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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
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retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
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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
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 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
 Visit https://ebookmass.com
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exciting offers!
 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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“Tell Don not to risk it again,” she said. “I want him to keep it always.
Tell him that for me.”
And Bart, deciding that his sister’s whims had already imposed far
too many restrictions upon both his own activities and Carver’s,
carefully refrained from delivering the message. Instead, he
registered a protest when he crossed the ridge to see Carver.
“I’m becoming downright weary of listening to warnings,” he fretfully
declared. “Never a day goes by but what some friendly soul drops
past to inform me that Wellman and Freel are scheming to play it
low-down on me. Every man in the county must know it by now.”
“The most of them,” Carver agreed. “If anything was to happen to us
now there’d be five hundred men rise up and point out to their friends
that they’d been predicting that very thing—that they’d been telling
’em all along how Wellman and Freel was planning to murder us
some night.”
“It’s nice to know that we’ll be vindicated after we’re dead,” said Bart.
“But I was wondering if there maybe wasn’t some method by which
we could go right on living even if we don’t get quite so much credit
for our part in the affair. Personally I don’t approve of trifling round
trying to set the whole county on their trail when one man could
terminate their wickedness in two brief seconds.”
“But it’s paved the way for the clean-up of the county seat,” said
Carver.
“Let’s you and me ride over and clean it up in the old wild way,” Bart
urged.
“Only we’ll let them ride out here,” Carver substituted. “That
background I was speaking about a while back is all arranged.”
“I’m glad you’re satisfied with the background,” Bart returned. “I still
maintain that I ought to secrete myself behind a sprig of scrub oak
and wait until Freel comes riding into the foreground. That way we’d
take ’em front and rear. But anyway suits me, if only it transpires
soon.”
“Real soon now,” Carver promised. He turned to a grub-liner who
was saddling his horse in the corral.
“You’ll find Mattison waiting in the hotel at Casa,” he informed. “He’ll
be expecting the message. Tell him just this: That my time has come
to deputize him. He’ll know what to do. Then you forget it.” He turned
back to Bart. “Real soon now,” he repeated. “That’s the chief reason
why Hinman and old Nate insisted on taking Molly over to enjoy
herself at the fair.”
The girl was, in all truth, enjoying herself at the fair. It was as old Joe
Hinman remarked to a group of friends in the lobby of Wellman’s
hotel.
“Nate and me are giving the little girl a vacation,” he said. “First time
she’s been away from that homestead overnight since Bart filed on
it. She thinks a lot of that little place, Molly does. Even now she won’t
be persuaded to stay away but one night. We’ll take her up to
Caldwell this evening to buy a few women’s fixings and show her the
best time we can but she’ll come traipsing back home to-morrow.
Can’t keep her away. Carver had to promise to go over and stay all
night with Bart so no one could steal that homestead while she’s
gone.”
Nate Younger remarked similarly in Freel’s saloon within earshot of
the two Ralstons who were refreshing themselves at the bar. In fact,
the two old cowmen mentioned the matter to a number of
acquaintances whom they chanced across in a variety of places
throughout town and it was within an hour of noon before they took
Molly out to the fair.
The girl found the fair a mixture of the old way and the new. The
exhibits were those of the settlers but the sports and amusements
were those of an earlier day, a condition which would prevail for
many a year. Every such annual event would witness an increase of
agricultural exhibits, fine stock and blooded horses as the country
aged; but at fair time, too, the old-time riders of the unowned lands
would come into their own again for a single day. Then would
bartenders lay aside their white aprons, laborers drop their tools and
officers discard their stars, donning instead the regalia of the
cowboys. Gaudy shirts and angora chaps would be resurrected from
the depths of ancient war bags. Once more they would jangle boots
and spurs and twirl old reatas that had seen long service. The spirit
of the old days would prevail for a day and a night and fairgoers
would quit the exhibits to watch the bronc fighters ride ’em to a
standstill, bulldog Texas longhorns and rope, bust and hog-tie rangy
steers, to cheer the relay and the wild-horse races and all the rest of
it; then a wild night in town, ponies charging up and down the streets
to the accompaniment of shrill cowboy yelps and the occasional
crash of a gun fired into the air,—then back to the white aprons and
the laborer’s tools for another year.
