An Ethnography of the Spring Festival

IMAGINING CHINA IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL CONSUMERISM AND LOCAL

CONSCIOUSNESS: MEDIA, MOBILITY, AND THE SPRING FESTIVAL

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of the College of Communication of

Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Li Ren

June 2003

This dissertation entitled

IMAGINING CHINA IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL CONSUMERISM AND LOCAL

CONSCIOUSNESS: MEDIA, MOBILITY AND THE SPRING FESTIVAL

BY

LI REN

has been approved by

the School of Interpersonal Communication

and the College of Communication by

Arvind Singhal

Professor of Interpersonal Communication

Timothy A. Simpson

Professor of Interpersonal Communication

Kathy Krendl

Dean, College of Communication REN, LI. Ph.D. June 2003. Interpersonal Communication

Imagining China in the Era of Global Consumerism and Local Consciousness: Media, Mobility, and the Spring Festival. (260 pp.)

Co-directors of Dissertation: Arvind Singhal and Timothy A. Simpson

Using the Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year) as a springboard for fieldwork and discussion, this dissertation explores the rise of electronic media and mobility in contemporary China and their effect on modern Chinese subjectivity, especially, the collective imagination of Chinese people. Informed by cultural studies and ethnographic methods, this research project consisted of 14 in-depth interviews with residents in

Chengdu, China, ethnographic participatory observation of local festival activities, and analysis of media events, artifacts, documents, and online communication.

The dissertation argues that “cultural China,” an officially-endorsed concept that has transformed a national entity into a borderless cultural entity, is the most conspicuous and powerful public imagery produced and circulated during the 2001 Spring Festival. As a work of collective imagination, cultural China creates a complex and contested space in which the Chinese Party-state, the global consumer culture, and individuals and local communities seek to gain their own ground with various strategies and tactics.

This dissertation has five chapters: Chapter one introduces the project and situates it within a theoretical, historical, and scholarly context. Chapter two details the methodological framework and lays out a specific design for the fieldwork in Chengdu,

China. Chapter three probes Chinese mediascapes with the focus on two image-centered media—television and the Internet. Discussion includes the transformation of the annual festival into a mediated national ritual, the China Central Television (CCTV) Spring Festival eve gala, as well as the virtual celebration of the festival on the Internet. Chapter four concerns holiday consumption and tourism as China undergoes a profound transition from a production-oriented to a consumer-oriented economy. The chapter examines the reconfiguration of urban spaces by market forces, a collective desire for festival consumption, and the revival of folk traditions as packaged tourist spectacles. Chapter five, the conclusion, reiterates the researcher’s interpretations, reflects on the methodology, and acknowledges limitations and implications of the present study.

Approved:

Arvind Singhal

Professor of Interpersonal Communication

Timothy A. Simpson

Professor of Interpersonal Communication

5 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the co-directors of my dissertation committee, Dr. Arvind

Singhal and Dr. Timothy A. Simpson, for all of their unflagging assistance, constructive critiques, and tremendous encouragement during this long process. I extend my gratitude to committee members, Drs. Jenny L. Nelson and Nagesh Rao, for making my educational experience at Ohio University stimulating and rewarding.

I am also grateful to all the individuals I interviewed in Chengdu, China for this fieldwork, who allowed me into their homes and lives during the bustling Spring Festival.

My gratitude also goes to those who offered their help and made my time spent in the field less stressful and more productive.

I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Hugh M. Culbertson, who has always supported me during and after my years in Athens, OH. I thank fellow Ph.D. students at the School of Interpersonal Communication, especially Debbie London, for their advice and encouragement during this toiling process.

My utmost thanks go to my families, both in China and the United States. My greatest gratitude is to my late mother, Zhou Liangfeng, for her unconditional love that still gives me strength in life. I thank my father Ren Xianfu, my sister Ren Hong, and my brother-in-law Shen Tao for their love and support throughout my education as well as in everyday life. I also want to express my gratefulness to my new family, my parents-in- law Ruth and Ralph Kaplan, and my sister-in-law Jenny Griffin and her family, for embracing me without reservation in their hearts.

