage film industry as a site of aggregating Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and overseas resources.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age A specific turning point in China–Hong Kong relations after 1997 is the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA)—the first regional trade agreement between China and Hong Kong, which was signed in June 2003 and implemented in 2004. This agreement aims to promote further trade liberalization by reducing or eliminating tariff barriers be­ tween the two sides. Specifically, CEPA facilitates interactions between China’s and Hong Kong’s film industries. Not only have Hong Kong’s audiovisual distributing companies ob­ tained more access to the Chinese market, China–Hong Kong coproduced films are now categorized as domestic films and therefore are exempted from China’s foreign film quota restriction. This new trade agreement grants Hong Kong cinema a competitive edge over Hollywood blockbusters, despite the difficulties related to the different censorship sys­ tems on the two sides. CEPA has therefore directly stimulated Hong Kong’s increased in­ vestment in China. This China–Hong Kong realignment is especially significant for commercial film culture. Connected is a case in point. It was coproduced by companies based in Hong Kong and the mainland, including Warner China Film HG Corporation, the first Sino-for­ eign joint venture in film production that brings together the China Film Group, Warner Bros. Pictures, and the Hengdian Group, China’s first cooperative organization for film (p. 617)

and TV shooting. Furthermore, the decision to remake Cellular had to do with its success­ ful reception in the Chinese market in early 2005, which lured the producers of Connect­ ed to cash in on the tested material, despite the higher cost of buying the remake rights as opposed to developing an original script.11 Thus, from the very beginning, the goal of remaking Cellular was to tap into the mainland market by repackaging a Hollywood “high concept.”12 To this end, Chan originally consid­ ered setting and shooting the film in a mainland city such as Qingdao or Xiamen, but due to geocultural differences he eventually decided to move it back to Hong Kong. As he ex­ plains, the Hollywood high concept combined with the Hong Kong spirit could perhaps best appeal to a mainland audience, and this audience of 1.3 billion is precisely what Hong Kong cinema needs. To the extent that the film pools transregional resources and appeals to mainland as well as Hong Kong audiences, Chan redefines dapian as not sim­ ply a film with stronger financial backing and wider commercial appeal, but also a catego­ ry that facilitates an integrated Chinese-language cinema synergistically produced with multilocal anchors. For Chan, the only way to preserve Hong Kong cinema is to expand the Hong Kong (as well as Hollywood) spirit into Mainland China.13 In this respect, Con­ nected, without actually commanding a dapian budget, is already blazing a new path that departs from the costume martial-arts genre by tapping into urban experiences and sensi­ bilities and reanimating the Hollywood concept with a Hong Kong trademark.14 In view of the importance of a realigned China–Hong Kong relationship especially in the commercial film/media industry, the original flavor of the Hong Kong action genre is em­ phatically not local, but rather translocal. Unlike Yang Yuanying 楊遠嬰, a Beijing-based film historian who argues that Hong Kong cinema has become “de–Hong Kong–ized” (港片 不港) through increasing Sino–Hong Kong coproductions since the signing of CEPA in 2003,15 I instead suggest that such collaboration has led to a Hong Kong cinema that is Page 8 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age no longer (if ever) local in essentialist terms, but rather features a synthetic Hong Kongness that increasingly depends on the mainland coproduction and consumption. In this light, Connected could effectively project an iconic Hong Kong feel precisely because of Hong Kong cinema’s confluence with Mainland China’s commercial media culture, as well as co-evalness with Western technology.

The Thrilling, the Comic, and the Iconic Having examined the co-implication between a Hong Kong flavor and the Mainland Chi­ nese market, we may now return to the issue of Chineseness as reinvented in Zhang (p. 618) Yimou’s remake of Blood Simple. I have argued that the opening gun-purchasing sequence in Zhang’s film skews the conventional story of China’s Westernization by sug­ gesting that China has always already been situated at the intersection of the local and the foreign. This does not simply mean that there is no inherent or essentialist Chinese­ ness, or that Chineseness is flaunted in a self-orientalist manner for Western consumption —as Zhang and some other Fifth Generation filmmakers have been criticized for doing following their success at major Euro-American film festivals in the 1980s. Rather, Zhang’s new millennium remake presents an anachronistic pastiche that actually alien­ ates Western audiences as much as it amuses northern Chinese ones, even while trigger­ ing harsh criticism across the board.16 Going against the dapian mentality, Zhang’s remake takes a “local” turn by mixing a sup­ posedly premodern northwestern Chinese landscape with contemporary northeastern Chinese folk entertainment and popular sayings. This leads to preposterous genre-bend­ ing and media-crossing eruptions that ultimately recast and derail the noirish psychic breakdown that makes Blood Simple so memorable. Meanwhile, it also transforms Chi­ nese cinema into a cinema with Chinese elements. According to Zhang Weiping 張偉平, Zhang Yimou’s longtime collaborator and one of the film’s producers, martial-arts dapian, a genre established by Zhang’s own Hero and House of Flying Daggers, is already an “outmoded” trend that “satiates” the domestic audience and fails to receive much attention in the international market. The starting point of A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, therefore, was to jettison the dapian mentality in order to offer, as Zhang put it, a dish of a different flavor.17 Indeed, budgeted at US$12 million (a big chunk of which was spent on purchasing the remake rights of Blood Simple), the film was significantly scaled down from Hero, which had cost $31 million seven years ear­ lier. Veering away from his previous multiregional casting of megastars in Hero and House of Flying Daggers, also contrary to Benny Chan’s remake that reaches out to Main­ land China to help to rebuild Hong Kong cinema, Zhang’s remake goes “local” by spot­ lighting a group of stage/film actors whose unique showbiz specialties bring a transmedia dimension to the picture. The actors Xiao Shenyang 小沈陽 (as the adulterer) and Cheng Ye 程野 and Maomao 毛毛 (as the waiter and waitress) all hail from northeastern China and were trained as stage actors under the tutelage of Zhao Benshan 趙本山, a veteran comedian who has a cameo Page 9 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age role in the film and who made his name by performing and promoting northeastern folk skits. Three additional actors, Sun Honglei 孫紅雷 (as the hired killer), Yan Ni 閆妮 (as the adulteress and the noodle shop owner’s wife), and Ni Dahong 倪大宏 (as the noodle shop owner), all come from a background in theater, film, and TV. Compared to border-crossing stars such as Jet Li 李連杰 and Donnie Yen 甄子丹 featured in Zhang’s previous martial-arts dapian, this exclusively Mainland Chinese cast devoid of any big names reduced the ac­ tors’ payroll to only 20 percent of the total production cost (vs. up to 60 percent when transnational superstars were used). This largely regional cast not only reduced the pro­ duction costs of the film, but more importantly injected a transmedia quality into Zhang’s remake. Xiao Shenyang, Cheng Ye, and Maomao are all well versed in northeastern rural, folk entertainment skits that emphasize physical performance (p. 619) and dialect verbal play, targeted at grassroots audiences. As a team, they have earned a nationwide reputa­ tion by routinely bringing their “local color” to the annual lunar New Year gala celebra­ tion orchestrated by CCTV (China Central Television). Cashing in on the actors’ local flavor, Zhang’s remake embeds multiple narrative pauses in order to showcase the individual comedians’ performance skill. Maomao, Cheng Ye, and Xiao Shenyang take turns spinning and thinning a clump of flour dough until it is transformed into strands of noodle. Xiao Shenyang pulls off a solo show when rehearsing both sides of a dialogue between himself and the shop owner’s wife, in which he plans to end their adulterous relationship. Maomao and Cheng Ye simulate a popular TV contest show in their rapid altercation over whether they are justified to bust the noodle shop owner’s safe to “steal” the salaries that the owner owes them. Finally, in the closing cred­ its sequence, all the dead characters come back to life for their last show. Accompanied by the theme song, “I’m Just a Legend,” performed by Xiao Shenyang, the entire cast, clad in their garish costumes, dances and performs skits while smilingly greeting their audience in the movie theater. Here the film not only crosses into a collective stage per­ formance, but also mimics the closing scene of the lunar New Year gala celebration, which traditionally features an encore in which all performers line up on stage to offer the audience New Year’s greetings. Such externalized acting, premised on proliferating verbal and visual gags, defies cine­ matic realism while enabling cartoonish characterization. This is illustrated particularly clearly in Xiao Shenyang’s caricaturized effeminate and cowardly noncommitment to his relationship with the noodle shop owner’s wife. Such hyperbolic acting also defuses po­ tential social comments. Maomao and Cheng Ye’s argument over whether they have the right to steal back their salary, for instance, touches upon sensitive issues of the labor re­ lationship and social injustice in contemporary China. However, by couching their alterca­ tion in the format of TV contest show, the film presents this episode more as a comic demonstration of the actors’ virtuosity than a didactic or critical message. These kinematic and humorous gags and spectacles scramble different historical periods while crossing between the screen and the stage, privileging transmedia performance episodes. Suspending (if not directly mocking) historical realism, Zhang’s remake aims to win the audience’s laughter, rather than merely maintaining the narrative’s suspenseful Page 10 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age tension or delivering a social commentary. Consequently, the remake constitutes a campy reconfiguration of the Coen brothers’ original thriller, Blood Simple. The phrase blood simple, which was coined by Dashiell Hammett in his novel Red Har­ vest, refers to the addled, fearful mind-set caused by a prolonged immersion in violent sit­ uations. In the Coen brothers’ film, the characters suffer increasing paranoia in the shad­ ow of encroaching jealousy, revenge, and miscommunication. This same paranoiac sensi­ bility also characterizes the American trailer of Zhang’s remake, which opens with Hammett’s definition of the phrase. Yet, despite the trailer’s attempts to play up the American origins of Zhang’s film, the Chinese remake makes no reference to the phrase and departs drastically from the mood of paranoia that characterized the original. In con­ trast to the characters in the original film, Zhang’s comedians relish going through the surface motions only to underscore the playful make-believe quality of their reenactment. In defense of his reconfiguration of an American classic thriller into a campy slap­ stick comedy, Zhang Yimou observed that it met an appreciative acknowledgment from the Coen brothers: “They thought it was fun and interesting the way we took their con­ temporary film, added Chinese flavor and set it in the past,” and he adds that “they never imagined their film could be expressed in this manner.”18 Reviewer Geoffrey Macnab (p. 620)

went further, judging Zhang’s remake to be as pleasurable as “swashbuckling silent movies”—with both being considered “very pure cinema.”19 Zhang himself equivocated on his agenda of resetting Blood Simple in what is presumably premodern China. His ob­ servation that “the further back you go [in history], the fewer political taboos there are and the better off you are in terms of political sensitivities”20 may cue the viewer to pon­ der whether and how Zhang might surreptitiously tackle taboo issues in the guise of a nonsensical thriller-slapstick comedy or pleasurable “pure cinema.” Yet the film’s decon­ textualized use of the pastiche form and the spectacular color-block aesthetics (enhanced by the use of a Sony F35 digital video camera) ultimately indicate no concern with locat­ ed politics and history.21 Consequently, the film offers vacuous entertainment, even if its entertainment value misfires in the Western market. Now, the question is: how did Zhang start with a “local” turn and anti-dapian stance and yet end up losing the grounded local-ness, becoming yet another dapian version of vacu­ ous and decontextualized entertainment? More generally, in what ways do the apparent localizing Chinese remakes necessitate a new understanding of Chinese cinema as cine­ ma with “Chinese elements”? Film reviewer Chris Lee’s conclusion that the film is “as pi­ quantly Chinese as Hoisin sauce” is telling.22 The superficial yet seemingly unquestion­ able connection between hoisin sauce and piquant Chineseness suggests two things. First, for the Western audience, even when the film is acknowledged for its formal aes­ thetics, it is inevitably perceived as a display of a Chinese image, including the pic­ turesque desert landscape and the cartoonish costuming, hairstyles, and performance. Second, the perceived Chinese image is never defined in terms of its own substance, but rather in terms of its foreignness vis-à-vis the Western self. To that extent, the flavor of hoisin sauce does not refer to the literal Cantonese hoisin sauce, but rather stands in for anything labeled as Chinese. Such reductive labeling forestalls any in-depth engagement Page 11 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age with located Chineseness, which therefore becomes hypostatized as iconic Chinese ele­ ments. Lee’s hoisin sauce metaphor echoes the assertion by Zhang Yimou’s producer, Zhang Weiping, that the remake intended to depart from the dapian logic and offer a different flavor. Thus, Zhang Yimou’s production team converged with Western reception in con­ structing reified flavor of Chinese cinema. Such flavor takes different forms and derives its currency from international circulation and thus becomes reified as easily recogniz­ able shorthand for “Chineseness.” Thus, whereas Zhang’s remake is by no means a dapi­ an in terms of its production value, it nevertheless adopts the same strategy of producing bite-sized, consumable “China.” In the process of remediating the local/regional color (i.e., northeastern folk stage enter­ tainment) into a new iconic and commercial tagging of “Chineseness,” the concept of Chi­ nese is decoupled from that of the nation. That is, the term no longer merely designates national politics or a cultural lineage, but also encapsulates manufactured (p. 621) audio­ visual spectacles that are not indexically or logically related to China as a political and cultural entity. By linking China with decontextualized local/regional and transnational qualities, while leaving out the national, Zhang’s remake constitutes a new mode of Chi­ nese cinema that is best understood as cinema with “Chinese elements.” Here we may also detect a significant difference between the early twentieth-century Chi­ nese remakes and Zhang’s new remake of Blood Simple. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, and also studied in depth in my book Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood, the early twentieth-century Chinese re­ makes arose from China’s subjugation to Western colonial forces, therefore inescapably interacted with Chinese intellectuals’ anticolonial and nation-building discourses (which were by no means homogenous). Consequently, they participated in shaping a Chinese cinema that had both national and regional investments, despite the fact that they were frequently criticized by intellectuals for being imitative and failing to engage with Chi­ nese circumstances. With Zhang Yimou’s recent remake, the global power structure has shifted from colonial­ ism to globalization. If China used to be subjugated within a global colonial system, which led to the imperative of building an independent nation-state and a collective subject po­ sition, it now aspires to profit from global capitalism through political, cultural, and eco­ nomic transactions. A specific manifestation of this desire is to make films compatible with Western commercial cinema so that they will sell in the international market. Cine­ ma with “Chinese elements” emerges precisely in this context. The fact that Zhang’s re­ make generated a high box-office return in the domestic market indicates Chinese audi­ ences’ acquiescence to the idea that the iconic “Chineseness” marketed by the remake needs not be invested in national history or politics.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age

Remaking “Chinese Cinema” into Cinema with “Chinese Elements” If Zhang’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop began with a local/regional emphasis that ends up being transvalued into iconic Chinese elements geared toward domestic and in­ ternational markets, then Benny Chan’s Connected seems to follow the opposite trajecto­ ry—namely, starting with border-crossing maneuvers but ultimately producing what is perceived as the original flavor of Hong Kong action cinema. In both cases, however, the strategy of localization in contemporary Chinese-language remakes does not produce a “local” as conventionally understood. In Chan’s Connected, the local Hong Kong flavor is more accurately understood as a flavor coproduced and co-consumed by the Mainland Chinese audience. In Zhang’s remake, the local/regional turn ultimately paves the way for an iconic Chineseness that is dissociated from the nation. This is not simply to say that the local/regional, be it Hong Kong or northeastern China, has always been manufactured through media technologies and therefore can (p. 622) never be understood in essentialist terms. More importantly, the underlying reason for such manufactured iconic local/regional elements has everything to do with the compul­ sive dapian logic, even when these two films are not technically dapian in their own right. One result of such iconization, dehistoricization, and denationalization of Chineseness is that Chinese elements become available not only for transnational circulation, but also for transnational deployment. They can be appropriated by non-Chinese filmmakers and com­ panies as much as by their Chinese counterparts. The confusingly flexible authorship of filmic Chinese elements is amply illustrated in the success of DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Pan­ da 1 and 2 (2008, 2011) in China. Kung Fu Panda 2, in particular, was applauded by some Chinese reviewers as “a Chinese animation film made by the United States” (美國制造的中 國動畫片).23 By a similar logic, one may argue that today’s Chinese-language cinema is in­ herently transnational and transregional not only because many films are coproduced and distributed in multiple markets, but more importantly because the very term Chinese no longer designates a geopolitical identity, but rather becomes an ungrounded iconic cul­ ture that is produced by transnational capital and market, and in turn feeds back into Chi­ nese filmmakers’ production of Chinese-language cinema. Geoffrey Macnab writes that A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop follows a “long tradition of cultural exchange,” as illustrated by Akira Kurosawa’s influence by Dashiell Hammett (his Red Harvest gave rise to the term “blood simple”), and by American Westerns bor­ rowing from Asian samurai or action movies. Macnab adds half-jokingly that “now what we need is for the Coens to give us their version of House of Flying Daggers.”24 Macnab’s wish may not be entirely unrealistic. After all, the new millennium has witnessed a new surge in American remakes of Hong Kong (as well as Korean and Japanese) box-office hits.25 One is tempted to wonder if any of Benny Chan’s action films might be taken up by Hollywood for remake.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age Such actual and anticipated cultural exchange, however, by no means suggests a recipro­ cal or merely technical interaction. Rather, it foregrounds a feedback loop in which Chi­ nese cinema is now securely stitched as a popular brand. With this, we see the emer­ gence of a cinema with “Chinese elements” that turns on iconographic Chineseness some­ times manufactured through localizing Western genre films and always displayed to ap­ peal to transnational audiences.

Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. The Spectre of Comparison: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. New York: Verso, 1998. Dai Jinhua 戴錦華. “Cong lang lai le dao langqun lai le” 從狼來了到狼群來了 [From “The wolf is coming” to “A pack of wolves are coming”]. Nanfang zhoumo 南方周末 [Southern week­ ly], March 1, 2002. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/f/ 2002-03-01/74242.html. (p. 625)

Fan Zheng 釩錚. “Fenzhang dapian jihuo shichang, cujin guonei dianying da

fazhan” 分賬大片激活市場促進國內電影大發展 [Revenue-share blockbusters revitalize the mar­ ket and catalyze the development of the Chinese film market]. Zhongguo dianying shichang 中國電影市場 [Chinese film market] 9 (2010): 19–22. Gaines Jane. “First Fictions.” Signs 30.1 (Autumn 2004): 1293–1317. Lee, Chris. “Zhang Yimou Remakes the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple.” Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2010. Retrieved January 15, 2011, from http://articles.latimes.com/2010/ aug/29/entertainment/la-ca-0829-woman-noodle-20100829. Lee, Maggie. “A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop—Film Review.” Hollywood Reporter, October 14, 2010. Retrieved August 25, 2011, from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ review/woman-gun-and-noodle-shop-29075. Li Dongran 李東然. “Baochi tonghua he Chen Musheng yanzhong de Xianggang dianying” 保持通話和陳木勝眼中的香港電影 [Connected and Hong Kong cinema in Benny Chan’s view]. Sanlian shenghuo zhoukan 三聯生活周刊 [Life week], October 20, 2008. Retrieved February 2, 2011, from http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/2008-10-20/16462213125.shtml. Li Ting 李婷. “Baochi tonghua: Gangpian de jianshou yu yuanban de chaoyue” 保持通話: 港 片的堅守與原版的超越 [Connected: Steadfast commitment to Hong Kong cinema and tran­ scendence of the American original]. Wenhui Bao 文匯報, October 8, 2008. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://yule.sohu.com/20081006/n259873712.shtml. Macnab, Geoffrey. “A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, Film Festival, Berlin: Coens’ Re­ made in Finest China.” Independent, February 17, 2010. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/a-woman-agun-and-a-noodle-shop-film-festival-berlin-1901570.html.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age Rao Shuguang 饒曙光. “Yuanli bentu guanhuai de Zhongguo dapian” 遠離本土關懷的中國大片 [Chinese blockbusters alienated from local concerns]. Dazhong dianying 大眾電影 [Popular cinema] 24 (2005): 1. Tönnies, Ferdinand. Community and Society. Trans. Charles Price Loomis. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1957. Wang, Yiman. Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013. Wang Yaming 王亞明. “Sanqiang pai’an jingqi de shuzi paishe shijian” 三槍拍案驚奇的數字拍 攝實踐 [Digital filming of A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop]. Xiandai dianshi jishu 現代電 視技術 [Contemporary television technology], December 2009, 1–15. Yang Yuanying 楊遠嬰 and Ding Ning 丁寧. “Xianggang dianying de beijin xiangxiang: guankan 2007 niandu gangchan hepai pian” 香港電影的北進想象: 觀看2007年度港產合拍片 [The northward advance imaginary of Hong Kong cinema: On Sino–Hong Kong coproduc­ tions in 2007]. Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 2008: no. 3, 48–53.

Notes: (1.) For an in-depth discussion of how remaking underpinned filmmaking from the incep­ tion of the new medium, see Gaines Jane, “First Fictions,” Signs 30.1 (Autumn 2004): 1293–1317. (2.) Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparison: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World (New York: Verso, 1998), 229. (3.) For a book-length study of Chinese-language remaking of Hollywood films and the role it plays in configuring location-specific collective subject positions, see Wang Yiman, Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013). (4.) On January 13, 1994, the Film Bureau of China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and TV issued a permit granting China Film Group the right to import ten foreign films per year and distribute them in Mainland Chinese markets. This quota was increased to twenty films per year after China joined the WTO in 2001. The initial intention of import­ ing foreign films was to secure recent Western (mostly Hollywood) hits in order to revital­ ize China’s film market, which had suffered plummeting theater attendance since the late 1980s. See Fan Zheng 釩錚, “Fenzhang dapian jihuo shichang, cujin guonei dianying da fazhan” 分賬大片激活市場 促進國內電影大發展 [Revenue-share blockbusters revitalize the market and catalyze the development of the Chinese film market], Zhongguo dianying shichang 中國電影市場 [Chinese film market] 9 (2010): 19–22. (5.) Dai Jinhua famously describes Hollywood blockbusters imported into China as the “wolf” and the increased blockbuster quota after 2001 as “packs of wolves.” See Dai Jin­ hua 戴錦華, “Cong Lang lai le dao langqun lai le” 從狼來了到狼群来了 [From “The wolf is Page 15 of 18

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age coming” to “A pack of wolves are coming”], Nanfang zhoumo 南方周末 [Southern weekly], March 1, 2002, retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/f/ 2002-03-01/74242.html. (6.) Rao Shuguang 饒曙光, “Yuanli bentu guanhuai de Zhongguo dapian” 遠離本土關懷的中國 大片 [Chinese blockbusters alienated from local concerns], in Dazhong dianying 大眾電影 [Popular cinema] 24 (2005): 1. (7.) “Zhang Yimou dui dapian mei xingqu le?” 張藝謀對大片沒興趣了 ？ [Has Zhang Yimou lost interest in big pictures?], Changsha wanbao 長沙晚報 [Changsha evening paper], No­ vember 24, 2009. (8.) Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Society, trans. Charles Price Loomis (East Lans­ ing: Michigan State University Press, 1957), 22. (9.) Li Ting 李婷, “Baochi tonghua: Gangpian de jianshou yu yuanban de chaoyue” 保持通話 港片的堅守與原版的超越 [Connected: Steadfast commitment to Hong Kong cinema and tran­ scendence of the American original], Wenhui bao 文匯報, October 8, 2008, retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://yule.sohu.com/20081006/n259873712.shtml. (10.) “Baochi tonghua kandian jiemi: Dongfang linian xuepin xifang xuanyi” 保持通話看點揭 秘: 東方理念血拼西方懸疑 [Tips for watching Connected: Eastern concept vying against Western suspense], retrieved February 10, 2011, from http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/ 2008-09-23/11242179666.shtml; Chiye qingfeng 赤葉青楓, “Baochi tonghua: Boming tiaozhan Haolaiwu” 保持通話: 搏命挑戰好萊塢 [Connected: Wrestling with Hollywood], re­ trieved March 10, 2011, from http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_44ab136d0100asbr.html. (11.) Benny Chan explains that purchasing the remake rights of a Hollywood film is more expensive than developing an original local script. See Li Dongran 李東然, “Baochi tonghua he Chen Musheng yanzhong de Xianggang dianying” 保持通話和陳木勝眼中的香港電 影 [Connected and Hong Kong cinema in Benny Chan’s view], Sanlian shenghua zhoukan 三聯生活周刊 [Life week], October 20, 2008, retrieved February 2, 2011, from http:// ent.sina.com.cn/m/2008-10-20/16462213125.shtml. This phenomenon contrasts with Hollywood’s remaking of East Asian popular films, which invariably serves as a cheaper method of obtaining market-tested plot ideas than developing an original story. (12.) Li Dongran, “Connected and Hong Kong Cinema.” (13.) Li Dongran, “Connected and Hong Kong Cinema.” (14.) Li, Dongran, “Connected and Hong Kong Cinema.” (15.) Yang Yuanying 楊遠嬰 and Ding Ning 丁寧, “Xianggang dianying de beijin xiangxiang: Guankan 2007 niandu gangchan hepai pian” 香港電影的北進想象: 觀看 2007 年度港產合拍片 [The northward advance imaginary of Hong Kong cinema: On Sino–Hong Kong coproduc­ tions in 2007], Dangdai dianying 當代電影 [Contemporary cinema] 3 (2008): 48–53.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age (16.) Sony Pictures Classics bought the film’s North American distribution rights halfway through its shooting, based on two main selling points: the film being Zhang’s first fea­ ture film following his directorial work for the Beijing Olympics ceremonies, and its being a Chinese remake of the Coen brothers’ breakthrough film, Blood Simple. Whereas Zhang’s film did well in northern Chinese theaters, its performance in America was mediocre. Maggie Lee of The Hollywood Reporter calls this work “a high-rolling but gar­ ish production with untranslatable regional ribald humor” that is “aimed squarely at the China market.” She observes that the film’s “specific cultural references and the cast’s screechingly noisy acting style are what eventually wear out non-Chinese viewers.” See Maggie Lee, “A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop—Film Review,” Hollywood Reporter, October 14, 2010, retrieved August 25, 2011, from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/re­ view/woman-gun-and-noodle-shop-29075. (17.) “Has Zhang Yimou Lost Interest in Big Pictures?” (18.) Chris Lee, “Zhang Yimou Remakes the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple,” Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2010, retrieved January 15, 2011, from http://articles.latimes.com/ 2010/aug/29/entertainment/la-ca-0829-woman-noodle-20100829. (19.) Geoffrey Macnab, “A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop,” Independent, February 17, 2010, retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ films/reviews/a-woman-a-gun-and-a-noodle-shop-film-festival-berlin-1901570.html. (20.) Chris Lee, “Zhang Yimou Remakes Blood Simple.” (21.) Regarding Zhang’s decision to shoot the entire film with Sony F35 DV cameras, see Wang Yaming 王亞明, “Sanqiang pai’an jingqi de shuzi paishe shijian” 三槍拍案驚奇的數字拍 攝實踐 [Digital filming of A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop], Xiandai dianshi jishu 現代電 視技術 [Contemporary television technology], December 2009, 1–15. (22.) Chris Lee, “Zhang Yimou Remakes Blood Simple.” (23.) See “Meiguo zhizao de Zhongguo donghuapian Haolaiwu zhong de Zhongguo yuan­ su” 美國制造的中國動畫片 好萊塢中的中國元素 [A Chinese animated film made by the United States; Chinese elements in Hollywood], Guoji caijing shibao 國際財經時報 [International fi­ nance newspaper], June 2, 2011, retrieved June 2, 2011, from http://www.ibtimes.com.cn/ articles/20110602/zhongguoyuansu-huamulan-xiongmao2.htm. (24.) Geoffrey Macnab, “A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop.” (25.) Examples include American remakes of Japan’s Ringu (1998), Ju-on: The Grudge (2002), and Dark Water (2002); Korea’s Il Mare (2000) and My Sassy Girl (2001); Hong Kong–Singapore-Thailand’s The Eye (2002); and Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs I (2002). The remake rights of all these films were brokered by the Korean American Roy Lee and his Vertigo Entertainment.

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Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Age

Yiman Wang

Yiman Wang is Assistant Professor of Film & Digital Media at University of California Santa Cruz. Her book on cross-Pacific film remakes, Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood, is forthcoming in March 2013. She has published in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film Quarterly, Cam­ era Obscura, Journal of Film and Video, Literature/Film Quarterly, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Chinese Films in Focus (Chris Berry ed. 2003, 2008), Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s (Patrice Petro ed. 2010), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (Chris Berry, Lü Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel eds. 2010), Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia (Yomi Braester and James Tweedie eds. 2010), and Engendering Cinema: Chinese Women Filmmakers Inside and Outside China (Lingzhen Wang ed. 2011).

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s

Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s   Carlos Rojas The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature, Film Online Publication Date: Oct 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0034

Abstract and Keywords Tsai Ming-liang’s 1997 film The River features one of the most challenging scenes in con­ temporary Chinese cinema: a graphically sexual encounter in a dark bathhouse between two men who belatedly recognize each other as father and son. This chapter uses an analysis of the dialectics of desire and alienation that drives this scene to reexamine some of the implications of cinematic suture—both as it is deployed in this particular film, and also more broadly as a metaphor for the relationship between viewers and a general field of cinematic production. Keywords: Tsai Ming-liang, The River, suture, incest

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. A way a lone a last a loved a long the James Joyce, Finnegans Wake “Once in a while,” Rey Chow observes in a discussion of Tsai Ming-liang’s 蔡明亮1997 film, The River (河流), “the encounter with a particular scene in a film is so challenging that it preempts one’s relationship to the entire film.”1 The “encounter with a particular scene” to which Chow is referring here is specifically a scene of an encounter—a five-and-a-halfminute-long take of an erotic liaison between two men in a Taipei bathhouse. After initiat­ ing contact in a dark room, the men take turns masturbating and fellating each other, ten­ derly bringing one another to sexual climax. The camera then briefly cuts away, and when it returns to the bathhouse two minutes later one of the men has gotten up and is now standing by the door. He has just turned on the light and is staring in shock at the younger man lying naked at his feet, whom he now recognizes to be his own son.

