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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

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
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189721, Singapore
 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.
 1 POST-SOCIALISM AND NOSTALGIA 5

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
 1 POST-SOCIALISM AND NOSTALGIA 7

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
 1 POST-SOCIALISM AND NOSTALGIA 9

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
(London: Routledge, 2012), 137.
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.
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADDRESS

OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AT CAIRO, ILLINOIS, OCTOBER 3,
1907 ***
Transcriber’s Note: The cover image was created from the title page by the
transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
 ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT
ROOSEVELT AT CAIRO, ILLINOIS
OCTOBER 3, 1907

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1907
Men of Illinois, and You, Men of Kentucky and Missouri:
I am glad to have the chance to speak to you to-day. This is the
heart of what may be called the Old West, which we now call the
Middle West, using the term to denote that great group of rich and
powerful States which literally forms the heart of the country. It is a
region whose people are distinctively American in all their thoughts,
in all their ways of looking at life; and in its past and its present alike
it is typical of our country. The oldest men present can still remember
the pioneer days, the days of the white-tilted ox wagon, of the
emigrant, and of the log cabin in which that emigrant first lived when
he settled to his task as a pioneer farmer. They were rough days,
days of hard work, and the people who did that work seemed
themselves uncouth and forbidding to visitors who could not look
below the surface. It is curious and amusing to think that even as
genuine a lover of his kind, a man normally so free from national
prejudices as Charles Dickens, should have selected the region
where we are now standing as the seat of his forlorn “Eden” in Martin
Chuzzlewit. The country he so bitterly assailed is now one of the
most fertile and productive portions of one of the most fertile and
productive agricultural territories in all the world, and the dwellers in
this territory represent a higher average of comfort, intelligence, and
sturdy capacity for self-government than the people in any tract of
like extent in any other continent. The land teems with beauty and
fertility, and but a score of years after Dickens wrote it was shown to
be a nursery and breeding ground of heroes, of soldiers and
statesmen of the highest rank, while the rugged worth of the rank
and file of the citizenship rendered possible the deeds of the mighty
men who led in council and in battle. This was the region that
brought forth mighty Abraham Lincoln, the incarnation of all that is
best in democratic life; and from the loins of the same people, living
only a little farther south, sprang another of our greatest Presidents,
Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory”—a man who made mistakes, like
most strong men, but a man of iron will and incorruptible integrity,
fearless, upright, devoted to the welfare of his countrymen, bone of
our bone and flesh of our flesh, a typical American if ever there was
one.
I commend a careful reading of Martin Chuzzlewit to the
pessimists of to-day, to the men who, instead of fighting hard to do
away with abuses while at the same time losing no jot of their
buoyant hopefulness for the country, insist that all our people,
socially and industrially, in their private lives no less than as
politicians, newspaper men, and business men, are at a lower ebb
than ever before. If ever any one of you feels a little downcast over
the peculiarly gloomy view of the present taken by some well-
meaning pessimist of to-day, you will find it a real comfort to read
Martin Chuzzlewit, to see what a well-meaning pessimist of the past
thought of our people sixty-five years ago; and then think of the
extraordinary achievement, the extraordinary gain, morally no less
than materially, of those sixty-five years. Dickens can be read by us
now with profit; Elijah Pogram, Hannibal Chollop, Jefferson Brick and
Scadder have their representatives to-day, plenty of them; and the
wise thing for us to do is to recognize that these are still types of evil
in politics, journalism, business, and private life, and to war against
them with all our hearts. But it is rank folly to regard these as the
only, or the chief, types in our national life. It was not of much
consequence whether Dickens made such an error or not, but it
would be of great consequence if we ourselves did; for a foolish
pessimism is an even greater foe of healthy national growth than a
foolish optimism. It was not that Dickens invented characters or
scenes that had no basis in fact; on the contrary, what he said was
true, as far as it went; the trouble was that out of many such half
truths he made a picture which as a whole was absurd; for often a
half truth is the most dangerous falsehood. It would be simply silly to
be angry over Martin Chuzzlewit; on the contrary, read it, be amused
by it, profit by it; and don’t be misled by it. Keep a lively watch
against the present-day Pograms and Bricks; but above all, distrust
the man who would persuade you to feel downhearted about the
country because of these same Pograms and Bricks, past or
present. It would be foolish to ignore their existence, or the existence
of anything else that is bad in our national life; but it would be even
more foolish to ignore the vaster forces that tell for righteousness.