6 Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to my husband, John Kaplan, whose love and vision inspire me daily and encourage me to grow to my full potential. Without him,

I would not be where I am today.

7 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract...... 3

Acknowledgments...... 5

Chapter 1 (Re)locating the Field/homework...... 9 1.1 Prologue: Homecoming ...... 9 1.2 Introduction: The Spring Festival ...... 10 1.3 Defining the Terms ...... 13 1.3.1 Nationalism/Culturalism...... 14 1.3.2 The Rise of Global Consumer Culture and Local Consciousness .21 1.3.3 Everyday Culture: A Site of Investigation...... 25 1.4 Theorizing and Contextualizing the Study ...... 32 1.4.1 Cultural Studies: Thinking Culture Politically ...... 33 1.4.2 Point of Entry: The Work of the Imagination in China ...... 34 1.4.3 Histories of Mediascapes and Ethnoscapes in China...... 36 1.4.4 An On-going Scholarly Debate...... 53 1.5 Organization of the Dissertation ...... 62

Chapter 2 Methodology: Cosmopolitan Ethnography in a Global Terrain...... 64 2.1 Ethnography: The Methodological Framework...... 65 2.2 Cosmopolitan Ethnography ...... 68 2.3 Inscribing Myself as a Native Ethnographer ...... 73 2.4 The Base: Entering the Heartland of China ...... 74 2.5 Doing and Learning ...... 77 2.5.1 Artifact Gathering...... 77 2.5.2 Participant Observation: Professional Observer or Observing Native...... 78 2.5.3 Interviewing ...... 78 2.5.4 Roadmap for the Interview ...... 79 2.5.5 Surfing the Internet ...... 80 2.5.6 Unintended Field/homework ...... 80 2.5.7 Transcribing and Translating ...... 81 2.6 Chapter Summary...... 81

Chapter 3 Mediascapes: Floating Imagery of “Chineseness”...... 82 3.1 CCTV gala: A Televised Re-invention of Festival Celebration ...... 85 3.1.1 An (Inter)national Family Reunion...... 87 3.1.2 Censored Happiness: For Sale ...... 105 3.1.3 The Watching Game ...... 122 3.2 The Internet: Virtual Spring Festival, Virtual China ...... 146 3.2.1 Tu verses yang: The Return of Myth ...... 149 3.2.2 Mythical Dragon with Electronic Wings ...... 151

8 3.2.3 Virtual Chinese Community ...... 157 3.3 Conclusions...... 161

Chapter 4 Celebration of Cosmopolitanism: Mobile and Deterritorialized Ethnoscapes163 4.1 Urbanity, Cosmopolitanism, and Consumerism: Reconfiguration of Space and Power in Urban China...... 165 4.1.1 Reclaiming Private Space and a Personal Celebration ...... 168 4.1.2 We Consume Therefore We Exist ...... 176 4.1.3 From the Rural to the Global: The Changing Façade of Chinese Imagined Worlds...... 195 4.2 Looking at Self Through a Global Gaze: Mass Consumption of a Touristic Festival...... 207 4.2.1 Staged Festivity: Urban fanggu Project ...... 213 4.2.2 Global Looking Glass: The Village of the “Other” ...... 221 4.3 Conclusions ...... 227

Chapter 5 Reaching Conclusions...... 229 5.1 Cultural China Revisited...... 229 5.2 Reflections on Ethnography in a Global Age ...... 235 5.3 Limitations and Implications ...... 239 5.4 Epilogue: Living in the Borderland ...... 240

References...... 242

9 CHAPTER ONE

(RE)LOCATING THE FIELD/HOMEWORK

Prologue: Homecoming

10:30 p.m., January 15, 2001

The giant Boeing 747 of Northwest Airlines has just landed at the newly renovated Beijing International Airport. Signs and posters of the city’s bid for the 2008

Olympics are everywhere, greeting the visitors. Several long lines of people are waiting to pass border checkpoints into the sovereign land of the People’s Republic of China.