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s This encounter is indeed quite “challenging.” In strictly visual terms, the scene is filmed in virtual darkness, to the point that it is rather difficult to discern what is exactly is tak­ ing place. Moreover, to the extent that the men are visible, the sexual nature of their in­ teraction is portrayed in very graphic terms. The situation is further complicated by the belated revelation that the men are actually father and son—suggesting that they have in­ advertently committed incest. Yet insofar as incest is conventionally understood as sexual intercourse between individuals who are too closely related to be allowed to marry, one may (p. 627) therefore ask whether same-sex intercourse can even be considered to be in­ cest in a context (such as 1990s Taiwan) where same-sex relations are not officially sanc­ tioned to begin with.2 The overlapping visual, ethical, and conceptual challenges presented by this notorious bathhouse scene capture in miniature some of the difficulties presented by the film as a whole. Widely acknowledged to be a “very, very strange”3 work, The River features a fam­ ily that—as the director himself has succinctly observed—“really should not exist.”4 The protagonist’s parents are barely on speaking terms, as his mother (played by Lu Yi-Ching 陸弈靜) carries on an extramarital affair with a porn film bootlegger, while his father (played by Miao Tien 苗天) periodically retreats to gay bathhouses for anonymous sex with other men. Throughout most of the film, the protagonist Xiaokang (played by Lee Kangsheng 李康生)5 suffers from a mysterious and debilitating neck cramp. His parents pursue a wide range of remedies in an increasingly desperate effort to treat him, including mas­ sages, injections, acupuncture, and even spirit divination, and although these remedies prove ineffective in treating the actual cramp, they do succeed in illustrating the inter­ twined vectors of desire and alienation that run through the family itself. A comparable conjunction of desire and alienation characterizes Tsai’s broader cinematic oeuvre. Tsai—who was born and raised in Malaysia, but in his twenties went to study in Taiwan, where he currently resides—has observed that he “belong[s] neither to Taiwan nor to Malaysia….I can go anywhere I want and fit in, but I never feel that sense of be­ longing.”6 After graduating from Taipei’s Chinese Culture University in 1982 with a de­ gree in drama and cinema, Tsai began writing, directing, and acting in stage plays, before moving to television dramas in the late 1980s, and to feature-length films in the early 1990s. Tsai’s first three films, Rebels of the Neon God (青少年哪吒, 1992), Vive l’Amour (愛 情萬歲, 1994), and The River, are informally known as his “Taipei trilogy” and present an intimate portrait of his adopted hometown. His fifth film, What Time Is It There? (你那邊幾 點?, 2001), is his first film to include scenes set outside of Taiwan, focusing on a Taiwan student who travels to Paris. A trip back to Malaysia in 1999, meanwhile, gave him the idea of making a film about exploited Southeast Asian workers in Taiwan, which ultimate­ ly yielded both The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲, 2005), about alienated porn actors in Taipei,7 and I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (黑眼圈, 2006), about transnational migrant labor­ ers stranded in Malaysia’s Kuala Lampur. The reception of Tsai’s works reflects a similar dialectics of desire and alienation. Despite the focus on Taiwanese settings in many of Tsai’s early films, for instance, his works have all had very poor box-office results in his adopted nation of Taiwan, and even his one work Page 2 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s filmed in his homeland of Malaysia, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, was officially banned there (on the grounds that it presented an unflattering view of the country). While Tsai has received considerable acclaim and numerous awards along the international film fes­ tival circuit and other foreign venues (including a Silver Bear Award for The River at the Berlin Film Festival), he himself frequently describes how film festival audiences often walk out of his screenings before they have concluded. In fact, even Tsai’s most recent feature-length film, Visage (臉, 2009)—which had the distinction of being the first film ever commissioned by the Louvre—reportedly had about a third of (p. 628) the audience walk out of its official screening at Cannes, where it had been nominated for a Palme d’Or.8 In fact, many of the same qualities that distinguish Tsai’s cinematography—includ­ ing his notoriously slow pacing, scant dialogue, heavy reliance on long takes, together with an emphasis on themes of desire and alienation—have helped make his films either appealing or off-putting, depending on his audiences’ familiarity with or interest in his works. Many of Tsai’s films are explicitly metacinematic, either in that they include allusions to other films (such as the homage to Truffaut’s The 400 Blows in What Time Is It There?) or because they reflect on the filmmaking process itself (such as the focus on Taiwan’s un­ derground porn industry in The Wayward Cloud). I will argue that The River is a paradig­ matically metacinematic work, not only in the sense that it opens with a film-within-a-film sequence, but also in that it presents an implicit commentary on the sorts of conflicted re­ sponses that Tsai’s films tend to inspire. The work’s thematization of a dialectics of desire and alienation allegorically captures the challenges faced by a viewer confronted with one of Tsai’s work—or, arguably, any film. I begin with a detailed reading of the work’s eighteen-minute prologue, which introduces several of the film’s central concerns with themes. I argue that the prologue as a whole, and particularly the impromptu sex scene with which it concludes, anticipates and mir­ rors the film’s trio of anonymous, same-sex bathhouse encounters culminating with the work’s notorious incest scene. I argue that these sexual (mis)encounters dramatize the process, described in classic suture theory, of how a cinematic work may invite the viewer to projectively identify with an embedded gaze within the work itself. In The River, how­ ever, this process of projective identification is introduced yet simultaneously foreclosed —and it is precisely in this failure of suture that the film hints at the possibility of alter­ nate ways of conceiving the audience’s relationship with a cinematic work.

Time and Movement Tsai’s film opens with a black screen against which the work’s title appears in white handwritten characters. A mechanical clicking noise is audible in the back­ ground, but initially it lacks a visual correlate on-screen. When the title screen is replaced by a static shot of an empty outdoor escalator viewed from below, howev­ er, it becomes clear that the background sound is actually that of the escalator. Af­ ter a few seconds, a young man and woman appear at opposite ends of the escala­ Page 3 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s tor, and they recognize each other only after passing one another in the middle. They then meet up at the top and have a brief conversation, during which the woman at one point grabs the man’s forearm and glances down at his wristwatch, asking whether or not he has any immediate plans. When he replies that he doesn’t, she invites him to come with her. As they head back down the escalator together, she wonders aloud how long (p. 629) it has been since they last saw each other, to which he replies, “About two years.” The first shot in The River is of an escalator linking a modern building with a subterranean cavi­ ty. Clearly visible at the top of the escalator is a large sign identifying the building as the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi department store, while the passageway out of which Xiaokang emerges leads to an underground shopping area across from the Taipei Railway Station (and located directly below a major thoroughfare called Zhongxiao xilu 忠孝西路, or literally “West loyalty and filial piety street”—ironically anticipating the film’s own use of incest to interrogate conventional no­ tions of filial piety). Bridging an underground mall catering primarily to local rail commuters and a towering department store that is part of a Japanese chain, the escalator’s cyclical movement mirrors the circuits of people, capital, and commodities within which Tsai’s film is situated.

The River opens with a moment of belated recognition. Just as viewers cannot identify the rhythmic mechanical sound audible in the background until after the title screen has been replaced by the establishing shot of the outdoor escalator, it is only after the young woman (played by Chen Shiang-chyi 陳湘琪) passes the man on the escalator that she be­ latedly recognizes him and calls out his name: Li Kangsheng.

Figure 33.1 Xiangqi checking the time on Xiaokang’s wristwatch

A similar sense of split temporality is invoked when the unnamed woman (whom, for sim­ plicity, we will call Xiangqi) casually grabs Xiaokang’s forearm and glances down at his wristwatch—an oddly intimate act that gestures toward two separate cinematic spaces and their corresponding temporalities (see fig. 33.1). On one hand, if the scene is viewed within the context of the film’s diegesis, it is clear that Xiangqi is checking to see how much time she has before she is due back at the riverside film-set where she is working. Tsai Ming-liang had originally planned to structure The River around a pair of plotlines in­ volving Xiaokang’s relationship with his father, on one hand, and the filming

(p. 630)

of an

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s environmental documentary, on the other; and while he ultimately decided to focus on the former, vestiges of the latter plotline may nevertheless be found in this short sequence in­ volving a makeshift film set located on the banks of Taipei’s Tamsui River.9 Xiangqi’s glance at Xiaokang’s watch, therefore, not only anticipates a future moment within the immediate plot of the film itself, it also figuratively gestures toward an alternate version of the work that was ultimately never realized. On the other hand, if Xiangqi’s glance at the wristwatch is viewed within the context of Tsai’s general oeuvre, it may be seen as referring to a rather different sort of cinematic rendezvous. While the actress Chen Shiang-chyi’s role in The River is limited to work’s opening eighteen-minute prologue, and she does not appear at all in Tsai’s following film, Vive l’Amour, her character does return in Tsai’s fifth film, What Time Is It There?, which opens with “Xiangqi” on a Taipei sky-bridge trying to buy a wristwatch from an itinerant street peddler (played again by Lee Kang-sheng). This “new” version of the Xiangqi char­ acter eschews the new Xiaokang’s ample collection of sale watches and insists instead on buying the dual-time watch he is wearing on his own wrist—because, it turns out, she is about to travel to Paris to study and therefore wants a watch that can keep both Taiwan and French time (see fig. 33.2). After Xiangqi leaves for Paris, Xiaokang begins systemati­ cally resetting all of his watches and clocks back in Taipei to Paris time—in a poignant act of yearning for this woman whom he barely knows.

Figure 33.2 Xiangqi expressing interest in Xiaokang’s dual-time wristwatch in What Time is it There?

A similar split temporality may be found in Xiaokang’s response to Xiangqi’s question of how long it has been since they last saw each other: “About two years.” Taken at face val­ ue, Xiaokang’s reply refers to the last time the two characters saw each other. If viewed in the context of Tsai Ming-liang’s broader cinematic oeuvre, however, the remark may be seen as an allusion to Lee Kang-sheng’s appearance in Tsai’s previous film, Vive l’Amour. (p. 631) Given that Vive l’Amour and The River had their respective debuts about twentyseven months apart, 10 Xiaokang’s two-year estimate raises the possibility that Xiangqi functions here as a stand-in for Tsai’s own “ideal audience,” who would have last seen Xi­ Page 5 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s aokang about two years earlier, and before whom Xiaokang has appeared like clockwork in a new Tsai Ming-liang film approximately every couple of years for the past two decades.11

Representation From the escalator, Xiaokang drives Xiangqi on his scooter to a makeshift film set located on the bank of Taipei’s Tamsui River. There, a director is attempting to shoot a scene of a corpse floating down the river but is frustrated that the man­ nequin the film crew is using for this purpose does not appear sufficiently realistic. The director calls for several retakes before eventually suggesting that everyone break for lunch and try again later. When asked why the sex in his films invariably appears different from that which one typically finds “on posters and the television screen,” Tsai once explained that “every time I want to shoot a love scene I have to tell my actors and film crew that I want a very porn-like effect….I want to imitate that because it’s also a part of reality.”12 Tsai here is making the point not only that pornography is an inescapable part of the world we inhabit, but also that the specific reality of sex is inextricably entangled with the representational logic of pornography—both in the sense that the sexual practice is frequently informed by pornographic conventions (in that people, when having sex, may imitate what they have seen in pornographic works), as well as in the sense that sex is often perceived through the lens of these same sorts of cultural representations (in that the representational logic of pornography conditions us to view sex in certain ways).

A similar interrogation of the relationship between reality and representation can be found in Tsai’s relationship with his perennial leading actor, Lee Kang-sheng. Tsai famous­ ly “discovered” Lee in 1991 while the latter was working as a security guard in a Taipei video arcade. Despite Lee’s lack of acting experience at the time, Tsai offered him a role in his television drama Kids (孩子, 1991) and has gone on to cast Lee in the lead role in every one of the feature-length films he has ever directed.13 The result is a cinematic symbiosis spanning more than two decades, in which Lee plays a variety of characters who all share a set of mannerisms inspired by those of the actor himself. Tsai recalls, for instance, that when he initially started working with Lee, he found the young man’s “rhythm [to be] a little strange, just a little bit slower than everybody else’s.” He explains that when the novice actor interacts with another performer, it’s not as if he’s not reacting to what they do, but it just takes slightly longer for his reaction to register….When I was pushing him to speed up the rhythm, [he] totally refused to take my direction, which shocked (p. 632) me, because I was the director, and no actor ever did anything contrary to my instructions. And here was this guy, coming from nowhere, saying, “That’s just the way I am. I’m not going to change.” [Laughs.]14 Initially perceived as a challenge to Tsai’s directorial authority, Lee’s laconic style and his re­ fusal to “take…direction” functioned as an irritant that helped generate, like a grain of sand in an oyster shell, a long and rich cinematic collaboration.

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Tsai’s initial attempts to have the actor Lee Kang-Sheng conform to his directorial vision are paralleled by his fictional director’s efforts, in The River’s riverside film set, to manip­ ulate a mannequin such that it may pass for a floating corpse (see fig. 33.3). It is fitting, therefore, that the fictional director’s eventual solution is to have Xiaokang himself play the part of the corpse instead—thereby capitalizing on the very same aspect of Lee Kangsheng’s acting that Tsai himself had initially found so frustrating. Indeed, the corpse that Xiaokang is assigned to play can be seen as an apotheosis of the actor’s exaggeratedly slow “rhythm” (see fig. 33.4)

Figure 33.3 Using a mannequin to play a corpse

Figure 33.4 Xiaokang stepping in to play the corpse in place of the mannequin

To the extent that the relationship between Xiaokang and the fictional director in The Riv­ er mirrors that which exists between Lee Kang-sheng and Tsai Ming-liang, it is fitting that Tsai cast the celebrated Hong Kong director Ann Hui 許鞍華 to play the director. Tsai notes that he “wanted Ann Hui to play the director because she’s from Hong Kong—a ‘foreign­ er’ in Taiwan. That makes her something of an objective observer, which is pretty much how I see myself too.”15 Hui is not only a “foreigner” in Taiwan, she could also be seen as a “foreigner” within Tsai’s own film. Given Tsai’s well-known fondness for repeatedly re­ Page 7 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s turning to the same set of actors in each of his films, Ann Hui’s cameo appearance in The River could be seen as a moment of radical singular (p. 633) ity that insistently shifts atten­ tion from the film’s diegetic plane back to the underlying cinematicity of the work itself. Apart from Ann Hui, the only other credited actor in The River who never appears in any of Tsai’s other feature-length films is the unnamed man (played by Chang Long 張龍) with whom Xiaokang’s mother carries on a desultory affair.16 In contrast to Ann Hui’s status as a (fictional) director who symbolizes a process of cinematic production, the mother’s paramour instead represents a process of cinematic reproduction. He makes his living on facsimiles of sexual intercourse (bootleg copies of porn videos), just as he himself func­ tions in the film as a convenient placeholder for the mother’s inchoate desires. This paral­ lel between the mother’s lover and the porn tapes in which he traffics is developed most explicitly in a scene in which the mother becomes aroused while watching some of her lover’s tapes on a small video monitor as they are being copied. She then proceeds to drape her body over his as he lies unconscious on the couch—his body as unresponsive as Ann Hui’s recalcitrant mannequin. In this way, she uses her lover’s body as a vehicle for expressing her own desires, treating it as a substitute for the simulacrum of pornography itself.

Contagion

Figure 33.6 Xiaokang’s neck cramping up on the ride home from the hotel

Following Xiaokang’s plunge into the Tamsui River, Xiangqi escorts him to a hotel to get cleaned up. While they are waiting for the elevator, she looks at him (still wrapped in a towel) and complains good-naturedly that he smells awful. In the fol­ lowing scene, Xiaokang is seen brushing his teeth while showering in the hotel room. Noticing what is apparently some residual filth (p. 634)

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s from the river, he us­ es his tooth­ brush to scrub his left hip, wrist, fore­ arm, armpit, and nipple. When Xiaokang’s neck begins to cramp Figure 33.5 Xiaokang scrubbing his body in the ho­ up as he is rid­ tel shower ing his scooter home from the hotel, viewers may reasonably assume his ailment to be a result of his unwise plunge into the polluted Tamsui River. Indeed, the sight of him in the hotel shower awkwardly peering down at the left side of his torso as he attempts to scrub himself clean directly anticipates the cramped posture in which he will find himself throughout the remainder of the film (p. 635) (see figs. 33.5, 33.6). If we view The River in the context of Tsai’s earlier oeuvre, however, a different set of po­ tential explanations for Xiaokang’s infirmity emerges. While Tsai was filming his debut television drama, All the Corners of the World (海角天涯, 1989), for instance, the actor Wang Youhui 王友輝 became violently ill after having been pushed into the Tamsui River. Three years later, Lee Kangsheng himself developed a debilitating neck cramp after filming Rebels of the Neon.17 Although Tsai ended up cutting the scene containing Wang Youhui’s fall into the Tamsui River from All the Corners of the World, and he had already finished filming Rebels of the Neon God before Lee Kang-sheng’s neck began cramping up, Tsai’s subsequent thematization of Xiaokang’s neck cramp in The River could be seen as an attempt to atone for his complicity in those earlier mishaps by rendering them cinematically visible. Tsai’s memory of these accidents that took place under his directorial watch cling stubbornly to his psyche like the filth that taints Xiaokang’s body following his ill-fated plunge into the polluted Tamsui River (a name, incidental­ ly, which in Chinese ironically means “fresh water” [danshui 淡水, in pinyin], suggesting that the contemporary waterway has been semiotically “contaminated” by the earlier purity of its own preindustrial history), and it was apparently an effort to expiate that symbolic guilt that helped provide the catalyst for The River itself.

To the extent that Xiaokang’s neck cramp in The River may have been partially inspired by Lee Kang-sheng’s own post-Rebels cramp, it is worth noting that Tsai has proposed two rather different sets of explanations for the latter ailment. On one hand, he claims that the actor’s cramp was a result of a porcelain shard that became embedded in Lee’s neck while he was filming a scene in Rebels of the Neon God (an iconic scene in which Xiaokang’s father—played, once again, by Miao Tien—hurls a bowl of rice at the wall above Xiaokang’s head as Xiaokang is dancing around spasmodically pretending to be possessed).18 On the other hand, Tsai has also indicated that the cramp may be seen as a symptom of Lee’s inability “to adapt to the changes in his life, such as becoming involved in a filmmaking circle,”19 suggesting that the cause of the cramp is not a foreign pres­ ence embedded in the actor’s neck but rather Lee’s perception of himself as a foreign ele­ Page 9 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s ment within Tsai’s own “filmmaking circle.” By extension, Xiaokang’s cramp in The River is one of the film’s most distinctive motifs, as well as a symbol of the internal rifts within the work itself. Just as Tsai shaped his cinematic oeuvre around Lee Kang-sheng’s initial resistance to his directorial control, Xiaokang’s neck cramp in The River functions as a visible trace of the productive tension between actor and director on which the film itself is grounded.

Desire After leaving Xiaokang at the hotel, Xiangqi drives off with several other members of her film crew. She soon returns, however, bearing a couple of cups of bubble tea to share with Xiaokang. After they finish the tea, she excuses herself to go wash her hands in the bathroom, first removing Xiaokang’s wet clothes from the sink and depositing them in the bathtub. She then asks Xiaokang to turn off the lights and pull the shade in the outer (p. 636) room, ostensibly so that she can use the restroom (the bathroom walls consist merely of semitransparent panes of glass). In the next shot, however, she is sitting naked in Xiaokang’s lap, facing him as they passionately make love. Tsai Ming-liang once observed that “all of the sex shown in [The River], homo or hetero, is based on a lack of affection.” He notes, for instance, that the encounter in the hotel room is a result of Xiangqi’s initiative and observes that her subsequent disappearance from the film (and, by impli­ cation, from Xiaokang’s consciousness) suggests “how little she meant to [him].”20 Indeed, even during the sex scene itself, Xiangqi literally occupies Xiaokang’s blind spot—her face buried in the crook of his neck.

This focus on Xiaokang’s blind spot is accentuated by the scene’s cinematography. The camera hovers over Xiaokang’s right shoulder—but rather than overlapping with his pre­ sumptive gaze (as one would expect to find in a conventional over-the-shoulder point-ofview [POV] shot), the camera instead focuses on the area around his shoulder itself—an area that is necessarily outside the subject’s own field of vision. The familiar conventions of the over-the-shoulder shot, therefore, are used here to present not a POV shot, but rather a “point of blindness”—inviting the audience to view what Xiaokang literally can­ not see.

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s

Figure 33.7 Xiaokang and Xiangqi making love in the hotel room

As Xiangqi passionately kisses Xiaokang’s right shoulder, ear, and neck region, he tilts his head further and further to the left (see fig. 33.7),21 uncannily anticipating the neck cramp that will begin afflicting him during his ride home from the hotel (see fig. 33.6) and will continue to plague him throughout the remainder of the film. Indeed, Xiaokang’s cramp may be seen as a mediated response to both his sexual encounter with Xiangqi and the issues of sexual orientation that this encounter tacitly introduces. Chang Hsiao-hung 張小虹, for instance, sees Xiaokang’s bent neck as a response to his (p. 637) preceding bout of “straight” sex with Xiangqi, Gina Marchetti compares his condition to AIDS, while Kai-man Chang suggests a parallel between the parents’ attempts to treat him and the at­ tempts by actual parents of gay children to “cure” them of their homosexuality.22 Each of these readings equates the cramp with same-sex desire, though in each case the cramp is manifested in explicitly oppositional terms (e.g., as a figurative immune reaction to het­ erosexual contact, as a resistance to the parents’ normativizing efforts, and so forth). By this logic, the cramp is a symptom not of homoerotic desire itself, but rather of the sorts of responses that homoerotic desire elicits in a presumptively heteronormative society. To the extent that the hotel room scene inverts the conventions of the standard POV shot by having the camera focus not on what the protagonist sees but rather precisely on what he can’t see, this perspectival inversion is itself inverted in figure of the reflection visible in the left-hand portion of the screen. Appearing on the glass surface of the hotel’s bath­ room wall, this reflection of the naked couple is visible not only to the camera but also to Xiaokang—who is facing the wall. In this reflection, positioned outside the camera’s main line of sight, we find a space of the returned gaze—a point from which Xiaokang implicitly has the capacity to gaze back at the location of the camera and, by implication, of the film’s viewer (see fig. 33.7). The inverted view of Xiaokang’s and Xiangqi’s lovemaking visible in the reflection on the bathroom wall also anticipates a more radical inversion of their coupling that appears in the following scene. Immediately after Xiaokang and Xiangqi appear to reach orgasm, the camera cuts abruptly from the dark hotel room to a dark Taipei bathhouse, where we see Page 11 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s a man lying on his back with his head and feet shrouded in darkness and an orange towel draped loosely over his waist. Another man emerges from the shadows and attempts to stroke the first man’s thigh. The prostrate man grunts in apparent annoyance, but makes no visible effort to move away. This routine is repeated several more times, until finally the second man loses interest and wanders off. The first man eventually sits up, and as he does so his face moves into the light. He is Xiaokang’s father. This bathhouse encounter closely resembles the preceding hotel room sex scene, in that both are shot in a single long take with no dialogue and in almost complete darkness. In terms of their content, however, the two scenes may be seen as almost precise inverses of one another. While in the first scene Xiaokang and Xiangqi are presented as being old ac­ quaintances, in the second it is implied that the two men are complete strangers; and while the first scene features a passionate heterosexual coupling, in the second we in­ stead find a display of awkwardly unconsummated homoerotic desire. At the same time, the same-sex desire in the bathhouse scene anticipates Xiaokang’s own homoerotic yearn­ ings—yearnings that help explain Xiangqi’s subsequent disappearance from Xiaokang’s consciousness, and which will pull him inexorably toward the fatefully sexual encounter with his own father at the end of the film. Positioned precisely halfway between the film’s first and final bathhouse scenes (i.e., the father’s initial encounter with an unidentified young man, and his eventual (p. 638) real­ ization that he has just inadvertently had sexual relations with his own son), meanwhile, there is a second bathhouse liaison involving the father and yet another young man.23 This second liaison is immediately preceded by a sequence in which Xiaokang’s mother lends Xiaokang her vibrating dildo to help massage his neck, and as the distinctive buzz of the erotic device reverberates through the small apartment Xiaokang’s father is seen lying uncomfortably in his dark bedroom, eventually covering his face with a wet towel. The vibrator, here, functions as a hinge between the mother’s unrequited passions and the father’s homoerotic desires, and it is immediately following the shot of the father ly­ ing in bed with the wet towel over his face that we see him picking up a young man (played by Chen Chao-jung 陳昭榮) in front of a local McDonald’s. After a short interstitial shot of Xiaokang back in the family kitchen shoveling rice into his mouth, we then see his father and the unidentified younger man from the McDonald’s in a dark room in a bath­ house. The father is being masturbated by his new companion, but when he tries to pres­ sure the younger man to perform oral sex on him, the latter abruptly gets up and walks out.

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s

Figure 33.8 Xiaokang’s mother staring up at her husband’s leaking ceiling

Figure 33.9 Xiaokang’s father staring down at him in the bathhouse

Just as the father’s second bathhouse encounter is immediately preceded by a seemingly unrelated shot of Xiaokang awkwardly eating rice at the family’s kitchen table, in the short interregnum between the father’s third bathhouse encounter and his subsequent discovery that this anonymous partner was actually his own son, the camera again cuts back to the family’s apartment, where now it is Xiaokang’s mother who is sitting at the kitchen table. After a pause, she begins devouring food from a take-out box in front of her, and as she does so she suddenly discovers a pool of water under her feet. She traces the source of the water to her husband’s bedroom, and when she opens the door she is shocked to find water cascading down from the ceiling (see fig. 33.8). She stares dumb­ founded at the ceiling for several seconds, then abruptly slams the door (p. 639) shut. The next thing we see is Xiaokang’s father, standing at the door to the bathhouse room, star­ ing down in dismay at his son, with whom he has just inadvertently had sex (see fig. 33.9).

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s

Figure 33.10 Xiaokang rushing out of the bathhouse

Like the early hotel room and bathhouse sex scenes, these two juxtaposed shots of Xiaokang’s mother and father are presented as precise reflections of one another—with the shot of Xiaokang’s mother standing in the doorway of her husband’s bedroom and staring up at the water gushing down from the ceiling being precisely inverted in the fol­ lowing shot of Xiaokang’s father standing at the door of the bathhouse room and staring down at his naked son. Moreover, while the first scene is structured as a conventional POV shot with the camera positioned directly behind the mother’s right shoulder, the sec­ ond scene mimics yet inverts the conventions of the over-the-shoulder POV shot—with the father appearing as the object of a short-circuited POV shot. More specifically, the latter scene opens with Xiaokang lying on the floor and outside the frame of the picture, and even after he sits up and moves in front of the stationary camera—such that the camera is now positioned directly behind his right shoulder—his body language nevertheless sug­ gests that he doesn’t yet fully register the fact that the man standing over him is actually his father (see fig. 33.9). The result, therefore, is that the POV shot is used to show the audience a scene that the subject himself, Xiaokang, technically witnesses but initially does not comprehend. There is then a dramatic pause, after which the father steps for­ ward and slaps Xiaokang across the face, causing him to fall backward and back out of the frame of the camera. After a few seconds, Xiaokang clambers to his feet and rushes out of the room while pulling up his pants (see fig. 33.10), but even after he leaves the camera remains trained upward at the father, who is staring intently down at the (p. 640) now-vacant spot where his son had been lying—a spot vacant, that is, except for the invis­ ible presence of the camera itself (see fig. 33.11).

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s

Figure 33.11 Xiaokang’s father staring at the empty space where Xiaokang had been sitting

Tsai Ming-liang claims that, for this now-notorious scene, he had originally planned to simply show the two men run into each other in the bathhouse and didn’t decide until the last minute to depict them actually having sex. He describes how he himself allegedly found the result so shocking that after filming was completed he went into hiding (p. 641) for a month before he could bring himself to revisit the scene for postproduction work.24 Tsai’s alienated response to his own film is mirrored quite precisely by the father’s dis­ mayed recognition of his son at the end of the final bathhouse sequence, followed by his vacant gaze at the empty space where his son occupied by the film camera itself. In both cases, the camera comes to be perceived as an autonomous force capable of generating new perspectives and social relationships.

Coda Xiaokang’s father returns to the dark hotel room where he and Xiaokang have been staying during their trip down south to visit a spirit doctor in an attempt to treat Xiaokang’s neck cramp. Without turning on the lights, the father takes off his outer shirt and lies down in the queen-sized bed. Xiaokang is already in the bed, and the two men proceed to lie there silently, back to back, expressions of appar­ ent grief on both their faces. The next morning the father wakes up first, speaks briefly on the phone, and leaves the room. After Xiaokang himself gets up, he stretches and steps out onto a balcony overlooking the street. He stands in the sunlight, gently massaging his neck, as street sounds are heard off-camera. The street sounds remain audible as the shot of Xiaokang is replaced with a black screen on which Tsai Ming-liang’s name appears in white characters. The closing credits follow, as street noises are heard in the background.