The girl and her two old companions spent the day at the fair and in
the early evening took a train to Caldwell some two hours before
Freel and Wellman rode out of town. The evening’s festivities were in
full swing and none observed their departure. Freel was nervous and
excited.
“We’d better have sent some one else,” he said.
Wellman turned on him angrily.
“And have the thing bungled again!” he said. “Damn your roundabout
planning and never doing anything yourself. If you hadn’t sent that
fool over to Alvin without letting me know we’d have had it all over by
now. Crowfoot told you we’d have to do it ourselves. So did I. And if
you’d only waited we’d have found an opening months back but that
Alvin fluke made Carver take cover and he’s never give us a chance
at him since. We wouldn’t even know there was one to-night if those
two old fossils hadn’t let it out accidental.”
“But maybe that talk of theirs was—” Freel began, but his companion
interrupted and cut short his complaint.
“We’ve give Carver time to do just what we was to head him from
doing—getting our names linked with every deal we wanted kept
quiet.”
“He couldn’t prove a sentence of it in the next fifteen years,” Freel
asserted.
“He’s started folks thinking—and talking,” said Wellman. “They’ll talk
more every day. It’s right now or never with me!”
“But it’s too late to make out that it’s an arrest,” Freel protested.
“After all that’s been said.”
“That’s what I know,” said Wellman. “So we’ll hurry it up and slip
back into town. With all that fair crowd milling around, there won’t be
one man that could testify we’d ever left town; and I can produce
several that’ll swear positive that we’ve been there all along.”
They rode on in silence and they had not covered a distance of three
miles from town when Mattison rode into the county seat at the head
of a half-dozen men,—men who, incidentally, knew nothing whatever
of his mission except that they had been deputized to follow
wherever he led. As the marshal entered the outskirts of town a
figure detached itself from the shadows. Mattison joined the man
who reported in tones that did not carry to the rest of the posse.
“They’ve gone,” he informed. “I followed Freel every living minute till
he and Wellman slipped out of town together a half-hour ago.”
“Sure they didn’t change their plans and come back?” Mattison
asked.
“Dead sure,” the man stated positively. “Not a chance.”
Mattison led his men direct to the county jail and left them just
outside the office while he entered alone. The two Ralstons occupied
the place at the time.
“Where’s Freel?” the marshal demanded.
“Couldn’t say,” one of the deputies answered. “Out around town
somewheres likely.” His eyes rested apprehensively on the group of
men standing just outside the door. “You wanting to see him?”
“Yes. I was—somewhat,” Mattison admitted. “I surmise you all know
what about.”
The Ralstons denied this.
“We’ll go out and look him up,” Mattison decided. “You two stay here.
I might be wanting to question you later.”
But the Ralstons failed to tarry. Within five minutes after the
marshal’s departure they set forth from town and the county was
minus the services of two deputies who neglected even to hand in
their resignations before quitting their posts.
A similar scene was enacted at Wellman’s hotel. The crowd in the
lobby turned suddenly quiet as Mattison led his men in and inquired
at the desk for Wellman. The proprietor was not to be found. The
county attorney reclined in a chair at one side of the lobby and
Mattison crossed over and addressed him.
“Any idea where I could locate Wellman and Freel?” he inquired.
The county attorney moistened his lips and disclaimed all knowledge
of their whereabouts. A voice rose from the far end of the lobby, a
voice which Mattison recognized as that of the man who had
accosted him in the outskirts as he rode into town.
“They got out ahead of you, Colonel,” the man stated. “Your birds
has flown.”
“What’s that?” Mattison asked, turning to face the informer. “How do
you know?”
“Just by sheer accident,” the man reported. “I see one party holding
two horses just outside of town. Another man joined him afoot. One
of ’em touched off a smoke, and in the flare of the match I made out
that they was Wellman and Freel. They rode west.”
“That’s downright unfortunate,” Mattison said. “But it don’t matter
much. I was only wanting to see them to gather a little information
they might be able to give. Another time will do just as well.”
He turned and stared absently at the county attorney and that
gentleman’s florid countenance turned a shade lighter.
“Don’t matter,” the marshal repeated, rousing from his seeming
abstraction. “Nothing of any importance.”