Ahead of me in line is a Chinese couple with a 2 or 3-year-old boy, speaking with each other in Beijing dialect, and immediately behind me is a Caucasian man dressed in suit and tie, holding a briefcase. Together we exemplify the mobile and dynamic global ethnoscapes, a term coined by Appadurai (1991) to refer to the landscape of persons who comprise the mobile world in which we live (p. 192). This is my sixth trip returning to

China since I began graduate school in the United States in 1996. This time, I am on the way to conduct ethnographic fieldwork for my dissertation about the Spring Festival, a little more than one week away.

Still light-headed from the 13-hour flight, I am suddenly overwhelmed by uneasiness, agitation, and self-doubt. I am in a state of emotional vulnerabilities. This vulnerability comes from my position at the intersection of the local and the global, from being an outsider in my home country and scrutinizing the familiar with strange eyes. It might be a state of mind where “thrice-born” ethnographers (Turner, 1978), who turn their academic attention back toward their own native nations and cultural heritages, have to experience. I have done ethnographic fieldwork for class projects in small Appalachian

10 communities around Athens, Ohio, where I was definitely the “field researcher.” I followed the books and immersed myself into the research; however, there was always a part of me that remained detached and untouched in a safe place. As a “thrice-born” native ethnographer, turning to my own cultural heritage means the walls surrounding this safe place will be ripped off. Fieldwork has turned into “homework” and I will dissect what had been familiar but then became strange to me—quotidian practices of ordinary Chinese during a holiday season when everyday life is magnified and intensified. I know during this trip, my academic world will collide with my “home world,” and my fundamental assumptions about both worlds and myself may be stripped down, examined, and re-examined. As Mascarenhas-Keyes (1987) calls it, I am in a state of “professionally induced schizophrenia” between the “native self” and “profession self.” (p. 180)

This field/homework, to borrow the term from Akindes (1999), is the time for me to live the ethnographic life (Crawford, 1996).

Introduction: The Spring Festival

Growing up in the 1970s in a small town in Sichuan Province, China, I always looked forward to the Spring Festival. During those days, I watched neighbors perform traditional dragon dance, set off firecrackers with neighborhood kids, and enjoyed delicious food. Despite the political atmosphere of the whole country, the local community was tightly-tied and always celebrated together. This community intimacy associated with the festival has faded since the 1980s, with China’s economic transition. Neighbors became too busy to organize community activities, and families tended to retreat to their own homes to watch television. As the sense of community faded, the festival has become more impersonal. My interest in the Spring Festival resumed after I came to the United States. The Chinese Student Association at the university I studied organized Spring Festival celebration parties every year. I found myself drawn to this festivity. One year I even became a presenter at the celebration. For Chinese students

11 living in a small college town in Appalachia, a sense of connectivity and community emerged from participating in this traditional Chinese festival.

This field/homework represents an ongoing personal effort, beginning with a general interest in the fast-transforming cultural landscapes in contemporary China.

Specifically, this communication study is to explore electronic media and mobility

(therefore, increased interpersonal communication) and their joint effect on modern

Chinese subjectivity by using a specific event, the Spring Festival (Chunjie), as a springboard for discussion. Discussing a variety of topics, including televised festival spectacles, virtual celebrations on the Internet, rising consumerism, migration and tourism, and food rituals, the fieldwork covers both media production and reception processes.

The Spring Festival, which is the Chinese New Year, usually falls between late

January and early February, starting with the new moon on the first day of the Chinese lunar New Year and ending on the full moon fifteen days later (from January 24 to

February 7 in the year of 2001). Positioned among holidays imposed by the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP) (such as the National Day to celebrate the establishment of the

People’s Republic of China) and those transplanted by global consumer culture (such as

Christmas and Valentine’s Day), the Spring Festival stands out as the most traditional festival for Chinese people. As a genuine “Chinese” tradition, this festival offers an excellent opportunity to investigate how “China” is defined and imagined, either by the

Party-state, the global consumer forces, or the ordinary folks.

