Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics

CONTEMPORARY EAST ASIAN
VISUAL CULTURES, SOCIETIES AND POLITICS
Screen Media
and the Construction
of Nostalgia in
Post-Socialist China
Zhun Gu
Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies
and Politics
Series Editors
Paul Gladston, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Frank Vigneron, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New
Territories, Hong Kong
Yeewan Koon, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong Island,
Hong Kong
Lynne Howarth-Gladston, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Chunchen Wang, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
Editorial Board
Jason Kuo, University of Maryland, Baltimore, College Park, MD, USA
Christopher Lupke, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Paul Manfredi, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Ted Snell, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia
Hongwei Bao, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Ting Chang, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Gerald Cipriani, National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, Ireland
Katie Hill, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, UK
Birgit Hopfener, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Takako Itoh, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan
Darren Jorgensen, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia
Beccy Kennedy, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Franziska Koch, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
Taliesin Thomas, AW Asia, New York, NY, USA
Wei-Hsiu Tung, National University of Tainan, Tainan, Taiwan
Ming Turner, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan
Meiqin Wang, California State University, Northridge, Los Angeles, CA,
USA
Yungwen Yao, Tatung University, Taipei City, Taiwan
Bo Zheng, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
This series brings together diverse perspectives on present-day rela-
tionships between East Asian visual cultures, societies and politics.
Its scope extends to visual cultures produced, disseminated and
received/consumed in East Asia – comprising North and South Korea,
Mongolia, Japan, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan – as
well as related diasporas world-wide, and to all aspects of culture expressed
through visual images, including across perceived boundaries between
high and popular culture and the use of traditional and contemporary
media. Taken into critical account are cultural, social and political ecolo-
gies currently shaped by geopolitical borders across the East Asia region
in addition to their varied intersections with an increasingly trans-cultural
world. The series emphasizes the importance of visual cultures in the crit-
ical investigation of contemporary socio-political issues relating to, for
example, identity, social inequality, decoloniality and the environment.
The editors welcome contributions from early career and established
researchers.
Zhun Gu
Screen Media
and the Construction
of Nostalgia
in Post-Socialist China
Zhun Gu
Fudan University
Shanghai, China
ISSN 2662-7701 ISSN 2662-771X (electronic)

Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics
ISBN 978-981-19-7493-9 ISBN 978-981-19-7494-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6
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Acknowledgements
This book is based on my Ph.D. thesis, submitted to the University

of Nottingham in 2019. It has taken many years to take shape and
many people have offered me generous help and have contributed to
the project in its various stages. I would like to take this opportunity
to thank all of them, knowing that an exhaustive list is impossible and a
brief mention of their names is insufficient. My heartfelt thanks go to my
two Ph.D. supervisors, Professor Paul Grainge and Associate Professor
Hongwei Bao, for their academic generosity and consistent support that
has extended beyond my Ph.D. candidature. I thank the thesis exam-
iners, Professor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and Professor Colin Wright
for their generous comments and suggestions for the thesis.
I am also grateful to Professor Chen Xuguang, Professor Gao Guiwu,
Professor Wang Xiaoping, and Professor Wang Yichuan for their help
and encouragement for the chapters of the book manuscript. During
the development of this book project, I am doing my postdoctoral
research at Fudan University, Shanghai. Many scholars have mentored me
and contributed to the project in various ways. These scholars include:
Professor Meng Jian, Professor Yao Jianhua, Professor Zhang Dawei,
Professor Zhu Chunyang, Dr. Li Jing, Dr. Xu Yu, Dr. Li Mengying,
Dr. Xu Shengquan, Dr. Feng Xian, and Dr. Ling Binqing. I owe a lot
of thanks to all the students (in particular, Chen Jing and Yan Kexin) I
have taught at Fudan University, whose lively seminar discussions have
enriched the ideas and increased the relevance of this book. At the same
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
time, this book would have been impossible without the generous support
of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation and Fudan University.
I thank my mother Feng Chunhua, my father Gu Zhengzhou, and my
brother Gu Wen. They may not understand what the book is about, but
their unrelenting support for me and unyielding confidence in me have
given me strength. My wife Zhang Hanwen read my Chinese articles and
offered much academic, spiritual, and financial support I needed at the
final stage of this book project. She always reminded me that the theory
is important and this book should provide its readers (even non-academic
one) a sense of feeling that it is very understandable and academic.
I have presented some words related to book chapters at various
academic conferences, workshops, and research seminars hosted by
different individuals, groups, and institutions. I thank all the funding
bodies for their generous support for my conference travels and research
trips. I also wish to thank all the conference and workshop organisers
and participants for their useful feedback. Earlier versions of some words
related to chapters have been published in the following books and
journals:
“Nostalgia in Urban Cinema: A Comparative Analysis of Zhang

Yang’s Shower (1999) and Jia Zhangke’s 24 City (2008),” Journal
of Languages, Texts and Society, 2018(5): 25–47.
“Nostalgia in the Context of ‘the Belt and Road Initiative’: An
Analysis of a Chinese Documentary: Maritime Silk Road (2016),”
Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, Summer 2018(1)1: 113–130.
“The Rhetoric of Nostalgia from Harmonious Society to Commu-
nity of Shared Future,” in China and the World in the 21st Century:
Communication and Relationship Building, ed. Xiaoling Zhang and
Corey Schultz, 116–130 (Routledge, 2022).
I thank all the editors and reviewers of these books and journals for
including my articles in their volumes and for their insightful sugges-
tions and comments. All the chapters in this book have been revised and
updated, and some differ significantly from their earlier versions.
Contents
1 Post-Socialism and Nostalgia 1

1 Post-Socialist China in the Context of Neoliberal Reform 9
2 Chinese Screen Media Since the 1990s 16
3 The Construction of Nostalgia 39
4 Methodology and Chapter Structure 47
References 53
2 Nostalgia and Guilt in the “Educated Youth” Films:
A Mongolian Tale (1995) and Nuan (2003) 57
1 The Social Context of the “Educated Youth” Films 58
2 Guilt as Expressed in A Mongolian Tale and Nuan 67
3 Conclusion 86
References 87
3 Nostalgia for a Communal Lifestyle in Urban Films:
Shower (1999) and 24 City (2008) 91
1 Historical Background of Urban Film 92
2 Demolition in Shower (1999) and 24 City (2008) 99
3 Documentary Aesthetics: History and Authenticity 109
4 Reflective/Restorative Nostalgia 117
5 Conclusion 124
References 126
vii
viii CONTENTS
4 Nostalgia in Youth Media So Young (2013) and With

You (2016) 129
1 Nostalgia in Chinese Youth Media Since 2010 130
2 Nostalgia in the Youth Film So Young (2013) 135
3 Nostalgia in the Internet Drama With You (2016) 146
4 Uncritical Stance in Youth Media 155
5 Conclusion 162
References 164
5 The Rhetoric of Nostalgia from Harmonious Society
to Community of Shared Future 167
1 The International Communication of the Chinese
Mainstream Media 168
2 Nostalgia in A Bite of China (2012) and Maritime Silk
Road (2016) 173
3 Nostalgia as CCP Rhetoric 182
4 Transformation of China’s Political Rhetoric 191
5 Conclusion 195
References 196
6 Discourse Articulation—A Media Mechanism
for International Communication 201
1 Introduction 202
2 Articulation: A Theory and Practice for the Chinese
Screen Media 204
3 Nostalgia in Li Ziqi Food Video Series (2016–2022) 208
4 Discourse Articulation in the Context of Constructing
Chinese Film School 213
5 Conclusion 223
References 224
7 Conclusion: The Transformation from Xiangchou
to Huaijiu 227
Index 237
About the Author
Zhun Gu was awarded Doctor degree in media studies by the University

of Nottingham in 2019. Now he is doing his postdoctoral research at
Fudan University, China. His interests include cultural memory studies,
intercultural communication, and media studies.
ix
CHAPTER 1
Post-Socialism and Nostalgia
I was born in the late 1980s in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
My early childhood was spent in the countryside until my parents sent my
brother and me to the city to receive a better education. Subsequently, my
family moved several more times to support our education. After gradu-
ating from senior high school, I moved to large cities for my bachelor’s
and master’s degrees. My fond memories of the 1990s with my family
in the countryside are a source of much nostalgia for the place where I
spent my childhood. For instance, I have many happy memories of fishing
with my brother after school. At the same time, however, the peripatetic
nature of my early life experience meant that I spent less time with my
grandparents, which evokes a sense of regret. This personal yearning for
my childhood home, coupled with regret over spending so little time with
my grandparents, is something I have in common with many friends in
my age group who moved from rural areas in their early years.
To some extent, the nostalgia prompted by the transition from coun-
tryside to city for a better education during the 1990s and early 2000s
may be viewed as a generational phenomenon, situated in the context of
China’s intense market economic reform from the early 1990s onwards.
Specifically, the Chinese market economy developed quickly after the
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
Z. Gu, Screen Media and the Construction of Nostalgia in Post-Socialist
China, Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6_1
2 Z. GU
implementation of a policy of “reform and opening up” in 1978.1 After

intense debates about how to develop the country throughout the 1980s,
China quickened the pace of its advance into modernity through urbani-
sation and the reform of state-owned enterprises and by joining the World
Trade Organization (WTO). These societal accelerations motivated many
rural residents to find jobs and relocate their homes in cities. In this
sense, Chinese society gradually transformed itself from a Maoist total-
itarian society to a capitalist and ideologically controlled, and specifically
post-socialist one, as will be discussed in the next section.
The economic and cultural changes after the Mao era have been
represented in various Chinese screen media. Essentially, three kinds of
nostalgic culture have been portrayed on the Chinese screen since the
1990s, in an attempt to transport viewers back to the different types of
“home” that can be found within various social contexts. The first kind
of screen nostalgic culture was produced by “educated youth” filmmakers
in the 1990s, a generation who were forced to move to the countryside
during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and who later returned to
the city.2 This cohort included many Fourth and Fifth Generation film-
makers; in their works, they created a sense of nostalgia for the idyllic
1 Reform and opening up refers to the programme of economic reform in the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) which started in December 1978 by reformists within the
Communist Party of China, led by Deng Xiaoping. Economic reforms introducing market
principles began in 1978 and were carried out in two stages. The first stage, in the late
1970s and early 1980s, involved the decollectivisation of agriculture, the opening up of
the country to foreign investment, and permission for entrepreneurs to start businesses.
However, most industry remained state-owned. The second stage of reform, in the late
1980s and 1990s, involved the privatisation and contracting-out of much state-owned
industry and the lifting of price controls, protectionist policies, and regulations, although
state monopolies in sectors such as banking and petroleum remained. The private sector
grew remarkably, accounting for as much as 70% of China’s gross domestic product
by 2005. From 1978 until 2013, unprecedented growth occurred, with the economy
increasing by 9.5% a year. Fang Cai, “Perceiving Truth and Ceasing Doubts: What Can
We Learn from 40 Years of China’s Reform and Opening Up?” China & World Economy,
2018 (2): 1–22.
2 The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was
a sociopolitical movement in China from 1966 until 1976, launched by Mao Zedong.
Its stated goal was to preserve “true” Communist ideology in the country by purging
remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose
Mao Zedong Thought as the dominant ideology within the Party. The Revolution marked
Mao’s return to a position of power after the failures of his Great Leap Forward. The
movement paralysed China politically and negatively affected both the economy and
society of the country to a highly significant degree. Xing Lu, Rhetoric of the Chinese
1 POST-SOCIALISM AND NOSTALGIA 3
countryside, the memories of which were entwined with their personal

memories in the context of the aforementioned early market economic
reform. The second kind of nostalgic screen culture emerged in the late
1990s and 2000s and was produced by Sixth-Generation filmmakers.
These filmmakers typically grew up in cities and studied in professional
film academies and were less influenced by the Cultural Revolution. Their
films focused on the demolition of old buildings and communities in
China’s cities, and the nostalgia embodied in their works relates to the
feeling of a loss of communal lifestyle. The third type of screen nostalgia,
which focuses on university and school days in the late 1990s and early
2000s, has been drawn upon by new generations of filmmakers and direc-
tors since 2010 and remains popular on the Chinese screen. To a large
extent, this particular nostalgic culture is related to the experiences of my
generation; hence my personal motivation for investigating the different
versions of nostalgia expressed by my own and other generations on the
Chinese screen.
Each of these screen media evokes a longing for different versions of
the past: some for the enthusiasm and passion felt at an earlier time,
some for innocence, and some for simple everyday life. Such diverse forms
of nostalgia also carry different functions: some are politically motivated
and tend to engage with social issues, whereas others lean more towards
commodification to attract China’s screen market. At the same time,
from a linguistic perspective, Western nostalgia has a different conno-
tation from nostalgia in a Chinese context, which to a larger extent
carries the dual meanings of an emotional homesickness (乡愁, xiang-
chou) and aesthetic reminiscence (怀旧, huaijiu). Furthermore, in the
Chinese government’s propaganda, nostalgia related to various forms of
cultural heritage and tradition came to be used as a means of intercul-
tural communication, a way to show a sense of China’s georgic civilisation
and promote China’s national image. In that context, regardless of how
the three forms of nostalgia are presented, the past appears to have been
portrayed as a warm and safe place, with the present often depicted as
depressing and anxiety-inducing. Therefore, the question this book seeks
to explore is how the different forms of nostalgia have been constructed
by different generations of filmmakers and directors within Chinese screen
media since the 1990s.
Cultural Revolution: The Impact on Chinese Thought, Culture, and Communication (South
Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), 51–72.
4 Z. GU
Two sub-questions will underpin this core research question: (1) what
institutional and cultural factors have given rise to the production of
screen nostalgia; and (2) How do specific nostalgic constructions nego-
tiate identity at the levels of gender, region, and nation? In this regard,
various cultural memories, revitalised by screen producers, are shown to
make and perform social meanings in the context of post-Mao market
reforms. This research highlights the capacity of nostalgic screen media to
document social transformations while also constituting a cultural sphere
in which multiple discourses confront and contest with each other. Within
these nostalgic cultures, different screen producers present screen nostal-
gias that have been influenced by, and engaged with, the transformation
of Chinese cultural and economic life since the 1990s.
In its examination of nostalgic cultures in Chinese screen media, this
book seeks to discuss the complex relationships between cultural memo-
ries and social contexts. Based on the core research question, it will
approach the topic from three angles. First, it will frame the 1990s as
making the beginning of Chinese nostalgic film, although the genre may
be said to have existed since the 1930s, with films such as Nostalgia
(1934), Spring in a Small Town (1948), and The Song of Youth (1959).
Many nostalgic films were also produced in the 1980s, such as Yellow
Earth (Chen Kaige, 1985) and Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou, 1987). The
1980s were a period during which China attempted to create order out
of chaos following the Cultural Revolution, and this engendered debates
about how to develop the country. Given this situation, the 1980s is a
period in which many social elements, such as “Reform and Opening-up,”
political reform, the student democratic movement,3 and literature trends
were both conjoining and contending for the authority to write contem-
porary Chinese history. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping’s “Southern Talk”
officially expressed the Chinese government’s determination to focus on
3 The Tiananmen Square protest or the June Four Movement was student-led popular
demonstrations in Beijing, which took place in the spring of 1989 and received broad
support from city residents. University students marched and gathered in Tiananmen
Square to demand that democracy, freedom, and liberal justice replace authoritarian rule
in the reform process while other citizens sought an end to official corruption, inflation,
and limited career prospects. The protesters called for government reform, freedom of
the press and speech. The government initially took a conciliatory stance towards the
protesters. Ultimately, the Chinese Supreme leader Deng Xiaoping and other party elders
resolved to use force to solve this event.
the development of the market economy.4 From the early 1990s, China
has increased the pace of its rush to modernity through urbanisation and
the reform of state-owned enterprises, and by joining the WTO (2001).
During this period, Chinese society has gradually transformed itself from a
Maoist totalitarian society to a capitalist and ideologically controlled one.
In this regard, developing China’s economy and maintaining the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP)’s legitimacy were two dominating discourses
affecting Chinese society and filmmaking. Therefore, the 1980s and the
later periods, to a larger extent, can be seen as two discrete periods. It
is not necessary to integrate them as a whole in order to make sense of
the dynamic relationship between the Chinese filmmaking and production
environments in the context of state-led commercialisation. Furthermore,
nostalgic films shot in the 1980s have been investigated by many scholars,
including Dai Jinhua (2002), Wang Ban (2004), Chris Berry (2006),
Rey Chow (2007), Sheldon H. Lu (2007), Zhang Xudong (2008), and
Yang Guobin (2016). It is difficult, therefore, to make any additional
contribution to the existing scholarship on this period in cultural studies
and Chinese film studies. In order to demonstrate how the commercial
imperative works in tandem with ideological prescriptiveness and state
censorship to shape the Chinese filmmaking, this book focuses only on
screen media produced after 1990. However, it must be recognised that
there remains a close relationship between the nostalgic films produced in
both periods. Therefore, Chapter 2 highlights the importance of “root-
searching” films in the 1980s and underlines their influence on the films
produced in the 1990s.
Second, the book addresses multiple articulations of nostalgia,
including traumatic and repressed memories, in the work of different
generational filmmakers and directors from different generations. Here,
I use the term articulation in Stuart Hall’s sense: as a connection or
link requiring particular conditions of existence, which is not eternal but
requires constant renewal and which may, under some circumstances,
rearticulate with others.5 The articulations of nostalgia express a dynamic
process in which the yearning for the past (seen as an internal attribute)
4 Robert Weatherley, Politics in China since 1949: Legitimising Authoritarian Rule

(London: Routledge, 2012), 137.
5 Stuart Hall, “Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post-
structuralist Debate,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1985 (2): 91–114.
6 Z. GU
is linked to different external conditions, such as social contexts, the film-

maker’s personal artistic pursuit and political attitude, and the screen
media industry itself. Thus, nostalgia in different periods may have some
similar elements, but each specific nostalgia retains its distinct determi-
nation and condition of existence. This determines how that individual
nostalgia may be disarticulated and rearticulated in other contexts. There-
fore, articulation highlights one of the purposes of this book: to identify
articulated nostalgias in various contexts in China. Chapter 6 focuses
on the intercultural communication of the Chinese screen media. Hall’s
version of articulation will be further used to analyse how Chinese
Internet video articulates the presentation of rural China within new
contexts to communicate an image of China that is easily understood by
foreign audiences.
The investigation of articulated nostalgia in different generational
screen media is to some extent a chronological study. These manifes-
tations of screen nostalgias were produced by different generations of
filmmakers in different periods, rather than by filmmakers from one
specific generation in a single period. In China, one generation of film-
makers normally maintains a stable film aesthetics. For instance, the
Sixth-Generational filmmakers’ works, epitomised by Wang Xiaoshuai’s
Beijing Bicycle (2001) and Shanghai Dreams (2005) and Jia Zhangke’s
24 City (2008) and A Touch of Sin (2013), keep on investigating the
individual’s helplessness in the face of destiny, as well as the post-socialist
upheaval. A filmmaker may change her/his film language over time;
however, from a broad perspective, it makes sense to see this change as a
maturing of the creator’s film aesthetics, rather than as a change in their
social and cultural altitude. Thus, the book highlights that generation is
not only a definition of a period of time, but, more importantly, it is a
social, cultural, and aesthetic generality. Not all Chinese filmmakers can
be included in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, or the “New Force” Generations.
Therefore, it is natural for there to be a degree of variety in aesthetics and
nostalgic culture in different screen media from the same period. Similarly,
it is reasonable that some screen media challenge a political discourse that
is eulogised by different filmmakers in the same period. To some extent,
“generation” refers to a similar and a dominating film aesthetic style in a
specific social-cultural period; therefore, it is difficult to argue that a film-
maker’s attitude has undergone an intense transformation because a single
film is inconsistent with this generational aesthetics. In this respect, what
this book analyses is not an aesthetic transformation of any specific gener-

ational filmmaker in the past thirty years, but rather the way in which
different generational filmmakers in their respective eras adopt a relatively
consistent aesthetic rendering of the constructed past as a means by which
to engage with the present. This study of various kinds of nostalgia in
Chinese screen media produced by generations of filmmakers can be seen
here as chronological.
Third, the book will engage with multiple expressions and forma-
tions of political and cultural discourses in the context of China’s market
economic reform insofar as they relate to articulated nostalgia in the
works of different generations of filmmakers. The primary aim of this
book is to identify various generational nostalgias in order to present
the dynamic relationship between a media text, the media industry, and
political discourse. These nostalgias can be related to Michael Foucault’s
understanding of discourse as something that affects the construction
and representation of nostalgia.6 For instance, Chapter 5 discusses the
documentary Maritime Silk Road (2016). Many documentaries entitled
Maritime Silk Road (or something similar) have been produced before,
which were produced in different historical periods, for different political
purposes, and using different film languages. This Maritime Silk Road
(2016) has unique characteristics: in invisible and apparently depoliti-
cised ways, it works to propagandise Xi Jinping’s “Community of Shared
Future.” This book examines different cultural and political discourses,
such as the concepts of youth without regret (Chapter 2), harmonious
society, and peaceful development (Chapter 5), while attempting to
unpick the intricacies of political and aesthetic entanglements between
Chinese filmmaking and official discourse.
Investigating screen nostalgia within specific discourses reveals the
tremendous influence of politics on Chinese filmmaking. The political
orientation in Chinese films may be overt or subtle; for instance, the
films discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 criticise the influence of the Cultural
Revolution and political-economic reform, whereas those examined in
Chapter 4 manifest a sense of apolitical and ahistorical nostalgia. This
all comes in the context of a mainstream Chinese film aesthetics that
maintains a balance between communicating the Chinese mainstream
6 Michael Foucault, Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–

1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 109–133.
8 Z. GU
ideologies and developing an industrial film system similar to Holly-

wood. The ahistorical, apolitical, and depoliticised nostalgia identified
in the youth media may be seen as a result of these film aesthetics.
Taken together, the aesthetics of film, the Cultural Revolution, urbani-
sation, media intercultural communication, and other political discourse
can be seen as comprising the CCP’s efforts to maintain regime legiti-
macy. Because of the close relationship between these elements, the effect
of political and ideological discourses on film aesthetics receives signif-
icant attention in this book. The book also acknowledges the effects of
media internationalisation and marketisation, and how commercial imper-
atives work in tandem with ideological prescription and state censorship.
Together, they shape commercial filmmaking, including the ways in which
film professionals appropriate the nostalgic elements of popular culture.
This overlap results in fluctuating tensions between political promotion,
critical engagement, and entertainment.
In order to investigate screen nostalgia comprehensively, this book
examines a diverse range of screen formats: film, television documen-
tary, Internet drama, and Internet short media. It includes the following
popular media products, all of which had box-office success in China:
five mainstream feature films—A Mongolian Tale (Xie Fei, 1995), Nuan
(Huo Jianqi, 2003), Shower (Zhang Yang, 1999), 24 City (Jia Zhangke,
2008), and So Young (Zhao Wei, 2013); one popular Internet drama—
With You (Liu Chang, 2016); two state-led television documentaries—A
Bite of China (Chen Xiaoqing, 2012) and Maritime Silk Road (Zhang
Wei, 2016); and one Internet short series—Li Ziqi (Li Ziqi, 2018–
2022). Through analysing the above, the relationship between media
professionals, industry, and the state is examined, thereby providing an
opportunity to re-examine and re-evaluate the boundaries between the
individual and the collective, between politics and commercialisation, as
well as between Chinese post-socialism and modernity. This book iden-
tifies the emergence of a culture of nostalgia has emerged in China
over the past three decades, in different media forms and genres and
across different generations. Nostalgic culture speaks to, or engages with,
China’s post-socialist condition and social changes, including the urban–
rural divide, urbanisation, commercialisation, and youth experience, as
well as its domestic and international policies. After tracing the uses of
nostalgia, from the critical engagement of “educated youth” filmmakers
in early post-socialist China, to the depiction of social upheavals in Sixth-
Generation works, to co-option by the Chinese government and screen
media industry for political and commercial gains in the work of the “New
Force.” I argue that China’s mainstream screen industry is progressively
losing its desire to critically and aesthetically engage with its political
environment. I attribute this to the complex interplay of strict political
pressure and an emerging, commercialised film market since the 1990s.
1 Post-Socialist China
in the Context of Neoliberal Reform
Any full exploration of the multifaceted relationships between various
nostalgias and their social contexts requires an understanding of the
broader Chinese context through post-socialism and the neoliberal market
economy reforms. Since the 1980s, market economy reform has increas-
ingly influenced the hegemony of the CCP. In this sense, the Chinese
government has “selectively adopted democratic elements and neolib-
eral logic as a strategic calculation to strengthen its dominance without
changing the character of the state apparatus.”7 This negotiated rela-
tionship between the state and a democratically appealing and market-
orientated economy are the main characteristics of the post-Mao period.
1.1 Post-Socialist China

It has been more than forty years since China transformed from Maoist
socialism to a capitalist market economy (post-socialist China). The
entirety of the 1980s is generally seen, therefore, as a period of imple-
mentation of “reform and opening up” and the creation of order out of
chaos following the Cultural Revolution. Then, the student movement
in 1989 can be seen as marking the end of the debate about how China
chose its political-economic system. Since the 1990s, the discourse on
economic reform has regularly referred to Deng Xiaoping’s “Southern
Talk” (1992), which officially conveyed the Chinese government’s deter-
mination to promote the development of the market economy.8 In this
context, China’s economic system has shifted to a capitalist mode of
production. However, its political-legal system remains largely dominated
7 Xiaoling Zhang, The Transformation of Political Communication in China: From

Propaganda to Hegemony (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2011), 23.
8 Robert Weatherley, Politics in China since 1949: Legitimising Authoritarian Rule
10 Z. GU
by the CCP. Wang Hui argues that this “free” and “unregulated” market
expansion is in fact a highly manipulative and coercive intervention by
the state.9 Under the influence of a series of economic policies, China’s
planned economy was gradually replaced by a market economy. More-
over, China joined the WTO, when large amounts of international capital
were invested in the Chinese market, significantly accelerating China’s
integration into global capitalism through its bureaucratically controlled
and market-driven industries. As a consequence of this economic stimula-
tion, China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reached the second highest
in the world in 2010.10 To some extent, the past three decades have been
a period during which China has developed its market economy through
capitalism. Furthermore, the political system associated with this economy
has transformed from a totalitarian-planned economy to state-controlled
capitalism.
This specific economic-political transformation is referred to by Arif
Dirlik as a period of post-socialism, which depicts new economic and
political conditions after the Cultural Revolution. Dirlik suggests:
Post-socialism is of necessity also post-capitalist[…]but in the sense of

socialism that represents a response to the experience of capitalism and an
attempt to overcome the deficiencies of capitalist development[…] For this
reason, and also to legitimise the structure of “actually existing socialism,”
it strives to keep alive a vague vision of future socialism as the common goal
of humankind while denying to it any immanent role in the determination
of present social policy.11
In Dirlik’s opinion, post-socialism seeks to improve existing socialism

by drawing on capitalist ideas. Thus, post-socialism refers to the point
at which the Chinese government reconceptualised Chinese socialism in
the context of global capitalist modernity. Sheldon Lu points out that
post-socialism is not only “a cultural logic” with which “the residual
socialist past and the emergent capitalist present” are negotiated, but also
9 Hui Wang, China’s New Order: Society, Politics and Economy in Transition
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 116.
10 David Barboza, “China Overtakes Japan to Become No. 2 Global Economic Power,”
New York Times, August 16, 2010, B1.
11 Arif Dirlik, “Postsocialism? Reflections on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” in
Marxism and the Chinese Experience, ed. Arif Dirlik and Maurice Meisner (Armonk, NY:
Sharpe, 1989), 364.
“a place for the emergence of a new life-world” and the creation of “new
socioeconomic practices.”12 Lisa Rofel has also argued that post-socialism
can be viewed as a period when socialism integrates with capitalism.13
Simply put, post-socialism is a fusion of socialism and capitalism that
contains some characteristics of both systems. Zhang Xudong further
claims that post-socialism is a historical and contemporary condition in
which the socialist state form and the economic system of capitalism
overlap.14 Therefore, post-socialism not only refers to an articulated post-
Mao period, but, more importantly, marks the advent of a policy of
“reform and opening up,” when the Chinese government decided to
carry out market economic reforms and integrate the country into the
global capitalist economy after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
The term post-socialism is not Chinese in origin; rather, it reflects
how the world understands contemporary China’s articulation of global
capitalism. Based on its specific economic-political system, China has
begun to reshape its own modernity by communicating with the West.
As Ralph Litzinger suggests, post-socialism reflects the Chinese govern-
ment’s attempts to “seek to construct new notions of Chinese cultural
identity and national subjectivity in ways that move beyond the tele-
ology of modernisation that has dominated Chinese thinking for much
of the twentieth century.”15 Indeed, the Chinese government is defining
a new understanding of modernity that is different from that of the
West. Jason McGrath points out that, since the early 1990s, China’s
modernity has integrated with marketisation, differentiation, individuali-
sation, and pluralisation.16 This modernity contains elements of socialism,
capitalism, and even postmodernity. Moreover, along with increasing
economic development, the Chinese government has been trying to exert
12 Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in

Literature and Visual Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 204–210.
13 Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public
Culture (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2007), 7–8.
14 Xudong Zhang, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics (Durham: Duke University Press,
2008), 16.
15 Ralph Litzinger, “Theorizing Postsocialism: Reflections on the Politics of Marginality
in Contemporary China,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 2002 (1): 39.
16 Jason McGrath, Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in
the Market Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 9.
12 Z. GU
its influence on international affairs and to project a positive image of itself

to the world.
Since 2000, the Chinese government has actively communicated its
national image and soft power to the world. For instance, hundreds
of Confucius Institutes were established globally to teach Chinese to
foreigners; many films and documentaries about China’s grand history
and achievements have been produced to construct and reinforce China’s
national image. President Xi Jinping (who has held this office since 2012)
coined the slogan “Chinese dream” to refer to a positive future. More-
over, on March 28, 2015, the Chinese government officially published
the strategy of “The Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road
Economic Belt and twenty-first century Maritime Silk Road” (often
known as “the Belt and Road Initiative”).17 Through this initiative,
the Chinese government attempts to link China’s seaports with those
in the South China Sea, the South Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean,
and Europe, thereby building the world’s longest economic corridor in
order to expand its economic and political influence. Indeed, the Chinese
government has exerted both its economic influence and state-controlled
media propaganda to construct and communicate its national image and
version of modernity. From this perspective, China’s post-socialist moder-
nity is close to and stimulated by global capitalism while, at the same
time, it may engender a new impetus to redefine the meaning of moder-
nity around the world. Therefore, as China reforms itself and emerges as
a new superpower, it is defining a new approach to domestic politics and
international relations.
Compared with its rapid economic development, China’s democrati-
sation and political reform, as components of post-socialism, have faced
certain challenges. It has not been easy for Chinese society to integrate
with global capitalism following Mao’s thirty years of autocracy. As Dirlik
argues, the Chinese government needs to overcome both the deficien-
cies of capitalist development and the intrinsic drawbacks of the socialist
17 Issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign

Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, with State Council
authorization, “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and
21st-Century Maritime Silk Road,” 28 March 2015, http://en.ndrc.gov.cn/newsrelease/
201503/t20150330_669367.html (Accessed 1 May 2019).
structure.18 In this sense, post-socialism is seen as a controversial ideology

positioned somewhat precariously between capitalist development and
the maintenance of Mao’s socialist regime. At the same time, nominal
socialism is crucial to the CCP’s legitimacy. For this reason, the CCP
chooses to maintain the facade of a socialist political state while imple-
menting capitalist economic policies. While both strategies are aimed
at maintaining the party’s legitimacy, their coexistence may eventually
prove irreconcilable. As Wang Hui argues, one of the crucial reasons
for political and social movements, such as the “June Fourth Move-
ment”, is the discord between old political ideologies and the promotion
of market reform, which has created a legitimacy crisis for the CCP.
Furthermore, Wendy Su suggests that this crisis is linked to the tangible–
material dimension (economic, institutional, and industrial structure and
facilities) and intangible–nonmaterial dimension (ideas, principles, and
ideals of humanity).19 Su’s description indicates that the current state of
post-socialism is a kind of unbalanced modernity. The state struggles to
navigate a capitalist system by absorbing its economic elements and inte-
grating within the global economic system while at the same time trying
to uphold national interests and reassert its national identity. The tension
between these imperatives results in the CCP reinforcing its suppressive
nature. Wang suggests that this structural imbalance has quickly resulted
in income disparities among different social strata and regions, rapidly
leading to social polarisation.20 Indeed, this unbalanced system has caused
social problems, such as increased inequality and official corruption. Thus,
the mechanism of China’s one-party system, with the CCP as the only
ruling party, is not subject to democratic and legal reforms in the face of
rapid market economic growth.
The Chinese government is using the massive growth of economic
development to conceal the contradiction between a market economy
and a one-party political regime. However, the public is increasingly
prompted to question political legitimacy that is based on economic
18 Arif Dirlik, “Postsocialism? Reflections on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” in

Marxism and the Chinese Experience, ed. Arif Dirlik and Maurice Meisner, 364 (Armonk,
NY: Sharpe, 1989).
19 Wendy Su, China’s Encounter with Global Hollywood: Cultural Policy and the Film
Industry, 1994–2013 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 9.
20 Hui Wang, China’s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition
(Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2003), 57–58.
14 Z. GU
performance.21 In other words, the CCP’s authoritarian regime may

be undermined by China’s economic achievements. From this perspec-
tive, the tension between economic growth and political oppression is
dynamic. Chinese society is moving beyond totalitarianism towards a
market-orientated economy, which drives China’s high-speed economic
development; in turn, the CCP’s control of this market economy system
may be challenged, as it hinders both political reform and further
economic development.
1.2 “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and Neoliberalism

China’s government often describes its specific post-socialist system as
“socialism with Chinese characteristics.”22 Rofel suggests this description
is actually how the Chinese government deals with tethering economic
reform to neoliberal capitalism, which normalises new forms of inequality,
new ways to value human activity, and new ways of “worlding” China,
of placing China in a reimagined world of “cosmopolitanism.”23 Rofel’s
investigation shows that the discourse of “socialism with Chinese char-
acteristics” is a reflection of China’s heterogeneous globalisation, which
results in social inequalities while presenting a cosmopolitan facade from
the perspective of capitalist development.
Rofel further uses the concept of “neoliberal capitalism” to depict
socialism with Chinese characteristics. Neoliberal capitalism, or neoliber-
alism, is another specific term to depict China’s economic-political struc-
ture. As defined by David Harvey, neoliberalism “proposes that human
well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by
strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade in political,
economic practices. Meanwhile, the role of the state is to create and

22 Gang Qian, “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” New York Times, 28 September
2012, https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20120928/cc28qiangang10/ (Accessed 26 May
2018).
23 Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public
Culture (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2007), 112–113.
preserve an institutional framework appropriate for such practices.”24

Indeed, China’s market economic reform has been significantly influenced
by Western economic theories since the onset of “reform and opening
up,” especially after joining the WTO in 2001.
Moreover, as Harvey pinpoints, however, China’s neoliberalism has its
own unique characteristics. For instance, the common neoliberal principle
that the state ventures into markets should be avoided or kept to a bare
minimum is not applicable to China’s economic-political system. China’s
reform is characterised by its cultural-political specificity, such that “the
party has also acceded to the massive proletarianisation of China’s work-
force, the breaking of the ‘iron rice bowl’, the evisceration of China’s
social protections, the imposition of user fees, the creation of a flex-
ible labour market regime, and the privatisation of assets formerly held
in common.”25 Macro-adjustment by the Chinese government has had
a crucial impact on the Chinese economy. In particular, China’s state-
owned enterprises hold a dominant position in the capitalist market. By
following its particular path towards neoliberalism, China has constructed
a system whereby the state-manipulated market economy promotes its
own spectacular economic growth. Within this context, China’s neolib-
eralism may be understood as an aspect of government activity reliant
on the post-socialist market economy and the CCP’s hegemonic political
agenda.
Post-socialism and neoliberalism have become standard terms used to
depict China’s political-economic society. Both terms are also used to
address various crises of state socialism as it searches for new ways to
develop the country while maintaining the CCP’s own grip on power.
Chinese screen media, which have developed quickly in this negotiated
context, have been further affected by this mixed political-economic
system.
24 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford; New York: Oxford

University Press, 2005), 2.
25 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford; New York: Oxford
16 Z. GU
2 Chinese Screen Media Since the 1990s

Following the Cultural Revolution, Chinese media did not serve exclu-
sively as a political mouthpiece for the CCP; they strengthened them-
selves through privatisation, commercialisation, and internationalisation.
As Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and Michael Keane suggest, while contin-
uing to work as fundamental props for government policy and state
ideology, Chinese media has shifted into new financial and policy struc-
tures and engaged with international partners and trading alliances.26
Furthermore, in the context of post-socialism and neoliberalism, one of
the media’s core political agenda has been to broadcast market-orientated
reform to the Chinese population. This agenda is monitored by the State
Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT),27 which regu-
lates China’s media. Jason McGrath argues that the autonomy of culture
and the arts in post-socialist China is faced with a paradox, as it “must
both respond to the dominant trend of marketisation and cope with the
remnants of state heteronomy.”28 In this sense, China’s screen industries
are expected to continue to play their part in supporting the state’s broad
purposes of maintaining the CCP’s political hegemony, while at the same
time making a profit through media marketisation. In this section, the
above context frames an analysis of the development of screen media.
2.1 Film Industry

Since the 990s, the Chinese film industry has developed rapidly, with
the help of many official policies. For instance, the SARFT issued a
directive entitled “Some Suggestions on Reform of the Film Industry”
in 1993, which abolished the centralised distribution system that had
existed for decades and provided film studios with a market mechanism
for film production and distribution. In August 1994, the SARFT issued
26 Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and Michael Keane, “Media in China: New Conver-
gences, New Approaches,” in Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis, ed.
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Michael Keane and Yin Hong (London: RoutledgeCurzon,
2002), 3.
27 SARFT, Some Suggestions on the Reform of Film Industry, January 1993. SARFT
merged with the State Administration of Press and Publication in 2013 and is now called
the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT).
another decree to start importing ten films (since 2012, the quota of
imported films has been thirty-four per year), specifically blockbusters (
大片, dapian), annually, to be distributed by the China Film Company.29
These policies changed the government-dominated film market. Further-
more, in the early 1990s, cooperation with foreign companies, either in
production or through investment, became a common scenario for many
Chinese filmmakers.30 As a result, the Chinese film market was gradu-
ally getting closer to the global film market. In particular, China’s entry
into the WTO in 2001 stimulated closer global cooperation and integra-
tion between the Chinese and Hollywood film industries. Subsequently,
in December 2001, the SARFT issued a series of updated film policies
that reduced barriers for individuals and non-state-owned organisations
to produce films. For instance, private companies with a minimum of one
million RMB in assets were now eligible for filmmaking and distribu-
tion.31 This round of film industry reform was aimed at attracting more
private investment to boost the Chinese film market. Private investment
became an important impetus to promote the decentralisation, privatisa-
tion, and globalisation of the Chinese film market. “Document no. 21,”
promulgated in 2003, sought to innovate the cultural sector so that it
benefits the public at an international level and supports commercialised
cultural enterprise at the same time.32 Based on the “Regulations of
Film Script Approval and Film Censorship” issued in 2003,33 licensed
film enterprises were required to submit a 1000-word synopsis of their
proposed films before shooting, thus reducing the chance of the final
29 Rong Tang. “A Review of the Course of 30-Years’ Chinese Film System Reform:
The Industry of Chinese Film in the Period of Adjustment and Reform,” Modern
Communication-Journal of Communication University of China, 2009 (2): 5–9.
30 Zhen Zhang, The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the
Twenty-First Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 70.
31 Film Regulation Act was issued on 25 December 2001. The Act went into force in
1 February 2002. In 2003, more regulations were issued by SARFT regarding foreign
investment in Chinese industry, signifying the opening up of the Chinese film market.
Foreign investment could have joint ventures with state-owned film institutions, as long
as the foreign share remained under 49%.
32 “Document No. 21,” the Chinese government, 25 November 2003, http://www.
gov.cn/gongbao/content/2004/content_62745.htm (Accessed 22 April 2018).
33 “Regulations of Film Script Approval and Film Censorship,” SARFT, on 6
July 2004, http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2005/content_63251.htm (Accessed
22 April 2018).
18 Z. GU
product being banned. These film policies showed that the CCP sought
to control core media, such as film and television, rather than the whole
of the cultural sector, thus illustrating greater flexibility afforded by the
commercial sector to pursue economic interests. In this way, the Chinese
film industry has gradually transformed from a state-controlled political
broadcasting system to a market-orientated media industry. This transfor-
mation is still in flux, with both functions evident in China’s film industry
today.
Since the new millennium, the Chinese film industry has been further
promoted by the policies of the Chinese government and the WTO. In
particular, the media “going out” policy, issued in 2001, aims to increase
and extend China’s global influence beyond the economic sphere to
cultural and creative industries. (This “going out” policy will be discussed
in Chapter 5.) Film cooperation and competition with international film
enterprises may function as a form of public diplomacy to shape and
enhance China’s image across the world. Chinese media now seek to
cultivate relationships with international audiences as they gradually move
away from explicit propaganda, while still presenting China’s national
image abroad (as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6). Thus, they continue to
perform under the constraints of the party-state system while following
market rules.
As indicated, post-WTO film industry reform brought about market
mechanisms for the development of the Chinese film industry. Private and
foreign investment has become the most important factor in boosting
such development. An increase in Hollywood imports has not only
offered a model from which Chinese filmmakers could learn; it has also
become an external impetus to promote the decentralisation and privati-
sation of the Chinese film industry itself. By means of this process, the
film market has become a lucrative vehicle for public and private firms to
turn quick profits. Media producers, as Chen points out, are generally
willing to be responsive to investors, respect the needs of their audi-
ences, and focus on a balance between input and output.34 To a larger
extent, the Chinese filmmakers who produced state-led media to propa-
gandise political discourse, while attracting domestic and international
audiences through film production and distribution methods adopted
from a Hollywood model, can be named as the authors within the system.
34 Xuguang Chen, “Authors within the System: The New-force Directors in Contem-
porary Chinese Cinema,” Journal of Film Studies, 2020 (1): 62–73.
They strive to deal with the tension and contradiction between individual
artistic style and the political system, investors, producers, and audiences.
This kind of filmmaking may be described as socialism, but with partic-
ular Chinese characteristics. As an example of its gradual adaptation to
a changing context, in the last twenty years, the term for a state-led film
has changed from “main-melody film” to “new main-melody film.” Tradi-
tional main-melody films use a variety of means and scenarios to project
a positive image of the CCP: for instance, the Chinese revolution under
the Party’s leadership from 1920 to 1949; the anti-Japanese war and the
anti-imperialist battles against Western invaders since the Opium War; the
positive portrayals of Communist Party cadres and their dedication to
serving the people after 1949; and the constructed neo-Confucian ideas,
morals, and virtues. As an example of this kind of filmmaking, the “ded-
ication film” (献礼片, xianli pian) commemorates the anniversary of the
founding of the People’s Republic of China and the CCP as a genre that
fulfils the latter’s propaganda mandate and enables the party to convey its
core values and consolidate its legitimacy. The effect of the CCP’s tight
control of media can be clearly seen in film, TV drama, and the Internet.
Meanwhile, new main-melody films, such as Hero (Zhang Yimou,
2002), The Founding of a Republic (Han Sanping, Huang Jianxin, 2009),
The Seal of Love (Huo Jianqi, 2011), The Taking of Tiger Mountain
(Xu Ke, 2014), and Wolf Warriors 2 (Wu Jing, 2016) have changed the
public’s impression of propaganda films. These new mainstream block-
busters have become the new ideological films. They draw their inspira-
tion from traditional revolutionary themes and figures to represent the
mainstream ideology of socialism with Chinese characteristics, but they
also try to consider the film market, attempting to bridge the gap between
communicating national discourse and pursuing commercial interests.35
To some extent, the system in “authors within the system” does not only
refer to the socialist political regime but also the requirements and real-
istic rules of box office, commercial market, production, marketing, etc. It
is a sum of requirements such as the Chinese social system, moral princi-
ples, and realistic rules. As Suzanne Xiao Yang suggests, China’s media
globalisation does not only strive for competitiveness for ideas in the
35 Xihe Chen and Liying Zhai, “A Study on the National Image in the Main Melody
Film in the 40 Years of Reform and Opening up Policy,” Hundred Schools in Arts, 2019
(35): 125–129.
20 Z. GU
global marketplace, but also for revenues.36 Accordingly, the Chinese film
industry and its new mainstream films are “closer to a Western-style indus-
trial structure, management model, and market mechanism”37 ; while also
strongly protecting their interests through continuous media reforms. For
the CCP, the slogan “arts are serving [for]the people,”38 established in
the 1940s, was gradually adjusted in the context of film marketisation to
strengthen the Chinese film industry.
2.2 Television Industry

In the context of Chinese screen media reform, the television industry, as
one component of the screen industry, has transformed its function from
a political broadcasting machine to multifunctional mass media. Taking
television drama as an example, China’s television industry has experi-
enced dramatic growth since the early 1990s. Annual drama production
has grown significantly both in terms of output and proliferation. China
Central Television (CCTV) launched its first drama serial, the nine-
episode Eighteen Years in the Enemy Camp (diying shibanian) in 1980.
At the same time, it also imported many serial dramas from the USA,
Japan, Hong Kong, and South America, such as the Japanese TV drama
Doubtful Blood Type, the American TV series Dynasty and Dallas, and
Huo Yuanjia from Hong Kong.39 From the 1980s on, many literary
classics were adapted and released through CCTV, including The Dream
of Red Chamber (红楼梦, honglou meng, 1986), Journey to the West (
西游记, xiyouji, 1987), The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义,
sanguo yanyi, 1994), and The Water Margin (水浒传, shuihu, 1998).
These dramas were also successful exports, becoming enormously popular
throughout East and Southeast Asia. For instance, in the mid-1990s,
36 Suzanne Xiao Yang, “Soft Power and the Strategic Context for China’s ‘Media Going
Global’ Policy,” in China’s Media Go Global, ed. Daya Kishan Thussu, Hugo De Burgh
and Anbin Shi (London: Routledge, 2018), 89.
37 Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen, “Introduction,” in Art, Politics and Commerce in
Chinese Cinema, ed. Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press, 2010), 8.
38 Zedong Mao, “Speech at the Yanan Forum on Literature and Art,” 2 May
1942, https://www.marxists.org/chinese/maozedong/marxist.org-chinese-mao-194205.
htm (Accessed 23 May 2018).
39 Ying Zhu, Television in Post-reform China: Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership, and
the Global Television Market (London: Routledge, 2008), 8.
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms was widely screened in Japan,

Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.40 CCTV
and some provincial-level stations began to produce their own televi-
sion dramas at the beginning of the 1990s. China’s first long serial
drama Yearnings (渴望, kewang ), produced by the Beijing Television Art
Centre, was released in 1990. It became the first Chinese TV drama
to highlight the domestic lives of ordinary Chinese people. Zhu Ying
points out that Yearnings ’ success firmly established the multi-episode
serial as a commercially viable format on Chinese primetime television.41
The 1990s, as a whole, became the pivotal era for the development of the
Chinese television drama.
Since the mid-1990s, costume dramas, in particular those about the
Qing dynasty (1644–1911), became popular. The first Qing drama was
the Hong Kong comedy Tales about Qianlong (戏说乾隆, xishuo Qian-
long, 1993), largely based on the Qianlong Emperor’s flirtations with
women, and it revealed amass appetite for costume drama. From the
late 1990s, CCTV and some other provincial stations produced many
historical dramas, including, Yongzheng Dynasty (雍正王朝, Yongzheng
wangchao, 1999), Kangxi Dynasty (康熙王朝, Kangxi wangchao, 2001),
Qianlong Dynasty (乾隆王朝, Qianlong wangchao, 2003), and The Great
Emperor Hanwu (汉武大帝, Hanwu dadi, 2004). These dramas usually
feature the lives of emperors, patrons, and courtiers in imperial China,
in a historical context that invariably includes government corruption
and the social sufferings of the people, as well as external threats from
foreign powers. For example, Yongzheng Dynasty portrays an upright
emperor, Yongzheng, in the Qing dynasty, who fights against corruption
and political nepotism. Zhu suggests that:
Nostalgic for this mythic era of upright rule, the Chinese viewing public
delighted in the contemporary relevance and palace politics of the new
dramas. Subjects and themes that would invite censorship if depicted in
contemporary settings—government’s corruption, political infighting and
22 Z. GU
power struggles, moral cynicism, public unrest, etc.—had a primetime

airing in revisionist Qing dramas.”42
Indeed, the historical period of Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors in

the Qing dynasty is depicted in television dramas as featuring an egal-
itarian economic society with exceptional prosperity and national unity.
This depiction, to some extent, reflected the Chinese government’s anti-
corruption campaign during the period of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
In this way, Qing dramas are used as a metaphor for the political situation
at the turn of the century and leading up to today.
Many television dramas were made by producers originating from
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea. Michael Keane points out that there
are “many international businesses that are beating a trail to the Main-
land with co-productions and formats.”43 The 2000s saw a much greater
integration of pan-Asian markets. Chris Berry notes that media prod-
ucts can no longer be counted as the output of one nation: they may
be conceived in Taiwan or Hong Kong but made in Mainland China.44
In this sense, co-produced TV dramas between Hong Kong and the
Mainland, or Taiwan and the Mainland became eligible to be counted
as Chinese domestic productions. Seeing the commercial potential of the
Mainland China, many companies from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea
set up their branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Hengdian, and Guangzhou,
or entered into various models of collaborative agreement with Mainland
companies.45 In the context of integrated pan-Asian TV drama markets,
the Chinese television drama (including TV documentary) has entered
the global media market as a serious competitor.
In 2004, the SARFT stopped authorising the founding of new media
groups and instead asked existing media collectives to separate their busi-
ness assets from television and radio stations in order to maintain the
43 Michael Keane, The Chinese Television Industry (London: BFI, 2015), 166.
44 Chris Berry, “Transnational Culture in East Asia and the Logic of Assemblage,”
Asian Journal of Social Science, 2014 (5): 453–470.
role of television and radio as public services.46 Furthermore, in 2009,

the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Televi-
sion (SAPPRFT), restructured based on the SARFT, issued “Suggestions
on Separation of Production and Broadcasting,” which ushered in a new
round of structural reform to television and radio broadcasting.47 Based
on this document, many Chinese provincial television stations were split
into two sectors: radio and television for public service (and propaganda),
and business. For instance, Hunan television station, founded in 1997 and
seen as one of the most successful provincial satellite stations, became
China’s first provincial-level consolidated media group in 2000.48 In
2010, it was divided into two sectors: Hunan Broadcasting System (radio
and television stations) and Hunan Mango International Media Group
(the business sector). Through this reform, the SARFT marketised the
Chinese television industry by expanding market access to allow private
and foreign investment entering the Chinese television industry (the busi-
ness sector). In the context of decentralisation, marketisation, and the
consequent expansion of China’s TV industry, the CCP offered more
freedom for the TV industry to develop itself.
The transcultural and global development of the Chinese television
industry can also be investigated in the context of the cultural “going
out” strategy. The Chinese government launched an economic strategy
“going out” in 1999,49 which was not only aimed at buying the neces-
sary resources from other countries, but also exporting China’s goods and
services. Through this policy, the Chinese government planned to support
its multinational companies to build their international brands. Following
the economic strategy “going out,” details of the cultural strategy of
“going out” were also launched on December 24, 2001. As Yu Hong
has noted, the first wave of strategies to expand soft power in the 2000s,
46 “National Conference on Radio, Film and Television,” The Chinese government, 22

December 2004, http://info.broadcast.hc360.com/list/zxzt-041223.shtml (Accessed 25
June 2018).
47 “Notice about Some Suggestions on Separation of Production and Broadcasting in
the Radio and Television Industries,” The Chinese Government, 7 April 2009, http://
www.gapp.gov.cn/govpublic/86/566.shtml (Accessed 25 June 2018).
48 Jianmin Zhang and Dingbin Zhou, “Current Situation, Problems and Future Trend
of Local Satellite TV Development,” China Television, 2011 (7): 54–57.
49 “Implementing the Strategy of ‘Going Out’,” The Chinese Government, 15 March
2006, http://www.gov.cn/node_11140/2006-03/15/content_227686.htm (Accessed 25
June 2018).
24 Z. GU
saw the SAPPRFT invest in CCTV, China Radio International, Xinhua

News Agency, and China Daily, as well as the establishment of Confu-
cius Institutes in universities around the world.50 The cultural “going
out” strategy was implemented for two reasons. First, at the turn of
the twenty-first century, a series of international events, including the
sovereignty handover of Hong Kong from the British to China (1997),
the sovereignty handover of Macau from Portugal to China (1999), the
hosting of the Beijing Olympics (2008), and China’s GDP achieving
second place worldwide (since 2010), all stimulated the rapid rise of
China’s international status. This further prompted Chinese political
leaders to pursue an improved international image which was consis-
tent with its economic power around the world. The CCP’s political
leaders repeatedly emphasised the importance of Chinese culture when
projecting images of China. For instance, on July 23, 2010, former Pres-
ident Hu Jintao (2002–2012) highlighted the importance of promoting
Chinese cultural brands and improving China’s international competi-
tiveness in the international cultural industry as a whole.51 President Xi
Jinping further proclaimed the advantages of innovatively using inter-
national media to communicate China’s voice to the world.52 In other
words, the discrepancy between China’s actual status and the status that
its leaders think it ought to have based on its economic status, stimulated
China’s policymakers to project a more diverse image to the world. In
this context, many advertisements conveying a positive image of China
were broadcast around the globe. For instance, a microfilm designed to
promote China’s national image was shown in Times Square, New York
City on January 17, 2011, which presented the country as prosperous,
democratic, civilised, and harmonious. Thus, conveying the Chinese soft
power has become a key national strategy in new domestic and inter-
national contexts where the Chinese government may set the agenda
through its culture and ideas rather than depending on economic carrots,
political sticks, or military threats.
50 Hong Yu, Networking China: The Digital Transformation of the Chinese Economy
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 138–139.
51 Wen Liu and Guotao Zhang, “Saving the Time for China, Resonating with the
World—The Responsibility and Mission of CCTV Documentary,” Modern Media, 2011
(1): 79–81.
52 Jinping Xi, “The Speech at the Conference of Urbanization,” 14 December 2013,
http://www.gov.cn/ldhd/2013-12/14/content_2547880.htm (Accessed 25 June 2018).
This cultural “going out” was also expected to offset, to some extent,
international perceptions of China’s negative impact on international
affairs and global stability. Controversial topics, such as the CCP’s author-
itarian regime, China’s human rights record, and military expansion in
East Asia and Africa, brought about a negative impact on the Chinese
government. Furthermore, foreign media coverage of the riots in Tibet in
March 2008 was a turning point for the Chinese government, spurring its
determination to launch a full-blown image-building campaign.53 Former
President Hu Jintao pointed out that the main reason for the “anti-
China” tide was that the West had an advanced international broadcasting
system. In recognition of the huge international communication capacity,
the gap between China and the West was huge.54 The desire to combat
“negative comments” was the impetus for the Chinese government to
provide extra funding for its broadcasting system. Some state-run media,
such as CCTV and Xinhua News Agency, soon became primary platforms
for expanding China’s soft power in the world.55 William A. Callahan
points out that in the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games,
CCTV presented a peaceful, civilised China, one that is friendly with
the rest of the world.56 As the mouthpiece of the CCP and state tele-
vision broadcaster, CCTV undertakes the job of promoting China’s views
and vision to the wider world and countering negative portrayals of the
country in the US-dominated international media. An estimated seven
billion dollars was earmarked for external communication after the Tibet
coverage, including the expansion of Chinese broadcasting networks such
as CCTV-News and Xinhua’s English-language TV, CNC World.57 Given
that it was unrealistic to expect the West to promote China’s image on
its behalf, the expansion of CCTV to advocate on behalf of China and
53 Ying Zhu, Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television (New York: The
New Press, 2012), 174.
54 “The Report of The Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Congress,” The
Chinese Government, 13 October 2008, http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/67481/94156/
135472/ (Accessed 25 June 2018).
New Press, 2012), 174.
56 William A Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 4.
57 Daya Kishan Thussu, Hugo De Burgh and Anbin Shi, “Introduction,” in China’s
Media Go Global, ed. Daya Kishan Thussu, Hugo De Burgh and Anbin Shi, 1–2 (London:
Routledge, 2018).
26 Z. GU
Chinese culture overseas has become a vital part of the CCP’s “going
out” strategy.
China’s political and economic growth has driven the country to
pursue greater cultural influence over the world. Accordingly, CCTV
has built different types of broadcasting platforms to expand Chinese
voices overseas in the context of the cultural “going out” strategy. The
process of projecting a positive image of the Chinese government runs
in tandem with CCTV’s gradual marketisation and internationalisation.
Chwen Chwen Chen argues that “if we put it in the broader context of
China’s emergence as a global actor, CCTV’s expansion is a natural devel-
opment of China’s firms’ internationalisation strategies.”58 Chen believes
that the key to the success of CCTV going global is incorporating a well-
developed business model into its organisation and operation. CCTV has
implemented many strategies to propel its globalisation. For example,
CCTV-4’s overseas Chinese service was divided into three regional chan-
nels in 2007, namely, CCTV International Asia, International Europe,
and International America, while the original CCTV-9 became CCTV-
News (or CCTV-N) in 2010 to service English-speaking audiences.
Moreover, CCTV-French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian channels were
established between 2004 and 2009 to target more international audi-
ences.59 In particular, CCTV-4 and CCTV-9 (Chinese and English) have
become the principal apparatus by which to broadcast China’s voices
around the world, starting with Western Europe and North America.60 In
this period, lots of television dramas and documentaries were produced by
CCTV to convey China’s soft power. For example, the twelve-part histor-
ical documentary series The Rise of the Great Powers (大国崛起, da guo
jueqi) was released on CCTV from November 13 to 24, 2006. It depicts
the evolution of European statecraft from monarchy to democracy and
examines nation-building and the territorial expansion of nine countries:
Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
58 Chwen Chwen Chen, “CCTV Going Global in a Digital Scenario,” 17 November