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s

Figure 33.12 Xiaokang on the hotel balcony at the end of the film

One of the most challenging aspects of The River is the seemingly abrupt transi­ tion from the father and son’s mutual dismay in the final bathhouse sequence, to their (p. 642)

(platonically) sharing a bed in the hotel room that same night, together with Xiaokang’s seemingly relaxed attitude on the balcony in the final scene of the film (see fig. 33.12). How might we reconcile this ending of the film with the startling events that immediately precede it? Some viewers have argued that the film actually concludes on an optimistic note. Rey Chow, for instance, describes the incest scene as a “rare instant of connectivity” resulting from a moment of “reciprocal tenderness,” Song Hwee Lim argues more broadly that “the ending of the film can only be read, however perversely, as hopeful—and utopian,” and Fran Martin agrees that the work’s conclusion illustrates what she calls “paradoxically situated utopias…spaces of love reimagined.”25 Tsai Ming-liang himself, viewing the film’s incest scene as if from the perspective of an outsider, reaches a similar conclusion: What I find very interesting is that after [the father and son have sex], it doesn’t seem so bad after all. When you see [them] embracing, you get the feeling that they have somehow found salvation, because they have probably never in their lives had the chance to embrace one another, hold hands, or even touch one an­ other. But when they do so, I think you get a feeling of great calm, and warmth. I don’t know what it is, in the end [that they did].26 Placing himself in a position of alienated recognition similar to that which we find the end of the bathhouse sequence, Tsai suggests that what he sees in the “incestuous” encounter—and, by ex­ tension, in the moment of mutual recognition at the conclusion of the scene—is in fact a positive, liberating transformation of the father and son’s relationship and self-understanding.

One way of approaching these various assessments of the film’s conclusion would be to consider the ways in which the work builds on, and also complicates, the vision of specta­ torial dynamics found in suture theory. As developed by Jean Pierre Oudart and Stephen Heath in the 1960s, suture theory posits that a viewer’s engagement with a cinematic work typically begins with an ecstatic identification with the images on screen, followed Page 16 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s by an acute sense of anxiety once the viewer is reminded of the existence of the film’s frame separating him or her from those same images. This anxiety may then be resolved when the viewer figuratively “sutures” over the resulting scopic “wound” by projectively identifying with one of the embedded gazes within the film This process of projective identification is often facilitated by the use of shot / reverse shot, over-the-shoulder, and other POV techniques.27 In The River, however, several key scenes trope on, yet strategically invert, the familiar conventions of the over-the-shoulder POV shot. In the hotel room scene at the end of the prologue, for instance, the over-theshoulder shot becomes instead an at-the-shoulder shot—and rather than depicting what Xiaokang sees, the camera instead lingers on what he literally cannot see. Similarly, in the final bathhouse scene an over-the-shoulder POV shot is used to depict what Xiaokang technically sees, but which he appears unable to comprehend. Even as both scenes im­ plicitly invite viewers to figuratively “suture” their gaze (p. 643) onto an embedded gaze within the scene itself, therefore, they simultaneously present an alternative that could be regarded as a form of “antisuture,” wherein the audience does not identify with an em­ bedded gaze within the work but rather recognizes the axiological independence of that same gaze. In the hotel room scene, for instance, the reflection of the naked couple on the bathroom wall raises the possibility that Xiaokang may be using the same reflective surface to gaze back at the space occupied by the camera. Similarly, the final bathhouse sequence concludes with Xiaokang’s father staring intently at a location on the floor that now contains only the camera itself. Rather than promoting an elision of perspectival dif­ ference, as suture theory claims that films typically do, these scenes instead embrace the axiological gap that necessarily exists between the viewer and the film’s embedded gaze. This theme of axiological difference and perspectival openness is also reflected in the overall structure of Tsai’s film. As discussed above, The River features a series of embed­ ded frames. Just as the incestuous encounter in the bathhouse mirrors Xiaokang and Xiangqi’s initial liaison at the beginning of the film, the entire work is itself framed by a pair of black screens featuring only the work’s title and director in white, handwritten characters. Song Hwee Lim notes that, beginning with The River, every one of Tsai’s films has featured the director’s handwritten signature appearing in a paratextual frame at the end of the work. While Lim interprets this as an act of “assuming responsibility and de­ claring ownership,”28 it might also be seen as a trenchant reminder of the existence of an embedded gaze within the film that actively resists being conflated with that of the view­ er. This theme of open-endedness articulated through the figure of the returned gaze is also explored, in the work’s outer frame, through the use of sound. As noted above, both the opening title frame and the concluding credits contain background noise (corresponding to the escalator at the beginning of the film, and the street traffic at the end) that is delinked from any on-screen referent. The way in which the film’s diegetic sound spills out into the work’s paratextual frame illustrates both the inherent limits of the cinematic gaze and the corresponding axiologial openness of the filmic medium itself. The pair of black screens that frame the film, in other words, function as an example of what Derri­ Page 17 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s da, following Kant, calls a parergon, or that which is “neither work (ergon) nor outside the work [hors d’oeuvre], neither inside or outside, neither above nor below, it discon­ certs any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work.”29 The parergonal frame, on other words, marks the impossibility of demarcating an ab­ solute boundary between a work and that which lies beyond it. A film’s productive poten­ tial, consequently, frequently lies precisely in this interstitial zone between the work’s diegetic space and the social configurations within which the work is positioned. The axiological openness of a film like The River is, paradoxically, precisely one of the as­ pects of the work that makes it so challenging for many viewers, who may find the work’s strategic subversion of the conventions of suture to be an insurmountable barrier to en­ try. The result may be compared to James Joyce’s extraordinarily rich yet virtually impen­ etrable Finnegans Wake, which famously ends with a sentence fragment: “A way a lone a last a loved a long the,” which loops back up to the work’s similarly-truncated (p. 644) opening line, “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”30 This line framing Joyce’s novel not only mirrors the circular structure of Tsai’s film, it also cap­ tures with uncanny accuracy many of the latter work’s central themes. With its attention to issues of dislocation, alienation, temporality, and desire, for instance, Tsai’s The River is surely situated “A way a lone a last a loved,” just as its fascination with polymorphous desire takes it well past a heteronormative “Eve and Adam’s.” The work loops back upon itself, exemplifying a “commodius vicus of recirculation,” as the film, like Tsai’s broader cinematic oeuvre, continually runs “a long the riverrun.”

Works Cited Anderson, Melissa. “Cannes Report: Day 10.” Artforum, May, 22, 2009. Retrieved October 24, 2012, from http://www.artforum.com/film/id=22907. Chang Hsiao-hung 張小虹. “Guaitai jiating luomanshi: ‘Heliu’ zhong de yuwang changjing” 怪胎家庭羅曼史: 《河流》中的慾望場景 [Queer family romance: The scene of desire in The Riv­ er]. Guaitai jiating luomanshi 怪胎家庭羅曼史 [Queer family romance]. Taipei: Shibao, 2000. Chang, Kai-man. “Drifting Bodies and Flooded Spaces: Visualizing the Invisibility of Het­ eronormativity in Tsai Ming-liang’s The River.” Post Script 28.1 (2008): 45–63. Chow, Rey. “A Pain in the Neck, a Scene of ‘Incest,’ and Other Enigmas of an Allegorical Cinema: Tsai Ming-liang’s The River.” New Centennial Review 4.1 (2004): 123–142. Derrida, Jacques. The Truth in Painting. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod. Chica­ go: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Heath, Stephen. “Notes on Suture.” Screen 18 (Winter 1978), 48–76. Huang, Andrew. “Sense and Sensuality: Art-House Master Tsai Ming-liang Discusses His New Movie The Wayward Cloud and His Philosophies in a Moody, Existential Interview.” Taiwan News, February 18, 2005. Page 18 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Hummel, Volker. “The Missing: An Interview with Li Kangsheng.” Senses of Cinema 32 (2004). Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/32/ lee_kang_sheng/. Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. New York: Penguin, 1999. Lim, Song Hwee. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contem­ porary Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006. Lim, Song Hwee. “Positioning Auteur Theory in Chinese Cinema Studies.” Journal of Chi­ nese Cinemas 1.3 (2007): 223–244. Marchetti, Gina. “On Tsai Ming-liang’s The River.” Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cine­ ma and After. Ed. Chris Berry and Feii Lu. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005. 113–126. Martin, Fran. Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Public Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Oudart, Jean-Pierre. “Cinema and Suture.” Trans. Kari Hanet. Screen 18 (Winter 1978): 35–47. Rehm, Jean-Pierre, Oliver Joyard, and Danièl Rivière, eds. Tsai Ming-liang. Paris: Éditions Dis Voir, 2001. Tsai Ming-liang. “An Interview with Tsai Ming-liang.” Interview by Samantha Culp and Tyler Coburn. Trans. Ken Chen, Bingyi Huang, James Tweedie, and Susan Yu. Wake: A Journal of Contemporary Culture (Fall 2003). Retrieved October 24, 2012, from http:// www.yale.edu/wake/fall03/tsai.html. Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮. “Yuwang, yapo, bengjiede shengming” 慾望, 壓迫, 崩解的生命 [Desire, repression, and a collapsed life]. Interview by Chen Baoxu 陳寶旭. Heliu 河流 [The river]. Ed. Peggy Chiao Hsiung-ping 焦雄屏 and Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮. 52–76. Wang, Shujen, and Chris Fujiwara. “My Films Reflect My Living Situation: An Interview with Tsai Ming-liang on Film Spaces, Audiences, and Distribution.” positions: east asia cultures critique 14.1 (2006): 219–241. Wen T’ien-hsiang 聞天祥. Guangying dingge: Cai Mingliang de xinling changyu 光影定格﹕ 蔡 明亮的心靈場域 [Freeze-frame of light and image: The field of Tsai Ming-liang’s heart and soul]. Taipei: Hengxing, 2002.

Notes: (1.) Chow Rey, “A Pain in the Neck, a Scene of ‘Incest,’ and Other Enigmas of an Allegori­ cal Cinema: Tsai Ming-liang’s The River,” New Centennial Review 4.1 (2004): 123. (2.) Rey Chow, “A Pain in the Neck,” 124. Page 19 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s (3.) “The River is a strange film. Everyone—including the crew, the actors, and the view­ ers—found it to be very, very strange.” Chang Hsiao-hung 張小虹, “Guaitai jiating luoman­ shi: ‘Heliu’ zhong de yuwang changjing” 怪胎家庭羅曼史: 《河流》中的慾望場景 [Queer family romance: The scene of desire in The River], in Guaitai jiating luomanshi 怪胎家庭羅曼史 [Queer family romance] (Taipei: Shibao, 2000), 113. (4.) “The family we see in The River is one that really should not exist. The father is gay, but he has a family. A wife. A child. But we understand why he has a family. He has to have a family to be his front.” Quoted in Wang Shujen and Fujiwara Chris, “My Films Re­ flect my Living Situation: An Interview with Tsai Ming-liang on Film Spaces, Audiences, and Distribution,” positions: east asia cultures critique 14.1 (2006): 223. (5.) As with Tsai Ming-liang and several of the other actors in the film, I identify the actor Lee Kang-sheng using the preferred spelling of his name. When referring to the fictional character Xiaokang, however, I use standard pinyin romanization system. (6.) Huang Andrew, “Sense and Sensuality: Art-House Master Tsai Ming-liang Discusses His New Movie The Wayward Cloud and His Philosophies in a Moody, Existential Inter­ view,” Taiwan News, February 18, 2005. (7.) Tsai subsequently observed, “It’s still the same idea but with a different occupation. What I am interested in is exploring the identity issue of these individuals who are caught and stuck between two worlds” (Andrew Huang, “Sense and Sensuality”). (8.) Melissa Anderson, “Cannes Report: Day 10,” Artforum, May, 22, 2009, retrieved Octo­ ber 24, 2012, from http://www.artforum.com/film/id=22907. (9.) See Tsai’s discussion of his original conception of the film, in T’ien-hsiang Wen 聞天祥. Guangying dingge: Cai Mingliang de xinling changyu 光影定格 ﹕ 蔡明亮的心靈場域 [Freezeframe of light and image: The field of Tsai Ming-liang’s heart and soul] (Taipei: Hengxing, 2002). (10.) Vive l’Amour debuted at the Venice Film Festival in September 1994, while The Riv­ er debuted at the Berlin Film Festival twenty-nine months later, in February 1997. (11.) The official release dates of Tsai’s films to date are as follows: Rebels of the Neon God (1992), Vive l’Amour (1994), The River (1997), The Hole (1998), What Time Is It There? (2001), Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003), The Wayward Cloud (2005), I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (2006), Face (2009). (12.) Rehm Jean-Pierre, Joyard Oliver, and Rivière Danièl, eds., Tsai Ming-liang (Paris: Édi­ tions Dis Voir, 2001), 100. (13.) Tsai even vowed at one point that he would never direct a feature film in which Lee did not play the protagonist. Hummel Volker, “The Missing: An Interview with Li Kang­ sheng,” Senses of Cinema 32 (2004).

Page 20 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s (14.) Scott Tobias, “Interview: Tsai Ming-liang,” A.V. Club, February 27, 2002, retrieved October 24, 2012, from http://www.avclub.com/articles/tsai-mingliang,13756. (15.) Tony Rayns, “Confrontation: Interview with Tsai Ming-Liang,” Sight and Sound 7.3 (1997). (16.) Chang Long appeared in Tsai’s early telefilm Give Me a Home (給我一個家, 1991) but does not appear in any of Tsai’s feature films other than The River. (17.) See Tsai’s discussion in Wen T’ien-hsiang, Freeze-Frame of Light and Image, 222; and in Peggy Chiao Hsiung-ping 焦雄屏 and Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮, eds., Heliu 河流 [The river] (Taipei: Huangguang, 1997), 55; Tony Rayns, “Confrontation.” (18.) See Tsai’s discussion in Wen Tianxiang, Freeze-Frame of Light and Shadow, 222; and in Chiao and Tsai, eds., The River, 55; Tony Rayns, “Confrontation.” (19.) “An Interview with Tsai Ming-liang,” inteview by Samantha Culp and Tyler Coburn, trans. Ken Chen, Bingyi Huang, James Tweedie, and Susan Yu, Wake: A Journal of Con­ temporary Culture (Fall 2003), retrieved October 24, 2012, from http://www.yale.edu/ wake/fall03/tsai.html. (20.) Both of the quotations in this paragraph are taken from Tony Rayns, “Confronta­ tion.” (21.) At the very end of the scene, as one or both of the young people appear to reach or­ gasm, Xiangqi moves her face from Xiaokang’s right shoulder to his left. (22.) Chang Hsiao-hung, “Queer Family Romance,” 124; Marchetti Gina, “On Tsai Mingliang’s The River,” in Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After, ed. Berry Chris and Lu Feii (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 113–126; and Chang Kaiman, “Drifting Bodies and Flooded Spaces: Visualizing the Invisibility of Heteronormativi­ ty in Tsai Ming-liang’s The River,” Post Script 28.1 (2008): 45–63. (23.) The first bathhouse encounter begins in the seventeenth minute of the film, the sec­ ond begins in the fifty-seventh minute, and the scene in which the father turns on the bathhouse light and sees his son begins in the ninety-eighth minute. There is, therefore, almost precisely the same forty-minute gap between the beginning of each of these three pivotal scenes. (24.) Jean-Pierre Rehm, Oliver Joyard, and Danièl Rivière, Tsai Ming-liang, 98. (25.) Rey Chow, “A Pain in the Neck,” 132; Lim Song Hwee, Celluloid Comrades: Repre­ sentations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (Honolulu: Universi­ ty of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 150; Martin Fran, Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Public Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), 180.

Page 21 of 22

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Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s (26.) Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮, “Yuwang, yapo, bengjiede shengming” 慾望, 壓迫, 崩解的生命 [Desire, repression, and a collapsed life], interview by Chen Baoxu 陳寶旭, in Chiao and Tsai, The River, 61. (27.) Oudart Jean-Pierre, “Cinema and Suture,” trans. Hanet Kari, Screen 18 (Winter 1978); Stephen Heath, “Notes on Suture,” Screen 18 (Winter 1978). (28.) Lim Song Hwee, “Positioning Auteur Theory in Chinese Cinema Studies,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 1.3 (2007): 237. (29.) Derrida Jacques, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). (30.) Joyce James, Finnegans Wake (New York: Penguin, 1999), 3, 628.

Carlos Rojas

Carlos Rojas is Associate Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University, and his research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, nationalism and diaspora studies. He is the author of The Great Wall: A Cultural History (Harvard University Press, 2010) and The Naked Gaze: Reflections on Chinese Modernity (Harvard University Asia Center, 2008). He is the co-editor, with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, of Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon (Routledge: 2009) and, with David Der-wei Wang, of Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History (Duke University Press, 2007). He is also the translator of Yan Lianke’s novel Lenin’s Kisses, and the co-translator, again with Eileen Chow, of Yu Hua’s two-volume novel, Brothers (Pan­ theon, 2009).

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Afterword (尾聲): chinese cinema as monkey’s tail

Afterword (尾聲): chinese cinema as monkey’s tail   The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature Online Publication Date: Oct 2013

(p. 647)

Afterword (尾聲)

chinese cinema as monkey’s tail If the story of Chinese cinema begins on Dingjun Mountain, we might say that it hangs its tail on another summit—that of Fruits-and-Flowers Mountain, the home lair of the Mon­ key King. Born from an egg harbored within an immortal stone created in primordial chaos, the autochtonic protagonist of the sixteenth-century Chinese novel Journey to the West (西遊記) arrives on the scene fully formed, beastly yet not quite. Of ambiguous bio­ logical and cultural origin (certainly there seems to be a family resemblance to the Hindu monkey-deity Hanuman), Monkey is not of any particular place and consequently has proven to be infinitely adaptable—his story capable of effortless travel to other times, places and contexts. Indeed, the endless versions, rewritings, and reinventions of Monkey’s tale circulating both within and beyond Chinese cultural borders would provide a fruitful field of study in their own right. Our enduring fascination with Monkey, howev­ er, begs the question: What is the function of a Monkey tale? Sun Wukong 孫悟空, or Monkey for short, is a paradigmatic trickster figure, capable of transforming each of the 84,000 hairs on his body into clones of himself, and of using his repertoire of seventy-two transformations to metamorphose into an array of other ani­ mals and physical objects. With his preternatural powers of transformation, self-replica­ tion, and illusion, Monkey is the best metaphor for the art and technology of mechanical reproduction—in other words, he is cinema’s perfect spirit animal. Moreover, Monkey’s aura of radical undecidability—simultaneously beast and deity, king and rebel, native and foreign—renders him uniquely plastic and capable of playing a criti­ cal role in some of the foundational moments in Chinese cinematic history. For instance, after watching Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) upon its premiere in Shanghai in 1939, Wan Guchan 萬古蟾 and Wan Laiming 萬籟鳴 (half of the legendary quar­ tet of Wan brothers who are essentially synonymous with the history of Chinese anima­ tion) decided to offer a homegrown answer to the foreign classic. The result was China’s first feature-length animated film: Princess Iron Fan (p. 648) (鐵扇公主, 1941), produced by Page 1 of 3

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Afterword (尾聲): chinese cinema as monkey’s tail Lianhua Studios during Occupation-period Shanghai and based on an episode in Monkey’s adventures (and his battle with the titular princess) in Journey to the West. If Monkey’s tale facilitated the birth of the Chinese animation industry, it also served Japan’s twice over, both in its prewar and postwar incarnations. The immediate and widereaching success of Princess Iron Fan left a deep impression not only on its domestic Chi­ nese audiences, but on the Japanese Imperial Navy, which promptly commissioned ambi­ tious animation projects of its own aimed at bolstering the patriotic spirit of Japanese children—resulting most notably in Seo Mitsuyo’s Momotaro’s Sea Eagles (Momotarō no Umiwashi, 1943) and Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors (Momotarō Umi no Shinpei, 1945), the latter of which is recognized as Japan’s first feature-length animated film. Among those who watched these unabashedly propagandistic yet lyrical and delicately drawn an­ imations of patriotic monkey-soldiers coexisting happily with colonized simian jungle na­ tives was a Japanese youth by the name of Osamu Tezuka 手塚 治虫. Tezuka, who would subsequently become better known as the creator of Astro Boy (Tetsuwan atomu) and oth­ er iconic characters, is revered as the “God of Manga” and as the fount from which the explosive and enduring transnational success of postwar Japanese anime has sprung. In an early memoir, he recalls being moved to “uncontrollable weeping” in the theater by the “lyricism and child-like spirit” of Seo’s film and describes this encounter as the pre­ cise moment he found his artistic calling: the rest, as they say, is anime history. Late in life, however, this memory of seeing the propaganda film is replaced with Tezuka’s ecstatic recollection of a young man’s self-discovery as an artist through his first en­ counter with Monkey on the screen. In this way, the problematic and war-tainted origins of Japan’s most successful postwar product, anime, is made less controversial by being resituated within a shared classical Chinese cultural tradition. Indeed, in 1988 an ailing Tezuka made a pilgrimage of his own—journeying west to China to meet up with his long­ time idol, Wan Laiming, one of the original directors of Princess Iron Fan. Upon his return to Japan, Tezuka promptly began drafting the script for an autobiographical anime fea­ ture titled Boku wa Son Goku, or I am Son Goku, in which the figure of Monkey bookends the artist’s own life. First, after a screening of Princess Iron Fan, the Monkey that Tezuka is idly sketching late at night comes to life and exhorts the young and diffident Tezuka to pursue his artistic dreams, while the film’s climactic final act features the older Tezuka’s journey to China, where he is able to meet and confide to “Wan Sensei” that he, too, had his own Monkey tale. Completed posthumously by Osamu Productions in 2003 based on the sketches and script the artist left behind after his death in 1989, I am Son Goku seems a deliberate affirmation on Tezuka’s part of his (and postwar Japanese anime’s) de­ scendance from Monkey, and not from those other politically suspect monkeys that ought to have already been forgotten and effaced from cinematic history. There are Monkeys for every season and every ideological wind. Monkey was a favorite of Chairman Mao, who proclaimed him a rebel hero who “dares to act and dares to stand up for things,” and who tacitly encouraged the equivalence made between Monkey and him­ self in films and stage adaptations in the 1950s and 1960s, most notably the Wan (p. 649) brothers’ 1961 animation of Monkey’s origin story and triumph over heavenly bureaucra­ Page 2 of 3

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Afterword (尾聲): chinese cinema as monkey’s tail cy in Havoc in Heaven (大鬧天宮). And Monkey’s transnational and transmedial transfor­ mations are ever proliferating, capitalizing on the latest developments in cinematic technology’s ability to fully express Monkey’s superpowers and acrobatism, but also be­ cause Monkey is seen to be China’s most marketable brand, and the best means of global conquest by the Chinese film industry. To think of Monkey as a figure for the taxonomical field of Chinese cinemas is a reminder not to lose sight of the guileful, illusory, and ever-mutating nature of the beast: any at­ tempt to pin it down would be eluded and shape-shifted away. There is always another story of Monkey waiting to be told, just as there is always another way to rethink and re­ categorize the texts, commodities, and artifacts that are labeled and circulated under the signs of either Chineseness or cinema. What is the function of a monkey’s tail? In biological terms, prehensility is actually a New World evolutionary adaptation, where having a lengthy, flexible tail that can grasp and manipulate objects provided an adaptive advantage in the densely wooded South Ameri­ can rain forests. Monkey’s own tail, however, carries a rather different significance. Giv­ en that Monkey’s identity straddles the boundary between beast and divinity, it is perhaps not surprising that the conjuring trick he finds most challenging is that of fully transform­ ing himself into human form. His telltale simian tail—the only part of him that resists change and concealment—always gives him away. The Monkey King’s tail, therefore, is both part of and persistently outside of all Monkey tales already in circulation: it is the trace of the untameable, unassimilable, vestigial remnant, that which vexes, betrays, and provokes the telling of yet another version of the tale.

Page 3 of 3

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Filmographies

Filmographies   The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature Online Publication Date: Oct 2013

(p. 650)

Filmographies

Over 350 Chinese films are mentioned in the main text of this volume, and scores more are referenced in the footnotes. For the convenience of our readers, we have brought to­ gether the various Chinese cinematic works discussed in the main text of the volume into three separate filmographies, categorized by date, title, and director, respectively. The first listing organizes the films by year, with works released the same year in alphabetical order by English title. The second listing organizes them by their Chinese titles, ordering them first by the number of characters in the title (including roman numerals, but exclud­ ing punctuation), with works having the same number of characters organized by year and by number of strokes in the initial character. The third and final listing, meanwhile, organizes the films by director, including only directors with two or more films discussed in the main body of the volume. Throughout the volume, we include Chinese characters for all personal names and film ti­ tles. Rather than simply using standard pinyin transliterations, we instead use the con­ ventional spelling of personal names (e.g., Tsai Ming-liang, rather than Cai Mingliang) and the accepted English translations of film titles (e.g., Dingjun Mountain, rather than Dingjun shan). Our decision not to simply default to pinyin transliterations is both princi­ pled (pinyin is based on Mandarin and was developed under the PRC, while many of the individuals and cinematic works we discuss here employ other dialects of Chinese and originate from areas outside of Mainland China) as well as practical (pinyin translitera­ tions would presumably be of limited use to those of our readers who either know little Chinese or are fluent in the language and therefore able to read the Chinese characters themselves). Readers who know only the Chinese title of a work, however, can use these filmographies to identify the corresponding English title, and then use the latter to look up the work in the index. As discussed in the introduction, we take a broad view of Chinese cinema and include works in a range of different formats, from a variety of nations and regions, and released in many different languages and dialects. The borders of the category are inherently “fuzzy,” and we are particularly interested in probing the margins of this loosely defined Page 1 of 26

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Filmographies category. The decision whether to include a work in the filmography, however, is neces­ sarily a binary one, requiring a series of judgment calls. For instance, we have included works like the 1979 graphic novel Maple (楓), which contributor Eugene Wang describes as a “‘film’ that was conceptualized and more successfully delivered in the print medi­ um,” but not the 1980 oil painting Father (父親), though Wang notes it provided (p. 651) an influential model for many Fifth Generation film directors. We include works like Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987), which contributor Michael Berry describes as a “Hollywood film set in China,” but not Mission Impossible III (2006), although, as Berry notes, it “utilize[s] the skyscrapers and modern exteriors of Shanghai and Hong Kong for large-scale action set pieces.” We include works like the 2004 interactive digital artwork A People’s Portrait by China-trained media artist Zhang Ga 張尕, set in cities including New York, Rotterdam, and Singapore, but not the countless fifteen-second commercials that Focus Media runs on hundreds of thousands of large outdoor screens throughout China. The following filmographies, accordingly, are intended to function not as a defini­ tive statement of our understanding of the category of Chinese cinema, but rather as an extension of our attempt to explore different ways of approaching the category and the conceptual field within which it is embedded.