Eric Hobsbawm (1992) suggests that traditions that appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented (p. 1). In the same fashion, traditions

12 that are old can be appropriated and reinvented to fulfill special social, political,

economic, or cultural needs at specific times. Chinese Lunar New Year has been

reinvented constantly throughout history. One significant recent reinvention of the Lunar

New Year occurred in the turbulent years at the beginning of the 20th century. It involved

renaming the festival as a result of interaction of the East and the West. The Lunar New

Year was officially named as the Spring Festival (Chunjie) after the 1911 Republic

Revolution. Since the Western calendar was adapted by the Chinese government, in order

to distinguish the lunar New Year from the Western New Year, the government had to

rename the Lunar New Year the Spring Festival. The name Yuandan, which means the

first morning of the year, has totally lost its original reference to the first day of the Lunar

New Year and refers exclusively to the Western New Year’s Day.

Although the Spring Festival is a traditional festival for Han Chinese (the majority ethnic group in China), it has been constructed by the official government culture as a national holiday for all ethnic groups in China. Over the past twenty years, I have witnessed the transformation of the Spring Festival into media spectacles and commercial events nicely packaged by the Chinese Party-state and consumer culture. Traditions handed down from ancient times have been constantly reinvented and turned into spectacles, and various cultural products and practices have emerged during the celebration, organized and sponsored by government officials, by businesses, and by local communities. These cultural products and practices include the Spring Festival eve gala on China Central Television (CCTV), pilgrimages to Buddhist or Taoist temples, temple fairs, lantern fairs, shopping and dining, and holiday tourism.

13 Growing up in an era of rising consumerism with global ties and emerging local- individual autonomy in China, I developed a personal and scholarly interest in the country’s evolving cultural condition at the intersection of the global, the nation-state, and local levels. My intention here is to investigate how, during the celebration, the

Party-state exercises power—especially in the production of electronic media—to provoke popular images of the Chinese nation-state; how commercial interests saturate in previously politically dominated cultural industries; and how local communities and ordinary Chinese interpret and make sense of the celebration. Although in this globalized world, festival celebrations outside of the People’s Republic of China unavoidably have impact on the psyche of Chinese citizens, I made a conscious choice to focus on investigating festivities only in mainland China, as that is where the power of Party-state remains the strongest and where consumerism rises at a rapid rate.

The main objective of this chapter is to situate this study within a historical and theoretical framework. I begin by clarifying key concepts and terms and demonstrating the significance of a further understanding of nationalism/culturalism, global consumer culture, local consciousness, and everyday culture in contemporary China. After exploring historical and cultural contexts of the evolving nationalism and changing roles of mass and folk culture in the 20th-century China, I explicate how the interpretive paradigm and cultural studies have shaped the current study.

Defining the Terms

After the reform and opening of China in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the

Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) cultural hegemony has been greatly challenged by global consumer culture as well as the emerging autonomy of local communities and

14 individual Chinese citizens. Anchoring my research on the Spring Festival celebration, I will explore critical issues in contemporary China—nationalism/culturalism, global consumerism, local autonomy, and everyday culture. Those terms and their significance will be explored in the following sections.

Nationalism/Culturalism

Understanding nationalism and the nation-state has become a dominant concern of contemporary human sciences (Appadurai, 1996, p. 188). The turbulent modern history, the widespread enthusiasm to reconnect with “the international fast-track”, the peculiar “market socialism” system, and the lingering Communist regime make the

People’s Republic of China a unique and fascinating case to study nationalism. The emotion of nationalism provides the individual with an ability to imagine a sense of commonality and community with his or her fellow citizens of the nation. In a country like China, comprising more than one billion people, from 56 ethnic groups, speaking numerous dialects, and practicing many forms of religion, such nationalism serves an especially important function.

The nation has been conceptualized by Benedict Anderson (1991) as a historically constructed cultural imaginary. Anderson defines the nation as “an imagined political community,” which is conceived as both inherently limited and sovereign (p. 6).