He led his men from the lobby and rode west out of town. And out in
the country toward which he was heading were Carver and Bart
Lassiter, both prone in the grass a few yards apart and as many from
Bart’s homestead cabin.
“This is growing real tedious,” Bart stated. “Whatever leads you to
suspect that they’re due to pay their call on just this particular night?”
“They won’t if you keep on talking,” Carver returned. “If you keep
quiet they might.”
Bart lapsed into silence. He had already spent a long hour in his
present location and would have preferred to be up and stirring
about. Another twenty minutes dragged by and he was on the point
of addressing Carver again when his intended utterance was cut
short by a slight sound close at hand. Five more interminable
minutes passed and he heard a single soft footfall a few feet away.
Two dim figures approached the house and slipped silently to the
door. The night was so black that they seemed but two wavering
patches that merged with the surrounding obscurity. One tested the
latch and the door opened on noiseless hinges. For a space both
men stood there and listened. Then one entered while the other
remained at the door.
Carver spoke.
“What was you expecting to locate in there?” he asked softly.
The man in the door whirled and fired at the sound of his voice, the
flash of his gun a crimson streak in the velvet black of the night.
Carver shot back at the flash and Bart’s gun chimed with the report
of his own. There was a second flash from the doorway but this time
the crimson spurt leaped skyward for the shot was fired as the man
sagged and fell forward. There was a splintering crash of breaking
glass as the man inside cleared a window on the far side of the
house. Bart shot twice at the dim figure that moved through the
night, then rose to his feet intent upon following but Carver
restrained him.
“Let him go!” he ordered. “One’s enough!”
“But just why the hell should I let Freel get away?” he demanded,
pulling back from the detaining hand which Carver had clamped on
his shoulder.
“It’s Wellman. Freel’s there by the door,” Carver said.
“How can you tell? It’s too black to see,” Bart insisted.
“Wellman would be the one to go in. Freel would be the one to hang
back,” Carver said. “That’s why I planned for you and me to stay
outside in the grass instead of waiting inside. Wellman and me used
to be friends—likely would be still if it wasn’t for Freel. It makes a
difference, some way. Wellman’s harmless to us from now on,
outlawed for this night’s business. He’ll be riding the hills with the
wild bunch till some one comes bringing him in.”
He stopped speaking to listen to the thud of many hoofs pounding
down the trail from the ridge.
“Now I wonder who that will be,” he speculated.
“You know now,” Bart accused. “You always know. Whoever it is
didn’t come without you had it planned in advance. But I’ll never tell
what I think.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Carver advised.
Mattison reached the foot of the trail with his men.
“What’s up?” he inquired. “We’d just stopped at the Half Diamond H
to ask you to put us up for the night. Nobody home. I thought I might
find you here so we’d just started over when all that shooting set in
and we hustled along. You two out hunting for owls?”
“Yes,” Carver said. “There’s one by the door. The other one flew out
the window. Bart and I was reclining out here in the grass talking
things over when the pair of them eased up to the door and one
slipped on in. I asked how about it and the man in the door started to
shoot. Then we did some shooting ourselves. The party there by the
door is our amiable sheriff.”
“Then the one that got off is Wellman,” one of the posse spoke up.
“Right from the first shot I guessed it. I’ve heard it whispered round
that they was planning to get you, and when the ruckus broke I was
looking to find you two dead when we got here. I’m glad they got it
instead. That whole county seat bunch needs cleaning out.”
There was a chorus of assent from the posse and under its cover
Carver murmured to Bart.
“So much for background,” he said.
“It’s a right queer bit of business for them two to be at,” Mattison
stated. “I’ll have to put off gathering that information from Freel.
You’d better saddle up and ride on into town with me, Carver, and
we’ll report this affair to the county attorney. You boys bring Freel in
with you. He’s likely got a horse tied round somewheres close. Scout
around till you find him. Yes, we’ve been needing a change of
officials at the county seat for some time and it does look like the
alteration has been effected to-night.”
Carver rode off with the marshal.
“Thanks for going to all that bother,” Carver said. “I’m indebted a lot.”