By Year Attack on a China Mission (1900) Bombardment of the Taku Forts [by the Allied Fleets] (1900) Dingjun Mountain 定軍山 (1905) Battle of Wuhan, The 武漢戰爭 (1911) Difficult Couple, The 難夫難妻 (1913) Yan Ruisheng 閻瑞生 (1921) Red Beauty and the Skeleton 紅粉骷髏 (1922) Sea Oath, The 海誓 (1922) Zhang Xinsheng 張欣生 (1922) Orphan Rescues His Grandfather, An 孤兒救祖記 (1923) Revival of an Old Well, The 古井重波記 (1923) Abandoned Child, The 棄兒 (1924) Couple in Name Only, A 挂名的夫妻 (1927) Lakeside Dreams 湖邊春夢 (1927) National Revolutionary Army’s War on Sea, Land, and Air, The 國民革命軍海陸空 大戰記 (1927) Romance of the Western Chamber, The 西廂記 (1927) Romantic Swordsman, The 風流劍客 (1929) Spring Dream in the Old Capital 故都春夢 (1930) Wild Flower 野草閒花 (1930) Love and Duty 戀愛與義務 (1931) (p. 652)

Songstress Red Peony, The 歌女紅牡丹 (1931) Romance of Tears and Laughter 啼笑因緣 (1932) Daybreak 天明 (1933) Page 2 of 26

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Filmographies Fallen Plum Blossoms (Part II) 梅花落 [後] (1933) Fourth Son Visits His Mother 四郎探母 (1933) Goddess, The 神女 (1933) Maternal Radiance 母性之光 (1933) Night in the City 城市之夜 (1933) Three Modern Women 三個摩登女性 (1933) Coming Home 歸來 (1934) Life 人生 (1934) Platinum Dragon 白金龍 (1934) Sea of Fragrant Snow 香雨海 (1934) Big Road, The 大路 (1935) Children of Troubled Times 風雲兒女 (1935) City Scenes 都市之光 (1935) New Woman, The 新女性 (1935) Song of China 天倫 (1935) Blood on Wolf Mountain 狼山喋血記 (1936) Crossroads 十字街頭 (1937) Murder in the Oratory 斬經堂 (1937) New and Old Times 新舊時代 (1937) New Year’s Coin, A 壓歲錢 (1937) Street Angel 馬路天使 (1937) Symphony of Lianhua Studio 聯華交響曲 (1937) Tears of a Mother 慈母淚 (1937) Love and Duty (remake) aka Days of Love, Blood, and Tears 情天血淚 (1938) Yan’an and the Earth Route Army 延安與八路軍 (1938) The Song of the White Orchid 白玉蘭之歌 (1939) The Light of East Asia 東亞之光 (1940) Romance of the West Chamber 西廂記 (1940) Wandering Songstress 天涯歌女 (1940) China Nights 中國之夜 (1941) Family 家 (1941) Princess Iron Fan 鐵扇公主 (1941) (p. 653) Storm on the Border 塞上風雲 (1942) Toward Eternity 萬世流芳 (1942) Winter Jasmine 迎春花 (1942) Everybody Is Happy 皆大歡喜 (1943) Lice Are to Be Feared 可怕的虱子 (1943) My Nightingale 私の鶯 [Watashi no uguisu] (1943) Myriad of Colors 萬紫千紅 (1943) Remorse in Shanghai 春江遺恨 (1944) Songs of Harmony 鸞鳳和鳴 (1944) Songs of the Phoenix 鳳凰于飛 (1945) All-Consuming Love, An 長相思 (1947) Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon 八千里路雲和月 (1947) Far Away Love 遙遠的愛 (1947) Page 3 of 26

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Filmographies Love without End 不了情 (1947) Spring River Flows East, A 一江春水向東流 (1947) Eternal Regret aka A Wedding in A Dream 生死恨 (1948) Myriad of Lights 萬家燈火 (1948) Spring in a Small Town 小城之春 (1948) Daughters of China 中華女兒 (1949) Million Heroes Crossing the Yangtze 百萬雄獅下江南 (1949) National Spirit 國魂 (1949) Sorrows of the Forbidden City 清宮秘史 (1949) March of Couples 夫婦進行曲 (1950) Protest 控訴 (1950) Scenes of Inner Mongolia 內蒙風光 (1950) Spring of Two Families 兩家春 (1950) Story of A Wandering Hero in Jiang Village 江村游俠傳 (1950) Story of Film Fans, A 影迷傳 (1950) Story of Wu Xun, The 武訓傳 (1950) Thresholds Between Human and Spiritual Realms 陰陽界 (1950) Victory of the Chinese People 中國人民的勝利 (1950) The White-Haired Girl 白毛女 (1950) Zhao Yiman 趙一曼 (1950) Company Commander Guan 關連長 (1951) Married Couple, A 我們夫婦之間 (1951) (p. 654)

Battles Across the Land 南征北戰 (1952) Daydreaming 白日夢 (1952) Autumn Festival 中秋月 (1953) Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai 梁山伯與祝英台 (1953) Sister-in-Law, The 小姑賢 (1953) Pick Up the Jade Bracelet 拾玉鐲 (1954) Heavenly Match, The 天仙配 (1955) Love and Duty 戀愛與義務 (1955) Song Shijing 宋詩景 (1955) Liu Qiaoer 劉巧兒 (1956) Shanggan Ridge 上甘嶺 (1956) Mambo Girl 曼波女郎 (1957) Mouthful of Vegetable Pancake, A 一口菜餅子 (1958) Split Open Mountains to Bring in Water 劈山引水 (1958) Spring in the Mountainous Region 山區的春天 (1958) Air Hostess 空中小姐 (1959) Friendship 友誼 (1959) Her Tender Hearts 玉女私情 (1959) Kingdom and the Beauty 江山美人 (1959) Nie Er 聶耳 (1959) Qixi 奇襲 (1960) Page 4 of 26

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Filmographies Railroad Guards 鐵道衛士 (1960) Train through War Flame 烽火列車 (1960) Typhoon 十號風球 (1960) Havoc in Heaven 大鬧天宮 (1961) Liu Sanjie 劉三姐 (1961) Red Detachment of Women 紅色娘子軍 (1961) Empress Yang 楊貴妃 (1962) It’s Always Spring 桃李爭春 (1962) Madame White Snake 白蛇傳 (1962) Mine Warfare 地雷戰 (1962) Prairie Fire 燎原 (1962) Love Eterne 梁山伯與祝英台 (1963) Heroic Sons and Daughters 英雄兒女 (1964) The East Is Red 東方紅 (1965) (p. 655)

Fighting the Invaders 打擊侵略者 (1965) Tunnel Warfare 地道戰 (1965) Come Drink with Me 大醉俠 (1966) Asia-Pol 亞洲秘密警察 (1967) Great Assassin 大刺客 (1967) One-Armed Swordsman 獨臂刀 (1967) Hong Kong Nocturne 香江花月夜 (1967) Hong Kong Rhapsody 花月良宵 (1967) King Drummer 青春鼓王 (1967) Chinese Boxer, The 龍虎鬥 (1970) Big Brother aka The Big Boss 唐山大兄 (1971) Chung Kuo-Cina (1972) Fist of Fury aka The Chinese Connection 精武門 (1972) King Boxer 天下第一拳 (1972) Way of the Dragon 猛龍過江 (1972) Conquering the Flood 戰洪圖 (1973) Heroes Two 方世玉與洪熙官 (1973) Pine Ridge 青鬆嶺 (1973) The Red-Hot Time 火紅的年代 (1973) Denouncement 決裂 (1975) Spring Sprouts 春苗 (1975) Private Eye, The 半金百兩 (1976) Executioners from Shaolin 洪熙官 (1977) Youth 青春 (1977) Drunken Master 醉拳 (1978) 36th Chamber of Shaolin, The 少林三十六房 (1978) Maple 楓 (1979) Little Flower 小花 (1980) Love on Lushan 廬山戀 (1980) Page 5 of 26

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Filmographies Eighteen Years in the Enemy Camp 敵營十八年 (1981) Floating Weeds 浮萍 (1981) The Herdsman 牧馬人 (1982) In Our Time 光陰的故事 (1982) The Boys from Fengkuei 風櫃來的人 (1983) Homecoming 似水流年 (1984) (p. 656)

Long Arm of the Law 省港旗兵 (1984) Yellow Earth 黃土地 (1984) Black Canon Incident, The 黑炮事件 (1985) Girl in Red 紅衣少女 (1985) Sacrificed Youth 青春祭 (1985) Taipei Story 青梅竹馬 (1985) Better Tomorrow, A 英雄本色 (1986) The Big Parade 大閱兵 (1986) Terrorizer, The 恐怖份子 (1986) Time to Live, A Time to Die, A 童年往事 (1986) The Last Emperor (1987) Red Sorghum 紅高粱 (1987) Samsara 輪回 (1988) All the Corners of the World 海角天涯 (1989) Last of the Aristocrats, The 最後的貴族 (1989) River Elegy 河殤 (1989) Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers 流浪北京: 最後的夢想者 (1990) Iron & Silk (1990) Judou 菊豆 (1990) Brighter Summer Day, A 牯嶺街少年殺人事件 (1991) Kids 孩子 (1991) Life on a String 邊走邊唱 (1991) Raise the Red Lantern 大紅燈籠高高掛 (1991) Rebels of the Neon God 青少年哪吒 (1992) Story of Qiuju, The 秋菊打官司 (1992) Beijinger in New York, A 北京人在紐約 (1993) Farewell My Concubine 霸王別姬 (1993) Puppetmaster, The 戲夢人生 (1993) Wedding Banquet, The 喜宴 (1993) Borrowed Life, A 多桑 (1994) In the Heat of the Sun 陽光燦爛的日子 (1994) Square, The 廣場 (1994) Vive l’amour 愛情萬歲 (1994) At Home in the World 四海為家 (1995) China Part 3 (1995) (p. 657)

Good Men, Good Women 好男好女 (1995) Page 6 of 26

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Filmographies Heavens Above 蒼天在上 (1995) Other Shore, The 彼岸 (1995) Sense and Sensibility (1995) Shanghai Triad 搖啊搖, 搖到外婆橋 (1995) Buddha Bless America 太平天國 (1996) East Palace/West Palace 東宮西宮 (1996) Goodbye South, Goodbye 南國再見, 南國 (1996) Mahjong 麻將 (1996) Temptress Moon 風月 (1996) Dream Factory, The 甲方乙方 (1997) Happy Together 春光乍洩 (1997) River, The 河流 (1997) Spicy Love Soup 愛情麻辣燙 (1997) Yongzheng Dynasty 雍正王朝 (1997) Be There or Be Square 不見不散 (1998) Hole, The 洞 (1998) Resisting Eminent Domain 釘子戶 (1998) Turandot, in the Forbidden City of Beijing (1998) Xiao Wu 小武 (1998) Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl 天浴 (1998) Emperor and the Assassin, The 荊軻刺秦王 (1999) Jiang Hu: Life on the Road 江湖 (1999) Men and Women 男男女女 (1999) Postmen in the Mountains 那山那人那狗 (1999) Shower 洗澡 (1999) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 臥虎藏龍 (2000) Devils on the Doorstep 鬼子來了 (2000) In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000) Shadow Magic 西洋鏡 (2000) Treatment, The aka The Gua Sha Treatment 刮痧 (2000) Unhappiness Does Not Stop at One 不快樂的不只一個 (2000) Yi Yi 一一 (2000) Betelnut Beauty 愛你愛我 (2001) Big Shot’s Funeral 大腕 (2001) (p. 658)

Challenge of Life 生死擂 (2001) Fish and Elephant 今年夏天 (2001) Hi, Frank 嗨, 弗蘭克 (2001) Hollywood Hong Kong 香港有個荷里活 (2001) Lan Yu 藍宇 (2001) Pavilion of Women (2001) What Time Is It There? 你那邊幾點? (2001) Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress 巴爾扎克與小裁縫 (2002) Blue Gate Crossing 藍色大門 (2002) Page 7 of 26

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Filmographies Double Vision 雙瞳 (2002) Hero 英雄 (2002) Killing Me Softly (2002) Let’s Love Hong Kong 好郁 (2002) Old Testament, The 舊約 (2002) Cell Phone 手機 (2003) Feeding Boys, Ayaya 哎呀呀, 去哺乳 (2003) Marching toward the Republic 走向共和 (2003) Zhou Enlai in Bandung 周恩來萬隆之行 (2003) Feuille (2004) Fuck Cinema 操他媽的電影 (2004) House of Flying Daggers 十面埋伏 (2004) Impression Liu Sanjie 印象劉三姐 (2004) Kung Fu Hustle 功夫 (2004) People’s Portrait, A (2004) Star Appeal 星星相吸惜 (2004) World without Thieves, A 天下無賊 (2004) Bandung 1955 萬隆 1955 (2005) Brokeback Mountain (2005) Crazy n’ the City 神經俠侶 (2005) Great Emperor Hanwu, The 漢武大帝 (2005) Looking for Lin Zhao’s Soul 尋找林昭的靈魂 (2005) Overseas Romances (Nplooj siab hlub hla ntuj) (2005) Oxhide 牛皮 (2005) Peacock 孔雀 (2005) Promise, The 無極 (2005) (p. 659)

Qixia Temple 1937 棲霞寺1937 (2005) Riding Alone for Thousand of Miles 千里走單騎 (2005) Three Times 最好的時光 (2005) Waiting Alone 獨自等待 (2005) Wayward Cloud, The 天邊一朵雲 (2005) Banquet, The 夜宴 (2006) Big Movie 大電影之數百億 (2006) Bus Uncle 巴士阿叔 (2006) China Village Self-Governance Film Project 中國村民自治影像傳播計畫 (2006) Crazy Stone 瘋狂的石頭 (2006) Curse of the Golden Flower 滿城盡帶黃金甲 (2006) Dingjun Mountain 定軍山 (2006) Dong 東 (2006) I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone 黑眼圈 (2006) Impression Lijiang 印象麗江 (2006) Night is the Tender (2006?) Painted Veil, The (2006) Page 8 of 26

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Filmographies Shanghai Red (2006) Still Life 三峽好人 (2006) Assembly 集結號 (2007) Dark Matter (2007) Flight of the Red Balloon 紅氣球 (2007) Great Ming Dynasty 1566, The 明王朝 1566 (2007) Impression West Lake 印象西湖 (2007) Lust, Caution 色, 戒 (2007) My Blueberry Nights (2007) Proté gé 門徒 (2007) Solos (2007) Spider Lilies 刺青 (2007) Though I Was Dead 我雖死去 (2007) Up the Yangtze 沿江而上 (2007) 1428 (2008) 1895 (2008) Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony (2008) Big Movie 2.0: Two Stupid Eggs 大電影: 兩個傻瓜的荒唐事 (2008) (p. 660)

Cape No. 7 海角七號 (2008) Children of Huangshi, The (2008) Connected 保持通話 (2008) Forbidden Kingdom, The (2008) Forever Enthralled aka Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 (2008) Ip Man 葉問 (2008) Kung Fu Panda (2008) Lao Wu’s Oscar 老五的奧斯卡 (2008) Lips 唇 (2008) Meishi Street 煤市街 (2008) Orz Boyz 冏男孩 (2008) Soap (2008) True Women for Sale 我不賣身我賣子宮 (2008) Who Killed Our Children 是誰殺死了我們的孩子 (2008) Winds of September 九降風 (2008) You Duo Welcomes You, A 阿幼朵歡迎您 (2009) Aftershock 唐山大地震 (2009) Bodyguards and Assassins 十月圍城 (2009) Founding of a Republic, The 建國大業 (2009) Impression Hainan Island 印象海南 (2009) Night and Fog 天水圍的夜與霧 (2009) Oxhide II 牛皮 II (2009) Vengeance 復仇 (2009) Visage 臉 (2009) Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, A 三槍拍案驚奇 (2009) Page 9 of 26

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Filmographies Confucius 孔子 (2010) Detective Dee 狄仁杰之通天帝國 (2010) High School Musical: China 歌舞青春 (2010) Hot Summer Days 全城熱戀 (2010) Impression Dahongpao 印象大紅袍 (2010) Ip Man 2 葉問 2: 宗師傳奇 (2010) Karate Kid, The (2010) Let the Bullets Fly 讓子彈飛 (2010) Monga 艋舺 (2010) Shanghai Blue (2010) (p. 661)

Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂樹之戀 (2010) What do Women Want? 我知女人心 (2010) Why Are the Flowers So Red 花兒為什麼這樣紅 (2010) Animal World: The Apartment Dweller 動物世界—宅居動物 (2011) Beginning of the Great Revival, The 建黨偉業 (2011) Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 單身男女 (2011) Flowers of War, The 金陵十三釵 (2011) Inseparable 形影不離 (2011) Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) Little Rabbit Be Good 小兔眶眶 (2011) Seediq Bale: The Rainbow Bridge 賽德克巴萊: 彩虹橋 (2011) Seediq Bale: The Sun Flag 賽德克巴萊: 太陽旗 (2011) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011) Wu Xia 武俠 (2011) You Are the Apple of My Eye 那些年,我們一起追的女孩 (2011) Grandmasters, The 一代宗師 (2012)

II. By Chinese Title 一 家 Family (1941) 楓 Maple (1978) 楓 Maple (1979) 洞 The Hole (1998) 東 Dong (2006) 唇 Lips (2008) 臉 Visage (2009) 二 海誓 The Sea Oath (1922) 棄兒 The Abandoned Child (1924) 天明 Daybreak (1933) 神女 The Goddess (1933) 人生 Life (1934) Page 10 of 26

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Filmographies 歸來 Coming Home (1934) (p. 662)

大路 The Big Road (1935) 天倫 Song of China (1935) 國魂 National Spirit (1949) 控訴 Protest (1950) 友誼 Friendship (1959) 聶耳 Nie Er (1959) 奇襲 Qixi (1960) 燎原 Prairie Fire (1962) 決裂 Denouncement (1975) 春苗 Spring Sprouts (1975) 青春 Youth (1977) 醉拳 Drunken Master (1978) 小花 Little Flower (1980) 浮萍 Floating Weeds (1981) 輪回 Samsara (1988) 河殤 River Elegy (1989) 菊豆 Judou (1990) 孩子 Kids (1991) 喜宴 The Wedding Banquet (1993) 多桑 A Borrowed Life (1994) 廣場 The Square (1994) 彼岸 The Other Shore (1995) 風月 Temptress Moon (1996) 麻將 Mahjong (1996) 河流 The River (1997) 小武 Xiao Wu (1998) 天浴 Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl (1998) 江湖 Jiang Hu: Life on the Road (1999) 洗澡 Shower (1999) 一一 Yi Yi (2000) 刮痧 The Treatment aka The Gua Sha Treatment (2000) 大腕 Big Shot’s Funeral (2001) 藍宇 Lan Yu (2001) 好郁 Let’s Love Hong Kong (2002) 英雄 Hero (2002) (p. 663)

舊約 The Old Testament (2002) 雙瞳 Double Vision (2002) 手機 Cell Phone (2003) 功夫 Kung Fu Hustle (2004) 牛皮 Oxhide (2005) 孔雀 Peacock (2005) Page 11 of 26

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Filmographies 無極 The Promise (2005) 夜宴 The Banquet (2006) 色, 戒 Lust, Caution (2007) 門徒 Proté gé (2007) 刺青 Spider Lilies (2007) 葉問 Ip Man (2008) 復仇 Vengeance (2009) 孔子 Confucius (2010) 艋舺 Monga (2010) 武俠 Wu Xia (2011) 三 定軍山 Dingjun Mountain (1905) 閻瑞生 Yan Ruisheng (1921) 張欣生 Zhang Xinsheng (1922) 西廂記 The Romance of the Western Chamber (1927) 梅花落 [後] Fallen Plum Blossoms (Part II) (1933) 白金龍 Platinum Dragon (1934) 香雪海 Sea of Fragrant Snow (1934) 新女性 The New Woman (1935) 斬經堂 Murder in the Oratory (1937) 慈母淚 Tears of a Mother (1937) 壓歲錢 A New Year’s Coin (1937) 西廂記 Romance of the West Chamber (1940) 迎春花 Winter Jasmine (1942) 不了情 Love without End (1947) 長相思 An All-Consuming Love (1947) 生死恨 Eternal Regret aka A Wedding in a Dream (1948) 白毛女 The White-Haired Girl (1950) 兩家春 Spring of Two Families (1950) (p. 664)

武訓傳 The Story of Wu Xun (1950) 陰陽界 Thresholds Between Human and Spiritual Realms (1950) 趙一曼 Zhao Yiman (1950) 影迷傳 A Story of Film Fans (1950) 關連長 Company Commander Guan (1951) 白日夢 Daydreaming (1952) 小姑賢 The Sister-in-Law (1953) 中秋月 Autumn Festival (1953) 拾玉鐲 Pick Up the Jade Bracelet (1954) 宋詩景 Song Shijing (1955) 上甘嶺 Shanggan Ridge (1956) 劉巧兒 Liu Qiaoer (1956) 劉三姐 Liu Sanjie (1961) 白蛇傳 Madame White Snake (1962) Page 12 of 26

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Filmographies 地雷戰 Mine Warfare (1962) 楊貴妃 Empress Yang (1962) 地道戰 Tunnel Warfare (1965) 東方紅 The East Is Red (1965) 大醉俠 Come Drink with Me (1966) 大刺客 Great Assassin (1967) 獨臂刀 One-Armed Swordsman (1967) 龍虎鬥 The Chinese Boxer (1970) 精武門 Fist of Fury aka The Chinese Connection (1972) 戰洪圖 Conquering the Flood (1973) 青鬆嶺 Pine Ridge (1973) 洪熙官 Executioners from Shaolin (1977) 廬山戀 Love on Lushan (1980) 牧馬人 The Herdsman (1982) 黃土地 Yellow Earth (1984) 青春祭 Sacrificed Youth (1985) 大閱兵 The Big Parade (1986) 紅高粱 Red Sorghum (1987) 釘子戶 Resisting Eminent Domain (1998) 西洋鏡 Shadow Magic (2000) 生死擂 Challenge of Life (2001) (p. 665)

定軍山 Dingjun Mountain (2006) 黑眼圈 I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (2006) 紅氣球 Flight of the Red Balloon (2007) 集結號 Assembly (2007) 九降風 Winds of September (2008) 冏男孩 Orz Boyz (2008) 梅蘭芳 Forever Enthralled aka Mei Lanfang (2008) 煤市街 Meishi Street (2008) 牛皮 II Oxhide II (2009) 四 武漢戰爭 The Battle of Wuhan (1911) 難夫難妻 The Difficult Couple (1913) 紅粉骷髏 Red Beauty and the Skeleton (1922) 湖邊春夢 Lakeside Dreams (1927) 風流劍客 The Romantic Swordsman (1929) 故都春夢 Spring Dream in the Old Capital (1930) 野草閒花 Wild Flower (1930)啼笑因緣 Romance of Tears and Laughter (1932) 四郎探母 Fourth Son Visits His Mother (1933) 母性之光 Maternal Radiance (1933) 城市之夜 Night in the City (1933) 風雲兒女 Children of Troubled Times (1935) 都市之光 City Scenes (1935) Page 13 of 26

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Filmographies 十字街頭 Crossroads (1937) 馬路天使 Street Angel (1937) 新舊時代 New and Old Times (1937) 情天血淚 Love and Duty [remake] aka Days of Love, Blood, and Tears (1938) 東亞之光 The Light of East Asia (1940) 中國之夜 China Nights (1941) 鐵扇公主 Princess Iron Fan (1941) 塞上風雲 Storm on the Border (1942) 萬世流芳 Toward Eternity (1942) 皆大歡喜 Everybody Is Happy (1943) 萬紫千紅 Myriad of Colors (1943) 春江遺恨 Remorse in Shanghai (1944) 鸞鳳和鳴 Songs of Harmony (1944) (p. 666)

鳳凰于飛 Songs of the Phoenix (1945) 遙遠的愛 Far Away Love (1947) 小城之春 Spring in a Small Town (1948) 萬家燈火 Myriad of Lights (1948) 中華女兒 Daughters of China (1949) 清宮秘史 Sorrows of the Forbidden City (1949) 內蒙風光 Scenes of Inner Mongolia (1950) 南征北戰 Battles Across the Land (1952) 曼波女郎 Mambo Girl (1957) 劈山引水 Split Open Mountains to Bring in Water (1958) 玉女私情 Her Tender Hearts (1959) 江山美人 Kingdom and the Beauty (1959) 空中小姐 Air Hostess (1959) 十號風球 Typhoon (1960) 烽火列車 Train through War Flame (1960) 鐵道衛士 Railroad Guards (1960) 大鬧天宮 Havoc in Heaven (1961) 桃李爭春 It’s Always Spring (1962) 英雄兒女 Heroic Sons and Daughters (1964) 花月良宵 Hong Kong Rhapsody (1967) 青春鼓王 King Drummer (1967) 天涯歌女 Wandering Songstress (1940) 唐山大兄 Big Brother aka The Big Boss (1971) 猛龍過江 Way of the Dragon (1972) 半金百兩 The Private Eye (1976) 似水流年 Homecoming (1984) 省港旗兵 Long Arm of the Law (1984) 青梅竹馬 Taipei Story (1985) 紅衣少女 Girl in Red (1985) 黑炮事件 The Black Canon Incident (1985) Page 14 of 26

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Filmographies 英雄本色 A Better Tomorrow (1986) 恐怖份子 The Terrorizer (1986) 童年往事 A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1986) 海角天涯 All the Corners of the World (1989) 邊走邊唱 Life on a String (1991) (p. 667)

戲夢人生 The Puppetmaster (1993) 霸王別姬 Farewell My Concubine (1993) 愛情萬歲 Vive l’amour (1994) 四海為家 At Home in the World (1995) 好男好女 Good Men, Good Women (1995) 蒼天在上 Heavens Above (1995) 太平天國 Buddha Bless America (1996) 東宮西宮 East Palace/West Palace (1996) 甲方乙方 The Dream Factory (1997) 春光乍洩 Happy Together (1997) 雍正王朝 Yongzheng Dynasty (1997) 不見不散 Be There or Be Square (1998) 男男女女 Men and Women (1999) 花樣年華 In the Mood for Love (2000) 臥虎藏龍 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) 鬼子來了 Devils on the Doorstep (2000) 今年夏天 Fish and Elephant (2001) 嗨, 弗蘭克 Hi, Frank (2001) 愛你愛我 Betelnut Beauty (2001) 藍色大門 Blue Gate Crossing (2002) 走向共和 Marching toward the Republic (2003) 十面埋伏 House of Flying Daggers (2004) 天下無賊 A World without Thieves (2004) 神經俠侶 Crazy n’ the City (2005) 漢武大帝 The Great Emperor Hanwu (2005) 獨自等待 Waiting Alone (2005) 三峽好人 Still Life (2006) 巴士阿叔 Bus Uncle (2006) 印象麗江 Impression Lijiang (2006) 印象西湖 Impression West Lake (2007) 我雖死去 Though I Was Dead (2007) 沿江而上 Up the Yangtze (2007) 1428 (2008) 1895 (2008) 保持通話 Connected (2008) (p. 668)

海角七號 Cape No. 7 (2008) 十月圍城 Bodyguards and Assassins (2009) Page 15 of 26

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Filmographies 印象海南 Impression Hainan Island (2009) 建國大業 The Founding of a Republic (2009) 歸途列車 Last Train Home (2009) 全城熱戀 Hot Summer Days (2010) 歌舞青春 High School Musical: China (2010) 讓子彈飛 Let the Bullets Fly (2010) 小兔眶眶 Little Rabbit Be Good (2011) 形影不離 Inseparable (2011) 建黨偉業 The Beginning of the Great Revival (2011) 單身男女 Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (2011) 一代宗師 The Grandmasters (2012) 五 古井重波記 The Revival of an Old Well (1923) 孤兒救祖記 An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather (1923) 挂名的夫妻 A Couple in Name Only (1927) 歌女紅牡丹 The Songstress Red Peony (1931) 戀愛與義務 Love and Duty (1931) 狼山喋血記 Blood on Wolf Mountain (1936) 聯華交響曲 Symphony of Lianhua Studio (1937) 白玉蘭之歌 The Song of the White Orchid (1939) 可怕的虱子 Lice Are to Be Feared (1943) 夫婦進行曲 March of Couples (1950) 江村游俠傳 Story of A Wandering Hero in Jiang Village (1950) 戀愛與義務 Love and Duty (1955) 一口菜餅子 A Mouthful of Vegetable Pancake (1958) 山區的春天 Spring in the Mountainous Region (1958) 紅色娘子軍 Red Detachment of Women (1961) 打擊侵略者 Fighting the Invaders (1965) 香江花月夜 Hong Kong Nocturne (1967) 天下第一拳 King Boxer (1972) 火紅的年代 The Red-Hot Time (1973) 敵營十八年 Eighteen Years in the Enemy Camp (1981) 風櫃來的人 The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) (p. 669)

光陰的故事 In Our Time (1982) 青少年哪吒 Rebels of the Neon God (1992) 秋菊打官司 The Story of Qiuju (1992) 愛情麻辣燙 Spicy Love Soup (1997) 最後的貴族 The Last of the Aristocrats (1989) 荊軻刺秦王 The Emperor and the Assassin (1999) 你那邊幾點? What Time Is It There? (2001) 印象劉三姐 Impression Liu Sanjie (2004) 星星相吸惜 Star Appeal (2004) 千里走單騎 Riding Alone for Thousand of Miles (2005) Page 16 of 26

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Filmographies 天邊一朵雲 The Wayward Cloud (2005) 最好的時光 Three Times (2005) 瘋狂的石頭 Crazy Stone (2006) 唐山大地震 Aftershock (2009) 山楂樹之戀 Under the Hawthorn Tree (2010) 印象大紅袍 Impression Dahongpao (2010) 我知女人心 What do Women Want? (2010) 金陵十三釵 The Flowers of War (2011) 六 三個摩登女性 Three Modern Women (1933) 延安與八路軍 Yan’an and the Earth Route Army (1938) 我們夫婦之間 A Married Couple (1951) 亞洲秘密警察 Asia-Pol (1967) 少林三十六房 The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) 北京人在紐約 A Beijinger in New York (1993) 南國再見,南國 Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996) 那山那人那狗 Postmen in the Mountains (1999) 哎呀呀, 去哺乳 Feeding Boys, Ayaya (2003) 操他媽的電影 Fuck Cinema (2004) 萬隆 1955 Bandung 1955 (2005) 老五的奧斯卡 Lao Wu’s Oscar (2008) 三槍拍案驚奇 A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (2009) 阿幼朵歡迎您 A You Duo Welcomes You (2009) 七 一江春水向東流 A Spring River Flows East (1947) (p. 670)

八千里路雲和月 Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon (1947) 百萬雄獅下江南 Million Heroes Crossing the Yangtze (1949) 中國人民的勝利 Victory of the Chinese People (1950) 梁山伯與祝英台 Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (1953) 梁山伯與祝英台 Love Eterne (1963) 方世玉與洪熙官 Heroes Two (1973) 大紅燈籠高高掛 Raise the Red Lantern (1991) 陽光燦爛的日子 In the Heat of the Sun (1994) 香港有個荷里活 Hollywood Hong Kong (2001) 周恩來萬隆之行 Zhou Enlai in Bandung (2003) 尋找林昭的靈魂 Looking for Lin Zhao’s Soul (2005) 棲霞寺一九三七 Qixia Temple 1937 (2005) 大電影之數百億 Big Movie (2006) 滿城盡帶黃金甲 Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) 明王朝 1566 The Great Ming Dynasty 1566 (2007) 天水圍的夜與霧 Night and Fog (2009) 葉問 2: 宗師傳奇 Ip Man 2 (2010) 八 Page 17 of 26

