[ China & Inner Asia, Table of Contents ]
[ Panels by World Area Main Menu ]
[ View the Timetable of Panels ]
China in Transition: Geopolitics, Literature, and Cinema
Organizer: Ta-wei Chi, University of Connecticut, Storrs
Chair: Michael S. Berry, University of California, Santa Barbara
Discussant: Edward M. Gunn Jr., Cornell University
This panel examines Chinese geographies by focusing on four crucial moments in twentieth-century modern history where intellectuals, writers, and filmmakers embark upon journeys either outside or inside of China proper. The common ground shared by the four panel participants is an interrogation of “Chineseness” and “cultural and political geographies,” which have been in transit ever since the turn of century.
Chien-hsin Tsai’s paper examines writings by two late-Qing intellectuals—Gu Hongming and Chen Jitong—to contextualize and conceptualize the interaction between geography and language, and how such interaction helped shape identity and nationalism.
A discussion of the Chinese Civil War, Ta-wei Chi’s study of The Rival Suns, a novel about political maneuverings between two Chinese cities and between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party, teases out the geopolitical formation of realism.
The Cold-War Taiwan characterizes Cindy Horng’s paper, which probes various boundaries of “national cinema.” Horng discusses both the upbringing background of and films by director Lee Hsing, starting with his classic Oyster Girl (1963).
Focusing on post-socialist China, Michael Berry’s reading of Xiao Wu (1997) by Jia Zhangke pays close attention to both the geographical and temporal transitions of the film’s narrative structure, and traces its linkage with Lu Xun’s Ah-Q.
Gu Hongming and Chen Jitong: Two Late-Qing Intellectuals and Their Non-Chinese Writings
Chien-Hsin Tsai, Harvard University
A period full of unexpected turns, the late Qing was both the worst and best of times in modern Chinese history. The worst, because continuous warfare followed by indemnities and unequal treaties quickly brought the good old “middle kingdom” into severe poverty and dilapidation. The best, because literary production, intellectual discourses, political movements, and overseas travel all reached unprecedented heights. Gu Hongming and Chen Jitong, the focus of my paper, are two intellectuals whose writings carry much weight in the above-mentioned fields. They were two important figures who have escaped contemporary critiques.
Schooled in different learned traditions, Gu published a number of books in English. Besides his fondness of bound feet, Gu was remembered as an eccentric Qing loyalist who continued to sport a queue after the Qing fell. On the other hand, Chen’s French monographs on China-related subjects made him a celebrity in France. Romain Rolland once described Chen as “…scornful…and treated the French public as a child.”
Gu’s and Chen’s multilingualism gave them a diplomatic edge, unlike their contemporaries such as Liang Qichao. In this paper, I argue that the two’s non-Chinese publications demonstrate their awareness of being in a transnational world and of China in transition. Through a discussion of non-Chinese writings by Gu and Chen wherein languages, nationalism, and geographical and historical imaginations jostle against each other, I explore a new way to critically access writings from the late Qing, an epoch that had everything and nothing.
A Realism Between Nanjing and Wuhan
Ta-wei Chi, University of California, Storrs
A spectrum of realism, where “socialist realism” and “critical realism” are deployed, characterizes twentieth-century Chinese fiction. This presentation situates anticommunist fiction, written during Chiang Kai-shek’s rule after 1949, on this spectrum and considers how anticommunist fiction can be understood in relation to socialist and critical realisms.
“Socialist realism”, embodied by literary works from communist regimes, includes those written under Mao Zedong. The May Fourth fiction is characterized with “critical realism,” or “traditional realism,” which advocates of socialist realism criticized as associated with capitalist bourgeoisie. Taking versions of realism into consideration, I ask where anticommunist fiction belongs. While anticommunist fiction and communist socialist realist fiction stand against one another, the two are preceded by the fiction of critical realism. One may ask: “Where is the political aesthetic position of anticommunist fiction between critical realism and socialist realism?”
This presentation focuses on The Rival Suns (1961) by Jiang Gui, a Chinese Civil War veteran. This novel is set in the late 1920s, a period known for two KMT governments coexisting separately in Nanjing and Wuhan. The Nanjing government led by Chiang Kai-shek was anticommunist, while the one in Wuhan accommodated communists. In the novel, characters oscillate between the two cities. A new kind of realism might have been born in the oscillation between Nanjing and Wuhan and between socialist and critical realisms. In this paper, I examine whether Jiang’s realism is as disoriented or reoriented as his characters, and whether the novel finds itself in between two political epicenters.
Lee Hsing and the Making of Mandarin-Language Films in Taiwan
Cindy Horng, University of California, Berkeley
Recent scholarship has done much to complicate categorizations of “Chinese film”, defying the tidiness of labels such as “national cinema” – which can convey vastly different meanings dependant on whether an analysis focuses on Chinese film, Hong Kong film, Taiwanese film, or intra-regional and transnational co-productions. Much literature on Taiwanese film relies heavily on 1980s New Taiwan Cinema, characterized by its aesthetic, temporal, and thematic splits with past government-sponsored productions. While New Taiwan Cinema has received much attention, its predecessors have often been neglected as “merely” propagandistic productions.
Nevertheless, key directors within Taiwan’s Central Motion Picture Corporation
(CMPC) played vital roles in the history of Taiwanese film, such as director Lee Hsing. Born in 1930 in Shanghai, trained in theater, and amongst the generation of mainland émigrés who matured professionally in Taiwan, Lee’s life story represented the very blend of scholarly cultivation and youthful drive that suited him for film work in postwar Taiwan. Lee is most known for establishing the Healthy Realism cinematic genre with Oyster Girl (1963). Due to this genre’s ideological and ultimately conservative overtones, Lee is inextricably linked to films in service of the government. However, a broader look at Lee’s filmography is necessary.
This paper bookends changes in the CMPC within Lee Hsing’s films, presenting an overview which is critical to creating a more complete picture of Taiwanese film’s legacy. It also examines theoretical constructions of “national cinema” during a half-century of the Republic of China’s tumultuous relationship with its own marginalized national identity.
Ah Q Revisited: Jia Zhangke's Xiao Wu and the Postsocialist Reinvention of China's Antihero
Michael S. Berry, University of California, Santa Barbara
With his feature directorial debut Xiao Wu (1997) winning coveted awards at film festival around the world, Jia Zhangke soon became China's most important post-Fifth Generation director. Xiao Wu is a gritty and moving portrait of a small time pickpocket in Fenyang, the provincial town in Shanxi from which the director hails. The film stands out for its distinct documentary-style realism, and its shockingly honest portrayal of small town China experiencing the growing pains of economic and social reform. Initially banned in China, the film's belated national release in 2005 marks the changing terrain of the Chinese film industry.
This paper approaches the film from the perspectives of film studies and contemporary Chinese cultural studies. The first section of the paper examines the film's narrative structure though close scene analyses. The next section explores the intertextual ties between Jia's film and Robert Bresson's Pickpocket (1959) and Vittorio De Sina's The Bicycle Thief (1948). The true intertextual skeleton key for reading Xiao Wu, however, lies in Lu Xun's classic "The True Story of Ah Q" (1921), a satiric critique of the Chinese national character. Reading the film against the original novella, I will argue that Xiao Wu is a postsocialist reinvention of China's ultimate allegorical anti-hero — Ah Q. In conclusion, I will explore the film's critique of contemporary China's economic revolution and how the new system of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" not only leaves Xiao Wu behind, but consumes China's traditional social structures and moral systems.