Although members of this community might have never met one another, Anderson notes, they imagine a common bond or linkage among their fellow citizens. In his opinion, the historical decline of religious communities and dynastic realms, and the simultaneity of past and future (which traditionally served as interlinked certainties for human race), led people to search for new ways of relating to others. Anderson argues

15 that the model of what he calls “nation-ness” was historically enabled by the

development of print-capitalism. Anderson also claims that the so-called “last wave” of

nationalism in Asia and Africa due to the independence movements in the former

colonies, was originally a response to colonial imperialism.

Anderson’s conceptualization of nation-state as a product of collective

imagination rejects the view that nation-state grows out of “natural” bonds, such as language, blood, soil, and race. Nationalism has been seen as the force which creates nation-states, and three stages of nation-building are identified by Hroch (cited in Billig,

1995, pp. 43-44): the interest in the national idea is first awakened by intellectuals, then diffused to the masses, and last, a mass movement seeks to translate the idea into the nation-state. Billig (1995) extends the three-stage development of nationalism to explore how nation-ness is maintained in everyday life after it has been established as an

“imagined community.” He contends that nationalism, as an ideology, operates to make people forget that it has been historically constructed. National identity is something

“natural” to remember; however, Billig argues, this remembering involves a forgetting, since nation-ness is embedded in routines of everyday life and operates mindlessly instead of mindfully. This daily perseverance represents the “banal reproduction of nationalism.” (Billig, 1995, p.37) “Hot” nationalism—the passionately waved flags shown in brief moments of nationalist emotion that disrupts routine life—serves as a collective remembrance of nation-ness. Nonetheless, Billig contends that banal nationalism, the “unwaved, unsaluted, unnoticed national flags,” also assumes an equally important role in sustaining national identity (p.46).

16 For more than 50 years, even before the establishment of the People’s Republic of

China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been striving to construct its

version of the image of “China.” The Chinese nation has been a cultural imaginary

serving the purpose of CCP’s political hegemony, and China has become a Party-state.

Within a turbulent modern history, Chinese nationalism has evolved from the ethnic

nationalism, or anti-Manchu racism, at the end of the 19th century. Jia, family, is contained within guojia, the nation-state, in the Chinese language. But guojia is a rather

broad and vague concept. It can mean the state (the political), the country (the

geographical), or the nation (the people). In 1902, Liang Qichao, the reformist thinker in

the late Qing Dynasty, proclaimed that the Chinese had never developed a national

consciousness because Chinese history had been written as stories of kings and generals

(Dirlik, 1996, p. 193). The repeated barbarian invasions, the rise and fall of dynasties, and

the absorption of alien religions in the past illustrate that Chinese civilization

consciousness often transcended the hard and fast boundaries that people usually

associate with the sovereign totality of the nation-state (Chun, 1996, p. 113). Prior to the

Nationalist Revolution in 1911, there was no comparable notion of national identity

among Chinese, but a dynastic self-reference: the subjects of the Great Qing Dynasty.

Duara notes the important role of ethnic nationalism, or anti-Manchu racism, in

the founding of the Republic of China (cited in Dean, 1998, p. 161). A popular

nationalistic discourse was first provoked at the turn of the 20th century by anti-Manchu

Han revolutionaries, who appealed to the masses to overturn the Qing Dynasty,

established by Manchu minorities from Northeastern China. Among them, Sun Yat-sen,

the revolutionary hero and father of the Republic of China, harshly criticized traditional

17 Chinese society without a national consciousness as being “a dish of loose sand.” (Chun,

1996, p. 114) At the same time, China was turned into a semi-colony by Western powers.

Chinese national identity, since then, has been largely created on the basis of anti-feudal and anti-imperialist discourses. Anderson (1991) claims that the 1911 Nationalist revolution was made possible by “planning revolution” and “imaging the nation” (p.

158). The establishment of the first Chinese nation-state, the Republic of China, in 1911 by the Nationalist Party was largely facilitated by such a national consciousness. By that time, the coin of the term “citizens of China (Zhongguo Ren)” clearly delineated the territorial China nation-state (Chun, 1996).