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Filmographies 搖啊搖, 搖到外婆橋 Shanghai Triad (1995) 不快樂的不只一個 Unhappiness Does Not Stop at One (2000) 巴爾扎克與小裁縫 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002) 我不賣身我賣子宮 True Women for Sale (2008) 狄仁杰之通天帝國 Detective Dee (2010) 花兒為什麼這樣紅 Why Are the Flowers So Red (2010) 動物世界—宅居動物 Animal World: The Apartment Dweller (2011) 賽德克巴萊: 太陽旗 Seediq Bale: The Sun Flag (2011) 賽德克巴萊: 彩虹橋 Seediq Bale: The Rainbow Bridge (2011) 九 牯嶺街少年殺人事件 A Brighter Summer Day (1991) 十 流浪北京: 最後的夢想者 Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990) 是誰殺死了我們的孩子 Who Killed Our Children (2008) 十一 國民革命軍海陸空大戰記 The National Revolutionary Army’s War on Sea, Land, and Air (1927) (p. 671)

大電影: 兩個傻瓜的荒唐事 Big Movie 2.0: Two Stupid Eggs (2008) 那些年, 我們一起追的女孩 You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011) 十二 中國村民自治影像傳播計畫 China Village Self-Governance Film Project (2006)

Films with No Original Chinese Title Attack on a China Mission (1900) Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony (2008) Bombardment of the Taku Forts [by the Allied Fleets] (1900) Brokeback Mountain (2005) Children of Huangshi, The (2008) China Part 3 (1995) Chung Kuo-Cina (1972) Dark Matter (2007) Feuille (2004) Forbidden Kingdom, The (2008) Iron & Silk (1990) Karate Kid, The (2010) Killing Me Softly (2002) Kung Fu Panda (2008) Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) Last Emperor, The (1987) My Blueberry Nights (2007) My Nightingale 私の鶯 [Watashi no uguisu] (1943) Night is the Tender (2006?) Page 18 of 26

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Filmographies Overseas Romances (Nplooj siab hlub hla ntuj) (2005) The Painted Veil (2006) Pavilion of Women (2001) People’s Portrait, A (2004) Sense and Sensibility (1995) Shanghai Blue (2010) Shanghai Red (2006) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011) Soap (2008) (p. 672)

Solos (2007) Turandot, in the Forbidden City of Beijing (1998)

By Director Ah Gan 阿甘 Big Movie 大電影之數百億 (2006) Big Movie 2.0: Two Stupid Eggs 大電影: 兩個傻瓜的荒唐事 (2008) Bu Wancang 卜萬蒼 A Couple in Name Only 挂名的夫妻 (1927) Love and Duty 戀愛與義務 (1931) Maternal Radiance 母性之光 (1933) Three Modern Women 三個摩登女性 (1933) Love and Duty (remake) aka Days of Love, Blood, and Tears 情天血淚 (1938) Family 家 (1941) Toward Eternity 萬世流芳 (1942) National Spirit 國魂 (1949) Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生 The New Woman 新女性 (1935) “Five Brothers” 小五義, in Symphony of Lianhua Studio 聯華交響曲 (1937) Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生 and Zheng Junli 鄭君理 A Spring River Flows East 一江春水向東流 (1947) Chen Kaige 陳凱歌 Yellow Earth 黃土地 (1984) The Big Parade 大閱兵 (1986) Life on a String 邊走邊唱 (1991) Farewell My Concubine 霸王別姬 (1993) Temptress Moon 風月 (1996) The Emperor and the Assassin 荊軻刺秦王 (1999) Killing Me Softly (2002) The Promise 無極 (2005) Page 19 of 26

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Filmographies Forever Enthralled aka Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 (2008) Chang Cheh 張轍 Great Assassin 大刺客 (1967) (p. 673)

One-Armed Swordsman 獨臂刀 (1967) Chang, Yung 張喬勇 and Fan Lixin 範立欣 Up the Yangtze 沿江而上 (2007) Last Train Home 歸途列車 (2009) Costo, Oscar L. Shanghai Red (2006) Shanghai Blue (2010) Cui Zi’en 崔子恩 Men and Women 男男女女 (1999) The Old Testament 舊約 (2002) Feeding Boys, Ayaya 哎呀呀, 去哺乳 (2003) Star Appeal 星星相吸惜 (2004) Eng, Dayyan 伍仕賢 Waiting Alone 獨自等待 (2005) Inseparable 形影不離 (2011) Fang Peilin 方沛霖 Myriad of Colors 萬紫千紅 (1943) Songs of Harmony 鸞鳳和鳴 (1944) Songs of the Phoenix 鳳凰于飛 (1945) Fei Mu 費穆 Night in the City 城市之夜 (1933) Sea of Fragrant Snow 香雪海 (1934) Life 人生 (1934) Song of China 天倫 (1935) Blood on Wolf Mountain 狼山喋血記 (1936) Murder in the Oratory 斬經堂 (1937) “An Interrupted Dream in a Spring Chamber” 春閨夢斷, in Symphony of Lianhua Stu­ dio 聯華交響曲 (1937) Eternal Regret aka A Wedding in A Dream 生死恨 (1948) Spring in a Small Town 小城之春 (1948) Feng Xiaogang 馮小剛 The Dream Factory 甲方乙方 (1997) Be There or Be Square 不見不散 (1998) Page 20 of 26

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Filmographies Big Shot’s Funeral 大腕 (2001) Cell Phone 手機 (2003) (p. 674)

A World without Thieves 天下無賊 (2004) The Banquet 夜宴 (2006) Assembly 集結號 (2007) Aftershock 唐山大地震 (2009) Hong Mo 洪謨 March of Couples 夫婦進行曲 (1950) A Story of Film Fans 影迷傳 (1950) Hou Hsiao-hsien 侯孝賢 The Boys from Fengkuei 風櫃來的人 (1983) A Time to Live, A Time to Die 童年往事 (1986) The Puppetmaster 戲夢人生 (1993) Good Men, Good Women 好男好女 (1995) Goodbye South, Goodbye 南國再見, 南國 (1996) Three Times 最好的時光 (2005) Flight of the Red Balloon 紅氣球 (2007) Hu Jie 胡傑 Looking for Lin Zhao’s Soul 尋找林昭的靈魂 (2005) Though I Was Dead 我雖死去 (2007) Hu Mei 胡玫 Yongzheng Dynasty 雍正王朝 (1997) The Great Emperor Hanwu 漢武大帝 (2005) Confucius 孔子 (2010) Huang Jianxin 黃建新 The Black Canon Incident 黑炮事件 (1985) Samsara 輪回 (1988) Huang Jianxin 黃建新 and Han Sanping 韓三平 The Founding of a Republic 建國大業 (2009) The Beginning of the Great Revival 建黨偉業 (2011) Inoue Umetsugu 井上梅次 King Drummer 青春鼓王 (1967) Hong Kong Nocturne 香江花月夜 (1967) Hong Kong Rhapsody 花月良宵 (1967) Jia Zhangke 賈樟柯 Xiao Wu 小武 (1998) Page 21 of 26

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Filmographies Still Life 三峽好人 (2006) Dong 東 (2006) (p. 675)

Jiang Wen 姜文 In the Heat of the Sun 陽光燦爛的日子 (1994) Devils on the Doorstep 鬼子來了 (2000) Let the Bullets Fly 讓子彈飛 (2010) Lau Kar-leung 劉家良 Executioners from Shaolin 洪熙官 (1977) The 36th Chamber of Shaolin 少林三十六房 (1978) Lee, Ang 李安 The Wedding Banquet 喜宴 (1993) Sense and Sensibility (1995) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 臥虎藏龍 (2000) Brokeback Mountain (2005) Lust, Caution 色, 戒 (2007) Li Hanxiang 李翰祥 Kingdom and the Beauty 江山美人 (1959) Empress Yang 楊貴妃 (1962) Love Eterne 梁山伯與祝英台 (1963) Heroes Two 方世玉與洪熙官 (1973) Liu Jiayin 劉伽茵 Oxhide 牛皮 (2005) Oxhide II 牛皮 II (2009) Lo Wei 羅維 Big Brother aka The Big Boss 唐山大兄 (1971) Fist of Fury aka The Chinese Connection 精武門 (1972) Sang Hu 桑弧 Love without End 不了情 (1947) The Heavenly Match 天仙配 (1955) Sang Hu 桑弧 and Huang Sha 黃沙 Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai 梁山伯與祝英台 (1953) Sun Yu 孫瑜 Dream in the Old Capital 故都春夢 (1930) Wild Flower 野草閒花 (1930) Daybreak 天明 (1933) Page 22 of 26

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Filmographies The Big Road 大路 (1935) The Story of Wu Xun 武訓傳 (1950) Song Shijing 宋詩景 (1955) (p. 676)

To, Johnnie 杜琪夆 Vengeance 復仇 (2009) Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 單身男女 (2011) Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮 All the Corners of the World 海角天涯 (1989) Kids 孩子 (1991) Rebels of the Neon God 青少年哪吒 (1992) Vive l’amour 愛情萬歲 (1994) The River 河流 (1997) The Hole 洞 (1998) What Time Is It There? 你那邊幾點? (2001) The Wayward Cloud 天邊一朵雲 (2005) I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone 黑眼圈 (2006) Visage 臉 (2009) Wan Brothers 萬氏兄弟, incl. Wan Guchan 萬古蟾 and Wan Laiming 萬籟鳴 Princess Iron Fan 鐵扇公主 (1941) Havoc in Heaven 大鬧天宮 (1961) Wei Te-sheng 魏德聖 Cape No. 7 海角七號 (2008) Seediq Bale: The Sun Flag 賽德克巴萊: 太陽旗 (2011) Seediq Bale: The Rainbow Bridge 賽德克巴萊: 彩虹橋 (2011) Wong Kar-wai 王家衛 Happy Together 春光乍洩 (1997) In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000) My Blueberry Nights (2007) The Grandmasters 一代宗師 (2012) Wu Nien-jen 吳念真 A Borrowed Life 多桑 (1994) Buddha Bless America 太平天國 (1996) Wu Wenguang 吳文光 Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers 流浪北京: 最後的夢想者 (1990) At Home in the World 四海為家 (1995) Jiang Hu: Life on the Road 江湖 (1999) Fuck Cinema 操他媽的電影 (2004) Page 23 of 26

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Filmographies China Village Self-Governance Film Project 中國村民自治影像傳播計畫 (2006) (p. 677)

Xie Jin 謝晉 Red Detachment of Women 紅色娘子軍 (1961) Spring Sprouts 春苗 (1975) Youth 青春 (1977) The Herdsman 牧馬人 (1982) The Last of the Aristocrats 最後的貴族 (1989) Yang, Edward 楊德昌 Floating Weeds 浮萍 (1981) In Our Time 光陰的故事 (1982) Taipei Story 青梅竹馬 (1985) The Terrorizer 恐怖份子 (1986) A Brighter Summer Day 牯嶺街少年殺人事件 (1991) Mahjong (麻將 (1996) Yi Yi 一一 (2000) Yi Wen 易文 Mambo Girl 曼波女郎 (1957) Air Hostess 空中小姐 (1959) It’s Always Spring 桃李爭春 (1962) Yim Ho 嚴浩 Homecoming 似水流年 (1984) Pavilion of Women (2001) Yuan Muzhi 袁牧之 City Scenes 都市之光 (1935) Street Angel 馬路天使 (1937) Yan’an and the Earth Route Army 延安與八路軍 (1938) Yue Feng 岳楓 Remorse in Shanghai 春江遺恨 (1944) Madame White Snake 白蛇傳 (1962) Zhang Li 張黎 Marching toward the Republic 走向共和 (2003) The Great Ming Dynasty 1566 明王朝 1566 (2007) Zhang Shichuan 張石川 Zhang Xinsheng 張欣生 (1922) The Songstress Red Peony 歌女紅牡丹 (1931) Romance of Tears and Laughter 啼笑因緣 (1932) Page 24 of 26

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Filmographies (p. 678)

Fallen Plum Blossoms (Part II) 梅花落 [後] (1933) Romance of the West Chamber 西廂記 (1940) Zhang Shichuan 張石川 and Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋 The Difficult Couple 難夫難妻 (1913) An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather 孤兒救祖記 (1923) Zhang Yang 張揚 Spicy Love Soup 愛情麻辣燙 (1997) Shower 洗澡 (1999) Zhang Yimou 張藝謀 Red Sorghum 紅高粱 (1987) Judou 菊豆 (1990) Raise the Red Lantern 大紅燈籠高高掛 (1991) The Story of Qiuju 秋菊打官司 (1992) Shanghai Triad 搖啊搖, 搖到外婆橋 (1995) Turandot, in the Forbidden City of Beijing (1998) Hero 英雄 (2002) House of Flying Daggers 十面埋伏 (2004) Impression Liu Sanjie 印象劉三姐 (2004) Riding Alone for Thousand of Miles 千里走單騎 (2005) Impression Lijiang 印象麗江 (2006) Curse of the Golden Flower 滿城盡帶黃金甲 (2006) Impression West Lake 印象西湖 (2007) Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony (2008) A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop 三槍拍案驚奇 (2009) Impression Hainan Island 印象海南 (2009) Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂樹之戀 (2010) Impression Dahongpao 印象大紅袍 (2010) The Flowers of War 金陵十三釵 (2011) Zhang Yuan 張元 East Palace/West Palace 東宮西宮 (1996) Resisting Eminent Domain 釘子戶 (1998) Zhang Yuan 張元 and Duan Jinchuan 段錦川 The Square 廣場 (1994) Zheng Junli 鄭君里 A Married Couple 我們夫婦之間 (1951) (p. 679)

Nie Er 聶耳 (1959) (with Qian Qianli 錢千里)

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Filmographies Zhu Shilin 朱石麟 New and Old Times 新舊時代 (1937) Tears of a Mother 慈母淚 (1937) Sorrows of the Forbidden City 清宮秘史 (1949) Autumn Festival 中秋月 (1953)

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Index

Index   The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas Edited by Carlos Rojas Print Publication Date: Apr 2013 Subject: Literature Online Publication Date: Oct 2013

(p. 680)

(p. 681)

Index

16 mm film, 74, 214, 301 35 mm film, 11, 74, 214 36th Chamber of Shaolin, The 少林三十六房 (1978). See Lau Kar-leung 56 wuliu wang 五六網, 378 1428 (2008), 331 1895 (2008), 159 Aaliyah, 186 Abandoned Child, An 棄兒 (1923), 30 Abbas, Ackbar, 136 Abel, Richard, 592 Abrams, J. J., 177 Academy Awards, 156, 180, 184 Ackerman, Raymond, 592 action film, 3, 12, 178, 186, 281, 295, 552, 616, 622 Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 236, 238 advertisement, 23, 25–27, 29, 225–26, 228, 234–35, 237, 311, 443, 492, 593 Aftershock 唐山大地震 (2009). See Feng Xiaogang Ah Gan 阿甘, 179 Big Movie 大電影之數百億 (2006), 179 Big Movie 2.0: Two Stupid Eggs 大電影: 兩個傻瓜的荒唐事 (2008), 179 Ai-Bao 愛報, 306 AIDS, 302, 304–5, 320, 331, 637 Air Hostess 空中小姐 (1959). See Yi Wen Ai Weiwei 艾未未, 328, 331 Ai Xiaoming 艾曉明, 331 Akinori Matsuo, 128 Aleni, Julio, 550 alienation, 259–60, 332, 491, 579, 627–28, 644 -effect, 72, 410 self-, 72 world, 190, 196, 205 All-Consuming Love, An 長相思 (1947), 442 allegory, 190, 354, 492, 613 Page 1 of 45

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Index national, 55., 87 political, 347, 249 All the Corners of the World 海角天涯 (1989). See Tsai Ming-liang alterity, 193, 332–33, 510–11, 518, 520–22 See also postalteric Altman, Rick, 438 Amakasu Masahiko, 82–83, 91–93 amateur, 4, 10, 329, 377, 378, 381, 383, 387, 389, 462, 515, 517, 594 American Graffiti (1973), 439 Anderson, Benedict, 80, 610 Ang, Florence, 312 Angarano, Michael, 177 Animal World: The Apartment Dweller 動物世界—宅居動物 (2011), 382, 390 animation, 90, 382–83, 414, 435, 622, 647–48 anime, 648 Chinese animation, 622, 647–48 Anna Karenina (1927), 45 Anthony and Cleopatra (1908), 25 anticolonialism, 32, 128, 621 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 98, 423, 578 An Zhanjun 安戰軍, 14, 17–20, 379–80 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 159 Araki, Greg, 305 Arendt, Hannah, 190, 196, 199 Ariztical Entertainment, 310–12 Arnold, Matthew, 412 Asia Film Company, 25, 27 Asian American, 292, 304–5 Asian Games in Guangzhou (2010), 359 Asianism, 549–55, 557, 560 ideal of, 551 interwar, 555 Japanese, 549 Japanese military’s version of, 551 (p. 682) “kingly way” [王道] of, 553 meaning of, 550 pan-, 551–52 See also “New Asianism” AsiaPacifiQueer group, 305 Asia-Pol 亚洲秘密警察 (1967), 128 Assayas, Olivier Irma Vep (1996), 2–3 Clean (2004), 163 Assembly 集結號 (2007). See Feng Xiaogang Astro Boy 鉄腕アトムTetsuwan atomu (1963). See Tezuka Osamu. At Home in the World 四海為家 (1995). See Wu Wenguang Attack on a China Mission (1900), 6, 592 Attitude Films, 314 Augé, Marc, 322 Page 2 of 45

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Index August First Film Studio, 272, 557 auteur, 15, 41, 152, 154–55, 157–58, 160–61, 307–8, 421–25, 431, 508 theory, 15, 422–23 See also politique des auteurs autoethnography, 515 See also ethnographic; ethnography Autumn Festival 中秋月 (1953). See Zhu Shilin Autumn in New York (2000), 182 A You Duo 阿幼朵, 511–16 A You Duo Welcomes You 阿幼朵歡迎您 (2009), 515–16 Baez, Joan, 447 Bai Guang 白光, 442 Bai Luming 白露明, 119, 494 Bai Yan 白燕, 494 Bai Yang 白楊, 118 Bai Yin. See Bak Yin Ba Jin 巴金, 255–56, 263 Bak Yin 白燕, 124, 494 Balázs, Bélazs, 407–8 Bale, Christian, 184, 187 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress 巴爾扎克與小裁縫 (2002), 520 Bandung 1955 萬隆 1955 (2005), 558 Bandung Conference (1955), 558 Banes, Sally, 80 Banquet, The 夜宴 (2006). See Feng Xiaogang Bao, Weihong, 210, 216, 554 Bao Tianxiao 包天笑, 44 Barney, Matthew, 429 Battle of Chemulpo Bay (1904), 593 Battle of the Yalu, The (1904), 593 Battle of Wuhan, The 武漢戰爭 (1911), 592 Battles across the Land 南征北戰 (1952), 251, 271 Baudrillard, Jean, 432, 435 Bauman, Zygmunt, 323 Bay, Michael, 174 Bazin, André, 71, 107, 109, 110, 112, 413–14, 421, 427, 566–67, 569–71 Beethoven, Ludwig von, 447 Beginning of the Great Revival, The 建黨偉業 (2011). See Huang Jianxin and Han Sanping Beijinger in New York, A 北京人在紐約 (1993), 172 Beijing Film Academy, 183, 572, 612 Beijing Film Dubbing Studio, 271 Beijing Film Studio, 272, 557, 602 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony (2008). See Zhang Yimou Bellour, Raymond, 528 Benjamin, Walter, 407, 413, 430–31, 492, 527 Berlin Film Festival, 154, 162, 194, 627 Berry, Chris, 288, 289, 307, 333, 360, 361, 365, 508, 532 Bertolucci, Bernardo, 82 Page 3 of 45

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Index Betelnut Beauty 愛你愛我 (2001), 154, 163 Be There or Be Square 不見不散 (1998). See Feng Xiaogang Better Tomorrow, A 英雄本色 (1986), 198 Biancorosso, Giorgio, 442 Bian Zhongyun 卞仲耘, 331 Bible, 448 Big Boss, The 唐山大兄 (1971). See Lo Wei Big Brother 唐山大兄 (1971). See Lo Wei Big Movie 大電影之數百億 (2006). See Ah Gan Big Movie 2.0: Two Stupid Eggs 大電影: 兩個傻瓜的荒唐事 (2008). See Ah Gan Big Parade, The 大閱兵 (1986). See Chen Kaige Big Road, The 大路 (1935). See Sun Yu (p. 683) Big Shot’s Funeral 大腕 (2001). See Feng Xiaogang Biograph, 407, 592–293 Bi Shou 俾壽, 454 black-and-white, 256, 269, 271, 595 Black Cannon Incident, The 黑炮事件 (1985). See Huang Jianxin Bliokh, Y. M., 601 Blood on Wolf Mountain 狼山喋血記 (1936). See Fei Mu Blood Simple (1984), 612–14, 618–22 Blue Gate Crossing 藍色大門 (2002), 159 blue-screen, 175 Blum, Susan, 509 “body genre,” 293 Bodyguards and Assassins 十月圍城 (2009), 176 Body Movies (2001, 2006), 362 Bolter, Jay David, 361 Bombardment of the Taku Forts [by the Allied Fleets] (1900), 592 Book from the Sky 天書 (1987–1991). See Xu Bing bootlegging, 172, 175, 181, 627, 633 Bordwell, David, 432, 438 Borrowed Life, A 多桑 (1994). See Wu Nien-jen Borzage, Frank, 230 Boxer Rebellion, 6, 456, 592 Boys from Fengkuei, The 風櫃來的人 (1983). See Hou Hsiao-hsien Braester, Yomi, 274, 431 Brahms, 447 Brecht, Bertolt, 197, 389, 410 Bridges of Madison County (1995), 180 Brighter Summer Day, A 牯嶺街少年殺人事件 (1991). See Yang, Edward Bright Sunny Sky 艶陽天 (1974), 12, 270, 272–77 Broadway Revue of 1929, The (1929), 446 Brocka, Q. Allan, 310 Brody, Adrien, 184 Brokeback Mountain (2005). See Lee, Ang Brooks, Peter, 232 Brotherhood of War, The (Taegukgi, 2004), 251 Brunetière, Ferdinand, 63 Page 4 of 45

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Index Btr, 4, 383, 389 Buck, Pearl, 182 Buddha Bless America 太平天國 (1996). See Wu Nien-jen Buddhist, 177, 406 Buhlmann, Vera, 363 Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers 流浪北京: 最後的夢想者 (1990). See Wu Wenguang Bund, The 上海灘 (1980), 201 Bureau of Drama Reform, 216 Burgoyne, Robert, 92 Bus Uncle 巴士阿叔 (2006), 382 Butler, Judith, 305, 508 Bu Wancang 卜萬蒼, 7, 9, 41, 45–46, 55, 56, 118, 552 A Couple in Name Only 挂名的夫妻 (1927), 46 Love and Duty 戀愛與義務 (1931), 7, 9, 18, 39–57 Maternal Radiance 母性之光 (1933), 42, 56 Three Modern Women 三個摩登女性 (1933), 56 Love and Duty (remake) aka Days of Love, Blood, and Tears 情天血淚 (1938), 56 Family 家 (1941), 56 Toward Eternity 萬世流芳 (1942), 88–89, 552 National Spirit 國魂 (1949), 118 Byron, Lord, 236 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (1920), 64 Cahiers du Cinéma, 98, 105, 421, 423, 431 Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生, 100, 107, 442, 474, 482, 531 “Five Brothers” 小五義, in Symphony of Lianhua Studio 聯華交響曲 (1937), 531 The New Woman 新女性 (1935), 442 Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生 and Zheng Junli 鄭君理 A Spring River Flows East 一江春水向東流 (1947), 70 Cai Guorong 蔡國榮, 229, 231–32 Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, 43 Callas, Maria, 447 camera obscura, 430 Cameron, James, 157 Camille, 236, 237 (p. 684) Cannes Film Festival, 107, 121, 154, 156, 162–63, 628 Cantonese opera 粵劇, 120, 124, 215, 219, 220 Cape No. 7 海角七號 (2008). See Wei Te-sheng capitalism, 144, 147, 278, 312, 325, 493, 557 anti-bureaucratic, 479 colonial, 409 global, 125, 555, 611, 616, 621 industrial, 128 late, 500 modern, 128 national, 478 Carlton Theater, 28, 32, 33, 238, 240 Carroll, Noel, 80 Cartier, Carolyn, 137 Page 5 of 45

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Index Casetti, Francesco, 388–89 Castells, Manuel, 12, 320, 322, 324–28 Cathay (國泰) Organization/Studio, 119–20, 123, 125–26, 129–30, 218, 476, 494, 559 Cavell, Stanley, 413 CCD Workstation (草場地), 330 Celestial Pictures, 129 Cell Phone 手機 (2003). See Feng Xiaogang Cellular (2004), 612–15, 617 censorship, 16, 55, 104, 119, 135, 172, 313, 452–66, 473–74, 479–81 Central Film Bureau 中央電影局, 474–75, 477, 479–501, 600, 603 Central Film Censorship Committee 中央電影局審查委員會, 479 Central Film Studio 中央電影攝影場, 494 Central North Film Team 華北電影隊, 591 Central Propaganda Bureau 中宣部, 109 Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan 毛主席去安源 (1967), 536 Challenge of Life 生死擂 (2001), 220 Chan, Benny 陳木勝, 612, 614–15, 618, 621–22 Chan, Fruit 陳果, 137–38, 140 Chan, Jackie 成龍, 129, 177–78, 184, 186 Chan, Kelly Wai-lum 陳慧琳, 496 Chan, Kenneth, 158 Chang, Andrew, 314 Chang, Eileen 張愛玲, 88 Chang, Kai-man, 637 Chang, Yung 張喬勇 and Fan Lixin 範立欣, 183 Last Train Home 歸途列車 (2009), 183 Up the Yangtze 沿江而上 (2007), 183 Chang Cheh 張轍, 121 Great Assassin 大刺客 (1967), 127 One-Armed Swordsman 獨臂刀 (1967), 127 Changcheng (長城) Film Studio, 118, 125, 126, 494 See also Great Wall (film studio) Changchun Film Studio 長春電影製片廠, 81, 91–92, 272 Chang-Feng-Xin (長鳳新) triumvirate, 119, 121 Chang Hsiao-hung 張小虹, 636 Changjiang 長江 (film studio), 477–78 Chang Long 張龍, 632 Chang Tso-Chi 張作驥, 422 Chaozhou opera 潮劇, 215 Chaplin, Charlie, 25, 66, 218, 421 Chau, Wakin 周華健, 369 Chekhov, Anton, 72 Chen, Joan 陳沖, 182, 184, 493 Chen, Leo, 435 Chen, Mickey 陳俊志, 301 Chen, Shi-zheng 陳士爭, 183 Chen, Tina Mai, 533 Chen Baozhu 陳寳珠, 494 Page 6 of 45

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Index Chen Bo 陳播, 602 Chen Bo’er 陳波兒, 474 Chen Chao-jung 陳昭榮, 638 Chen Daming 陳大明, 178 Chen Daoming 陳道明, 175 Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, 412 Chen Fang 陳方, 351 Cheng, Anne Anlin, 391–93 Cheng, Sammi Sau-man 鄭秀文, 494 Cheng Bugao 程步高, 27 Cheng Che 程澈, 458 Cheng Jihua 程季華, 100, 110 Cheng Pei-pei. See Zheng Peipei Cheng Ye 程野, 618 Chen Huangmei 陳荒煤, 100, 105, 109–10 Chen Kaige 陳凱歌, 175, 183, 228, 301, 306, 445, 494–95, 514, 520, 529, 537, 572, 631 Yellow Earth 黃土地 (1984), 445, 494, 514, 520, 537, 538, 572, 585 (p. 685) The Big Parade 大閱兵 (1986), 529, 536–39, 542, 576–81, 583–86 Life on a String 邊走邊唱 (1991), 494 Farewell My Concubine 霸王別姬 (1993), 162, 301, 306, 495 Temptress Moon 風月 (1996), 495 The Emperor and the Assassin 荊軻刺秦王 (1999), 495 Killing Me Softly (2002), 183 The Promise 無極 (2005), 175, 495, 611 Forever Enthralled aka Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 (2008), 228, 495 Chen Kuan-tai 陳觀泰, 127 Chen Kuo-fu 陳國富, 158–59, 181 Chen Liangyu 陳良宇, 352 Chen Liting 陳鯉庭, 481 Chen Pingyuan 陳平原, 234 Chen Shaozhou 陳少舟, 209 Chen Shiang-chyi 陳湘琪, 629–30 Chen Xiaodie 陳小蝶, 27 Chen Yanyan 陳燕燕, 532 Chen Yiming 陳宜明, 567 Chernaik, Laura, 326 Cheung, Maggie 張曼玉, 2–3, 162, 163, 175, 495 Cheung, Nick 張家輝, 616 Cheung Ying 張瑛, 124 Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石, 125, 273, 553 The Children of Huangshi (2008), 277 Children of Troubled Times 風雲兒女 (1935), 539 China Central Television (CCTV), 170, 186–88, 344, 347, 365, 512, 517, 619 China Film Distribution Company 中國電影發行公司, 479 China Film Group, 186, 617 China Motion Picture Corporation 中國電影製片廠, 595 China Nights 中國之夜 (1941), 84 China Part 3 (1995), 518 Page 7 of 45