2014, http://theasiadialogue.com/2014/11/17/cctv-going-global-in-a-digital-scenario-
some-reflections/ (Accessed 25 June 2018).
59 Junhao Hong and Youling Liu, “Internationalisation of China’s Television: History,
Development and New Trends,” in Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media, ed. Gary D.
Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 430.
New Press, 2012), 172.
Japan, Russia, and the USA. The documentary highlights that histor-
ical events aligned with social stability, industrial investment, peaceful
foreign relations, and national unity are integral to the rise of great power.
Michael Keane suggests that the emphasis on these elements, rather than
“military strength, political liberalisation, or even the rule of law,” is
meant to publicise to the world that the rise of China is also a peaceful
one.61 Thus, CCTV’s The Rise of the Great Powers unveils China’s cultural
soft-power strategy to broadcast a peace-loving national image globally.
CCTV gradually expanded its international market share not only
by diversifying its channels, but also by cooperating with international
media. For example, CCTV has secured its position as a strategic collab-
orator with the BBC and has cooperated with the BBC to shoot three
documentaries—Wild China (2008), Africa (2013), and Hidden King-
doms (2014)—since 2008.62 CCTV has also signed deals with many
other international media organisations. For instance, in October 2001,
it expanded CCTV-9 into cable delivery and began to partner with global
media firms such as AOL, Time Warner, and News Corporation. By
giving Time Warner cable delivery and News Corporation’s BSkyB satel-
lite service limited access to the television market in Guangdong Province,
CCTV is able to access New York, Los Angeles, and Houston in the USA,
as well as some areas in Europe.63 Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley suggests:
In addition to in-house production, CCTV has adopted three methods

to internationalise and upgrade its documentary profile in recent years,
namely procurement from foreign sources, coproduction and joint venture.
The advantageous resources, finance and an enormous market potential
have empowered the CCTV to be able to target at elite broadcasters as its
international partners, such as the BBC, Discovery Channel and National
Geographic.64
62 Tongdao Zhang and Lan Liu, “The Research Report of Chinese Documentary
Production in 2014,” Contemporary Cinema, 2015 (5): 103.
63 Yuezhi Zhao, “Transnational Capital, the Chinese State, and China’s Communication
Industries in a Fractured Society,” Javnost—The Public, 2003 (4): 56.
64 Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, “Reflections on the Transformation of CCTV Documentary,”
14 November 2014, http://theasiadialogue.com/2014/11/14/reflections-on-the-transf
ormation-of-cctv-documentary-2/ (Accessed 25 June 2018).
28 Z. GU
Through cooperation with the BBC and other reputable interna-

tional broadcasters, CCTV has gained credibility and experience in
documentary-making and has established itself as a major player in the
international TV documentary industry. It has adopted new practices
steeped in the tradition of Western journalism, introduced live studio
interviews, and made room for a greater diversity of opinion. Based on its
international broadcasting system, CCTV not only “presents a Chinese
perspective on issues that interest the world and reports world news
in a timely fashion,”65 but, more importantly, it learns advanced tools
for about media creation by cooperating with News Corporation, CNN,
BBC, and NHK. Berry has identified this situation as “the hegemony
of the party-state apparatus and the marketplace.”66 This suggests that
while an internationalised CCTV must put the CCP’s political impera-
tives as a priority, it also needs to survive according to market rules while
projecting its positive image overseas. In short, CCTV, as the mouth-
piece of China’s government, has carried out many strategies to identify
itself as a comprehensive broadcasting system through which to commu-
nicate Chinese stories, voices, and national images. In this context, CCTV
has further strengthened itself by cooperating and competing with other
international media companies. For the Chinese government, building
a modern broadcasting system through wide coverage has become an
urgent task to break the Western media monopoly, to defend against the
“theory of China’s threat,” and to achieve a higher status based on its
economic development.
In addition to CCTV, China’s provincial, municipal, and rural televi-
sion stations are also important components of its television broadcasting
system. One main difference between CCTV and provincial TV stations
is that as the main broadcasting system in China CCTV has a more
comprehensive and competitive method of communicating the Chinese
official voice. The provincial television stations perform a cooperative
and supplementary function in the aspect of projecting national images.
Since the late 1990s, and even more so after China joined the WTO,
65 John Jirik, “Marking News in the People’s Republic of China: The Case of CCTV-9”
(PhD Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 2008), 103.
66 Chris Berry, “Shanghai Television’s Documentary Channel: Chinese Television as
Public Space,” in TV China, ed. Ying Zhu and Chris Berry (Bloomington: Indiana
the Chinese government has encouraged private and foreign compa-

nies to invest in its television industry. Chapter 5 will discuss CCTV’s
internationalisation through cooperation with foreign television stations,
coupled with its own innovation. China’s provincial television stations
have also undergone development. For instance, some large metropolitan
city television stations, including those in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and
Chongqing television stations have more creative autonomy now in terms
of finance, employment, and equipment management. Based on Chris
Berry’s investigation, advertising accounts for as much as 99% of the
revenue from Chinese television: “the Chinese provincial television has
been transformed from a medium owned and funded entirely by the
state to one owned by the state but funded by advertising.”67 These
metropolitan television stations promote their city’s culture through
commercial, participatory, and entertainment programmes. For example,
as Berry points out, Shanghai Television has multiple channels broad-
casting by cable and satellite to not only attract audiences from all over
China but also from Hong Kong.68
Compared to metropolitan television stations, some television stations
at municipal and county levels have adopted a different strategy to
attract audiences with lower socio-economic status. For example, some
of their programmes are aimed at providing practical assistance to ordi-
nary viewers who live in small cities or the Chinese countryside. After
analysing Let Me Help You (Bengbu Television Station, 2011), Wanning
Sun claims that the programme appeals to ordinary people (接地气, jie
diqi) and functions as a facilitator, enabler, and platform for the resolu-
tion of their everyday concerns.69 Meanwhile, the provincial TV industry
is somewhat competitive with CCTV. For example, SHTV, GZTV, and
QZTV, as an integrated whole, participated in the bidding for the docu-
mentary of Maritime Silk Road, supported by SAPPRFT, with CCTV

69 Wanning Sun, “Scaling Lifestyle in China: The Emergence of Local Television
Cultures and the Cultural Economy of Place-Making,” Media International Australia,
2013 (1): 65.
30 Z. GU
and other local television stations. Ultimately, SHTV, GZTV, and QZTV
won the bid.70 To some extent, these three provincial television stations
exploited their advantages to project the image of their cities and the
Chinese government’s BRI policy to the world.
2.3 Digital Industry

As a new component of the screen industry in China, The Internet
has achieved exponential growth since the new millennium, gradually
becoming a pillar of the industry. The development of China’s Internet
began in the mid-1990s, when China first became connected to the
Internet in April 1994.71 Sina (新浪, xinlang ), Sohu (搜狐, souhu), and
Netease (网易, wangyi) were the first of several Internet enterprises.
On March 10, 1999, Alibaba.com, the first Business to Business (B2B)
website in China, went online amid much media attention. In less than
a year, it made a significant impact on China’s emerging e-commerce
market. At the same time, the Chinese government carried out a series
of important initiatives to embrace the Internet revolution; as a result,
the online industry has grown quickly in the past few years.
Since the new millennium, China has witnessed the rise of Weibo,
Wechat, and other new media platforms. The public space created by
these social media champions a burgeoning field for discussion and the
sharing of information, with the solid support of a mobile network infras-
tructure. This wealth of new media facilitated by Internet technologies
has rapidly entered people’s daily lives, a phenomenon that has entirely
remoulded social relations. According to statistics from Zhang Xiaoming,
from 2004 to 2010, the value of China’s Internet-related cultural indus-
tries grew from US$ 55 billion to US$ 173 billion, representing an
increase of US$ 118 billion, an average annual increase rate of 23.6%.72
In particular, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and other Internet giants have
70 Wei Zhang, “Seven Episodes Documentary Maritime Silk Road Is Coming,” Docu-
mentary New, 1 February 2016, http://www.docuchina.tv/show_news.aspx?News_Id=
188&CateId=7&order=215&ParentId=5 (Accessed 21 June 2018).
71 Fengshu Liu, Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and the Self (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2011), 35.
72 Xiaoming Zhang, “The Cultural Industries in China: A Historical Overview,” in
Handbook of Cultural and Creative Industries in China, ed. Michael Keane, 108–109
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016).
entered the core fields of the cultural industries: many new Internet
“innovations,” such as Internet novels, Internet music, “Internet big
film” (网络大电影, wangluo dadianying ),73 and other “we media” (自
媒体, zi meiti), have been generated by these Internet enterprises. By the
end of December 2018, the number of online video users in China was
612 million.74 Online videos, including Internet big film, Internet drama,
and microfilm, show a booming development trend and have become a
core pillar of the entertainment industry network.75
When Chinese economic development faced this “new normal” after
the financial crisis of 2008,76 many policies for promoting the devel-
opment of the cultural industry and Internet enterprises were issued,
and these, in turn, facilitated the rise of China’s cultural industries as
a new economic pillar and support for economic transformation and
restructuring. In March 2015, the Chinese government issued a policy
of “Internet Plus” which integrated the Internet technology with tradi-
tional industries, as part of the national strategic plan to transform China’s
industrial and economic structure from labour-intensive to a service
economy.77 The Internet in China has become a more tangible and politi-
cised technology and platform than other media formats such as television
and film. It can connect with the film and TV industries to create a space
73 The time of the internet big film is more than 60 minutes but is shorter than
normal films. It is produced by a professional crew and has an integrated narrative. It is
broadcasted through the Internet and the content should comply with relevant policies
and regulations.
74 “Statistical Report on the Development of China’s Internet,” China Internet
Network Information Centre, December 2018, http://www.cac.gov.cn/wxb_pdf/022
8043.pdf (Accessed 26 March 2019).
75 “2018 Research Report on the Development of Audio-Visual Network in China,”
China Netcasting Services Association, November 2018, http://www.cnsa.cn/index.php/
industry/industry_week.html (Accessed 26 March 2019).
76 New Normal is a term in business and economics that refers to financial conditions
following the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the aftermath of the 2008–2012 global
recession. The term has since been used in a variety of other contexts to imply that
something which was previously abnormal has become commonplace. Jing Zhang and
Jian Chen, “Introduction to China’s New Normal Economy,” Journal of Chinese Economic
and Business Studies, 2017 (1): 1–4.
77 “Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Promoting Internet Plus Action,” The
Chinese Government, 1 July 2015, http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2015-07/04/
content_10002.htm (Accessed 26 March 2019).
32 Z. GU
in which multiple agents with different interests may exert their influ-
ences. As Keane suggests, “the transformation that we are now witnessing,
from ‘Made in China’ to ‘Created in China,’ illustrates the state’s focus
on ‘independent innovation’ diffused within regional policy, allowing and
encouraging new networks and alliances between government, individ-
uals, small and medium enterprises and international finance.”78 Indeed,
the Internet plus policy has become a next-generation social infrastructure
that may change traditional industries profoundly, while at the same time
promoting the competitiveness, productivity, and creativity of traditional
enterprises.
With the rapid development of the Chinese Internet industry, in recent
years, the mobile short video industry is also in a period of explosive
development, and has played a unique role in the international commu-
nication of Chinese culture. Short video is a kind of Internet content,
normally less than five minutes long, and transformed by mobile phones.
With the advent of 5G, these short videos are produced mainly relying on
rapid shooting, beautification, and editing, through which they are shared
quickly on social media platforms. Short video integrates text, language,
and video, which is able to meet user needs for expression, communica-
tion, display, and sharing. The audiovisual content represented by Li Ziqi,
Ding Zhen, and other network personalities strives to create a credible,
amiable, and respectable image of Chinese people, and thus encourage
overseas audiences to focus on Chinese culture. As a new communica-
tional carrier after text, picture, and traditional television and film, short
video has become a new tool for netizens to show their daily lives,
record social upheavals, and shape social culture. By December 2021, the
number of short video users in China was 934 million, accounting for
90.5% of the total number of Internet users.79 In 2020, applications of
short video are booming in the overseas market. For example, the popu-
larity of Chinese-owned video-sharing service TikTok has spread across
the Internet to form a network social circle that has penetrated deeply
and spread widely overseas.
78 Michael Keane, Created in China: The Great New Leap Forward (Abingdon:
79 The 49th Statistical Report on the Development of China’s Internet Network, China
Internet Network Information Center, 25 February 2022, http://www.cnnic.cn/hlwfzyj/
hlwxzbg/hlwtjbg/202202/P020220407403488048001.pdf (Accessed 26 March 2022).
TikTok is especially popular with teens and young adults. Young people
in China are using the service during the COVID-19 quarantine to stave
off boredom and communicate with friends. The app lets users create
and share short videos, many of which are under fifteen seconds. It offers
sounds, parts of songs, and special effects to help make these videos,
which often include popular songs from well-known artists (TikTok has
even helped launch the careers of new music stars). Many TikTok-based
memes go viral. In this regard, TikTok can be read as a mimetic text;
imitation and replication—the driving forces of mimesis—are latent in its
platform design.80 ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, used its large
and increasingly demanding home market to experiment with creative
combinations of business model elements. Through this experimenta-
tion, it has developed a unique business proposition that positions the
TikTok app as a hybrid of social networking and video-sharing.81 The
successful development of Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese edition, has been
supported by China’s IT strength, national high-tech policy, and AI-
based recommendation algorithm. ByteDance used its domestic market
as an experimentation lab, testing various elements of its business model
before implementing them abroad. Based on these domestic experiences,
the international edition of TikTok launched a localisation strategy for
global products through business model innovation. To a large extent,
the short video and its platform extend the folk narrative mode, excavate
the rich connotations and empathy value of Chinese culture from multiple
angles, and enable foreign users to intuitively feel the charm of Chinese
culture.
While China’s short videos and platforms are popular around the
world, and have played an important role in telling Chinese stories
and communicating Chinese culture, they have also faced bans overseas
for communicating the CCP’s ideologies or for their ostensibly absurd
and vulgar images. For example, US former President Donald Trump
accused TikTok of being a national security risk, claiming that it and its
Chinese parent ByteDance could access user data and deliver it to Chinese
80 Diana Zulli and David James Zulli, “Extending the Internet Meme: Conceptualizing
Technological Mimesis and Imitation Publics on the TikTok Platform,” New Media &
Society, 2021 (1): 1–19.
81 Yulun Ma and Yue Hu, “Business Model Innovation and Experimentation in Trans-
forming Economies: ByteDance and TikTok,” Management and Organization Review,
2021 (2): 382–388.
34 Z. GU
intelligence services, although TikTok has denied ties to the Chinese

government and claims its servers are inaccessible to Beijing. While
China’s ongoing Internet revolution faces some scepticism and suspicion
abroad, it has won enthusiastic support from its own government, which
sees the Internet as a golden opportunity for another Chinese economic
success.
In short, a major media policy changed at the state level in the late
1980s, which allowed private and non-media entities to produce and
distribute films, television dramas, and other digital media. The primary
functions of screen media also shifted radically, away from propaganda and
mass mobilisation and towards information dissemination, cultural enrich-
ment, and entertainment.82 The ascension of screen industries reflects
technological, economic, and political changes in China, and they have
become a lucrative vehicle for public and private firms to turn quick profits
in the context of China’s post-socialism.
2.4 Ideological Control

The prosperity of the screen industry does not mean that the CCP’s
control has weakened or withdrawn from Chinese media, but rather
shows a managed process of institutional adjustment through which the
CCP not only maintains the legitimacy of the regime but further stimu-
lates the growth of the Chinese screen industry. Zhao Yuezhi argues that
“based on lessons learned from the outbreak of the pro-democracy move-
ment in 1989 in China and the collapse of Eastern European communism
and the Soviet Union, wherein the political liberalization of the media
was believed to be a major contributing factor, the party set out to
reassert media control and upgrade its ruling technologies in the post-
1989 era.”83 Thus, the reform period has been identified not only as an
era of rapid development for the screen industry, but also as a time when
the state’s entire propaganda apparatus has been strengthened.
This tightened media control is evident in film, TV drama, and the
Internet. More specifically, the genre of “main-melody film and TV
drama” is a genre that performs the CCP’s propaganda function, through
82 Ying Zhu, Television in post-reform China: Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership, and
83 Yuezhi Zhao, Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict
(Lanham, MD; Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 3.
which the party continues to convey its core values and consolidate its
legitimacy.84 Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin summarised that
Chinese films should present the “spirits of the time” (Zeitgeist, 时代
精神, shidai jingshen) of “patriotism, socialism and collectivism.”85 From
1995 to 2000, 80–100 movies were produced each year. Approximately
80% could be categorised as “main-melody films” that communicate
the party’s ideology in post-socialist China.86 Through these films, the
CCP continued to maintain its ideological control. Mary Lynne Calkins
claims that the promotional nature of the main-melody film is to “show
post-liberation China in a positive light.” When representing “the true
contradiction in life,” these films suggest that the contradiction should
and can be solved.87 In other words, while these films are allowed to
present social darkness, they need to present solutions that display the
superiority of the socialist system. In the context of the media “going out”
strategy, films, TV dramas, and documentaries did obtain more freedom
in terms of development, but as Sun suggests, China’s provincial tele-
vision networks are owned and funded by the government at various
strata. They use one political voice and promote an identical image of the
Chinese nation.88 Therefore, a documentary that has been produced by
a provincial television station may still propagandise the Chinese govern-
ment’s voice abroad. Similarly, other Chinese screen media also undertake
a political function as the Chinese government’s mouthpiece in order to
84 These films normally restore through a number of methods to project CCP’s images
through adapting Chinese revolution under the Party’s leadership from 1920 to 1949,
the anti-Japanese war and the anti-imperialist battles against Western invaders since the
Opium War, the positive portrayal of Communist Party cadres and their dedication to
serving the people after 1949, the “dedication films” that commemorates the anniversary
of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party,
and the constructed neo-Confucian ideas, morals, and virtues.
85 Hua Xiao, “The Discussion of the Unification of Patriotism, Collectivism and
Socialism,” Journal of Nanchang University, 1995 (1): 30–34.
87 Mary Lynne Calkins, “Censorship in Chinese Cinema,” Hastings Communications
and Entertainment Law Journal, 1998 (2): 307.
2013 (1): 63.
36 Z. GU
break the hegemony of the Western media and to project China’s national
image.
At present, the Chinese Film School (中国电影学派, zhongguo
dianying xuepai), a predominant film aesthetics in the contemporary
Chinese film industry, emphasises that film should communicate a positive
national image and propagandise the superiority of the Chinese socialism.
(for more on this, see Chapter 6). Influenced by this nationalistic film
aesthetics, many Chinese films have earned high box-office returns within
the domestic film market over the last several years. At the same time,
however, their overseas box-office returns remained relatively low, and
the films faced criticism for propagandising the discourse of the Chinese
government. It is evident that many “going out” films adopt Hollywood-
style narratives and plots of individual heroism to communicate a Chinese
voice. But despite following the Hollywood model, this process has failed
to transform Chinese local discourse into global universal knowledge, as
it follows a trend of one-sided self-glorification. Meanwhile, the CCP’s
censorship and control are getting more intense, as is shown by the
number of patriotic and nationalistic stories in Chinese screen media,
often embedded in ahistorical and apolitical narratives (see Chapter 4).
Like the film and television industry, China’s Internet is not a
completely free space. Based on Zhao’s investigation, between May
2003 and June 2004, seventeen online activists were put on trial in
China, receiving prison sentences of up to fourteen years, thereby making
China the top country for imprisoning Internet activists.89 The CCP
has managed to maintain its control over the Internet by deleting politi-
cally sensitive content, blocking websites, monitoring citizens’ networking
activities, and tracking down and arresting offending individuals. The
Chinese government sees Internet security as an important component
of national security, under which censorship is justified as “harmonising”
to order to present a national image of rapid and sustainable develop-
ment. In this regard, any speech violating this doctrine is deleted by the
authorities. Some popular social media sites such as Google, YouTube,
Facebook, and Twitter cannot be accessed in China owing to the difficulty
of controlling their web content, although, as discussed, the Chinese-
owned social media content platform TikTok has become more and more
popular around the world.

(Lanham, MD; Plymouth, 2008), 20.
In this environment, digital technologies, digital media, and platforms

are still expected to function as mouthpieces of the party. Faced with
a transformed media ecosystem in the age of Internet short videos,
the Chinese party-state adjusted its online content regulatory frame-
work accordingly to manage its cultural and ideological communication
in China and abroad. Since 2014, China’s online content regulator, the
Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), has focused its Internet
governance on digital media platforms. As the Annual 2015 Analysis
Report on China’s Online Public Opinion observes, the government’s
management of online public opinion has moved from focusing on
sensitive keyword filtering […] and individual users to targeting online
platforms, especially news aggregating portals and [social media] plat-
forms like WeChat and Weibo.90 In recent years, more than a dozen
sets of regulations concerning platforms have been issued by the CAC to
regular China’s digital platforms, online user comments, online groups on
platforms, and security evaluation of new technologies and applications.
These changing policies, to a larger extent, show an increasing impact
of platforms on its own control of information and the CCP’s intense
concerns about its governance of digital media regulations.
The expansion of a broadcasting system for the CCP not only serves
to project China’s positive image globally but is also frequently related
to nationalist propaganda for domestic audiences. The CCP locates its
nationalism partly within the discourse of China’s past “humiliation and
greatness,” which recalls, more specifically, the unequal Western treaties
since the Opium War (1840) and Japanese aggression (from 1895 to
1945) that led to a situation of suffering for China, known as the “hun-
dred years’ humiliation,” and the wars led by the CCP against both
domestic and international opponents (1921–1949), which are depicted
as a great success. Therefore, the content of CCP’s nationalism contains
its leadership of the wars of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism.
The discourse of national humiliation reveals China’s insecurity about
the past, and is often used by the CCP to maintain its regime legitimacy
in the present. For instance, the humiliation of the Japanese aggression
(1895–1945) is often reignited by a current territorial dispute about
whether China or Japan owns the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands.
In 2012, triggered by this territorial dispute, anti-Japanese protests took
90 H. Zhu, Y. Pan, and X. Chen, “2015 Analysis Report on China’s Online Public
Opinion,” http://yuqing.people.com.cn/GB/392071/401685/index.html.
38 Z. GU
place in many cities in China. China’s media, including CCTV and many
local television stations, connected the territorial dispute of the Diaoyu
Islands with the history of Japanese aggression in order to challenge
Japanese behaviours towards these islands. Neil Renwick and Cao Qing
suggest that the lost territories and wars before 1945 have convinced the
Chinese government that it must not lose any territory to its neighbours
again.91 The discourse of the “hundred years’ humiliation” is constructed
and used by the Chinese government to contrast with a national rejuvena-
tion, which serves the CCP’s long-term goals of uniting its people, lifting
national morale, and reaffirming its regime legitimacy. Prasenjit Duara
further argues that “on the one hand nationalist leaders and nation-states
glorify the ancient or eternal character of the nation, they simultaneously
seek to emphasise the unprecedented novelty of the nation-state, because
it is only in this form that the ‘people’ have been able to realize them-
selves as the subjects or masters of their history.”92 In this sense, the
CCP’s propaganda machine has drawn on China’s historical and cultural
narratives to serve its ideological goals.
The nationalism of post-socialist China, which focuses on China’s
past humiliations, is used to maintain the authority of the CCP regime
in the face of rapid economic development. In other words, the CCP
has used this constructed “history of suffering” to propagandise its
own patriotism and regime legitimacy. In this process, a transfer from
culturalism to nationalism under state-led discourse is indicated. To a
certain extent, the globalisation of Chinese media and the promotion
of Chinese public diplomacy go hand in hand as a packaged tool to
improve China’s international image and stabilise the CCP regime. Thus,
the CCTV’s internationalisation was linked to the Chinese government’s
proactive efforts to gain discourse power and a greater capacity for media
communication globally.
By outlining the development of screen industries in post-socialist
China since the 1990s, this section illustrates the evolving state-society
nexus for screen media production, consumption, and distribution.
Notably, it is evident that the CCP has selectively and strategically
91 Neil Renwick and Qing Cao, “Chinese Political Discourse towards the 21st Century:
Victimhood, Identity, and Political Power,” East Asia: An International Quarterly, 1999
(4): 112.
92 Prasenjit Duara, “De-Constructing the Chinese Nation, Jonathan Unger,” in Chinese
Nationalism, ed. Geremie R. Barmé, 42 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996).
adopted democratic elements and neoliberal logic to strengthen its domi-

nance without changing the nature of the state apparatus. This strategy
is reflected in the operations of Chinese screen media. In the process
of carrying out new media policies, the CCP’s political discourses are
mediated by media commercialism and globalisation. In short, the devel-
opment of Chinese screen media represents a dual phenomenon of
flourishing prospects and a state-controlled broadcasting machine in the
context of accelerated market reforms and global reintegration since the
1990s. The marketised and ideologically controlled media environment
has constructed nostalgic screen cultures since this era.
3 The Construction of Nostalgia

In this book, nostalgia is examined through film, television, and digital
media representations. It is seen as a particular type of remembering,
forgetting, and cultural construction that denotes an orientation towards
the past based on a sense of longing.93 When nostalgia is presented by
screen media, it can be used to characterise different forms of cultural
memory. Nostalgia in life and art is understood as a kind of allegorical
narrative and social commentary that represents a dialogical relation-
ship between the past and present. As sociologist Fred Davis points out,
the ability to feel nostalgia for events in the past has less to do with
how recent or distant these events are, than with the way they contrast
or, more accurately, the way we make them contrast with the events,
moods, and dispositions of our present circumstances.94 Based on Davis’s
theorisation, nostalgia is something one experiences when two different
moments, past and present, come together. This moment signifies discon-
tinuity between the past and present. Furthermore, this feeling may draw
on the representation of the past to engage with the situation of the
present. Hence, nostalgia often carries a considerable emotional weight as
it responds to this discontinuity. To a larger extent, Davis’s interpretation
93 Michael S. Roth, “Remembering Forgetting: Maladies de la Mémoire in Nineteenth-

Century France Representations,” Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, 1989 (26):
49–68; Janelle Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning (Bucknell University Press, 2005),
25.
94 Fred Davis, Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: Free Press;
London: Collier Macmillan, 1979), 11–12.
40 Z. GU
of the relationship between past and present offers a theoretic framework

for this research and provides inspiration for subsequent research.
Later, Stuart Tannock further emphasises the importance of cultural
construction, suggesting that “a critical reading of the nostalgic struc-
ture of rhetoric should focus, then, on the construction of a prelapsarian
world, but also on the continuity asserted, and the discontinuity posited,
between a prelapsarian past and a postlapsarian present.”95 Here, Tannock
draws on Raymond Williams’s “structure of feeling,” a cultural hypothesis
deriving from attempts to understand such elements and their connec-
tions in a generation or period96 ; to divide nostalgia into a hierarchy of
consciousness of said nostalgia. According to Tannock, nostalgia is also
a structure of feeling that can be divided into three stages: prelapsarian
past, lapse (a cut, a catastrophe, a separation or sundering, and the Fall),
and a postlapsarian present.97 Subsequently, some questions related to
this nostalgic structure of feeling emerge. For instance, how is the image
of a prelapsarian world constructed by nostalgia? What is placed in the
past and brought into the present?
Furthermore, as Philip Drake suggests, nostalgia “can be conceptu-
alised as conveying a knowing and reflexive relationship with the past, as a
yearning for a better but irretrievable past, or, in more sceptical accounts,
as emblematic of an engrossing but ultimately fabricated approximation
of the past.”98 Indeed, nostalgia in screen media is a deliberately selected
narrative that may evoke, erase, and create memories of the past by recon-
figuring it as a sense of stability, albeit one that is realised as an active,
intricate, and ambiguous feeling. In this regard, nostalgia is perceived
as a continuous process of memorial construction and reconstruction. It
establishes cultural values and understands the past from a contempo-
rary perspective. This continuous cultural construction is marked by the
process of signification to produce meaning. Andreas Huyssen suggests
that the past is not simply there in memory, but it must be articulated
95 Stuart Tannock, “Nostalgia Critique,” Cultural Studies, 1995 (3): 457.

96 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1977), 128–135.
97 Stuart Tannock, “Nostalgia Critique,” Cultural Studies, 1995 (3): 458.
98 Philip Drake, “Mortgaged to Music’: New Retro Movies in 1990s Hollywood
Cinema,” in Memory and Popular Film, ed. Paul Grainge (Manchester: Manchester
to become a memory.99 This notion highlights the fact that screen media
are, in part, artistic constructions of the past. Nostalgia, herein, is not
an inquiry into the original event; rather, it pays more attention to how
cultural memory is constructed and reconstructed by specific cultural-
political discourse. Sturken also suggests that construction is an essential
characteristic of cultural memory that distinguishes it from history.100
This construction-based concept of nostalgic memory in screen media
reads the past in terms of a dialogue with the present.
The concept of “construction” is identified as a critical perspective
from which to investigate how cultural memories are produced within
China’s social contexts. If socialism and socialist lifestyles are seen as
prelapsarian, for example, then, the market economic reform may be seen
as lapse; and post-socialism and marketised lifestyle may be understood
as postlapsarian. In other words, nostalgia is constructed by the post-
socialist human condition (normally seen as a sense of discontinuity) to
engage with the influence of capitalism through imagining a past time or
place set in the period of socialism. In post-socialist China, constructed
nostalgia has become a way in which different factors, such as the CCP’s
hegemonic discourse, market economic reform, and media marketisation
and internationalisation are assembled and forged together to present
a contested image of post-socialist China. Marita Sturken suggests that
cultural memory is a field of cultural negotiation through which different
stories vie for position in history.101 Nostalgia is negotiated between
China’s neoliberal government attributes, market-driven capitalism, and
the domain of politics. In this sense, the constructed nostalgia in post-
1989 China has participated in China’s accelerated transition from a
planned to a market economy, from a rural society to an urban society,
and from socialism to post-socialism (neoliberalism).
In general, nostalgia is less about what happened in the
history/historical events, but more about mobilising a sense of what
might be called “pastness” to imagine a previous place and time through
99 Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New

York; London: Routledge, 1995), 2–3.
100 Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the
Politics of Remembering (Berkeley; London, 1997), 4.
Politics of Remembering (Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1997), 1.
42 Z. GU
constructed stories. Every nostalgic narrative is an interpretation of “his-

tory”; an objective, unified, and orderly fact may exist, with the memories
in screen media portrayed as its shadows. From this perspective, nostalgia
is not so much concerned with the accuracy or authenticity of mnemonic
retrieval; rather, it investigates how screen media represent the past in
relation to a specific social context. Hence, this book focuses not on what
happened in the past, but on how screen media articulate a structure of
feeling that speaks to the present situation.
Having identified construction as a characteristic of screen nostalgia,
one might now ask what kinds of social context, trajectory, or connota-
tion are presented through constructed nostalgia. Joanne Garde-Hansen
provides one possible answer to this question. She focuses on the repre-
sentation of Holocaust memories on screen and suggests that such means
not only that this event is “widely thought of as a unique and uniquely
terrible form of political violence,” but also that it also offers “a metaphor
or analogy for other events and histories.”102 Garde-Hansen’s view of
memory as a metaphor or analogy for other events and histories can
also be examined through a Chinese film In the Heat of the Sun (Jiang
Wen, 1995), produced after the Cultural Revolution. The 1980s and
early 1990s were seen as a period of correcting mistakes, deconstructing
a mythical historiography, and dismantling of the grand narrative about
the Mao era; this mandate promoted writers and filmmakers to unearth
the suppressed strata of the past. Additionally, in this period, the CCP
needed a positive national image in order to accelerate the process of
economic reforms. As Wang Hui points out, a revised version of the
Cultural Revolution is partially a tactic to legitimise present economic
reform.103 In this cultural-political context, the film In the Heat of the
Sun presents a bright version of the Cultural Revolution that contrasts
with the gloomy and suffocating period depicted in Tian Zhuangzhuang’s
The Blue Kite (1993) and Zhang Yimou’s To Live (1995). Instead, it
depicts a passionate, romantic, and carefree summer, tinted by nostalgia,
experienced by a group of teenagers.
Here, the Cultural Revolution and China’s socialist past are recon-
structed around a post-socialist discourse of ideological liberation and
102 Joanne Garde-Hansen, Media and Memory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2011), 57.
103 Hui Wang, The End of The Revolution (London; New York: Verso, 2009), 69–105.
market economic reform. This nostalgia allows audiences to interpret

memories in multiple directions, while at the same time connecting them
back to the Cultural Revolution. Hence, the Cultural Revolution in this
film loses its quality as an index of specific historical events and trau-
matic memories; instead, it is constructed as a vehicle for paving the road
for economic reform and stabilising the CCP’s political regime. Thus,
this constructed past has a double mission: it compels people to reflect
on what happened, through which nostalgia that could have the posi-
tive effect of providing solace; and it engages with political discourses to
challenge and resist some government policies. This structure of feeling
extends our vision and enables us to balance an anxious present with
a lived past. As Clay Routledge suggests, nostalgia may be a response
to distress rather than the cause of it.104 In other words, nostalgia may
serve as a coping mechanism or a regulatory resource that people employ
to counter negative experiences in the present. The constructions of
nostalgia are understood as an engagement with the relationship between
the past, present, and future, in the context of post-socialist China. At
times, this constructed nostalgia may mediate the contradictions between
screen media marketisation and the enhancement of the government’s
ideological control. Alternatively, it may mobilise individual and collec-
tive identities to challenge the Chinese government’s hegemonic cultural
norms. Nostalgia in Chinese screen media has, therefore, become an
integral tool of both political control and social mobilisation.
Nostalgia not only anchors one’s identity in the present but also
nurtures a vision of the future. This future-oriented nostalgia may foster
a sense of optimism, inspiration, and creativity. For example, after inves-
tigating the post-socialist cities of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and
Prague and unravelling in a global nostalgia epidemic, Svetlana Boym
presents the two sub-categories of “reflective nostalgia” and “restora-
tive nostalgia” in order to discuss personal and historical memories.105
She suggests that the present may feed one’s unconscious desires and
guide one’s conscious actions. In this context, nostalgia embodies a futur-
istic utopia. Boym further claims that “fantasies of the past determined
by needs of the present have a direct impact on realities of the future.
Consideration of the future makes us take responsibility for our nostalgic
104 Clay Routledge, Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource (Routledge, 2015), 26.

105 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 42–50.
44 Z. GU
tales. The future of nostalgic longing and progressive thinking is at the

centre of this inquiry.”106 Boym’s research broadens the understanding
of nostalgia, inferring that it is not always retrospective, but implies what
the past could have been like, thereby pointing to a kind of possibility
in the future. This nostalgic longing has exceeded a sense of geograph-
ical homesickness and turned into a modern temporal aesthetic concept,
an existential experience of exile, and a feeling of rootlessness. To some
extent, it is difficult, if not impossible, to return to a place that has ceased
to exist. Nostalgia keeps the future culturally and psychologically alive
even when the past has been lost and one’s feelings are tinged with painful
mourning. In this sense, tomorrow has become a kind of home, while the
past has never been somewhere to which one can return. Imagining an
illusory past, then, is really a way to imagine the future through nostalgic
longings.
Here, an imagined homeland may not be any place where one would
actually wish to return. People may develop a sense of diasporic intimacy,
which Boym explains as an aesthetic of estrangement and longing.107
They may cherish their diasporic condition rather than wishing to go
back “home.” Although people may remember their old homes and other
outmoded objects and yearn for a lost community of close friends, “life
is elsewhere” may be a more suitable way to depict this nostalgia. This
mental condition allows them to dream of their escape to some imagined
place but to live as necessary in “reality.” However, this is in some sense a
reading of two sides of the same coin. Nostalgia may be a sentimental illu-
sion when nostalgia is constructed as an aspiration. In other words, when
nostalgia is linked to aspirations for the future, it may turn to escapism,
which can be read as a sense of sentimental weakness. In this way, the
search for continuity amid threats of discontinuity may lead to passivity
and cause people to escape from reality and hide in another “golden”
past.
This future-envisioned nostalgia may also be used in politics. For
instance, during his time in office, US President Ronald Reagan (1981–
1989) advocated a supposedly idyllic conception of his country’s past,
characterised by the lifestyle of a small town and its composite institutions,
such as family, church, and community, to promote the development of
107 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 50.
the US economy. Paul Grainge argues that “Reagan’s politics of nostalgia

invoked a vision of America unaffected by the social ruptures of the 1960s
and the political and economic humiliations of the 1970s[…]Reagan
played upon a reinvigorated sense of national mission in a climate of
acute socio-political discordance.”108 Simply put, Reagan implemented a
strategy of economic nationalism (prelapsarian) in an unstable social and
cultural environment (postlapsarian present) to stimulate the development
of the US economy. Similarly, the Chinese government also reconfigured
the Confucian ideology of “harmony” to promote a nationalist concept of
a “harmonious society” and to publicise a peace-loving image of China for
the twenty-first century. Here, the resort to American analysis is relevant
to economic stimulation in the 1980s, rather than to the complex polit-
ical situations in China in which every generation has operated. In this
light, nostalgia navigates the Chinese government’s political, cultural, and
ideological agendas, and even endorses the CCP’s nationalism through
“traditional” Confucianism. Therefore, nostalgia may become a rhetor-
ical tool in service of a government’s dominant political or economic
ideology.
New nostalgic styles have emerged when contemporary technologies,
commercial cultures, and marketing strategies exert their influences on
screen media.109 For example, commercial factors often have an impor-
tant influence on the promotion of nostalgic culture. Grainge investigates
the rise of nostalgia-focused broadcasting networks and wider tendencies
towards the selling of nostalgia in US media culture in the 1990s and
suggests:
The nostalgia network is not about the past, per se, but about niche
marketing and the taste and value differentials of particular demographic
segments. […] In commercial terms, it need not depend on a specific idea
of the past but can designate anything which has been culturally recycled
and/or appeals to a market where pastness is a value. It is not, in other
words, symptomatic of cultural or consumer longing but is an index of
commodities, media products, and programming orientations, that draw
108 Paul Grainge, Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America
(Westport, CT; London: Praeger, 2002), 45.
109 By highlighting the role of technology in representing cultural memories, I am
not claiming technological determinism; rather I indicate that new technologies are an
important factor in the contexts of the politics and economy.
46 Z. GU
upon notions of tradition, or use an idea of the past to position themselves

within particular niche markets.110
In Grainge’s opinion, this nostalgic culture, as a kind of mode, should

be examined in commercial and aesthetic terms rather than being seen as
symptomatic of a sense of longing or loss in contemporary US culture.
Elizabeth Outka further argues that this specific culture can be interpreted
by the term “nostalgic authenticity,”111 which aims to create a past in
new and dynamic ways. Outka suggests that “at the turn of the century
(2000), however, there was an explosion of efforts to mass-produce and
market this nostalgic vision. Such marketing was reflected both in the
rapid rise of town planning efforts such as the Garden City Movement and
in new designs of individual domestic homes (in Britain).”112 In other
words, marketing and mass culture influenced British house design. This
goes far beyond the simple extraction of profit from individual consumers
and becomes a critical perspective to make sense of and engage with the
value of the past in the present.
This commodified authenticity is also identified by Chinese scholar
Dai Jinhua. After investigating “Mao Zedong fever”—the popularity of
the cultural and commercial products related to Mao in the 1990s—Dai
suggests that nostalgia for the Mao era “signified an ideological trend
toward the quotidian and consumerisation, precisely in a form that was
not without irreverence and profanity, as it carried out the final dissolu-
tion of the taboo and the sacred.”113 Mao fever marked a phenomenon of
ideological production that elided with a very typical process of produc-
tion and consumption in the context of an early marketised consumer
culture. This fever provided people with commercial and cultural prod-
ucts related to Mao, but did not necessarily represent a desire to go
back to that period. Therefore, nostalgia, for Outka, Grainge, and Dai,
functions in an aesthetic mode related to the development of technology
110 Paul Grainge, “Nostalgia and Style in Retro America: Moods, Modes and Media
Recycling,” Journal of American Culture, 2000 (1): 30.
111 Elizabeth Outka, Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodi-
fied Authentic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 9.
112 Elizabeth Outka, Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodi-
fied Authentic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 8.
113 Jinhua Dai, Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work
of Dai Jinhua, ed. Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow, 130 (London: Verso, 2002).
and commercialism, while embodying different visions, values, and ideas

to construct a sense of pastness. Here, nostalgia may not merely be
constructed as a sense of yearning for a lost past, but also as a recycled
resource and commercial strategy.
Overall, nostalgia has been analysed as a form of culturally and
commercially constructed memory, to link the past, present, and future.
Nostalgia may construct a past as a “golden age” in order to respond
to, engage with, and even endorse a situation in the present. However,
because of its complexity as a structure of feeling, it is difficult to concep-
tualise nostalgia as a single cultural orientation or experience. It might be
more useful to present nostalgia in its various forms, characteristics, and
styles in different social contexts.
4 Methodology and Chapter Structure

Having briefly introduced the constructed nostalgic culture on the
Chinese screen in the context of post-socialism, this section will intro-
duce the methodologies used in this research and illustrate how the five
chapters will apply these theoretical perspectives and approaches to the
corpus under analysis.
4.1 Methodology
This book uses textual analysis and discourse analysis to investigate how
different forms of nostalgia have been constructed in Chinese screen
media since the 1990s. Textual analysis is a research method that describes
and interprets a recorded or visual message; furthermore, it is a method
for describing, analysing, interpreting, and evaluating messages embedded
within texts.114 In this book, the term “text” refers not only to screen
genres, contents, narratives, and structures, but further to the media
languages of camera angles, mise-en-scène, sound, and light, all of which
work together to construct a preferred reading of the text. Some ques-
tions relating to rhetorical and textual features will be asked; for example,
where is nostalgia located in the texts of screen media? How do past
events shape, and how are they shaped by, screen media narratives and
114 Carl Botan, Gary L. Kreps, Lawrence R. Frey, and Paul G. Friedman, Investigating
Communication: An Introduction to Research Methods (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999),
225–226.
48 Z. GU
media languages? What is the relationship between a nostalgic text and its
social context? What is the relationship between past and present? Who
has created these nostalgic screen media? Who is the intended audience?
To what extent are individual, collective, and generational issues addressed
through the representation of nostalgia? What is the central theme or
claim made in these screen media? How do nostalgic texts relate to other
texts in the same genre or format? Therefore, analysing the texts of media
languages and structures is a suitable method by which to investigate these
questions related to the nostalgia in screen media. Through these ques-
tions, textual analysis may yield a deeper understanding of what nostalgia
means in a variety of cultural texts, which may, in turn, provide insights
into the ideological implications of those texts.
Discourse analysis aims to systematically explore the causality between
discursive practices, wider social and cultural structures, and relations
and processes.115 This method recognises a dynamic relationship between
discursive events and social structures. In this book, discourse is a specific
ideological system and involves a combination of discursive formations.
Discourse analysis will be used to interpret how nostalgia engages with
an ideological system. For example, discourse analysis will be used to
investigate what has been mobilised in specific conjunctures ranging
from the idea of “youth without regret” (Chapter 2) to the policy of
“going out” (Chapter 5). Situated in discourse analysis, screen media
can be examined as a site to reflect on how multiple types of nostalgia
are constructed under ideological influences in their respective social
contexts in China. Drawing on discourse analysis, this book will explore
the following questions, including: how do discourses influence nostalgic
screen cultures? How do different forms of nostalgia engage with, enact,
confirm, legitimise, reproduce, or challenge the CCP’s political and
economic discourses? What is the relationship between a socio-cultural
context and the representation of nostalgia in that context? How do
media producers negotiate multiple, possibly conflicting discourses, such
as the CCP’s hegemonic influence and media consumerism? In some
respects, critical discourse analysis is employed when some chapters (e.g.,
Chapters 2 and 3) examine the relationship between film language,
specific social ideologies, and the representation of nostalgia. Evidently,
115 James Paul Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method
(Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 94–104.
then, discourse analysis is therefore useful in examining the relationship

between social ideologies and the purpose of screen media making.
To a certain extent, discourse analysis, in the context of Chinese screen
media, is related closely to Chinese politics and it has therefore been
used to explore the CCP’s political intentions behind the constructed
nostalgia. Through this critical examination, which is integrated with
textual analysis, a nostalgic culture has been identified in China over the
past three decades. This nostalgic culture speaks to (or engages with)
China’s post-socialist condition and social changes, including the urban–
rural divide, urbanisation, commercialisation, and youth experience, as
well as China’s domestic and international policies. Thus, discourse anal-
ysis not only moulds a matrix about how to investigate screen culture
in post-socialist China, but, more importantly, stimulates future scholars
to critically consider the “truth” and “purpose” of some “common
sense,” such as the discourses of “youth without regret” and “commu-
nity of shared future” discussed in Chapters 2 and 5, respectively. Hence,
discourse analysis reminds us to reflect on some grand historical narra-
tives in China, through which space can be opened for the public to
contest old understandings of individual, collective, and national identi-
ties, and make meanings from new versions of Chinese history. Therefore,
discourse analysis helps to demystify a monolithic and grand narrative
of history and presents a post-socialist modernity negotiated amidst the
CCP’s political discourse, marketised neoliberalism, media globalisation,
and public appeal for democracy. This post-socialist Chinese modernity is
not homogeneous, but is rather a process of cultural diversification and
negotiation that incorporates global cultural elements into China’s poli-
tics, culture, and economy, through which the concept of “Chineseness”
has been constantly unpacked and constructed.
Textual analysis and discourse analysis are considered two suitable
methods for the examination of screen media texts and their socio-cultural
contexts in post-socialist China. However, it is noted that textual analysis
and discourse analysis, as two critical approaches, also have their limita-
tions when adopted to investigate the theme of nostalgia. In the process
of writing this book, a reading of any text may echo my personal perspec-
tives and experiences. I am aware of my own subjectivity (as a sentimental
and nostalgic person) and politics of location (feeling disappointed with
current China’s political and economic situation). I am equally aware
that my subjectivity may have an impact on the interpretation of screen
media texts and contexts. Furthermore, the use of theory has its own
50 Z. GU
scope and context. My adoption of Western theories and perspectives to

investigate Chinese contexts and media, which may bring about certain
misunderstandings of China’s complex situation (e.g., using the theo-
ries of neoliberalism and nationalism to discuss China’s party-controlled
economic system and the CCP’s broadcasting system). Lastly, this book
is aware that the relationship between the PRC’s policies and economic
initiatives, and the creative and technical processes of media production
themselves is not always linear. Accordingly, I share combine different
textual analysis approaches, such as semiotics and mise-en-scène analysis,
to examine screen texts in a multi-dimensional way. Furthermore, media
industry analysis will be adopted to enhance the understanding of the
dynamic relationship between screen texts and the screen industry. A
basic understanding of Chinese and international media industries will
help to anchor nostalgic culture in specific media environments. This
will illuminate the changing tendencies of nostalgic culture over the last
three decades in China. Concurrently, textual analysis, discourse analysis,
and media industry analysis, as three intersecting methods, will hence
be drawn upon to interpret media texts, social contexts, and economic-
political discourses in order to investigate the rhetoric of nostalgia in
post-socialist China.
4.2 Chapter Structure

This book comprises two parts, which are divided into five chapters. Part
I, which encompasses Chapters 2, 3, and 4, examines different genera-
tional and geographical nostalgias in the context of broad and ongoing
Chinese social struggles. This part investigates how the filmmakers known
as “educated youth,” “urban generation,” and “New Force” engage
with social transformations and potentially challenge the CCP’s political
discourses. Part II, encompassing Chapters 5 and 6, focuses on two state-
led TV documentaries and a short video series, respectively, also produced
by younger generational directors. Chapter 5 articulates the Chinese
government’s discourses of “going out” (2000) and “the Belt and Road
Initiative” (2015) to discuss how the CCP’s broadcasting apparatus
communicates China’s image to domestic and international audiences.
Chapter 6 mobilises a culinary nostalgia produced by a private Chinese
company to examine a dynamic relationship between the communication
of CCP’s discourse and media internationalisation in the context of the

construction of Chinese Film School.
Chapter 2 analyses the films A Mongolian Tale (1993) and Nuan
(2001), both of which were produced by the generation of “educated
youth” filmmakers. In this chapter, nostalgic culture is shown to be
attached to a structural sense of guilt. Firstly, film languages of light,
sound, mise-en-scène, and camera angle are used to analyse how the two
films present a sense of guilt as their male protagonists discard their girl-
friends. Further, the status of the female in post-socialist China is analysed
to emphasise the image of the sacrificing female in the films, which is
used to present more feelings of guilt. Lastly, the desertion of the idyllic
countryside and “traditional lifestyle” in response to increasing economic
influences, is seen as the third type of guilt. By presenting these structures
of guilt, this chapter will argue that nostalgia as constructed by “educated
youth” filmmakers decentres the CCP’s doctrine “youth without regret”
in order to criticise the Cultural Revolution itself. Chapter 3 focuses on
the “urban films” Shower (1999) and 24 City (2008), shot by Sixth-
Generation filmmakers. The two films present the city as a battleground to
give a voice to ordinary people, such as small-business owners and local
residents, who grew up in the cities but live on the margins of society.
This chapter asks specific questions: how do Sixth-Generation filmmakers
draw on the issue of demolition of the old buildings to present nostalgia?
How do these filmmakers, identified as the “forsaken generation,” engage
with post-socialist issues, for the working-class citizens who have laboured
in socialist factories? Chapter 4 examines the commercial film So Young
(2013) and the Internet drama With You (2016) in the context of film
aesthetics of “film industrial aesthetics” which aim to produce rational,
industrial, commercial, and artistic screen media products.116 Both screen
media were produced by younger producers who fall into the category
of “New Force.” This chapter asks questions such as: how is nostalgia
constructed through the scenes of university and senior high school life?
Who is the intended audience? How do commercial factors influence
the presentation of nostalgia? Why do screen media after 2010 show an
uncritical consciousness?
116 Xuguang Chen, “Industrial Aesthetics of Chinese Film in the New Era: Interpre-
tation and Construction,” Journal of Zhejiang University of Media and Communications,
2018 (1): 18–22.
52 Z. GU
In Part II, the fifth chapter examines how two Chinese state-
funded documentaries—A Bite of China (2012) and Maritime Silk Road
(2016)—adopt a rhetoric of nostalgia to (re)shape China’s image domes-
tically and internationally in the context of official discourses of peaceful
development and the Belt and Road Initiative. Departing from both
future-oriented nostalgia of Boym and Lu’s rhetorical approach, the
chapter will argue that the rhetoric of nostalgia presented in these docu-
mentaries demonstrates a subtle yet more active way to propagandise the
Chinese government’s ideologies, shape its global reception, and pursue
its targeted audiences. The nostalgia expressed in these documentaries
advances Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream discourse and reflects the shift from
Hu Jintao’s harmonious society to Xi’s community of shared future.
The sixth chapter investigates the Chinese Internet video Li Ziqi food
Internet series to examine how a Chinese private media company articu-
lates a traditional culture with different discourse generated by multiple
cultural backgrounds to resonate with a variety of audiences. Previ-
ously, many new mainstream films used a distinct national discourse that
was highly successful at the Chinese box office. However, their inter-
national box-office returns were poor, and the films faced criticism for
overt nationalist propaganda. Thus, Chapter 6 highlights how Stuart
Hall’s theory of articulation can be used by Chinese screen media in
the process of intercultural communication. The cultural articulation in
the Li Ziqi food video series suggests that rather than relying on self-
glorification to implicitly communicate a vivid Chinese national image,
Chinese screen media should articulate constructed traditional cultural
resources and connect them with a universal discourse to expand the space
for international communication.
As discussed earlier, this book posits and examines the construction of
nostalgia in various forms of Chinese screen media to explore the expres-
sions of on-screen nostalgia in specific social contexts. It thereby provides
a detailed exploration of the way in which the Chinese screen industry has
deployed specific cultural strategies to respond to and engage with social
transformations in post-socialist China. The next chapter will therefore
initiate the investigation of how nostalgia is constructed by screen media,
beginning with the “educated youth” films that challenged the CCP’s
discourse of “youth without regret.”
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CHAPTER 2
Nostalgia and Guilt in the “Educated

Youth” Films: A Mongolian Tale (1995)
and Nuan (2003)
Around the 1990s and early 2000s, the theme of “educated youth” (知
青, zhiqing )—young people forcibly sent to rural areas to receive educa-
tion from farmers during the Cultural Revolution—emerged in films. This
chapter identifies three kinds of guilty feelings expressed in two films, Xie
Fei’s A Mongolian Tale (1995) and Huo Jianqi’s Nuan (2003). Both
films challenge the discourse “youth without regret,” constructed by the
Chinese mainstream media since the 1980s to whitewash the effects of the
Cultural Revolution. The first manifestation of guilty feelings presented
through the narrative of the film is that of a male protagonist who returns
to his rural childhood home to address his abandonment of a former girl-
friend. In contrast to this guilty male image, the second form of guilt is
portrayed through the image of a tolerant and self-sacrificing female. This
image is articulated with the socialist female image shaped by the CCP,
so as to deepen the understanding of the guilty feeling of the “educated
youth.” The third representation of guilt relates to a sense of confusion
about cultural identity in China’s urban environment during the spiritual
crisis of the post-1990s. In this social context, urban residents feel guilty
at having renounced their own cultural identity to strive in a city under-
going post-socialist modernisation. In this chapter, an idyllic lifestyle in