Since the very idea of a “national” identity was new in China, any notions connected with it had to be historical constructions. The image of China was enthusiastically constructed not only in political practices, but most importantly also in social and cultural practices. The May Fourth movement was a turning point in modern

Chinese history. On May 4, 1919, Chinese students staged a series of demonstrations to protest the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, in which the Beijing government agreed to cede the province of Shandong, formerly under German control, to Japan. The political fervor, student activism, and reformist intellectual currents of the May Fourth movement grow out of the New Culture movement, which occupied the period from 1917 to 1923.

Science and democracy were two major themes promoted by the New Culture movement, and Chinese modernists advocated social and political theories ranging from a complete

Westernization of China to the Marxism that was later adopted by China’s Communist

Party.

18 Popular culture and folk culture were widely utilized by Chinese intellectuals as vehicles to reach the masses and promote a national consciousness during the New

Culture movement. The May Fourth movement made Chinese nationalists realize how important support from the masses was, and the role popular culture could play in reaching them. New forms of popular culture, including cartoon magazines, stage dramas, and films, emerged in urban centers like Shanghai as a result of the New Culture movement. Some of them were employed by Leftists to promote revolutionary- nationalistic ideas to liberate China from threats of imperialist encroachment and the lethargy and stagnation of the feudal past. Chinese nationalist discourse reached its climax on October 1, 1949, when Mao proclaimed at Tiananmen Square that “Chinese people have stood up!” By this time, China had gone through the three stages of nationalism postulated by Hroch (cited in Billig, 1995, pp. 43-44): the awakening of the intellectuals, the diffusion to the masses, and the establishment of the nation-state. Since

1949, nationalism has been well maintained in Chinese everyday life, with either passionate celebrations of national days or quotidian routines.

The establishment of the People’s Republic of China led to the country’s 30-year insulation from the global community due to hostile external conditions and self-imposed isolation. During this period, “China” was imagined with a selective recreation of the

CCP revolutionary past and present, which was exemplified in textbooks, comic books, popular music, movies, and novels. The victory of the Chinese Communist Party over the

Nationalist government gave the power to the CCP Party-state to demand and codify a selective forgetting of the initial establishment of the Chinese nation. Chinese nationalism, which was sustained by the CCP discourses of constant external threats from

19 Western imperialists and Soviet revisionists, was intertwined with popular loyalty and

gratitude to the CCP and the skillfully fostered blind worship of Mao as the infallible

helmsman.

In the last two decades, as the result of the open policy in the economic reform era

(1979 onwards), the evolution of revolutionary China has been greatly challenged by

flourishing global consumer culture and awakening local consciousness. As Appadurai

(1996) has noted, there is an urgent need to relate the national to the global and the local.

The Chinese Party-state is striving to construct a revised version of nationalism facing

this changed reality.

Appadurai (1996) suggests using culturalism to designate a feature of movements involving identities consciously in the making (p. 15). Culturalism, Appadurai maintains, is “the conscious mobilization of cultural differences in the service of a larger national or transnational politics.”

Culturalism suggests something more than either ethnicity or culture, both of which terms partake of the sense of the natural, the unconscious, and the tacit in-group identity. When identities are produced in a field of classification, mass mediation, mobilization, and entitlement dominated by politics at the level of the nation-state, however, they take cultural differences as their conscious object. These movements can take a variety of forms: They can be directed primarily toward self-expression, autonomy, and efforts at cultural survival, or they can be principally negative in form, characterized largely by hate, racism, and the desire to dominate or eliminate other groups. Although modern ethnicity is in this sense culturalist and intimately linked to the practices of the nation-state, it is also worth noting that an important group of culturalist movements is today transnational, given that many mobilized national ethnicities, because of international migration, operate beyond the confines of a single nation-state. (p. 147, italics original)

Simply put, culturalism is identity politics mobilized at the level of the nation-

20 state. However, culturalist movement in China seems to be initiated by the Party-state as a response to the increasingly global reality, not directed at the nation-state, as suggested by Appadurai.