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Index China Sun Film Company 民新, 235 See also Minxin Studios China Village Self-Governance Film Project 中國村民自治影像傳播計畫 (2006). See Wu Wenguang Chinese Boxer, The 龍虎鬥 (1970), 284 Chinese Cinema 中國電影 (journal), 100–102, 104–10 Chinese Cinema Study Society 中國影戲研究社, 462 Chinese Connection, The 精武門 (1972). See Lo Wei Chineseness, 65, 301–22, 313, 390, 522, 610–13, 615, 617, 620–22 ancient, 521 cinematic, 63 construct of, 522 disavowal of, 288 essentialist, 618 framing of, 306 iterations of, 308 meaning of, 610 as queer, 306 technological production of, 301 Chinese screen cultures, 301 Chou, Katherine Hui-ling, 408 Chou, Zero 周美玲, 301–6 Chou Wah-Shan, 305 Chow, Eileen Cheng-yin, 227 Chow, Raymond, 121, 127, 129 Chow, Rey, 291, 369, 508–9, 527–28, 585, 626 Chow, Stephen 周星馳, 181 Chow Yun-fat 周潤發, 178 Christianity, 307 Chu, Yingchi, 287 Chua Lam 蔡澜, 127 Chung, Chang-wha 鄭昌和, 284 Chung Kuo-Cina (1972), 98 Chu Yuan 楚原, 221 Cinema Novo, 161 cinema of attractions, 271, 377, 387–90, 440–41 Cinématheque Française, 106 cinephile, 101 City Scenes 都市之光 (1935). See Yuan Muzhi city wall, 70–71, 79 “civilized dramas” (文明戲), 25, 230 Cixi, Empress Dowager, 6 Clark, Paul, 490 Clausewitz, Carl von, 250 Close, Chuck, 571 Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), 134–35, 138, 616–17 close-up, 8, 15, 27, 47, 54, 89–91, 213, 253, 257, 313, 385, 405–9, 433, 532, 539, 571, 573, 576, 580, 585–86, 596 (p. 686) Coen Brothers, 178, 612–13, 619–20, 622 Cohen, Paul, 231, 377 Page 8 of 45

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Index Cohen, Rob, 157 colonialism, 136–37, 143, 259, 312, 552, 610, 621 See also anticolonialism color film, 4, 73, 121, 128 Ansco color film, 73 Kodak color film, 73 Sovcolor, 217 Spectacolor, 361 Columbia Pictures Asia, 181 Come Drink with Me 大醉俠 (1966), 127 comedy, 25, 32, 86, 88, 103, 119, 129, 146, 181, 183–84, 210, 310, 404, 439, 446, 480, 573, 577, 614, 620 Coming Home 歸來 (1934), 56 communism, 125, 415, 557, 577 communist cosmopolitanism, 265 Company Commander Guan 關連長 (1951), 103 Confucian, 31, 44, 56, 64–65, 303, 344, 348–49 Confucius 孔子 (2010). See Hu Mei Connected 保持通話 (2008), 612–17, 621 Conquering the Flood 戰洪圖 (1973), 272 continuous revolution, 262, 264 Coogan, Jackie, 30 Corney, Frederick C., 594 cosmopolitanism, 24, 26, 29, 32, 41, 43, 86, 141, 145–46, 180, 349, 409, 521 See also communist cosmopolitanism Costo, Oscar L., 182 Shanghai Red (2006), 182 Shanghai Blue (2010), 182 Couple in Name Only, A 挂名的夫妻 (1927). See Bu Wancang Cradle 2 the Grave (2003), 186 Crazy n’ the City 神經俠侶 (2005), 137–40 Crazy Stone 瘋狂的石頭 (2006), 181 “creative industries” (倡依產業), 366 Creekmur, Corey, 440 Cremaster cycle (1994–2002), 429 Crossroads 十字街頭 (1937), 42 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 臥虎藏龍 (2000). See Lee, Ang Cubitt, Sean, 377, 390 Cui, Shuqin, 493 Cui Zi’en 崔子恩, 307–10 Men and Women 男男女女 (1999), 307, 309–10 The Old Testament 舊約 (2002), 307 Feeding Boys, Ayaya 哎呀呀, 去哺乳 (2003), 307 Star Appeal 星星相吸惜 (2004), 309 “cultural fever” (文化熱), 321 cultural imperialism, 177 cultural production, 8, 16, 79, 283, 304, 328, 378, 381, 508–9, 514–15, 537

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Index Cultural Revolution, 12, 95, 103, 125, 182–83, 206, 221, 259–60, 262, 269–73, 275, 278, 282, 331, 354, 445, 481–82, 528, 535–37, 567, 568 before the, 216 eve of, 251, 255, 259, 262 post-, 16 Soviet Union, 594 “cultural somatics,” 363 Curran, John, 177 Curry, Ramona, 307 Curse of the Golden Flower 滿城盡帶黃金甲 (2006). See Zhang Yimou Dafoe, Willem, 182, 184 dagongmei 打工妹 (“working girl”), 142, 511 Da Guangming 大光明 (film studio), 117, 476 Dai Jinhua 戴錦華, 174, 427 Dai Sijie 戴思杰, 520 dalumei 大陸妹 (“mainland sisters”), 137 Dance Flick (2009), 179 Dan Erchun 但二春, 30 Daoist, 177, 186 dapian 大片 (“blockbuster”), 17, 307, 610–11, 617–18, 620, 622 Daquin, Louis, 106 Dargis, Manohla, 309 Dark Knight, The. See Nolan, Christopher Dark Matter (2007), 183 Daston, Lorraine, 413 Datong 大同 (film studio), 476 Daughters of China 中華女兒 (1949), 106 Davis, Darrell, 128, 422 Daybreak 天明 (1933). See Sun Yu Daydreaming 白日夢 (1952), 125 (p. 687) Dazhonghua baihe 大中華百合 (film studio), 46 Da Zhonghua 大中華, 117–18, 476 See also Great China (film studio); Lily (film studio) Death of the New Cinema, The 新電影之死 (1991), 423 de Baecque, Antoine, 98, 106–7 Debord, Guy, 426, 443 de Certeau, Michel, 333 decoupage, 213, 217 de Lauretis, Teresa, 305 Deleuze, Gilles, 293, 540 demolition, 190–92, 197–98, 200, 320, 322, 324, 329, 575 Deng Guang 鄧廣, 26 Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平, 104, 174, 273, 278, 578 Denouncement 决裂 (1975), 273 Derrida, Jacques, 643 de Sica, Vittorio, 412 destruction, 191, 195–98, 293, 295, 428, 430–31, 434, 541 Detective Dee 狄仁杰之通天帝國 (2010), 176 Page 10 of 45

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Index Devils on the Doorstep 鬼子來了 (2000). See Jiang Wen dGenerate Films, 307 Dianmao 電懋 (film studio), 494 diaspora, 126, 176, 301, 518, 519 Chinese, 4, 287, 291, 293, 346, 390, 548, 550 Hmong, 512, 517 trauma of, 122 Dickens, Charles, 31, 241–43, 409 diegesis, 54, 72, 313, 629 diegetic, 18–19, 54, 87, 284, 301, 306, 408, 633, 643 Difficult Couple, The 難夫難妻 (1913). See Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu digital light processing (DLP), 360 Ding Jiao 丁嶠, 603–4 Dingjun Mountain 定軍山 (1905), 4–10, 14–15, 62, 209, 377–79, 390, 647 Dingjun Mountain 定軍山 (2006), 14, 17–20, 379–80 Ding Ling 丁玲, 461 Ding Xilin 丁西林, 474 Ding Ying 丁瑩, 494 Dirlik, Arif, 323–24, 326–27 Disney, 178, 444, 647 Dissanayake, Wimal, 136, 229–30 dissolve, 50, 69, 71, 89, 90, 214, 218, 387, 578 distraction, 361, 377, 405 DMX, 186 Doane, Mary Ann, 464 “documentalism” 紀實主義, 600–601 Dogme95 153, 160, 164 dolly, 217 “Chinese dolly,” 219 Dong 東 (2006). See Jia Zhangke Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 單身男女 (2011). See To, Johnnie Double Vision 雙瞳 (2002), 159, 181 Dream Factory, The 甲方乙方 (1997). See Feng Xiaogang Dream in the Old Capital 故都春夢 (1930). See Sun Yu Dream of the Red Chamber, The 紅樓夢 novel, 87, 344 Yue opera, 126 Dreamworks, 622 Drunken Concubine, The 貴妃醉酒, 402–3 Drunken Master 醉拳 (1978), 177 dubbing, 2, 105, 110, 128, 271–72, 339, 382, 390, 444, 476 Du Fu 杜甫, 27 Du Haibin 杜海濱, 331 Du Lala (杜拉拉) phenomenon, 144 Dumas, Alexander père, 236 Du Yun-chih 杜雲之, 25, 160 DV, 1, 383, 391, 624 Dylan, Bob, 447 Page 11 of 45

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Index dynasty drama, 343–46, 348–49, 355 Eastern Miscellany 東方雜志, 25 East Is Red, The 東方紅 (1965), 536 East Is West (1922), 28 East Palace/West Palace 東宮西宮 (1996). See Zhang Yuan Eastwood, Clint, 180 Eating Out (2004), 310 edification, 12, 251, 270, 275, 278 Edison Company, 592–93 Eighteen Years in the Enemy Camp 敵營十八年 (1981), 344 (p. 688) Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon 八千里路雲和月 (1947), 70 Eisenstein, Sergei, 66, 569, 594 The Battleship Potemkin (1925), 527 October (1927), 594 The Old and the New (1929), 80 montage theory, 569–70 “Eleven Rules Governing the Showing of Motion Pictures in the Evenings” (1905), 453–59, 466– 67 Ellis, David, 612, 615 Elsaesser, Thomas, 423 Emperor and the Assassin 荊軻刺秦王 (1999). See Chen Kaige Empress Yang 楊貴妃 (1962). See Li Hanxiang Eng, David, 391–93 Eng, Dayyan 伍仕賢, 183–84 Waiting Alone 獨自等待 (2005), 183 Inseparable 形影不離 (2011), 184 Escobar, Arturo, 323 establishing shot, 90, 629 Eternal Regret 生死恨 (1948). See Fei Mu ethnicity, 193, 305, 497, 499, 521, 549, 555 ethnographic, 16, 81, 86, 444, 507–10, 517, 522, 573 ethnography, 508–11, 516–18 See also autoethnography European Union, 3, 329 Everybody Is Happy 皆大歡喜 (1943), 86–87 Executioners from Shaolin 洪熙官 (1977). See Lau Kar-leung expressionism (xieyi 寫意), 212–13, 218, 221, 409–10, 412, 417 Fallen Plum Blossoms (Part II) 梅花落 [ 後] (1933). See Zhang Shichuan Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), 594 Family 家 (1941). See Bu Wancang Fan Bingbing 范冰冰, 184, 496 Fang Peilin 方沛霖, 442, 552 Myriad of Colors 萬紫千紅 (1943), 552 Songs of Harmony 鸞鳳和鳴 (1944), 442 Songs of the Phoenix 鳳凰于飛 (1945), 442 Fang Yanfen. See Fong Yim-fun Fang Ying 方盈, 494 Fanon, Frantz, 291–93 fantasy, 49, 136, 172, 218–19, 287, 290, 292, 295, 305, 368, 433, 440, 552 Page 12 of 45

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Index rape, 28 redemption, 139 Far-Away Love 遙遠的愛 (1947), 70 Farewell My Concubine 霸王別姬 (1993). See Chen Kaige Farquhar, Mary, 289 Father 父親 (1980), 571–73 Fei Mu 費穆, 4, 8, 62–74 Night in the City 城市之夜 (1933), 63 Sea of Fragrant Snow 香雪海 (1934), 63 Life 人生 (1934), 63 Song of China 天倫 (1935), 42, 64 Blood on Wolf Mountain 狼山喋血記 (1936), 64–65 Murder in the Oratory 斬經堂 (1937), 64–65 “An Interrupted Dream in a Spring Chamber” 春閨夢斷, in Symphony of Lianhua Studio 聯華交 響曲 (1937), 64 Eternal Regret aka A Wedding in A Dream 生死恨 (1948), 4, 8, 63–74, 210, 213–15, 217–19 Spring in a Small Town 小城之春 (1948), 8, 57, 62–63, 69–74 feminism/feminist, 24, 44, 493, 496, 500 film theory, 497–99 mobilization, 24 Feng Baobao 馮寶寶, 494 Fenghuang (鳳凰) Film Company, 119, 125–26, 494 Fengtai Photography Studio, 5, 378, 392, 456–57 Feng Xiaogang 馮小剛, 172, 175, 181, 184, 251, 378, 529, 540–43, 611 The Dream Factory 甲方乙方 (1997), 172, 179 Be There or Be Square 不見不散 (1998), 172 Big Shot’s Funeral 大腕 (2001), 179 Cell Phone 手機 (2003), 181 A World without Thieves 天下無賊 (2004), 611 The Banquet 夜宴 (2006), 175 Assembly 集結號 (2007), 251 Aftershock 唐山大地震 (2009), 378, 529, 540–43, 611 (p. 689) Feng Xizui 鳳昔醉, 405, 407 fetish, 80, 258, 261, 491–500, 558, 582, 610 fetishistic desire, 30 Freudian, 491–92 Marxian, 491–92 money fetishism, 192 Feuillade, Louis, 2 Feuille (2004), 311 Fifth Generation, 110, 155, 158, 183, 186, 303, 494, 508, 511, 537, 539, 567, 571–73, 578, 584– 85, 612, 618 Fighting the Invaders 打擊侵略者 (1965), 558 filial piety, 65, 127, 229, 629 Film Art Resources 電影藝術資料叢刊, 600 Film Art Translations 電影藝術譯叢, 100, 105, 600 See also World Cinema (journal) Film Daily, 29 Page 13 of 45

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Index Film Guidance Committee 電影指導委員會, 474, 480–81 Film Magazine, The 影戲雜誌, 39, 57, 401–2, 413 “films for internal circulation” (内参片), 272 Finnegans Wake (1939), 626, 644–45 Fish and Elephant 今年夏天 (2001), 301, 310–11 Fishermen of the Caspian (1949), 601 Fist of Fury 精武門 (1972). See Lo Wei “Five Brothers” 小五義 (1937). See Cai Chusheng Flammarion, Camille, 234 Flight of the Red Balloon 紅氣球 (2007). See Hou Hsiao-hsien Floating Weeds 浮萍 (1981). See Yang, Edward Flowers of War, The 金陵十三釵 (2011). See Zhang Yimou Focus Media, 365 Fong Yim-fun 芳艷芬, 124, 494 Forbidden Kingdom, The (2008), 177–78, 180, 186 Forever Enthralled aka Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 (2008). See Chen Kaige formalism, 215–16, 406, 410–11, 576–78 Russian, 577–78 Forster, Marc, 177 Foucault, Michel, 321, 327, 497 The Founding of a Republic 建國大業 (2009). See Huang Jianxin and Han Sanping Fourth Generation, 110 Fourth Son Visits His Mother 四郎探母 (1933), 211 framing, 306, 307, 312, 313, 442, 455, 596, 613, 644 geometrical, 383 random, 515 static, 303 Franklin, Sidney, 28 French Institute for Advanced Film Studies (IDHEC), 106 French New Wave, 110, 160, 431 French Revolution, 431 Freud, Sigmund, 291, 491–92 Freudian, 292, 491 Friendship 友誼 (1959), 558 Frodon, Jean-Michel, 422 Fu, Poshek, 89, 551–52 Fuck Cinema 操他媽的電影 (2004). See Wu Wenguang Fujian Minnan opera 閩南劇, 215 Fung, Richard, 301 Galison, Peter, 412 Gang of Four, 354, 568 Gao Yuanyuan 高圓圓, 145 Gaozu 高祖, emperor, 354 Garbo, Greta, 46, 225, 401 gay, 302, 304, 306–10, 312–14, 498, 627, 637 gaze/to gaze, 192, 199, 314, 407, 416, 424, 434, 496–97, 499, 518, 537, 574 of the camera, 424 cinematic, 135, 643 Page 14 of 45

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Index cinephilic, 105 distracted, 361 embedded, 18, 628, 642–43 enamored, 406 eroticized, 303 ethnographic, 509, 522 heterosexist, 499 humanitarian, 144 hybrid, 361, 365 identification with, 83 imperious, 86 invention of, 98 (p. 690) loving, 52 male, 497 orientalist, 518 phallocentric, 499 returned, 47, 56, 139, 519, 643 vacant, 641 voyeuristic, 30 Ge Lan, Grace 葛兰, 119, 126, 448, 494 Geng Xi 耿西, 100 Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, 105 Getino, Octavio, 160 Ge You 葛優, 162, 182 Ghosts Pounding the Wall 鬼打牆 (1990). See Xu Bing Gibson, Mel, 178 Girl in Red 紅衣少女 (1985), 182 Gish, Lillian, 7, 24, 28–30, 32, 35–38, 408 globalization, 9, 129, 173, 193–96, 203, 322–27, 333–34, 360, 365, 424, 427, 509, 621 era of, 322, 331 Hollywood-style, 160 glocalization, 323 Godard, Jean-Luc, 110, 161 Goddess, The 神女 (1933), 41, 55, 408, 490–92, 495 Golden Harvest 嘉禾 (film studio), 494 Golden Horse Award, 128 gongfu film, 176 See also kung fu Gong Li 鞏利, 184, 495 Gong Qiuxia 龔秋霞, 442 Goodbye South, Goodbye 南國再見, 南國 (1996). See Hou Hsiao-hsien Good Men, Good Women 好男好女 (1995). See Hou Hsiao-hsien Gorki, Maxim, 601–2 Gosfilmofond, 79 Graduate, The (1967), 439 Gramsci, Antonio, 265, 267 Grandmasters, The 一代宗師 (2012). See Wong Kar-wai Great Assassin 大刺客 (1967). See Chang Cheh Page 15 of 45

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Index Great China 大中華 (film studio), 235, 476 See also Da Zhonghua Great Emperor Hanwu, The 漢武大帝 (2005). See Hu Mei Greater China, 4, 306–7, 309 Greater East Asia, 550, 552–53, 559 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 79, 85, 87–89, 550, 555 “Greater East Asian film” (Daitōa eiga 大東亞映画), 550 Great Ming Dynasty 1566, The 明王朝 1566 (2007). See Zhang Li Great Spectacle, The 大觀樓 (movie theatre), 457 Great Wall (monument), 79, 186, 366, 538, 542, 580–81, 583, 584 Great Wall 長城 (film studio), 235 See also Changcheng Film Studio Grenier, Fernand, 106–7 Greyson, John, 305 Grieveson, Lee, 456 Griffith, D. W., 7, 23–33, 35, 37, 404, 407, 438–39, 527 The Voice of the Violin (1909), 438 Schneider’s Anti-Noise Crusade (1909), 438 The Lonely Villa (1909), 438 The Birth of a Nation (1915), 23–24, 27–28, 32, 439, 527 Intolerance (1916), 23, 25, 33, 439 Broken Blossoms (1919), 23, 28, 33, 439 The Girl Who Stayed at Home (1919), 27 Way Down East (1920), 23, 27, 29–31, 33 Orphans of the Storm (1921), 23, 31 Grigoriev, R., 601 Grusin, Richard, 361 Gu, Ming Dong, 410 Guangxi Gui opera 桂劇, 215 Guangxu 光緒, emperor, 232 Gu Changwei 顧長衛, 163, 269–70 Gu Eryi 顧而已, 529 Gu Kenfu 顧肯夫, 402, 410–11, 413–15 Gunning, Tom, 414, 440 Guo Jing 郭淨, 330 Guolian 國聯 (film studio), 494 Hai Rui 海瑞, 353–54 Hall, Stuart, 141, 304 Hamilton, Devin, 312 Hammett, Dashiell, 619, 622 Han, Shinhee, 391–93 Handover (1997), 8, 134–36, 139, 616 Han Han 韓寒, 382 (p. 691) Han Sanping 韓三平, 170, 186, 540 Hansen, Miriam, 24–25, 592 “vernacular modernism,” 32, 414 Han Shangyi 韓尚義, 211, 213, 217 Han Xiongfei 韓雄飛, 126 Hanuman (Hindu monkey-deity), 647 Hao Ran 浩然, 276 Page 16 of 45

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Index Happy Together 春光乍洩 (1997). See Wong Kar-wai Harbord, Janet, 361–62 Harris, Kristine, 492 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2 (2011), 172 Havoc in Heaven 大鬧天宮 (1961, 1964). See Wan Brothers. Haynes, Todd, 305 Hays Code, 530 Heath, Stephen, 642 Heavenly Match, The 天仙配 (1955), 106, 126, 218–19 Heavens Above 蒼天在上 (1995), 344 Hebei “Silk String” opera 絲弦, 215 He Feiguang 何非光, 555 Heidegger, Martin, 9, 195–96 He Jingzhi 賀敬之, 603–4 He Lili 何琍琍, 494 He Menghua 何夢華, 121–22 Hengdian World Studios 橫店影視城, 174 Hengdian Group, The, 617 He Qun 何群, 537, 572 Her, Yengtha, 4, 519 Herdsman, The 牧馬人 (1982). See Xie Jin Heroes Two 方世玉與洪熙官 (1973). See Li Hanxiang Heroic Sons and Daughters 英雄兒女 (1964), 11, 251–52, 254–56, 261–66, 558 Hero 英雄 (2002). See Zhang Yimou Her Tender Hearts 玉女私情 (1959), 119 He Tingran 何挺然, 461 He Xin 何新, 345 He Zhaozhang 何兆璋, 442 Hi, Frank 嗨, 弗蘭克 (2001), 172, 180 High School Musical: China 歌舞青春 (2010), 178 High School Musical series (2005, 2007, 2008), 178 Higson, Andrew, 32 Hindi movies, 440–41, 444 Hing Fat 興發 (film studio), 494 Hjort, Mette, 152 Ho, Sam 何思颖, 129 Hole, The 洞 (1998). See Tsai Ming-liang Holloway, Johnny, 184 Hollywood Hong Kong 香港有個荷里活 (2001), 137–40 Hom, Alice, 304 homage, 172, 178, 378, 628 Homecoming 似水流年 (1984). See Yim Ho Hong Kong and Kowloon Free Filmmakers General Association 港九電影戲劇自由總會, 125 Hong Kong International Film Festival, 231 Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, 306 Hong Kong-ness, 617 Hong Kong New Wave, 155 Hong Kong Nocturne 香江花月夜 (1967). See Inoue Umetsugu Page 17 of 45

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Index Hong Kong Rhapsody 花月良宵 (1967). See Inoue Umetsugu Hong Mo 洪謨, 478 March of Couples 夫婦進行曲 (1950), 478 A Story of Film Fans 影迷傳 (1950), 480 Hong Xiannü 紅線女, 494 hooks, bell, 328 Horose, S. See Hua Luo Chen, Madame Hospitality, 141, 516 Hot Summer Days 全城熱戀 (2010), 181 Hou Hsiao-hsien 侯孝賢, 155, 157–59, 162, 421–22, 427, 432 The Boys from Fengkuei 風櫃來的人 (1983), 159, 428 A Time to Live, A Time to Die 童年往事 (1986), 159–60 The Puppetmaster 戲夢人生 (1993), 159, 162 Good Men, Good Women 好男好女 (1995), 159, 427 Goodbye South, Goodbye 南國再見, 南國 (1996), 159 Three Times 最好的時光 (2005), 156 Flight of the Red Balloon 紅氣球 (2007), 157 Hour of the Furnaces, The (1968), 160 House of Flying Daggers 十面埋伏 (2004). See Zhang Yimou Hou Yao 侯曜, 63 (p. 692) Hsu, Barbie 徐熙媛, 615 Hu, Ann 胡安, 10, 13–14, 17, 182 Hu, King 胡金銓, 127, 221, 282 Hua Chun 華純, 558 Huaguang 華光 (film studio), 476 Hua Luo Chen, Madame 華羅琛夫人, 8, 42–43 Hua Nangui 華南圭, 43 Huang Gang 黃鋼, 100 Huang Jianxin 黃建新, 540, 573, 575–77 The Black Canon Incident 黑炮事件 (1985), 573, 577–78 Samsara 輪回 (1988), 573–76 Huang Jianxin 黃建新 and Han Sanping 韓三平, 540 The Founding of a Republic 建國大業 (2009), 540 The Beginning of the Great Revival 建黨偉業 (2011), 172–73 Huang Jiguang 黃繼光, 253 Huangmei opera (huangmeidiao 黃梅調), 122–23, 127–28, 214, 218–20 Huang Shaofen 黃紹芬, 41, 47 Huang Sha 黃沙, 217 Huang Shuqin 黃蜀芹, 172, 180 Huang Xing 黃興, 593 Huang Yijing 黃弈璟, 383 huaqiao 華僑. See overseas Chinese Huaxia Film Distribution, 177 Huayi Brothers 華誼兄弟, 174, 177 Hu Die 胡蝶, 41, 211 Hu Feng 胡風 103 Hu Ge 胡戈, 382 Huhtamo, Errki, 361 Page 18 of 45

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Index Hu Huizhong 胡慧中, 494 Hui, Ann 許鞍華, 137, 142–44, 162, 632–33 Hui, Michael 許冠文, 129 Hu Jichen 胡寄塵, 44 Hu Jie 胡杰, 330–31 Looking for Lin Zhao’s Soul 尋找林昭的靈魂 (2005), 330–31 Though I Was Dead 我雖死去 (2007), 331 Hu Jinkang 胡晋康, 125 Hu Jintao 胡錦濤, 348–49, 353 Hu Jubin 胡菊彬, 230 Hu Ke 胡克, 99 humanism, 579 Hu Mei 胡玫, 344, 348 Yongzheng Dynasty 雍正王朝 (1997), 344–47 The Great Emperor Hanwu 漢武大帝 (2005), 347–49 Confucius 孔子 (2010), 172 Hunchback of Notre Dame, The (1956), 272 Hundred Flowers campaign, 8, 99–100, 102–4, 106, 108–9 Hung Chih-yu 洪智育, 159 Hunt, Leon, 293 Huo Jianqi 霍建起, 510 Huo Yuanjia 霍元甲, 285 Hu Yanni 胡燕妮, 494 Hu Yinmeng 胡茵夢, 494 hybridity, 234, 441, 531 Ibsen, Henrik, 44 Ideology, 1, 42, 71, 85, 88, 101, 126, 147, 185, 188, 215–16, 250, 254, 258, 260, 264, 325, 346, 361, 411–12, 444, 473–74, 497–98, 534, 537, 551, 560, 576 I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone 黑眼圈 (2006). See Tsai Ming-liang IMAX, 181, 540 Impression Dahongpao 印象大紅袍 (2010). See Zhang Yimou Impression Hainan Island 印象海南 (2009). See Zhang Yimou Impression Lijiang 印象麗江 (2006). See Zhang Yimou Impression Liu Sanjie 印象劉三姐 (2004). See Zhang Yimou Impression West Lake 印象西湖 (2007). See Zhang Yimou Inception. See Nolan, Christopher independent documentary, 320–22, 324, 326, 328–33, 509, 517 Individual Visit Scheme, 138 inequality, 9, 129, 193–94, 323, 327, 333 Inoue Umetsugu 井上梅次, 128, 442 King Drummer 青春鼓王 (1967), 442 Hong Kong Nocturne 香江花月夜 (1967), 128, 220, 442 Hong Kong Rhapsody 花月良宵 (1967), 220 In Our Time 光陰的故事 (1982). See Yang, Edward (p. 693) Inseparable 形影不離 (2011). See Eng, Dayyan intellectual property rights, 190–91 “interior performance” (内心表演), 405–6, 411 International Cinema 國際電影 (journal), 106 See also Chinese Cinema and Film Art Page 19 of 45

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Index Internet, 4, 13, 302, 308, 325–26, 328, 331, 336, 377–78, 382–83, 512 interpellation, 80, 286–87, 290–91, 293, 530, 539, 548 “Interrupted Dream in a Spring Chamber, An” (1937). See Fei Mu intertitle, 41, 47, 90 In the Heat of the Sun 陽光燦爛的日子 (1994). See Jiang Wen In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000). See Wong Kar-wai Ip Man 葉問 series (2008, 2010), 176 Irma Vep (1996). See Assayas, Olivier Iron & Silk (1990), 182 Iskusstvo kino, 101–2 It’s Always Spring 桃李爭春 (1962). See Yi Wen Iwabuchi, Koichi, 303 Iwasaki Akira, 85–86 Jackson, Peter A., 305 Jameson, Fredric, 282–84, 426 Jane Eyre (1944), 272 Jarman, Derek, 305 Javie, I. C., 123 Jiajing 嘉靖 emperor, 352–54 Jia Ling 嘉玲, 494 Jiang Boying 蔣伯英, 117 Jiang Hu: Life on the Road 江湖 (1999). See Wu Wenguang Jiang Ning 江寧, 558 Jiang Qing 江青, 109, 271–73, 277–78, 474, 494, 536, 545 Jiang Wen 姜文, 162, 182, 269–70, 272 In the Heat of the Sun 陽光燦爛的日子 (1994), 269–70, 272 Devils on the Doorstep 鬼子來了 (2000), 269–70 Let the Bullets Fly 讓子彈飛 (2010), 176 Jiang Xue 江雪, 494 Jiang Yue 蔣樾, 332 Jiang Zemin 江澤民, 349 Jia Qi 賈霽, 100 Jia Zhangke 賈樟柯, 9, 163, 182, 190–203, 307, 329, 383, 424, 426, 430 Xiao Wu 小武 (1998), 192 Still Life 三峽好人 (2006), 9, 163, 190–203, 329 Dong 東 (2006), 329 Jin Yan 金焰, 41, 45–48, 56, 531 Ji Yun 紀昀, 411 Johnson, Rian, 177 Journey to the West, The (西遊記), 138, 177, 344, 647–49 Joyce, James, 626, 644–45 JRG, 383, 389 Judou 菊豆 (1990). See Zhang Yimou Julien, Isaac, 305 kaifang 開放 (“opening up”), 302 Kaixin 開心 (production company), 234 Kalin, Tom, 305 Kampf um Rom (1968), 272 Page 20 of 45