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6_2
58 Z. GU
the countryside is shown to represent cultural roots to which the “edu-

cated youth” filmmakers urge the public to return. This chapter argues
that the “educated youth” filmmakers use nostalgia (xiang chou) for the
pastoral countryside to challenge the discourse of “youth without regret”
projected by the Chinese mainstream media.
1 The Social Context

of the “Educated Youth” Films
The intense Chinese economic reform began in the countryside in the
early 1980s. Rural reform was mainly carried out in two ways. The first
was the dismantling of collectivised agricultural ownership and its replace-
ment with a household responsibility system, which was an attempt to
increase the enthusiasm of Chinese farmers for agricultural production.
Second, Chinese farmers were given the freedom to choose how to use
their land, for instance, raising cash crops, developing workshops, or
deserting it for the city.1 Rural reform mobilised many villagers to work in
the city, thus providing the necessary labour for the development of rural
small businesses and urbanisation. China’s urban reform was implemented
from 1985 and ushered in a wave of change, as millions of migrant
workers began to move into cities for employment. At the same time,
Chinese household registration (户口, hukou) reform, as one component
of urban reform, further stimulated social transformation. In 1955, the
Chinese government initiated a household registration system, which clas-
sified the population into “rural” and “urban” residents. Yu Xie and two
other scholars point out that the normal methods of obtaining urban resi-
dent status are pursuing higher education in a city, joining the military,
finding a job in an urban area, or marrying a person with urban resi-
dency.2 This household registration system widened urban–rural income
gaps as it restricted the ability of workers to move from poor rural areas
to more progressive urban regions. From the 1990s to the early 2000s,
corresponding with rural and urban reforms, rural people’s yearning for
city life further stimulated migration from the countryside to the city.
1 David S.G. Goodman, Class in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), 41–
42.
2 Xie Yu, Jiang Yang and Emily Greenman, “Did Send-Down Experience Benefit Youth:
A Re-evaluation of the Social Consequences of Forced Urban–Rural Migration during
China’s Cultural Revolution,” Social Science Research, 2008 (37): 687.
2 NOSTALGIA AND GUILT IN THE “EDUCATED YOUTH” … 59
Gradually, the household registration system lost its validity and was
replaced by a united resident registration system.3 In short, a combina-
tion of China’s urbanisation and the desire of rural Chinese people for an
urban lifestyle accelerated social transformation in the 1990s.
Alongside the movement of workers from the countryside to the city
during this period, China also saw the cultural transition from the city
to the countryside. More specifically, during the Cultural Revolution, in
accordance with the Maoist imperative “up to the mountains and down to
the villages” (上山下乡, shangshan xiaxiang ), more than eighteen million
young people—the so-called “educated youth”—moved to the country-
side to receive education from farmers.4 This large-scale migration from
urban to rural spaces was first practised within a limited scope in 1953
and reprised in the early 1960s, after which it was accelerated during
the Cultural Revolution and ended in 1979. Some scholars argue that
the movement was in response to economic and social issues, such as
over-urbanisation, unemployment, and social turbulence as a result of the
Red Guards.5 After the Cultural Revolution, various forms of literature
that represented this period as the past emerged. Many literatures and
films turned up, criticising this political movement and expressing suspi-
cion and resentment about the country. Examples include Scar literature,
Reflective literature, Root-searching literature,6 and films To Life (Zhang
Yimou, 1993), Farewell to My Concubine (Chen Kaige 1993), and Blue
Kite (Tian Zhuangzhuang 1994). At the same time, the discourse of
“youth without regret” in some literatures was met by a generation of
“educated youth” who felt less regret towards the Cultural Revolution.
3 “The Suggestions of Stimulating the Reform of Household Registration,” the

Chinese Government, 30 July 2014, http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2014-07/
30/content_8944.htm (Accessed 22 June 2018).
4 Carl Riskin, “United Nations Development Programme,” in China Human Develop-
ment Report 1999: Transition and the State, ed. Carl Riskin, 37 (Oxford University Press,
2000).
5 Yihong Pan, “An Examination of the Goals of the Rustication Program in the People’s
Republic of China,” Journal of Contemporary China, 2002(31): 361–379.
6 Literature of “educated youth” not only depicts enormous individual and collective
sufferings during the Cultural Revolution, but also expresses bittersweet feelings about
the countryside, the lost youth, and the Cultural Revolution. The representatives have A-
Cheng’s novels of King of Chess (1984), King of Trees (1985), and King of Child (1985),
Han Shaogong’s novel of Dad Dad (1985) and Female Female (1985) and Zheng Yi’s
novel of Old Well (1985).
60 Z. GU
“Youth without regret” had an important influence when the generation

of “educated youth” searched for meaning for their lost youth during the
Cultural Revolution.
The emergence of this discourse had its specific cultural, economic
and political environment and brought about a tremendous influence on
social judgement about the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, it may reflect
an authentic consciousness and experience felt by many in the “educated
youth” generation. Wang Hansheng and Liu Yaqiu identify three reasons
why the “educated youth” may have felt less regret than others. First, the
experience of “up to the mountain and down to the countryside” may
have appealed to their constructed selves as kind-hearted, pragmatic, and
hard-working characters. In other words, the suffering endured during
the Cultural Revolution was interpreted as engendering resilience and
courage that enabled the “educated youth” to overcome difficulties in
their later lives. The second reason is that sending twenty million young
urban residents to the countryside helped China to overcome a series
of economic and political difficulties that affected its cities during the
Cultural Revolution. This interpretation integrates the destiny of “edu-
cated youth” with national destiny, through which “educated youth” may
adopt a national identity as a tough but glorious generation. Third, most
“educated youth” were forced to go to the countryside rather than chose
to go. They had no other choice but did what was demanded and they
did nothing wrong when they got there.7 Therefore, most of them did
not need to feel regret or remorse for a choice that was not theirs. The
discourse of “youth without regret” was further constructed, as Yang
Jian suggests, as “glory through suffering,” in the literature of “edu-
cated youth” after the mid-1990s. This kind of literature suggests that
many of the “educated youth” achieved success in China and abroad.8
Thus, regardless of ideas of “youth without regret” or “glory through
suffering,” such a discourse intends to address the Cultural Revolution in
positive terms.
The development of a discourse expressing criticism or support of the
Cultural Revolution is a complex process influenced by historical, literary,
and political factors. It may not be fair to assume that the idea of “youth
7 Hansheng Wang and Yaqiu Liu, “Social Memory and Its Construction: A Study about
Collective Memory of ‘Educated Youth’,” Chinese Journal of Sociology, 2006 (3): 7–10.
8 Jian Yang, The Chinese History of “Educated Youth” Literature: Chinese Folk
Memorandum of “Educated Youth” (Beijing: China Worker Press, 2002), 2–5.
without regret” is constructed by politics alone. Rather, like Wang and

Liu, we might ask why it was the only discourse publicised by the Chinese
broadcasting system, rather than other negative viewpoints of the Cultural
Revolution,9 such as “regret about the lost youth.” This book points out
that SAPPRFT, as one of China’s propaganda apparatuses, chose “edu-
cated youth” literature with the theme of “youth without regret” to
whitewash the image of the Chinese government. To some extent, “youth
without regret” has an intention of transferring the critique about the
Cultural Revolution from experiencing suffering, suspicion and resent-
ment to feeling praise, and thus the Chinese government may become a
beneficiary of, rather than appear criticised by society. This argument does
not suggest that all literature presenting the theme of “youth without
regret” attempted to whitewash the image of the Chinese government.
Rather, it emphasises that some mainstream media have an agenda: to
control the negative discussion of the Cultural Revolution. Zhao Yuezhi
argues that “despite the reform era’s shift of focus from ideological revo-
lution to economic development, the party continues to derive at least
part of its political and ideological legitimacy from the Maoist revolu-
tionary hegemony.”10 The censorship of the party-state has not retreated
from ideological control, but has become more proactive in rearticulating
the terms of its ideological hegemony in the context of market economic
reform. Therefore, “youth without regret” not only constructs “educated
youth” an identity important to the early period of the People’s Republic
of China, but also helps the Chinese government get rid of its negative
reputation. The discourse “youth without regret,” as a technical construc-
tion of the Chinese broadcasting system, shows that the harsher aspects of
the Cultural Revolution as developing strength in the “educated youth.”
This discourse attempts to transfer suffering into a sense of pride in order
to downplay the negative impact of the Cultural Revolution.
In the early 1990s, a new cultural and commercial phenomenon—
paying a visit to the countryside where the “educated youth” worked
during the Cultural Revolution—became commonplace.11 At this time,
9 Hansheng Wang and Yaqiu Liu, “Social Memory and Its Construction: A Study about
Collective Memory of ‘Educated Youth’,” Chinese Journal of Sociology, 2006 (3): 17.
(Lanham, Md.; Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 37.
11 Shumei Lv, “The Tendency of Idealization in New China’s Rural Film Creation”
(PhD Dissertation, Fudan University, 2007), 55–56.
62 Z. GU
many people who could be deemed “educated youth” returned to the

countryside to unearth their memories. In a similar phenomenon, many
revolutionary songs and plays produced in the Mao period were commer-
cially repackaged and became popular again. These cultural products
became nostalgic artefacts related to the cult of Mao and the Cultural
Revolution (a detailed discussion of recycled nostalgic culture will be
given in Chapter 4, in the context of Chinese nostalgia). Influenced by
this recycled culture, China’s revolutionary past was now being promoted
as a commercial and cultural product. Alongside “youth without regret”
and nostalgic artefacts related to socialist China, the 1990s reflected a
cultural tendency of representing (even worshipping) the Cultural Revo-
lution, Mao, and socialist China. The ideology of the Cultural Revolution
seems to reappear within this commercial culture. Cui Shuqin suggests
that “for producers and distributors, the obvious reason for repackaging
the red classics is to generate profit. However, the question of why these
particular political and cultural artefacts, buried in history and neglected
by memory were chosen requires explanation.”12 This rebirth culture has
been investigated by Dai Jinhua, who suggests that:
This[worship of Mao]was undoubtedly one of the social and cultural symp-

toms of both the mutual opposition between, and the deconstruction of,
the employment of the ideological state apparatus and the first appear-
ance of specific public space, the reaffirmation of prohibitions and the
consumption of prohibitions, the reiteration of mainstream discourse and
a voyeuristic desire to view political secrets.13
In other words, the representation of socialist culture is a new narrative

which retells the classic discourse of Mao and socialist mythology under
the influence of the social and political turbulence of the 1990s onwards.
In short, China’s social transformation since the 1990s was a bidirectional
process between countryside and city. On the one hand, it was influenced
by China’s urbanisation and reform of the household registration system.
On the other, it was also a social and cultural movement influenced by
12 Shuqin Cui, Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese
Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), 74.
13 Jinhua Dai, “Redemption and Consumption: Depicting Culture in the 1990s,” in
Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua,
ed. Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow, 127 (London: Verso 2002).
the discourse of “youth without regret” and a recycled culture of retro

socialist China.
Chinese film industry reform was accelerated by rising economic devel-
opment in the context of early post-socialist modernisation. From the
1990s, this reform aimed to open up the Chinese film market and intro-
duce market mechanisms to boost the industry. As reforms continued,
more capital came into this market, which stimulated the Chinese film
industry to be more active than it had been during the Cultural Revo-
lution. More specifically, since the beginning of the People’s Republic
of China in 1949, most filmmakers, working at various state-owned film
companies, did not need to worry about anything they produced in terms
of capital or profit. These films resembled assignments that helped project
socialist China, the CCP and Chairman Mao. After the Cultural Revolu-
tion, however, the Chinese government gradually loosened restrictions
on personal filmmaking. Since the 1990s, it has become common to
cooperate with foreign companies and absorbing capital from overseas,14
which has challenged the status of government-dominated filmmaking.
Thus, more and more films have been produced by foreign organisa-
tions; especially after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO)
in 2001, following which the Chinese film industry’s integration into
the global film market compelled the Chinese government to adjust the
boundaries of its censorship. In 2002, the success of Zhang Yimou’s spec-
tacular film, Hero (英雄, Yingxiong ), signalled the rise of the Chinese
blockbuster.
China’s film industry has developed quickly since the 1990s. Private
capital investment gradually replaced state subsidies as the primary
impetus for the development of the Chinese film market. In fact, the
decentralisation and privatisation of the industry were partially initiated
by the Chinese government to compete with Hollywood blockbusters
in the face of increasing globalisation. China imported ten Hollywood
blockbusters in 1995. This number increased to twenty in 2001 and
thirty-four in 2012.15 By learning from and competing with foreign
companies, Hollywood studios in particular, the Chinese film industry
Twenty-First Century (Durham: Duke University Press 2007), 70.
15 Rong Tang, “A Review of the Course of 30-Years’ Chinese Film System Reform:
The Industry of Chinese Film in the Period of Adjustment and Reform,” Modern
Communication-Journal of Communication University of China, 2009 (2): 5–9.
64 Z. GU
was becoming “closer to a Western-style industrial structure, manage-

ment model, and market mechanism.”16 Moreover, Chinese filmmakers
and films were gradually entering the international film market to compete
with other nations.
Filmmakers Xie Fei and Huo Jianqi both belong to the generation
of “educated youth.” Xie’s A Mongolian Tale and Huo’s Nuan were
produced within the above contexts. Following graduation from the
Beijing Film Academy in 1965, Xie was denied the opportunities to
produce films at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and became an
“educated youth,” working on a farm for four years during this time. In
the meantime, Huo had no opportunity to go to university and worked
in the countryside for nearly two years. After these setbacks to their
careers, Xie finally got the chance to produce films and Huo got the
chance to study painting at the Beijing Film Academy, from which he
graduated in 1982. As a representative of the Fourth Generation film-
makers,17 Xie’s films A Girl from Hunan (1986), Black Snow (1990),
and Woman Sesame Oil Maker (1993), A Mongolian Tale (1995), and
Song of Tibet (2000), are full of idealism and aesthetic yearning for rural
purity. His critical stance in his later works adheres more closely to the
context of “millennial capitalism.” For instance, A Mongolian Tale and
Song of Tibet reflect on the chaotic lifestyle of post-socialist modernity,
through which both films engage with political trauma and a vision of
modernisation in the socialist period. The Fourth Generation adopted
the countryside or minority areas as their subject in order to criticise the
Cultural Revolution and enlighten the public. They are often referred
16 Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen, “Introduction,” in Art, Politics and Commerce in
Chinese Cinema, ed. Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen, 1–13 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2010).
17 The Fourth-Generation filmmakers mainly graduated from Beijing and Shanghai Film
Academy before the Cultural Revolution. Main representatives are Wu Yigong, Wu Tian-
ming, Zhang Nuanxin, Huang Jianzhong, Teng Wenji, Zheng Dongtian, and Xie Fei.
Although they graduated in the sixties, due to various historical reasons they did not shot
films until after 1977. They opened their horizons, absorbed fresh artistic experience, and
explored the characteristics of art in order to use new ideas to reform and promote the
development of Chinese film. They broke the dramatic structure, promoted the style of
documentary, and pursued a simple, natural style and open architecture to reflect society.
The aesthetic style of the Fourth-Generation found historical heritage, reality of national
culture and modern consciousness. The main works are Xie Fei’s A Girl from Hunan
(1988) and Woman Sesame Oil Maker (1993); Wu Yigong’s My Memories of Old Beijing
(1983) and A Confucius Family (1993); Wu Tianming’s Old Well (1986) and so on.
to as believers and promoters of humanity and humanitarianism. They

extend sympathy to kind-hearted people from the lower rungs of the
social hierarchy. However, they would rather maintain distance from
the objects of their description, thus revealing the deep contradictions
between idealised aesthetics and the pursuit of modernity.
Similar to their predecessors, many of the Fifth Generation, such
as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, also present themselves as cultural
critics and enlighteners. Their films are distinctively marked by the spirit
of subjectivity and express a sense of noble, passionate, and profound
emotion. At the same time, Huo Jianqi, a late-comer among the Fifth
Generation filmmakers,18 not only inherits the traditions of his predeces-
sors—focusing on rural places in which to explore national and cultural
roots—but also integrates his earlier personal experiences, as a painter
prior to becoming a filmmaker, into his work. Huo’s films are full of
personal aesthetic style. Postmen in the Mountains (1999) and Nuan
(2003), for instance, are shot in Xiangxi City of Hunan province and
Wuyuan City of Jiangxi province, respectively. Huo depicts both places
as traditional river towns with small bridges and clear streams, unlike
his predecessors, who often depict rural areas as uncivilised wastelands.
By way of example, the images of the countryside in Zhang Yimou’s
films Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1990), and Raise the Red Lantern
(1991) depict “uncultured” rural places. Some scholars, such as Wang
Yichuan and Stephanie Donald, suggest that this somewhat exotic image
of China may be intended to cater to the tastes of Western audiences.19
However, the countryside in Huo’s films is portrayed as an idyllic place;
thus, through this image of Chinese rural life, the films move closer to the
desires of the international film audiences. The film Nuan was produced
in 2003, two years after China joined the WTO, and employed more
18 The Fifth Generation filmmakers refer to the people who graduated from the Beijing
Film Academy in the early part of the 1980s, their work is characterised as being subjec-
tive, symbolic, allegorical, and the representatives are Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian
Zhuangzhuang. They have strong desire to explore the history of national culture and
national psychology through the film structure. The main works are Zhang Yimou’s Red
Sorghum (1986), Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite (1993) and Chen Kaige’s Farewell
My Concubine (1993).
19 Yichuan Wang, The End of Zhang Yimou’s Myth (Zhengzhou: Henan People’s
Publishing House, 1998), 166–167; Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Public Secrets, Public
Spaces: Cinema and Civility in China (Lanham, Md.; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield,
2000), 3.
66 Z. GU
international marketing strategies; specifically, it targeted a Japanese audi-

ence, with one of the male protagonists played by a Japanese actor, and
post-production completed in Japan. This new Chinese image and inte-
grated approach led to the successful promotion of Nuan in the East
Asian film market.20
Two reasons underpin the selection of films for this comparative
study. Firstly, although the Fourth and Fifth Generation filmmakers have
different film aesthetics, there is a commonality in their reflections on
youthful sacrifice and the questioning of socialist discourses, which are
recurring themes in their films of “educated youth,” such as Troubled
Laughter (Yang Yanjin and Deng Yimin 1979), Sacrificed Youth (Zhang
Nuanxin, 1986), and Coming Home (Zhang Yimou 2014). In particular,
these films denoted the rebirth of the socialist culture which subsequently
dominated the discourse of “youth without regret” in the 1990s and
early 2000s to further criticise the Cultural Revolution. Both filmmakers
adapted two famous examples of “educated youth” literature—Zhang
Chengzhi’s Black Beauty (1982) and Mo Yan’s White Dog and Swing
Frame (1985)—and integrated their own experiences to engage with the
discourse of “youth without regret” and the worship of the Cultural
Revolution in the context of increasingly post-socialist modernisation.
Second, both films present a similar sense of guilt, as male protagonists
abandon their girlfriends and the idyllic countryside and relocate to the
city for the sake of their future. This guilt is similar to that experienced by
the “educated youth” generation when they returned to the city, which
they consider to be their future after the Cultural Revolution. Guilt then
motivates the male protagonists and “educated youth” to return to the
countryside to rediscover their dreams, faith and memories. In this sense,
analysing guilt offers a way to unpack the nostalgia of these male protag-
onists and the generation of “educated youth” as a whole. Therefore,
the guilty images of the “educated youth” and the male protagonists
are combined to construct a structural sense of guilt that challenges the
discourse of “youth without regret” in the context of the post-1990s
political and commercial cultures of socialism. Xie and Huo, as intellec-
tuals, witnesses, and sufferers, use the language of film to urge people to
stay vigilant about the resurgence of the Cultural Revolution.
20 Nuan not only achieved success at the box office in Japan but also gained “Best
Film” and “Best Male Protagonist” in Tokyo International Film Festival in 2003.
2 Guilt as Expressed
in A Mongolian Tale and Nuan
The films adapt “educated youth” literature and draw on the filmmakers’
personal experience of the Cultural Revolution to construct a structural
sense of guilt through which to engage with a resurgent socialist ideology
and the discourse of “youth without regret.” Guilt, as a critical stance, is
constructed from three aspects: regretful and nostalgic male protagonists,
tolerant female protagonists, and discarded traditional lifestyle.
2.1 Nostalgic and Regretful Male Protagonists

The “educated youth” filmmakers Xie and Huo use a similar narrative;
they present a nostalgic and regretful masculine image through the male
protagonists Baolige and Jinghe, who, having abandoned their girlfriends
ten years before, return to the countryside to confess their guilt. Their
sense of remorse stimulates these male protagonists to return to a phys-
ical home and is also related to “educated youth” filmmakers’ collective
memories of the Cultural Revolution. This homecoming emotion can be
called xiangchou in Chinese name.
In A Mongolian Tale, Baolige is adopted by an old Mongolian woman
on the prairie. He calls her grandmother and grows up with her grand-
daughter, Suomiya. Baolige gradually falls in love with Suomiya and plans
to marry her after he graduates from university. However, on his return
after graduation three years later, he discovers, tragically, that Suomiya is
pregnant as a result of being raped. The grandmother sees that Suomiya’s
pregnancy not as a disgrace but a positive event that proves her ability
to bear children. She tells Baolige that he should undertake his respon-
sibility as a man to look after Suomiya. However, after three years of
study in the city, Baolige’s ideology of grasslands civilisation has changed
significantly. He cannot accept the grandmother’s suggestion to marry
Suomiya, but chooses to leave them both, along with the prairie. Many
years later, when Baolige has become a famous singer, he returns to look
for the grandmother and Suomiya. When he arrives at Suomiya’s home,
he discovers that his departure led to the grandmother’s death and subse-
quently difficult life for Suomiya, which evokes intense feelings of guilt in
Baolige. Regret for his actions ten years earlier causes Baolige to experi-
ence a sense of nostalgia for the prairie and to atone for his mistakes by
supporting the education of Suomiya’s daughter, Qiqige.
68 Z. GU
The film Nuan has a similar narrative to A Mongolian Tale. It narrates

a love story between Nuan and Jinghe who are classmates in the country-
side around the early 1980s. A troupe of actors comes to the countryside
to perform for several months. Nuan and a male actor befriend each other,
and the actor makes a promise that he will take her to the city at the end
of his tour. However, the actor leaves the countryside without fulfilling
his promise. Later, Jinghe expresses his love for Nuan, though she has
become crippled by an accident. Jinghe tells her that he will come back to
marry her after he graduates from university in Beijing. However, he also
breaks his promise. Ten years later, Jinghe returns to the village to help
his teacher, Mr. Cao, resolve a dispute. By then, Nuan and a farmer have
been married for seven years. Jinghe confesses his sense of guilt to Nuan,
which generates his nostalgia for the countryside and their shared past.
Eventually, after promising to support the education of Nuan’s daughter,
Jinghe leaves the countryside with conflicted feelings.
In both films, what leads the male protagonists to feel nostalgia is their
guilt, resulting from the promises they have broken. The filmmakers use
poetic film language in romantic scenes that depict the consolation of the
male protagonists after they return to the countryside. For instance, in A
Mongolian Tale, a distinct difference may be seen in the two departures
of Baolige. On the first departure, heavy snow and strong wind create
a cold and miserable atmosphere. The film languages of long-shots and
deep focus are repeatedly used to convey the desolation of the prairie
covered by heavy snow and the loneliness and hopelessness of the protag-
onists. Baolige says goodbye to the Mongolian prairie in despair. On the
second occasion, ten years later, the filmmaker, Xie, integrates wide shots
of the vast prairie under the warm glow of sunset with haunting Mongo-
lian music to show Baolige’s departure after he confesses his guilt to
Suomiya. This time the image is of a beautiful, peaceful, and utopian
prairie, through which the audience may see that Baolige has assuaged
his feelings of guilt and obtained a kind of spiritual solace after a nostalgic
homecoming. As Routledge suggests, nostalgia may be a response to the
distress, not the cause of it.21 By comparing the two departures, we can
see that nostalgia, indeed, serves as a coping mechanism that the male
protagonists employ to counter their guilt in the present.
21 Clay Routledge, Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource (Routledge, 2015), 26.

The “leave-return-leave” narrative of these male protagonists is a

natural analogy for a similar experience that the “educated youth”
suffered during the Cultural Revolution. The generation of the “edu-
cated youth” was sent to the countryside to receive an education from
farmers during the Cultural Revolution. They returned to the city, where
they identified as their (and China’s) future after this political movement.
In the 1990s, some of the “educated youth” returned to the country-
side again to recall their memories of the ten years lost to the Cultural
Revolution. The “leave-return-leave” narrative presents a distinct critical
stance against the prevalent discourse of “youth without regret” and the
Cultural Revolution itself. Although the latter has been over for decades,
its ghost still haunts some people, especially various “leftists” and vulner-
able groups in the lower social classes.22 The document “Resolution
on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding
of the People’s Republic of China,”23 issued by The Sixth Plenum of
the Eleventh Central Committee of the CCP in 1981, has defined the
Cultural Revolution as a disaster. However, any discussion of and reflec-
tion on the Cultural Revolution is still forbidden, which means that
this political mistake has never been fully and openly recognised by the
Chinese public.
In this respect, the prevalence of the rhetoric of “youth without
regret” may be viewed as a romanticised sanitising of the Cultural Revo-
lution. Therefore, Xie and Huo, as “educated youth,” both construct
a nostalgic and remorseful male image to challenge the discourse of
“youth without regret,” and thereby possibly correct misconceptions of
the Cultural Revolution, simultaneously warning against its resurgence.
As Daase suggests, “if we understand collective guilt as the perceived
moral co-responsibility of members of a group for the deeds—current or
historical—of their fellow members and their group as such, the notion
22 “Why do Some People still Miss the Cultural Revolution Today?” Boxun.com,
24 October 2013, https://www.boxun.com/news/gb/pubvp/2013/10/201310242308.
shtml (Accessed 26 May 2018).
23 David S. G. Goodman, “The Sixth Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the
CCP: Look Back in Anger?” The China Quarterly, 1981 (87): 518.
70 Z. GU
loses its enormity and apology becomes possible.”24 From this perspec-
tive, the “educated youth” filmmakers construct collective and political
guilt to potentially condemn the Cultural Revolution. This collective guilt
also directly triggers a sense of nostalgia, which prompts the public to
return to the past physically or mentally to reappraise “youth without
regret” and the Cultural Revolution itself.
In this way, some “educated youth” films function as a demand for
the nation to be seen to be guilty and to speak of that guilt on behalf
of the Chinese government. Therefore, the remorseful and nostalgic male
image invokes a sense of cultural and political resistance. With regard to
this, Olick suggests:
The discourse of universal human rights is tied directly to a politics

of regret because its advocates believe that only gestures of reparation,
apology, and acknowledgement can restore the dignity of history’s victims
and can deter new outbreaks of inhumanity. The retrospective gaze of this
discourse is thus part of an anticipation of the future.25
The purpose of “gestures of reparation, apology, and acknowledge-

ment” becomes an impetus to create the image of masculine guilt,
through which the filmmakers Xie and Huo testify to the crimes of the
Chinese government, potentially deter their repetition, and embrace the
anticipation of the future for the next generation. Both films end on a
similar narrative note: the male protagonists support the next generation’s
studies to further ease their guilt, following which they leave the coun-
tryside and return to the city. Both films provide an assumption that the
daughters of Suomiya and Nuan, women abandoned by the protagonists,
represent the next generation, and the future of China. This undoubtedly
represents one of the mental supports that sustain victims: ensuring the
progress of the next generation.
The warmth of the past may provide positive models of resistance to
the status quo while revealing possibilities are still valid in the present. In
other words, this backwards-looking culture contains a utopian impulse
24 Christopher Daase, “Addressing Painful Memories: Apologies as a New Practice in

International Relations,” in Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajecto-
ries, ed. Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad, 23–24 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2010).
25 Jeffrey K. Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical
Responsibility (New York; London: Routledge, 2007), 126.
of longing for another place; an alternative, better world. As Spender

suggests, one of the nostalgic tendencies is to return to an “imaginative
terrain of an idealised past, another tendency, much more future-oriented
in its aims, [which] consists of exploiting the capacity of nostalgia to
expose the mechanised brutalities, social inequities, dizzying effects of
technological change, the spiritual emptiness of the age.”26 Therefore,
youthful nostalgia may have productive and progressive impacts. Both
filmmakers present an image of male guilt to expose the nature of the
“youth without regret” rhetoric projected by the CCP’s broadcasting
system. The redemption of male protagonists in both films creates a
new moral identity, through which Xie and Huo admonish the Chinese
government to acknowledge its moral and political culpability in facing
up to its mistakes during the Cultural Revolution.
2.2 Tolerant Female Image

Nostalgic and remorseful images of masculinity are constructed to empha-
sise a politics of guilt. Compared to this male image, the female image
in both films is equally distinctive. On the one hand, the women in
both films are sanctified, embodying characteristics of beauty, kindness,
human sympathy, and the intrinsic goodness of human nature. On the
other hand, they are tolerant and passive objects, waiting for men to
return while they bear the sufferings of life in silence. This image of
the tolerant female is mainly the construct of a male-centric imagination,
and is articulated with the socialist sacrificing female image to deepen the
understanding of guilt of the male image.
In A Mongolian Tale, the grandmother is emblematic of self-effacing
philanthropy. She adopts many children, loves all beings, and tolerates
her own suffering silently. Her image is like that of the Mongolian prairie
which absorbs all love and hate. Suomiya inherits the grandmother’s char-
acteristic, and she asks Baolige to send his children back to the prairie.
She wants to bring up his children as the grandmother brought up other
children many years ago. In Nuan, the eponymous heroine is abandoned
by Jinghe, but ultimately forgives his betrayal and wishes him happiness.
Both films construct the tolerant, all-forgiving female image through the
representation of the classic Chinese cultural image of water. This is a
26 Stephen Spender, The Struggle of the Modern (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1963), 212.
72 Z. GU
common cultural analogy that depicts the female as pure and mild, like
water. For instance, in A Mongolian Tale, the grandmother tells Baolige
and Suomiya that she has not been back to her hometown on the other
side of Shi Xiang (石像) River for fifty years. She hopes to be buried
beside the Shi Xiang River when she dies in order to be closer to her
hometown. As she says this, running water is gurgling, which seems to
suggest the grandmother’s nostalgic feelings and represents her home-
sickness. In Nuan, the image of water also appears many times, including
the reunion of Nuan and Jinghe, which happens on the bridge, when the
latter returns from the city. The dialogue between Jinghe and Nuan is
overwhelmed by the sound of the river. The clear water seems to tell the
audience that Nuan has been waiting for Jinghe’s return. Here, the film-
maker Huo uses his experience as a painter to create a classic poetic image:
a woman standing beside the river waiting for her husband’s return.
Water, according to classical Chinese literature, is not only a neces-
sary element for life but also purifies the heart. Here, the gentle image
of a woman incorporates the characteristics of water. To some extent, the
portrayals of Suomiya and Nuan as flexible, tough, and tolerant, offering
their kinship to soothe Baolige and Jinghe, may be seen as a symbol of
water. The Chinese classical philosopher Laozi says, “the highest good is
like water. Water is good at benefiting a myriad of creatures, while not
contending with them (上善若水, shangshan ruoshui).”27 This wisdom
has had a tremendous influence on the development of Chinese philos-
ophy and character. In ancient Chinese poems, there are many famous
verses expressing nostalgia through the image of water. For instance, Li
Bai’s “I must ask the water that is flowing to the east: Please tell me which
goes further, my nostalgic feeling or this river?”28 Thus, the women in
both films are endowed with the characteristics of tolerance and purity
symbolised by water, which is mainly constructed from a male-centric
fantasy, and provides a sense of maternal warmth to console the loneliness
of Baolige and Jinghe.
Baolige and Jinghe want to be forgiven by their girlfriends, but both
films also present the tolerant female as waiting to be rescued. More
specifically, the two films analysed here also use the divide between rural
27 Tzu Lao, Dao De Jing of Laozi, trans. Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis: Hackett,
2003), 8.
28 Bai Li, Li Bai Selected Works, selected by Xianhao Yu (Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient
Books Publishing House, 1990), 23.
and urban life as a narrative/symbolic mechanism. In Nuan, only the

actor character who befriends Nuan at the beginning is considered to be
an urbanite. In the eyes of the rural people, this handsome, educated,
and courteous man is a symbol of the city. His performance reflects a
new, idiosyncratic, and superior urban culture. The actor opens a window,
through which Nuan, Jinghe, and other rural people begin to imagine
and discover the outside world. Nuan likes the actor and maintains an
intimate relationship with him, which in turn motivates Jinghe to escape
from his peasant status and become an urban resident by studying at a
university in the city.
Therefore, aspiration for urban status, popularised since the 1980s, is
the main goal that encourages Baolige and Jinghe to leave their country-
side homes. Ten years later, Jinghe has also become an urban resident.
The voiceover explains the reason Jinghe returns to help his teacher,
Mr. Cao, solve a problem. Furthermore, when he meets Nuan again, he
attempts to help her and her family to resolve a difficult situation. like
the actor ten years before, he displays his sophisticated urban abilities,
thus evoking the economic and social imbalance between the city and the
countryside in the early era of post-socialist reform. As Yu claims, “the
main reason that many people try their best to go to cities is that city
residents enjoy many more advantages compared to the residents of rural
areas.”29 For instance, city residents have more opportunities to receive
a better education, a job, healthcare benefits, and access to state-owned
housing. In 1955, the Chinese government issued the household regis-
tration system, which classified the Chinese population into “rural” and
“urban.” In the films discussed here, Baolige and Jinghe are clearly repre-
sentatives of those who try to change their rural status through working
or studying in the city.
However, despite being presented as an urban resident who uses his
status to rescue the uncultured countryside and the former girlfriend he
previously discarded, Jinghe is actually the one being rescued. This struc-
ture is also found in A Mongolian Tale. In the end, Jinghe and Baolige
both pledge to support the education of the next generation. Through
these promises, they not only address their guilt, but also rescue their
countryside and former girlfriends. While the tolerant female is shown as
29 Xie Yu, Jiang Yang and Greenman Emily, “Did Send-down Experience Benefit Youth:
A Re-evaluation of the Social Consequences of Forced Urban–Rural Migration during
China’s Cultural Revolution,” Social Science Research, 2008 (37): 687.
74 Z. GU
waiting to be rescued, it is her forgiveness that offers the male protagonist

his redemption.
Thus, the woman in both films is the image of forgiveness for male
guilt, while she waits to be rescued by a man from the city. The female
characters are caught in a cycle of suffering as a result of the departure of
men. At the same time, the process of soothing male guilt supposedly
rescues the women from their sufferings. Mostly, however, the female
image is one of tolerance and waiting to be rescued, and the male image
is that of guilt and the rescuer.
This double-sided image shows how the tolerant female is articu-
lated with the socialist sacrificing female image constructed by socialist
politics in the era of Mao, though Chris Berry argues that this sacri-
ficing female image can be traced back earlier, to the Republic of China
(1912–1949).30 Cui Shuqin investigates socialist-feminist culture and
suggests:
Under the socialist system, the nation-state offered woman liberation and
the possibility of participation in the social, political, and economic spheres.
Her presence, however, is significant only when needed to exhibit the
policy or ideology of the nation-state. After many “liberations,” the ques-
tion remains: Does the transition from patriarchal family to the collective
nation-state (from jia to guojia) really bring woman emancipation? Her
escape from the family and to the state freed her from the father figure of
the patriarchal household only to subordinate her to the collective father
of communism. From familial daughter to a socialist model, she has no
name of her own, no subject position.31
Under the socialist system, the nation-state offered women ostensible

liberation, as described above. However, the notion of feminism in China
was not exactly in favour of the liberation of women. Its main func-
tion was seen as a political discourse and practice to deal with national
issues. The female was significant only when required to exhibit a policy
or ideology of the nation-state.
Indeed, in both films, Suomiya and Nuan are still given the collective
names that represent a tolerant female and a suffering earth, respectively.
30 Chris Berry, China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (New York; Chichester: Columbia
31 Shuqin Cui, Women through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese
After many liberations, the patriarchal family and collective nation-state

do not really bring each woman emancipation. She tries to change her
position, but the nation-state only supports her childbearing, maternal
functions. Even ten years after Baolige discards Suomiya, she welcomes
him back wholeheartedly on his return to the prairie. Wang Lingzhen also
suggests that the socialist state demands women’s self-sacrifice and iden-
tification with an implicitly masculine model through the promotion and
institutionalisation of their political, social, and economic roles.32 Thus,
the images of Suomiya, the grandmother, and Nuan are those of the
tolerant, maternal and self-sacrificing female, expected to accept all the
love and hate directed at them. This male-centric perspective articulates
the conception of a socialist female image in the context of post-socialism
and uses it to deepen the understanding of masculine guilt. Both film-
makers adopt this tolerant female image to frame the homecoming of
their male protagonists in the context of post-socialist modernity. As
Davis argues, home is a return to safety, comfort, and the predictability of
metaphoric domicile.33 However, this social and cultural home may also
become an invisible mental shackle for women that prioritises the needs
and comfort of the man as a priority.
Nostalgia for the pure and peaceful prairie and countryside can be
called xiangchou in Chinese. This nostalgia reflects the capacity of nature
to support the homecoming of Baolige and Jinghe, and to ease their guilt.
Rey Chow suggests that “the filmic fascination with nature, which is a
legacy of the rural imperative of the Cultural Revolution […] is insep-
arable from a deep sense of nature’s energy and destructiveness, and,
with it, the futility of human endeavour.”34 Here, images of the land,
village, countryside, and prairie are captured in such a way as to depict
the women as emblematic of nature itself, with the power to absorb all
happiness and evil and become a spiritual home for male urban residents
in the context of post-socialist modernity. Thus, the frame-by-frame shots
of the Mongolian prairie and mountains, along with a beautiful village in
32 Lingzhen Wang, “Socialist Cinema and Female Authorship: Overdetermination and

Subjective Revisions,” in Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts, ed. Lingzhen
Wang, 17 (New York; Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2011).
34 Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary
Chinese Cinema (New York; Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1995), 39.
76 Z. GU
both films, indicate the filmmakers’ intentions to represent a woman as

the eternal earth and silent support for male homecoming. This constructs
the female as a tolerant, suffering, and sacrificial image connected to the
earth.
It is evident that the nostalgia in these films, the pure and utopian
countryside and prairie, and the tolerant female image are portrayed
through very male-centric perspectives. The woman as a symbol of
the countryside and prairie suggests that the female image is some-
what indigenous, which according to certain prejudices means primitive.
The male protagonists are able to go out in search of their dreams,
while the women must stay at home to wait for their return. As Chow
suggests, “women occupy the traditional spaces of frustrated, dissatis-
fied, or tortured young wife, widow, mother, adulteress, and concubine,
who despite their strength of character remain always trapped in a hope-
less situation.”35 In this respect, Suomiya and Nuan are symbols of
the Chinese female, endowed with a tolerant “quintessence” in keeping
with male fantasy. Therefore, the homecoming of Baolige and Jinghe is
exchanged with the sacrifices and sufferings of Suomiya and Nuan. Their
tolerance becomes both source and solution for the men’s guilt.
The tolerant and sacrificial female image does not necessarily mean
that female protagonists are resigned to their status; they resist their
destiny, and that of their daughters, as helpless and uncultured women.
For instance, although Suomiya has no opportunity to get an education
herself, she tries to support her daughter Qiqige’s studies by working for
the school for free. She does not want her daughter to experience the
suffering she has felt. Nuan strives to pursue her own future through an
intimate relationship with the actor. She refuses to go with the troupe to
a small city; she wants the chance to go to a larger, provincial city and
leave the countryside thoroughly behind. Therefore, it is not only men
who aspire to an urban lifestyle; women share that desire too. In Nuan
in particular, the repeated image of a swing depicts this aspiration for
the city and urban status. Nuan and Jinghe often talk about their dreams
together when they play on it; the swing serves as a vehicle that encour-
ages them to imagine their futures. Jinghe asks Nuan what she sees from
her vantage point on the swing, and Nuan replies that she sees Beijing and
35 Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary

Chinese Cinema (New York; Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1995), 44.
Tiananmen Square.36 The filmmaker uses close-ups, close-shots, long-

shots, and wide-angled shots to show this scene. Thus, the swing is like
a telescope through which Jinghe and Nuan imagine their future in the
city. Through such imagery, we understand that the female characters in
both these films are fighting for their future. What they are fighting for,
therefore, is both their love and, more importantly, the opportunity to
change their rural status.
Xiao HongFrom this perspective, the stories of Suomiya and Nuan may
be understood through the lens of the Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound,
in the sense that contemporary women fail to change their sacrificial
destinies. Both films manifest a deepening guilt over this self-sacrificing
and helpless female image, as the filmmakers reaffirm the unbalanced
relationship between the countryside (rural people) and the city (urban
residents) through the female’s image. This imbalance is reflected in the
fact that it is impossible for Jinghe to bring Nuan’s daughter to study
in the city. People like Baolige and Jinghe who step out of the deprived
countryside and enter the comfortable city, are unlikely to feel compelled
to save that countryside. The woman is therefore left struggling in a
situation where she can only wait and suffer. Neither of the films is femi-
nist, but in Xie’s previous film, A Girl from Hunan (1986), we can see
a distinct criticism of the inequality between men and women in early
post-socialist China. Huo’s film Falling Flowers (2013) adopts a delicate
perspective to depict the legendary life of a famous female writer Xiao
Hong (萧红, 1911–1942) in the period of the Republic of China. There-
fore, both filmmakers have at least some consciousness of a narcissistic and
oppressive patriarchal imagination, and criticise it by constructing tolerant
and self-sacrificing female images. In short, the man tries to assuage his
guilt through homecoming and the woman’s warmth and understanding.
However, the woman is falling into a political and patriarchal trap, as
shown by a representation of guilt that challenges the discourse of “youth
without regret.”
The tolerant female, idyllic countryside and clear water are integrated
as a whole to evoke a sense of spiritual refuge for Baolige, Jinghe, urban
residents and the “educated youth” generation in general. In this situa-
tion, the woman and the countryside are not only the rescued, but are also
36 Beijing is the capital of China and Tiananmen Square is the centre of Beijing.
78 Z. GU
the saviours who provide hope to console urban residents in their lone-
liness. Additionally, one may also understand the accepting female image
from the story of Odysseus in which men alienate women (who usually
remain at home like Penelope, while men wander the world and experi-
ence homesickness)37 ; or Sigmund Freud’s theory of the woman’s womb
to explain the male fantasy as a wish to return to their eternal origin (of
the mother).38 From Odysseus’s story and Freud’s theory, it seems that
returning to the forgiving female and the natural maternal origin is both
a wish and an instinct of (male) human consciousness. In the works of
“educated youth” filmmakers, this maternal origin (home) is constructed
from a very male-centric perspective. Here, nostalgia and “home” relate
to the woman’s forgiving character, becoming a cultural construction that
forms an idyllic togetherness to console the man’s guilt.
The tolerant female image, the idyllic countryside, and motherhood
are embodiments of rural China. The analysis of the female character
offers an analogy with the nation; ancient China’s land, like the women
in these films, has experienced suffering because of cultural and political
oppression. This suffering female is conflated with the national image by
male fantasy in order to console masculine guilt, and to further represent
sufferers from the generation of the “educated youth” and those who
suffered in the Cultural Revolution. Through the presentation of these
suffering beings, the filmmakers construct an impression of guilt about
the sacrificial female image, with which they deepen the understanding of
male guilt, present a tragic destiny, criticise the Chinese patriarchal system,
and challenge the discourse of “youth without regret.”
2.3 Guilt for Discarding Agrarian Society and Cultural Identity

Baolige and Jinghe not only betray their girlfriends but also discard the
pure countryside where they spent their youth. In another words, they
give up agrarian society and the heart-warming sense of home in the
countryside and embrace consumerism in the context of Chinese urban-
isation since the 1990s. This supposed betrayal is similar to the situation
in which the “educated youth” left the countryside for the city after the
37 Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. Valdés, “Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern:
A Dialogue,” http://revistas.unam.mx/index.php/poligrafias/article/viewFile/31312/
28976 (Accessed 26 October 2017).
38 Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers (New York: Basic, 1959), 368–407.
Cultural Revolution. Therefore, the “educated youth” filmmakers draw

on the betrayal of their spiritual home by both men as a kind of analogy,
to express their guilt about loosing cultural identity, to rewrite a desire
for redemptive memory, and, once again, to challenge the discourse of
“youth without regret.”
Baolige and Jinghe are representative of people who were influenced
by the “cultural fever” of the 1980s. They leave the countryside for the
city in search of their future and more advanced knowledge coming from
the West. China gradually connected to global modernity following the
policy of “reform and opening up” implemented in 1978. As Wang Jing
suggests, the 1980s were a period in which miracles and superstition
triumphed over rational forces; a period in which China was seeking inspi-
ration from the symbols of ancient civilisation, such as the Great Wall and
the dragon.39 The 1980s as a whole were seen as a period of optimism
and idealism, which accelerated after the end of Mao’s authoritarian rule.
At the same time, many Western research methods and ideologies in the
natural and social sciences, such as Sartre’s existentialism, Freud’s psycho-
analysis and Nietzsche’s philosophy, were introduced into China from
the early 1980s onwards.40 Therefore, the 1980s was seen as not only
a period of reflection on the Cultural Revolution, but also of learning
from the West. This period was therefore depicted as a time of “cultural
fever.”41
In A Mongolian Tale, Baolige is influenced by this cultural fever. When
he comes back from the city after graduating from university, he finds
Suomiya pregnant. What makes him angry, however, is that Suomiya and
the grandmother are dedicating all their love to this baby. The grand-
mother, as a traditional Mongolian woman, thinks that it is fortunate that
a woman has the ability to conceive a baby. However, from Baolige’s
perspective, their apparent indifference to Suomiya’s rape is unendurable;
this creates tremendous loneliness, confusion, and desperation for him,
which causes him to leave the prairie (the unenlightened rural area)
39 Jing Wang, High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China
(Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1996), 38.
40 Keqiang Fang, “Reinvestigation of the Literature Trend of ‘Searching Root’ in the
1980s,” Quarterly Journal of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, 2001 (1): 184.
41 Jilin Xu, “The Dilemma of Cultural Identity-the Anti-Westernization Ideological
Trend in China’s Intellectual Circles in the 1990s,” Journal of East China University of
Science and Technology, 1996 (4): 15.
80 Z. GU
in search of modernity in the city. In the event of Baolige’s departure

we may recognise two different cultures: the countryside (which may
represent the Mongolian ethnicity) and the city (which may represent
Han ethnicity). As Pan Yihong suggests “the Han being agricultural,
Confucian, conservative, submissive and soft as sheep, under an author-
itarian power symbolized by a dragon totem; and the Mongols being
pastoral, nomadic, mythical, spiritual, full of valour and vigour and love
of freedom, and unyielding, unified under the wolf totem.”42
Baolige grows up in the Mongolian prairie, but he receives an educa-
tion in a modern educational system. As a Mongolian, however, he has
access to his collective culture. He has a straightforward character: he likes
horse-riding and playing a traditional Mongolian instrument. However, as
a modern educated intellectual, he can accept neither Suomiya’s rape nor
the pregnancy that results. His departure may therefore be seen as the
result of conflict between the different cultures. Baolige sees the tragedy
of Suomiya from the perspective of modern moral principles. The baby in
her womb reminds him constantly that the purity of their love has disap-
peared, and he will search for his new and modern lifestyle in the city.
This reflects the 1980s as a time when the Chinese people were searching
for their (and China’s) modernity in the context of intense urbanisation
and information from the West.
This cultural fever and the pursuit of a humanist spirit in the 1980s
was, however, swallowed by commodification in the 1990s. The city does
not, after all, provide an ideal life. The period after the early 1990s is seen
not only as an era of increasing economic development but also of the
search for a humanist spirit that has somehow been lost in the process of
commercialisation. Jason McGrath points out that this period was charac-
terised by “money worship, the sacrifice of principle for profit, the loss of
ideals, the disintegration of ethics. The 1990s marked a return to ques-
tions of capitalist modernity that had been bracketed for decades by the
very different utopian vision of modernity offered by Maoism.”43 That
is, the idealism and humanist spirit of the 1980s were obscured by post-
socialist market economic reform in the 1990s. Thus, the 1990s were
not only seen as an era of increasing economic development but also as
42 Yihong Pan, “Revelation of the Grassland: The Han Sent Down Youths in Inner
Mongolia,” Asian Ethnicity, 2006 (3): 237.
the Market (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008), 32.
a time that sought to regain the humanist spirit lost in the process of
market economic reform. The culture related to Mao and socialism in
the 1990s has had a real and political significance for the reiteration of
idealism in this new social context. As Dai suggests, “the popular swelling
of ‘Mao Zedong fever’ signifies the longing of people for a sense of trust
and of ‘security’ in society, the memory of an age that, while not pros-
perous, still neither knew hunger nor felt threatened.”44 Through this
imaginary redemption and road of return, people—in particular urban
residents—looked for an age of idealism that featured heroes and had less
commerce and consumerism. As Jiang and Xie suggest, “spiritual crisis is a
big issue which is commonly encountered by modern human beings espe-
cially in the last decades when technology promotes the development of
society rapidly… now, many intellectuals think that people need spiritual
sustenance, reflection, and reconstruction.”45 Their comments express an
intense clash between the absorption of Western ideologies and the desire
to return to traditional cultures as China searched for its modernity during
post-socialism.
To a certain extent, the nostalgia that envisions a return to tradi-
tional culture to stabilise cultural and national identities may be deemed
a conservative ideology that seeks to address the issues of modernity.
However, this is how some intellectuals among the “educated youth”
hoped to resolve Chinese social and cultural issues in the context of
aggressive post-socialist capitalism. Furthermore, while people enjoyed
the economic dividends of capitalism, they also experienced confusion in
the face of fierce competition, a bustling urban lifestyle, utilitarianism, and
pragmatism, and a social moral crisis. All these factors combined to create
a kind of cultural shock. Therefore, nostalgia for the countryside and the
prairie, both in film and reality, might be seen as a way to construct a
coherent self-narrative that compensates for the discontinuity between
present and past; this narrative takes people back not only to a place or
a time they associate with personal integrity and psychic well-being but
also to native soil and a traditional culture that allows them to regain their
national and cultural identity in new contexts.

ed. Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow, 128 (London: Verso, 2002).
45 Wei Jiang and Fei Xie, The Works of Xie Fei (Beijing: China Film Press, 1998),
300–301.
82 Z. GU
The filmmakers present a social transformation between the country-

side and the city in the context of unprecedented large-scale urbanisation
that started in the early 1990s. When post-socialist modernity comes to
China, the yearning for the city impels Baolige and Jinghe to leave home
to achieve their aspirations. In the eyes of these two male protagonists,
the countryside is an unenlightened place compared with the city. Jinghe’s
longing for urban life, which entails his rejection of the status of farmer,
is the real reason that stops him from replying to Nuan. One could
argue that Baolige and Jinghe are cowardly and irresponsible, but it is
more appropriate to situate them within a social context in which people
strived for their dreams, wealth, and urban status in an early period of
China’s market reform. The conflict between sense and sensibility presents
a somewhat contradictory feeling that people like Baolige and Jinghe are
subconsciously or instinctively abandoning their rural identity by going
to the city in the face of China’s post-socialist modernisation. Meanwhile,
in this process, they also feel guilty about the people, countryside and
culture they have discarded. Wang Ban suggests:
The village has become a venerable image, a favourite haven, resonating

to a general nostalgic desire for authentic experience, which was doubly
removed from the real referent, can be attributed to an intensified loss of
authenticity and innocence on the more accelerated socio-economic devel-
opment and also has wide collective resonance in the capitalist sociocultural
changes.46
Therefore, the filmmakers see the countryside and prairie as a cultural

repository to nourish a more local and adhesive culture in order to resist
the incoming Western theories, knowledge, and post-socialist commercial
culture.
Baolige and Jinghe represent the conflict inherent in this social issue
as it affected the former “educated youth” generation. Based on Yang’s
research, from the 1990s onwards, many of the “educated youth” began
to become unsettled as a result of burgeoning social and cultural transfor-
mation. One of the most serious problems was that 40–60% of the total
46 Ban Wang, Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern
China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), 189.
laid-off workforce in 1998 was the former “educated youth.”47 A kind of

disorientation afflicted these former “educated youth” post-1990s, when
China’s society was experiencing an economic and cultural transforma-
tion, which in turn propelled this generation of the “educated youth” to
reflect on what caused them to suffer this situation. As Yang suggests, “the
zhiqing generation finds itself again in the vortex of social change and in
renewed struggles against disruptions of identity – hence also against the
social forces that destabilize identities.”48 Thus, the chaotic social envi-
ronment and confused cultural identity of the 1990s triggered filmmakers
Xie and Huo, living in the city after the Cultural Revolution, to draw
on personal nostalgia to imagine a stable, socialist past in the untouched
countryside as they attempted to engage with the urban issues.
For many of the “educated youth,” returning to the cities after the
Cultural Revolution was a happy event. After all, the city was the place
where they were born. However, this return betrayed the countryside
homes where they spent their youth, stored their faith, and where their
identity was constructed as “youth without regret,” a glorious generation.
From this perspective, the “educated youth” filmmakers investigated what
their youth spent in the Cultural Revolution had meant for them. As Pan
Yihong claims, “after returning to the cities and settling down in various
occupations, the former educated youth themselves have reflected on their
rustication experiences […] to understand their role in the history of
the People’s Republic of China.”49 Indeed, the generation of “educated
youth” witnessed all the key historical and political events of the entire
history of the People’s Republic of China, including the Red Guards,50
“up to the mountain and down to the countryside,” the democratic
student movement of 1989, and reform of state-owned enterprises. This
generation has certainly earned the right to question both the Cultural
47 Guobin Yang, “China’s Zhiqing Generation Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural

Resistance in the 1990s,” Modern China, 2003 (3): 274.
48 Guobin Yang, “China’s Zhiqing Generation Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural
Resistance in the 1990s,” Modern China, 2003 (3): 276.
49 Yihong Pan, “An Examination of the Goals of the Rustication Program in the
People’s Republic of China,” Journal of Contemporary China, 2002 (31): 227.
50 Red Guards were a student mass paramilitary social movement mobilized by Mao
Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution. Anita Chan, Children of Mao:
Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation (University
of Washington Press, 1985), 143.
84 Z. GU
Revolution years and current conditions in China. Therefore, as historical

witnesses, the filmmakers discussed here integrate their experience of the
Cultural Revolution with the social situation in the 1990s and early 2000s
to appeal to people to come back to the simple and pure lifestyle of the
countryside.
Both films use a similar narrative of “leave-return-leave” to highlight
the “return” to the beauty and purity of the countryside. The Mongolian
prairie and village are relatively closed traditional communities, but the
vast and magnificent grassland with Mongolian tents, images of strong,
honest, and hard-drinking herdsmen, and the magnificent steeds that
incarnate the spirit of the land, all converge into a mythical, unspoiled
paradise of purity and harmony. It is this idealised cultural identity that the
filmmakers Xie and Huo want to recreate. As Wang suggests, “this place-a
milieu of memory conjured up for nostalgia-is evidently a repository of
meaning, value, and wisdom, a source of life and vitality.”51 Furthermore,
the caring and nurturing grandmother in the film A Mongolian Tale is
almost an embodiment of the natural environment. Meng Gaha (the black
horse) is an orphan, born on a snowy night. The grandmother saves its
life, and it becomes part of her family. The old woman also decides to
look after Suomiya’s baby, regardless of how she was conceived. Thus, a
powerful emotional bond, an ethical and moral mother’s love and respect
for human beings has surpassed Baolige’s pursuit of a “purer” love in the
city. This bond reflects the national and cultural identity that was lost in
the market economy reform, which the “educated youth” filmmakers try
to rediscover through their homecoming.
In the films, the presentation of countryside restores the authenticity
and innocence of the traditional cultural identity. In this sense, the home-
coming to the traditional and national culture may also be perceived as
a kind of cultural nationalism, through which the filmmakers want to
return to a more “pure and traditional” pastoralism. After experiencing
the period of learning from the West throughout the 1980s, some intel-
lectuals began to question China’s identity in the unstable spheres of
economy, culture, and nation. Svetlana Boym suggests that nationalism
tends to fill the gap between socialism and post-socialism, which “modifies
51 Ban Wang, Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern
China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), 121–123.
capitalist individualism and gives people an imaginary sense of commu-

nity, a mythical map of rewritten history.”52 Furthermore, the mythical
nostalgia in A Mongolian Tale and Nuan corresponds to the rising
nationalistic sentiment in China in the early 1990s. The warm home-
coming not only provides a spiritual placebo to alleviate the confused
identity and chaotic urban lifestyle, with its McDonald’s and Coca-Cola,
but potentially also this kind of nationalist impulse. Zhu Ying points out
that nationalism as a force has propelled changes in the way Chinese
intellectuals and policymakers have viewed the world since the 1990s.
Nationalism in the 1980s was directed towards economic development
and a critique of traditional socialism. The 1990s have been perceived as
a return to Chinese values.53 In other words, nationalism in the 1990s
may have been an intellectually led cultural movement that adopted a
cultural reflection on the process of learning Western modernity in the
1980s and the commercialisation of the 1990s.
Through the idea of cultural homecoming, we are presented with an
image of a guilty urban resident, who gives up the “pure” countryside
but struggles in the post-socialist city. Urban residents feel guilty as they
abandon a peaceful lifestyle and lose their faith and cultural identity. that
uses traditional cultural identity to represent the best hope for recovering
a sense of harmony and intimacy in a turbulent modernity. Davis suggests
that nostalgia “does not derive from some inherent quality found in the
past, but occurs in the context of present fears, discontents, anxieties and
uncertainties. Nostalgia thrives in transition, on the subjective disconti-
nuities that engender our yearning for continuity.”54 Based on Davis’s
understanding, the personal guilt that results from giving up cultural
identity is indeed triggered by a contemporary, urban, and turbulent
transformation in the context of post-socialist modernity since the 1990s.
Returning to one’s cultural roots is perceived as a solution for contempo-
rary urban residents attempting to relieve their loneliness, stabilise their
identity, and navigate social discontinuity in the context of post-socialist
transformation.
52 Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge,

Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 1994), 285.
86 Z. GU
Xie and Huo, as intellectuals and witnesses of contemporary society,

appeal to the public to return to a point where they may regain their
peace of mind and resist the quick pace of life demanded by post-socialist
modernity. While this attempt may be utopian and doomed to inevitable
failure, it feeds the imagination and offers consolation for confusion about
cultural identity. Set against modern aspirations to productivity, progress,
social mobility, and technological skills in an increasingly urban environ-
ment, this grassland is seen as a pastoral haven. When people are attracted
by the image of a developed and civilised city, then the countryside is seen
as a rural and uncultured place. However, the countryside and prairie in
A Mongolian Tale and Nuan are constructed as romantic, pastoral, and
redeeming cinematic representations, which provide humane warmth to
console the loneliness of city life compared to the loneliness of city life in
a time of intense social transition.
Thus, both films construct the guilt-ridden identity of the urban
residents in order to validate traditional and national identities and to
challenge the values of commercialism. At the same time, modern turbu-
lence is articulated through the memories of the “educated youth” of the
Cultural Revolution. Their nostalgia for the lost countryside is drawn on
by the “educated youth” filmmakers in order to engage with the current
social situation while bringing audiences back to the era of the Cultural
Revolution and emphasise feelings of guilt. The “educated youth” film-
makers articulate their own guilt as a way of expressing the general anxiety
of giving up national identity, as the third guilty feeling, and to challenge
the discourse “youth without regret.”
3 Conclusion
When the Chinese government opened its doors after the Cultural Revo-
lution, the Chinese film industry experienced a series of reforms. Chinese
film gradually changed from being a mouthpiece of the CCP to a marke-
tised and political mechanism in post-socialism. In this post-socialist
environment, it becomes possible for a film to act as a tool to critique
both past and present. The filmmakers draw on their collective experi-
ence of “educated youth” in the Cultural Revolution and the chaotic
social environment since the 1990s to narrate stories of homecoming
in A Mongolian Tale and Nuan. Through their use of images of a
culpable male and a tolerant, self-sacrificing female, and the evocation of
guilty emotions related to the discarding of cultural identity, this chapter
argues that these two “educated youth” filmmakers have presented a

structure of guilt that functions as a sense of nostalgia. This structure
is intended to challenge the discourse “youth without regret” projected
by the Chinese government’s broadcasting system in the fusion of rapid
commercialisation, political control, and media marketisation since the
1990s.
In this regard, the personal guilt of the male protagonists, Baolige
and Jinghe, becomes a collective and national guilt. The construction of
this guilt is a mechanism of self-reconciliation, through which “educated
youth” and other urban residents can express the suffering they experi-
enced during the Cultural Revolution, while potentially regaining a sense
of national identity that people who feel guilty about the Cultural Revo-
lution may regain a kind of national identity as the suffering Chinese.
Therefore, if the discourse of “youth without regret” is a cultural
construction that allows for an image of a tough and glorious genera-
tion of “educated youth,” then, the representation of guilt and regret in
politics in nostalgic film narratives is also a cultural construction, which
becomes a way to criticise the injustices of the Cultural Revolution itself
in the context of China’s post-socialism.
Finally, this chapter indicates that both films locate the pure coun-
tryside and prairie as the home and origin of China’s cultural identity.
This home may not, however, be a solution for current social issues, but
rather a cultural negotiation between the CCP’s hegemonic ideology, the
appeal by intellectuals for an evaluation of the Cultural Revolution, and a
potential conservative tendency in society as a whole since the 1990s.
Today, the Cultural Revolution has been over for forty years. In this
context, the purpose of presenting discourses of guilt and regret is not
only to highlight how “educated youth” filmmakers challenge the CCP’s
discourse of “youth without regret,” but also to prompt reflection on
other grand historical narratives in China, through which to open up
spaces for contested memories and imaginings of Chinese modernity.
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CHAPTER 3
Nostalgia for a Communal Lifestyle in Urban

Films: Shower (1999) and 24 City (2008)
Since the late 1990s, the acceleration of urbanisation in many cities in

China has resulted in the demolition (拆迁, chaiqian) of old buildings
and streets. Many cinematic works produced by “urban filmmakers,”
who grew up in cities and were educated in film academies, captured
these changes. They not only focus on urban transformation in post-
socialist China but, more importantly, on marginalised people and social
issues frequently overlooked. This chapter analyses two such films from
three angles: the trope of demolition in the city, documentary aesthetics
of urban filmmakers, and restorative and reflective nostalgias. Through
exploring the representation of urban change since the late 1990s, it is
argued that the urban filmmakers Zhang Yang and Jia Zhangke draw
on nostalgia for the communal urban lifestyle to engage with the social
issues of urban change and the declining status of the working class in a
background of state-owned enterprise reform. Both filmmakers reflect on
the social rupture between socialism and post-socialism and criticise the
CCP’s hegemonic politics. The ambivalent identity of urban filmmakers
in representing the generation discarded by socialism is also presented in
the context of post-socialist China.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6_3
92 Z. GU
1 Historical Background of Urban Film

Post-Mao reforms of state-owned enterprises, coupled with the develop-
ment of urbanisation, had a visible impact on urban development. Four
aspects of these urban changes are identified: first, the CCP’s land policy
was changed to promote urban development. Where previous land regu-
lation stipulated that all the land in China belonged to the socialist state,
now the land was leased to private individuals or companies (usually
for 70 years, subject to renewal) in order to make money.1 In other
words, the privatisation of land and the transfer of land rights from the
state to private ownership were very important factors in stimulating
China’s urban development. Second, many Chinese cities, both large
and small, underwent an intense process of demolition. Old buildings,
such as hutong in Beijing and longtang in Shanghai, were torn down to
make room for modern skyscrapers. The reform of state-owned enterprise
further promoted this urban demolition. Many companies such as Factory
420 in the film 24 City (2008) relocated, and the old workshop units were
demolished. Third, some coastal cities, such as Shenzhen and Shanghai,
were set up as “Special Economic Zones” in the early 1990s. These cities
developed quickly, in a process heightened by Deng Xiaoping’s polit-
ical slogan that “socialism can also develop market economy.”2 In this
environment, many Chinese people conducted their business in these
Special Economic Zones.3 Fourth, as mentioned, two events—China
joining the WTO in 2001 and hosting the Beijing 2008 Olympics—
further encouraged urban development. Stimulated by these policies and
events, China’s cities profited from a huge influx of capital and a cheaper
labour force, which boosted development while accelerating demolition
and reconstruction.
1 “Interim Regulation of the People’s Republic of China Concerning Assignment

and Transfer of the Right to the Use of the State-owned in the Urban Areas,” the
Chinese Government, 19 May 1990, http://www.cin.gov.cn/law/other/2000111602-00.
htm (Accessed 20 September 2018).
2 “We Can Develop a Market Economy Under Socialism,” the Chinese Government,
1979, http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/dengxiaoping/103388.htm (Accessed
20 September 2018).
3 David S. G. Goodman, Class in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Polity, 2014),
41–42.
3 NOSTALGIA FOR A COMMUNAL LIFESTYLE IN URBAN … 93
The phenomenon of urban demolition and reconstruction attracted

the attention of many filmmakers, especially urban generation (or so-
called Sixth Generation) filmmakers. In contrast to the generation of
“educated youth” discussed in the first chapter, most urban genera-
tion filmmakers were born in the 1960s and early 1970s, grew up in
cities and studied directing or cinematography at elite universities such
as the Beijing Film Academy.4 Many of them focus on ordinary urban
residents and marginalised groups, such as the “lumpen proletariat,”
avant-garde artists, and rock singers. On the screen, these characters are
shown lingering outside the official system and on the fringes of main-
stream society. Their ideals are sometimes questionable and their lives are
stressful. Their worries are not on a collective or national level, but they
are sensitive and sentimental on a personal level. Their anxieties derive
from identity crises or, in some cases, the practical need to survive.
One of the filmmakers who turns his lens on these characters is Jia
Zhangke, born in 1970. He lived in a small city in Shanxi province and
studied at the Beijing Film Academy from 1993 to 1997. Compared
to the Fifth Generation filmmakers who predominantly focus on rural
areas and search for rural value and national roots, Jia, like other urban
generation filmmakers, has made the city his subject. Born in the latter
part of the Mao era, this generation had little experience of the Cultural
Revolution. Thus, they are also identified as “Forsaken Generation”
filmmakers, referring to their abandonment by socialist China in the
transformation from socialism to post-socialism.5 To a great extent, the
terms Sixth Generation filmmakers, urban generation filmmakers, and
“Forsaken Generation” filmmakers are interchangeable and depict a new
generation, born in the city, who stood out as new social subjects, and
who adopted the post-socialist situation as the nurturing ground for their
works.
From the late 1990s onwards, the Chinese film industry developed
at high speed. The strategies of international cooperation and foreign
investment referred to in the first chapter further promoted the devel-
opment of this industry. At the same time, new film policies such as
Twenty-First Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 41–42.
5 Xiaoping Lin, “New Chinese Cinema of the ‘Sixth Generation’: A Distant Cry of
Forsaken Children,” Third Text, 2002 (3): 261–284; Qi Wang, Memory, Subjectivity and
Independent Chinese Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 10.
94 Z. GU
the establishment of film group corporations, adjustments to the share-

holding system, and the integration of film production, distribution, and
screening, further stimulated the development of the industry.6 The films
produced by the Sixth Generation or “Forsaken Generation” are known
as “urban film (or urban cinema).”7 Yomi Braester suggests that the
Sixth Generation filmmakers often pay attention to marginalised subcul-
tures and self-marginalising countercultures in order to address young
people’s alienation and loneliness in the quickly developing metropolises,
with the present-day city shown as the battleground between oppressive
collectivity and rebellious individuality.8 In the early period, the urban
generation consciously differentiated themselves and their work from
the former generation of filmmakers. Their films are sometimes labelled
“avant-garde films,” “underground films,”9 or “independent films.”10 In
general, they focus on urban environments in which physically disabled
people, the unprivileged populace, or non-traditional communities live,
thus exploring the lives of individuals who are excluded from mainstream
society. Ning Ying, as one of these filmmakers, claims that the Sixth
Generation also need to return to their roots, but not as in the “root-
seeking” literature and films of the 1980s and early 1990s, which portray
6 “Suggestions on Further Deepening the Reform of the Film Industry,” the Chinese
Government, 6 June 2000, http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2001/content_60781.
htm (Accessed 20 September 2018).
Twenty-First Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 41–42.
8 Yomi Braester, Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract
(Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2010), 4.
9 Jinhua Dai, “The Sixth Generation and Their Films,” 17 January 2012,
https://site.douban.com/136388/widget/notes/6509806/note/196321212/ (Accessed
20 September 2018).
10 Independent film: Because of official intolerance for some films, they cannot make
and obtain enough capital and opportunities to shoot films, some filmmakers seek recog-
nition through international channels and commit themselves to independent filmmaking
as a way out. Therefore, the signature marks of independent films became another way
to shoot films for many new filmmakers. Although each director offers a distinct vision,
their psychological and cinematic engagements with the city bind them together. The
shared urban sensibility often finds rock music as the language of expression, the isolated
apartment as a private world, and urban life as a form of youthful self-display. Therefore,
shooting independent film is not only a suitable way out of a difficult situation but also
an aesthetic practice. The cinema was part of a larger experiment by the socialist state,
aimed at producing new spatial practices.
the countryside as the root of culture and national identity.11 Rather, this
new group of filmmakers situate their roots in Chinese cities. They focus
on urban transformation and engage with the social reality in China’s
urban environments. Zhang Yuan’s films Beijing Bastards (1993) and
East Palace West Palace (1996) and Jia Zhangke’s films Xiao Wu (1998)
and A Touch of Sin (2013) all belong to this genre.
Furthermore, the release of the Sixth Generation filmmakers’ works
represents a negotiation between their artistic aesthetics, the interest of
the film market, and CCP censorship. More specifically, compared to
some commercial films, urban films steer clear of the state-sponsored
“main-melody” (主旋律, zhuxuanlü) genre that projects socialist ideolo-
gies and CCP nationalism. Some works of the Sixth Generation film-
makers were denied release in China because they were seen as a threat
against the CCP’s regime. For instance, Jia’s films Xiaowu (1997) and A
Touch of Sin (2013) were banned throughout the country as they describe
some of the serious social issues in China’s cities. Although urban film-
makers consider their works (at least the early ones) to be independent,
they try to maintain some communicative link with mainstream ideology
in order to gain permission for the release of their films in the Chinese
market. In particular, since the new millennium, works by these film-
makers have received many awards at both domestic and international
film festivals,12 which has, in turn, influenced the aesthetic of the wider
Chinese film market. To some extent, the professional environment since
the 1990s has improved for urban filmmakers, whose assimilation into the
Chinese market has given their films a greater chance of being released in
China. In the new environment of filmmaking and film supervision, the
urban generation filmmakers presented their works as new subjects, which
implicitly and explicitly expressed a social and political critique of the post-
socialist market economy. Chris Berry and Lisa Rofel remark that owing
to an apparent absence of ideological framing coupled with the portrayal
of a “common folk” lifestyle within the films, the state found it difficult to
11 Huadong Qiu, City Tank (Beijing: The Writer’s Publishing House, 1997), 250.
12 Wang Xiaoshuai’s Beijing Bicycle (2004) awarded “Silver Bear Grand” at the 51st
Berlin International Film Festival. Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006) awarded “Gold Lion”
at the 63rd Venice Film Festival.
96 Z. GU
object to Sixth Generation films.13 Whatever the reasons for their release,
these film products can be viewed as a negotiated result of the stability
of the CCP’s regime, the filmmakers’ aesthetics, and the interest of the
Chinese film market. Many urban films were produced in this negoti-
ated context, such as Zhang Nuanxin’s Morning, Beijing (1990); Zhou
Xiaowen’s No Regrets about Youth (1991); Wang Xiaoshuai’s Winter Days
Beijing Bicycle (2001); Shi Runjiu’s Beautiful New World (1998); Lou
Ye’s Suzhou River (2000); Jia Zhangke’s 24 City (2008); and Zhang
Yang’s Shower (1999), Quitting (2001), and Sunflower (2005).
In this chapter, two urban films—Zhang Yang’s Shower and Jia
Zhangke’s 24 City—are examined as part of the analysis of nostalgic
screen culture. Shower was financially supported and produced by Imar
Film Co. Ltd, founded in 1996 by American businessman Peter Loehr.
Imar provided financial and technological support for many young film-
makers; many of the resulting films did well at the Chinese box office.
Zhang’s early films, such as Beautiful New World (1998), Shower (2000),
and Crazy Stone (2006), were all distributed by Imar. According to Loehr,
his business model adheres to two principles. First, he provides a readily
available and independent environment for shooting films, with a wide
range of resources, and the mechanisms to sustain good relationships with
some international film festivals; this, in turn, provides larger platforms
for his filmmakers to access the international film market and communi-
cate their film aesthetics. Second, he maintains a good relationship with
China’s film authority to obtain the necessary film release permissions
in China.14 Shower was produced in this context, and involved not only
cooperation with foreign investors and producers but also a collabora-
tion with the domestic film company Xi’an Studio. This film, depicting
China’s urban demolition, had good box office revenue in 1999. The
Imar phenomenon testifies to the fact that urban generation filmmakers
were able to keep their chosen film aesthetic while working within the
Chinese film market. As a successful urban generation filmmaker, Zhang
brought a new vitality to this market. Typical of a film produced in the
13 Chris Berry and Lisa Rofel, “Introduction,” in The New Chinese Documentary Film
Movement: For the Public Record, ed. Chris Berry, Xinyu Lu and Lisa Rofel (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 11.
context of the negotiated film industry, Shower is neither a mainstream

film nor a challenge to the political status quo.
Jia’s early work was released in a different format. His early films
Xiaowu (1997), Platform (1998), and Unknown Pleasures (2001) were
shot in China but released abroad. Most were sent to international film
festivals. Jia experienced budgetary and release difficulties similar to those
of his peers. The budget for his first film Xiaowu (1998) was only
300,000 RMB (around $36,000)15 ; a very modest sum with which to
produce a feature film. Furthermore, his films Xiaowu and A Touch of Sin
(2013) were banned in China as they depict the suffering of people living
in the lowest echelons of society. Berry points out that low budgets and
the use of realism (纪实主义, jishi zhuyi) became the hallmark of indepen-
dent (Sixth Generation) filmmakers from the 1990s onwards.16 For these
reasons, Jia showcased many of his early films at international festivals;
gradually, his film aesthetics came to be recognised equally by Chinese
and international audiences. In short, since the Chinese film industry’s
increasing marketisation and privatisation, independent filmmakers (the
early wave of Sixth Generation filmmakers) moved above ground and had
their films publicly released. Many of Zhang and Jia’s films are referred to
as art films or independent films. The conflation of labels indicates that
in the shifting social and economic context of post-socialist China, the
meaning of independence has been reconfigured by party-state control,
market logic, and filmmakers’ aesthetics. As with Zhang, Jia cooperated
with a domestic film studio—in this case, Shanghai Film Group Corpo-
ration—to release various films into China’s market, such as The World
(2004), Still Life (2006), 24 City (2008), I Wish I Know (2010), A Touch
of Sin (2013), Mountains May Depart (2015), and Ash Is Purest White
(2018). In summary, Jia’s early films were released abroad owing to his
realistic film aesthetic. Later, he consciously positioned his work closer to
the mainstream film market, seemingly finding a suitable way to keep a
dynamic balance between sustaining his own film aesthetic and attracting
the film market.
15 “Jia Zhangke: I Am in Charge of My Film,” China Weekly, 8 October 2010, http://

ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2010-10-08/14573106303.shtml (Accessed 23 September 2018).
Movement: For the Public Record, ed. Chris Berry, Xinyu Lu and Lisa Rofel (Hong Kong:
98 Z. GU
Three elements underpin the comparison of Zhang’s Shower and Jia’s

24 City. First, urban demolition in both films, as a cultural metaphor,
equates the collapse of old buildings with the transformations of family,
city, and social ethics. Through this metaphor the cinematic represen-
tation of nostalgia in the context of post-socialist urbanisation can be
explored. Second, both feature films use a documentary aesthetic to
engage with social reality. This aesthetic not only emphasises the phys-
ical co-presence of the camera but also provides a chance to make
close contact with the material world. Documentary aesthetics, seen in
this light, may be regarded as social engagement that helps to build
up counter-publics, through which alternative narratives may be heard.
Third, in the presentation of socialist urban lives, both films show
different but related nostalgic cultures connected to Svetlana Boym’s
concepts of “reflective nostalgia” and “restorative nostalgia.”17 She
defines restorative nostalgia as “reconstructive” and “utopian,” which
stresses the root “nostos”18 in “nostalgia” and is linked to a concept
of home. To some extent, restorative nostalgia dreams of rebuilding a
lost trans-historical home and bridges a perceived gap between the past
and present. It does not think of itself as nostalgia, but rather as truth
and tradition. Restorative nostalgia is at the core of national and religious
revivals and has two main plots—returning to origins and the perception
of a conspiracy—to present a sense of home.19 Meanwhile, Boym defines
reflective nostalgia as “inconclusive” and “ironic.” It thrives in “algia” and
longing itself,20 and delays homecoming wistfully, ironically, and desper-
ately. It focuses on the concept of displacement and is more interested in
effecting displacement without trying to rebuild it.21 This personal and
18 Nostos (Ancient Greek: νóστoς) is a theme used in Ancient Greek literature which
includes an epic hero returning home by sea. Marigo Alexopoulou, The Theme of
Returning Home in Ancient Greek Literature: The Nostos of the Epic Heroes (Lewiston,
New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009), 2–5.
20 “Algia”: ¥λγoς (álgos), meaning “pain” or “ache”, and was coined by a seventeenth-
century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting
away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the Early
Modern period. It became an important trope in Romanticism. Svetlana Boym, The Future
of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), xiii–xiv.
historical memory, as a global epidemic of longing and dislocation, can

also be found in the cinematic work of post-socialist China.
This chapter will analyse nostalgic cultures in the films Shower (1999)
and 24 City (2008) from three angles: urban demolition, documentary
aesthetics, and restorative/reflective nostalgia. Through these angles, two
urban generation filmmakers adopt a cultural metaphor of urban demo-
lition to represent their own identity and engage with social issues in
post-socialist urban development.
2 Demolition in Shower (1999) and 24 City (2008)

This section explores the cinematic representation of urban demolition
in Zhang Yang’s Shower (1999) and Jia Zhangke’s 24 City (2008), with
a focus on the question: how do these two different filmmakers present
the themes of destruction and reconstruction of the cityscape, family, and
social ethics? Three dimensions are discussed; namely, the demolition of
a building, the removal of families, and the transformation of society.
Nostalgia will also be examined in this process.
The film Shower begins when the protagonist Da Ming, a businessman
in China’s city of Shenzhen, returns home to Beijing where his father
owns a traditional public bathhouse. Da Ming stays at home for a couple
of days and observes his father working as a marriage counsellor and
dispute mediator for his clients. Da Ming is caught between two worlds:
the decaying district that still maintains a socialist and communal lifestyle,
and his modern urban life with his wife and new family in booming
southern China. After Da Ming reconciles with his ageing father, the
father unexpectedly dies, leaving Da Ming to take care of his younger
brother, Er Ming, who has mental disability. Da Ming gradually learns
to accept the public bathhouse culture and communal lifestyle, and when
the bathhouse and much of the neighbourhood are torn down to make
way for the 2008 Beijing Olympics this acceptance is apparent in the way
he looks after his brother and family.
The bathhouse operated by Da Ming’s father represents a disap-
pearing lifestyle. In this bathhouse, the Beijing opera, Chinese chess,
massages, and pedicures reflect traditional Chinese culture. At the same
time, outside of the bathhouse, old buildings (hutong ), early morning
calisthenics, and talkative residents are, to some extent, representatives
of a traditional Beijing lifestyle far removed from its increasing commer-
cialism. To some extent, this communal lifestyle has exceeded the sphere
100 Z. GU
of socialism and become embedded in everyday life. Thus, the bathhouse

is not only a place of business but also a community, which contains a
particular form of social organisation based on the lifestyle therein. As
Zhang suggests, “community is seen as something that has been lost
to modernity and as something that must be recovered. As a process
dominated by state formation, modernity has allegedly destroyed the
community.”22
Public bathhouse culture breaks through the barrier between socialism
and post-socialism to exist as a communal experience rather than a hier-
archical system. It provides residents with a sense of kinship and social
networks for entertainment and communication. As the film transposes
traditional communal Beijing culture onto the bathhouse itself, scenes
of old buildings, streets, and public playgrounds around the bathhouse
become representative of that community. The difference between life in
in the bathhouse and the fast-paced metropolis at large may be perceived
as a comparison between local and global lifestyles in neoliberalist China.
The presentation of this community in Shower seeks to express the
desire for harmony and a well-organised environment in the context of
chaotic and large-scale urban demolition. Wang Di makes comparisons
between the communal environment in this film and the culture of a
teahouse in Chengdu, China, and finds that the bathhouse community
represents the “plebeian public sphere.” Wang argues that “each street or
neighbourhood had a teahouse that served as a kind of community centre
where people got to know each other very well, sharing information
about their work, families, happy and sad events. Someone who needed
help might first ask his teahouse buddies for information or advice.”23 In
Shower, the public bathhouse has a similar social function and is used as a
space to mediate issues between husband and wife, as well as a sanctuary
for those wishing to elude their creditors. Furthermore, Wang indicates
that the teahouse was a fluid social group that nonetheless functioned as a
social force that resisted the wave of modernity and uniformity associated
with the growing role of the state in public space and public life during
23 Di Wang, The Teahouse: Small Business, Everyday Culture, and Public Politics in
Chengdu, 1900–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 261.
the first half of the twentieth century.24 The teahouse was a commu-
nity that maintained a small corner of a world gradually encroached
upon by modernity and political ideology. When commercialism becomes
increasingly prevalent in cities, the bathhouse exerts its social functions
as a sanctuary, a mediator, and a place where the communal lifestyle is
maintained.
Shower presents this communal lifestyle as disappearing in the wave
of post-socialist modernity. The public bathhouse in post-socialist China
has a different destiny from the teahouse in Chengdu in the first half of
the twentieth century. The social function of the bathhouse is challenged
by China’s urbanisation and new housing reform, which, as Chen Tao
argues, are two events that have led to large-scale demolition in Chinese
cities.25 Indeed, new modern skyscrapers and commercial, residential
buildings gradually replaced old buildings. In Shower, the bathhouse is
explicitly representative of an old communal and collective lifestyle, and
its demolition is seen as the epitome of a disappearing traditional lifestyle
in the context of rapid urbanisation.
Compared to the plebeian culture of the teahouse in Chengdu, the
urban residents’ longing for the communal lifestyle in Shower articu-
lates a global tendency towards nostalgia. This nostalgic culture, which
yearns for stronger local attachments, searches for a plebeian commu-
nity in a chaotic urban environment. The public bathhouse, with its
distinct regional features and local characteristics, presents a nonindus-
trial image of the past that fosters intimate relationships. However, David
Bray suggests that the emergence of “community” (社区, shequ) was
also symbolic of the government in mid-1990s urban China. Introduced
by the CCP, the idea of community was used to distinguish “street
offices” (街道办事处, jiedao banshichu) from “resident committees” (居
委会, jvweihui).26 However, the communal lifestyle in Shower is organic
compared with that of a regulated administrative entity community. As an
autonomous community, the bathhouse is seen as a place where citizens
24 Di Wang, The Teahouse: Small Business, Everyday Culture, and Public Politics in
Chengdu, 1900–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 252.
25 Tao Chen, “Representations of Urban Demolitions in Contemporary Chinese
Cinema,” Studies in Culture & Art, 2011 (3): 187.
26 David Bray, Social Space and Governance in Urban China: The Danwei System from
Origins to Reform (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 91.
102 Z. GU
share multiple interests. The filmmaker has taken on the task of repre-
senting such communities with common interests in order to recover
and express the individual and communal yearning for a comfortable
social atmosphere in the context of the chaos that follows urban demo-
lition (although, in fact, this communal past may not ever have existed).
To some extent, in Shower, nostalgia is a defence mechanism against
accelerating urban rhythms and historical upheavals.
The communal lifestyle and post-socialist modernity seem to be in
opposition, which causes a sense of discontinuity between the past and
present. As Zhang suggests, “unprecedented large-scale urbanisation and
globalisation of China” and “socioeconomic unevenness, psychological
anxiety, and the moral confusion caused by the upheaval” have had a
complicated influence on some urban residents.27 However, nostalgia has
contemporary resonance, acting as a reflective tool to assess the past and
present; it may be used to construct a nostalgic public space in which to
narrate a story of a provincial community being converted into “mod-
ern” and industrial city living. Fred Davis suggests that nostalgia, as
a discontinuity between past and present, is often less about the past
than it is about the present.28 Davis’s interpretation has been widely
acknowledged, and here nostalgia shows a sense of discontinuity between
a socialist and communal lifestyle and a post-socialist, chaotic urban
lifestyle. The process of constructing this communal lifestyle may be seen
as a kind of resistance culture concerned with roots that supports iden-
tity and aspirations of belonging. The public bathhouse then becomes an
avatar of nostalgia.
The demolition in Shower presents a site of urban disappearance
and becomes a further cultural metaphor for the dynamic relationship
between father and son. In other words, the relationship between tradi-
tional Beijing and modern Shenzhen resembles that between the father
(Lao Liu) and son (Da Ming). More specifically, Shenzhen, compared
to Beijing, is a young city that has developed rapidly. Like Shenzhen,
Da Ming’s character is full of creative spirit. The public bathhouse and
old Beijing City are representative of the communal lifestyle, while Shen-
zhen and Da Ming represent urban modernity. Since the early 1990s,
28 Fred Davis, Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: Free Press,
1979), 50.
the reform of state-owned enterprises sought to replace the old planned-

economic system with a market economic system. Thus, many people
formed a belief that the old economic system was conservative and lazy,
like the father in Shower, while the new system (Shenzhen) was forward-
thinking, like the son, Da Ming. The reform of state-owned enterprises
starting in the 1990s was an aggressive industrial reconstruction, espe-
cially after Deng Xiaoping’s “Southern Talks.”29 At the same time, radical
marketisation was promoted by mainstream media, and the people who
left the planned economy to do business were regarded as heroes. In this
context, Shower potentially endorses the CCP’s economic reform.
The image of the father (socialism) is also related to the worship
of Mao. If the generation of “educated youth” is seen as the child of
Mao, then the Sixth Generation filmmakers and other people of a similar
age may be seen as children without fathers, as the image of Mao was
transformed from the status of God to a man after the Cultural Revolu-
tion. From this perspective, the term “Forsaken Generation” not only
means that these people were abandoned by the socialist system, but
also that they lost their faith, no longer worshipping Mao and socialist
ideologies. In Shower, images of Lao Liu, the bathhouse, the old Beijing
lifestyle, and the worship of Mao are seen as representative of the old
planned-economic system, while Da Ming, a son working in the new and
rapidly developing city Shenzhen, is a contemporary hero who also feels
confused about the discontinuity between socialism and post-socialism.
In the beginning, the father (Lao Liu) cannot understand Da Ming’s
lifestyle; in the same way, Da Ming cannot accept the bathhouse culture,
which creates conflicts between father and son. The misunderstanding
between them is not a symbol of a generation gap, but rather a metaphor
of the discontinuity between socialism and post-socialism in the context
of modernisation.
Lao Liu is representative of the socialist ideology and communal
lifestyle, both of which are challenged by significant socio-cultural
changes. As Li Yinghui argues, China’s social structure and values devel-
oped within a period of diversification, which led, to some extent,
to confusion, loss, and anxiety.30 In this sense, some people eagerly
29 Robert Weatherley, Politics in China Since 1949: Legitimising Authoritarian Rule

30 Yinghui Li, An Aesthetic Feature of Balance Between Popularization and Individua-
tion (Shandong: Shandong Normal University, 2008), 15.
104 Z. GU
attempted to regain idealised traditional beliefs. The folk and communal

lifestyle became a symbol through which the urban generation filmmakers
addressed their nostalgia. Wu Jing further suggests that the nostalgia for
disappearing socialism was channelled by a passionate reconstruction of
benevolent patriarchy, in which the appealing ideas of family, sharing,
responsibility, and community took concrete forms.31 In other words, Da
Ming reconciles with his aged father after living with him in the bathhouse
for several days. He seems to understand his father’s ethos and accepts
this simple and communal lifestyle. Such a compromise may also be inter-
preted through Dai’s suggestion that mainstream Chinese culture in the
1990s was influenced by Western cultures, and that the Chinese seemed
to be confused about their own culture at this time.32 This suggestion is
related to the issue of cultural identity discussed in the first chapter. As a
result of the overlapping conflicts of different ideologies, the “Forsaken
Generation” not only feel anxiety for losing faith in Mao, but also fall into
a historical crevice between socialism and post-socialism. They are facing
the absence of the socialist lifestyle and are witnessing or experiencing
massive urbanisation.
The relationship between father and son is an important theme in
Zhang’s films, including Spicy Love Soup (1994), Shower (1998), Quitting
(2001), and Sunflower (2005). In all of these films, a similar structure
of “resistance-compromise-understanding” may be recognised. The male
protagonist experiences a mental conflict in his refusal to accept the
“father.” In the process of constructing this relationship, Zhang normally
depicts a communal lifestyle with relatively stable values that differentiate
it from the chaotic urban lifestyle, through which he addresses the discon-
tinuity between socialism and post-socialism. Friedman suggests that
“such longing is a characteristic of male texts of modernity, which exhibits
an Oedipal preoccupation with the dead father, and a hankering after the
meaning provided by an explanatory past: the yearning for fathers, for past
authority and sure knowledge that may no longer be supported, perme-
ates male texts of modernity.”33 In other words, although Shower begins
31 Jing Wu, “Nostalgia as Content Creativity: Cultural Industries and Popular Senti-
ment,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2006 (3): 364.
32 Jinhua Dai, Sights in the Fog (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2000), 407.
33 Ellen G. Friedman, “Where Are the Missing Contents? (Post) Modernism, Gender,
and the Canon,” in Narratives of Nostalgia, Gender and Nationalism, ed. Jean Pickering
and Suzanne Kehde (Macmillan: Basingstoke, 1997), 159.
with Da Ming’s confusion about the bathhouse lifestyle, the focus soon
switches to a search for the missing father and the son’s longing for a lost
paternal order. It is a journey that returns to the father, elders, and ances-
tors of a community. Rey Chow suggests that “it is a return, now possible
only in remembrance, to the utopian possibilities of determination, mean-
ingful action, communal purpose, and happiness—the constituents of a
sociality that has since, to all appearances, become lost.”34 Therefore, Da
Ming’s return to “father” and “communal lifestyle” may be a utopian
aspiration in an increasingly commercial urban lifestyle, through which
the filmmaker seeks to redress this discontinuity between socialism and
post-socialism.
Compared to the destruction of the old public bathhouse and the
nostalgia for communal culture in Shower, 24 City—documenting nine
workers, five of whom were real workers at Factory 420, while four
are fictional characters played by actors—mainly depicts the demolition
of old buildings at Factory 420. It is a film about state-owned enter-
prises—set in Chengdu, Sichuan province, which was once home to
over 20,000 workers—and the transformation of Chinese society from
a planned economy to a market economy (the film also addresses the
suffering of workers during the socialist era).35 Factory 420 was a mili-
tary factory that manufactured aeroplanes for the state in Shenyang, a city
in northern China. In 1958, Factory 420 was relocated to Chengdu based
on the Cold War policy that important military enterprises should be
moved to the inner cities to support local economic development. After
the reform of state-owned enterprises in the 1980s and 1990s, Factory
420 then began to manufacture appliances such as televisions and fridges.
However, it failed to transform its structure, and the original factory was
purchased by a real estate company, China Resources, and pulled down
to make way for luxury flats: 24 City.
The film 24 City tells nine stories that record, reflect on, and construct
a narrative about the working class, who not only worked at Factory
420 but also at other industrial placements in China. For instance, one
interview states that female protagonist Da Li’s child got lost during the
removal of Factory 420 from Shenyang to Chengdu in 1958. Although
34 Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the

Age of Global Visibility (New York; Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2007), 71–72.
35 Huashan Bai and Lian Duan, “24 City: The Interweave of the Real Life and the
Real Art,” Social Outlook, 2009 (9): 70–71.
106 Z. GU
she expresses her regret and sadness, Da Li shows no apparent resentment

towards the state. Another character, Hou Lijun relates her experiences of
working at Factory 420 for many years, of having no chance to return to
Shenyang, and being laid-off and re-employed after the reform of state-
owned enterprises. In “traditional” Chinese culture, the number nine
means “whole.” For instance, the nine states (九州, jiuzhou) is a poetic
name for China. To a certain extent, the nine interviews shape a historical
and contemporary context for the condition of workers or their family
members at Factory 420. Jia remarks that together, the nine narratives
in this film form a group, and that this creates a feeling of completion
in the overall story about Factory 420, as well as depicting an ultimate
story of state-owned enterprise reform.36 Through individual and incom-
plete narratives, the whole trajectory of Factory 420—from thriving to
fading business and community—is presented. Furthermore, some histor-
ical events behind this transformation are shown, such as how the state
prepared for war in the period of the 1950s; the class struggle that was
launched in the Cultural Revolution; the battle of the Sino-Vietnamese
War that took place in the late 1970s; the reforms of state-owned enter-
prises and the housing system that began in the 1980s. Thus, these
nine narratives have an intense symbolic function, presenting the trans-
formation from collective socialism to individualist and commercialist
post-socialism.
In 24 City, the demolition of the old factory and construction of
new residential buildings is presented through a group of small figures
perceived as “owners” of socialist China who are now becoming outcasts
in the context of state-owned enterprise reform. It is known that socialist
China declared that the working class were the owners of the country
in order to mobilise their enthusiasm and develop the economy. For
instance, oil worker Wang Jinxi was praised and showcased as a model
worker by the Chinese government because he had worked hard to
extract oil during the 1950s and 1960s. However, the pride of workers as
owners of their country was gradually eliminated by state-owned enter-
prise reform. After the reform, capital and technology became central, and
the working class lost their value, now perceived as a cheap labour force,
a primitive method of production, and even an encumbrance on society.
36 Zhangke Jia and Jianghe Ouyang, “The Filmmaker of Poet of Interpreting China-
Dialogue with Jia Zhangke about 24 City,” 21st Century Business Herald, 2008 (38):
2.
Once, in Mao’s era, this group of workers was a glorious class, but they
have now fallen into redundancy owing to the state’s market economic
reforms. Most of the actual workers depicted in the film feel honoured to
have been a part of Factory 420, even though they have been abandoned
by the state. Therefore, the transformation of Factory 420 is both about
the destiny of the working class in this factory and a representation of the
Chinese economic and political transformation over several decades.
Jia Zhangke excels at depicting people from the lowest levels of society
in order to engage with social issues and transformations. In his early
films, Xiaowu (1998), Platform (2000), and Still Life (2006), most of
the protagonists are people who live at the very bottom of a society that is
changing before their eyes. In the process of representing the fluctuating
status of the working class, individual nostalgia about socialist factory lives
is used to retain and construct collective memories. Maurice Halbwachs
divides memory into individual and collective memory. He suggests that
“there exists a collective memory and social frameworks for memory; it
is to the extent that our thought places itself in these frameworks that it
is capable of the action of recollection.”37 In 24 City, individual memory
and collective memory are closely integrated. Interviewees’ adherence
to socialism and their yearning for a comfortable lifestyle, as individual
memories, are integrated with the collective memory of China during
its transformation from socialism to post-socialism. When the working
class are discarded by the new industrial system, their imprinted image
as owners of the country may also be reconstructed by a new official
discourse. In this context, a new individual and collective memory of these
people may appear. 24 City tries to make sense of this transformation from
workers being seen as the owners of the country to members of a some-
what backward system of production. The transformation of Factory 420
means the end of the planned-economic system. Its substitute residential
building, 24 City, represents a new beginning in the market economic
system. However, this beginning is full of uncertainty for the country’s
former “owners.”
From the nine interviews in 24 City we can see that the erasure of
old socialist structures has left many people with no access to their past.
Jia portrays the struggle of nine workers trying to reconcile the two
social systems. He shows them wrestling with confusion as they search
37 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Francis J., Ditter, Jr. and Vida
Yazdi Ditter (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1980), 38.
108 Z. GU
for meaning in their existence in post-socialist China. Thus, Jia, as one

of the Sixth Generation filmmakers, critiques the Chinese government’s
exploitation of the working class as a tool to stabilise its regime. The
people we meet in 24 City occupy a humiliating position; now seen as
inefficient and lazy, they miss the planned socialist system within which
they felt respected and valued. Indeed, 24 City exposes the emotional
scars of workers laid off as the result of radical market-orientated reform.
After more than twenty years of marketisation, people have begun to
yearn for a more stable social system. 24 City expresses the way that the
status of workers has been changed to suit the needs of the country that
once honoured them. Jia’s film shows us that the working class have paid
a heavy price in order to consolidate the Party’s political legitimacy and
the success of the country’s economy. In other words, they have been
used.
From these nine stories, Jia creates a sense of the helplessness of the
working class in the face of the above-mentioned economic and polit-
ical movement. In this sense, the film exposes the status of the working
class, not as an autonomous element of socialist and post-socialist China,
but rather as an economic and social group whose status bears important
political implications. In his work, Jia not only urges the Chinese govern-
ment to focus on this social issue and protect these marginal figures, but
also potentially challenges the CCP’s authority and its political hegemony.
By drawing on urban demolition, the filmmakers Zhang and Jia express
a sense of helplessness in the context of rapidly changing urban environ-
ments. For instance, at the end of Shower, Da Ming seems to recognise
the importance of the old community lifestyle and reconciles with his
father. However, this may not mean full acceptance on his part. The
conflict between a communal lifestyle and the post-socialist lifestyle is
still a source of confusion when he turns to thinking about his future.
Returning to the past is not necessarily the way to solve the historical
and cultural rupture. The idealism of the folk and communal lifestyle has
not disappeared, but is actively reconstructed through the representation
of post-socialist modernity. Da Ming, as a modern urban resident with
ambitious goals for the future is also an image of hesitation, representative
of urban residents’ confusion about historical discontinuity. The subjects
in 24 City also experience this sense of helplessness. Most of them are
facing a situation where there is neither a way to return to the past, nor
to envision a satisfying future.
Such filmmaking is reflective of the cultural and social turmoil felt

by the Sixth Generation filmmakers and their peers. Most of them were
born later in the Mao era and thus, while they were influenced by Mao’s
socialist ideology from an early age they witnessed rapid social trans-
formation while they were growing up. Hence, their worldview may
be conflicted, caught in the ideological confusion between a communal
lifestyle and a post-socialist one. Demolition in both films is not only
an infrastructural construction but also a metaphor that reflects the
choice between a communal lifestyle and post-socialist modernity. In this
regard, nostalgia as a modern characteristic is a reaction to this cultural
rupture. The post-socialist world is represented as containing an element
of xiangchou but is also impacted by a market economy, and therefore
also contains a sense of huaijiu culture. Both films portray the folk and
communal lifestyle, but not as a self-reaffirming panacea to address this
confusion. Rather, it may be seen as an encouragement to reflect on the
unstable conditions brought about by the reform of state-owned enter-
prise. The urban generation filmmakers adopt the changing cityscape
in order to engage with the confusion caused by reform; in doing so
they express their own helplessness as a “forsaken generation” and reflect
on who should take political and social responsibility for the desperate
situation faced by the working class. Braester argues that city and film
are more than complementary manifestations of material structure and
artistic imagination, and that they play an active role in the imposition of
government’s power, the formation of communities, the establishment of
cultural norms, and the struggle for civil society.38 The filmmakers here
engage directly with the social issues reflected by the transformation of
their cities.
3 Documentary Aesthetics:
History and Authenticity
The urban generational filmmakers use documentary aesthetics in their
films to focus on neglected places and isolated individuals and to create
an impression of reality. The documentary form has become an impor-
tant film aesthetic for the urban generation to record and rewrite such
38 Yomi Braester, Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract
(Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2010), 4.
110 Z. GU
a “reality” in their work. Confronting the ruins of the socialist past and
suffering the loss of the “father,” the Forsaken Generation filmmakers
were left with a sense of loss and pain. As Wang suggests, “the doomed
incompleteness and brokenness in their (the Sixth Generation filmmakers)
experience produce an intensified reflexive vision on history, reality and
the specific contingency and situatedness of their status as post-socialist
historical subjects.”39 To some extent, documentary aesthetics meet their
artistic criteria for engagement with society. In this process, they also
create a new film aesthetic, a “new documentary movement.” As Zhang
himself suggests:
The documentary form is inspiring to find the shape and meaning of a

multifaceted social experience in the era of transformation. The docu-
mentary method is instrumental in laying bare the oscillation between
representation and actuality and in foregrounding the subject-object rela-
tion between the filmmaker and his or her subject matter so as to create a
more intersubjective or democratic cinema.40
Both feature films use documentary techniques to record what is

happening in the city. Jia and Zhang, as two independent filmmakers (at
least in their early careers), express an intense desire to create a sense
of “being on the scene” (现场, xianchang ). As Luke Robinson suggests,
the incorporation of active reportage provides an aesthetic of presence,
which emphasises the physical co-presence of camera and subject during
the very moments of collapse of old buildings, and brings audiences into
direct contact with the material world.41 This film aesthetic allows urban
filmmakers to construct a sense of reality and to promote an under-
standing of what is happening in Chinese society. Chris Berry and Lisa
Rofel also suggest that “the New Documentary Movement in China goes
beyond filmmaking and is more fundamentally rooted in its commitment
to recording contemporary life in China outside any direct control of the
39 Qi Wang, Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema (Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 50–51.
41 Luke Robinson, Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 138.
state.”42 Indeed, urban filmmakers see their works as a social practice that
opens up new public spaces for the discussion of social dilemmas in the
post-socialist era.
In Shower, for instance, in the last attempt to keep a memento of local
buildings, nostalgia is set at the moment of the demolition of the old city,
in which the aged urban residents are encouraged to take a camcorder and
chronicle the process of destruction. A shaky camera lens shows the pres-
ence of urban residents and filmmakers. Shower, although a commercial
film, takes up the task of home videos, displays images of urban change,
and shows the loss entailed in demolition. The filmmaker Ning Ying, also
from the urban generation, suggests that the city is changing too rapidly
for her to establish a stable relationship with its materiality. Old buildings
are razed and new ones are built overnight. In the absence of familiar
landmarks, her memories are unanchored, to the extent that Beijing is
no longer her hometown. All that remains is the record stored by her
camera.43 Ning sees her films as a repository for the evidence of urban
transformation and the documentation of people’s lives. Produced in the
late 1990s, Shower is also tinged with fear for the future, anxiety over
the loss of identity, and an urge to preserve images of the neighbour-
hoods of old Beijing at the very moment of their disappearance. To some
extent, such rapid urbanisation has been counterbalanced by the increased
interest of urban generation filmmakers in recording and preserving folk
and communal lifestyle. The documentary aesthetic has become a cine-
matic strategy and a social practice, which exhibits an impulse to preserve
the city, if only in images.
Throughout Shower’s story, in which aged urban residents capture
the process of demolition with a camcorder, Zhang adopts the docu-
mentary form, as a kind of film aesthetic, to engage with urban change.
Furthermore, the status of media as a witness to events is shown through
the interactions of two separate practices: a witness shown through a
camcorder held by urban residents; and the filmmakers as witnesses them-
selves. Both these techniques are a cultural investment in the construction
of “witnessing.” They are called witnessing [memory] in the media and
Movement: For the Public Record, ed. Chris Berry, Lu Xinyu and Lisa Rofel (Hong Kong:
112 Z. GU
witnessed [memory] through the media, respectively. The extent to which

they are telling us the truth through this witnessing may be questioned.
To address this issue, Andreas Huyssen uses the term “representation”:
Re-presentation always comes after, even though some media will try to
provide us with the delusion of pure presence. But rather than leading us
to some authentic origin or giving us verifiable access to the real, memory,
even and especially in its belatedness, is itself based on representation. The
past is not simply there in memory, but it must be articulated to become
memory.44
Representation is a result of continuous memorial reconfiguration and

construction. The claim might be extended that a visual medium is (in
part) the art of the representation of memory. Furthermore, memo-
rial representation may become a testimony, thereby adopted by some
scholars to critique the notion that nostalgia is sentimental and unhistor-
ical.45 In other words, memory is always in the process of construction
and reconstruction. Nostalgia has often been understood as a form of
sentimentality, longing, narcissism, and melancholia, which may dispel
history and see it only as discursive imagination, especially for elites who
adopt the past to establish “authentic origin.” In these debates, nostalgia
is perceived as a form of cultural construction, in response to which Marita
Sturken suggests construction is an essential characteristic of cultural
memory, distinct from history.46 The camcorder (or documentary form)
may be perceived as creating a cultural construction of urban demolition
rather than a replica of an experience. The camcorder is distant from a
discussion of the “original event,” accuracy, or authenticity of mnemonic
retrieval; rather, it reveals how the film chronicles urban transformation
in a specific social context.
As discussed above, the documentary aesthetic in the urban film
becomes a social practice that engages with social issues, such as the
declining status of the working class. If the films of “educated youth,”
44 Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia

(London, 1995), 2–3.
45 Paul Grainge, Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America (West-
port, CT; London: Praeger, 2002), 11.
Politics of Remembering (Berkeley; London, 1997), 4.
discussed in the first chapter, present a critique of the CCP’s hegemony

in the Cultural Revolution, then the documentary aesthetic is a platform
for urban filmmakers to engage with the socio-political issues of state-
owned enterprise reform and the declining status of the working class.
For their critical stance, urban filmmakers have been seen as an inde-
pendent new generation. In particular, in 24 City, Jia uses documentary
aesthetics to portray the transformation of a socialist state-owned enter-
prise in the period of post-socialism. This feature film focuses on how
different generations of workers at Factory 420 evaluate and present their
past in the context of post-socialist China, rather than on exactly what
happened at this factory. Compared to Zhang’s use of a camcorder to
chronicle urban transformation, Jia extends documentary aesthetics to
reflect a deeper interpretation of how to understand both fiction and
reality. 24 City is a feature film that documents nine workers, five of
whom were real workers at Factory 420, while four are fictional char-
acters played by actors. For instance, Joan Chen plays a woman called
Gu Minhua, who tells the audiences that her experiences are similar to
the eponymous female protagonist of the film Xiao Hua (1979), a role
also played by Joan Chen. In this instance, Chen, as an actress, integrates
the story of another female protagonist in an older film set in 24 City.
Although Chen’s performance indicates that Gu Minhua’s story may not
be real, this metaphor represents the real existence of workers at Factory
420. The other fictional narratives in the film shoulder a similar function.
As an example, Su Na, as the daughter of an older generation of workers
at Factory 420, represents a conflict between the post-1980s generation
and their parents. Su Na feels regret about her parents’ belief that working
at Factory 420 is honourable.
Through its nine characters, the film depicts the transformation of
Chinese society from collectivism to individualism, from the public to the
private ownership of property, and from socialism to post-socialism. Thus,
individual stories are integrated with social transformation. Some of the
interviewees’ words may be not narrated exactly according to their expe-
riences, but are re-enacted based on the experiences of people like them.
These stories—the four real ones and the five fictional narratives—span
nearly three generations, across forty years, a period that shows the rise
and fall of state-owned enterprises and the change in people’s attitudes.
Sebastian Veg suggests that though Jia’s “reality” is different from actual
114 Z. GU
reality, his fictional narratives also act as a bridge to reality.47 In other

words, these blurred lines between fiction and reality create a kind of
augmented reality that enables the film to present a universal experience.
Luke Robinson further suggests that “in 24 City, the actor is ordinary
people, and history itself appears almost as a form of performance. Off-
camera interjections are thus one of a panoply of techniques used to blur
boundaries between reality and fiction, with the consequence that only
a contextual understanding can help even an engaged viewer distinguish
between the two.”48 The film narrates the history of Factory 420, and
the destiny of ordinary people between 1958 and 2008, to present both
the lives of individuals and a collective history. It does not provide histor-
ical facts, but instead shows a possible historical experience that includes
elements of reality, while, at the same time, constructing a new one.
This aesthetic pursuit reveals that some new documentary films do not
simply reflect reality, but further question the “truth” that is manifested.
As Jia suggests, “history in this film is comprised of truth and image, and
24 City is a story about loss which may not be seen again in reality.”49 The
fictional segments that are represented through documentary aesthetics
are essential for making sense of the complex period between 1958 and
2008. Hence, 24 City contributes to an experiment by which the narra-
tives of fiction and constructed reality may cooperate in creating a lived
space and imagined historical time. Jia’s camera records a group of people
who seem likely to disappear in the post-socialist economic reform. As
Jia suggests, he seeks to “face the truth, even if it contains some deep-
ening weakness of our human nature […] We are considerate to others so
that people can communicate with each other in the age of waning faith.
We have respect for individual life. We focus on the human condition,
through which to engage with the social condition.”50 Through the use
of documentary aesthetics and a combination of authentic and fictional
narratives, 24 City presents a lived social transformation.
47 Sebastian Veg, “From Documentary to Fiction and Back: Reality and Contingency
in Wang Bing’s and Jia Zhangke’s films,” China Perspectives, 2007 (3): 58–64.
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 138–154.
49 Zhangke Jia, Jiaxiang 1996–2008: Jia Zhangke’s Film Guide (Beijing: Peking
University Press, 2009), 18–19.
In this way, as suggested above, the fictional narrative does not reduce
the sense of authenticity, but rather emphasises the existence of “reality.”
As Achim Saupe suggests, “this desire for historical authenticity and past
‘reality’ goes hand in hand with an attachment to ‘tradition’ and a longing
to experience history ‘first hand’ […] Ultimately, this is all bound up
with a desire for things regarded as ‘genuine,’ with a wish to reconstruct
and preserve the ‘true’ and ‘original’.”51 Similarly, the fictional narratives
in 24 City present another way of witnessing historical events; one that
replenishes and enriches the recognition of historical authenticity. These
fictional narratives may not have occurred in history, but they inspire
a heuristic consciousness in that historical accounts in urban films may
be used to make sense of different conceptions of the past. Nostalgia
for the socialist period may also present different longings. For instance,
some are searching for enthusiasm and passion, and others for an ordi-
nary, simple, communal life. These diverse nostalgias also carry different
functions; some maintain a critical stance towards the CCP’s discourse
and some enjoy post-socialist commodities uncritically. Embedded in the
documentary aesthetics of the urban filmmakers, they indicate divergent
imaginings of Chinese modernity. There is, therefore, no need to assess
these constructed memories by the same standards as written work, but
rather as enriching the recognition of historical events.
The techniques used in these films serve to remind the audience of the
existence of filmmakers. The camera and the filmmaker Jia—in the sense
of “being on the scene”—are also performers who sometimes jump out of
the film and remind the audience that this “reality” is constructed. Many
of Jia’s films pay attention to individual feelings and the unique circum-
stances of ordinary people, which may reflect his understanding of artistic
authenticity. He produced 24 City in the form of documentary aesthetics
and presents “reality” in the form of authentic and fictional narratives,
through which he builds a filmic world about ordinary people’s problems
with the transformations of time and society. This form of filmmaking
produces both intimacy and an epic narrative of spiritual change as he
tracks the transformation of socialist China. His films are effective at recre-
ating the chaos, confusion, and ambiguity of real life itself, which he then
uses to investigate his present-day society. Jason McGrath suggests that
51 Achim Saupe, “Good old things: Nostalgia and the Discourse of Historical Authen-
ticity,” the abstract in the conference: “Nostalgia: Historicising the Longing for the Past,”
1 October 2015, https://nost.hypotheses.org/abstracts (Accessed 25 September 2019).
116 Z. GU
rather than professing to show an ideological truth that underlies apparent

reality, 24 City seeks to reveal a raw, underlying reality by stripping away
the ideological representations that might distort it.52 Thus, Jia’s film
is making meaning rather than being an act of mimesis or providing a
copy of “reality,” which can be understood as an aesthetic construction of
“reality.” In this aesthetic reality, the “traditional” (socialist) order is chal-
lenged and eroded by the process of social transformation and those once
shielded in this society, for instance, the former workers at Factory 420,
are exposed as it changes. In this way, 24 City finds the means to rewrite
modern China’s history, and to capture a sense of the “deep reality” of
the world.
The discussion of documentary aesthetics in both of these films raises
the question of how filmmakers adjust the original intention of film-
making when it differs from historical authenticity. Jia suggests that he
holds a critical consciousness of the old Factory 420 and the socialist
system, on behalf of which many people paid a heavy price.53 Hence,
he chooses interviewees who have a commonsense moment, such as a
heartrending memory about that period. However, with the deepening
of his investigations, Jia realises that his intention to criticise the socialist
system must change, as rather than complain about the factory and the
old system, many workers express a desire to maintain that system.54
Evidently, the interviewees do not form a consensus of the past, and
some even have a sense of adherence to the original beliefs, including
socialism, of their youth. This altered purpose in the filmmaking shows
that the filmmaker’s nostalgia and his own intentions must be negotiated
and filtered through the intense search for historical authenticity. It is true
that the former socialist workers, once seen as the owners of the country,
have been assigned a new image as backward and less productive in order
to facilitate their replacement by more efficient production means. From
this perspective, however, some of their nostalgia about their past glorious
status does not weaken the filmmaker’s criticism of the socialist system but
makes the images of socialism and the working class more real.