The dynamic interaction of the global, the national, and the local in contemporary

China has produced a new form of nationalistic discourses about a cultural China, which is no longer bounded by physical territory. In his discussion on the current global cultural flows, Appadurai (1996) notes that ideas of nationhood appear to be steadily increasing in scale and regularly crossing existing state boundaries to include transnational diasporas.

In late 1994, a massive “Patriotic Education” campaign was launched, which illustrated

Chinese Party-state’s intention for a global reach while maintaining a Han Chinese core.

According to the outlines of the program issued by Xinhua News Agency, the aims of patriotic education were to “boost the nation’s spirit, enhance its cohesion, foster its self- esteem and sense of pride, consolidate and develop a patriotic united front to the broadest extent [italics added]….help the motherland become unified, prosperous and strong.”

(“Patriotic Education,” 1994) The outlines also claimed that the government should

“vigorously popularize putonghua [standard Han Chinese language].” Townsend identifies four different but overlapping “Chinese nations” in Chinese mentality (cited in

Dean, 1998, p. 161): the ethnic Han Chinese nation; the multi-ethnic Chinese nation- state; the pan-Asian Chinese cultural unity; and the world-wide Chinese community, which at times is considered to share a common Chinese nationality. Tu (1994) also notes the emerging discourse of a cultural China, which is comprised of mainland China,

Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and overseas Chinese communities throughout the world. China (zhongguo), in Chinese, means “the central country.” Chinese used to

21 regard the country as the universally recognized center of human civilization, while always referring to other peoples as barbarians. Tu predicts that a renewed “Central

Country syndrome” is up-and-coming due to China’s rapid economic advancement and rising political and cultural position in the global community, and a Chinese civilization- state remains a distinct possibility (p. 17).

The Rise of Global Consumer Culture and Local Consciousness

In this project, global consumer culture refers to the emergence of a Chinese consumer society interrelated with the global capitalist system as a result of China’s transition from a state-controlled economy toward a market economy as well as its participation in the so-called globalization process. As more and more consumer goods are becoming available and affordable for common Chinese citizens, per capita material consumption has risen at an average annual rate of seven per cent since 1978 (Hooper,

1998). Hooper claims that per capita statistics, however, are not sufficient to illustrate the increasing affluence and spending power of some sectors of the Chinese population, especially urban residents. According to a 1994 report, China’s consumer market, which was already the second largest in Asia, would become the fastest growing in the world during the decade 1993-2003 (cited in Hooper, 1998, p. 108). After decades of deprivation of material consumption due to heavenly disasters and human calamities

(Tianzai Renhuo) and a virtual cult of austerity imposed officially by the Chinese communist regime, a new cult of consumption has risen out of encouragement from both reform-minded officials as well as domestic and foreign producers. A materially well-off society, termed as xiaokang, has been officially recognized as the mid-range goal of the reform inaugurated by the government. Manufacturers and trading companies have

22 created a booming consumer culture and a generation of modern Chinese consumers who are immersed in the global consumer culture and pursue individual goals for materialistic gains.

The rise of the Chinese consumer society is not an isolated phenomena, but is closely related to the fact that China has been integrated into a heavily Western- influenced global system, economically, socially, politically, and most important of all, culturally. In contemporary China, a market economy closely tied to global markets is on the rise and seems to be fast penetrating into Chinese everyday life. China has been reconnected with the outside world through memberships in various global organizations, trading partnerships, and scholastic and cultural exchange. Although different regions in

China have varying levels of global connections, the country has opened up to global influence. Dirlik (1996) claims that the world we live today is the world of global capitalism, which is characterized by globalized division of labor, global flow of capital, and globalized commodification of culture. Stuart Hall (1996) uses the United Kingdom as a case to illustrate that globalization has raised the concern with the erosion of nation- state and the affiliated national-cultural identities. Hall maintains that globalization has entered a new era, during which a new form of global mass culture is emerging. The new era is dominated by modern means of cultural production, producing images that cross and re-cross “linguistic frontiers much more rapidly and more easily.” (p. 178)

The other side of globalization is the question of local consciousness, which, in this project, refers both to the awakening of individualism and the autonomy of local government and community in China. As pointed out by Hall (1996), globalization is bringing about localization and decentralization of state power over cultural production.