Friends, there is every reason why we should fight whatever is evil in
the present. But there is also every reason why we should feel a
sturdy and confident hope for the future. There are many wrongs to
right; there are many and powerful wrong doers against whom to
war; and it would be base to shrink from the contest, or to fail to
wage it with a high, a resolute will. But I am sure that we shall win in
the contest, because I know that the heart of our people is sound.
Our average men and women are good men and women—and this
is true in all sections of our country and among all classes of our
countrymen. There is no other nation on earth with such vast natural
resources, or with such a high standard of living and of industrial
efficiency among its workers. We have as a nation an era of
unexampled prosperity ahead of us; we shall enjoy it, and our
children will enjoy it after us. The trend of well-being in this country is
upward, not downward; and this is the trend in the things of the soul
as well as in the things of the body.
Government in its application is often a complicated and delicate
work, but the principles of government are, after all, fairly simple. In a
broad general way we should apply in the affairs of the national
administration, which deals with the interests of all our eighty-odd
millions of people, just the same rules that are necessary in getting
on with our neighbors in our several neighborhoods; and the nation
as a whole should show substantially the same qualities that we
would expect an honorable man to show in dealing with his fellows.
To illustrate this, consider for a moment two phases of governmental
action.
First as to international affairs. Among your own neighbors, among
your friends, what is the attitude you like to see a man take toward
his fellows, the attitude you wish each of your sons to take when he
goes out into the world? Is it not a combination of readiness and
ability to hold his own if anyone tries to wrong him, while at the same
time showing careful regard not only for the rights but for the feelings
of others? Of course it is! Of course the type of man whom we
respect, whom we are proud of if he is a kinsman, whom we are glad
to have as a friend and neighbor, is the man who is no milksop, who
is not afraid, who will not tolerate nor hesitate to resent insult or
injury, but who himself never inflicts insult or injury, is kindly, good-
natured, thoughtful of others’ rights—in short, a good man to do
business with or have live in the next house or have as a friend. On
the other hand, the man who lacks any of those qualities is sure to
be objectionable. If a man is afraid to hold his own, if he will submit
tamely to wrongdoing, he is contemptible. If he is a bully, an
oppressor, a man who wrongs or insults others, he is even worse
and should be hunted out of the community. But, on the whole, the
most contemptible position that can possibly be assumed by any
man is that of blustering, of bragging, of insulting or wronging other
people, while yet expecting to go through life unchallenged, and
being always willing to back down and accept humiliation if
readiness to make good is demanded.
Well, all this is just as true of a nation as of an individual, and in
dealing with other nations we should act as we expect a man who is
both game and decent to act in private life. There are few things
cheaper and more objectionable, whether on the part of the public
man or of the private man, on the part of a writer or of a speaker, an
individual or a group of individuals, than a course of conduct which is
insulting or hurtful, whether in speech or act, to individuals of another
nation or to the representatives of another nation or to another nation
itself. But the policy becomes infamous from the standpoint of the
interests of the United States when it is combined with the refusal to
take those measures of preparation which can alone secure us from
aggression on the part of others. The policy of “peace with insult” is
the very worst policy upon which it is possible to embark, whether for
a nation or an individual. To be rich, unarmed, and yet insolent and
aggressive, is to court well-nigh certain disaster. The only safe and
honorable rule of foreign policy for the United States is to show itself
courteous toward other nations, scrupulous not to infringe upon their
rights, and yet able and ready to defend its own. This nation is now
on terms of the most cordial good will with all other nations. Let us
make it a prime object of our policy to preserve these conditions. To
do so it is necessary on the one hand to mete out a generous justice
to all other peoples and show them courtesy and respect; and on the
other hand, as we are yet a good way off from the millenium, to keep
ourselves in such shape as to make it evident to all men that we
desire peace because we think it is just and right and not from
motives of weakness or timidity. As for the first requisite, this means
that not only the Government but the people as a whole shall act in
the needed spirit; for otherwise the folly of a few individuals may
work lasting discredit to the whole nation. The second requisite is
more easily secured—let us build up and maintain at the highest
point of efficiency the United States Navy. In any great war on land
we should have to rely in the future as we have relied in the past
chiefly upon volunteer soldiers; and although it is indispensable that
our little army, an army ludicrously small relatively to the wealth and
population of this mighty nation, should itself be trained to the
highest point and should be valued and respected as is demanded
by the worth of the officers and enlisted men, yet it is not necessary
that this army should be large as compared to the armies of other
great nations. But as regards the Navy all this is different. We have
an enormous coast line, and our coast line is on two great oceans.