54 Zhangke Jia, “Unsafety Film: Jia Zhangke Discusses 24 City,” Southern Weekend,
2009 (3): 20.
These films not only give a visual form to city space but also present
the feelings of individuals about urban development. By chronicling the
declining status of the working class and the demolition of the old city,
Zhang and Jia’s films, to some extent, resist the abandonment of the
urban past, by which a new history about the working class may be
rewritten. Shower and 24 City both use the theme of urban demolition to
focus on changes in society and the working class. But a comparison of
the two films also reveals some differences. For instance, Zhang’s Shower
cooperates with the mainstream social project of building a prosperous
China in the 1990s. The film potentially endorses post-socialist urbani-
sation and the change to urban culture, although Zhang also expresses
a sense of puzzlement about the future. Jia’s 24 City focuses on the
effects of economic reform on a changing society, and reminds us that
the people who worked so diligently under the socialist system should
not be forgotten by post-socialist China.
Urban generation filmmakers Zhang and Jia search for effective ways
of engaging with urban environments and portraying the difficulties
of socialist workers in a post-socialist system. Documentary aesthetics
becomes a means of exploring new forms of realist expression and polit-
ical criticism during the period of post-socialist reform, and filmmakers
further construct their group identity as activists to engage with urban
transformation.
4 Reflective/Restorative Nostalgia
This chapter has so far focused on the metaphor of demolition and on
documentary aesthetics. This section examines nostalgia itself to present
a more comprehensive picture of socialist memorial types in the context
of post-socialist urbanisation. Investigating Russian culture after the fall
of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Boym breaks nostalgia down into two clas-
sifications: restorative and reflective. To some extent, restorative nostalgia
tends to be conservative in that it aspires to a homogeneous whole, while
reflective nostalgia is potentially creative and productive.55 Boym empha-
sises that the two types of nostalgia cannot be completely separated, and
often mediate between the poles of yearning for and displacing home.
118 Z. GU
The nostalgia presented in Zhang’s Shower, is to some extent under-

stood as a kind of reflective nostalgia. The difference between Da Ming
and his father (Lao Liu) may be perceived as that between two lifestyles:
socialist and post-socialist. As described, Lao Liu owns a traditional bath-
house and works as a social director, marriage counsellor, and dispute
mediator for his customers. Da Ming represents the modern urban life
situated in booming southern China. He is, however, stymied by the gap
between the two worlds when he tries to communicate with his little
brother and father. Da Ming’s puzzlement, to some extent, is interpreted
as a kind of discontinuity between the socialist communal past and post-
socialist present urban life, which is seen as a radical break, a shift from a
party-centred public life to an individual-centred consumerist ethos. The
rupture between a remembered collective past and an individual present
seems entirely unbridgeable. Thus, Da Ming is fraught with emotional
fragmentation and anxiety at the same time that he embraces new desires
and identities. Although Lao Liu and Da Ming try to reconcile their rela-
tionship, the intimate family bond cannot bridge this discontinuity. Da
Ming is torn between his perplexing future and inaccessible past. The
filmmaker, Zhang, does not think that socialist style, as a kind of nostalgia,
is able to address post-socialist spiritual confusion, although Shower does
attempt to address the conflict between socialism and post-socialism. The
presence of the public bathhouse reminds the audience that the socialist
past was a time of disruption, destruction, and trauma. The representation
of this past, in turn, becomes an important temporal resource to express
another sense of “suffering” and “victimhood” in China’s post-socialism
of the present.
Here, the communal bathhouse for Da Ming is not a place to which
he wants to return. He feels nostalgic and develops a particular kind of
diasporic intimacy, which, as Boym suggests, is an aesthetic of estrange-
ment and longing.56 This transitory experience of communal life may
arouse his memories of other outmoded objects and make him yearn
for a community of close friends. However, it does not mean that he
considers coming back home permanently. This type of nostalgia allows
him and others of this young urban generation to temporarily dream
of their escape, while living in the reality of modern cities. Gediminas
Lankauskas further suggests that such reminiscences of relatively recent
56 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 50.
socialist history are not about a yearning to return to and be at “home”

but instead externalise socialism as a time of existential homelessness.57
This historical and political displacement may become a permanent frac-
ture. It seems, then, that the remembrance of socialism is not related to
the yearning for return, but, paradoxically, its opposite. The nostalgia in
Shower looks backwards to find whatever might soothe the soul and give
the mind a sense of peace in the present. This discontinuity makes the
film a reflective more than restorative nostalgic film.
Compared to Shower, the nostalgia in 24 City can be seen as restora-
tive, invoking memories of the past to create a sense of continuity and to
connect socialism and post-socialism. The existence of Factory 420 can be
divided into two eras: socialism (1958–1978) and post-socialism (1979–
2008). 24 City tries to eliminate a gap between the two eras and build
a sense of continuity rather than a jarring disjuncture between the recent
communist past and a consumerist present. In the film, Jia constructs
restorative nostalgia in three ways.58
First, each interviewee’s memory presents an example of nostalgia. For
instance, the scene when a middle-aged man visits his former mentor,
who is now elderly, evokes feelings of respect and appreciation for the
first-generation workers who have dedicated their lives to the country
since the 1950s. Many first-generation workers brought their families to
Chengdu upon the relocation of Factory 420. Once seen as owners of
the country, envied by many, they are now retired from Factory 420 and
reluctantly experiencing the change in their lives since the days when they
were admired. In a narrative from the second generation of workers, a
female worker, Gu Minhua, proud of her beauty when young, is now
nearing 45 years old. She has not married, saying that she has the confi-
dence to wait for the right man. In her interview, we witness her complex
feelings of pride, regret, contradiction, insistence, and even hate about
the effects of time and change. The transformation of Factory 420 over
the past fifty years is revealed through these interviews. At the end of the
film, there is an interview with a third-generation worker, Su Na, who
at twenty-six years old now manages her own business as a purchasing
57 Gediminas Lankauskas, “Missing Socialism Again? The Malaise of Nostalgia in Post-

Soviet Lithuania,” in Anthropology and Nostalgia, ed. Olivia Angé and David Berliner
(New York: Berghahn, 2014), 40.
58 Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society: Economy, Society and Culture
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 190.
120 Z. GU
agent rather than working at the factory. She expresses an optimistic atti-
tude about her future but feels puzzled about her parents’ willingness to
remain employees of Factory 420.
In other interviews, Hou Lijun lost her job as a result of state-owned
enterprise reform and now receives a subsidy of only 200RMB per month.
Da Li loses her son in 1958 when Factory 420 moves to Chengdu;
as a soldier, she has to give up looking for her child in order to fulfil
her job. The film follows the memories of three generations of workers
in Chengdu (in the 1950s, the 1970s, and the present) to express the
changing experience for individuals, the factory, and the whole country.
Through these interviews, the situation of three generations of people
who either worked or lived at Factory 420 is laid out, constructing a
connection between socialism and post-socialism.
The filmmaker includes one poem at the end of every interview, which
is another form of restorative nostalgia in the film. For instance, when
Song Weidong stands at the playground with his basketball and watches
the camera silently after finishing his interview, William Butler Yeats’s
poem The Coming of Wisdom with Time emerges on the screen: “though
leaves are many, the root is one./Through all the lying days of my
youth/I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;/Now I may wither into
the truth.”59 Song, as a second-generation worker, experiences the facto-
ry’s journey from prosperity to fading. His experience is like the flower in
Yeats’s poem, which enjoys its youth and is now waiting for its death. In
another interview, Gu Minhua tells of her experience as the most beau-
tiful woman of the factory in the 1960s and 1970s. Cao Xueqin’s poem
is used to express Gu’s sadness: “it is quite nerve-racking for I like spring
and feel sad when it is leaving.”60 This poem represents a sense of contra-
diction when a once-beautiful woman is caught in the flow of time and
worries about her future. Herein, the film’s narrative and Cao’s poem
construct a poignant image of Gu Minhua being affected by time while
feeling helpless in a rapidly changing world. The filmmaker Jia delicately
integrates the poem with the destiny of the interviewee, a subtle means of
59 William Butler Yeats, W.B, Yeats: A Critical Edition of the Major Works (Oxford
60 Cao Xueqin is a writer and poet in the Qing Dynasty. This poem comes from
his novel A Dream in Red Mansions and is translated by the author of this chapter
from Chinese-language sources: 怪侬底事倍伤神?半为怜春半恼春 (guai nong di shi bei
shangshen, ban wei lianchun ban naochun).
creating a nostalgic feeling. Ouyang comments that Jia himself is a poet

who uses the film to present an accurate representation of the world.61
Moreover, the poems in the film cooperate with documentary aesthetics
to create a flexible world that shows individual and collective feelings of
yearning, desire, and regret about the changing times.
Jia uses the soundtrack as a kind of film language to elevate each story,
which deploys musical memory about the past as an important aesthetic
strategy to construct restorative nostalgia. The soundtrack is linked to
each narrative and also suggests a conclusion to each interviewee’s story,
similar in function to the poem. During the interview of a post-1970s
reporter from a Chengdu television station who grew up at Factory 420,
the music Outside World (1987), sung by famous Taiwanese singer Qi
Qin is played. It tells the listener: “a long time ago, you owned me and
I owned you. Then, someday, you leave me for your dream.” The lyrics
echo the experience of the 1970s generation, striving for their dreams
while feeling hesitant about their future. The melancholy soundtrack of
Qi’s pop music plays an active role in the construction of the reporter’s
narrative, creating a relationship between sound and image to represent
a generation. As Philip Drake suggests, the work of a soundtrack is to
connect with the memorialised knowledge to establish retro feelings of
the period. The soundtrack takes on a symbolic function in establishing
relationships between characters and their nostalgia.62 In this sense, the
soundtrack cooperates with other aspects of film language to evoke an
associational structure of feeling for people who may have had a similar
experience.
The temporal evolution of socialism to post-socialism unfolds through
the configuration of the nine interviews, nine poems, and nine sound-
tracks that make up 24 City. Chialan Sharon Wang claims that “instead
of presenting ruptures and disorientation of drastic changes marked by
demolition, displacement, and breakups of human relationships, the story
about the relocation of Factory 420 seems to be a project of producing
61 Yan Lv, “From Jia Zhangke’s film 24 City to Discuss the Possibility Marriage
Between Film and Poetry,” Movie Review, 2009 (27): 2.
62 Philp Drake, “‘Mortgaged to Music’: New Retro Movies in 1990s Hollywood
Cinema,” in Memory and Popular Film, ed. Paul Grainge (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2003), 193–195.
122 Z. GU
a palpable past buried in history.”63 Indeed, the nine stories in the film
emphasise a connection between socialist past and post-socialist present,
rather than a division between the communist past and consumerist
present. Jia’s aesthetic construction creates a sense of restorative nostalgia
to engage with the chaotic urban environment in post-socialist China. (To
some extent, the nostalgia for the idyllic countryside discussed in the first
chapter may also be read as a kind of restorative nostalgia.)
Reflective and restorative nostalgia overlap in both the films discussed
here. Although reflective nostalgia dwells on the ambivalence of human
longing and belonging and does not shy away from the contradiction of
modernity, it is sometimes conscious of returning to an original place.
In Shower, the father character Lao Liu is representative of the tradi-
tional Beijing community. Though confused about the past, Da Ming
tries to understand his father and community life, which may be seen as
a return to folk and communal lifestyle. Additionally, two plotlines that
depict water can further be understood as expressing restorative nostalgia.
The two inserted sequences take the audience first to the Loess Plateau, a
cultural symbol shared with the Fifth Generation filmmaker Chen Kaige’s
Yellow Earth (1984). This sequence reveals an active connection with
former filmmakers and their film aesthetics of “national allegory.”64 The
second scene involving water brings the audience to a Tibetan holy lake.
The water is referred to metaphorically as a cultural soul, with the ability
to baptise and purify. Hence, the two allegories of water may be perceived
as a return to the aesthetics of previous filmmakers, which might be
understood as a kind of restorative nostalgia not only for the mundane
lifestyle depicted but for the work of those filmmakers.
24 City offers a similar connection between restorative and reflective
nostalgia. For instance, some younger workers express their helpless-
ness and disappointment when facing the transformation of Factory 420.
When a woman from the third generation of factory workers talks about
her memories and her parents’ faith in Factory 420, the conflict between
63 Chialan Sharon Wang, “Confronting the Real, Construing Reality: Artistic Vision
and Gaze in Jia Zhangke’s 24 City,” Concentric, 2013 (1): 97–118.
64 Jameson’s definition of the “third-world” national allegory is that “the story of the
private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public
third-world culture and society.” In a national allegory, the personal is the national. Fredric
Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text,
1986 (15): 69.
her ideas about the past and desire and yearning for the future may not
be interpreted as restorative nostalgia for socialism. However, it is very
similar to Da Ming’s conflicted feelings in the film Shower. Furthermore,
the effects of state-owned enterprise reform continually remind the audi-
ence of the rupture between socialism and post-socialism. This sense of
discontinuity can potentially be seen as a kind of reflective nostalgia.
Through comparison, restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia do
provide a useful schema for identifying people’s complex feelings about
socialism and post-socialism in these urban films. Reflective nostalgia
mainly constructs a different time and place to inhabit, while restora-
tive nostalgia constructs a link between socialism and post-socialism. The
mood of hate, critique, and yearning for a communist past is integrated
with feelings of desire and anxiety about a post-socialist lifestyle. This
is similar to the position of the “forsaken generation” (or the Sixth
Generation) of filmmakers, who are seen as independent. Their pecu-
liar involvement with the past shapes their relationship to the present
into something characterised by interruption and breakage, rather than
a smooth, integral, and solid transition. These characteristics also cause
urban generation filmmakers to choose documentary aesthetics to rewrite
socialist content in the post-socialist context. In both films, Zhang and
Jia use the documentary aesthetic to engage with Chinese urban issues,
but Zhang’s Shower presents a warm atmosphere, while the tone of Jia’s
24 City is colder. These styles use different aesthetics and have a diverse
understanding of the post-socialist condition, but it is these differences
that ultimately construct a more comprehensive understanding of urban
transformation in post-socialist China.
When comparing representations of nostalgia in Chapsters 2 and 3,
there are both differences and similarities. The “educated youth” gener-
ation’s idyllic countryside locations have reconstructed the past with
images that represent collective guilt, while the Sixth Generation film-
makers focus on idiosyncratic and marginal individuals in an urban
environment. If “youth without regret [or guilt]” is, to some extent,
a generational impression of “educated youth,” then, images of irony,
helplessness, and a retrospective mood represent the intense changes
experienced by the young urban generation. If the nostalgia of the
“educated youth” generation sees a physical countryside as home, then,
restorative and reflective nostalgia situates home as being in China’s cities.
Regardless of national allegories or a more personalised approach to
124 Z. GU
representing the past, the nostalgic cultures coincide with the privati-
sation and marketisation process in China. In this transformation, the
remembrance of socialism represents a powerful moral and social critique
of the present. Although the transition from state socialism to market
socialism has brought undeniable material progress, neither system is
perfect.65 The progress of the economy may be paid for by palpable
social discontinuity. Therefore, historical representations on screen have
the significant effect of coding the past by remembering, forgetting, and
imagining. These representations thus form a significant arena in which
different discourses interpret the Cultural Revolution, state-owned enter-
prise reform, and other policies initiated by the Chinese government. The
result is the construction of a new or updated social image to explain what
has happened and what is happening in China.
In this regard, we can find that reflective and restorative nostalgia orig-
inally derive from the analysis of post-Soviet places and periods. To a great
extent, they are available to examine the cultural and political aspects of
social upheaval in post-socialist China.
5 Conclusion
Shower and 24 City present the city as a battleground to give voice to
the urban generation filmmakers and the people, such as small-business
owners and local urban residents, who grew up in the cities and lived
at the margins. Both films map out urban memories and expose mate-
rial wounds to present the changing status of the working class, which
may be seen as a kind of nostalgic recall of a communal lifestyle. In
both films, the past is both heart-warming and crude, the present both
prosperous and confused, and the future both bright and ambivalent; all
against a historical background of social transformation from socialism to
post-socialism.
In this regard, restorative and reflective nostalgia create historical
authenticity and a sense of being in the work of Sixth Generation film-
makers. Restorative nostalgia yearns for a lost home, as when workers in
65 Ching Kwan Lee, “What Was Socialism to Chinese Workers? Collective Memories
and Labor Politics in an Age of Reform,” in Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The
Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China, ed. Ching Kwan Lee and
Guobin Yang (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Stanford, CA: Stanford
24 City are compelled to leave their native towns. Then, Factory 420
becomes a promise of a new home for them under socialism. As Wu
Shu-chin states, individuals are to participate in the common destiny in
all-embracing structures of community inside of Factory 420. However,
the factory also represents the anguish and despair of ordinary people
as an effect of politics.66 In this way, nostalgia has become a contem-
porary resonance in post-socialist changing cities. Home has disappeared
for many with the advent of post-socialist modernity, at the same time
that China’s economic neoliberalism has created new social spaces and
new cultures for the young urban generation. The overall message of
both Shower and 24 City “signals an awareness of both the failures
of the Maoist era and the rise of ‘desperate individualisms’ in post-
socialist China.”67 Finally, both Lao Liu in Shower and other workers
in 24 City feel worried about their declining status. In this situation, the
sense of helplessness becomes a resource that admits the legality of the
expansion of capitalism, urbanisation, and neoliberalism in the context of
post-socialist China.
Overall, urban generation filmmakers present two types of different
but related nostalgias to investigate urban demolition and social transfor-
mation and to rewrite the past for the future. Deepening marketisation
and globalisation have reignited and intensified the debates about a
different version of Chinese modernity. Documentary aesthetics are used
to engage with the dilemma of contemporary individuals (including the
filmmakers themselves), caught between socialism and post-socialism.
These aesthetics also potentially criticise the Chinese government’s hege-
monic politics. As these films show, the decline of the working class and
the widening gap between urban and rural life, together with people’s
disillusionment with capitalist modernity, have incubated a rising nostalgia
for the communal past. In post-socialist China, where the grand narratives
of socialism and modernity have broken down, Chinese modernities are
evinced in personal memories and narratives.
66 Shu-chin Wu, “Time, History, and Memory in Jia Zhangke’s 24 City,” Film
Criticism, 2001 (1): 17.
67 Hsiu-Chuang Deppman, “Reading Docufiction: Jia Zhangke’s 24 City,” Journal of
Chinese Cinemas, 2014 (3): 1–21.
126 Z. GU
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CHAPTER 4
Nostalgia in Youth Media So Young (2013)

and With You (2016)
This chapter examines nostalgic screen culture as expressed in the youth

film So Young (2013) and the Internet drama With You (2016). Both of
these examples of youth media present nostalgic cultures in relation to
the innocent lives of the university and school students in the late 1990s
and early 2000s. By using Paul Grainge’s definition of nostalgia mood
and nostalgia mode1 these works are shown to manifest a sense of genera-
tional yearning in response to life’s anxieties, as experienced by those born
after 1980. Both works present a form of affective consumption through
music, posters, food, and clothes. The presentation of nostalgic culture
and the characteristics of screen youth media—homogeneous scenarios;
an uncritical historical stance; the adoption of advanced digital tech-
nology; and a dynamic balance between market, political discourse, and
film aesthetics—are discussed in this chapter. Through the dissection of
this specific nostalgic culture, it is argued that nostalgia in recent Chinese
youth media contains a sense of yearning associated with demographic
social anxiety. This nostalgic culture is also reconfigured as a kind of
1 Paul Grainge, Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America (Westport,
Conn.; London: Praeger, 2002), 24–35.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6_4
130 Z. GU
popular commercial culture to attract the youth screen market and is

aligned with the Chinese government’s political gains since 2010.
1 Nostalgia in Chinese Youth Media Since 2010

As mentioned previously, China’s accession to the WTO significantly
accelerated the integration of the screen industry with global capitalism.
Many transnational media corporations extended the scope and depth
of their penetration into China’s screen market. Furthermore, Chinese
domestic officials and private media corporations used WTO policies
to pursue their own interests.2 Consequently, China’s screen industry
achieved rapid growth. In 2012, China’s film box office made $2.7
billion, surpassing Japan’s $2.4 billion, to become the second-largest film
market in the world.3 In February 2012, China and the USA signed
an agreement which gave permission for a larger quota of imported
blockbusters (jumping from twenty to thirty-four films) to be released
in China’s film market.4 Further, since the early 2010s, there has been
much more cooperation with Western media giants in the ways that China
invests capital, in exchange for which Hollywood provides scriptwriters,
actors, and other creatives to produce a series of high-budget cinema
blockbusters with vastly differing degrees of “Chinese characteristics.”5
Films such as Iron Man 3 (2013), Transformers: Age of Ultron (2015),
Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016), Warcraft (2016), and The Great Wall (2016)
were produced in this way. Through such international cooperation,
Chinese film companies gained access to the world’s largest cinema
2 Kevin Voigt, “China Firm Buys AMC to form World’s Largest Cinema Chain,”
Cable News Network, 21 May 2012, https://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/21/business/
china-amc-wanda-theater/index.html (Accessed 12 March 2019).
3 Michael Cieply, “China Overtaking Japan as the World’s Second-Largest Film
Market,” New York Times, 22 March 2013, https://cn.nytimes.com/business/201
30322/c22box/ (Accessed 12 March 2019).
4 “The Analysis of the Changes in Chinese Film Industry Led by New Film
Policy Between China and the United States,” China Industry Research, 25 February
2012, http://www.cir.cn/ZiXun/2012-02/2012NianZhongMeiDianYingXinZhengDaoZ
hiZhongGuoYingYeBianJ.html (Accessed 12 March 2019).
5 Michael Keane, “Introduction: Willing Collaborators, the Long Game,” in Willing
Collaborators: Foreign Partners in Chinese Media, ed. Michael Keane, Brian Yecies and
Terry Flew (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018), 6–7.
4 NOSTALGIA IN YOUTH MEDIA SO YOUNG (2013) … 131
market, as well as to advanced technologies in filmmaking and post-

production, enabling positive images of China to be incorporated into
these popular films. In this post-2010 context, China’s film industry made
great progress and even began to compete with Hollywood.
Advanced digital technology, in particular, has become an important
factor in stimulating screen media creation, promotion, broadcasting,
and cultural construction. For instance, China’s social media, such as
QQ, Weibo, and WeChat have provided opportunities for Chinese people
to connect easily in the age of instant communication when Facebook,
Twitter, and other foreign social media were forbidden in China. This
aggressive online and digital development further generated many new
media formats, such as Internet novels, Internet music, “Internet big
film” (网络大电影, wangluo dadianying ), and other “we media” (自媒体,
zi meiti). Moreover, the introduction of the concept of “Internet plus”
by the Chinese government,6 ushered in a new era of development for
China’s Internet media. Internet plus changed many traditional screen
industries profoundly and promoted their competitiveness, productivity,
and creativity. For example, when a traditional TV drama is produced and
released online, it may further attract more young audiences, especially
the netizen generation who tend to watch drama almost exclusively via
the Internet. In this context, many Internet dramas have been produced
by online media enterprises, such as IQIYI, Youku, and Tencent. Internet
dramas are normally serialised like traditional TV drama. They differ in
two ways: first, before an Internet drama is produced, it will be anal-
ysed by a “big data system.”7 Therefore, the information on the target
audience of an Internet drama is more precise than for a traditional TV
6 “Internet plus” is the Internet plus any traditional industry. It refers to the integra-
tion, rather than a simple combination, of the Internet and traditional industries through
online platforms and information technology. “Guiding Opinions of the State Council on
Promoting Internet Plus Action,” the Chinese government, 1 July 2015, http://www.
gov.cn/zhengce/content/2015-07/04/content_10002.htm (Accessed 13 March 2019).
7 Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data
processing application software is inadequate to deal with them. Big data challenges
include capturing data, data storage, data analysis, search, sharing, transfer, visualization,
querying, updating, and information privacy. Lately, the term “big data” tends to refer
to the use of predictive analytics, user behaviour analytics, or certain other advanced data
analytics methods that extract value from data, and seldom to a particular size of data set.
Nick Couldry & Joseph Turow, “Advertising, Big Data, and the Clearance of the Public
Realm: Marketers’ New Approaches to the Content Subsidy,” International Journal of
Communication, 2014 (8): 1710–1726.
132 Z. GU
programme. Second, the form of an Internet release is more diverse; it

could be one episode per week, two episodes per day, or all the episodes
at once. Those who buy membership have access to more episodes than
those who do not subscribe. Thus, Internet drama and other online videos
have become important cultural products, and the development of digital
media has facilitated the convergence of culture, art, business, and tech-
nology in China’s screen industry. In short, stimulated by international
cooperation, preferential policies, and advanced digital technology, the
Chinese screen industry, in particular, film and the Internet, has not only
become a significant public media force but is seen as an important pillar
in the development of China’s economy.
A new generation of filmmakers and directors (the New Force)
with specific styles of filmmaking emerged into this prosperous screen
industry from 2010 on.8 They consciously adopted Hollywood indus-
trial aesthetics and emphasised the use of a standard and industrial
mechanism to produce films and other screen media. As we know, the
Sixth-Generation filmmakers conscientiously attempt to differentiate their
works from the Fifth Generation’s in approach, style, and content, and to
incorporate the aesthetic style of European art films. However, the highly
visible, personalised style of the Sixth-Generation is gradually replaced
by a depersonalised style that prioritises the market, the audience, and
the generic production. Chen Xuguang uses the term of “film industrial
aesthetics” to depict the characteristics of the Chinese screen industry
since 2010.9 As Chen suggests, “film industrial aesthetics” refers to the
films produced by the so-called New Force filmmakers within the current
Chinese film industry. The New Force filmmakers, such as Ning Hao,
Diao Yinan, Chen Sicheng, Guo Jingming, Xiao Yang, and Cao Baoping,
were mostly born in the 1970s and grew up in the 1990s. They have
mainly been influenced by Hollywood films and commercial blockbusters.
Most of them have “grown up” in the orbit of American films and
have entered the film industry alongside the accelerated marketisation of
Chinese films in the new century.
8 Xuguang Chen, “Industrial Aesthetics of Chinese Film in the New Era: Interpretation
and Construction,” Journal of Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, 2018
(1): 18–22.
9 Xuguang Chen and Lina Zhang, “The Rise of Chinese ‘New Power’ Directors and
the Principle of ‘Aesthetics of Film Industry’,” Film Art, 2018 (1): 99–105.
Their professional backgrounds may differ but their films have some
common characteristics. They are generally willing to be responsive to
investors, respect the needs of the audience, and to achieve a good
balance between them. Furthermore, Chen emphasises that rationality
as the first principle in the process of filmmaking, which weakens the
personal emotion of producers as it highlights a rational, standardised,
and collaborative mechanism.10 More importantly, these filmmakers are
called “Authors within the system,” which refers to the fact that they have
a profound understanding of the film industry and the market regula-
tions and consciously (and conscientiously) attempt to negotiate balances
between genres and auteurs, between commodity and politics.11 From
Chen’s description, the term “film industrial aesthetics” emphasises that
filmmaking needs a balance between the film’s artistic and commercial
goals, and as such sits between institutional and auteurist systems. Overall,
it is clear that the principle of “film industrial aesthetics” was formed in
the context of prosperity and the increasing development of digital tech-
nologies in China’s screen industry. This principle has not only been used
in films but further extended to other screen media.
Many works by the New Force filmmakers depict young people’s lives
at senior high school and university, familiar contexts for the post-1980s
and post-1990s generation. These works have had considerable box-office
success since 2010. The scriptwriter of So Young, Xin Yiwu, was born in
1981, and its filmmaker Zhao Wei was born in 1976; Bayue Changan, the
author of the novel With You (2013), was born in 1987. It is reasonable
to speculate that the scenarios shown in their work have been influenced
by the personal experiences of these creators. Timothy Shary suggests that
“films are cultural artefacts revealing much about not only the people who
are depicted in them but also those who make and view them.”12 To some
extent, these filmmakers and writers integrate the experiences of their own
youth into the media they create, through which the “authors” come into
10 Xuguang Chen, “Interpretation and Construction: ‘Industrial Aesthetics’ of the

Chinese Film in New Period,” Journal of Zhejiang University of Media and Commu-
nications, 2018 (1): 18–22.
11 Xuguang Chen, “Interpretation and construction: ‘Industrial Aesthetics’ of the
nications 2018 (1): 18–22.
12 Timothy Shary, Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American
Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 12.
134 Z. GU
existence inside these screen media. Jin Danyuan also suggests that the
reason recent screen media have obtained such high box-office success
is that these films are made for the post-1980s and 1990s generations
who make up a large percentage of film audiences.13 Eighty-seven percent
of youth screen media audiences are between the ages of nineteen and
forty,14 while 72.1% of Internet users are between 10 and 39 years old.15
Accordingly, screen media since 2010 are mainly produced by those born
in the late 1970s and aim to attract audiences of those born after 1980.
New Force filmmakers may thus draw on their personal experience to
grasp the aesthetic needs of these young mainstream audiences.
The film So Young (2013) and the Internet drama With You (2016),
both discussed in this chapter, are produced in the aforementioned screen
industry context. Two reasons underpin their selection here. First, the
portrayal of youth as the period between teenage years and adulthood,
a transition from school or university to work life, during which young
people ultimately forge an identity for themselves within their native
social structure. Both films express a nostalgic feeling about university
and senior school lives respectively, which will be analysed using Paul
Grainge’s aforementioned conceptual distinction between nostalgia mood
and nostalgia mode. Grainge suggests that “mood” theorists understand
nostalgia “as a socio-cultural response to forms of discontinuity, claiming
a vision of stability and authenticity in some conceptual ‘golden age’,”16
while “mode” theorists are concerned with nostalgia’s “stylistic form,”
“media image” and “retro fashion.”17 Compared to nostalgia mood,
nostalgia mode is based not so much on the feared loss of the “golden
years” but on distinct materialities that create a sense of pastness. Second,
13 Danyuan Jin, “The Reflection on the Narrative of Nostalgia in Recent Youth Film,”
Literature and Art Studies, 2015 (10): 16–22.
14 “China Film Market Influence Research Report 2013–2014,” Entgroup, 7 January
2015, http://www.199it.com/archives/320094.html (Accessed 13 March 2019).
15 “The 40th China Statistical Report on Internet Development,” China Internet
Network Information Center, 4 August 2017, https://cnnic.com.cn/IDR/ReportDow
nloads/201706/P020170608523740585924.pdf (Accessed 13 March 2019).
port, CA; London: Praeger, 2002), 24.
17 Grainge’s “nostalgia mode” departs from Jameson postmodernism. He agrees the
theory of nostalgia as a retro style, but rejects the assumption of amnesia and histori-
cist crisis common to much postmodern critique. Paul Grainge, Monochrome Memories:
Nostalgia and Style in Retro America (Westport, CA; London: Praeger, 2002), 43–48.
So Young and With You not only draw on similar plotlines, such as the
narratives of campus life and breaking up with lovers, but also present a
changing screen industry influenced by “film industrial aesthetics” in the
context of the commercialisation and industrialisation of China’s screen
industry. Their works do not directly endorse the Chinese government’s
discourse; instead, they maintain a dynamic balance between political
discourse, film aesthetics, and the film market.
This chapter will first analyse how nostalgia is constructed as an
aesthetic style in the film So Young (2013); next, the Internet drama
With You (2016) is investigated from the perspective of nostalgic culture
and compared with the youth screen media produced in the early 2010s.
In both media, the nostalgic culture is set in a university and in senior
high school respectively, which represents a through-line to express
how nostalgia has been constructed in the context of “film industrial
aesthetics” since 2010.
2 Nostalgia in the Youth Film So Young (2013)

So Young not only creates a sense of nostalgia mood through constructed
university life to engage with a sense of social anxiety, but also presents
a sense of pastness, as a kind of nostalgia mode, to attract demographic
audiences.
So Young begins with the story of Zheng Wei as she takes a train to a
big metropolis to start her college life. Zheng majors in civil engineering
and studies at the same college as her childhood friend, Lin Jing, whom
she is determined to marry. However, when she arrives, she finds Lin
has left the university to study abroad. At first, Zheng feels confused and
sad about Lin’s leaving without any notice. She establishes and maintains
close friendships with her three roommates, Ruan Guan, Li Weijuan, and
Zhu Xiaobei. By chance, Zheng falls in love with Chen Xiaozheng who
comes from a poor, single-parent family and is raised by his strict mother.
Four years later, Chen obtains a graduate fellowship to study architecture
in the USA. Before graduation, Zheng and Chen break up, and both end
their university years with feelings of regret.
A few years later, Zheng has become the head of a successful company
when one day she encounters Lin Jing. Lin explains that he left without
contacting her because he knew his father was having an affair with her
mother and did not know how to face Zheng at that time. He did not
136 Z. GU
in fact go to the USA. Now, however, Lin wants to restart their friend-
ship. At the same time, Chen Xiaozheng, now a famous architect, returns
from the USA. Although he has everything he should want, Chen feels
a sense of incompleteness in his life because he gave up the relationship
with Zheng, which, like Lin, he now wants to restart. Zheng Wei chooses
neither. The film ends with a scene where Chen Xiaozheng askes Zheng
Wei “Can I start over, and love you again?” To which Zheng Wei replies,
“Xiaozheng, we spent our youth together, we owe each other nothing
[…] youth is something you can release in our memories.”
The theory of nostalgia mood is understood as a socio-cultural
response to forms of discontinuity; it does not necessarily mean a breakage
of or any negative feeling about the present. However, in youth media
since 2010, this discontinuity, in youth media since 2010, is partly seen
as a reaction to address the social anxiety of contemporary young audi-
ences born after 1980.18 People who were born after 1980 (post-1980s
and 1990s) are considered the main audiences of youth media. They
have been experiencing an increasingly prosperous Chinese economy and
enjoying the fruits of its development. For instance, as a result of the
“one-child policy,” initiated in 1979,19 most of those people have no
siblings; therefore, they have been the sole subject of devoted love and
care by their parents.20 Furthermore, the policy of expanding university
enrolment since 1999 has provided greater opportunities for students to
receive better higher education21 ; thus, the number of university students
18 The post-1980s generation that this chapter talks about in contemporary China
is based on the post-1980s group that mostly grew up, studied and lived in mainland
cities. Rural post-1980s generation may meet some different social, cultural, and economic
circumstance.
19 The one-child policy is a population planning policy of China. It was introduced in
1979 and began to be formally phased out in 2015. The new law became effective on
January 1, 2016, following its passage in the standing committee of the National People’s
Congress on December 27, 2015. In 2007, 36% of China’s population was subject to a
strict one-child restriction, with an additional 53% being allowed to have a second child
if the first child was a girl. Feng Wang and Yong Cai & Baochang Gu, “Population,
Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge China’s One-Child Policy?,” Population and
Development Review, 2012 (38): 115–129.
20 Denise Sabet, “Confucian or Communist, Post-Mao or Postmodern? Exploring the
Narrative Identity Resources of Shanghai’s Post-80s Generation,” Symbolic Interaction,
2011 (4): 547–548.
21 Yinmei Wan, “Expansion of Chinese Higher Education Since 1998: Its Causes and
Outcomes,” Asia Pacific Education Review, 2006 (1): 19–31.
increased from 1,080,000 in 1999 to 6,850,000 by 2012.22 Lian Hong-

ping remarks that the “post-1980s” generation may have superiority in
mastering material things compared to the generations before them. They
grew up with various types of mobile phones and laptops. They live in
an era when material things have become increasingly abundant, and the
marketing of almost all products is aimed at their tastes.23
Meanwhile, China’s economic growth does not necessarily create
enough jobs for graduates; they have suffered more pressure related to
employment,24 housing, and caring for the elderly. For instance, before
the housing reform, people working at state-owned enterprises or in
government would normally be allocated a house. However, many people
of the post-1980s generation must personally bear the huge burden of
house ownership, albeit with the support of their parents.25 Indeed,
unlike the generations of “educated youth” and the “forsaken generation”
who experienced or partly experienced the Cultural Revolution in the
centralised socialist state, people born after 1980 did not have any expe-
riences of that political movement. Instead, while, on the one hand, they
are undoubtedly enjoying considerable material comforts, on the other,
they are facing serious anxiety and material pressures.
The nostalgia mood in So Young is constructed through the depic-
tion of “golden years” on a university campus. The film features many
symbolic moments and iconic toys of the 1990s and early 2000s to
construct this mood. For instance, it uses a narrative of an old green
train to present past time. This type of train was the main rail trans-
portation prior to 2007, now almost completely replaced by a high-speed
railway network. The scene of a noisy coach in the green rail carriage, with
its stale air and uncomfortable seats, stimulates audiences to recall what
old green rail travel was like. Another device featured is a once-popular
22 “Statistics of College Entrance Examination Enrollment and Admission Rate Over

the Years (1977–2017),” Koolearn, 6 June 2018, http://news.koolearn.com/20180606/
1152629.html (Accessed 13 March 2019).
23 Hongping Lian, “The Post-1980s Generation in China: Exploring Its Theoretical
Underpinning,” Journal of Youth Studies, 2014 (7): 1–17.
24 Denise Sabet, “Confucian or Communist, Post-Mao or Postmodern? Exploring the
Narrative Identity Resources of Shanghai’s Post-80s Generation,” Symbolic Interaction,
2011 (4): 543.
25 Hongping Lian, “The Post-1980s Generation in China: Exploring Its Theoretical
Underpinning,” Journal of Youth Studies, 2014 (7): 1–17.
138 Z. GU
pager, commonly used in the 1990s and early 2000s.26 The film features
a moment when a teacher asks all students to shut down their pagers
before a lecture. In the film, the old green train and pager are specific
symbols that resonate as a sense of nostalgia mood for many members of
the audience.
However, the nostalgia mood may evoke memories of different things
for different audiences. For instance, the television drama New Legend
of Madame White Snake (1992), British rock band Suede’s “ So Young”
(1993), and Hong Kong’s singer Lee Hak-kan’s Red Sun (1992) may
be perceived as fashionable trends with which people born after 1980 are
more familiar. These symbols of fashionable culture were welcomed by
this group of people in the 1990s and early 2000s, and represent their
interests and differences from other generations. As Arthur Asa Berger
argues, “fashion has a double valence. On the one hand, it separates and
differentiates us from others; on the other hand, it integrates us into
society as well as into groups and subcultures with which we share similar
tastes.”27 In this film, the memorabilia of the 1990s and early 2000s func-
tion as just such a “double valence” for the audience, as a reminder that
these are “our” stories (the stories of people born after 1980). Thus,
a sense of nostalgia mood is constructed which, in turn, addresses the
anxiety of people born after 1980 when they first began to work.
Furthermore, the film So Young constructs a nostalgia mood by
portraying the lifestyle in student accommodation. The living conditions
at many Chinese universities in the 1990s and early 2000s were relatively
poor. Often, one room would be shared by four students, with two or
three bunk beds; two of the bunks would be for sleeping and the rest for
storing personal items. As a result, there was little space to hang washed
clothes out to dry; most students hung their clothes elsewhere in the
building or in the corridor. The film is more elaborate in its depiction of
male student accommodation. On one occasion, Zheng Wei goes to Lao
Zhang’s room to borrow his DVDs only to find Lao Zhang watching
a pornographic film. Zheng Wei is disgusted by the messy condition of
Zhao’s room, except for Chen Xiaozheng’s bed, which is neat and clean.
26 Pager is a small device, usually carried or worn on the body that vibrating or making
a noise to tell the consumer someone is waiting for his/her phone.
27 Arthur Asa Berger, The Objects of Affection: Semiotics and Consumer Culture
This tidiness stimulates Zheng Wei’s interest in Chen and subsequently

her love.
Although the student accommodation and quality of life are harsh, they
are depicted with warmth. People in this environment are portrayed as
generally happy, although they accumulate some painful memories, such
as breaking up with lovers. These bittersweet memories suggest a happy
university life overall. In this sense, a nostalgia mood of warm student
accommodation serves as a kind of aesthetic construction, which pulls
away from the memory of the grey, romanticises the pain, and removes
the crueller aspects of youth. Indeed, these scenes show that a shared past
is an integral part of the general process of collective identities, which
potentially soothes the anxiety of the post-1980s generation. Moreover,
nostalgia gives access to a shared university life that is peculiar to the
post-1980s “us.” Liu argues that “it [nostalgia mood] thus enhances the
cohesiveness and affiliation among the members and gives further legit-
imacy for the group’s uniqueness claim […] by which individuals and
groups understand their present circumstances, preserve self-esteem and
react to perceived threats.”28 Nostalgia about university life thus serves as
an emotional support when engaging with the sense of anxiety that some
people of the post-1980s and 1990s generation face in an era of rapidly
commercialised culture.
Nostalgia mood is presented through specific memorabilia and
constructed by the film language of lighting. In the film So Young, there
is a thread of light that is used to show the development of narra-
tive and create a contrasting pair of environments: warm and cold. The
warm lighting presents a beautiful, fresh, warm-toned university life, as
the film adopts yellow light to show Zheng Wei’s longing for Chen
Xiaozheng’s love. Yellow often implies a sense of mysterious yearning,
which reflects her passionate feelings. Similar light-enhanced scenes occur
in the library and common room when Zheng Wei and Chen Xiaozheng
get together. Carlos Fortes suggests that the “warm light expresses a
sensation, something that is engraved in ourselves, almost unconscious,
of the incandescent lamp, because we use it at home, you are used to it,
28 Fengshu Liu, Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and the Self (Abingdon:
140 Z. GU
this cosy sensation, comfort.”29 Indeed, the yellow light creates a sugges-
tion of the innocence of university days and an atmosphere that engenders
well-being for audiences. This warm and hazy environment is suitable to
present Chen and Zheng’s feelings when they are in love. Similarly, the
filtered blue light that comes through the window and leaves a lot of
shadow in the room is used to reveal the changing relationship between
Zheng and Chen. When Zheng is told that Chen plans to study abroad,
she asks why she is the last to know. In this scene, backlighting is used
almost like a character. From the image alone, the lovers appear to be in
silhouette. The blue light shines between them. The light is full of strong
blue and white and creates a shadowy and gloomy atmosphere to express
a lonely feeling and the uncertain future of Zheng Wei.
This lighting produces a mysterious effect that shows Zheng’s confu-
sion and Chen’s self-accusation. Andrew Geoff argues that blue light in
film may be used to create moods of melancholy and coldness.30 Indeed,
the blue light here creates both of those, as well as a sense of melancholy,
mourning, loss, coldness, and separation when Chen plans to leave Zheng
to go to the USA. The strong backlighting not only increases aesthetic
pleasure but also depicts pain, and anticipation as a part of university
life. By using lighting to create a nostalgia mood, the film attempts to
temporarily soothe the post-1980s generation’s feelings of anxiety, caused
by a competitive job market, high housing prices, and the responsibility
for caring for elders in their real lives.
Nostalgia mood is presented through symbols and film language to
construct a positive, innocent, enthusiastic, and warm memory of univer-
sity. In contrast, the sense of coldness from the white light is used to
construct a negative, corruptible and undisciplined environment in the
present. In the film, Zheng Wei and Lin Jing meet again at a hospital.
Zheng Wei is accompanying Ruan Guan to have an induced abortion
while Lin Jing is looking after his girlfriend Shi Jie, who has some psycho-
logical issues. The cold environment of the hospital suggests the troubled
circumstances in which the protagonists find themselves. Although Zheng
Wei has become a successful and decisive professional, she still feels lonely
29 Carlos Fortes, Light and Emotions: Exploring Lighting Cultures: Conversations with
Lighting Designers, ed. Vincent Laganier and Jasmine van der Pol (Basel: Birkhauser,
2011), 161.
30 Andrew Geoff, The ‘Three Colours’ Trilogy (London: British Film Institute, 1998),
25.
and is unable to overcome the trauma of Chen Xiaozheng’s abandonment

many years earlier; Lin Jing is perplexed by Shi Jie’s mental health issues;
and Ruan Guan has broken up with her boyfriend even though she is
pregnant. Therefore, the clinical background of the hospital is seen as a
silent language that indicates the protagonists’ internal crises. The white
light is used to present this cold “reality,” which causes the protagonists
to search for a solution to emptiness. As Richard Dyer suggests, “death
may in some traditions be a vivid experience, but within much of the
white tradition it is a blank that may be immateriality (pure spirit) or else
just nothing at all.”31 Thus, white, as a film language, symbolises a blank-
ness, a void, and death in a social environment where Zheng Wei and her
classmates have worked for many years after graduating from the univer-
sity. By presenting this difference between the warmth of the university
campus and the absence of it in the present day, a nostalgia for the warm
university days is emphasised as a kind of cultural engagement, to relieve
social anxiety.
Here, nostalgia is constructed as a mood that allows young adults to
escape their stressful, dull, and oppressive “reality” for a more happy and
carefree time. This need is perhaps heightened by China’s materialistic
social context, which is different from the chaotic urban lifestyle shown
in the films of the Sixth-Generation filmmakers. Motifs such as misery,
awkwardness, deficiency, and frustration that recur across youth films of
the 1990s32 are barely found in youth media since 2010. People born
after 1980 appear to be used to a chaotic urban life. Furthermore, the
spiritual torture of the question “who am I?” that turns up in many
avant-garde films, such as Beijing Bastards (Zhang Yuan, 1993) and The
Making of Steel (Lu Xuechang, 1997), has disappeared in recent youth
films, which seem to have given up searching for a physical and spiri-
tual home. Instead, these films exhibit their familiarity with urban life and
adopt a commercial ideology to engage with the anxiety brought about
by its culture.
Nostalgia mode is more about a sense of pastness, not as a golden age
or a better past, but the recycling of old belongings and retro artefacts as
a strategy to reach a specific demographic market. In other words, unlike
nostalgia mood, nostalgia mode is not based on a feared loss of “golden
31 Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1997), 207–209.

32 Jinhua Dai, Film Theory and Criticism (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2007), 191.
142 Z. GU
years,” but instead connects the past with distinct materialities such as
clothing, furnishings, foods, and music, as a commercial recreation of
retro culture. To some extent, commercial culture and nostalgia mode
have occupied a dominant position in Chinese youth films since 2010.
However, it is difficult to specify that one film is about nostalgia mood,
another about nostalgia mode. Rather, nostalgia mode and nostalgia
mood are always overlapping. In this regard, a nostalgia-related product
may remind those facing anxiety caused by discontinuity of a sense of
pleasure, stability, security, and continuity.
Youth media since 2010 construct a sense of Grainge’s theory of
nostalgia mode, which can be analysed as a stylised pastness in So Young.
Grainge examines nostalgia mode and suggests: “In commercial terms,
it [nostalgia] need not depend on a specific idea of the past but can
designate anything which has been culturally recycled and/or appeals to
a market where pastness is a value.”33 Nostalgia mode offers an interpre-
tation of the past that enables mainstream media to promote advertising,
film, fashion, and other forms of popular culture. It is not a cultural
longing but an index of commodities that draw on notions of the past
to position themselves within a particular niche market. Grainge further
defines nostalgia mode as a kind of retro culture and claims that “retro
was popularized both as a commercial category and as a cultural practice;
it designated a wide range of forms and activities where the past was taken
up with a particular, often ironic, self-consciousness.”34 When nostalgia
is connected to consumer culture directly, it expresses more of a desire
to capitalise upon the imagination of consumers rather than expressing a
sense of yearning for the past.
Since 2010, youth media has revitalised this retro strategy to create
a sense of pastness that is related to the period of the 1990s and early
2000s in an attempt to attract the youth media market. In So Young, some
items used to show nostalgia mood also construct nostalgia mode, such
as posters of Suede and Leslie Cheung, a busy public phone booth, and a
broken wash basin. Some kinds of food and clothes regularly consumed
by the younger generation appear repeatedly. These items are not all that
distant from the present, but have nonetheless been culturally recycled to
33 Paul Grainge, “Nostalgia and Style in Retro America: Moods, Modes, and Media
Recycling,” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures, 2000 (1): 30–31.
port, CA; London: Praeger, 2002), 55–56.
attract the Chinese youth media market. Mike Featherstone suggests that
these “signs become central to a late capitalist society where commodities
have come together to produce the ‘commodity-sign’.”35 In other words,
some symbols related to the past in the film So Young may not be signif-
icant for their material utility but are understood as symbols to present a
nostalgia mode. Here, commercial utility is emphasised, which becomes
an important factor in attracting the film market.
With the exception of some static symbols understood as nostalgic
objects to cater to the screen media market, plotlines related to the
pursuit of wealth are also repeatedly used to present a commercial influ-
ence. For instance, Chen Xiaozheng leaves Zheng Wei and studies in the
USA because it can bring him the professional and material success to
which he aspires. Li Weijuan discards her boyfriend and gets married to
an old man who is divorced and has two children because he is very
wealthy. Xu Kaiyang does whatever he wants because he has a wealthy
father. Therefore, wealth is a motivating factor in the choices the char-
acters in So Young make about their future. In other words, consumer
culture uses symbolic goods and narratives that are related to the protag-
onists’ dreams and desires to create the nostalgia mode. Featherstone
comments that “contemporary consumer culture seems to be widening
the range of contexts and situations in which such behaviour[worship of
capital]is deemed appropriate and acceptable.”36 In this sense, So Young
broadens the scope of the worship of capital in Chinese consumer society.
The construction of the past is related to the desire for wealth, which,
furthermore, is an embodiment of consumption. These protagonists are
desiring subjects who yearn for success, wealth, and power. As urban
young people, they embrace consumerism as an identity.
Further investigation of other youth screen media since 2010 may
uncover similar, even repetitive, narratives that are used to create a sense
of pastness. Based on Dong’s analysis, there are three special, often-
repeated characteristics of recent youth films produced in mainland China:
(1) plotlines related to abortion, such as in the films So Young, My Old
Classmate, and Fleet of Time; (2) plotlines that feature lovers breaking
up because one wants to study abroad, such as in So Young, Fleet of
35 Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: SAGE, 2007),

14.
36 Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: SAGE, 2007),
27.
144 Z. GU
Time, Forever Young, and My Old Classmate; and (3) narratives of death,
such as in So Young and The Left Ear.37 Dong speculates that recent
Chinese youth films have adopted these somewhat formulaic narratives to
attract the youth market.38 In other words, when youth culture becomes
popular in East Asia, the Chinese film industry jumps on the bandwagon
by producing similar products that contain recognised youth elements.
However, these youth media lose spontaneity and vitality by simplifying
the representation of youth through narratives of abortion and callous
behaviour between lovers. As Grainge suggests, the commodification of
nostalgia does not necessarily represent the arousal of cultural longing but
can be explained as market segmentation and media syndication through
commercial imperatives.39 From this perspective, what is consumed in
youth media is not past realities, but some kind of artificial meanings
created to cater to the film market.
This consumer culture is more overt in some films than others and
can be seen, for instance, through the use of a popular British song as a
title.40 Suede’s “So Young,” adopted as the name of the film, is referred
to four times as a way to parallel the female protagonist Ruan Guan’s
narrative. In the end, Ruan Guan dies in a car accident on the way to
attend Suede’s Beijing concert, and to some extent, her experiences in So
Young portray the meaning expressed in Suede’s song “So Young”: the
joy of youth. Suede held concerts in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing in
2013, the same year that the film So Young was released. When So Young
was released in London, Suede attended its premiere.41 Hence, the song
“So Young” and the story, with its echoes of Suede’s theme, all combine
in nostalgia mode to sell the musical past and express the dream of being
young forever. Nostalgia becomes a musical category in its own right
37 Yaou Dong, “Comparative Research of New Generational Film Narrative,” Popular

Literature and Art, 2017 (7): 197.
38 Yaou Dong, “Comparative Research of New Generational Film Narrative,” Popular
Literature and Art, 2017 (7): 197.
port, CA; London: Praeger, 2002), 51.
40 So Young (1993) is the fourth and final single from the debut album by Suede,
released on 17 May 1993 on Nude Records.
41 Zi Chuan, “Interview: Zhao Wei Talking About Premiere So Young in London,”
BBC, 8 October 2013, http://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/indepth/2013/10/131
018_zhaowei_lff_iv (Accessed 13 March 2019).
within this context. What nostalgia mode intends to create here is a sense
of pastness that will stimulate more audiences to view this film. Besides
this musical reference, the poster of Hong Kong singer Leslie Cheung
is also seen on the wall of student accommodation in the film,42 and
Li Hak-kan’s Red Sun (1992) is sung by Zheng Wei. With the marked
increase in youth films since 2010, there is heightened competition for
market share through media nostalgia. Classic posters and popular songs
are reconfigured by contemporary media culture and transformed into a
nostalgic commodification rather than a nostalgic longing and yearning.
The selling of a musical past can clearly be understood as a kind of
nostalgia mode and retro culture. Generally speaking, the youth film
market provides corresponding, often retro products to meet customers’
emotional demands. Retro is a non-historical way of knowing the past
through commercial forms that may evoke a memory of a relatively recent
time. As Grainge suggests, “the content and ‘meaning’ of nostalgia are, in
many respects, secondary to strategies of production and the imperatives
of niche consumption.”43 Retro in this film, as a new form of revivalism,
defines a modern Chinese past in the popular imagination. Since 2010,
Chinese youth films and advertising firms quickly identified retro as an
attractive “pitchman” for audiences born after 1980. Hence, the nostalgia
mode in youth screen media since 2010 is presented through commercial
goods, the pursuit of wealth, and repetitive narratives in the context of
Chinese film aesthetics.
In the second chapter, the nostalgia mode has been associated with
the “red image.” “Mao Zedong Fever,”44 for instance, was rampant
in the 1990s in some Chinese cities, with portraits of Mao (the first
Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1976), on caps, T-
shirts, and books. At the same time, music about “Red China,” such as
Rock on the New Long March (Cui Jian, 1989) was highly popular. Cui
states that it is astonishing how past revolutionary artefacts and present
42 Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing (Chinese: 张国荣; 12 September 1956—1 April 2003)

was a Hong Kong singer and actor. He is considered “one of the founding fathers of
Cantopop” for achieving a huge success both in film and music.
trans. Edward Gunn; ed. Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow (London: Verso, 2002), 172.
146 Z. GU
commercial packaging have come together for popular consumption.45

For producers and distributors, the obvious reason for repackaging “red
classics” is to generate profits. Nostalgic portraits and music not only
cater to an older generation who have memories of the Mao period
but further attract many young people who enjoy this culture as fashion
without sentimentality or regret in the context of the early Chinese market
economy.
An intense social engagement (nostalgia mood) and a contrived
aesthetic pastness (nostalgia mode) are constructed in the context of
Chinese film aesthetics. In one sense, nostalgia is perhaps rendered as
engagement with a social issue, such as the anxiety of a specific group
of people. In another, it appears to become a sense of pleasurable melan-
choly stimulated by the presentation of soundtracks and fashionable items
in youth media to attract the screen market. There is an argument to
be made that the longing for the past is changing into a desire for
commercial advertising products. Thus, nostalgia mood may be gradu-
ally diminished as an influence on the feelings of anxiety and yearning
as commercial culture and nostalgia mode becomes dominant. In this
regard, the discontinuity between past and present and consumer pref-
erence for nostalgic products are connected, and nostalgia mood and
nostalgia mode overlap. In other words, people facing the anxiety evoked
by discontinuity will show a preference for products that remind them of
an ostensibly simpler past. Hence, consuming nostalgia-related products
may also provide a sense of pleasure, stability, security, and continuity.
The next section provides an analysis of the Internet drama With You
to further explore the development of nostalgic screen culture in film,
Internet drama, and other screen media.
3 Nostalgia in the Internet