“It just evens that score,” said the marshal. “And the whole thing
worked out nice. It’ll make a clean sweep in Oval Springs. Wellman
won’t show up any more. I’ll venture to predict that the two Ralstons
will have vanished from these parts before morning and the county
attorney is scared into a state of palpitation right now. He’ll attend to
all the necessary formalities to see that you’re given honorable
mention instead of a trial.”
“Then after we’ve finished with him I’ll take the night train for
Caldwell and loaf around a few days,” Carver announced. “I haven’t
traveled to any extent for some time.”
It was nearly morning when the train pulled into Caldwell.
“No use to go to bed now,” Carver decided. “I’ll find some of the boys
and set up.”
The Silver Dollar, now conducted in the rear of a cigar store which
had been fashioned across the front of the building since the old,
wide-open days had become a thing of the past in Caldwell, was still
operated as an all-night place of amusement. But Carver found that
its grandeur had vanished, the whole atmosphere of the place was
different. There were a dozen men in the place, but of them all
Carver saw not one of the riders that had been wont to forgather
here.
He drew a tarnished silver coin from his pocket.
“Here’s where I got you and right here is where I leave you,” he said.
“You’ve sewed me up for one year now and I’m about to get shut of
you before you cinch me for another. We’ll spend you for a drink to
the boys that used to gather here. Back to your namesake, little
silver dollar.”
As he crossed to the bar he glanced at the swinging side door that
led into the adjoining restaurant. It opened and a girl stood there,
motioning him to join her. He followed her outside. Two horses stood
at a hitch rail down the street.
“Come on, Don; we’re going home,” she said. Then, as he seemed
not quite to understand, “Didn’t Bart tell you?”
“No,” he said. “Whatever it was, Bart didn’t tell me.”
“Then I’ll tell you myself on the way home,” she promised.
She linked an arm through his and moved toward the two horses at
the hitch rail.
“Tell me now,” he insisted, halting and swinging her round to face
him. “You can’t mean—but I must be reading my signs wrong, some
way.”
“You’re reading them right,” she corrected. “All those outside things
don’t matter. I know that now. We’re going home, Don, just you and
me. That’s all that counts.”
He had a swift, uneasy vision of the occurrences of the night just
past.
“But you haven’t heard—,” he commenced.
“Oh, yes; I’ve heard,” she interrupted. “The news was telephoned up
here and was spread all over Caldwell before you even took the train
from Oval Springs. That doesn’t matter either. Hinman phoned to
Mattison at the hotel and found that you were coming. That’s how I
knew and why I was waiting up. I’ve rented those two horses so we
could ride instead of taking a train to Oval Springs. I’d rather,
wouldn’t you?”
“We’ll start in just one minute, Honey,” he said. “But first—”
She looked the length of the street and nodded, for there was no one
abroad.
Some miles out of Caldwell the girl pulled up her horse where the
road crossed the point of a hill.
“You remember?” she asked.
“I won’t forget,” he said.
For it was from this same point that they had watched the last of the
herds of the big cow outfits held in the quarantine belt awaiting
shipment, the riders guarding them, the trail herds moving up from
the south, while over across had been that solid line of camps where
the settlers were waiting to come in.
“We saw the sun set on the old days here,” she said. “Let’s watch it
rise on the new.”
For as far as they could see the lights were flashing from the
windows of early-rising settlers. A boy was calling his cows. A
rooster crowed triumphant greeting to the red-gray streaks that were
showing in the east. There came a flapping of wings as a flock of
turkeys descended from their perch on the ridgepole of a barn, then
their querulous yelping as the big birds prospected for food in the
barn lot.
“It’s different,” he said.
Then, from the road below them, came the clatter of hoofs and
riotous voices raised in song; a few wild whoops and a gun fired in
the air.
“The last few of the tumbleweeds, rattling their dry bones to impress
the pumpkins,” Carver said.
The words of the song drifted to them.
I’m a wild, wild rider
And an awful mean fighter,
I’m a rough, tough, callous son-of-a-gun.
I murder some folks quick
And I kill off others slow;
 It’s the only way I ever take my fun.
The girl’s thoughts drifted back to the big Texan who had led the
stampede and then presented his claim to another. She leaned over
and rested a hand on Carver’s arm.
“I’m very much contented right now, Don,” she said. “But so terribly
sorry for the poor tumbleweeds that have been crowded out.”
 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been
standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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