To repel hostile attacks the fortifications, and not the Navy, must be
used; but the best way to parry is to hit—no fight can ever be won
except by hitting—and we can only hit by means of the Navy. It is
utterly impossible to improvise even a makeshift navy under the
conditions of modern warfare. Since the days of Napoleon no war
between two great powers has lasted as long as it would take to
build a battle ship, let alone a fleet of battle ships; and it takes just as
long to train the crew of a battle ship as it does to build it; and as
regards the most important thing of all, the training of the officers, it
takes much longer. The Navy must be built and all its training given
in time of peace. When once war has broken out it is too late to do
anything. We now have a good Navy, not yet large enough for our
needs, but of excellent material. Where a navy is as small as ours,
the cardinal rule must be that the battle ships shall not be separated.
This year I am happy to say that we shall begin a course which I
hope will be steadily followed hereafter, that, namely, of keeping the
battle-ship fleet alternately in the Pacific and in the Atlantic. Early in
December the fleet will begin its voyage to the Pacific, and it will
number, friends, among its formidable fighting craft three great battle
ships, named, respectively, the Illinois, the Missouri, and the
Kentucky. It is a national fleet in every sense of the term, and its
welfare should be, and I firmly believe is, as much a matter of pride
and concern for every man in the farthest interior of our country as
for every man on the seacoast. A long ocean voyage is mighty good
training; and not the least good it will do will be to show just the
points where our naval program needs strengthening. Incidentally I
think the voyage will have one good effect, for, to judge by their
comments on the movement, some excellent people in my own
section of the country need to be reminded that the Pacific coast is
exactly as much a part of this nation as the Atlantic coast.
So much for foreign affairs. Now for a matter of domestic policy.
Here in this country we have founded a great federal democratic
republic. It is a government by and for the people and therefore a
genuine democracy; and the theory of our Constitution is that each
neighborhood shall be left to deal with the things that concern only
itself and which it can most readily deal with; so that town, county,
city, and State have their respective spheres of duty, while the nation
deals with those matters which concern all of us, all of the people, no
matter where we dwell. Our democracy is based upon the belief that
each individual ought to have the largest measure of liberty
compatible with securing the rights of other individuals, that the
average citizen, the plain man whom we meet in daily life, is
normally capable of taking care of his own affairs, and has no desire
to wrong any one else; and yet that in the interest of all there shall be
sufficient power lodged somewhere to prevent wicked people from
trampling the weak under foot for their own gain. Our constant
endeavor is to make a good working compromise whereby we shall
secure the full benefit of individual initiative and responsibility, while
at the same time recognizing that it is the function of a wise
government under modern conditions not merely to protect life and
property, but to foster the social development of the people so far as
this may be done by maintaining and promoting justice, honesty, and
equal rights. We believe in a real, not a sham, democracy. We
believe in democracy as regards political rights, as regards
education, and, finally, as regards industrial conditions. By
democracy we understand securing, as far as it is humanly possible
to secure it, equality of opportunity, equality of the conditions under
which each man is to show the stuff that is in him and to achieve the
measure of success to which his own force of mind and character
entitle him. Religiously this means that each man is to have the right,
unhindered by the state, to worship his Creator as his conscience
dictates, granting freely to others the same freedom which he asks
for himself. Politically we can be said substantially to have worked
out our democratic ideals, and the same is true, thanks to the
common schools, in educational matters. But in industry there has
not as yet been the governmental growth necessary in order to meet
the tremendous changes brought about in industrial conditions by
steam and electricity. It is not in accordance with our principles that
literally despotic power should be put into the hands of a few men in
the affairs of the industrial world. Our effort must be for a just and
effective plan of action which, while scrupulously safeguarding the
rights of the men of wealth, shall yet, so far as is humanly possible,
secure under the law to all men equality of opportunity to make a
living. It is to the interest of all of us that the man of exceptional
business capacity should be amply rewarded; and there is nothing
inconsistent with this in our insistence that he shall not be guilty of
bribery or extortion, and that the rights of the wageworker and of the
man of small means, who are themselves honest and hard working,
shall be scrupulously safeguarded. The instruments for the exercise
of modern industrial power are the great corporations which, though
created by the individual States, have grown far beyond the control
of those States and transact their business throughout large sections
of the Union. These corporations, like the industrial conditions which
have called them into being, did not exist when the Constitution was
founded; but the wise forethought of the founders provided, under
the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, for the very
emergency which has arisen, if only our people as a whole will
realize what this emergency is; for if the people thoroughly realize it,
their governmental representatives will soon realize it also. The
National Government alone has sufficiently extensive power and
jurisdiction to exercise adequate control over the great interstate
corporations. While this thorough supervision and control by the
National Government is desirable primarily in the interest of the
people, it will also, I firmly believe, be to the benefit of those
corporations themselves which desire to be honest and law-abiding.