Drama With You (2016)
The construction of nostalgia for campus life and senior high school life
is a through-line in youth media since 2010. In this section, the Internet
drama With You (2016) is examined in order to explore the way that the
45 Shuqin Cui, Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese
young director uses food, music, clothes, and a digital platform to further
express nostalgic culture and thus attract the youth market.
With You is an Internet drama with twenty-four episodes, distributed
through the video website IQIYI, with two episodes released every week.
Its narrative follows two main protagonists, Geng and Yu Huai, who sit
together and become classmates at the senior school, Zhenhua (振华).
Their names, Geng and Yu Huai, combine as, genggeng yu yuai (耿耿
于怀), a classic Chinese idiom, which means some regretful experiences
are taken to heart and are difficult to shake. In With You, the unforget-
table memories relate to the protagonists’ lives in senior school. Geng, Yu
Huai, and their classmates not only experience military training together
at the beginning of the new term but also prepare for exams and deal
with some bittersweet relationships with their classmates and teachers.
Their negative experiences of family and studies are counterbalanced with
their enjoyment of subtle friendships and loves. Another protagonist, Lu
Xinghe, a rebellious classmate with a talent for painting, bravely expresses
his love for Geng, although he knows that she and Yu Huai like each
other. After three years at senior high school, Lu Xinghe is admitted to
China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts. Yu Huai disappears after failing
the college entrance examination; he leaves Geng behind and does not
contact her for the next seven years. At last, her memories of Yu Huai
stimulate Geng to find him and to reject Lu’s affection once again.
Similar to the nostalgic culture established in So Young, With You
presents many common memories, including the national college entrance
exam, military training, the Hong Kong pop music band “Beyond,”
the television drama Romance in the Rain (2001), mischief between
classmates, and dreams of the future. These experiences, as discussed
in the previous section, have been constructed as a kind of nostalgia
mood to address life’s pressures for young people in the post-1980s to
1990s generations. At the same time, nostalgia mode is also constructed
through some commercial products. For instance, a brand of milk that is
commonly consumed by young people appears many times in the drama.
Here, nostalgia for the comfort of a pastime is used as a marketing tool
to advertise an existing brand.
As mentioned, With You constructs a sense of nostalgia mood through
the representation of another common experience: military training.
Geng, Yu Huai, and their new classmates are receiving military training
at the beginning of their new term. Military training in China is compul-
sory for high school students, even those who do not want to join the
148 Z. GU
army. It is, therefore, a familiar scene for audiences, one that naturally
evokes memories of their own senior high school days. Nostalgic narra-
tives of military training further stimulate audiences to post personal
memories of their senior high school lives while watching the Internet
drama, through “danmu.” Danmu comes from a Japanese video-sharing
website “Niconico.” It is a form of audience engagement with a new
digital technology, which enables them to participate in comments that
are superimposed upon the screen, sliding from the right to the left,
similar to the comment function of YouTube. Unlike YouTube, however,
the comments on danmu instantly slide from right to left on the screen
and remain there while viewers post their comments. Other viewers can
watch the video as well as read the related comments and post responses
to both the comments and the narrative. The Internet drama has adopted
danmu to increase interactivity between drama and audiences. By adding
real-time online comments to the screen while the video is playing,
danmu, as part of the visual screen experience, is becoming popular across
Asian markets.
The comments in the danmu have a direct function of broadening the
influence of the drama. For instance, take the plotline where new students
begin their senior school with military training. In the on-screen danmu,
one commenter posts that they “dug out” their old military training
clothes several days ago after watching this drama and it recalled lots of
memories. In another scene, when Geng is instructed to sit in the last row
of classroom seats as a result of exam scores, one danmu commenter says
“the last row is best” and that they sat in the last row for three years at
senior high school. Another replies that in their class, the second, third,
and fourth rows were for the best students. Indeed, these different memo-
ries of where they sat when they studied at senior high school construct
yet another nostalgic narrative layer. Eventually, audiences creatively use
nostalgic narratives and advanced digital technology to interpret their
circumstances and construct an image of their own youth, which may
be related to the Internet drama but include different nostalgic memo-
ries. Indeed, danmu is a relatively convenient interactive platform for the
audiences to express themselves and create communities.
Danmu needs to be understood as a particular digital architecture
designed to efficiently harness the playful creativity of its users in ways
that not only build engagement but also, in turn, shape the nature and
the value of this creative play. What matters in such a system is not
the specific content or its meaning—as such—but rather its capacity to
incite interest, be shared, and go viral. This has significant implications

for future creative-work practices and how they are valued, with advanced
technology playing an important role. Based on statistics from the video
website IQIYI, the post-1985 and post-1990 generations account for
86.3% of the audience of With You.46 Zhu Zhenhua, the show’s producer,
says it attempts to attract audiences who are mainly from the post-1985
generation.47 It is clear that this Internet drama was analysed by IQIYI’s
“big data system” before it was produced. IQIYI belongs to China’s
biggest search engine company, Baidu, and its “big data system,” known
as “Green Glass,” collects, stores, and analyses the viewing behaviours of
audiences to identify the kinds of narratives that may interest them. Based
on the statistics provided by the producer of With You, it is reasonable
to think that the crew consulted this data when they were in production.
Youth media have been gradually using advanced technologies to position
and attract their audiences, rather than relying on traditional methods
of market promotion, such as microblogs, forums, or off-line activities.
For instance, statistical analysis of So Young indicates that more than
2000 posts on microblogs were related to the theme of nostalgia, and
were written by its actors, actress, producers, and other crew members
from March 2012 to June 2013.48 However, With You has used more
advanced technology to select those narratives that appeal most to a
young audience.
Here, the constructed memories of senior school are a kind of nostalgia
mood that brings audiences back to the past. Moreover, the comments
about the past via danmu, regardless of whether they are about the
protagonists in With You or the commenters themselves, narrate another
thread through which the audience’s own lives may be interpreted. As
another form of narrative engagement, netizens insert their real identities
into the virtual narrative of the drama, to be consumed by their fellow
netizens. As Jon Dovey suggests, web media that invite the user to join,
create a profile, and post blogs or other announcements, are seeking a
46 Rushi Wowen, “With You Builds a New Benchmark of Youth Media,” TV Guide
China, 2016 (5): 60–61.
China, 2016 (5): 60–61.
48 “The Promotion of So Young,” Zhihu, 2013, https://www.zhihu.com/question/
21054367/answer/17022380 (Accessed 14 March 2019).
150 Z. GU
transient marketplace to create brand engagement, through which audi-

ence behaviours become data to be sold and then used to maintain
consumption.49 Audience memories of senior high school are influ-
enced and fed by the dynamic interactivity between the Internet drama,
comments via danmu, and these memories. This cultural integration has
been used by businesses to promote their food and clothes.
The college entrance examination is another collective memory for
many Chinese students. Regardless of the end result, the pressure of this
exam and multiple other academic competitions in high school hangs over
all the characters in With You. Such pressure leads to Geng Geng’s class-
mate Zhu Yao jumping off a building; even Yu Huai, a gifted student,
has to retake the exam owing to anxiety. Every character—Geng, her
classmates, their teachers, and parents—has to bear the intense pressure
brought about by the examination. Its representation awakens collective
memories that are full of nostalgia, intertwined with anxiety.
The importance and pressure of this examination are evident in the
slogan “change your life with the college entrance exam.”50 Chapter 2
refers to the critical impact of passing the exam, which ultimately allows
Jinghe (the character in the film Nuan) to change his status from peasant
to urban resident through studying at a university in the city. The slogan
is accurate for many Chinese students; in particular, those who live in
rural areas, whose main chance for a better future is university admission.
Another “youth without regret” slogan is also famous, although this is
not the same kind of regret as that discussed in Chapter 2. Here, “youth
without regret” suggests the regret that students would feel if they fail
the entrance examination, regardless of whether or not they have worked
hard. The slogans of “change your life with the college entrance exam”
and “youth without regret” intensify the pressure for many Chinese senior
high school students. Watching Geng, Yu Huai, and many of their class-
mates in With You, strive to prepare for the exam and other tests, the
audience posted numerous comments about their own experiences in
49 Jon Dovey, “Time Slice: Web Drama and the Attention Economy,” in Ephemeral
Media: Transitory Screen Culture from Television to YouTube, ed. Paul Grainge (London:
BFI, 2011), 143.
50 Xuguang Chen, “The Construction About the Internet and Contemporary Young
People’s Collective Memories: A Research About the Memory of Chinese College
Entrance Examination for Some People of the Post-1990s,” Contemporary Communi-
cations, 2017 (1): 66–70.
danmu. The Internet drama constructs nostalgia through its presentation

of this stressful time in senior high school, which transports the audiences
back to the same time in their own lives.
In contrast to the diligent students who are working hard, Lu Xinghe
becomes seen as a “weird and bad” student who plays tricks on his class-
mates and teachers. He likes painting, although his father opposes his
career, and he boldly expresses his love for Geng despite knowing that
she and Yu Huai like each other. In With You, Lu Xinghe’s character and
his artistic goals are created as an alternative to the fierce competition
for college admission. At last, Lu fulfils his dream as a painter, while Yu
Huai fails to pass the college examination. To some extent, rather than
Lu Xinghe’s rebellious tricks on his teachers being seen as a nostalgic
reflection of colourful senior high school life, they may be viewed as a
critique of a rigid educational system. Likewise, the exam pressure on
Yu Huai, rather than representing an unforgettable time in the lives of
many Chinese students, may be seen as a criticism of the harsh academic
selection process. From this perspective, while the representation of the
college entrance exam constructs a nostalgia mood, it may also function
as a social criticism of the Chinese education system as a whole.
This potential criticism of the educational system presents the produc-
ers’ desire for a more reasonable and effective selection mechanism. This
aspiration is expressed through the protagonist Yu Huai’s character and
dialogue. At one point, he complains that most of his classmates have
been brainwashed by mainstream ideology when they shed tears after
listening to patriotic music. As Anthony Y. H. Fung and Jeroen de Kloet
suggest:
When youth actively demand their rights, proclaim their autonomy, or even
fight for a higher goal in society, youth are considered as a contentious or
rebellious group[…]in daily life, Chinese youth will feel uneasy with such
official notions that define them either as trouble or as hope. They struggle
to negotiate other possible subject positions, neither that of troublemaker
nor that of hope for the country.51
In other words, some young people speak out in order to nego-

tiate with mainstream ideologies about the education system. From this
51 Anthony Y.H. Fung and Jeroen de Kloet, Youth Cultures in China (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2017), 13–14.
152 Z. GU
perspective, the Internet and its media products provide a space for youth
to express their frustration and disappointment with their society. The
phrase “changing destiny with the college entrance exam” may represent
a mainstream ideology, but the constructed nostalgic feelings about this
examination in With You have negotiated with this ideology. This is linked
to the concept discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 that nostalgia can be seen
as a counter-hegemonic discourse. Similarly, the nostalgia in With You
may also be understood as an aspiration to challenge the contemporary
educational system. It represents a particular use of the past to change
the present, and therefore the future. However, in the context of Chinese
film industrial aesthetics, the essence of this negotiation should be seen
not as an intense social resistance, but as a more temperate aspiration.
Finally, the Internet drama constructs an impression of innocent friend-
ship between Geng, Yu Huai, and their classmates, encouraging the sense
of being forever young to address the pressure of competitive examina-
tions. Therefore, the bittersweet lives at senior high school become a kind
of nostalgia mood to assuage the social pressures of those born after 1980.
At the same time, the nostalgic comments in danmu, and the display of
nostalgic and commercial products, further present a sense of pastness to
construct a kind of nostalgia mode.
The previous section emphasised the overlap of nostalgia mood and
nostalgia mode in youth screen media since 2010. Based on this cultural
and commercial integration, this overlap is further emphasised in the inte-
gration of innocent senior high school lives in With You. The nostalgic
narratives and audience comments can be seen as a kind of nostalgia
mode that attracts more audiences to share and construct their memo-
ries, related but not limited to, the life of the senior high school. Ryan
Lizardi suggests that this process has dual motivation. Those viewers who
knew and loved the original texts, they may pay to see the newest “re-
imagining.” For new audiences who are possibly too young to know the
original, these older texts may become a trigger for engaging in their
own lives.52 Regardless of individual audience interpretations, this new
nostalgic style constructed by danmu creates contexts in which the audi-
ence can respond to their memories. Each form of audience interaction
not only enriches the narrative of With You, but further builds a sense of
visible narrative. Thus, it has the potential to take the original content
52 Ryan Lizardi, Mediated Nostalgia: Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 116.
in new and more creative directions, regardless of the “first author’s”

original intention. In the context of “film industrial aesthetics,” the devel-
opment of digital technology promotes the expansion of screen media.
Grainge writes of “new technological innovations and their ability to
rescue, recycle, and reconfigure the past.”53 In this regard, the integration
of nostalgic narrative in the Internet drama and simultaneous nostalgic
commentary in danmu can be seen as an emotional strategy, which not
only elevates the Internet drama to achieve a higher “use value” as a
cultural product but also enhances the sense of nostalgia mood around
senior high school. Through this cultural and commercial integration,
With You increases the pleasure and interaction between the viewer and
drama. In both the examples of screen media discussed in this chapter,
we find that nostalgia is not related to a physical or emotional home,
countryside, or city; instead, many old belongings commonly used by the
targeted audiences have been presented to show a huaijiu culture. In
particular, new digital technologies rescue, recycle, and reconfigure the
past for particular niche markets.
There are some distinct differences between So Young and With You.
As some scholars point out, recent youth films present youth as a some-
what dark and harrowing time.54 Narrative elements such as abortion,
death, and breaking up with lovers are used to portray young adulthood
as a miserable period. For instance, the central characters in So Young
suffer painfully when they break up with their lovers, especially Ruan
Guan, who aborts her child after she breaks up with her boyfriend. Love
for these young people becomes torment through which they mature.
Features like rock music, violence, and profanity become obvious markers
of their youthful struggle and have become selling points to attract audi-
ences. Such works have strong characteristics of youth subculture which
can be traced back to the early works of the Sixth-Generation filmmakers.
It is clear that the youth screen industry has produced similar narra-
tives in the context of the standardised and industrial mechanisms. In
the first few years since 2010, much of the youth literature and music,
many games and scripts (intellectual property, also known as IP) with
large readerships or audiences were purchased by film enterprises and
Recycling,” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures, 2000 (1): 32.
54 Yuhui Guo, “Analysis of Domestic Youth Films Since the New Century,” Today’s
Massmedia, 2017 (2): 81.
154 Z. GU
video websites to produce as youth screen media. To some extent, the

prosperity of the Chinese screen industry is related to the recreation of
this IP. For new filmmakers and directors with insufficient experience of
filmmaking, it may be easy to lose their creative personality and initia-
tive under the influence of capitalism. As Chen and Li suggest, the rise
and fall of IP fever in the field of film creation in recent years reflects the
contradiction between pursuing a commercial interest and maintaining
high-quality media aesthetics.55 Based on this phenomenon, it should
be emphasised that screen media is both an industrial and an artistic
product. The customer may lose interest if too many screen media copy
each other’s narratives.
In With You, this situation changes significantly. The narratives of cruel
youth disappear and are replaced by a “pure” lifestyle which is supposed to
be characteristic of the senior high school experience. Geng, Yu Huai, Lu
Xinghe, and other characters strive for their dreams. Although there are
some conflicts around love, study, and work, the main narrative presents
a beautiful and innocent youth. Hence, Wowen offers the opinion that
With You presents a youth that is closer to “reality.”56 This “pure and
real” youth is an important factor in propelling this Internet drama into
first place according to “customer click rate” in 2016.57 With You keeps
a balance between box office and media quality. It pays attention to
the story itself and encourages the audience to focus on ordinary youth
culture rather than cruel dramatic experiences, which is an adjustment
from the “cruel youth” aesthetic (and the multiplicity of such narratives).
Chen and Li claim that exclusively commercial aesthetics lead to inferior
products, but if industrial aesthetics maintain a balance between indus-
trial criteria and the pursuit of art, the issue of repetitive narratives may
55 Xuguang Chen and Hui Li, “Reinterpretation of Aesthetics in Film Industry: Reality,
Theory and Possible Space for Expansion,” Journal of Communication University of
Zhejiang, 2018 (4): 104.
China, 2016 (6): 60–61.
57 “Top 100 of Chinese Internet Drama in 2016,” Sohu, 22 March 2017, http://
www.sohu.com/a/129787383_465911 (Accessed 15 March 2019).
be solved. In other words, repetitive narratives are caused by capitalism,

and “industrial aesthetics” is able to solve this issue.58
This change from cruel to innocent youth may be further attributed
to Thai and Taiwanese youth films that express the theme of “pure
love.” The development of Chinese youth screen media is not only influ-
enced by China’s increasing cultural industry, commercial culture, and
specific consumer group but is also consistent with the influence of youth
media in other Asian screen markets. For instance, the Thai film First
Love (Puttipong Pormsaka Na-Sakonnakorn, Wasin Pokpong, 2010) was a
huge success at the box office. This film tells the moving story of a young
man and woman from their middle school days. Thai cultural themes such
as worshipping Buddhism, respect for elders, and care for the young, are
presented in this film. “Pure love” is used as the core element to express a
depiction of youth. The Taiwanese film You Are the Apple of My Eye (Jiu
Badao, 2011) is also famous in the Chinese film market and tells another
love story. This notion of “pure love” has had an impact on the narra-
tives and themes of Chinese young people’s films produced since 2010.
Internet drama, to some extent, has adopted this style to depict innocent
youth for the Chinese screen market. Rushi Wowen comments that the
director Liu understands youth and represents it deliberately.59 If the film
So Young is an imagination of youth produced by an adult, With You is
a youth drama that accurately depicts ordinary young people’s lives and
therefore is more relatable to its audience. Evidently, the popularity of
youth nostalgia has a global reach that has not been specific to China.
The “innocent youth” nostalgia of the late 2010s is situated in a range of
national contexts but may have been influenced by a transnational trend.
4 Uncritical Stance in Youth Media

The film So Young and the Internet drama With You were produced in
the context of rapid film industry development since 2010. Chen has
summarised the situation of filmmaking at this period as “film industrial
aesthetics” and highlighted one of its important characteristics as being
58 Xuguang Chen and Hui Li, “Reinterpretation of Aesthetics in the Film Industry:
Reality, Theory and Possible Space for Expansion,” Journal of Communication University
of Zhejiang, 2018 (4): 104.
China, 2016 (5): 60–61.
156 Z. GU
“Authors within the system.”60 From Chen’s description, it is evident

that the New Force filmmakers have a profound understanding of the film
industry and market regulations, and that they consciously (and consci-
entiously) attempt to negotiate a balance between auteurism, commodity,
and politics. Even though the New Force filmmakers, like their predeces-
sors, are concerned with social pressures, they often express such concerns
in a more low-key way. Thus, it is a challenge to explore their films on
a philosophical level or to feel their subjectivity. Their attitude to film-
making is more objective, and their stance in production is more playful.
Indeed, both of the youth media examined here have produced an ahis-
torical narrative that situates its authors within the system. It is evident
that some historical events—China regaining Hong Kong’s sovereignty in
1997, the celebration of the new millennium, the World Cup of 2002, the
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndromes (SARS) epidemic of 2003, Chinese
athlete Liu Xiang winning the 110-metre hurdles in 2004—are used to
imply a historical moment in many youth screen media. However, these
historical events serve merely as background news to reveal the time
period, and are not used to show character development in young people.
The youth media produced by the Hollywood mode usually facing a
strain between the representation of Chinese mainstream value/ideology
system and the pursuit of commodified entertainment which sometimes
may be regarded as sub-cultural. Therefore, we may investigate the ahis-
torical, apolitical, and uncritical stance from two angles: media consump-
tion and political influence. First, generally speaking, the New Force
filmmakers belong to the Net Generation, focusing on their audience,
respecting the market, and skilled at using the Internet for cross-media
operation and cross-media creation. They accept the reality of the film
industry against the background of the Internet, and actively engage with
genre and commercialisation in film. Thus, it is a normal situation for their
youth media to dilute the differences between artistic film and feature
films, or mainstream films and independent films, in order to consider
specific audience groups and gain box-office returns. As a result of such
pragmatism, some New Force filmmakers may dilute their own personality
and artistic experimental spirit while paying more attention to claiming
the youth market. In short, against a background of globalisation and
60 Xuguang Chen, “Interpretation and construction: ‘Industrial Aesthetics’ of the

nications, 2018 (1): 18–22.
the norms of the Chinese social system, the New Force filmmakers strive
to follow the standards for film industrialisation and commercialisation.
Thus, culture in youth screen media since 2010 has been commodi-
fied, subjected to the market mechanism and the profit imperative. The
historical and political events in youth media have become a kind of frag-
mentation, which may indicate a specific historical time but maintain an
uncritical stance towards its subject matter.
From the perspective of commercial consumption, the ahistorical and
uncritical stance presents a simplified version of the past to attract young
adult audiences. Ryan Lizardi suggests:
This past is a commodified version of history that asks consumers to

actively maintain a connection to our beloved childhood media objects
by reinvesting our energy and, of course, our money over and over again.
Mourning a past media text and releasing it would mean that content
producers would need to continually replace creative content with innova-
tive fresh media, whereas encouraging melancholia leads to money-saving
and demographic-tested continual recycling and repackaging of the same
content. A playlist past is an individual and uncritical familiar past, and an
uncritical familiar past is a bankable past.61
In this sense, the producers of youth media since 2010 may have aban-
doned attempts to critique the past and instead focus mainly on their
audience as a market. The remarkable effect of historical phenomena—
such as the reform of state-owned enterprises shown in 24 City—on the
destiny of individuals and countries is far less likely to appear in their
work. Neither do they emulate the achievements of the Fifth Generation
filmmakers by pursuing cultural enlightenment or contemplating China’s
ancient history. They are also different from their Sixth-Generation equiv-
alents in that they do not feel lost or confused by the rapid progress of
commodification and marketisation. Unlike the previous generations, the
New Force Directors are more relaxed and carefree in their efforts to
achieve a balance between personal interests and market demands. They
use a nostalgic narrative as a strategy to represent subculture, which not
only narrows the gap between youth subculture and mainstream culture
but also facilitates the consumption of youth nostalgia media. As has been
61 Ryan Lizardi, Mediated Nostalgia: Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 144.
158 Z. GU
outlined above, in So Young and With You, nostalgia is linked to the

past with distinct materiality, using clothing, furnishings, foods, and music
through which to create a sense of pastness. What is conveyed in youth
films is not exactly the golden age or a better past. Rather, youth media
construct a sense of pastness to attract a specific demographic market. In
this situation, whether a film is able to achieve market success does not
just rely on the story itself or how the story is told. A thorough explo-
ration of the market and the prospective audience also plays a key role.
The New Force filmmakers, sensitive to market mechanisms and capital,
often involve themselves heavily in promoting a film they have completed.
In doing so, they will turn to social media such as Weibo and WeChat to
launch efficient mass marketing campaigns.
The retro culture and products created by the youth film market are
intended to meet customers’ emotional demand and to satisfy a non-
historical way of knowing the recent past in commercial form. Therefore,
youth film and other screen media since 2010 may pay little attention
to the effects of historical events, instead adapting a simplified version of
the past to attract a screen market through nostalgic commercial strate-
gies. In this uncritical historical stance, nostalgia mode becomes a new
form of revivalism, defining a simplified modern Chinese past in popular
imagination.
The “authors within the system” as one of the evident character-
istics of “film industrial aesthetics“reflect the fact that the New Force
filmmakers not only realise the importance of box-office revenues, the
demands of a commodified market and the regulations imposed by exhi-
bition and promotion codes, but also the requirements of the social
system, moral ethics, and censorship. Many youth media convey a national
image of an ascendant and harmonious country rather than a chaotic and
unstable society. Compared to their predecessors, the New Force film-
makers are realistic about the conditions of Chinese society and take a
practical attitude to production. Admittedly, the “system” we discuss here
features specific Chinese characteristics and pressures that differentiate it
from Hollywood. The ahistorical and uncritical stance in youth media
may indicate a collusive relationship between the pursuit of commod-
ified entertainment and the presentation of mainstream ideologies and
may prevent them from producing stylistically innovative and ideologically
subversive works.
As Kloet and Fung describe, “what we are witnessing today is a China

with a huge bureaucracy, a booming economy and an allegedly ‘harmo-
nious society’ highly regulated by the Party and bound by their doctrines.
All these factors merely seem to render the revolutionary ideal nonsen-
sical, anachronistic, and inapplicable to contemporary China.”62 Indeed,
under the influence of the idea of a “harmonious society,”63 uncritical
representations may be a strategy through which youth screen media
avoid touching on any sensitive political themes in order to be able to
release their work in the Chinese screen market. In other words, many
New Force filmmakers do not ignore politics but have learned how to
protect themselves from the State. Consumption and material concerns
have taken over from political participation in the fate of the nation
that was exemplified earlier by the Red Guards or student protestors.64
To some extent, the determinedly uncritical stance of New Force film-
makers and directors further highlights the reality that state censorship
and control of screen media since the 2010s is not in decline, but may
in fact have become more intense in the face of internationalisation and
marketisation.
This process of rejection of political and radical thoughts is becoming
what Wang Hui calls “depoliticised politics.”65 In this context, depoliti-
cised politics is a combination of politics and strategy adopted by New
Force filmmakers to express their intellectual and commercial purposes
and shield them from the intervention of government. For youth media
producers, depoliticised politics has become a filmmaking strategy which
removes political discourse, apparently in order to gain the permission
for screen release in China. In this respect, youth memories express a
non-controvercial discourse which serves as a way of writing history that
62 Jeroen de Kloet and Anthony Y.H. Fung, Youth Cultures in China (Cambridge:
Polity, 2017), 2.
63 “Harmonious society” was put forward by former President Hu Jintao in
2004, which has been seen as a response to the increasing social injustice and
inequality emerging in China. Maureen Fan, “China’s Party Leadership Declares
New Priority: ‘Harmonious Society’,” Washington Post Foreign Service, 12 October
2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/11/AR2006
101101610.html??noredirect=on (Accessed 20 September 2018).
64 Paul Clark, Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 195.
65 Hui Wang, “Depoliticized Politics: From East to West,” trans. Christopher Connery,
New Left Review, 2006 (41): 29–45.
160 Z. GU
facilitates a smooth transition between the past and the present. Gary
Cross suggests that an uncritical stance may become dangerous as it
superficially homogenises the past and diverts attention away from critical
comparison, creating a present couched in a past that is used to advocate
for the uncritical status quo.66 It is such representations of depoliticised
and smooth social transition that indicate the more strict political environ-
ment and ideological control over screen media making since the early
2010s. The uncritical stance does not mean that youth media endorse
or reject a specific political discourse, but rather that they aim to build
an effective communicating bridge between national discourse and the
Chinese screen industry. Hence, the work that youth media since 2010
has disseminated may represent neither a totally mainstream ideology nor
a critical stance.
So far, this book has discussed some of the artistic characteristics of
filmmakers and their generations. For instance, the Fourth Generation
used scenes of countryside or minority areas to criticise the Cultural
Revolution and enlighten the public on humanitarianism. The Fifth
Generation returned to an ancient and mysterious countryside to express
noble, passionate, and profound emotions and to challenge cruel polit-
ical movements. Late-comers to the Fifth Generation filmmakers have
constructed a beautiful countryside in south China to reflect on the polit-
ical environment and engage with the fast pace of commercialism. The
Sixth-Generation, however, focuses on cities and their inhabitants in the
context of China’s urbanisation. The characters in these films normally
hover outside the official system and on the fringe of the mainstream
society. They do not possess lofty ideals but express anxieties deriving
from their own identity crises. In contrast, the New Force filmmakers
engage with social anxieties which they further adopt and commercialise
within particular niche markets. Consistent with a more objective, playful
approach to filmmaking, nostalgia is related neither to the theme of
searching for home nor the expression of a certain critical stance. To some
extent, nostalgia mode (also seen as a retro or huaijiu) is a common film
strategy in the cases discussed above; nostalgia as described in this chapter
has changed with the arrival of fast capitalism and has been portrayed as an
exuberant individualism in youth screen media since 2010. Consumption,
regardless of nostalgia mood or nostalgia mode, becomes an inducement
66 Gary Cross, Consumed Nostalgia: Memory in the Age of Fast Capitalism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2015), 15–16.
that leads to a sense of anxiety for some young people born after 1980 and
further prompts youth screen media to create a greater sense of pastness
to attract and soothe audiences.
Thus, we have a clearer understanding now about “authors within
the system,” who are positioned at the crossroads between Chinese
film industrialisation and intense cultural censorship. The “system” here
includes a Hollywood-style focus on box-office revenues, the demands of
a commodified market, and the regulations imposed by exhibition and
promotion. However, this “system” also includes unique requirements
of Chinese society, such as the censorship system, the obligation to tell
Chinese tales that cater to local audiences of specific age groups, and the
CCP’s interests. Thus, the intense censorship of film causes filmmakers
to shy away from talking about politics and to take a practical attitude to
production.
To some extent, the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth-Generation works can
be seen as a kind of auteur film that attempts to present a personal
viewpoint approaches, styles, and contents, based on an aesthetic style
inherited from the European artistic films. Compared with auteur films,
genre films “are those commercial feature films which through repetition
and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situa-
tions.”67 The conventions of genre films function as an implied agreement
between the filmmaker (director, producer, or production company) and
the consumer (audience). To a large extent, the work of New Force film-
makers belongs to genre films or at least a version of Hollywood-style
genre films in the Chinese context. In this regard, the youth media audi-
ence “not only plays a role in the production of meaning but also plays
an economic role in the perpetuation and decline of various genres, and
if the texts do not express the spectator’s needs and aspirations, they are
consigned to oblivion.”68 For the New Force filmmakers, it is only natural
to shift from European art films to Hollywood genre movies that prioritise
the market, the audience, and generic production.
Thus, the work of youth screen media benefits from contemporary
power structures and creates a rising and harmonious image of current
society. In this regard, China’s youth screen media since 2010 has paid
67 Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre Reader (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), ix.
68 Marcia Landy, British Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930–1960 (Princeton: Princeton
162 Z. GU
much attention to a market-orientated industrial system, while polit-

ical engagement has nearly disappeared. In such a context, the selling
and circulation of nostalgia (huaijiu) has become less dependent on the
content of any specific past, but rather constructs an affective economy of
pastness. Memory, nostalgia, and the past have been integrated and have
become an amplified site where affective investment, new technologies,
and the CCP’s political discourse are mobilised to present a new commer-
cial, cultural, and political phenomenon. As the term film, industrial
aesthetics suggests, youth screen media since 2010 create a prosperous
national image as New Force filmmakers try to keep a balance between
mainstream ideology, film aesthetics, and the box office.69
5 Conclusion
The proliferation of nostalgia in Chinese youth screen media since 2010
can be related to a specific demographical and commercial culture. The
characteristics of “authors within the system,” Hollywood-style genre
films, and the audience-oriented marketing approach of youth media
are summarised as “film industrial aesthetics.” Nostalgia, in the film
So Young is related to an apparently innocent university time, through
which nostalgia mood provides a sense of continuity for people born
after 1980. Furthermore, the commercial impulse draws upon colours,
symbols, and music to construct the sense of pastness. Unlike a longing
for the idyllic countryside (discussed in Chapter 2) or the recapturing
of a lost community (discussed in Chapter 3), nostalgia in this chapter is
further understood as a mode for attracting the youth screen market. With
You highlights the fact that nostalgic culture has transferred from film to
Internet drama and become prevalent in the development of digital tech-
nology. In With You, nostalgia mood and nostalgia mode are constructed
through the representation of senior high school lives. At the same time,
nostalgic commentary in danmu further provides a convenient platform
for audiences to construct their own personal nostalgia, related but not
limited to the Internet drama.
A similarly uncritical stance can be found in So Young and With You,
which indicates that the hegemonic influence of the Party-State still
69 Xuguang Chen and Hui Li, “Reinterpretation of Aesthetics in Film Industry: Reality,
Theory and Possible Space for Expansion,” Journal of Communication University of
Zhejiang, 2018 (4): 104.
controls the media content even while screen media expand through
marketisation and international cooperation. Overall, this chapter argues
that nostalgia in youth screen media situates itself in an innocent univer-
sity and school time, engages with specific anxieties, and attracts the youth
screen market through various filmmaking strategies while maintaining a
close relationship with the Chinese government’s political objectives in
the context of “Chinese film industrial aesthetics.”
After presenting constructed nostalgia in the first three chapters, the
differences and connections between types of nostalgias are evident. In
Chapter 2, nostalgia is framed by a utopian countryside, used by the
“educated youth“ filmmakers to criticise the CCP’s discourse of “youth
without regret.” In Chapter 3, nostalgia is related to the communal,
collective way of life in urban contexts in the work of the Sixth-Generation
filmmakers, through which they engage with urban reform and the
decline of the working class. In this chapter, nostalgia is associated with
the innocence of school and university life as depicted via film indus-
trial aesthetics. The industrial mechanism, commercial consumption, and
digital technology are emphasised in the process of classifying nostalgia
mood and nostalgia mode. In the progression from “educated youth“
to the Sixth-Generation and then “New Force,” three tendencies can be
identified. First, the increasing influence of global capitalism and media
marketisation, which have promoted the development of the Chinese
screen industry. Second, nostalgia may be highlighted as a counter-
cultural engagement to criticise materialism and capitalism. Ironically,
nostalgia is further packaged as an alluring commodity and a fashionable
culture to cater to commercialism. Third, the critical stance against CCP
political discourses is declining. The New Force filmmakers and directors
mainly exhibit an uncritical stance in the context of Chinese film indus-
trial aesthetics. In the progression described above, nostalgia culture is
not only transforming but also breaking apart, diversifying, and becoming
ever more difficult to define. A visible market integrated with the CCP’s
political discourse has exerted its influence to engender new autonomies
of popular culture, allowing new genres of screen media to appear and
occupy an increasingly large space.
Part I has identified nostalgic cultures in the context of post-
socialist China from the perspectives of different generational producers
and various screen formats. These perspectives show how nostalgia is
constructed to engage with China’s social transformations and political
discourses in the post-socialist era. In Part II (Chapters 5 and 6), this
164 Z. GU
book will further broaden its examination of screen formats to TV docu-

mentary series and Internet video series as it further investigates how
nostalgia is adopted politically and commercially to project the Chinese
government’s discourses.
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CHAPTER 5
The Rhetoric of Nostalgia from Harmonious

Society to Community of Shared Future
This chapter examines how two state-funded documentaries—A Bite of

China (2012) and Maritime Silk Road (2016)—adopt a “rhetoric of
nostalgia” to (re)shape China’s image domestically and internationally in
the context of the Chinese government’s discourses of peaceful devel-
opment and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Departing from the
future-oriented nostalgia of Boym and the rhetorical approach of Lu, the
chapter argues that the rhetoric of nostalgia presented in these docu-
mentaries demonstrates a subtle yet active means to propagandise the
Chinese government’s ideologies, shape its global reception, and pursue
its targeted audiences. All of these objectives are pursued in the context
of Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream discourse, and the shift from Hu Jintao’s
harmonious society to Xi’s community of shared future. This chapter
contributes to the identification of a radical embodiment of nostalgia in
the process of political communication, and highlights a political tendency
of Xi’s government to make more radical gestures in the pursuit of
China’s global governance.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6_5
168 Z. GU
1 The International Communication

of the Chinese Mainstream Media
China’s political and economic growth has driven the country to pursue
greater cultural influence over the world. However, the discrepancy
between China’s actual and desired status has prompted its politicians
to innovate their use of international media to communicate China’s
voice to the world. Thus, conveying the Chinese soft power has become
an essential national strategy in domestic and international contexts, as
the Chinese government attempts to exert its influence through culture
and ideas rather than depending on economic carrots, political sticks,
or military threats. This is reflected in two related discourses, peaceful
development and community of shared future, proposed by the Chinese
government in 2005 and 2015, respectively. Harmonious society and
peaceful development were packaged together as one tool to pursue
China’s economic interests, expand cultural influence, and act as a rebuttal
against the theory of China as a global threat. To explain these terms
further, the discourse of harmonious society, proposed by former Pres-
ident Hu Jintao, was a response to the increasing social injustice and
inequality emerging within the country.1 In other words, promoting
harmony is expressed as a response to inharmonious issues, such as uneven
economic development and political reform. At the same time, in tandem
with this discourse, China officially announced its political rhetoric of
peaceful development in 2005, with the core selling-point of this foreign
policy being the notion that China would not pose a threat to other
nations. As Zhu suggests, China emerges as a benevolent world leader
that uses its Confucian legacy to practise a responsible and egalitarian path
towards modernisation and development.2 Hence, harmonious society
and peaceful development suggest that China seeks to avoid unnecessary
international confrontation and would not seek to overturn the current
international system.
1 Maureen Fan, “China’s Party Leadership Declares New Priority: ‘Harmonious

Society’,” Washington Post Foreign Service, 12 October 2006, http://www.washingto
npost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/11/AR2006101101610.html??noredirec
t=on (Accessed 20 September 2018).
the Global Television Market (Routledge, 2008), 126.
5 THE RHETORIC OF NOSTALGIA FROM HARMONIOUS … 169
Accompanying the discourse of peaceful development, in 2005 the

Chinese government officially published another policy named “Vision
and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and Twenty-
First Century Maritime Silk Road (BRI).”3 This is an economic and
cultural diplomacy effort initiated when Xi Jinping became President
of the People’s Republic of China in 2013. The BRI announced the
construction of two international trade routes by land and sea based on
the ancient Maritime Silk Road.4 Under this initiative, China’s infrastruc-
tures, including ports, railroads, roads, airports, and dams, were extended
to different countries, whereby China built the longest economic corridor
across Central Asia, the Middle East, the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, and Europe.5 The BRI propagandised a paradigm-shifting
approach to international relations, claiming to be more egalitarian, inclu-
sive, and responsive than the existing regional and international order.6 It
is clear that the discourse of harmonious society, peaceful coexistence, and
respect for differences is at the core of the BRI. In short, China aims to
extend its global influence, while at the same time reassuring the world
that its rise will not be a threat to international peace and security.
The policies of peaceful development and the BRI have stimulated
the Chinese government to provide extra funding for its broadcasting
system. Some state-run media, such as CCTV and Xinhua News Agency,
soon became primary platforms for expanding China’s soft power in
the world.7 For instance, the state news agency Xinhua launched a 24-
hour global news channel in English in 2010.8 William A. Callahan
points out that in the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games,
3 “The Chinese Government, Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk

Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” Xinhua, 20 June
2017, http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/publications/2017/06/20/content_2814756
91873460.htm (Accessed 20 April 2019).
4 William A. Callahan, “China’s ‘Asia Dream’: The Belt Road Initiative and the New
Regional Order,” Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 2016 (3): 226–243.
5 Simon Xu Hui Shen, “Special Issue: New Silk Road Project,” East Asia, 2015 (1):
1–5.
6 Jeffrey Reeves, “China’s Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative: Network and Influence
Formation in Central Asia,” Journal of Contemporary China, 2018 (27): 502–518.
New Press, 2012), 174.
8 “China’s Xinhua Launches Global English TV Channel,” BBC, 1 July 2010, https://
www.bbc.co.uk/news/10473645 (Accessed 20 April 2019).
170 Z. GU
CCTV presented a peaceful, civilised China, friendly towards the rest

of the world.9 As the mouthpiece of the CCP and state television
broadcaster, CCTV undertakes the job of promoting China’s views and
vision to the wider world and countering negative portrayals of the
country in the US-dominated international media. An estimated seven
billion dollars was earmarked for external communication, including
the expansion of Chinese broadcasting networks, such as CCTV News
and Xinhua’s English-language TV, CNC World.10 At the same time,
China’s provincial television stations have also undergone development.
For instance, some large metropolitan city television stations including
those in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing television stations
have more autonomy in terms of finance, employment, and equipment
management, to create visual works. Based on Chris Berry’s investi-
gation, advertising accounts for as much as 99% of the revenue from
Chinese television. Berry writes: “the Chinese provincial television has
been transformed from a medium owned and funded entirely by the
state to one owned by the state but funded by advertising.”11 These
metropolitan television stations promote their city’s culture through
commercial, participatory, and entertaining programmes. However, as
Sun suggests, China’s provincial television networks are owned and
funded by the government at various levels. They use one political voice
and promote an identical image of the Chinese nation.12 Therefore, even
though a programme is produced by a provincial television station, it may
still propagandise the Chinese government’s voice abroad.
In the context of media international communication, nostalgia is not
related to a home, countryside, or city, but has been politically adopted
by the Chinese screen media to construct a national image. Theoret-
ically, nostalgia, as Boym claims, is not always retrospective; rather, it
9 William A. Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2010), 4.
10 Daya Kishan Thussu, Hugo De Burgh and Anbin Shi, “Introduction,” in China’s
Media Go Global, ed. Daya Kishan Thussu, Hugo De Burgh and Anbin Shi, 1–2 (London:
Routledge, 2018).
Public Space,” in TV China, ed. Ying Zhu and Chris Berry, 73 (Bloomington: Indiana
2013 (1): 63.
implies what the past could have been like and points to a kind of future
possibility.13 Boym investigates the cities of St. Petersburg, Moscow,
Berlin, and Prague and presents two sub-categories: “reflective nostalgia
(stressing the concept of home)” and “restorative nostalgia (focusing on
the concept of displacement)” in order to discuss personal and histor-
ical memories (as discussed in Chapter 3). As Boym suggests, the present
may feed one’s unconscious desires, guide one’s conscious actions, and
embody a futuristic utopia.14 Thus, nostalgia is not merely a sense of
yearning for a specific past determined by the needs of the present.
Furthermore, it refers to a cultural construction of the future.
This future-oriented nostalgia in Chinese films has been investigated.
For example, some have shown that culture related to Chairman Mao
was broadcast by the mainstream media to push political and economic
reform in the 1990s.15 In this light, nostalgia does not aim to criticise
what happened in the past. Instead, it navigates the Chinese govern-
ment’s agendas and becomes a political rhetoric to implement a govern-
ment’s dominant political and economic ideology. Thus, future-oriented
nostalgia is also seen as political rhetoric that different social elements
adopt to communicate their political purposes. In this sense, Lu Xing
has provided a useful framework for the CCP’s political rhetoric from
Mao’s “class struggle (dividing people into the proletarian and bourgeois
classes)” to Xi’s “Chinese dream (China becoming a moderately well-
off society and a fully developed nation).” As Lu argues, these rhetorical
themes and styles are powerful means of persuasion, through which a
rising global power presents itself to appeal to domestic audiences.16 Lu
further points out that the current Chinese official language has lost its
persuasive effectiveness in the domestic arena as it has failed to continue
Mao’s rhetorical legacy, particularly his commitment to “serving the
13 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (Basic Books, 2001), 42–50.

14 Ibid.
15 Jinhua Dai, Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work
of Dai Jinhua, eds. Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow, 130 (London: Verso, 2002); Chun-
feng Lin, “Red Tourism: Rethinking Propaganda as a Social Space,” Communication and
Critical/Cultural Studies, 2015 (3): 328–346; Ban Wang, Illuminations from the Past:
Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China (Stanford University Press, 2004).
16 Xing Lu, “The Little Red Book Lives On: Mao’s Rhetorical Legacies in Contem-
porary Chinese Imaginings,” in Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in an Age of
Globalization, ed. S. J. Hartnett, L. B. Keränen, and D. Conley, 12–39 (Michigan State
172 Z. GU
people.”17 In other words, Lu acknowledges that Mao’s political rhetoric

was successful in targeting Chinese audiences, but that this effectiveness is
declining as new political rhetoric has moved away from Mao’s principle
of serving the people. While Lu’s investigation appears comprehensive,
this chapter emphasises that another reason China does not necessarily
return to Mao’s rhetoric is that its propaganda is not only aimed at
maintaining internal stability but also at communicating its peaceful and
harmonious images to international audiences.
Although the future-oriented nostalgia in Chinese films, seen as a kind
of political rhetoric, has indeed been examined by many scholars, the
way Chinese documentaries in particular use this rhetoric to communi-
cate official discourse is seldom examined. Thus, this chapter uses Boym’s
future-oriented nostalgia and Lu’s rhetoric-focused approach to examine
how two Chinese state-funded documentaries—A Bite of China (2012)
and Maritime Silk Road (2016)—construct various forms of nostalgia as
political rhetoric to communicate China’s discourses of peaceful devel-
opment and community of shared future to domestic and international
audiences. A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国) (Chen Xiaoqing 2012), about
Chinese traditional food culture, was released through China Central
Television-1 (CCTV-1, 中国中央电视1台) on May 14, 2012, and broad-
cast on Hong Kong TVB, Taiwan Public Television, Malaysian Astro,
Singapore Channel 8, and Belgium RTBF (Zhao 2015).18 Maritime Silk
Road (海上丝绸之路) (Zhang Wei 2016) is a collaborative documen-
tary series produced by three provincial television stations (Shanghai TV,
Guangzhou TV, and Quanzhou TV), which articulates a historical narra-
tive of the ancient Maritime Silk Road within the current discourse of
BRI. This series has been translated into at least ten versions and has been
broadcast on foreign TV stations, including Pakistan’s state television
PTV, Singaporean StarHub TV, Malaysian Astro TV, American SinoVi-
sion, and Australian Plus TV.19 Thus, both documentaries, as the product
17 Xing Lu, “The Little Red Book Lives On: Mao’s Rhetorical Legacies in Contem-
porary Chinese Imaginings,” in Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in an Age
of Globalization, ed. S. J. Hartnett, L. B. Keränen, and D. Conley, 14 (Michigan State
18 Yu Zhao, “Tasting a Nation: A Case Study of Documentary A Bite of
China,” https://kingsasiancci.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/a-bite-of-china-ppt-yu-zhao.
pdf (Accessed 1 May 2019).
19 Weiqi Yan and Jijun Cao, “The Documentary Maritime Silk Road Telling the
Legend of the Silk Road, 15th May 2017,” Guangming Daily, https://epaper.gmw.
cn/gmrb/html/2017-05/15/nw.D110000gmrb_20170515_4-07.htm?div=-1 (Accessed
1 May 2019).
of government-owned or influenced screen media at various strata,20 have

contributed to shaping China’s global reception and pursuing its national
interests in the context of its increasing economic and political power.
I begin my analysis with an examination of how both documentaries
construct various forms of nostalgia. Then, I explore how these forms of
nostalgia, have shown a future-oriented (rhetoric) characteristic and been
mobilised to communicate the CCP’s discourse of peaceful development
and the BRI, targeting both domestic and international audiences. Finally,
this chapter probes what kinds of political and economic changes are
reflected in the discourse from peaceful development to Xi’s community
of shared future, in order to further investigate how cultural memories
are used for political purposes.
2 Nostalgia in A Bite of China

(2012) and Maritime Silk Road (2016)
A Bite of China and Maritime Silk Road are documentary series, each
comprising seven episodes, with each episode expressing a different but
related theme. For example, A Bite of China narrates stories related to
foods; the first episode discusses the difficulty of foraging for special
mushrooms, and the second episode discusses the balance between
humans and nature. This section examines the narratives and texts of both
documentaries to discuss how they present various forms of nostalgia,
such as yearning for the countryside, an agrarian past, home-cooked food,
and grand history.
2.1 Nostalgia in A Bite of China

A Bite of China shows China as an agricultural society and constructs
its nostalgia in two ways: first, homemade food is presented through
the depictions of preparing, gathering, and selling food; second, people’s
concerns about social issues are portrayed through the disappearance of
homemade food as a result of rapid social transformation.

2013 (1): 66–72.
174 Z. GU
Many food activities shown in the documentary are often motivated

by family ties, such as those between a Tibetan mother and daughter in
the case of the mushroom gatherers (episode one), and between parents,
grandparents, and children in other episodes. For instance, a scene in
episode two depicts a multigenerational family getting together to cele-
brate the Spring Festival. An old cutting board is used to cut fresh
ingredients. Vivid colour contrast is used to heighten the presentation of
the countryside as an idyllic paradise, as often depicted in Chinese classical
literature; viewers are reminded of that paradise by the old cutting board
used by their mother and grandmother. Especially for those who are far
away from their original home, any images of old cooking items, home-
made food, and family reunion may effectively arouse nostalgia. Margaret
Morse suggests that “a fleeting smell, spidery touch, a motion, a bitter
taste-almost are thus ephemeral and potential triggers to search familiar
memories in this sensory world.”21 In other words, nostalgia is not simply
an individual feeling but also a product of the social environment in which
people’s lives are embedded. Many plotlines about the warmth of family
are narrated by “real” people living in the countryside, which evokes a
self-sufficient rural community and suggests that nostalgia is a sense of
yearning for past home and countryside. The family reunion moment,
when people cook for their families, becomes an important narrative to
present such nostalgia.
Secondly, nostalgia is related to a sense of anxiety about the disappear-
ance of traditional foods and the countryside itself as a result of China’s
rapid urbanisation. Nostalgia can be interpreted through the Chinese
words xiangchou (乡愁): xiang (乡) meaning home, hometown, or coun-
tryside; and chou (愁), which suggests a sense of melancholy. In the
context of China’s rapid urbanisation, much of the countryside is disap-
pearing; thus, chou is gradually dominating the attempts to search for
rural China. The steep decline of traditional homemade food as a symbol
of a past lifestyle and a traditional culture triggers people’s complex collec-
tive memories about that culture and the idealised country lifestyle. In
this context, A Bite of China frequently questions the fate of traditional
culinary culture. For instance, in The Story of Staple, Lao Huang (老黄)
insists on making numerous yellow steamed buns with his wife using
21 Margaret Morse, “Home: Smell, Taste, Posture, Gleam,” in Home, Exile, Homeland:
Film, Media, and the Politics of Place, ed. Hamid Naficy, 63 (New York: Routledge,
1999).
a traditional procedure. On the one hand, Lao Huang expresses pride

when his customers praise his steamed buns; on the other hand, he is
concerned that this skill is in danger of disappearing, as his children do
not want to carry on this business and have left their home for the city.
Through this narrative, the documentary series shows a complex nostalgia
that reflects current reality. Many of the younger generations who used
to live in the countryside have moved to the city as part of China’s rapid
urbanisation. As a result of this urbanisation, some traditions, including
foods and folk arts, are in danger of disappearance. According to Zhou,
the number of villages has declined from 3.6 million in 2000 to 2.7
million by the end of 2010. This equates to an average of twenty-five
villages disappearing every day.22 In contrast, the equivalent migration
took approximately 100 years in the United Kingdom, and 60 years in
the USA.23 This rising urbanisation brings about significant homesickness
and pain for many people, especially those who have had the experi-
ence of living in the countryside. The Chinese government is aware of
the effects of this hyper-urbanisation; hence, President Xi’s declaration,
“Remember the Nostalgia” at a conference on December 12, 2013. Xi
pointed out that the city can be reintegrated completely into the natural
cycle in the process of urbanisation.24 In other words, the unique scenery
of water and hills can be preserved in and around the city, providing
a good chance for urban residents to enjoy nature and remember the
past. Zhang argues that the China’s government should keep in mind
its 5000-year history of agriculture when it boosts its rate of urbanisa-
tion.25 Chinese traditional culture is based on rural agriculture rather
than urban industry, thus the countryside is seen as a spiritual home
by many Chinese people. Homemade food and the countryside itself
not only provide a social palliative for painful nostalgia caused by the
quick pace of urbanisation, but has helped to sustain many social trans-
formations in China’s long history. While the connection between the
22 Weilin Zhou, “The Death and Life of Chinese Villages and Towns”, Beijing Cultural
Review, 2018 (3): 88–97.
23 Jin Feng, “Food Nostalgia and the Contested Time,” Frontiers of Literary Studies in
China, 2016 (1): 58–85.
24 Jinping Xi, “The Speech at the Conference of Urbanization,” 14 December 2013,
http://www.gov.cn/ldhd/2013-12/14/content_2547880.htm (Accessed 1 May 2019).
25 Xiaode Zhang, “Why Do You Want to Emphasize Remember the Nostalgia?” China
Economic Report, 2014 (2): 27.
176 Z. GU
younger generation and the countryside has faded, nostalgia may be trig-
gered by depictions of homemade foods and traditional craftsmanship, as
reminders of their disappearance. The documentary repeatedly expresses
a sense of worry that the traditional agricultural civilisation is shrinking.
Xiao Mingwen claims that a more serious concern is the potential erasure
of some traditional handicrafts by China’s increasing industrialisation.26
The rapid pace of industrialisation and urbanisation not only causes the
shrinking of the countryside, but also raises questions about food safety.
Owing to several food scandals, China’s public concern for food safety
rose dramatically in 2008.27 The nostalgia described above is stimulated
not only by the disappearance of homemade food and country life, but
by a sense of worry about these food safety issues. The documentary’s
purpose in presenting traditional homemade foods in an ordinary family
kitchen is to communicate “warmth” by stimulating memories of the taste
of authentic food and ingredients, while restoring people’s confidence
in food safety by enhancing their knowledge of the actual preparation
methods for their food. This constructed nostalgia may help Chinese
consumers regain confidence in food safety.
Nostalgic food culture related to the concept of family is framed
around simple tastes passed down from generation to generation in rural
China. As director Chen Xiaoqing suggests, “A person may speak with
a London accent, but his stomach is still a Chinese stomach.”28 Thus
the documentary series highlights culinary memories as a kind of collec-
tive unconsciousness for Chinese people, overseas Chinese, and even
foreigners. For these groups, nostalgia lies where homemade food can
be found.
2.2 Nostalgia in Maritime Silk Road

Maritime Silk Road (2016) constructs nostalgia through the historical
narrative of the ancient Maritime Silk Road. In the former chapters,
nostalgia has been partly depicted as a yearning for the past in response
26 Mingwen Xiao, “Ecocriticism and National Image in A Bite of China,” Comparative