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Index Kangxi 康熙, emperor, 344 Kang Xiaoguang 康曉光, 348 Kang Youwei 康有為, 345, 550 Kan Lume, 312 Kant, Immanuel, 643 Karate Kid, The (2010), 4, 170–71, 185–87 Karl, Rebecca, 550 Katsudô shashinkai 活動寫真界, 24–25 Katzin, Lee S., 171 Kawakita Nagamasa 川喜多長政, 551 Ke Ling 柯靈, 118 Khan, Genghis, 81 Khoo, Olivia, 301 Kids 孩子 (1991). See Tsai Ming-liang Kierkegaard, Søren, 275 Kill Bill series (2003, 2004), 177 Killing Me Softly (2002). See Chen Kaige Kim, Hyejin, 351 Kim Duk-run. See Jin Yan kinetoscopes, 430 King Boxer 天下第一拳 (1972), 284 Kingdom and the Beauty 江山美人 (1959). See Li Hanxiang King Drummer 青春鼓王 (1967). See Inoue Umetsugu (p. 694) King of Jazz (1930), 446 Kingsberg, Miriam, 89 Kinkley, Jeffrey, 346, 351–52 kinopravda, 593 kinship, 11–12, 87, 139, 141, 276 Kin Sing 堅城, 494 Kitaro, 369 Kite Runner, The (2007), 177 Kluge, Alexander, 331 Knight Rider, 182 Ko, Giddens 柯景騰, 152, 158 Koe, Stuart, 313 Kong, Bill 江志強, 175 Kong Ngee 光藝 (film studio), 124, 494, 559 Koo, Louis 古天樂, 616 Korean War, 11, 250–66, 483, 557, 559 Kraicer, Shelly, 541 kuer 酷兒, 306 kung fu, 12, 126–29, 181, 220, 227, 281–96, 359 “Kung Fu Dream,” 170 Kung Fu Hustle 功夫 (2004), 181 Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda 2 (2008, 2011), 622 See also gongfu film Kunlun (崑崙) Studio, 117, 477–78, 479, 481 See also Changjiang 長江 Kunqu 昆曲, 215, 219 Page 21 of 45

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Index Kurosawa, Akira, 154, 423, 622 Kwan, Stanley 關錦鵬, 162, 301, 306 Lakeside Dreams 湖邊春夢 (1927), 236 Lam, Carrie Cheng Yuet-Ngor 林鄭月娥, 142 Lan Yu 蓝宇 (2001), 306 Lao Wu’s Oscar 老五的奧斯卡 (2008), 180 Larusso, Daniel, 186 Last Days of Pompeii, The (1913), 25, 243 Last Emperor, The (1987), 91–92, 172, 178–79, 182 Last of the Aristocrats, The 最後的貴族 (1989). See Xie Jin Last Train Home 歸途列車 (2009). See Chang, Yung and Fan Lixin Latour, Bruno, 326 Lau, Carina Kar-ling 劉嘉玲, 496 Lau Kar-leung 劉家良, 127–28 Executioners from Shaolin 洪熙官 (1977), 127 The 36th Chamber of Shaolin 少林三十六房 (1978), 127 Law Kar 羅卡, 127, 129, 231, 445 Le Bon, Gustave, 527 Le Di 樂蒂, 494 Lee, Ang 李安, 4, 154–57, 159, 162, 163, 174, 182–83, 301, 306, 307, 422, 443 The Wedding Banquet 喜宴 (1993), 162, 306 Sense and Sensibility (1995), 152, 163 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 臥虎藏龍 (2000), 4, 154, 156–58, 174, 176, 183 Brokeback Mountain (2005), 154–55, 163 Lust, Caution 色, 戒 (2007), 157, 158, 163, 183, 443 Lee, Bruce 李小龍, 129, 176, 282, 285–95 Lee, Chris, 620 Lee, Frank, 307 Lee, Jee Yeun, 304 Lee, Kwang-Suk, 369 Lee, Leo Ou-fan, 441 Lee, Quentin, 301 Lee, Vivian P. Y., 138 Lee Hsing 李行, 159 Lee Kang-sheng 李康生, 627, 630–32, 635 Lefebvre, Henri, 324–25, 332–33 Left-Wing Cinema Movement 左翼電影運動, 42, 87, 104, 212, 230, 272–75, 480, 528, 530 Legendary Entertainment, 177 Lei Feng 雷鋒, 259 lesbian, 302, 304, 306, 308, 310–12, 314, 498 Let’s Love Hong Kong 好郁 (2002), 311 Let the Bullets Fly 讓子彈飛 (2010). See Jiang Wen Leung, Tony Chiu-wai 梁朝偉, 162, 175 Levenson, Joseph, 262, 265 Leyda, Jay, 23, 401 LGBT, 156, 302, 306, 310, 312, 313 Li, Jet 李連杰, 175–78, 184–86, 618 Li, Siu Leung, 284 Page 22 of 45

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Index Liang Qichao 梁啟超, 26, 233–34, 345, 409, 550 Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai 梁山伯與祝英台 (1953). See Sang Hu and Huang Sha Liangyou 良友畫報, 442 Lianhua (聯華) Film Studios, 41–42, 44–48, 57, 531, 648 (p. 695) Lianhua Symphony 聯華交響曲 (1937), 64, 440, 531 Liao Chengzhi 廖承志, 119 Liao Yiyuan 廖一原, 119 Li Bin 李斌, 567 Li Bingbing 李冰冰, 496 Li Boyuan 李伯元, 350 Lice Are to Be Feared 可怕的虱子 (1943), 88 Li Cheuk-to 李焯桃, 71, 231 Li Daoxin 李道新, 553 Li Dazhao 李大釗, 550, 555 Life on a String 邊走邊唱 (1991). See Chen Kaige Life 人生 (1934). See Fei Mu light emitting diode (LED), 360 lighting, 47–48, 53, 64, 66, 69, 71, 73, 232, 274, 360, 367, 368, 446 Light of East Asia, The 東亞之光 (1940), 554 Li Hanxiang 李翰祥, 121–23, 219, 221 Kingdom and the Beauty 江山美人 (1959), 122, 219 Empress Yang 楊貴妃 (1962), 122 Love Eterne 梁山伯與祝英台 (1963), 122–23, 210, 218–19 Heroes Two 方世玉與洪熙官 (1973), 128 Li Huailin 李懷麟, 29 Li Jing 李菁, 494 Li Jun 李俊, 558 Li Kelong 李克龍, 180 Li Lihua 李麗華, 118, 121, 494 Li Lili 黎莉莉, 442 Li Lisan 李立三, 534 Lily 百合 (film studio), 235 Lim, Song Hwee, 642 Li Minwei 黎民偉, 41, 44–45, 415, 592–94 Lin, Tom 林書宇, 159 Lin Biao 林彪, 260–61, 568, 590 Lin Cheng-sheng 林正盛, 154, 163, 422 Lin Cui 林翠, 494 Lin Dai 林黛, 121, 494 Lin Feng 林鳳, 494 Ling, Ivy Po 凌波, 121, 123, 126, 219, 494 Ling Guang / Ling Kwong 嶺光 Studios, 124, 494 Lin Qingxia (Brigitte Lin) 林青霞, 494 Lin Shan 林杉, 557 Lin Shuyu 林漱玉, 30 Lin Wenchi, 431 Lin Zexu 林則徐, 88–89 Li Pingqian 李萍倩, 118, 125 Page 23 of 45

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Index Lips 唇 (2008), 383–86 liquid crystal display (LCD), 360 Li Rentang 李仁堂, 277 Lissitzky, El, 576 Li Suyuan 酈蘇元, 230 Little Flower 小花 (1980), 182 Little Rabbit Be Good 小兔哐眶 (2011), 382 Li Tuo 李陀, 110 Liu, Lydia, 234 Liu Bang 劉邦, 354 Liu Heping 劉和平, 349 Liu Hui 劉輝, 129 Liu Jiayin 劉伽茵424, 430 Oxhide 牛皮 (2005), 424 Oxhide II 牛皮 II (2009), 424 Liu Qiaoer 劉巧兒 (1956), 215–16 Liu Qiong 劉瓊, 118 Liu Sanjie 劉三姐 (1961), 366, 444–45 Liu Shaoqi 劉少奇, 534, 536 Liu Shipei 劉師培, 550 Liu Xiancheng 劉現成, 126 Liu Xiaobo 劉曉波, 345 Liu Xiaodong 劉小東, 329 Liu Xiaoqing 劉曉慶, 493 Liu Ye 劉燁, 183, 510, 616 Liu Yifei 劉亦菲, 184 Liu Yulian 劉宇廉, 567 Liu Zhonglun 劉仲倫, 5–6, 10, 13–14, 379 Liu Zifeng 劉子楓, 573 Li Xianglan 李香蘭, 79–81, 83–87, 89, 442, 554 Li Yu 李玉, 301, 310 Li Yu 李漁, 411 Li Zongren 李宗仁, 598 Li Zuyong 李祖永, 118, 121 Lloyd, Harold, 403–4 Locano Film Festival, 118 Loehr, Peter, 181 Loke Wan Tho 陸運濤, 119, 121, 123 London, Jack, 236 Long Arm of the Law 省港旗兵 (1984), 136 Longqing 隆慶 emperor, 352 long shot, 258, 313, 385, 405, 538, 566, 574, 594, 596–97 (p. 696) long take, 70–72, 107, 110, 213–14, 303, 626, 637 Looking for Lin Zhao’s Soul 尋找林昭的靈魂 (2005). See Hu Jie Looper (2012), 177 Loo Zihan, 312 loss, 87, 116, 118, 122, 138, 195–96, 290–92, 509, 540–41 Love and Duty 戀愛與義務 (1931). See Bu Wancang Page 24 of 45

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Index Love and Love and Duty (remake) aka Days of Love, Blood, and Tears and Duty 戀愛與義務 (1955). See Bu Wancang Love Eterne 梁山伯與祝英台 (1963). See Li Hanxiang Love on Lushan 廬山戀 (1980), 171 Love without End 不了情 (1947). See Sang Hu Lo Wei 羅維, 282, 284, 286 Big Brother aka The Big Boss 唐山大兄 (1971), 129 Fist of Fury aka The Chinese Connection 精武門 (1972), 176, 282, 284–96 Lozano-Hemmer, Rafael, 362 Lu, Sheldon, 508 Lu, Xiaobo, 355–56 Lucas, George, 174 Lu Dun 盧敦, 125 Lü Jiankang 呂建康, 118 Lü Liping 呂麗萍, 493 Lumière brothers, 6, 390, 527 Luo Mingyou 羅明佑, 41–46 Luo Yan 羅燕, 182, 184 Luo Zhongli 羅中立, 571, 584 Lust, Caution 色, 戒 (2007). See Lee, Ang Lu Xun 魯迅, 53, 212, 526–29 Lu Yi-Ching 陸弈靜, 627 Lu You 陸游, 27 Ma, Ming-Yuen S., 301 MacGyver, 182 Macnab, Geoffrey, 620–22 Madame White Snake 白蛇傳 (1962). See Yue Feng Mahjong 麻將 (1996). See Yang, Edward “main melody” (主旋律) films, 173, 185, 379, 381, 392–93, 444 Malevich Kasimir, 576 Mambo Girl 曼波女郎 (1957). See Yi Wen Man’ei. See Manchurian Motion Picture Association Manchurian Motion Picture Association, 79–83, 85–86, 88, 90–92, 549, 552 Man from Atlantis, The (1977–1978), 171 Ma Ning, 230 Manovich, Lev, 362 Mantetsu. See South Manchurian Railway Company Manying. See Manchurian Motion Picture Association Mao Dun 茅盾, 63, 474 Maomao 毛毛, 618 Mao Zedong 毛澤東, 109, 215, 259, 331, 482, 498, 542, 556, 590, 595, 603, 648 Mao Zedong Thought (毛澤東思想), 258, 529 “Talks at the Yanan Forum,” 258 third-worldism, 260 Maple 楓 (1979 graphic novel), 567–71 Maple 楓 (1979 short story), 567 Maple 楓 (1980 film), 568–69 Marchetti, Gina, 27, 637 Page 25 of 45

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Index Marching toward the Republic 走向共和 (2003). See Zhang Li March of Couples 夫婦進行曲 (1950). See Hong Mo “March of the Volunteers” 義勇軍進行曲, 538, 583 Marcuse, Herbert, 355 Married Couple, A 我們夫婦之間 (1951). See Zheng Junli Martin, Fran, 305, 306, 310, 642 Marx, Karl, 89, 190, 192, 491, 497, 499, 500, 579 Marxian, 284 Marxism, 346, 579 Marxism-Leninism, 103, 348 Marxist, 99, 199, 491–93, 496, 550, 555 Massey, Doreen, 322–24 Maternal Radiance 母性之光 (1933). See Bu Wancang matte shot, 218 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 601 May Fourth Movement, 25, 42–43, 48, 64, 212, 345, 409, 411–14 (p. 697) McClelland, Mark, 305 McGrath, Jason, 216, 274, 303 McKellan, Ian, 312 McLuhan, Marshall, 585–86 McQuire, Scott, 361 media infrastructure, 362 Meet the Spartans (2008), 179 Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳, 62–63, 65–74, 211, 213, 217, 219, 228, 410 Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 (2008). See Chen Kaige Mei Qi 梅綺, 494 Meishi Street 煤市街 (2008), 324, 328 Meisner, Maurice, 478, 537 Mei Yanfang 梅艷芳, 494 melancholia, 12, 281–82, 291–93, 295, 296 Méliès, Georges, 390 melodrama, 11, 31, 39, 41, 45, 48, 55–56, 65, 70, 103, 124, 210, 212, 228–32, 236, 404, 408, 415, 494, 496, 530–32, 552 Men and Women 男男女女 (1999). See Cui Zi’en Metroer 2008 cellflix online competition, 385 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 225, 241–43 Meyer, Nancy, 178 Miami Vice, 182 Miao Jinfeng 苗金鳳, 494 Miao Tien 苗天, 627, 635 migrant, 82, 90, 91, 116, 137, 142, 192, 197, 321, 329, 515, 627 Million Heroes Crossing the Yangtze 百萬雄獅下江南 (1949), 17, 591, 595–98 Miluku Productions, 435 mimesis, 15, 192, 216, 401, 403–4, 410–11 Mimura, Glen, 305 Mine Warfare 地雷戰 (1962), 250, 271 Mingxing (明星) Studios, 41, 46 Minkoff, Rob, 178 Page 26 of 45

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Index Minxin (民新) Studios, 45–46 See also China Sun Film Company minzu 民族 (“minority nationalities”), 507, 509, 511–12, 514, 516, 518–22 mise-en-scène, 15, 63, 68, 212, 270, 274, 423–27, 430–31, 435, 567–71, 598 Mission Impossible III (2006), 177 Mitchell, John Cameron, 312 “mobile women,” 137, 139–40, 142, 144–45 model operas (樣板戲), 216, 221, 271, 445, 537 modernization, 24, 86, 91, 110, 143, 192, 198–200, 228, 257, 345, 347, 348, 365, 414, 423, 455– 56, 494, 554, 558–60, 583–84 Möller, Olaf, 213–14 Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors 桃太郎海の神兵 Momotarō umi no shinpei (1945). See Seo Mit­ suyo. Momotaro’s Sea Eagles 桃太郎の海鷲 Momotarō no umiwashi (1943). See Seo Mitsuyo. Monga 艋舺 (2010), 352–59 montage, 70–72, 76, 84, 90, 213–14, 217, 253, 443, 541, 545, 567, 569–71, 573, 597, 602 Morcom, Anna, 440 Morin, Edgar, 362 Morse, David, 184 Motion Pictures & General Investment Co. Ltd. (MP & GI), 119–23, 126 Motion Picture World 影戲世界, 26, 29 mourning, 50, 201, 203, 291–92, 541 Mouthful of Vegetable Pancake, A 一口菜餅子 (1958), 344 Movie Magazine 電影雜志, 27 “Movietown,” 120–22, 128–30 Moving Pictures Division of the Commercial Printing Press 商務印活動影戲部, 235 multiracial, 176 Mulvey, Laura, 30 496–97 Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The (2008), 157 Murder in the Oratory 斬經堂 (1937). See Fei Mu My Blueberry Nights (2007). See Wong Kar-wai My Nightingale (Watashi no uguisu 私の鶯 ) (1943), 4, 86 Myriad of Colors 萬紫千紅 (1943). See Fang Peilin Myriad of Lights 萬家燈火 (1948), 104 Mysterious Lady, The (1928), 225–27, 235, 239 Nakamura Masanao, 233 Nanguo 南國, 117 See also Kunlun (崑崙) Studio Nan Hong 南紅, 494 Nanjing Massacre, 179, 184 (p. 698) Nanyang (南洋) Studio, 120–21 narcissism, 291, 295 national cinema, 32, 62–63, 79, 81, 108, 152–53, 161, 170, 182, 184–87, 236, 251, 282, 379, 422, 430, 552, 612 nationalism, 8, 33, 43, 65, 123, 171, 185, 209, 252, 263–66, 287, 290–91, 305, 321, 370, 455, 465, 554, 559 National Revolutionary Army’s War on Sea, Land, and Air, The 國民革命軍海陸空大戰記 (1927), 593 National Spirit 國魂 (1949). See Bu Wancang nation-building, 32, 80, 361, 621, 648 naturalism, 412 Page 27 of 45

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Index Nazarov, I., 600–601 Needham, Joseph, 5, 20 Neoauthoritarianism, 345 Neoconservatism, 345–47 neoliberalism, 302, 369 neorealism. See realism New and Old Times 新舊時代 (1937). See Zhu Shilin “New Asianism” 新亞細亞主義, 555 New Cinema 新電影 (journal), 102 New Culture Movement, 43–44, 412 “new documentary” (新記錄片), 320 “new drama” (新劇), 25, 64, 230, 405, 410 New German Cinema, 161 New Life Movement, 64 new queer cinema, 303–5 new wave, 9, 56, 57, 98, 157, 161, 303, 421 “new New Wave,” 158 new wave in music, 447 postwar new waves, 432 See also French New Wave; Hong Kong New Wave; Taiwan’s New Wave; Taiwan New Cine­ ma “new woman,” 32, 415 New Woman, The 新女性 (1935). See Cai Chusheng New Year’s Coin, A 壓歲錢 (1937), 442–43 New Youth 新青年, 409–10, 412 Ng Chor-fan 吳楚帆, 124 NGO, 304, 329 Nichols, Bill, 497–98 Ni Dahong 倪大宏, 618 Nie Er 聶耳 (1959). See Zheng Junli and Qian Qianli Night and Fog 天水圍的夜與霧 (2009), 137, 142–44 Night in the City 城市之夜 (1933). See Fei Mu Night is the Tender (2006?), 4, 383, 389–90 Nikkatsu (日活) Studios, 25 Ning Hao 寧浩, 181 Niu, Doze 紐承澤, 352, 359 Nolan, Christopher, 197 The Dark Knight (2008), 157, 177 Inception (2010), 430 nonnarrative film, 515 Northeast Film Studios 東北電影制片廠, 91–92, 591 See also Changchun Film Studio “northern girls” (北姑), 137–39, 147 Nouvelle Vague, 161 Nye, Joseph S. Jr., 153–54 Officialdom Unmasked 官場現形記 (1903), 350 Oishi, Eve, 305 Olympics, Beijing (2008), 13, 176, 359, 366 Page 28 of 45

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Index One-Armed Swordsman 獨臂刀 (1967). See Chang Cheh Opium War, 88 Oriental DreamWorks, 177 Orientalism, 313, 497, 500, 518 internal, 509 self-, 618 Orphan Rescues His Grandfather, An 孤兒救祖記 (1923). See Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu Orz Boyz 冏男孩 (2008), 159 Other Shore, The 彼岸 (1995), 332 Oudart, Jean Pierre, 642 Ou Ning 歐寧, 324 Ouyang Yuqian 歐陽予倩, 118 Overbrook Entertainment, 185 overseas Chinese, 119, 126, 218, 236, 246, 550–51 Overseas Romances (Nplooj siab hlub hla ntuj, 2005), 4, 519–21 Oxhide 牛皮 (2005). See Liu Jiayin Oxhide II 牛皮 II (2009). See Liu Jiayin Painted Veil, The (2006), 177 Pang, Laikwan, 136, 360, 530, 532 Pan Hong 潘虹, 493 (p. 699) Pan Jianlin 潘劍林, 331 Pan Lei 潘垒, 126 Pan–Pearl River Delta Regional Cooperation, 134 parxinoscope, 1 Pathé, 538, 592 patriotism, 27–28, 42, 66, 171, 173, 252–53, 255, 263, 558, 648–49 Patton (1970), 172 Pavilion of Women (2001). See Yim Ho Peacock 孔雀 (2005), 163, 269 Peng Dehuai 彭德懷, 354 Peng Hsiao-yen, 159 People’s Literature 人民文學, 105 People’s Portrait, A (2004), 363 People Like Us (PLU), 313 Perez, Gilberto, 528 performance studies, 322, 332–33 Perry, Elizabeth, 534, 536 Petrie, Duncan, 152 Phantom of the Opera, 446 phenakistoscope, 1, 430 photogénie, 528 Photoplay, 29 photorealism, 571–72, 585 Pickford, Mary, 30, 66 Pickowicz, Paul, 212, 230, 473 Pick Up the Jade Bracelet 拾玉鐲 (1954), 216–17 Pine Ridge 青鬆嶺 (1973), 272 Page 29 of 45

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Index Pingju 平劇, 215 plasma display (PDP), 360 Platinum Dragon 白金龍 (1934), 120 point-of-view [POV] shot, 636, 637, 639 political unconscious, 282–84, 288, 296 See also Jameson, Fredric politics of place, 320 politique des auteurs, 98, 422 pollution, 197 Popular Cinema 大眾電影 (journal), 100, 102, 105, 107 postalteric, 510, 520–21 See also alterity Postmen in the Mountains 那山那人那狗 (1999), 510–11, 519–21 postproduction, 73, 307, 599, 641 Powell, Michael, 448 Prairie Fire 燎原 (1962), 529, 533–36, 542 Presley, Elvis, 447 Princess Iron Fan 鐵扇公主 (1941). See Wan Brothers. Private Eye, The 半金百兩 (1976), 129 The Promise, The 無極 (2005). See Chen Kaige prostitution, 308, 490–91 Protégé 門徒 (2007), 616 Protest 控訴 (1950), 478 Puppetmaster, The 戲夢人生 (1993). See Hou Hsiao-hsien Pu Yi 溥傑, 92 Qianlong 乾隆, emperor, 344 Qian Qianli 錢千里, 442 Qiling Tong 麒麟童. See Zhou Xinfang Qing Shan 青山, 126 Qin Ping 秦萍, 494 Qin Xiqing 秦喜清, 230 Qin Yu 秦羽, 119 Qi Qin 齐秦, 369 Qi Rushan 齊如山, 411 Qixia Temple 1937 棲霞寺, 1937 (2005), 179 Qixi 奇襲 (1960), 558 Quine, W. V. O., 2 Quinn, Aidan, 183 Quo Vadis? (1912), 25 Railroad Guards 鐵道衛士 (1960), 254 Railton, Jeremy, 359 Raise the Red Lantern 大紅燈籠高高掛 (1991). See Zhang Yimou Rancière, Jacques, 388–89 realism, 15, 17, 63, 67–81, 105–9, 125, 211–13, 216–17, 221, 252–53, 256, 265, 401, 403, 405–6, 408–15, 427, 441, 460, 463, 604, 613, 619 “exotic,” 366, 368 neorealism (Italian), 110 on-the-spot, 183, 600 photorealism, 571–472, 585 postsocialist, 313 Page 30 of 45

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Index socialist, 103–4, 381, 594, 603 xieshi (寫實), 212–13, 218, 221, 409–10, 412 Rebels of the Neon God 青少年哪吒 (1992). See Tsai Ming-liang Record of the Western Capital 西京雜記, 5 Records of the Historian 史記, 597 (p. 700) Red Beauty and the Skeleton 紅粉骷髏 (1922), 24 Red Dawn Productions, 312 Red Desert (1964). See Antonioni, Michelangelo Red Detachment of Women 紅色娘子軍 (1961). See Xie Jin Red Flag 紅旗 (magazine), 536 Red Guards, 536 Red Harvest (1929), 619 Red-Hot Time, The 火紅的年代 (1973), 272 Rediffusion Limited (RTV), 612 Red Shoes, The (1948), 272 Red Sorghum 紅高粱 (1987). See Zhang Yimou reenactment, 2, 6, 17, 253, 428, 590–604, 619 reform era, 171, 178, 180, 182, 344, 346 Reis, Michele 李嘉欣, 496 Relativity Media, 177 remake (cinematic), 2–3, 9, 17, 56, 170, 174, 178–79, 185, 210, 277, 287, 442, 446, 610–22, 647– 49 Remorse in Shanghai 春江遺恨 (1944). See Yue Feng Ren Jingfeng 任景豐. See Ren Qingtai Renoir, Jean, 421 Ren Pengnian 任彭年, 459, 462 Ren Qingtai 任慶泰, 4–6, 10, 14–15, 17–18, 378, 392, 457 Resisting Eminent Domain 釘子戶 (1998). See Zhang Yuan Resurrection, 232, 236, 238 Revival of an Old Well 古井重波記 (1923), 30 Ricci, Matteo, 550 Rice, Elmer, 225 Rich, B. Ruby, 303–5 Riding Alone for Thousand of Miles 千里走單騎 (2005). See Zhang Yimou River, The 河流 (1997). See Tsai Ming-liang River Elegy 河殤 (1989), 348 Robbins, Tim, 184 Robinson, Jennifer, 135 Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), 379, 439 Rodowick, David, 413 Rofel, Lisa, 302, 333 Romance of Tears and Laughter 啼笑因7DE3 (1932), 225–27, 235, 239 Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三國演藝, 7, 251, 253 Romance of the West Chamber 西廂記 (1940). See Zhang Shichuan Romance of the Western Chamber 西厢記 1927 film, 45 1940 film, 442 play, 406 Page 31 of 45

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Index Romantic Swordsman, The 風流劍客 (1929), 46 Romeo Must Die (2000), 186 Rosen, Stanley, 347 Rosenblatt, Nina Lara, 528 Rosenthal, Joseph, 6 Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉, 7, 18, 39–42, 45–57, 401, 406, 408, 415, 443, 491–92 Ruan Qian 阮潛, 101 Rui Kaizhi 芮愷之, 28 Rush Hour series (1998, 2001, 2007), 186 Russo-Japanese War, 527, 557, 593 Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 308 Ryuichi Sakamoto, 92 Sacrificed Youth 青春祭 (1985), 520 Sadoul, Georges, 106–10 Salt of the Earth (1954), 105 Samsara 輪回 (1988). See Huang Jianxin Samson and Delilah (1903), 438 samurai (chambara) films, 283 San Francisco International Film Festival, 121 Sang Hu 桑弧, 126, 217, 221 Love without End 不了情 (1947), 57 The Heavenly Match 天仙配 (1955), 126 Sang Hu 桑弧 and Huang Sha 黃沙, 217 Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai 梁山伯與祝英台 (1953), 217 Sarris, Andrew, 423 SARS, 134 Scary Movie series (2000, 2001, 2003, 2006), 179 Scenes of Inner Mongolia 內蒙風光 (1950), 474 Schechner, Richard, 332 Schindler’s List (1993), 179 Scholars, The 儒林外史 (1750), 350 Schram, Stuart, 254 Schurmann, Franz, 260 (p. 701) Schwartz, Benjamin, 260 Schwartz, Vanessa, 528 science fiction, 307 screenology, 361 screenwriter, 41, 45, 56, 159, 177, 182 Sea Oath, The 海誓 (1922), 24 Sea of Fragrant Snow 香雪海 (1934). See Fei Mu Sea Wolf, The, 236, 237 Sedgwick, Eve, 305 Seediq Bale: The Rainbow Bridge 賽德克巴萊: 彩虹橋 (2011). See Wei Te-sheng Seediq Bale: The Sun Flag 賽德克巴萊: 太陽旗 (2011). See Wei Te-sheng semiosis, 15, 403–4, 410, 415 semiotics, 274, 514, 518 Sense and Sensibility (1995). See Lee, Ang Seo Mitsuyo 瀬尾光世, 648 Page 32 of 45