Only thus can we put over these corporations one competent and
efficient sovereign—the Nation—able both to exact justice from them
and to secure justice for them, so that they may not be alternately
pampered and oppressed. The proposal need be dreaded only by
those corporations which do not wish to obey the law or to be
controlled in just fashion, but prefer to take their chances under the
present lack of all system and to court the chance of getting
improper favors as offsetting the chance of being blackmailed—an
attitude rendered familiar in the past by those corporations which
had thriven under certain corrupt and lawless city governments.
The first need is to exercise this Federal control in thoroughgoing
and efficient fashion over the railroads, which, because of their
peculiar position, offer the most immediate and urgent problem. The
American people abhor a vacuum, and is determined that this control
shall be exercised somewhere; it is most unwise for the railroads not
to recognize this and to submit to it as the first requisite of the
situation. When this control is exercised in some such fashion as it is
now exercised over the national banks, there will be no falling off in
business prosperity. On the contrary, the chances for the average
man to do better will be increased. Undoubtedly there will be much
less opportunity than at present for a very few individuals not of the
most scrupulous type to amass great fortunes by speculating in and
manipulating securities which are issued without any kind of control
or supervision. But there will be plenty of room left for ample
legitimate reward for business genius, while the chance for the man
who is not a business genius, but who is a good, thrifty, hard-working
citizen, will be better. I do not believe that our efforts will have
anything but a beneficial effect upon the permanent prosperity of the
country; and, as a matter of fact, even as regards any temporary
effect, I think that any trouble is due fundamentally not to the fact
that the national authorities have discovered and corrected certain
abuses, but to the fact that those abuses were there to be
discovered. I think that the excellent people who have complained of
our policy as hurting business have shown much the same spirit as
the child who regards the dentist and not the ulcerated tooth as the
real source of his woe. I am as certain as I can be of anything that
the course we are pursuing will ultimately help business; for the
corrupt man of business is as great a foe to this country as the
corrupt politician. Both stand on the same evil eminence of infamy.
Against both it is necessary to war; and if, unfortunately, in either
type of warfare, a few innocent people are hurt, the responsibility lies
not with us, but with those who have misled them to their hurt.
This is a rapidly growing nation, on a new continent, and in an era
of new, complex, and ever-shifting conditions. Often it is necessary
to devise new methods of meeting these new conditions. We must
regard the past, but we must not regard only the past. We must also
think of the future; and while we must learn by experience, we can
not afford to pay heed merely to the teachings of experience. The
great preacher Channing in his essay on “The Union” spoke with fine
insight on this very point. In commenting on the New England
statesman Cabot, whom he greatly admired, he said that
nevertheless “he had too much of the wisdom of experience; he
wanted what may be called the wisdom of hope.” He then continued
in words which have a peculiar fitness for the conditions of to-day:
“We apprehend that it is possible to make experience too much our
guide. There are seasons in human affairs, of inward and outward
revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when
new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined
good is thirsted for. These are periods when the principles of
experience need to be modified, when hope and trust and instinct
claim a share with prudence in the guidance of affairs, when in truth
to dare is the highest wisdom.”
These sentences should be carefully pondered by those men,
often very good men, who forget that constructive change offers the
best method of avoiding destructive change; that reform is the
antidote to revolution; and that social reform is not the precursor but
the preventive of socialism.
 Transcriber’s Notes:
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been
preserved.
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