Literature and Culture, 2014 (4): 5.
27 Of these, the one caused by the Sanlu Group’s melamine-contaminated baby formula
in 2008 was perhaps the most widely reported and condemned.
28 Fan Yang, “A Bite of China: Food, Media, and the Televisual Negotiation of National
Difference,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2015 (5): 411.
to a loss, absence, or discontinuity felt in the present. At the same time,

nostalgia also can be seen as a loss of tradition and may therefore be
used in conservative political rhetoric to support radical nationalism and
project a national image. In this regard, the ancient Maritime Silk Road
is depicted as a representing Imperial China’s prosperity. Historical repre-
sentation is used to integrate the ancient Maritime Silk Road with the
contemporary one, as a way to project the Chinese government’s policy
of “the Belt and Road Initiative.” Here, the rhetoric of nostalgia is devel-
oped by a glorified historical discourse in which the constructed cultural
values are further politicised to communicate official policy. Such nostalgia
may also be called historical nostalgia. Marchegiani and Phau suggest that
“historical nostalgia is generated from a time in history that the respon-
dent did not experience directly, even a time before they were born.”29 In
other words, the past in historical nostalgia does not necessarily represent
first-hand memories, but rather may be constructed through imagining
other periods. Based on this understanding, the ancient Maritime Silk
Road may be imagined as a “golden age” that contemporary people have
not experienced but have attempted to construct. As Jonathan Steinwand
further argues, nations frequently make use of nostalgia in the construc-
tion of national identity. The myths of any nation appeal to national
nostalgia by encouraging identification with such images as the nation’s
“founding fathers,” a “golden age,” or decisive historical and the cultural
events.30 Clearly, nostalgia is a particularly useful tool to present a national
image. Its use by political power to reflect future-oriented characteristics
will be explored in the next section.
In the documentary Maritime Silk Road, historical nostalgia is shown
through glorifying the eponymous trade route as it existed in the Han,
Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties of Imperial China, all of which are
portrayed as strong and prosperous. Under these dynasties, the voiceover
tells audiences, Chinese silks and ceramics were sent to Europe through
Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East, facilitating the economic
29 Christopher Marchegiani and Ian Phau, “Away from Unified Nostalgia: Concep-
tual Differences of Personal and Historical Nostalgia Appeals in Advertising,” Journal of
Promotion Management, 2010 (1–2): 86.
30 Jonathan Steinwand, “The Future of Nostalgia in Friedrich Schlegel’s Gender
Theory: Casting German Aesthetics beyond Ancient Greece and Modern Europe,” in
Narratives of Nostalgia, Gender, and Nationalism, ed. Jean Pickering and Suzanne Kehde,
10 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997).
178 Z. GU
success of Imperial China and of the countries along the Maritime Silk
Road. Here, historical nostalgia constructs national images and identifi-
cation through a sense of historical eventfulness in the period of Imperial
China. In its presentation of prosperity through this historical nostalgia,
the documentary creates a connection between ancient maritime trade
along the Maritime Silk Road and the contemporary policy of the BRI.
As the voiceover points out, since ancient times the Maritime Silk Road
has had a profound influence on countries along its route. According to
the documentary, the contemporary Maritime Silk Road is still a path of
openness, integration, mutual benefit, and peaceful development (episode
1). Historical nostalgia is thus used to assert that the new Maritime Silk
Road, raised in the context of the BRI, will have a similar function to the
ancient one in facilitating global economic development.
Furthermore, this historical nostalgia is also connected to Xi’s polit-
ical discourse of the “Chinese dream” (the great rejuvenation of China)
that demonstrates efforts to build a moderately well-off society and a fully
developed nation.31 In short, contemporary socialist China will be strong
and prosperous, Imperial China. The glorious period of the Han and
Tang dynasties reconstructed in the documentary series indeed represents
prosperity, and this is what Xi’s Chinese dream attempts to recreate. For
instance, the voiceover says in episode seven, “the twenty-first-century
Maritime Silk Road is linked to the Chinese dream that aims to fulfil the
great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and achieve a global dream of
durable peace and common prosperity.” Theresa Fallon argues that the
BRI sits well within Xi’s idea of great national rejuvenation to show the
Chinese government’s confidence and international clout.32 In Xi’s plan,
rejuvenation may be achieved through maritime trade, whereby China will
regain its dominant position, previously lost during the unequal treaties
with the West such as in the Opium Wars (1840–1842, 1856–1860) and
in the face of Japanese aggression (1895–1945). These eras are known
together as the “century of humiliation,” while the wars (1921–1949)
led by the CCP against both domestic and international opponents are
depicted as a great success. The CCP locates its nationalism partly within
31 “These Ten Sentences of Xi Jinping Defining the Meaning of the Chinese Dream,”
Xinhua. 29 November 2017, http://news.cnr.cn/native/gd/20171129/t20171129_524
043788.shtml (Accessed 1 May 2019).
32 Theresa Fallon, “The New Silk Road: Xi Jinping’s Grand Strategy for Eurasia,”
American Foreign Policy Interests, 2015 (3): 175–182.
this discourse of China’s past humiliation and greatness. In this regard,

future-oriented nostalgia is both stimulated by China’s glorious past and
aroused by Xi’s national rejuvenation. The documentary tells audiences
that the essence of both the BRI and the Chinese dream is to achieve the
goal of developing China into a rich and powerful country, revitalise the
nation, and enhance the well-being of its people (episode 7).
The integration of the Chinese dream and BRI does not only serve
as symbolic for Chinese people, but is also used in the attempt to create
an alliance of coexistence and mutual benefit with external partners. The
documentary presents the concepts of “coexistence” and mutual benefit
through examples of international, cultural, and economic communica-
tion. For instance, it tells a historical story about religious communication
during the Eastern Jin dynasty (AD 410), when the eminent monk
Faxian went to Sri Lanka to learn Buddhist doctrine and brought signif-
icant knowledge of Buddhism back to China. In an instance that is
presented as analogous, the Sri Lankan monk Latalaxi came to China
in 2007 to learn Buddhism (episode 5). In another example of cross-
cultural communication, the documentary highlights China’s attempts to
develop friendly relations with Muslim countries through the BRI. In
Quanzhou City, for instance, there are many ancient mosques, which,
according to the documentary, indicates that in both ancient and contem-
porary Quanzhou—and China as a whole—different beliefs, religions, and
cultures are respected and coexistent.33 Li further points out that China’s
population of over 23 million Muslims (especially the people of Hui
ethnicity) know two cultures (Chinese and Islamic culture) and have two
identities (Chinese and Muslim), which can be viewed as a natural bridge
between China and Islamic countries.34 Chinese Muslims are playing an
important role in the development of Islamic finance and the production
of Muslim licit (halal) food products which are two potential areas of
cooperation between China and Islamic countries. Li Fuquan argues that
Islamic culture is a dominant one in core sections of the Maritime Silk
Road, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.35
33 Related to the current strategy of cultural destruction underway in Xinjiang, this

discourse of “coexistence” should be critiqued.
34 Fuquan Li, “The Role of Islam in the Development of the ‘Belt and Road
Initiative’,” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2018 (1): 38.
35 Ibid.
180 Z. GU
The presentation of the idea of “coexistence” throughout the docu-

mentary aims to promote the impression that China welcomes multiple
ideologies, cultures, and religions. The documentary emphasises that only
by accepting diversity and otherness can different countries deal with
international conflicts and maximise their interests. Therefore, it is neces-
sary for China to expand its cultural diplomacy to the Islamic world in
order to eliminate misunderstanding with one another.
As well as Islam, Quanzhou City has hosted other ancient religion,
including Christianity, Hinduism, Manicheism, Judaism, and Matsu. By
presenting the “coexistence” of different religions in China, the docu-
mentary portrays both the ancient Maritime Silk Road and its twenty-
first-century version as trade routes equally open to embracing different
cultures. According to this framework, the contemporary economic
and cultural road inherits the ancient peaceful and cooperative spirit
and further creates a good environment for international cultural and
economic communication. Zhang Yaxin points out that cooperation,
openness, and mutual benefit are the motifs of this documentary.36 The
series repeatedly emphasises that the Chinese government will deal with
conflicts in a peaceful manner and find common interests everywhere to
fulfil the promise of “coexistence.” Historical nostalgia is thus used to
indicate that the Chinese government’s BRI policy is one that welcomes
different countries to join. When some nations expressed their concerns
about the real purpose of the BRI, the documentary, as a mouthpiece
of the Chinese government, communicated its cooperative and coexistent
nature. The concept of “coexistence” constructs an image of China as an
open and free country, both historically and in the contemporary period.
More importantly, the documentary draws on this concept to indicate
the Chinese government’s efforts to develop a close relationship with
Buddhist and Islamic countries along the Maritime Silk Road, particu-
larly important now that Islam is one of the most influential and widely
disseminated religions in the world.
The documentary further presents many diasporic stories, implying
an imagined link between dispersed overseas Chinese and a notional
motherland and emphasising the twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road.
For instance, Chen Kaixi, as a second-generation individual of over-
seas Chinese heritage in Malaysia, is known for expressing his concerns
36 Yaxin Zhang, “Maritime Silk Road: Telling a Grand Story from a Tiny Perspective,”
Review of Radio and Television, 2016 (5): 40.
about Wenchuan’s reconstruction after the earthquake of 2008 and

donating large amounts of money to help Wenchuan residents (episode
6). Through Chen’s story, the documentary shows that overseas Chinese
people have remained loyal and are concerned about the situation in
China even though they may be classified as foreigners. Kuehn et al.
argue that diasporic Chinese may obtain national consciousness and iden-
tities by engaging with and contributing to the “motherland.”37 Data
published in December 2014 identified more than 50 million ethnic
Chinese in Southeast Asia, comprising more than 10% of the regional
population and 83% of the global Chinese diaspora (Foreign & Common-
wealth Office).38 These overseas Chinese may have different languages,
religions, and customs than their domestic counterparts, but the docu-
mentary reveals that many maintain an enduring cultural, economic, and
political connection with China. Jayani Jeanne argues that the experi-
ences of overseas Chinese are “lived and re-lived, produced, reproduced
and transformed through individual as well as collective memory and re-
memory.”39 Thus, the diasporic narrative promotes an intense emotional
connection between overseas Chinese and China. In this sense, the
glorious history, the riots against overseas Chinese in 1998,40 today’s
loyal overseas Chinese, and the discourses of the Chinese dream and the
BRI are integrated to construct an “imagined community” to project the
twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road as a road of “coexistence” and
mutual benefit. In this light, overseas Chinese are agents who promote
China to other countries of the ASEAN to maintain good relations.
37 Julia Kuehn, Kam Louie, and David M. Pomfret, “China Rising: A View and Review
of China’s Diasporas since the 1980s,” in Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China:
Communities and Cultural Production, ed. J. Kuehn, K. Louie, and D. M. Pomfret, 8
(UBC Press, 2014).
38 “‘One China’? Beijing and Its Diaspora-Opportunities, Responsibilities and Chal-
lenges,” Foreign & Commonwealth Office, https://www.gov.uk/government/public
ations/one-china-beijing-and-its-diaspora-opportunities-responsibilities-and-challenges
(Accessed 1 May 2019).
39 Jayani Jeanne Bonnerjee, “Neighbourhood, City, Diaspora: Identity and Belonging
for Calcutta’s Anglo-Indian and Chinese Communities,” 42 (Ph.D. thesis, University of
London, 2010).
40 Aihwa Ong, “Chinese Diaspora Politics and Its Fallout in a Cyber Age,” in Encyclo-
pedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World Ember, ed. Melvin
Ember, Carol R. and Skoggard, Ian, 392–403 (New York: Springer Science + Business
Media, 2005).
182 Z. GU
Through this construction, the documentary forges a new round of

ancestral homeland ties for overseas Chinese, for whom historic and dias-
poric nostalgia may arouse a sense of belonging and even nationalism
for overseas Chinese. This sense of nostalgia shows a revived nation
and conveys the message that the Chinese government expects overseas
Chinese to play an important role in the process of carrying out the BRI.
History and the modern diaspora, in their different density variations, may
bring China and overseas Chinese together, which guarantees a desirable
outcome for China and overseas Chinese. It seems that another version of
modernisation has also been used to conceive of the twenty-first-century
Maritime Silk Road.41 Western “modernisation” is thereby edited, and
another modernisation focusing on “coexistence” and mutual benefit
is growing; this presents another kind of “Chineseness” to project the
Chinese government’s BRI policy. Thus, this documentary uses histor-
ical nostalgia to assert that China will no longer simply be a participant
in modernisation and globalisation, but rather a sponsor to project new
standards centred on China rather than the West. Thus, the documentary
highlights that the Chinese dream is not only for people living in China
but also for the overseas Chinese (diaspora), in particular those living in
the ASEAN.
In this section, nostalgia about food, countryside, historic grandeur,
and diasporic groups have all been shown to construct a nostalgic aspira-
tion which links various groups of people in a community. This nationalist
community provides a useful analytical frame to support the political and
economic policies of peaceful development and the BRI, as discussed in
the next section.
3 Nostalgia as CCP Rhetoric

This section conceptualises the relationship between nostalgia and the
CCP’s discourse of peaceful development and community of shared future
to examine how the documentaries use the future-oriented characteristic
of nostalgia to convey the Chinese government’s political rhetoric.
41 The theory of the modernisation originates from the ideas of German sociologist
Max Weber (1864–1920) and develops by Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons (1902–
1979), which is described as a social model spread to the East from the West. Henry
Bernstein, “Modernization Theory and the Sociological Study of Development,” Journal
of Development Studies, 1971 (2): 141–160.
In contemporary China, harmony as created by nostalgic food activities

is a form of political rhetoric that supports and consolidates the official
discourse of a harmonious society and peaceful development. The term
“harmony” has many meanings, such as gentleness, smoothness, compro-
mise, cooperation, balance, and adaptation. These connotations originally
reflected the relationship between human beings and nature. In Chinese
classical philosophy, harmony is explained as “unity of heaven and human
beings,” first elaborated by the philosopher Zhuangzi (BC 369–BC 286),
and later developed into a philosophical system of “harmony between
human beings and nature” by the Confucian thinker Dong Zhongshu
(BC 179–BC 104). Although there are many interpretations of “unity
of heaven and human beings” in Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism,
this “harmony between human beings and nature” is understood consis-
tently. A Bite of China shows the belief of Chinese people in maintaining a
harmonious relationship between nature and human beings. For instance,
the fishermen only catch fish that weigh more than two kilogrammes
and purposefully leave the smaller ones (episode 2). Zhuoma covers
fungus pits with pine needles to protect them after collecting mushrooms
(episode 1).
Now, harmony has been used by the CCP to construct a contemporary
China in which politics is stable, economic development is prosperous,
people live in peace and work in comfort, and social welfare improves
quickly.42 In contemporary China, harmony is a political rhetoric that
supports and consolidates the discourse of a “harmonious society”—put
forward by former President Hu Jintao in 2004—which has been seen as
a response to the emergence of increasing social injustice and inequality.43
Callahan argues that “China’s domestic policy of a ‘harmonious society’,
and its foreign policy of peacefully rising in a harmonious world, are
reconfigured based on the idealised view of Chinese civilization as open
42 Feng Ling & Newton Derek, “Some Implications for Moral Education of the Confu-
cian Principle of Harmony: Learning from Sustainability Education Practice in China,”
Journal of Moral Education, 2012 (3): 345.
43 Maureen Fan, “China’s Party Leadership Declares New Priority: ‘Harmonious
Society’,” Washington Post Foreign Service, 12 October 2006, http://www.washingto
npost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/11/AR2006101101610.html??noredirec
t=on (Accessed 2 May 2019).
184 Z. GU
to the world and tolerant of outsiders.”44 In this regard, the documen-

tary adopts the Confucianist philosophical system of “harmony between
human beings and nature” to foster the idea that China is not a threat to
other nations, and instead maintains a harmonious relationship with the
world. When nostalgia is integrated with a certain political circumstance
it gradually illustrates its future-oriented characteristics. The discourse
of harmonious society and China’s peaceful development have become
a diplomatic framework advocated by the Chinese government to reas-
sure the world,45 with the aim of enhancing appreciation for the PRC’s
soft power while seeking to alleviate concerns about any of the country’s
controversial behaviour.
Thus, as an ancient cultural ideology, harmony has achieved its prac-
tical value through nostalgic food activities, viewed overall as a political
rhetoric with which to persuade the world that China is a peace-loving
and harmonious nation. This persuasive discourse is a dynamic rhetoric,
which, like any other media event, opens an alternative virtual space for
possible re-interpretation and deconstruction in China and beyond. For
instance, compared to the nostalgic food activities in the documentary
series, food safety issues in China—such as the addition of melamine
to milk in 2008 in order to make it seem like it had higher protein
content—have caused widespread panic, social distrust, and disharmony46
(In fact, Yan suggests that despite the rapid development of China’s
market economy, social trust has generally declined in recent years).47 In
the context of the CCP’s harmonious discourse, the documentary series
ignores the inharmonious social concerns about food safety, presenting
warm and healthy food activities instead. This media behaviour, as Dodge
suggests, actually reveals that the CCP actively silences dissidence online
by erasing posts (etc.), which is referred to in internet slang as “being
44 William A. Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Oxford University Press, 2010),
20.
45 Christina J. Lai, “Rhetorical Traps and China’s Peaceful Rise: Malaysia and the
Philippines in the South China Sea Territorial Disputes,” International Relations of the
Asia–Pacific, 2019 (1): 117–146.
46 Donovan Conley, “China’s Fraught Food System: Imagining Ecological Civilization
in the Face of Paradoxical Modernity,” in Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in
an Age of Globalization, ed. S. J. Hartnett, L. B. Keränen, and D. Conley, 188 (Michigan
State University Press, 2015).
47 Yunxiang Yan, “Food Safety and Social Risk in Contemporary China,” The Journal
of Asian Studies, 2012 (3): 705–729.
harmonised (被和谐).”48 From Dodge’s perspective, it is reasonable to

contend that the presentation of nostalgic food in A Bite of China, to
some extent, is intended to counter and even conceal inharmonious social
phenomena in order to enhance popular confidence in food safety. For
the Chinese government, as Gong suggests, “probably no other character
aptly captures its leadership’s sentiment nowadays than harmony…the
ruling CCP had been constantly reflecting on its governance record, ideo-
logical validity, and social relevance, particularly its contested political
legitimacy.”49 In this case, the harmonious society presented by nostalgic
food activities is a form of political persuasion designed to both suppress
social and political contestation for domestic audiences and counter the
theory of China as a threat abroad. A Bite of China, to some extent, func-
tions as an illustration of China’s ostensible commitment to “peaceful
development” diplomacy, using nostalgic food culture to propagandise
the CCP’s discourse of a “harmonious society” as a national image.
In short, food becomes an avatar for the discourse of soft power. Here,
CCTV seeks to create a stylistic image of “Chineseness” to propagandise
the CCP’s rhetoric in the context of media globalisation and marketi-
sation. Thus, harmony presented by the future-oriented nostalgia is a
cultural construction designed to convey the CCP’s discourse of harmo-
nious society and peaceful development. The rhetorical investigation of
future-oriented nostalgia shows a sense of tension between the Party’s
definition of harmony that narrates a national and international imagery
and the public’s concern for harmony (or being harmonised). In rela-
tion to this discourse, nostalgia in Maritime Silk Road tries to project the
BRI’s attempt to create a community of shared future aimed at providing
benefits for Chinese and foreigners along the Maritime Silk Road.
48 Patrick Shaou-Whea Dodge, “Imagining Dissent: Contesting the Façade of Harmony

through Art and the Internet in China,” in Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in
49 Jie Gong, “Re-Imaging an Ancient, Emergent Superpower: 2008 Beijing Olympic
Games, Public Memory, and National Identity,” Communication and Critical/Cultural
Studies, 2012 (2): 202.
186 Z. GU
3.1 The Historical Nostalgia Acting as a Political Discourse

Historical nostalgia acts as a political discourse to tell Chinese people,
diasporic groups, and foreigners in the ASEAN that the BRI is an open
network of friends, which is seen as a chorus rather than a single voice
(episode 7). This message demonstrates that nostalgia in the documen-
tary has a future-oriented tendency and aims to persuade international
communities that the BRI is not a policy that challenges the current
world system,50 but one that constructs a shared future to improve inter-
national relations and promote the global economy.51 Indeed, China’s
burgeoning economy has provided a huge market for overseas Chinese
and foreigners, and the documentary highlights the BRI has brought
about many job opportunities for people in different places and coun-
tries. For instance, when talking about cooperating infrastructures, such as
the China-Pakistan friendship road, Madeleine Island port of Indonesia,
and Mombasa port of Kenya, the documentary shows individuals who are
working hard at these collaborative projects in order to learn advanced
technology and make a living for themselves and their families.
At the same time, the documentary showcases many stories in which
overseas Chinese do business with companies in China to imply that these
relationships can obtain tangible economic benefits. One such story is that
of Lin Shizhong, a tea merchant from Malaysia who is a third-generation
overseas Chinese. He has been doing business with Chinese people for
many years and invested in a tea factory in China’s Yunnan province. Most
tea produced in his factory is delivered to Malaysia and other countries of
the ASEAN. In many ASEAN countries, Chinese diasporic communities
dominate the main sectors of the national economy. As Lee notes, an
estimated ninety per cent of Indonesia’s commerce with China involves
Chinese-Indonesians.52 Investment from this group has become integral
to supporting the development of China’s economy.
50 Denghua Zhang, “The Concept of ‘Community of Common Destiny’ in China’s

Diplomacy: Meaning, Motives and Implications,” Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 2018
(2): 196–207.
51 Jun Ding and Hongjin Cheng, “China’s Proposition to Build a Community of
Shared Future for Mankind and the Middle East Governance,” Asian Journal of Middle
Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2017 (4): 1–14.
52 John Lee, “The Chinese Diaspora’s Role in the Rise of China,” East Asia Forum,
2 June 2016, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/09/14/the-chinese-diasporas-role-in-
the-rise-of-china/ (Accessed 2 May 2019).
To some extent, this transnational community may prove an impor-

tant determinant in securing the “Chinese dream.” Therefore, the series
presents a trend of more and more overseas Chinese returning to China
to do business. Trissia Wijaya argues that overseas Chinese have the
edge over other diasporas in the world when they come to trade in
the Chinese market, namely, personal networks (关系, guanxi). Through
these networks, the “borderless economy” may be realised. With these
networking advantages, alongside the significant capital they have accu-
mulated, overseas Chinese may become major linchpins and beneficiaries
of the BRI.53 Indeed, China’s burgeoning economy has provided a huge
market for foreigners and overseas Chinese. Thus, nostalgia is not only
an emotion but also an experience related to the profit when foreigners
and overseas Chinese do business with Chinese people in the context
of the BRI. The documentary implies that it is the BRI that provides
a convenient method for doing business, through which overseas Chinese
may maintain a close relationship with China and gain realistic benefits.
From this perspective, the historical and diasporic nostalgia, as a rhetoric,
is further constructed by the documentary to project the Chinese govern-
ment’s ambition of building a “community of shared future” along the
Maritime Silk Road.
The Chinese government has attempted to convince an often-sceptical
world that China’s rise is not a challenge or a threat to the current world
system. What “community of shared future” aims to propose instead is
an economic alliance. Therefore, the documentary repeatedly emphasises
that only through respecting different national modes of development
can such a community be achieved along the Maritime Silk Road, and
that the countries on its route are an integrated whole. The voiceover
of the documentary states, “‘the Belt and Road Initiative’ is an open
network of friends and a chorus rather than a solo act (episode 7).” This
statement emphasises that different countries, cultures, and social systems
can coexist and be of mutual benefit. The “community of shared future”
communicates a positive image of involvement and a sense of common
belonging that includes the common historical and economic background
of the people living along the Maritime Silk Road. As Zhang suggests,
“the documentary not only shows a similar historical discourse, but also
53 Trissia Wijaya, “Can Overseas Chinese Build China’s One Belt, One Road?” East
Asia Forum, 2 June 2016, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/?p=50783 (Accessed 2 May
2019).
188 Z. GU
records contemporary situation and constructs a prosperous picture about

the future.”54 Hence, the documentary conveys the Chinese govern-
ment’s official line that the BRI provides a chance for people along the
Road to fulfil their dreams.
Even though the documentary suggests that the “community of shared
future” will eliminate the national boundaries and bring modernisation
to the people along the Maritime Silk Road, not everyone may share
this view. The Chinese economy is expanding rapidly since joining the
WTO, and China is also regarded as one of the biggest beneficiaries
in the process of globalisation.55 However, not everyone’s lives will be
improved through international trade, and the discourses of “coexistence”
and “mutual benefit” that are highlighted in the documentary intention-
ally ignore the negative consequences of the BRI perhaps because China
needs investment from ASEAN countries if it is to keep its GDP growth
steady at around 6.7%.56 Despite the benefits of the BRI, as Jing Yin
points out, only the Chinese government, business elites, and transna-
tional corporations will really benefit from trade; millions of workers,
both in China and in developing countries, will be harmed by the initia-
tives.57 According to relevant data, China had a total of more than $5
trillion in overseas assets by the end of 2016, and large amounts of
capital has been invested in the ASEAN under the BRI strategy.58 There-
fore, it is reasonable to consider that the Chinese government will be
the primary beneficiaries of the BRI policy. Economic development and
national/regional securities are two major concerns for China and the
ASEAN countries. However, the documentary only focuses on the two
core interests of security and economy from the perspective of China’s
sovereignty, a stance that may negatively impact interpretations of the
54 Yaxin Zhang, “Maritime Silk Road: Telling a Grand Story from a Tiny Perspective,”
Review of Radio and Television, 2016 (5): 42.
55 Ning Wang, “Globalisation as Glocalisation in China: A New Perspective,” Third
World Quarterly, 2015 (11): 2062.
56 Jing Zhang and Jian Chen, “Introduction to China’s New Normal Economy,”
57 Yin Jing, “China’s Second Long March: A Review of Chinese Media Discourse on
Globalization,” The Review of Communication, 2006: 6 (1–2), 32–51.
58 “How Much Assets Does China has in the outside of China?” National Business
Daily, 13 October 2017, http://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2017-10-13/doc-ifymvi
yp0667904.shtml (Accessed 4 May 2019).
concepts of “coexistence” and “mutual benefit” and cause the other

countries to suspect the real purpose of the BRI.
Furthermore, some controversy can be found in the propagandistic
slant to the documentary series. First, there is no narrative about the
Philippines, Vietnam, and India, all of whom have border disputes with
China. From this perspective, the community of shared future is indeed
political rhetoric, attempting to build a political arena with those coun-
tries that befriend China. It is a reasonable consideration for the Chinese
government to build these harbours as this community of partners may
be more beneficial for China’s economic development. From a histor-
ical perspective, China is unlikely to implement an economic or political
offensive in the areas of the ASEAN. However, many countries in this
area feel that the goal of constructing a trans-regional community could
threaten their economic and cultural independence. Moreover, the docu-
mentary implicitly expresses that the community being built is largely
beneficial to those countries who have a good relationship with China.
Second, the documentary emphasises that there are many ancient
mosques and other manifestations of Islamic cultural heritage in today’s
Quanzhou City as an example of religious and cultural tolerance and
inclusion in China. However, it does not narrate any story about Muslims
in Xinjiang; as Thussu argues, with more than 20 million Muslims in
Xinjiang are not included in Chinese media.59 If millions of Muslims
in Xinjiang cannot be categorised in this community or even be “har-
monised” by the Chinese government,60 then it is difficult for other
countries to believe that such a community is supported. In this regard,
the narrow perspective of the documentary may negatively affect the
achievement of Xi’s Chinese dream. In particular, Chinese TV stations
face mistrust when they undertake a more detailed elaboration of the
Chinese government’s diplomacy,61 as the use of political rhetoric raises
concern in both domestic and international media markets over what a
Chinese-defined international order might look like.
59 Daya Thussu, “BRI: Bridging or Breaking BRICS?” Global Media and China, 2018
(2): 117–122.
60 “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020.” United States Congress, https://www.
congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3744 (Accessed 3 May 2019).
2013 (1): 66–72.
190 Z. GU
Furthermore, although the story told by the documentary series is that

the BRI aims to revive the ancient Silk Road through building transporta-
tion across the ASEAN countries, of those countries (and others) may be
more likely to see this geopolitical construction as a tool for the Chinese
government to pursue its political and economic interests in Asia and
beyond. For instance, India, as the largest country in the area around the
Indian Ocean, believes that China’s construction in Kashmir (as presented
in the documentary) may be used for military means and violates India’s
national security62 ; from 2020 to 2021, some serious skirmishes occurred
at locations along the Chinese-Indian border, such as Pangong Lake and
Tibet Autonomous Region.63 In this light, the future-oriented nostalgia
expressed by the government and recycled in the documentary is political
rhetoric in China’s interest.
From this perspective, China’s version of the community may be
similar to the “British free trade” whereby the UK Parliament has
signed agreements with foreign powers about mutual free trade since
the 1820s.64 British free trade, which increased the nation’s exports and
prosperity, became widely accepted and made British goods more compet-
itive on the international market. However, this policy may have set
back the progress of developing countries’ economies through integra-
tion into the world market system. In writing about British free trade,
Dutt argues that “the victory of foreign capitalism in India differed from
the victory of capitalism in Europe, in that the destructive process was
not accompanied by any corresponding growth of New-force.”65 In other
words, Britain’s capitalism did not bring about the development of new
productive powers in India; rather, it may have blocked such progress
for developing countries. The BRI may have a similar influence on the
countries along the twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road, which may
62 Christopher Len, “China’s 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative, Energy

Security and SLOC Access,” Maritime Affairs, 2015 (1): 1–18.
63 “India-China Dispute: The Border Row Explained in 400 Words,” British
Broadcasting Corporation, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53062484 (Accessed
1 October 2021).
64 “British Free Trade,” UK Parliament, https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-her
itage/transformingsociety/tradeindustry/importexport/overview/freetrade/ (Accessed 1
October 2021).
65 Rajani Palme Dutt, India Today (Manisha Granthalaya, 1970), 87.
bring about the destruction of the old economy; it should be recog-

nised that a new society is not necessarily a better one. In this regard,
while China’s capitalism may promote the development of the countries
along the Road, this could be used to beautify the Chinese government’s
hegemonic ambition.
Thus, the community of shared future may welcome some Asian coun-
tries whose overseas Chinese populations have an important influence
on social and political affairs in those countries. However, as a separate
nation, China is distinctly different in geopolitical and cultural spheres
from some countries of the ASEAN. Accordingly, although the docu-
mentary series strives to deploy future-oriented rhetoric to unite the
ASEAN, the lived reality of China’s increasingly hegemonic influence in
the ASEAN invites objection to such efforts.
4 Transformation of China’s Political Rhetoric

This section further unpacks the rhetoric of nostalgia and cultural memo-
ries by investigating the rhetorical transformation from a harmonious
society to the community of shared future. To some extent, Hu’s harmo-
nious society and Xi’s community of shared future both depict a China
image within the ancient Chinese ideology of harmony. Moreover, the
community of shared future can be understood as an upgraded discourse
of harmonious society, which not only conveys China’s peaceful rise but
also projects a global initiative based on China’s military and economic
forces. In this sense, if the harmonious society and peaceful development
discussed in A Bite of China tend to portray China as a passive target of
outside forces (such as those who see China as a global threat), then the
community of shared future more directly demonstrates China’s ambi-
tion to recreate a contemporary empire. The three provincial TV stations
involved in the series have shown little concern about the theory of China
as a threat, while focusing instead on the constructed image of China as
the centre of Asia. Future-oriented nostalgia indeed conveys the idea that
China was, for most of its history, the centre of the world and is trying
to return to this norm in order to achieve Xi’s Chinese dream.
Xi’s community of shared future and the Chinese dream are often
compared with the discourse of the American dream. Adams emphasises
that the essential American manifestos is “life should be better and richer
and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability
192 Z. GU
or achievement.”66 It is clear from this that individual happiness is the

primary goal of the American dream. In contrast, Hartnett claims that
Xi’s dream metaphor is different, putting the nation first while invoking
Mao’s reverence for China’s collectivist and nationalist values and echoing
Mao’s vision of building.67 In other words, Xi’s Chinese dream empha-
sises an authoritarian rule and is a reaction against westernisation, through
which it builds a global power and regionalism.68 However, Xi may feel
that it is neither easy nor necessary for modern China to return to Mao’s
collectivist socialism; the community wants to link with the rest of the
world rather than to be isolated from it. What Xi is attempting to build
is a new economic and political alliance built on the ancient Sino-centric
hierarchical imagination of a tianxia (i.e., under the heaven, 天下) framed
vision of international politics within Asia.69
From this perspective, the documentary communicates an image of the
ancient Maritime Silk Road to establish a twenty-first-century Maritime
Silk Road (community of shared future), to which China is central. Shi
Anbin argues that “community of shared future” is a supranational and
transcultural policy. It intertwines the classical Chinese philosophy of
tianxia with the Euro-American concept of cosmopolitanism, which aims
to achieve potency and relevance through remapping the topography of
global communication.70 In this light, the concept of tianxia may imply
a changing geopolitical relationship between China and the rest of the
world. Compared to the “Euro-American concept of cosmopolitanism,”
“community of shared future” or tianxia has a typical characteristic of
Chinese modernity, in holding that all human beings belong to a single
community. In this sense, it is not that the ancient Maritime Silk Road
66 James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (Florida: Simon Publications, 2001),
373.
67 Stephen J. Hartnett, “Alternative Modernities, Postcolonial Colonialism, and
Contested Imaginings in and of Tibet,” in Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in
68 Baogang He, “Regionalism as an Instrument for Global Power Contestation: The
Case of China,” Asian Studies Review, 2020 (1): 79–96.
69 June Teufel Dreyer, “The Tianxia Trope: Will China Change the International
System?” Journal of Contemporary China, 2015 (96): 1015–1031.
70 Anbin Shi, “China’s Role in Remapping Global Communication,” in China’s Media
Go Global, ed. Daya Kishan Thussu, Hugo De Burgh, and Anbin Shi, 34 (London:
Routledge, 2018).
conceived the twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road, but rather that

China’s current political and economic situation produced the ancient
Maritime Silk Road and embellished it to fulfil a political aim. From this
perspective, the past in the documentary, no matter whether it is accurate
or historical, is seen as an allegorical narrative and societal commentary
that represents China’s present intentions.
Thus, historical nostalgia in the documentary reflects Xi’s ambition that
Asia be seen as China’s tianxia, although some scholars have argued that
during the Han, Tang, Ming, and Qing dynasties, foreign relations did
not conform to this hierarchical model.71 Compared to Hu’s harmonious
society, Xi’s discourse is directly embedded within centuries-old Chinese
history, providing a sense of historical depth, building a strong sense of
nationalism, and presenting an imagined great glory for China’s future.
In the context of the CCP’s leadership from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping,
three provincial TV stations are less worried about “the theory of China
threat” but are responding to various challenges through the constructed
image that China positions itself as the centre of the Maritime Silk Road
and Asia. This new image is further linked to President Xi’s “Chinese
dream”. Hence, a documentary creates the twenty-first-century Maritime
Silk Road as the successor of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, thereby
endorsing the Chinese government’s discourse of rejuvenating ancient
national civilisation and constructing a great contemporary power. Huang
Xinyan suggests that Maritime Silk Road bears an important mission as
external propaganda for a new Chinese image that will establish China’s
status abroad.72 This documentary represents that the Chinese govern-
ment’s attempt to construct a nostalgic community and the concept of
a shared future to recall a glorious era of Imperial China after suffering
a hundred years of humiliation, thus constructing China’s constructed
past and its complex external situation in the present. This China-initiated
project attempts to integrate the notion of “cosmopolitanism” with the
71 Geoff Wade, “Ming China and Southeast Asia in the 15th Century: A Reappraisal,”
Asian Research Institute Working Chapter No. 28. National University of Singapore, July
2004, https://ari.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/wps04_028.pdf (Accessed 1
October 2021); Feng Zhang, “Rethinking the ‘Tribute System’: Broadening the Concep-
tual Horizon of Historical East Asian Politics,” Chinese Journal of International Politics,
2009 (4): 545–574.
72 Xinyan Huang, “Interpretation of Contemporary China Image in the Documen-
taries about ‘One Belt and One Road’: Taking Maritime Silk Road (2016) Produced by
Shanghai Documentary Channel as an Example,” China Television, 2017 (7): 87.
194 Z. GU
traditional Chinese philosophy of tianxia, in order to regain leadership

in Asia. No matter whether it is the intention of the Chinese govern-
ment, a Confucian “harmony,” or a Utopian vision of tianxia, and
universal values are reached through the communication of these Chinese
provincial television stations.
The documentary series constructs a distinct narrative in which China
is the most important player along the Maritime Silk Road, both past
and present. It mainly depicts three Chinese ports as hubs in the history
of the Maritime Silk Road, a China-centric commercial road through
which large amounts of merchandise was shipped to different places
around the world. This narrative of China as the centre of the ancient
Maritime Silk Road may provoke controversy through academic chal-
lenges to its impartiality. This controversy may be associated with the
three provincial TV stations of Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Quanzhou,
which produced the documentary. As three important Chinese harbour
cities, it is perhaps unsurprising that their TV stations should centre their
own harbours and cities in the documentary, rather than others with
which they have a competitive relationship. In this regard, the process
of projecting a positive image of the Chinese government is, at the same
time, a gradual procedure of Chinese media marketisation and interna-
tionalisation. Chwen Chwen Chen argues that “if we put it in the broader
context of China’s emergence as a global actor, CCTV’s expansion is a
natural development of China’s firms’ internationalisation strategies.”73
Chen believes that the key to the success of CCTV going global is
incorporating a well-developed business model into its organisation and
operation.
Dadabaev suggests that Japan and Korea were also important players
along the ancient Silk Road.74 However, the documentary is centred
around a form of historical nostalgia that nurtures a future in which
China is seen as the centre of the BRI. Dadabaev further suggests that
the notion of the Silk Road has changed from a static concept of a histor-
ical trade route into a social construction by some powerful Central Asian
73 Chwen Chwen Chen, “CCTV Going Global in a Digital Scenario,” 17 November

2014, http://theasiadialogue.com/2014/11/17/cctv-going-global-in-a-digital-scenario-
some-reflections/ (Accessed 1 September 2018).
74 Timur Dadabaev, “‘Silk Road’ as Foreign Policy Discourse: The Construction
of Chinese, Japanese and Korean Engagement Strategies in Central Asia,” Journal of
Eurasian Studies, 2018 (1): 30–41.
states, whose engagement strategies of which are constantly shaped, imag-

ined, and re-interpreted.75 In other words, the history of the ancient Silk
Road does not belong to one specific country, but rather changes with
time and the international environment. China, Japan, Korea, and the
Middle East were all important components of this ancient trade route
during different historical periods, yet the documentary has deliberately
omitted the narratives of Japan and Korea to create a Chinese national
identity that aligns with the Chinese dream and image of community.
This constructed national history shows that the Chinese government
has always had a hand in controlling mainstream cultural interpretation
to reaffirm its dominant role. Portrayal of the past in the documentary
is a flexible political rhetoric to pursue a historical legitimacy for Xi’s
government.
5 Conclusion
In the context of media marketisation, the state-owned TV industry
presents the ambition of the Chinese government to convey a peace-
loving and coexistent national image. Nostalgia is articulated in relation
to the Chinese government’s policies of “going out” and the BRI, as
the agenda of Sino-globalisation is increasingly based on international
economic and cultural communication. Various forms of nostalgia, such
as a yearning for the countryside, an agrarian past, home-cooked food,
historic grandeur, and a diasporic home, have been identified as future-
oriented political rhetoric adopted by Chinese state media to produce a
global image of China aligned with the Chinese government’s discourses
of peaceful development and the BRI. Despite China’s claim of its benign
objectives of cultural and economic communication, the implications
of the dynamic rhetoric of nostalgia show its ambition to potentially
change the world order. Thus, Boym’s future-oriented nostalgia has
been expanded into a highly political sphere and has become polit-
ical rhetoric in Chinese state-funded documentaries. Furthermore, this
political rhetoric differs from Mao’s principle of serving the people,
aimed instead at maintaining internal stability and communicating China’s
international image.
75 Ibid.
196 Z. GU
Overall, this chapter has argued that the various forms of nostalgia
in both documentaries constitute political rhetoric intended to (re)shape
China’s image as one of harmonious development domestically and inter-
nationally, as the CCP’s diplomatic policy, based on Xi’s dream discourse,
gradually becomes more active and even aggressive. Furthermore, it
shows that China’s diplomatic priorities have shifted from communi-
cating Chinese soft power to promoting China’s global governance.
Through deploying this future-oriented nostalgia ideologically, cultur-
ally, and historically, both documentary series have reflected the Chinese
government’s needs and aspirations. This discussion offers a critical frame-
work through which to examine how the documentaries manipulate
collective memory to service a political and ideological agenda. This
chapter has discussed how the state-led media construct nostalgia to
endorse the CCP’s discourse. Chapter 6 will further probe how the
Internet videos produced by the Chinese private institutions articulate
Chinese traditional elements with different social contexts in order to
attract audiences of different cultural backgrounds in the context of the
construction of what is known as the Chinese Film School.
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CHAPTER 6
Discourse Articulation—A Media Mechanism

for International Communication
Chinese screen media has been exploring various methods for intercul-
tural communication for a considerable amount of time. At present,
many “new mainstream” films offer a distinct national discourse and
have achieved box-office success in the Chinese film market. However,
their international box-office returns have been poor, and the films have
faced criticism for overt propaganda in relation to the Chinese national
image. Their approach to intercultural communication contrasts with
that of the Li Ziqi food video series on YouTube, which articulates
nostalgia from Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong’s presentation of rural
China with different cultural contexts to offer a national image of new
rural China that is more easily understood by international audiences.
This cultural communication, as Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation high-
lights, is intended to articulate different ideologies and express cultural
negotiation. In this regard, an effective form of intercultural communica-
tion occurs when the communicator articulates their discourse with others
generated in different cultural backgrounds, through which they may
develop a general and shared emotion to resonate with audiences from
those backgrounds. The cultural articulation in the Li Ziqi food video
series suggests that Chinese media should overcome tendencies toward
self-promotion and implicitly communicate a vivid Chinese national image

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6_6
202 Z. GU
through cultural conversation and compromise. In addition, the series

implies that Chinese media should articulate constructed Chinese tradi-
tional cultural resources with universal discourse to expand the space for
intercultural communication.
1 Introduction
Chinese screen media, on the one hand, can be seen as a kind of
ideological state apparatus or political tool for implementing national
discourse propaganda and competing for cultural hegemony. On the
other hand, it is also a cultural industry and commodity supported by the
Chinese system, technology, and culture, engaged in the internationalisa-
tion and marketisation of the Chinese screen industry. This combination
of cultural, economic, and political functions inspires Chinese screen
media to adhere to the tradition of main-melody film, while consciously
designing more varied discourses aimed at audiences of different cultural
backgrounds.
As the international environment around China has changed in recent
years, a stream of “new mainstream” films featuring brave Chinese soldiers
earned good box-office returns in China. These new mainstream block-
busters have become a new genre of main-melody film promoted by
the government. This genre represents the mainstream ideologies of
socialism with Chinese characteristics and has pursued high box-office
returns through good production values and the casting of well-known
film stars.1 On the one hand, these films draw inspiration from the revo-
lutionary tradition of main-melody films and people’s films that emphasise
the state’s responsibilities in serving the people, thereby communicating
the CCP’s revolutionary history and propagandising national discourses.2
On the other hand, they attempt to incorporate commercial elements
in order to gain broader audience resonance. For instance, the brave
soldiers in films such as Operation Mekong (2016), Wolf Warrior and Wolf
Warrior 2 (2015, 2017), and Operation Red Sea (2018) are symbolic of
1 Chen Xihe and Zhai Liying, “A Study on the National Image in the Main Melody
Film in the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up Policy,” Hundred Schools in Arts, 2019
(1): 126.
2 Wang Haizhou, “Re-nationalization of the Chinese Film: Path and Future of the
Construction of Film Nationality in New China,” Contemporary Cinema, 2020 (5): 4.
6 DISCOURSE ARTICULATION—A MEDIA MECHANISM … 203
the effort to shape a great and strong national image of China. In partic-
ular, Wolf Warrior 2 is set against a turbulent overseas background; its
nationalism captivates many Chinese audiences as a display of the national
responsibility shouldered by the Chinese government.
Scholars have identified a predominant film aesthetic called the Chinese
Film School, which emphasises the responsibility of Chinese films to
communicate a positive national image and propagandise the superiority
of Chinese socialism.3 Indeed, the Wolf Warriors series and many other
new mainstream films demonstrate the aesthetic and political qualities of
this school. However, some new mainstream films have failed to grasp
the difference in how this filmic discourse is received by domestic and
overseas markets. As a result, although many of these films achieved good
box-office results in China, their box-office returns were relatively low
overseas, where they faced criticism for their function as obvious govern-
ment propaganda. Clearly, the box-office returns is a primary indicator of
whether Chinese films are recognised by overseas audiences, and whether
their discourse is accepted outside China. The Chinese Film School is
defined in political terms as much as aesthetic or academic. If its reach is
to extend beyond China, Chinese “going out“ films will have to actively
balance the differences between Chinese local culture and global popular
culture.
This analysis of media intercultural communication investigates how
China’s screen media produce images and discourse that can be easily
understood by audiences of different cultural backgrounds. British scholar
Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation emphasises that an effective commu-
nication needs to link different communities of knowledge, discourse,
and ideology.4 The Chinese media industry produces films and television
that are popular among Chinese people and manifest Chinese national
culture. As Hall’s theory makes clear, it is necessary to articulate the
knowledge and discourse of different cultural backgrounds if Chinese film
and television are to expand its intercultural communication.
Many Chinese Internet short videos presenting Chinese traditional
culture have achieved relative success in both domestic and interna-
tional screen markets. An exploration of the discourse articulation of
3 Guangming Hou, “The Research Progress and Future Prospects of the Chinese Film
School,” Journal of Beijing Film Academy, 2021 (10): 14.
4 Stuart Hall, “On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall,”
The Journal of Communication Inquiry, 1986 (2): 45–60.
204 Z. GU
these Chinese screen media can help us further realise that this success
is linked to the activation of Chinese history and culture to show the
contemporary value of the Chinese national spirit to domestic and inter-
national audiences. Thus, this chapter examines the Li Ziqi YouTube food
videos to probe how Chinese screen media articulate different cultures
and discourses to fulfil their economic, artistic, and political purpose in
the Chinese Film School context.
2 Articulation: A Theory and Practice

for the Chinese Screen Media
As discussed earlier, Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation holds that the
new discourse system constructed by integrating multiple ideologies is
more vigorous than a homogenous system. Around the 1980s, British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher proposed a series of popular polit-
ical and economic measures.5 Hall investigated the background and
specific content of these measures and proposed the theory of articula-
tion. In his opinion, articulation is the form of connection that unites
two different elements under a certain discourse or ideology.6 The artic-
ulation represents a connection or linkage that happens under particular
conditions. In other words, this cultural construction is not eternal but
requires constant renewal; as Hall suggests, the internal organisation of
any discourse (involving potential disjunctures, contradictions, antago-
nisms, and tensions) combined with its external conditions create the
possibility of disarticulation and rearticulation.7 Thus, an articulation
between different practices does not mean that they become identical or
that one is dissolved into the other. Rather, each one retains its distinct
determinations and conditions. However, once an articulation is made,
the two practices can function together in a unified way.
Hall’s theory of articulation has become a territory where different
social forces, such as multiple social structures and power groups, join in a
5 Stuart Hall, “The Road in the Garden: Thatcherism amongst the Theorists’,” in
Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 43
(Macmillan, 1988).
7 Stuart Hall, “Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post-
structuralist Debate,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1985 (2): 91–114.
dynamic process that integrates and constructs different discourses under

certain historical and realistic conditions. More importantly, there is no
clear-cut distinction between the ruling and ruled class in the process of
cultural articulation in different ideological struggles. Here we can easily
see the influence of Marx’s ideology of class struggle. Marxism stated
that society can only be understood in terms of a system where the domi-
nant ideas are formulated by the ruling class to secure its control over
the working class.8 Owing to exploitation, the working class will even-
tually try changing this situation through revolution, producing its own
ideas as well as its own industrial and political organisation. Compared
with Marx’s discussions on ideology, Hall’s articulation desalinates ideo-
logical confrontation and distortion between the ruling class and ruled
class but, rather, refers to a cultural negotiation and communication
between different social elements. Furthermore, articulation theory is fed
by Antony Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, as the process by which the
dominant culture maintains its dominance. Gramsci stated that the only
way the working class achieves hegemony is by accounting for the inter-
ests of other groups and social forces and finding ways to combine them
with its own interests.9 Thus, the reason the bourgeoisie became a hege-
monic leading class is that bourgeois ideology can, to a large extent,
accommodate the culture and values of the anti-class. The attainment of
bourgeois hegemony, therefore, did not lie in the elimination of class
culture, but in the absorption of the culture and ideology of the other
class. Gramsci’s theory of hegemony inspires Hall’s articulation theory
that ideology is a public space wherein different classes interact through
a dynamic process of negotiation, dialogue, and struggle.
Assimilating Marx and Gramsci, Hall’s articulation theory highlights
that ideology is “the mental frameworks—the languages, the concepts,
categories, imagery of thought, and the systems of representation—which
different classes and social groups deploy to make sense of, define, figure
out and render intelligible the way society works.”10 Three essential
8 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),
55.
9 Antonio Gramsci, The Gramsci Reader Selected Writings 1916–1935, ed. David Forgacs
(New York University Press, 2000), 189–221.
206 Z. GU
aspects of this theory can be identified. First, the linkage is not neces-
sarily determined all of the time; Hall’s articulation inherits the theory
of ideology, but at the same time, desalinates ideological confrontation
and distortion between the ruling class and ruled class. This under-
standing of ideology is more akin to Louis Althusser’s theory as subjective
and existing in institutions and apparatus at every level of our lives.11
Second, the process of articulation may be situated within a specific
ideology, which encourages us to think about how ideological elements
empower people. Third, this articulation is not settled. On the contrary,
it can be rearticulated at specific conjunctures. This feature implies that
Hall’s articulation theory is anti-essentialist and rejects reductionism and
determinism.
Thus, Hall’s articulation theory has redefined Marx’s ideology theory,
which asserts that discourse communication is a dynamic process of
struggle and negotiation between different forces. In this regard, the
theory of articulation is a confluent territory within which various social
structures and force groups are not merely integrated; they also accept
different worldviews as much as possible to alleviate the potential for
antagonism. According to Hall’s articulation theory, text may not be
the source of meaning, but a specific field of reproduction in a specific
context for specific, perhaps resistant, social interests. On the other hand,
articulation theory becomes a strategy for various stakeholders to obtain
new knowledge through struggle and negotiation. We find that articula-
tion is the product that different elements actively negotiate for specific
interests in a specific context, which may generate new mechanisms or
connections to acquire meanings. Hall’s articulation theory has become
the most important theoretical foundation of The Birmingham School
(cultural studies).
Hall’s articulation theory holds that film is a field full of cultural
negotiation, which may bring about a temporary hegemony in a specific
context, but within which resistant elements struggle for dominance.
The phenomenon that some Chinese mainstream films did well in China
but relatively poorly overseas shows that the Chinese film industry does
not successfully balance nationalism, promotion of the development of
11 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an

Investigation),” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster, 85–125
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001).
Chinese films, and communication of Chinese culture. More impor-

tantly, if we are to follow the theory of articulation, it fails to balance
the aesthetic expectations and discourse receptivity of audiences from
different cultural backgrounds. Chinese scholars have proposed to solve
these problems by constructing the national film theory of the Chinese
Film School. Hou Guangming believes that the Chinese film industry
needs to summarise the experience of its development, absorb foreign
film culture and theory, and find methodology and knowledge through
its history and culture.12 Based on Hou’s suggestion, the Chinese Film
School calls for the investigation of marketisation and internationalisation
of Chinese screen media and the promotion of a coordinated develop-
ment of a national film theory and practice. Thus, the Chinese Film
School not only focuses on propagandising Chinese mainstream ideolo-
gies but is also an aesthetic construction based on academic discussion, as
well as a realistic, problem-oriented artistic pursuit that aims to “activate
cultural traditions and cease Chinese aesthetics.”13 Thus, the Chinese film
industry is a theoretical system that attempts to guide the international
development of Chinese screen media in the context of cultural “going
out.”
At present, the Chinese Film School initiative is a hot topic. From
the suggestions and statements related to this theory, it can be deter-
mined that it is a theoretical system with national attributes that aim
to communicate the Chinese government discourse. At the same time,
it could become a more practical film initiative if Chinese films were to
actively balance the differences between the CCP’s discourse and popular
culture. In this regard, the Chinese Film School and articulation theory
have a similar appeal that insists on diluting the ideological attribute of
confrontation when dealing with different discourses. Therefore, Hall’s
articulation theory is able to provide specific measures for the construc-
tion of the Chinese Film School, which may become a cultural engine
to enlighten Chinese screen media in how to articulate Chinese discourse
with the knowledge and discourse familiar to overseas audiences. The end
goal of such an initiative would be to achieve economic success for the
“going out of the Chinese screen media.
208 Z. GU
It is these characteristics—the dilution of ideological conflict, the

blurred distinction between ruling and ruled classes, and the dynamic
negotiation of various interests—that make articulation a suitable theory
to examine intercultural communication of Chinese screen media in the
context of ideological conflicts between post-socialist China and the
West. This chapter uses Hall’s theory to analyse discourse articulation
in the Li Ziqi YouTube food video series and to illustrate how Chinese
screen media, as a vehicle for popular culture, communicates the Chinese
government’s discourse through nostalgia to develop its internationalisa-
tion in the context of the Chinese Film School. The theory of articulation
becomes a means by which to understand how ideological elements are
integrated within discourses such as the new socialist countryside and the
community of shared future.
3 Nostalgia in Li Ziqi Food

Video Series (2016–2022)
The Li Ziqi food video series has posted a new episode on food prepara-
tion techniques every month on YouTube since August 2017 (barring
a short hiatus as a result of a legal dispute) and has become increas-
ingly popular among a global audience. The series uses a more flexible
film language to communicate a sense of common nostalgia related to
a traditional national image of rural China that appeals to international
audiences. This process not only communicates Chinese culture but also
urges audiences of different cultural backgrounds to look at their own
culture, potentially constructing new meanings and symbols for both
communicators and recipients.
The Li Ziqi food video series mainly articulates a nostalgic coun-
tryside lifestyle, situated in sociologist Fei Xiaotong’s rural China, with
different cultural and social agendas, such as family kinship, environmental
protection, and feminism. This representation constructs a new rural
China that is more easily understood and appreciated by audiences from
different cultural backgrounds, thus prompting them to reflect on their
own cultures. Fei Xiaotong’s Rural China depicts a vision of the Chinese
countryside in the 1930s and 40s. The book portrays multiple character-
istics of rural China; for instance, rural communities are clan groups in
which the elders control all aspects and people communicate intimately
with each other; villagers pay special attention to the rule of etiquette,
consanguinity, and ethics; there are strict distinctions between male and
female genders in terms of behavioural norms and psychology. As the

book has argued, “from a local perspective, China’s society is rural.”14
Rural China does not argue that the Chinese countryside is rural in a
narrow sense, but that the whole of Chinese society is rural in general.
The Li Ziqi food video series abandons the characteristics of elder rule
and an uncultured Chinese countryside shown in Rural China; rather,
it presents a nostalgic, naive, rich, beautiful, and ritual-based rural China
through reconstructions of traditional food and lifestyle. This new rural
China presents a rich and harmonious countryside, which indeed endorses
the Chinese government’s discourse of the new socialist countryside,
initiated in 2005.
Li Ziqi first presents new rural China by articulating Fei’s Rural China
with a poetic and ancient China, through which to resonate with audience
memories of family affection, hometown, and the beauty of nature. Li
Ziqi shows an ancient agrarian society by presenting various traditional
cooking methods and cuisines. Handmade embroidery, fermented rice
wine, food-making activities, and traditional countryside lifestyles awaken
a common emotion about the past and reproduce an image of a self-
sufficient, ancient farming civilisation. These reconstructed scenes of the
ancient Chinese countryside are full of affection, drawn from the poetry of
Tao Yuanming (AD 365–427): 采菊东篱下, 悠然现南山 (caiju donglixia,
youran xian nanshan). In this regard, the Li Ziqi food video series artic-
ulates Fei’s Rural China with the imagination of the ancient poetry to
construct a utopian scene of an idyllic home in the countryside of contem-
porary China. The seasonal and traditional food and wine made by Li Ziqi
represent a self-sufficient ancient agricultural civilisation, which reminds
Chinese audiences of a traditional culture, natural beauty, and family life.
At the same time, the various delicacies, printing and dyeing skills, and
peaceful rural lifestyles in Li Ziqi videos are not historical memories stored
in museums, but national images of new rural China. Presentations of
rural China might change within a different social context; however, the
argument that “Chinese society is rural” is deeply embedded in all levels
of Chinese society as a part of collective consciousness.
The way the series portrays elements of the rural life that are discussed
in Rural China articulates a new discourse of the construction of the
new socialist countryside, through which to present a rural China that
14 Xiaotong Fei, Rural China Fertility System, Rural Reconstruction (Beijing: The
Commercial Press, 2011), 6.
210 Z. GU
is closer to the life of contemporary Chinese people. At the same time,

the series narrates stories designed to evoke warm feelings. For instance,
Li Ziqi takes care of her grandmother, which creates the impression
of family warmth and promotes the notion of an independent female
entrepreneur. Such images embody universal emotions that may resonate
with foreigners. Many commenters praise this family’s affection and
concern for the grandmother, who only occasionally appears in the series.
One commenter writes, “My grandma lives like this. Her kitchen is very
similar to Li Ziqi’s, but she has been dead for three years and I miss
her very much.”15 Another writes, “This is what our way of life is, we
share everything with our family. Nature provides us with everything
in life. I wish her and her grandma all happiness.”16 Here, nostalgia
becomes a kind of articulated discourse system comprising universal
emotions that exist in most social and cultural spheres. The comments
reveal that the presentations of beautiful rural China and familial affec-
tion have been felt by overseas audiences. Given the volume of comments
on each episode of Li Ziqi, these nostalgic food narratives have estab-
lished a distinct connection between Chinese and global society. Xin Jing
and Ye Qianqian conducted a statistical analysis of the comments on Li
Ziqi food video series to characterise the prevailing attitudes. Positive
words such as “loving,” “peacefully,” “goodness,” “pleasing,” “inspi-
ration,” and “relaxing” make up the highest percentage of comments.
Evidently, many comments express love for Chinese food, affection and
admiration for Li Ziqi’s lifestyle, and positive wishes for her family. This
new concept of rural China and the beauty of the countryside and rural
life satisfy the imaginations of contemporary domestic and international
audiences. When set against the relatively low overseas box-office receipts
for Chinese films, partly as a result of ideological conflicts between post-
socialist China and the West, it is apparent that the Li Ziqi food video
series breaks down cultural barriers and communicates Chinese culture
abroad.
As part of China’s rapid progress to modernity, the subconscious need
to search for historical roots has been tapped into by the nostalgic culinary
activities in the Li Ziqi food video series. Nostalgia is “a socio-cultural
15 Commons on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b44xja5KeAo