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Index Momotaro’s Sea Eagles (Momotarō no umiwashi 桃太郎の海鷲) (1943), 648 Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors (Momotarō umi no shinpei 桃太郎 海の神兵) (1945), 648 “seventeen years,” 99 Shadow Magic 西洋鏡 (2000), 10, 13–14, 17, 183 shadowplay 影戲, 24, 67, 232, 233, 401, 414, 454, 593 Shadowplay Magazine 影戲雜誌. See Film Magazine, The Shakespeare, William, 235–36, 239, 243–44 Sha Meng 沙蒙, 253, 557 Shanggan Ridge 上甘岭 (1956), 11, 251–56, 263, 557 Shanghai Film Studio, 182, 217–18, 272, 475, 478 Shanghai Shadowplay Production 上海影戲, 235 Shanghai Triad 搖啊搖, 搖到外婆橋 (1995). See Zhang Yimou Shanghai United Studio 上海聯合製片廠. See Shanghai Film Studio shanshui hua 山水畫 (“landscape painting”), 190 Shanxi Pu opera 蒲劇, 215 Shaviro, Steven, 293 Shaw, Cunren 邵邨人, 120 Shaw, Runme 邵仁枚, 120–21 Shaw, Run Run 邵逸夫, 120–23, 126, 129 Shaw, Zuiweng 邵醉翁, 120 Shaw Brothers 邵氏, 56, 116, 119–29, 210, 214, 218–20, 494, 559 Shenbao 申報, 23, 26, 29–30, 225–27, 234–35 Shen Congwen’s 沈從文, 510 Shen Jianzhi 沈鑒治, 118 Shen Yanbing 沈雁冰. See Mao Dun Shen Zhaojian 沈兆堅, 455 Shibata Tsunekichi, 592 shidai qu 時代曲 (“Mandarin pop songs”)442–445 Shi Dongshan 史東山, 474 Shih, Shu-mei, 136–37, 411 Shi Hui 石揮, 104–5, 109, 218, 219, 487 Shi Hui 石慧 (Shek Hwei), 125 Shimazu Yasujiro, 186 Shimizu, Celine Parreñas, 304–5 shingeki. See new drama Shin Production Company, 128 Shoel, Michael J., 310–11 Shower 洗澡 (1999). See Zhang Yang Show of Shows, The (1929), 446 Shub, Esfir, 594 Shu Qi 舒琪, 494 Shu Shi 舒適, 118 Shut Up and Kiss Me (2010), 312 “sick man of Asia” (東亞病夫), 89–90, 285–93 Siegel, Greg, 361 Simon, Paul, 447 simulacrum, 52, 201, 435, 499–500, 633 Singin’ in the Rain (1952), 446 Page 33 of 45

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Index sinification, 11, 210 Sino-Japanese War, 25 Sino-Japanese War, Second, 66, 69, 73, 594 Sino-Soviet, 486, 488, 577, 595 border, 91 coproduction, 17, 603 split, 259, 264 Sister-in-Law, The 小姑賢 (1953), 216 Sixth Generation, 158, 181, 275, 508 Slaatta, Tore, 362 Slight Fever of a, 20-Year Old, 308 slow motion, 70, 72, 407, 539, 578 Smiles, Samuel, 231 Smith, Jaden, 186 (p. 702) Smith, Will, 170, 185 Sng Song-yong, 159 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011), 182 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), 647 Soap (2008), 383–90 socialism, 185, 215, 257, 277–78, 473, 534, 558 social mobility, 29, 30, 351 Soja, Edward, 12, 320, 324–25, 328, 330, 332 Solanas, Fernando, 160 solidarity, 88–89, 199, 259–60, 264–67, 500, 529, 535, 550, 560 Solos (2007), 312–13 Son Goku 孫悟空, 648 see also Sun Wukong (aka Monkey). Song of China 天倫 (1935). See Fei Mu “Song of Four Seasons” 四季歌, 443 “Song of the Hero” 英雄贊歌, 257 Song of the White Orchid, The 白玉蘭之歌 (1939), 83 Song Shijing 宋詩景 (1955). See Sun Yu Songs of Harmony 鸞鳳和鳴 (1944). See Fang Peilin Songs of the Phoenix 鳳凰于飛 (1945). See Fang Peilin Songstress Red Peony, The 歌女紅牡丹 (1931). See Zhang Shichuan Soong, Stephen 宋淇, 119 Sorrows of the Forbidden City 清宮秘史 (1949). See Zhu Shilin Sound of Music, The (1965), 446 sound track, 15, 74, 253, 256, 303, 310, 574, 578–80, 596 South Manchurian Railway Company, 79, 81, 83 sovereignty, 7, 135, 138, 193, 262, 265, 457, 481 Spacey, Kevin, 184 special effects, 48–49, 175, 218, 519 spectatorship, 13, 305, 360, 362, 370, 387, 497, 527 Spicy Love Soup 愛情麻辣燙 (1997). See Zhang Yang Spider Lilies 刺青 (2007), 306 Spielberg, Steven, 174 Split Open Mountains to Bring in Water 劈山引水 (1958), 603 “spoken drama” (話劇), 210, 230, 277, 405 Page 34 of 45

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Index Spottiswoode, Roger, 177 Spring Dream in the Old Capital 故都春夢 (1930), 44 Spring in a Small Town 小城之春 (1948). See Fei Mu Spring in the Mountainous Region 山區的春天 (1958), 603 Spring of Two Families 兩家春 (1950), 478 Spring River Flows East, A 一江春水向東流 (1947). See Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli Spring Sprouts 春苗 (1975). See Xie Jin Square, The 廣場 (1994). See Zhang Yuan and Duan Jinchuan Stalin, Joseph, 260, 599 myth, 107, 109 Prize, 590 Stalinism, 106 Stalinist, 106–7 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 408, 411 Star (明星) Motion Picture Company, 30–32, 226, 235, 463 Star Is Born, A (1954), 446 State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), 347 Still Life 三峽好人 (2006). See Jia Zhangke Stimler, Mike, 307–11 stop-motion animated shot, 49 Storm on the Border 塞上風雲 (1942), 556 Story of a Wandering Hero in Jiang Village 江村游俠傳 (1950), 480 Story of Film Fans, A 影迷傳 (1950). See Hong Mo Story of Lala’s Promotion, A 杜拉拉升職記, 144 Story of Qiuju, The 秋菊打官司 (1992). See Zhang Yimou Story of Wu Xun, The 武訓傳 (1950). See Sun Yu Story World, The 小說世界, 43–44 Streep, Meryl, 183 Street Angel (Frank Borzage, 1928), 230 Street Angel 馬路天使 (1937). See Yuan Muzhi Street Scene (1931), 225–27, 239 subjectivity, 8, 62, 69, 71, 92, 259–61, 266, 291, 320–21, 325, 412–13, 528, 537–39 (p. 703) sublimation, 56, 274, 440–41, 532, 537, 585 subtitles, 2, 307, 382, 390, 394, 555 suicide, 39, 41, 42, 44, 46, 50, 55–56, 109, 142, 292, 545 Su Li 蘇里, 366, 444 Sun Honglei 孫紅雷, 182, 618 Sun Wukong 孫悟空 (aka Monkey), 647–49 tail, 649 Sun Yat-sen 孫中山, 264, 347, 550–53, 557, 562, 593–95 jacket, 55 pan-Asianism, 561 Three Principles, 551 Sun Yu 孫瑜, 216, 443, 481–82, 529, 531, 541 Spring Dream in the Old Capital 故都春夢 (1930), 44 Wild Flower 野草閒花 (1930), 44–46 Daybreak 天明 (1933), 42 The Big Road 大路 (1935), 443, 529–33, 541 Page 35 of 45

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Index The Story of Wu Xun 武訓傳 (1950), 99, 103, 479, 481–82 Song Shijing 宋詩景 (1955), 482 Sun Zi’s Art of War 孫子兵法, 251 Su Thao, 518 Sutherland, Donald, 184 suture, 18–19, 53, 71, 286, 628, 642–43 Swat, Harald, 4, 170, 197 Symphonie des ombres chinoises, La, 45 Taipei Story 青梅竹馬 (1985). See Yang, Edward “Taiwan Cinema Manifesto” (1987), 158, 160, 421, 423 Taiwan New Cinema, 15, 19, 152–61, 447 Taiwan’s New Wave, 421, 423 Talmadge, Norma, 30 Tang Baoyun 唐寳雲, 494 Tang Huang 唐煌, 119 Tang Siu Wa, 147 Tang Wei 湯唯, 496 Tan Xinpei 譚鑫培, 5–6, 9–10, 14–15, 17–19, 379, 392, 457 Tan Yuanshou 譚元壽, 17–19, 392 Tao Xingzhi 陶行知, 481 Tarantino, Quentin, 177 Tasker, Yvonne, 284 Tears of a Mother 慈母淚 (1937). See Zhu Shilin Tebaldi, Renata, 447 Techne, 303 Television Broadcasting Ltd. (TVB), 612 television drama, 144, 159, 343–44, 346–48, 352, 356, 422, 627, 631, 635 “Television without Frontiers,” 3 Temptress Moon 風月 (1996). See Chen Kaige Teo, Stephen, 229, 231, 282, 287, 291, 445 Teresa Teng 鄧麗君, 126 Terrorizer, The 恐怖份子 (1986). See Yang, Edward Tezuka Osamu 手塚治虫, 648 Astro Boy (Tetsuwan atomu 鉄腕アトム) (1963), 648 I am Son Goku (Boku wa Son Goku ぼくは孫悟空) (2003, posthumous work), 648 thirding, 322, 324–25, 332–33 Thompson, Kristin, 438, 453 Though I Was Dead 我雖死去 (2007). See Hu Jie Three Gorges Dam, 9, 190–92, 197–98, 203, 329 “three highlights” ( 三突出), 273, 275–78 Three Modern Women 三个摩登女性 (1933). See Bu Wancang Three Musketeers (1914), 25, 236, 238 Three Times 最好的時光 (2005). See Hou Hsiao-hsien Thresholds between Human and Spiritual Realms 陰陽界 (1950), 480 Tiananmen crackdown (1989), 345, 347 Tiananmen Square, 345, 359, 537–39, 541, 576, 578, 581 Tian Han 田漢, 27, 62, 216, 236, 443, 606 Tianyi ( 天一 ) Film Company, 31, 120, 122, 231, 235 Page 36 of 45

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Index Ti Lung 狄龍, 127 Time to Live, A Time to Die, A 童年往事 (1986). See Hou Hsiao-hsien Titanic (1997), 157, 165, 173 To, Johnnie 杜琪夆, 137, 184 Vengeance 復仇 (2009), 184 Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 單身男女 (2011), 137, 144–45 Tolstoy, Leo, 232, 236, 238, 409 (p. 704) Tongdao Film and Television Production Company, 347 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 614 Toward Eternity 萬世流芳 (1942). See Bu Wancang tracking shot, 47 tragedy, 31, 56, 103, 229, 348, 433, 463, 567 Train through War Flame 烽火列車 (1960), 254 Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), 172 translingual, 234 transmedial, 648 Tratner, Michael, 530 Treatment, The (aka The Gua Sha Treatment) 刮痧 (2000), 172 Troche, Rose, 305 True Women for Sale 我不賣身我賣子宮 (2008), 137, 140–44 Truffaut, François, 15, 110, 160–61, 423 The, 400 Blows (1959), 628 Tsai Chin 蔡琴, 424 Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮, 18, 154–57, 159, 162–63, 301, 306, 421, 428, 448, 626–44 All the Corners of the World 海角天涯 (1989), 635 Kids 孩子 (1991), 631 Rebels of the Neon God 青少年哪吒 (1992), 627, 635 Vive l’amour 愛情萬歲 (1994), 162, 428, 627, 630–31 The River 河流 (1997), 18, 162, 301, 306, 626–44 The Hole 洞 (1998), 428–29, 448 What Time Is It There? 你那邊幾點 ? (2001), 627–28, 630 The Wayward Cloud 天邊一朵雲 (2005), 156, 159, 163, 627–28 I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone 黑眼圈 (2006), 156, 627 Visage 臉 (2009), 157, 428–29, 448, 627 Tucker, Chris, 186 tudou wang 土豆網, 378, 390 Tu Guangqi 屠光启, 56 Tunnel Warfare 地道戰 (1965), 250, 271 Tuohy, Sue, 441–43 Turandot, in the Forbidden City of Beijing (1998). See Zhang Yimou Twain, Mark, 236 Twin Peaks, 182 Typhoon 十號風球 (1960), 125 Udden, James, 154–56, 432 Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂樹之戀 (2010). See Zhang Yimou UNESCO, 368 Unhappiness Does Not Stop at One 不快樂的不只一個 (2000), 332 Unique (天一 ) Moving Pictures. See Tianyi Page 37 of 45

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Index United Six 六合 (film studio), 235 Up the Yangtze 沿江而上 (2007). See Chang, Yung and Fan Lixin urban generation, 303 urbanization, 144, 424, 494, 614 Vampire Boys (2011), 312 Vampires, Les (1915–1916), 2 Varlamov, Leonid, 590–92 Vasudevan, Ravi, 440 Vaughn, Charlie, 312 VCD, 515–17, 522 vengeance, 12, 281, 285–86, 291, 293 Vengeance 復仇 (2009). See To, Johnnie “vernacular modernism.” See Hansen, Miriam Verne, Jules, 232 Vertov, Dziga, 593–94 Victory of the Chinese People 中國人民的勝利 (1950), 17, 590–91, 595, 600, 603 Vidor, King, 225 Vinterberg, Thomas, 153 Virilio, Paul, 592 Visage 臉 (2009). See Tsai Ming-liang Vive l’amour 愛情萬歲 (1994). See Tsai Ming-liang voice-over, 141, 256, 285, 596–98, 603 von Trier, Lars, 153 waishengren (外省人), 431 Waiting Alone 獨自等待 (2005). See Eng, Dayyan Walter Defends Sarajevo (1972), 271 Wan Brothers 萬氏兄弟, incl. Wan Guchan 萬古蟾 and Wan Laiming 萬籟鳴, 647–49 Princess Iron Fan 鐵扇公主 (1941), 647–48 Havoc in Heaven 大鬧天宮 (1961, 1964), 649 (p. 705) Wandering Songstress 天涯歌女 (1940), 442 Wang, Ban, 274 Wang, David Der-wei, 122, 409 Wang, Eugene, 409, 538 Wang, Jing, 512 Wang, Wayne, 182 Wang Chao 王超, 424 Wang Chaoge 王潮歌, 367 Wang Fen 王芬, 332 Wang Hanlun 王漢倫, 31–32 Wang Hui 汪暉, 412 Wang Huning 王滬寧, 345 Wang Jingwei 汪精衞 regime, 550–51 Wang Lianying 王蓮英, 462 Wang Mochou 王莫愁, 494 Wang Renmei 王人美, 442 Wang Shangxin 王尚信, 534 Wang Shuo 王朔, 272 Wang Tao 王韜, 550 Page 38 of 45

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Index Wang Xiaofang 王曉方, 351 Wang Xiaoshuai 王小帥, 163, 181 Wang Xinqi 王心齊, 87 Wang Xueqi 王學圻, 538 Wang Youhui 王友輝, 635 Wang Yu 王羽, 121, 126, 127, 284 Wang Ze 王則, 82 Wan Laitian 萬籟天, 406–7 War in the Dark, 225 Water Bearer Films, 307–11 Water Margin, The (水滸傳), 344 Waugh, Thomas, 305 Way of the Dragon 猛龍過江 (1972), 129, 288 Wayward Cloud, The 天邊一朵雲 (2005). See Tsai Ming-liang Weber, Max, 354, 361 Wedding Banquet, The 喜宴 (1993). See Lee, Ang Wedding in A Dream, A 生死恨 (1948). See Fei Mu Wei Lian 韋廉, 558 Wei Ping’ao 魏平澳, 288 Wei Te-sheng 魏德聖, 152–58, 447 Cape No. 7 海角七號 (2008), 152, 157–60, 447 Seediq Bale: The Sun Flag 賽德克巴萊: 太陽旗 (2011), 154, 157 Seediq Bale: The Rainbow Bridge 賽德克巴萊: 彩虹橋 (2011), 154, 157 Wei Wei 魏巍, 255 Welles, Orson, 421 Weltliteratur, 192 See also world literature Wenhua 文華 (film studio), 476 Wenhui bao 文匯報, 108–9 wenyi picture 文藝片, 11, 56, 225, 228, 232 What do Women Want (2000), 178 What Time Is It There? 你那邊幾點 ? (2001). See Tsai Ming-liang Whissel, Kristen, 592 White-Haired Girl, The 白毛女 (1950), 91, 177, 493 Who Killed Our Children 是誰殺死了我們的孩子 (2008), 331 Why Are the Flowers So Red 花兒為什麼這樣紅 (2010), 331 Wiene, Robert, 64 Wild Flower 野草鮮花 (1930). See Sun Yu Williams, Linda, 293 Williamson, James, 6, 592 Winds of September 九降風 (2008), 159 Winter Jasmine 迎春花 (1942), 85 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 3 Wizard of Oz, The (1939), 439 Wolff, Ludwig, 225 Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, A 三槍拍案驚奇 (2009). See Zhang Yimou Wong, Faye 王菲, 496 Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲, 129 Page 39 of 45

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Index Wong Fei-hung 黃飛鴻, 220 Wong Kar-wai 王家衛, 155, 162, 442 Happy Together 春光乍洩 (1997), 155, 162 In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000), 57, 162, 442, 494 My Blueberry Nights (2007), 442 The Grandmasters 一代宗師 (2012), 176 Woo, John 吳宇森, 163, 178, 221 world cinema, 26, 157, 190, 192–94, 196, 203, 209, 422, 430, 490 World Cinema 世界電影 (journal), 100 World Cinema Fund, 198 World Expo, Shanghai (2010), 177 world literature, 196 (p. 706) “world picture.” See Heidegger, Martin world system, 192–94, 555 World Trade Organization (WTO), 144, 176, 191, 359, 366 World War II, 107, 120, 201, 271, 421, 424, 493, 557, 594, 648 World Without Thieves, A 天下無賊 (2004). See Feng Xiaogang Wu 武, emperor, 348–49 Wu, Alice, 301 Wu, Vivian 烏郡梅, 182 Wu Benli 吳本立, 591 Wu Cun 吳村, 442 Wu Han 吳晗, 354 Wu Jingzi 吳敬梓, 350 Wu Nien-jen 吳念真, 159 A Borrowed Life 多桑 (1994), 159 Buddha Bless America 太平天國 (1996), 159 Wushi Niandai (五十年代) Studio, 118 Wu Wenguang 吳文光, 321, 328–30, 332, 383 Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers 流浪北京: 最後的夢想者 (1990), 321, 329 At Home in the World 四海為家 (1995), 329 Jiang Hu: Life on the Road 江湖 (1999), 332 Fuck Cinema 操他媽的電影 (2004), 332 China Village Self-Governance Film Project中國村民自治影像傳播計畫 (2006), 329 Wu Xia 武俠 (2011), 176 wuxia 武俠, 127, 128, 156, 158, 174, 176, 178, 186, 212, 220, 238, 282–84, 415 Wuxi opera 錫劇, 215 Wuxu Reform Movement, 232 Wu Yinxian 吴印咸, 595 Wu Yonggang 吳永剛, 221, 408, 490 Wu Zhaoti 武兆堤, 558 Xian Xinghai 冼星海, 599 Xiao Fangfang 蕭芳芳, 494 Xiao Gongqin 簫功秦, 345–46 Xiao Hua 蕭華, 474 Xiao Shenyang 小沈陽, 618 Xiao Wu 小武 (1998). See Jia Zhangke Xia Yan 夏衍, 442, 475–76, 481–82 Page 40 of 45

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Index Xie Jin 謝晉, 172 Red Detachment of Women 紅色娘子軍 (1961), 274, 493 Spring Sprouts 春苗 (1975), 273 Youth 青春 (1977), 182 The Herdsman 牧馬人 (1982), 171 The Last of the Aristocrats 最後的貴族 (1989), 172 Xinlian 新聯 (film studio), 119, 124, 125 Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl 天浴 (1998), 182 xuanchuan 宣傳 (“propaganda”/”publicity”), 517 Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻, 409 Xu Bing 徐冰 Book from the Sky 天書 (1987–1991), 581–82 Ghosts Pounding the Wall 鬼打牆 (1990), 583–84 Xu Sangchu 徐桑楚, 478 Xu Wenrong 徐聞榮, 174 Xu Xiaobing 徐肖冰, 595 Xu Xingzhi 許幸之, 538 Xu Youxin 許又新, 558 Xu Zhenya 徐枕亞, 44 Xu Zhuodai 徐卓呆, 232–36 Yamaguchi Takeshi, 80 Yamaguchi Yoshiko 山口淑子. See Li Xianglan Yam Kam-fai 任劍輝, 219 Yan’an and the Earth Route Army 延安與八路軍 (1938). See Yuan Muzhi Yan’an Film Troupe 延安電影團, 91, 591, 595 Yang, Edward 楊德昌, 154, 156, 421–36 Floating Weeds 浮萍 (1981), 421–22 In Our Time 光陰的故事 (1982), 422 Taipei Story 青梅竹馬 (1985), 15, 423, 424–26, 427, 430, 433–36 The Terrorizer 恐怖份子 (1986), 426–27 A Brighter Summer Day 牯嶺街少年殺人事件 (1991), 423 Mahjong 麻將 (1996), 158–59 Yi Yi 一一 (2000), 156, 430, 447 Yang, Youxin, 311 Yang Du 楊度, 550 Yang Gensi 楊根思, 256 Yang Hansheng 陽翰笙, 474 Yang Quan 陽泉, 412 (p. 707) Yang Xiaozhong 楊小仲, 462 Yang Ya-che 楊雅喆, 159 Yang Yuanying 楊遠嬰, 617 Yan Ni 閆妮, 618 Yan Ruisheng 閻瑞生 (1921), 24, 230, 459, 462–65 Yan Song 嚴嵩, 352 Yan Youxiang 嚴幼祥, 117 Yao Ke 姚克, 119 Yao Surong 姚蘇蓉, 126 Yao Wenyuan 姚文元, 354 Page 41 of 45

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Index Yau, Herman 邱禮濤, 137 Yau, Kinnia Shuk-ting, 128 Yau Ching 游靜, 301, 311 Yee, Derek 爾冬陞, 616 Yee Chih-yen 易智言, 159 Ye Feng 葉楓, 494 Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, 128, 209, 211, 422, 432, 448 Yellow Earth 黃土地 (1984). See Chen Kaige Yellow Man, 23, 28 yellow peril, 28 Yen, Donnie 甄子丹, 175, 618 Yeoh, Michelle 楊紫瓊, 496 Yi Lin 伊琳, 215 Yim Ho 嚴浩, 162 Homecoming 似水流年 (1984), 136 Pavilion of Women (2001), 182, 184 yingxi 影戲. See shadowplay Ying Yunwei 應雲衞, 556 Yi Wen 易文, 119, 126, 442 Mambo Girl 曼波女郎 (1957), 119 Air Hostess 空中小姐 (1959), 126 It’s Always Spring 桃李爭春 (1962), 442 Yi Yi 一一 (2000). See Yang, Edward Yonghua 永華 (film studio), 117–19, 121 Yongzheng Dynasty 雍正王朝 (1997). See Hu Mei Yongzheng 雍正, emperor, 344–46, 348 You Are the Apple of My Eye 那些年, 我們一起追的女孩 (2011), 152, 158 youku wang 優酷網, 368, 378, 390 You Min 尤敏, 119, 494 Youth 青春 (1977). See Xie Jin YouTube, 328, 390, 512 Yuan, Haiwang, 444 Yuan Muzhi 袁牧之, 103, 378, 441–42, 473–76, 482, 532, 595, 599 City Scenes 都市之光 (1935), 442 Street Angel 馬路天使 (1937), 42, 230, 378, 443, 531 Yan’an and the Earth Route Army 延安與八路軍 (1938), 599 Yuan Yan’an 袁仰安, 118 Yu Dafu 郁達夫 Yue, Audrey, 305 Yue Feng 岳楓, 119, 121–22, 552 Remorse in Shanghai 春江遺恨 (1944), 552 Madame White Snake 白蛇傳 (1962), 122 Yuen, James 阮世生, 137–38, 140 Yu Ling 于伶, 475 Yunnan Multiculture Visual Festival (Yunfest), 329–30 Zecca, F., 438 Zeitlin, Judith, 215 Zhang, Shu-guang, 254 Page 42 of 45

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Index Zhang, Xudong, 534 Zhang, Yingjin, 465, 508, 509, 538 Zhang Dali 張大力, 575 Zhang Ga 張尕, 363 Zhang Henshui 張恨水, 44, 226, 242 Zhang Junxiang 張駿祥, 529 Zhang Li 張黎, 347 Marching toward the Republic 走向共和 (2003), 347 The Great Ming Dynasty 1566 明王朝 1566 (2007), 349–55 Zhang Lianwen 張連文, 277 Zhang Lu 張律, 424 Zhang Meiyao 張美瑤, 494 Zhang Min 張敏, 88 Zhang Nuanxin 張暖忻, 110, 520 Zhang Qing 張情, 119 Zhang Shankun 張善琨, 118, 125, 551 Zhang Shichuan 張石川4, 25, 30, 226, 240, 442, 459 Zhang Xinsheng 張欣生 (1922), 259, 459, 463–65 The Songstress Red Peony 歌女紅牡丹 (1931), 4, 211 Romance of Tears and Laughter 啼笑因緣 (1932), 226 Fallen Plum Blossoms (Part II) 梅花落 [ 後] (1933), 226 (p. 708) Romance of the West Chamber 西廂記 (1940), 442 Zhang Shichuan 張石川 and Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋, 25, 30 The Difficult Couple 難夫難妻 (1913), 25, 30 An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather 孤兒救祖記 (1923), 30 Zhang Taiyan 章太炎, 550 Zhang Weiping 張偉平, 618 Zhang Xinsheng 張欣生 (1922). See Zhang Shichuan Zhang Yang 張揚, 181–82 Spicy Love Soup 愛情麻辣燙 (1997), 181 Shower 洗澡 (1999), 181 Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, 13, 155, 158, 162, 174–80, 184, 269–70, 307, 360, 365–70, 494, 537–40, 572, 576–77, 611–22 Red Sorghum 紅高粱 (1987), 162, 495, 539 Judou 菊豆 (1990), 495 Raise the Red Lantern 大紅燈籠高高掛 (1991), 162, 495 The Story of Qiuju 秋菊打官司 (1992), 495 Shanghai Triad 搖啊搖, 搖到外婆橋 (1995), 495 Turandot, in the Forbidden City of Beijing (1998), 366 Hero 英雄 (2002), 175–80, 366, 495, 611, 618 House of Flying Daggers 十面埋伏 (2004), 175, 367, 611, 618, 622 Impression Liu Sanjie 印象劉三姐 (2004), 367 Riding Alone for Thousand of Miles 千里走單騎 (2005), 367 Curse of the Golden Flower 滿城盡帶黃金甲 (2006), 175, 367, 495, 611 Impression Lijiang 印象麗江 (2006), 366–67 Impression West Lake 印象西湖 (2007), 367 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony (2008), 366 Impression Hainan Island 印象海南 (2009), 367 Page 43 of 45

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Index A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop 三槍拍案驚奇 (2009), 178, 367, 612–13, 618–22 Impression Dahongpao 印象大紅袍 (2010), 367 Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂樹之戀 (2010), 269, 367 The Flowers of War 金陵十三釵 (2011), 184 Zhang Yuan 張元, 181, 301, 309, 324, 328–29 East Palace/West Palace 東宮西宮 (1996), 301, 309 Resisting Eminent Domain 釘子戶 (1998), 324 Zhang Yuan 張元 and Duan Jinchuan 段錦川, 329 The Square 廣場 (1994), 329 Zhang Zhen, 303, 440, 446, 462 Zhang Ziyi 章子怡, 175, 184, 495 Zhan Hongzhi 詹宏志, 160 Zhao Benshan 趙本山, 278, 618 Zhao Lei 趙雷, 121 Zhao Wei 趙薇, 496 Zhao Yiman 趙一曼 (1950), 91 Zheng Junli 鄭君里, 24, 406–8, 442, 481 A Married Couple 我們夫婦之間 (1951), 103 Nie Er 聶耳 (1959) (w/ Qian Qianli 錢千里), 442 Zheng Peipei 鄭佩佩, 122, 494 Zhenguang (真光) Cinema, 42, 45 Zheng Xiaolong 鄭小龍, 172 Zheng Yi 鄭義, 567 Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋, 25, 30–31, 405, 407 Zhen Zhen 甄珍, 494 Zhong Dianfei 鐘惦棐, 100, 108–10 Zhong Qiwen 鐘啟文, 119 Zhou Bin 周斌, 216 Zhou Enlai 周恩來, 119, 272, 273, 474, 481–82, 558, 598 Zhou Enlai in Bandung 周恩來萬隆之行 (2003), 558 Zhou Manhua 周曼華, 442 Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑, 25, 29 Zhou Xinfang 周信芳, 64–65, 212 Zhou Xuan 周璇, 118, 441–43 Zhou Xun 周迅, 496 Zhou Yang 周揚, 100, 109, 474 Zhu De 朱德, 481, 596 Zhu-Hu Binxia 朱胡彬夏44 (p. 709) Zhu Liankui 朱連奎 (aka Ching Ling Foo), 592 Zhu Rongji 朱鎔基, 346, 348 Zhu Shilin 朱石麟, 41, 45–46, 55–56, 118, 125, 221 New and Old Times 新舊時代 (1937), 56 Tears of a Mother 慈母淚 (1937), 56 Sorrows of the Forbidden City 清宮秘史 (1949), 118 Autumn Festival 中秋月 (1953), 125 Zi Luolian 紫蘿蓮, 494 zoetrope, 1, 5 Zwick, Edward, 178 Page 44 of 45

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Index

Page 45 of 45

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