(Accessed 1 May 2022).
16 Commons on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqY4OmDHUyc&
t=4s (Accessed 1 May 2022).
response to forms of discontinuity caused by the present situation, such as

worry, anxiety, and discontinuous situation.”17 The presentation of new
rural China motivates audiences to return to this continuous source of
comfort to relieve their current anxiety or stress (as if the series itself
were comfort food). Nostalgia in the Li Ziqi food video series thus
is used to construct an imaginary past from the perspective of present
needs and future aspirations. Thus, it not only builds the image of a self-
sustaining rural China with an ancient farming civilisation, but also shows
people’s reactions to the beauty of nature. Thus, the new rural China
engages with contemporary anxieties about the loss of the traditional way
of life,18 and the worry about industrialism in the era of globalisation.19
In this regard, the Li Ziqi food video series seeks to provide a consis-
tent source of comfort for viewers through depictions of a pre-industrial
society and traditional good life. The new rural China also has future-
oriented meaning,20 which is based on the needs of reality and revises the
cultural memory of rural China in the 1930s and 1940s to meet social
expectations for stability.
The image of nostalgic rural China is also articulated with feminism
to attract more international audiences. There is no male presented in
the videos and Li Ziqi is the only female protagonist, which may cause
Chinese audiences to reflect on Fei’s rural China, where the roles of
men and women were strictly defined. Unlike the image of traditional
Chinese women, Li Ziqi is able to chop wood, carry water, and culti-
vate vegetables, while also making textiles, and taking care of elders.
This persona is more nuanced and complex, which may resonate more
widely among audiences from different cultural backgrounds. Meanwhile,
in the comments, we find that many foreign netizens praise Li’s forti-
tude, strength of character, and independent female consciousness. In
this regard, it seems that aspects of her classic, hard-working, nostalgic
peasant image articulate independent female consciousness. Thus, Li is
17 Fred Davis, Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: Free Press,
1979), 50.
18 Liu Zhiying, “Aesthetic Interpretation of Li Ziqi’s Short Video in the Cross-Cultural
Communication Vision,” Contemporary TV , 2020 (11): 86.
19 Ji Deqiang, “Li Ziqi’s Echo Chamber? The Boundary-Breaking and Demarcation of
Cross-Cultural Communication in the Era of Social Media,” News and Writing, 2020
(3): 13.
212 Z. GU
interpreted as an independent, modern woman who is seen as an exem-

plar of gender equality globally. In this respect, the articulation between
Fei’s rural China and contemporary discourses makes Li Ziqi’s image both
socialised and naturalistic. Her image not only communicates the achieve-
ments of the construction of China’s new countryside but also provides
a common focus for the discussion of feminism for Chinese and foreign
audiences, highlighting improvements in the status of women in China.
The poetic and ancient farming civilisation depicted in the series
constructs a contemporary vision of rural China that blends the aesthetic
expectations of both Chinese and foreign audiences. It not only satisfies
the Chinese imagination about the cultural roots of rural China, but also
connects to the expectations of other cultures regarding home, family,
identity, and an independent female personality. As a result, an image of
rural China from the 1930s and 1940s is articulated through discourses
of nostalgia, family affection, and feminism that domestic and overseas
audiences are able to understand. A sense of common emotion is thus
orchestrated between audiences from diverse cultural backgrounds. This
cultural articulation not only encourages the creator to break through
the constraints of their own environment and consider the environment
of others but also invites the audience to adopt an open attitude to other
cultures. No longer fixated on the old cultural, this media activity, there-
fore, downplays the Chinese ideological discourse and constructs a space
for intercultural communication.
The Li Ziqi food video series offers a snapshot of the Eastern world
from a general perspective to show the peculiarities (spectacles) of Chinese
culture. Meanwhile, it also uses cultural commonalities (concern for the
environment, family, affection, etc.) to reveal collective societal needs
for emotional warmth and a beautiful environment. In this sense, the
food-themed series does not cater directly to the West but uses universal
cultural themes of nature, environmentalism, feminism, and family kinship
to attract global audiences. The new rural China is no longer equated with
dying and backward rural areas. Nor is it a spectacle of material pros-
perity combined with spiritual degeneration as depicted by Orientalism.
The representation of the new rural China thus transcends Orientalism
and evokes shared cross-cultural emotions to alleviate the spiritual anxiety
of human society in an era of globalisation, ultimately revealing an image
of an Eastern interlocutor that actively seeks to equally communicate
with the West. This media practice is not a one-way activity, geared only
towards catering to and pleasing the West; it is more a self-reflection of
China’s current social culture and the problems associated with glob-
alisation and is intended to foster dialogue between China and the
world.
Hall’s articulation theory emphasises that meaning is generated by
different elements that hinge on specific historical conditions. The repre-
sentation of the new rural China is being generated in the historical
context of ideological conflicts between post-socialist China and the West.
Low international box-office receipts for “new mainstream” Chinese films
indicate that international audiences are resistant to overtly ideological
presentations. In contrast, Chinese Internet media articulates rural China
with contemporary societal aspirations for a better life and a beautiful
natural environment to construct a visual image subject that can be under-
stood by audiences of different cultural backgrounds. In this regard, the
Li Ziqi food video series internalises itself as a subject of the national
ideology through cultural articulation to indirectly become the conduit
for national discourse. Thus, Hall’s articulation is useful in finding similar-
ities that offset differences and communicate a flexible, negotiated media
culture that gradually dispels the sense of Chinese culture as a political
discourse.
4 Discourse Articulation in the Context

of Constructing Chinese Film School
The impetus for the Chinese Film School is to further strengthen the
characteristics of Chinese culture and communicate China’s soft power.
Two aspects of Hall’s theory of articulation relate to the construc-
tion of the Chinese Film School. First, stories communicated by the
Chinese screen media, to a larger extent, present national and polit-
ical discourse. Second, the Chinese screen industry needs to question
how these discourses are articulated with different cultures to successfully
communicate a type of universal knowledge.
4.1 National Attribute of Chinese Film School

The Chinese Film School emphasises the primacy of China, which indi-
cates that the international communication of Chinese screen media has
a national attribute based on China’s political purpose. As Hu Zhifeng
suggests, the construction of the Chinese Film School echoes the strategic
214 Z. GU
needs of cultural and national development.21 Another keyword in this

concept is the term “school,” which undoubtedly emphasises that the
Chinese Film School focuses on media practice, theory, and criticism.
Therefore, the Chinese Film School is not a purely academic concept,
but a community that is compatible with the enhancement of national
soft power and an international influence in China’s plans to play a
central role in leading a new round of globalisation. For instance,
although the Li Ziqi food video series was produced by a private Chinese
company, its intercultural communication should be understood as indi-
rectly expressing current national discourses of the construction of new
socialist countryside and the community of shared future.
Cultural articulation theory allows for an in-depth analysis of various
discourses behind film languages, which are used not only to construct
the Chinese national identity but also to communicate a modern Chinese
culture able to be understood by international audiences. In the Li
Ziqi food video series, we find that the articulation mechanism absorbs
meaning from the Chinese national tradition; thus, the aura of Tao Yuan-
ming’s poetry is embodied in the new rural China, which conveys a
traditional poetic spirit and the national tendency to cherish land. Chinese
aesthetics about rural China have been innovatively integrated into this
Internet video series, by using the poetry and painting of China to express
a distinct Chinese temperament, Chinese manners, and Chinese verve.
This articulation between the mainstream discourse of rural China and
popular culture shows that the aesthetic of Li Ziqi compatibly interrelates
political propaganda and artistic creation, weaving both of them into a
commercial product.
Through the articulation mechanism, Li Ziqi internalises the dissemi-
nation of Chinese culture and perhaps unconsciously becomes the bearer
of the Chinese mainstream discourse. As Hall argues, “this connection
is not only to understand how ideological elements are integrated in a
certain way of discourse under certain historical conditions but also to
question how they are connected with a certain political subject at a
21 Zhifeng Hu, “The Historical Logic, Realistic Basis and Future Concept of the
Chinese Film School in the New Era,” Journal of Beijing Film Academy, 2021 (6):
4.
particular time.”22 In this regard, Chinese screen media, whether state-

led or private, is able to disseminate or promote Chinese culture, national
image, CCP discourse, and the beliefs of the political system. This cultural
articulation helps us conceptualise how an ideology empowers people and
enables them to make sense of their historical situation. As we know,
knowledge is not necessarily neutral or objective, but always reflects the
position of the one who is communicating, to whom, and what they wish
to express.23 Foucault’s central idea is that what is generally regarded as
objective truth is actually a construction of discourse, created by those
with power to maintain and increase their power. Thus, the discourse is a
kind of knowledge, which presents a kind of political and economic char-
acteristic and always communicates ideology. As long as Chinese screen
media use an appropriate articulation strategy to ensure that target audi-
ences unconsciously receive the intended knowledge and discourse, they
are able to positively communicate China’s image.
As an apparatus of state propaganda, Chinese screen media bear a sense
of political responsibility to promote China’s national image and commu-
nicate its cultural and institutional confidence. Since 2000, Chinese film
and television have had several successful discourse articulations. For
instance, Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002) articulates the traditional Chinese
conception of family and state through a display of individual heroism
familiar to Western audiences. Through this mechanism of representa-
tion, the film successfully combines Chinese nationalism with a sense of
cosmopolitanism that may be of more interest to Western audiences. This
new cosmopolitanism, indeed, is a result of ideological compromise and
negotiation. Wang Haizhou points out that Zhang Yimou’s films have
some invisible elements that are “eager to be examined by the West.”24
This presupposition of eagerness can be read both as a kind of articula-
tion, although is also criticised as “pandering to the West” and “showing
China’s inferiority.”25 After the film Hero, there are many “going out“
The Journal of Communication Inquiry, 1986 (2): 48.
23 Michael Foucault, Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–
1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 109–133.
24 Wang Haizhou, “Film Format Revised and Culture Rewritten: Hero in the Era of
Globalization,” Journal of Beijing Film Academy, 2006 (4): 2.
25 Wang Haizhou, “Film Format Revised and Culture Rewritten: Hero in the Era of
Globalization,” Journal of Beijing Film Academy, 2006 (4): 2.
216 Z. GU
film examples of cultural articulations. For instance, The Banquet (Feng

Xiaogang, 2006) tells a story of power, love, and death in the court
struggle in ancient China. The main characters and the outline of the
story are borrowed from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet; the character of
Sun Wukong in Monkey King: Hero is Back (Tian Xiaopeng, 2015) also
has Hamlet’s hesitant and wandering temperament; the image of naughty
and healing Huba in Monster Hunt (Xu Chengyi, 2015) is inspired by
American animation and Japanese manga.
Meanwhile, the new mainstream film, Wolf Warrior 2 (2017), which
was successful domestically, neither breaks away from the Hollywood
filming model nor articulates any discourse with which foreign audiences
are familiar. Comments from some scholars and overseas audiences may
partly explain its reception abroad. Comments on IMDb criticise Wolf
Warriors 2 as a political propaganda film that combines heroism and
CCP nationalism to communicate the Chinese government’s discourse.26
In particular, the patriotic tagline in the film, “whoever attacks China
will be killed no matter how far away the target” (犯我中华者虽远必
诛, fan wo zhonghua zhe sui yuan bi zhu), was heavily criticised. In
recent years, the Chinese government has assumed a more combative
stance in international relations, and the tagline can be partly seen as a
typical representation of this diplomatic policy. As Chen Xuguang notes,
“Wolf Warriors 2 seems too tough and positions China as a saviour
of Africans.”27 Indeed, narratives about a Chinese warship and pass-
port in Wolf Warriors 2 create a strong national image of a Chinese
government with the ability and inclination to protect its people. Influ-
enced by the CCP’s strict and patriotic discourse, it is understandable
that these films adopt a nationalist tone to cater to the Chinese film
market; however, in the context of ideological conflicts between post-
socialist China and the Western world, this display of nationalism may
deter some foreign audiences. Moreover, images of Chinese soldiers using
force to resolve disputes are controversial in light of official statements
that China insists on dispute resolution through non-violent forms. Thus,
this controversial presentation is not conducive to China’s propaganda
26 The Commons of Wolf Warriors 2 in IMDB, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7131

870/reviews?ref_=tt_urv (Accessed 1 May 2022).
27 Xuguang Chen and Huaide Xiao, The Gaze of Cinema: A Strategic Study on the
“Going Out” of Chinese Cinema (Guiyang: Guizhou Educational Publishing House, 2020),
263.
campaign for building a “community of shared future“ through the BRI

(see Chapter 5).
Thus, it is not difficult to discern why the current new mainstream
Chinese films failed to transform China’s discourse into universal knowl-
edge. These films adopt Hollywood-style narratives and plots of individual
heroism to communicate a Chinese voice, but they have not been able to
create a new model for constructive dialogue with Hollywood because
they follow a trend of one-sided self-aggrandisement. Therefore, for
many Western audiences who are accustomed to Hollywood films, the
form of Chinese mainstream “going out“ films lack novelty at the same
time that their content is seen as propaganda. It is understandable that
Chinese screen media, as one apparatus of state ideology, should propa-
gandise China’s political discourse. However, they need to articulate
these discourses with texts and contexts that will hold greater appeal to
international audiences. In other words, Chinese screen media should
have produced Operation Red Sea (2018) or Wolf Warrior (2016) in
ways that are different from Saving Private Ryan (1998) or First Blood
(1982). Only in this way will it become possible to attract audiences from
different cultural backgrounds while also reflecting unique characteris-
tics of Chinese films, which are different from Hollywood, Bollywood,
Japanese, Iranian, and Korean films, for instance.
Back to Li Ziqi food videos, it is notable that the Internet celebrity
Li Ziqi was awarded “2019 cultural communication person of the year”,
“Influential person of the year”, “Official ambassador of China’s intan-
gible cultural heritage” and “Promotion ambassador for China’s rural
youth to become rich leaders” and many other honours and titles by
China’s local and central government around 2019. The presentations of
traditional leisure and fascinating lives in the constructed Chinese villages
in Li’s videos indeed communicates a general Chinese image because
these videos were produced in the Chinese context and approved by
the Chinese authority. It is possible that the popularity of Li abroad will
inevitably increase China’s international influence and further promote
other Chinese media. Therefore, the Chinese provincial and central
authorities tried to show their support. For the West, however, only
cultural or technological products that are rarely used as the Chinese
government’s propaganda may become popular and accepted. Li’s case
is a vivid example that the cultural and political empowerment may cause
Li to be suspected as a speaker of the Chinese government and propagan-
dises its political discourse in the context of ideological conflicts between
218 Z. GU
China and the West. In this light, the Chinese authority should keep Li
Ziqi’s videos as independent media that is different from the state-led
ones. In this way, Li’s videos may have a hugh potential to be accepted
by more international audiences.
In the context of the Chinese Film School, the Li Ziqi food video
series articulates Chinese traditional culture with common themes such
as family kinship, and feminism to convey a traditional poetic spirit and
a national love for the land. The video recreates the prototype of tradi-
tional culture by the practice of cultural articulation while continuously
summarising and refining it, so as to display a contemporary China that
is more accessible to foreign audiences. In this way, discourse articulation
is not only conducive to the inheritance of folk customs, artistic tradi-
tions, and other important contents of traditional Chinese culture, but
also to a recreation of national culture. The representation of new rural
China reflects the current Chinese screen media’s active dialogue with
global audiences, which indeed reflects the Chinese Film School’s goal of
activating cultural traditions.
4.2 The Internationalisation of Chinese Film School

Hall’s articulation theory was summarised through British political prac-
tice, which was originally seen as a political strategy to unite multi-party
ideologies, so as to unify the majority power and discourse in British
society. I have used this theory in the context of the international commu-
nication of Chinese screen media and the construction of the Chinese
Film School, through which to think about how Chinese screen media
integrate different social discourses to promote internationalisation and
to communicate Chinese culture. Thus, articulation theory becomes a
highly inclusive concept, which inspires Chinese scholars and screen media
producers to combine national and international cultures in the construc-
tion of the Chinese Film School. In this regard, the Chinese Film School
intends to solve problems in the development of Chinese screen media
and provide a means for successful intercultural communication.
To a large extent, we should encourage the trial-and-error process for
Chinese “going out“ screen media as an important strategy to make up
for any cultural discount and promote cultural integration. A healthy
and effective intercultural communication should maintain a symbiotic
relationship between the transmitter and receiver. Chinese intercultural
communication and research cannot return to the old way of directly
refuting Western hegemonic communication. Instead, it should actively

emphasise similar elements between different cultures, as a means by
which to evoke a common emotion and build possible intercultural
communities. Chapter 5 has suggested that food culture can be used
to convey Chinese culture and emphasised that national image is an
extremely sensitive political topic. This process of communicating a
national image is neither blindly immersed in narcissism about Chinese
culture nor reflexively antagonistic to Western cultural hegemony and
colonialist intercultural communication. Rather, Chinese film and tele-
vision media need to link traditional Chinese concepts to a modern
social context in order to develop a flexible and perceptible culture for
international audiences.
In the process of constructing the Chinese Film School, the “going
out“ screen media could consider mixing and recreating multiple ideolo-
gies to communicate a depoliticised China. For instance, air pollution
caused by economic development, food safety issues, marginalised human
beings, and children whose needs are underserved in rural areas are
current social issues that people in other countries have most likely also
encountered and are interested in. By addressing these issues in a more
universal way, media may therefore resonate more easily with international
audiences and avoid accusations of propaganda. Using artistic representa-
tion to promote dialogue across different cultures could gradually dissolve
conflicts between post-socialist China and the West. Therefore, discourse
articulation promotes the development of Chinese culture into a common
knowledge system, avoiding self-congratulation about China’s success,
and forming a Chinese discourse with global influence. In this regard,
localisation and internationalisation can be regarded as two sides of the
construction of the Chinese Film School, which together cooperatively
promote the growth of Chinese film theory and criticism.
The process of communicating national images through cultural artic-
ulation reminds us that cultural communication is at least partially based
on facts; at the same time, however, we must also acknowledge that
national image is a cultural and aesthetic construction. The information
reflected in the communication process is dynamic and contributes to the
production and construction of social meaning in a specific context. The
reconstruction and communication of rural China in the Li Ziqi food
videos inspire Chinese screen media to adopt and reimagine folk culture
in the process of constructing the Chinese Film School. The represen-
tation of new rural China not only comes from the accumulation of
220 Z. GU
traditional Chinese culture but also articulates the public mood, which
yearns to return to nature, by rejecting industrial society and creating an
image of artistic life. The cultural construction of new rural China is an
aestheticised reflection of daily life, which urges people to resist being
commercialised and alienated and instead live creatively while striving
to pursue an authentic experience of beauty.28 This cultural construc-
tion not only satisfies popular imagination in China regarding its national
image in the new era but also avoids the excessive intervention of national
discourse. In this regard, the new rural China evokes multiple resonances
of family, identity, and personal independence among audiences from
different cultural backgrounds. From this perspective, although we know
that the constructed environment in Li Ziqi is very different from where
we live, we are still willing to yearn for this image, as if it did exist in
history.
The international communication of Chinese screen media needs to
adopt the cultural articulation techniques used in the Li Ziqi food videos,
and consider designing, mixing, and rebuilding various discourses to
present China with a more restrained narrative and language. This may
encourage more audiences from different cultures to participate in the
construction of multiple images of China. The representation of a flexible
national image neither caters to the West nor reflects self-deprecation, but
instead seeks to establish an identity in different social contexts. Through
this cultural behaviour and a carefully negotiated method of communica-
tion, common emotions may be disseminated to the world. In the context
of ideological conflicts between East and West, art may become a useful
tool to promote the dialogue between different civilisations. Evidently,
the construction and communication of the Chinese Film School are
useful not only for ideological propaganda but also as a means by which
to convey popular and commercial culture to global audiences.
The internationalisation of Chinese screen media and the effective
communication of “Chineseness” is key to the construction of Chinese
Film School. The exploration and renewal of Chinese culture in Chinese
screen media not only highlights the specificity of Chinese culture but
also enables audiences from other cultural backgrounds to understand
28 Jiang Zhiquan and Fan Rui, “Towards the Aesthetics of Everyday Life—The
Aesthetic Characteristics of the Era of Social Short Videos,” Literary and Artistic
Contention, 2020 (8): 101.
the modern vitality and value of Chinese traditional culture gener-

ally. Raymond Williams opposes a manipulative view of communication,
which in his view entails not only transmission but also acceptance and
response.29 In other words, any communication theory is a theory about
constructing community. From the perspective of community, the reason
the Li Ziqi food videos resonate with audiences of different cultural back-
ground is that the new rural China, as constructed through articulation
strategy, stimulates audiences to recall memories associated with their own
culture. This constructs a new discourse space that may form a community
where similar experiences are shared. Thus, it is a cultural transformation
from Fei’s rural China to Li’s. The new rural China is not in fact totally
new; rather, it inherits many characteristics from Chinese cultural tradi-
tion. However, by adding and omitting some elements, it is endowed
with political and ideological connotations in a new social context.
Chapter 5 has discussed the Chinese government’s discourse of “com-
munity of shared future.” This chapter further highlighted that while
this discourse has its particularity, China’s screen media should indicate
that the nation does not intend to establish a new set of international
rules, but to communicate a common sense of value that all people share
the planet and need to work together under the existing international
system. Wang Peinan points out that the discourse of “community of
shared future“ is a meta-narrative system, which sets up a guiding frame-
work for all stories about China.30 Indeed, the meta-narrative can be
used as a kind of communicational strategy, which can be understood
both as a narrative and an analysis of a narrative. To some extent, the
essence of meta-narrative is also a paradigm of discourse articulation.
For instance, the everyday, practical, perceptual, and carnival aspects of
popular culture in Li Ziqi food videos can be combined into the narrative
of rural China, so as to construct an everyday aesthetic paradigm of meta-
narrative within rural China. Therefore, Chinese screen media can also
use the cultural model of meta-narrative to combine multiple discourses
into a discourse framework that does not present cultural and economic
29 Raymond Williams, Culture and Society: 1780–1950 (Columbia University Press,

1983), 19, 392.
30 Peinan Wang, “From International Communication to Strategic Communication:
Building a Community of Interpretation of the Chinese Story,” Modern Audio–Video
Arts, 2021 (8): 10.
222 Z. GU
communication between countries as a zero-sum game, but rather allows

for the generation of an interdependent community.
The construction of the Chinese Film School and the international
communication of Chinese screen media also convey the idea of building a
community through intercultural communication. The new rural China in
Li Ziqi invites overseas audiences to realise that the stories and emotions
conveyed by Chinese screen media have much in common with their
own, and there are no essential differences despite different social systems.
In the process of cultural communication between different groups or
nations, a political discourse may become a popular culture, and a new
cultural identity will be internalised. As a result, the mainstream version
of nation-state once represented in Chinese screen media has gradually
softened to emphasise the common development of all countries. There-
fore, while continuing to communicate Chinese mainstream culture,
the Chinese Film School might emphasise the internalisation of global
culture, just as other individuals and nations have gone beyond self-
dissemination to explore, examine, filter, and absorb different cultures.
In this regard, discourse articulation may break the dualistic frameworks
of “subject–object” and “West–East” and become a kind of cosmopoli-
tanism. Just like the concept of “community of shared future,” articu-
lation emphasises the potential of all countries to develop and promote
equal exchanges and mutual learning among civilisations.
The Chinese film industry should recognise that Chinese screen media
indeed constitute an important ideological apparatus to communicate
China’s socialist system and sustain the legitimacy of the CCP. At the
same time, and more importantly, they are an industrial product of
China’s social system, technology, and culture. Rather than prioritising
the function of propaganda, the Chinese film industry should consider
the habits of overseas (especially Western) audiences. To a considerable
extent, the overseas box office is an appropriate indicator of whether
Chinese screen media (as a commodity) are welcomed by overseas users.
The state-led commercialisation of the film industry may be deemed an
appropriate outcome of collaboration between screen media and popular
culture, wherein commercial imperatives work in tandem with ideological
prescriptions to engage in popular culture production and establish the
Party’s cultural hegemony.
5 Conclusion
Over the past several years, poor international box-office results have
shown that the direct propaganda of national discourse in Chinese screen
media is not well received by overseas audiences. Clearly, producers and
audiences may have different social, cultural, and political circumstances
and beliefs. Thus, the international communication of Chinese screen
media should focus on understanding the interests of overseas audi-
ences when broadcasting China’s discourse. It must be acknowledged
that an ideological conflict (perhaps even war) is occurring between
China and the West. However, the ideology referred to in the theory
of articulation is not the antagonistic one distorted by Marxism, but a
discourse paradigm that articulates Chinese wisdom and spirit with the
knowledge of different cultures to express a sense of common human
values. Therefore, the discourse articulation mechanism primarily sees
the international communication of screen media from the perspective
of cultural commodity and realises that the communication process is
largely interactive. It is necessary to recognise similarities and understand
differences in order to achieve satisfactory communication. In the era of
globalisation, the internationalisation of Chinese screen media no longer
reflects Orientalism or resistance to other cultures. Rather, this kind of
cultural communication responds to and engages with universal issues.
This discourse articulation inspires Chinese screen media to explore and
reconstruct Chinese traditional culture from a realistic context so as to
enhance national cultural identity and communicate an active Chinese
culture readily accepted by overseas audiences.
Like the nostalgia discussed in Chapter 5, nostalgia in Chinese screen
media, whether state-led or privately produced, has lost any impulse for
social criticism and has instead assumed a political function. Influenced
by intense commercial consumption and media marketisation, nostalgia
in Chinese documentaries and Internet videos has similar aspects to that
of Chinese youth films and Internet dramas discussed in Chapter 4. Any
differences are related to the genre; for instance, the documentary is seen
as a more suitable tool to communicate (introduce and record) thought,
ideology, and discourse. However, this communication function has been
magnified in the context of intense CCP ideological control and a market-
oriented media environment.
224 Z. GU
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CHAPTER 7
Conclusion: The Transformation

from Xiangchou to Huaijiu
This book has examined the post-socialist transformation of the Chinese

society through an investigation of articulated nostalgia within Chinese
screen media in the post-1990s period. The various forms of nostalgia
are explored and shaped from the perspective of the present, while often
containing a vision of the future.
In post-socialist China, many policies were implemented to strengthen
the competitiveness of the Chinese media industry, which developed
quickly through media marketisation and globalisation. During this time,
the Chinese party-state embraced the market economy, implemented
privatisation of state-owned enterprises, and promoted marketisation
of screen media to maintain the legitimacy and vitality of the screen
industry, which actively strengthened the state’s propaganda apparatus
and ideological control. Neoliberalist economic reform, associated with
post-socialism, did not destabilise China’s party-state regime, reduce the
state’s hegemonic power, or loosen its surveillance of the media. In
fact, as Zhu suggests, in the context of post-socialist China, the content
is controlled not only by a combination of legal and administrative
mechanisms, but also by personal intervention from the top leadership.
Furthermore, since the new millennium, the Chinese government has
broadened its cultural reach, harnessed cultural forms as a tool of soft

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6_7
228 Z. GU
power in increasingly international diplomacy, and done its best to sustain

the CCP’s legitimacy through diverse Chinese screen media productions.
For China, the period since the 1990s in the Chinese context has
been characterised by neoliberal market development, a steady increase in
government surveillance and media censorship, and a persistent interna-
tional communication about Chinese discourses. Within this context, the
development of Chinese screen media has assumed three goals: increasing
the share of Chinese media in the global market, strengthening their
capacity to maintain the legitimacy of the CCP regime, and projecting
Chinese soft power onto the world stage. As this book has demon-
strated, the core question—how different forms of nostalgia have been
constructed by Chinese screen media since the 1990s—has been explored
across the five chapters. Part I (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) examined articulated
forms of nostalgia from geographical, demographic, and generational
perspectives. Nostalgias are triggered by displaced individual and collec-
tive identities, the dynamics of commercial culture, and screen media’s
marketisation and globalisation. They engage with the CCP’s hegemonic
politics and address a sense of social or group anxiety in the context of
rapid social transformations. Chapter 2 investigated the films A Mongolian
Tale (1993) and Nuan (2001), which were produced by the generation
of “educated youth” filmmakers. The complex tensions between yearning
for the idyllic countryside, dissatisfaction with chaotic urban lifestyles, and
criticism of the patriarchal system were examined. The “educated youth”
filmmakers made efforts to expose a political trauma by representing a
physical home situated in the countryside. In Chapter 2, case studies
were discussed in which nostalgia is constructed as a resistant force, chal-
lenging the CCP’s discourse “youth without regret.” This chapter argued
that a sense of guilt is constructed as a form of nostalgia to challenge the
CCP’s hegemonic discourse of “youth without regret” and to criticise the
Cultural Revolution itself.
Chapter 3 focused on the “urban films” Shower (1999) and 24 City
(2008), shot by the Sixth Generation filmmakers. Both films draw on the
social phenomenon of the demolition of old buildings and communities,
not only to identify the Sixth Generation filmmakers as a “forsaken gener-
ation” deserted by socialist China, but also to engage with post-socialist
politics, especially the lives of the working class in former socialist facto-
ries. The chapter argued that constructed nostalgia about the communal
lifestyle has become part of cultural politics to address the social issue of
the declining status of the working class, and to potentially criticise the
7 CONCLUSION: THE TRANSFORMATION … 229
CCP’s hegemonic influence in the context of intensified market reform.

Herein, nostalgia has been used affectively in urban films to conjure up
socialist histories and memories as a defence against the increasing social
disorder.
Chapter 4 scrutinised the youth media texts So Young (2013) and With
You (2016) in the context of “Chinese film industrial aesthetics.” Youth
nostalgia is, on the one hand, anchored to ostensibly innocent univer-
sity and senior high school lives and providing the impetus to address
the anxiety experienced by those born after 1980. On the other hand,
youth nostalgia is created as a commercial incentive through the use of
light, costume, food, and music, to construct a sense of pastness that
will attract specific audiences. In this chapter, nostalgia was shown to be a
stylistic mode and generational expression that can be linked to an increas-
ingly commercialised culture. To some extent, this nostalgic culture has
endorsed the CCP’s political discourse of “harmonious society.” This
chapter argued that nostalgia in youth screen media not only engages with
specific anxieties and attracts the youth screen market through adjusting
filmmaking strategies, but also shows a closer alignment with the Chinese
government’s political gains since 2010.
Part II (Chapters 5 and 6) examined the national strategies of “going
out” and “the Belt and Road Initiative” to further interrogate how
nostalgias have been mobilised by the CCP to convey the soft power of
the Chinese government. Chapter 5 explored how two Chinese state-
funded documentaries—A Bite of China (2012) and Maritime Silk Road
(2016)—adopt a “rhetoric of nostalgia” to (re)shape China’s image
domestically and internationally in the context of the Chinese govern-
ment’s discourses of peaceful development and the BRI. A Bite of China
presents stories about homemade food in different provinces and among
ethnic minorities in order to construct an image of a united China,
through which the CCP’s nationalism can be conveyed and its one-
party regime justified. Furthermore, A Bite of China emphasises the
CCP’s political discourse of “harmonious society” in processes of food
preparation and preservation as a way to project China’s “peaceful devel-
opment.” When China emerged as a global economic power in the late
2000s, the Chinese government began to construct its peace-loving image
through the redefined discourse of Confucianism. In this documentary,
nostalgia works with a conservative political agenda of a “harmonious
society” and the “Chinese dream” to publicise the voice of the Chinese
government in the context of the national strategy of “going out.” Food
230 Z. GU
becomes a vehicle to convey China’s cultural, economic, and political

power and to counter negative discourses domestically and globally. In
Maritime Silk Road (2016) produced by three Chinese provincial televi-
sion stations in the context of the CCP’s BRI policy, the ancient history
of the Maritime Silk Road and stories of overseas Chinese are linked with
historical and diasporic nostalgias. This imaginary past becomes a tool to
support President Xi Jinping’s nationalist slogan of the “Chinese dream.”
The BRI becomes another policy to implement the “going out” strategy
and to fulfil Xi’s idea of constructing a leadership role for China along
the twenty-first century Maritime Silk Road. The concepts of “coexis-
tence,” “mutual benefit,” and “community of shared future,” articulated
with Chinese cultural traditions and a neo-Confucianist value system, use
strategic political rhetoric to further convey the Chinese government’s
soft power and to conceal its ambitions.
Departing from the future-oriented nostalgia of Boym and the rhetoric
approach of Lu, Chapter 5 argued that the rhetoric of nostalgia presented
in these documentaries demonstrates a subtle yet more active means to
propagandise the Chinese government’s ideologies, shape its global recep-
tion, and pursue its targeted audiences in the context of Xi Jinping’s
Chinese dream discourse, and in line with the shift from Hu Jintao’s
harmonious society to Xi’s community of shared future. If China was
compelled to renegotiate its own international influence in A Bite of
China, then, Maritime Silk Road implies that the Chinese government is
constructing its identity as the centre of Asia and creating the sinicisation
of the world. Chapter 5 has shown how CCTV and provincial TV stations
have been tasked with developing the capacity of international communi-
cation to highlight China’s great cultural traditions, as represented by a
neo-Confucianist value system, and to create contemporary narratives of
China. This chapter contributes to the identification of a radical embodi-
ment of nostalgia in the process of China’s political communication, and
highlights a political tendency of Xi’s government to make more radical
gestures in the pursuit of China’s global governance.
Chapter 6 explored the Li Ziqi YouTube food video series and identi-
fied that nostalgia about rural China as defined by Chinese sociologist Fei
Xiaotong has been articulated with different cultural contexts to offer a
national image of a new rural China that is easily understood and appre-
ciated by international audiences. Compared with the “new mainstream”
films, which faced criticism for overt propaganda in service of the Chinese
national image, the Li Ziqi food video series effectively articulates China’s
discourse with discourses generated from different cultural backgrounds,

through which the series and its host create general and shared emotions
to resonate with diverse audiences. This can be explained by Stuart Hall’s
theory, which highlights how different ideologies (discourse) can be artic-
ulated and rearticulated in certain contexts. The cultural articulation in
the Li Ziqi food video series suggests that the Chinese media should work
to implicitly communicate a universal image through which to expand the
space for international communication. The Li Ziqi food video series was
produced by a Chinese private company. Compared with the documen-
taries discussed in Chapter 5, the series adopts a subtler, less visible effort
to communicate Chinese discourse and national image. From this cultural
transformation, we can find that Chinese screen media has adopted a more
mature film strategy to initiate its cultural “going out.” In this regard, we
realise that both state-led and privately produced media communicate the
Chinese mainstream voice in the context of an intense media control.
The five chapters (nine case studies) in the corpus of this study
share a common theme of constructed nostalgia, which is articulated
by drawing upon the structural depiction of guilt, the decline of the
working class, innocent youth, “harmonious society” and “community
of shared future,” and new rural China. Thus, these chapters collectively
answer the core question of this book; namely, how different forms of
nostalgia have been constructed by Chinese screen media since the 1990s,
by providing key examples of nostalgia on Chinese screens in this post-
socialist period. In the context of this research, nostalgia, triggered as it
is by the context of the present, has become a critical lens through which
to study the relationship between past, present, and future. By returning
to the imaginary past, Chinese screen producers try to make sense of
what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen in their
nation. Nostalgia has been used in various ways by the Chinese govern-
ment for state-building and by social groups as critiques of the present, or
as inspirations for an alternative future. At the same time, nostalgia is also
a cultural phenomenon, a site of memory narratives and stylistic images.
From this perspective, nostalgia, as a form of cultural memory, bridges
screen media and social contexts, and in so doing, engages with indi-
vidual and collective demands. Furthermore, the Chinese government has
used the rhetoric of nostalgia to globalise its cultural reach and to match
its powerful economic status by instrumentalising state-led and privately
produced screen media.
232 Z. GU
In this book, the discussion of nostalgia began with Fred Davis’s

emphasis on anxieties that arise from processes of social and cultural
discontinuity. In Chapter 2, nostalgia is related to the Chinese word
xiangchou, which is centred on the process of searching for a physical
countryside and constructed as a resistant force, challenging the CCP’s
discourse “youth without regret.” In Chapter 3, nostalgia is related to
a communal community. Here, home does not refer to the traditional
Chinese countryside, but is instead linked to a socialist city in the early
reform period. In the Sixth Generation works, had been influenced by the
early commercial consumption, nostalgia has been transferred from a loss
of home to the projection of an imagined old belongingness (huaijiu).
Although nostalgia engages with post-socialist politics, especially the lives
of the working class in former socialist factories, the tendency for screen
media to criticise the declining society. Therefore, we can find two kinds
of cultural structures: xiangchou and huaijiu in the work of the Sixth
Generation. In Chapter 4, the New Force filmmakers pay more atten-
tion to the commercial elements as they portray life at universities and
high schools in Chinese cities to create huaijiu culture. Nostalgia has
been understood as a stylistic mode and generational expression linked
to an increasingly commercialised culture. In this regard, the image of
physical home disappeared entirely; instead, the ahistorical, apolitical, and
commercial presentations of the later 1990s and early 2000s became the
main scenes to attract the generational audiences born in the 1980s and
1990s. Chapters 5 and 6 present various forms of nostalgias constructed
commercially and politically by state-led and private media institutions to
communicate the CCP’s agendas for domestic and international audiences
in the context of cultural “going out.” Here, nostalgia is indeed related
to kinds of traditional cultural heritages, through which expresses a sense
of worries about the disappearance of a traditional countryside lifestyle.
Meanwhile, to a larger extent, it is deployed by Chinese documentaries
and internet video series to shoulder the function of an ideological state
apparatuses. Therefore, nostalgia has been used more and more for polit-
ical propaganda and commercial consumption, while its function of social
criticism, as discussed in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 has declined.
From the investigation of the presentations of nostalgia, xiangchou
and huaijiu, we can elucidate two cultural phenomena. First, the English
term “nostalgia” includes the concepts of xiangchou and huaijiu in the
Chinese context. Therefore, when scholars use the theory of nostalgia
to examine Chinese screen media in the Chinese contexts, they should
identify whether they are talking about xiangchou, or huaijiu, or both.

From this perspective, Boym’s book, The Future of Nostalgia, translated
as the Chinese phrase huaijiu de weilai 《怀旧的未来》
( ), is problematic.
Second, the analysis of xiangchou and huaijiu is helpful to further reveal
that in Chinese films of different generations produced since the 1990s,
the representation of xiangchou in general has been declining, while that
of huaijiu has gradually increased. Thus, this book presents a specific
chronological study classified by generations of filmmakers over the past
three decades. However, nostalgia as a cultural tendency is a social,
cultural, and aesthetic generality, as not all Chinese filmmakers can be
included in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, or the New Force Generational film-
makers. This cultural transformation shows that under the influence of
multiple factors in the Chinese screen media industry, the locality and
criticality of xiangchou is gradually weakening, and Chinese screen media
may be losing the cultural construction of “home.”
Different articulations of nostalgia, presented by different screen
producers and a diverse range of screen formats, have mobilised individual
and national identities, and at times have potentially challenged the CCP’s
hegemonic cultural norms. At the same time, nostalgia has been linked to
conservative political agendas that serviced the interests of the Chinese
government. Hence, the trajectory of nostalgia from searching for home
physically or mentally to servicing for the CCP’s version of nationalism
is identified. Nostalgia has transferred its original meaning of home-
sickness to an imaginative construction. Overall, through a comparative
study of diverse constructions of nostalgia in different forms of screen
media—specifically, commercial film, art-house film, TV documentary,
Internet drama, and Internet video—this book finds that the connotation
of nostalgia has undergone semantic, political, and cultural transforma-
tion in the Chinese contexts over the past few decades. More specifically,
nostalgia has changed from the “educated youth” filmmakers’ intellectual
and critical engagements in early post-socialist China, to the depiction
of social upheavals in the Sixth Generational works, and to its co-option
by the Chinese government and screen media industry for political and
commercial gains in the work of the New Force. In other words, Chinese
mainstream screen media are gradually losing their intention and capacity
to critically engage with China’s political environment given the entangle-
ments of strict political pressure and the emerging commercialised screen
media market since the 1990s.
234 Z. GU
In the context of commercialisation, globalisation, and depoliticisation

of the Chinese screen media, the study of nostalgia is not only a cultural
retrospective, but also a social criticism, and a practical redemption. In
this regard, this book offers two contributions to academic scholarship.
First, in the marketised-political screen media industry, various forms of
nostalgia that criticised social issues or endorsed policies of the Chinese
government, were mediated and navigated with different inflections. This
book has engaged with multiple expressions and formations of political
and cultural discourse and interpreted different and even new visions
of China (from the 1990s to 2020s) in the context of China’s market
economic reform. The Chinese government exerted its economic influ-
ence and used state-controlled media to construct its own national image
and its own version of modernity. Here, nostalgia has defined a new
approach to the interpretation of Chinese modernity: a hybrid model that
combines an authoritarian state with a market economy. Moreover, with
increasingly strict media censorship and ideological control, constructed
nostalgia may be used by the State to create more hegemonic policies
and discourses that then become one aspect of Chinese modernity. At
the same time, the constructions of nostalgia in different works produced
by different generational creators cause us to think about what the
purpose of constructing nostalgia is. In different periods, many different
factors combined together impact the presentation of nostalgia. There-
fore, the study of nostalgia not only provides a new lens through which
to examine the commercialisation, internationalisation, and depoliticisa-
tion of Chinese screen media, but also to observe the political, economic,
and cultural changes of Chinese society.
Second, with the continuous development of China’s urbanisation,
media globalisation, and capitalisation, and the prediction of intense
media censorship, the subjectivity and materiality of human beings seem
to be losing out. What is worse, the depiction of a geographical and spir-
itual return home in Chinese screen media is gradually fading. Modern
people are wrapped up in technology and information, with less concern
for the differences between real and virtual worlds. To some extent,
many people do not want to spend their energy on the experience of a
deeper emotion such as xiangchou, but tend to prefer the relatively easily
obtained feeling of huaijiu. As huaijiu becomes part of popular culture,
China’s screen media industry and capital seem to be no longer interested
in presenting xiangchou; they are more inclined to construct a commercial
huaijiu. In this regard, if China’s new generation of audiences and film-

makers lose their intention to return home spiritually or physically, will
Chinese screen media, as an important historical participants, witnesses,
and critics, still have the ability to engage with China’s social changes, or
is the younger Chinese generation losing their interest in thinking about
“poetic dwelling”?
The English term “nostalgia” came from the field of medicine and was
first used to describe a homesickness in the Western context in the seven-
teenth century. Nostalgia in the Chinese context has never been defined
as illness, but expresses a deep longing for one’s native land, parents,
or grandparents. However, it is exceptionally hard to find xiangchou in
the works produced by the filmmakers of post-80 s and post-90 s. In
this regard, does this mean that these filmmakers and generations have
suffered the disease of homesickness? Or does it mean that the xiangchou
in the Chinese literature and other cultures is in danger of disappearing?
Coincidentally, Jia Zhangke expresses a similar concern about the rupture
between the tradition of root-seeking and the younger generation’s indif-
ference to the concept in his latest documentary, Swimming out till the Sea
Turns Blue (2020). This reflects a consistent theme of the Sixth Gener-
ation filmmakers about engaging with people’s unstable identity in the
process of urban upheavals. From this point of view, understanding how
the Chinese society provides its residents (especially the younger genera-
tion) an emotional “home” is an important cultural and political project,
particularly, perhaps, at a time when COVID-19 is still raging, affecting
China’s cities and tormenting many of its people.
Index
A censorship, 5, 8, 36, 61, 63, 95, 158,

aesthetics, 3, 6–8, 36, 44, 46, 51, 159, 161, 228, 234
64–66, 91, 94–99, 109–118, Chinese dream, 12, 52, 167, 178,
121–123, 125, 129, 132, 134, 179, 181, 182, 187, 189,
135, 139, 140, 145, 146, 154, 191–193, 195, 229, 230
161–163, 203, 207, 212, 214, Chinese Film School, 36, 51, 196,
219, 221, 233 203, 204, 207, 208, 213, 214,
ahistorical, 7, 8, 36, 156–158, 232 218–220, 222
anxiety, 86, 102–104, 111, 118, 123, coexistence, 13, 169, 179–182, 188,
129, 135–142, 146, 150, 161, 189, 230
174, 211, 212, 228, 229 commercialisation, 5, 8, 9, 16, 49,
apolitical, 7, 8, 36, 156, 232 80, 85–87, 99, 101, 135, 156,
articulation, 5, 6, 11, 52, 201–208, 157, 160, 222, 234
212–216, 218–223, 231, 233 commodification, 3, 80, 144, 145,
aspiration, 44, 73, 76, 82, 86, 102, 157
105, 151, 152, 161, 182, 196, community, 44, 100–102, 104–106,
211, 213 108, 118, 122, 125, 162, 174,
182, 187, 189, 190, 192, 193,
195, 214, 221, 222, 232
C community of Shared Future, 7, 49,
capitalism, 10–12, 14, 41, 81, 125, 52, 167, 168, 172, 173, 182,
130, 154, 155, 160, 163, 190, 185, 187–189, 191, 192, 208,
191 214, 217, 221, 222, 230, 231
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 237
license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7494-6
238 INDEX
construction, 7, 39–43, 51, 52, 61, 81–84, 86, 87, 93, 103, 112,
78, 87, 106, 109, 111, 112, 116, 123, 137, 163, 228, 233
121, 122, 124, 131, 139, 143, engagement, 8, 43, 94, 98, 110, 141,
146, 169, 171, 177, 182, 185, 146, 148, 149, 162, 163, 195,
190, 194, 196, 204, 207, 210, 233
212–215, 218–220, 222, 233,
234
consumption, 38, 46, 129, 143, 146, F
150, 156, 157, 160, 163, 223, feminism, 74, 208, 211, 212, 218
232 film industrial aesthetics, 51,
countryside, 1–3, 29, 51, 57–62, 132–135, 152, 153, 155, 158,
64–70, 73, 75–87, 95, 122, 123, 162, 163
153, 160, 162, 163, 170, food, 52, 129, 142, 147, 150, 158,
173–176, 182, 195, 208–210, 172–176, 179, 182–185, 195,
212, 214, 228, 232 202, 204, 208–214, 217–221,
critical, 8, 41, 46, 48, 49, 64, 67, 69, 229–231
113, 115, 116, 150, 160, 163,
196, 231, 233
G
generation, 2, 3, 5–8, 32, 40, 45, 51,
59, 60, 64, 66, 69, 70, 73, 77,
D
78, 82, 83, 87, 91, 93–96, 99,
demolition, 3, 51, 91–93, 96,
103, 104, 109, 111, 113,
98–102, 105, 106, 108, 109,
117–125, 131–133, 136–140,
111, 112, 117, 121, 125, 228
142, 146, 147, 149, 157, 160,
depoliticised, 7, 8, 159, 160, 219
175, 176, 222, 228, 233, 235
discontinuity, 39, 41, 44, 81, 85, globalisation, 14, 17, 19, 26, 38, 39,
102–105, 108, 118, 119, 123, 49, 63, 125, 156, 182, 185, 188,
124, 134, 136, 142, 146, 177, 195, 211, 213, 214, 223, 227,
232 228, 234
discourse, 4–9, 14, 18, 19, 36–39, going out, 18, 23–26, 35, 36, 48, 50,
41–43, 47–52, 57–63, 66, 67, 195, 203, 207, 208, 216–219,
69, 74, 77–79, 86, 87, 107, 115, 229–232
124, 129, 135, 152, 159, 160, guilt, 51, 57, 66–71, 73–79, 82,
162–164, 167–169, 172, 173, 85–87, 123, 228, 231
177–179, 181–188, 191, 193,
195, 196, 201–210, 212–223,
228–232, 234 H
harmonious society, 52, 159,
167–169, 183–185, 191, 193,
E 229–231
educated youth, 2, 8, 50–52, 57–61, hegemony, 9, 16, 36, 61, 108, 113,
64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 77–79, 202, 205, 206, 219, 222
INDEX 239
history, 4, 12, 38, 41, 42, 49, 62, 65, 108, 109, 115, 122, 125, 192,
83, 112, 114–117, 119, 157, 211, 234
159, 173, 175, 181, 182, 191, mood, 39, 123, 129, 134–142, 146,
193–195, 202, 204, 207, 220, 147, 149, 151–153, 160, 162,
230 163, 220
homecoming, 67, 68, 75–77, 84–86, mouthpiece, 16, 25, 28, 35, 37, 86,
98 170, 180
homesickness, 3, 44, 72, 78, 175,
233, 235
hopeless, 76 N
huaijiu, 3, 109, 153, 160, 162, national identity, 13, 86, 87, 95, 177,
232–235 195, 214
national image, 3, 12, 18, 24, 27, 28,
36, 38, 42, 52, 78, 158, 162,
I 170, 177, 178, 185, 195,
ideology, 2, 13, 16, 19, 35, 45, 62, 201–203, 208, 209, 215, 216,
67, 74, 81, 87, 95, 101, 103, 219, 220, 230, 231, 234
109, 141, 151, 152, 156, 160, nationalism, 37, 38, 45, 50, 84, 85,
162, 171, 184, 191, 203–206, 95, 177, 178, 182, 193, 203,
213, 215, 217, 223 207, 215, 216, 229, 233
independent, 94–97, 110, 113, 123, negotiation, 41, 49, 87, 95, 152, 201,
156, 210, 212, 218 205, 206, 208, 215
international communication, 25, 32, neoliberalism, 14–16, 41, 49, 50, 125
52, 170, 214, 218, 220, 222, New Force, 6, 9, 50, 51, 132–134,
223, 228, 230, 231 156–163, 232, 233
internationalisation, 8, 16, 26, 29, 38,
41, 51, 159, 194, 202, 207, 208,
218–220, 223, 234 P
pastness, 41, 47, 134, 135, 141–143,
145, 146, 152, 158, 161, 162,
M 229
main-melody film, 19, 35, 202 peace-loving, 27, 45, 184, 195, 229
marketisation, 8, 11, 16, 20, 23, 26, post-socialism, 8–13, 15, 16, 34, 41,
41, 43, 87, 97, 103, 108, 124, 47, 75, 81, 84, 86, 87, 91, 93,
125, 132, 157, 159, 163, 185, 100, 103–107, 113, 118–121,
194, 195, 202, 207, 223, 227, 123–125, 227
228 prairie, 67, 68, 71, 75, 76, 79–82,
memory study, 231 84, 86, 87
mode, 9, 33, 46, 129, 134, 135, present, 3, 4, 7, 14, 18, 24, 25,
141–147, 152, 156, 158, 160, 35–37, 39–43, 45–49, 51, 52,
162, 163, 187, 229, 232 57, 61, 65–73, 78, 81, 82,
modernity, 2, 5, 8, 10–13, 49, 64, 85–87, 91, 95, 98, 99, 101, 102,
65, 75, 79–82, 85–87, 100–102, 106, 113–115, 117–125, 129,
240 INDEX
134–137, 139–143, 145–147, T

151–155, 157, 160–162, 167, the BRI, 169, 173, 178–182,
170, 171, 173, 174, 177, 179, 185–190, 194, 195, 217, 229,
180, 182, 185, 187, 190, 230
193–195, 201, 207, 209–211, the Cultural Revolution, 2–4, 7–11,
213, 215, 220, 222, 227, 16, 42, 43, 51, 57, 59–64, 66,
229–233 67, 69–71, 75, 78, 79, 83, 84,
propaganda, 3, 12, 18, 19, 23, 34, 86, 87, 93, 103, 106, 113, 124,
37, 38, 52, 61, 172, 193, 137, 160, 228
201–203, 214–217, 219, 220, tianxia, 192–194
222, 223, 227, 230, 232 TikTok, 32–34, 36
tolerant, 57, 67, 71–78, 86
tradition, 3, 28, 46, 65, 98, 177, 202,
R 207, 214, 218, 221, 230, 235
redemption, 71, 74, 81, 234 transformation, 4, 6, 7, 10, 18, 31,
reflective, 59, 91, 98, 99, 102, 109, 50, 52, 58, 59, 62, 82, 83, 85,
117–119, 122–124 91, 93, 95, 98, 99, 105–107,
regime, 8, 13–15, 19, 25, 34, 37, 38, 109–117, 119, 122–125, 163,
43, 95, 96, 108, 227–229 173, 175, 191, 221, 227, 228,
representation, 7, 39, 42, 48, 57, 62, 231, 233
71, 77, 86, 87, 91, 98, 99, 107,
108, 112, 116, 118, 121, 123, U
124, 144, 147, 150, 151, 156, uncritical, 51, 115, 129, 156–160,
159, 160, 162, 177, 205, 208, 162, 163
212, 213, 215, 216, 218–220, urbanisation, 2, 5, 8, 49, 58, 59, 62,
233 78, 80, 82, 91, 92, 98, 101, 104,
restorative, 91, 98, 99, 117, 119–124 111, 117, 125, 160, 174–176,
retro, 63, 121, 134, 141, 142, 145, 234
158, 160
rhetoric, 50, 52, 69, 71, 167, 168,
171–173, 177, 182–185, 187, X
189–191, 195, 196, 230, 231 xiangchou, 3, 67, 75, 109, 174,
rural, 1, 2, 6, 8, 28, 41, 57–59, 64, 232–235
65, 72, 73, 75, 77–79, 82, 86,
93, 125, 136, 150, 174–176, Y
201, 208–214, 218–222, 230, youth, 7, 8, 49, 59, 60, 78, 83, 116,
231 120, 129, 133–136, 139,
141–149, 152–163, 223, 229,
231
S youth without regret, 48, 49, 51, 52,
self-sacrificing, 57, 75, 77, 86 57–63, 66, 67, 69–71, 77–79,
short video, 32, 33, 37, 50, 204 83, 86, 87, 123, 150, 163, 228,
232

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CONTEMPORARY EAST ASIAN

VISUAL CULTURES, SOCIETIES AND POLITICS

ISSN 2662-7701 ISSN 2662-771X (electronic)

Cover illustration: Richard Jackson/Alamy Stock Photo

This book is based on my Ph.D. thesis, submitted to the University

“Nostalgia in Urban Cinema: A Comparative Analysis of Zhang

1 Post-Socialism and Nostalgia 1

4 Nostalgia in Youth Media So Young (2013) and With

Zhun Gu was awarded Doctor degree in media studies by the University

Post-Socialism and Nostalgia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

implementation of a policy of “reform and opening up” in 1978.1 After

countryside, the memories of which were entwined with their personal

4 Robert Weatherley, Politics in China since 1949: Legitimising Authoritarian Rule

is linked to different external conditions, such as social contexts, the film-

this book analyses is not an aesthetic transformation of any specific gener-

6 Michael Foucault, Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–

ideologies and developing an industrial film system similar to Holly-

1.1 Post-Socialist China

7 Xiaoling Zhang, The Transformation of Political Communication in China: From

Post-socialism is of necessity also post-capitalist[…]but in the sense of

In Dirlik’s opinion, post-socialism seeks to improve existing socialism

12 Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in

its influence on international affairs and to project a positive image of itself

17 Issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign

structure.18 In this sense, post-socialism is seen as a controversial ideology

18 Arif Dirlik, “Postsocialism? Reflections on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” in

performance.21 In other words, the CCP’s authoritarian regime may

1.2 “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and Neoliberalism

21 Xiaoling Zhang, The Transformation of Political Communication in China: From

preserve an institutional framework appropriate for such practices.”24

24 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford; New York: Oxford

2 Chinese Screen Media Since the 1990s

2.1 Film Industry

2.2 Television Industry

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms was widely screened in Japan,

power struggles, moral cynicism, public unrest, etc.—had a primetime

Indeed, the historical period of Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors in

role of television and radio as public services.46 Furthermore, in 2009,

46 “National Conference on Radio, Film and Television,” The Chinese government, 22

saw the SAPPRFT invest in CCTV, China Radio International, Xinhua

58 Chwen Chwen Chen, “CCTV Going Global in a Digital Scenario,” 17 November

In addition to in-house production, CCTV has adopted three methods

Through cooperation with the BBC and other reputable interna-

the Chinese government has encouraged private and foreign compa-

67 Chris Berry, “Shanghai Television’s Documentary Channel: Chinese Television as

2.3 Digital Industry

intelligence services, although TikTok has denied ties to the Chinese

2.4 Ideological Control

89 Yuezhi Zhao, Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict

In this environment, digital technologies, digital media, and platforms

adopted democratic elements and neoliberal logic to strengthen its domi-

3 The Construction of Nostalgia

93 Michael S. Roth, “Remembering Forgetting: Maladies de la Mémoire in Nineteenth-

of the relationship between past and present offers a theoretic framework

95 Stuart Tannock, “Nostalgia Critique,” Cultural Studies, 1995 (3): 457.

99 Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New

constructed stories. Every nostalgic narrative is an interpretation of “his-

market economic reform. This nostalgia allows audiences to interpret

104 Clay Routledge, Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource (Routledge, 2015), 26.

tales. The future of nostalgic longing and progressive thinking is at the

the US economy. Paul Grainge argues that “Reagan’s politics of nostalgia

upon notions of tradition, or use an idea of the past to position themselves