23 Appadurai (1996) claims that locality is primarily relational and contextual rather than scalar or spatial. In this project, local consciousness and autonomy in contemporary

China happens on both community and individual levels. On one hand, there is emerging autonomy at the level of local governments and communities, which, under a global market economy, might (also are able to) place higher priority on their own development rather than the central government’s ideological directives. Appadurai (1996) notes that, as social formations, local communities represent anxieties for the nation-state where the techniques of nationhood are likely to be either weak or contested (p. 190). On the other hand, at individual level, individualism and the pursuit for personal happiness are becoming pervasive in China (Rao, Singhal, Ren, & Zhang, 2001). Hofstede (1984, p.151) explains that during Mao’s era, individualism and liberalism were perceived as selfishness and aversion to discipline characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie. In 1978, the responsibility system, in which farmland was distributed to every household, was carried out in rural areas. Applauded by the West as “a triumph for material incentives,” the responsibility system linked income with the quantity and quality of work, so farmers were intrinsically motivated to boost their productivity and recognized for their individual efforts (Bernstein, 1981, p. 51). A strong wave of self-awareness emerged among the Chinese people during this time. “Following your own path” has become a more and more popular motto. While there is less social and political pressure on

Chinese’s pursuit of personal happiness, the global consumer culture has introduced people in China to the world of personal desires through images of good life, beauty and personal fulfillment.

24 Obviously, in the age of global capitalism, local cultural production and consumption can no longer be adequately located and analyzed without linking it to the global production and consumption system. While recognizing the potential of the global and the local, however, postcolonial/cultural studies scholars are cautious about neglecting or underestimating the powerful response of nation-state to the global and the local and mounting nationalism around the world. Some scholars believe that despite (or due to) the rising global/local consciousness, the nation-state, as an existing reality, is emerging more than ever as the central articulating agent, especially in the Asia-Pacific

(Chen, 1998, pp. 34-35). Chen maintains that instead of declining during the globalization process, the nation-states in the Asia-Pacific region are becoming the most powerful forces to be confronted. Appadurai (1996) claims that global media production, dissemination, and consumption are being exploited by nation-states to exercise taxonomic control over difference, to create various kinds of international spectacle to domesticate difference, and to seduce small groups with the “fantasy of self-display on some sort of global or cosmopolitan stage.” (p. 39)

The power of nation-state and nationalist sentiments has thrived in post-Mao

China as a response to the emerging global consumerism and local consciousness. The global market was welcomed by both Chinese and overseas critics and intellectuals as a liberating agency, and an overly optimistic view about ideological freedom, hence local/individual autonomy, following economic freedom was pervasive in China in the

1980s. However, this optimistic dream was shattered by the crackdown of the 1989 pro- democracy movement. Although the pro-democracy movement in China has been acclaimed throughout the world, Lee (1996) insists that even the pro-democracy Chinese

25 activists were unable to imagine a “liberatory politics beyond the confines of the nation- state.” (p. 40) Instead, their rhetoric echoed the same old patriotic, nationalistic discourse exploited by the CCP. The 1990s witnessed intensified nationalistic discourses by

Chinese Party-state under the leadership of president Jiang Zemin. Lee (1996) maintains that after Tiananmen incident, even the ideology that seeks to challenge official discourses is informed by nationalism (pp. 39-40). A newly provoked wave of Chinese nationalism manifested in the publication of anti-American bestsellers China Can Say No and Behind the Demonization of China and in the fiery demonstrations after the NATO bombing of Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999. The handover of Hong Kong in

1997 and in 1999, which was depicted as a national commitment to redress the humiliation of the Opium War, and the Chinese government’s insistence on reunion with

Taiwan as an issue of national sovereignty added more heat to soaring Chinese nationalist sentiment. This resurgence of Chinese nationalism, specifically rising Chinese culturalism in a global terrain, requires special scholarly attention as well as popular awareness.

Everyday Culture: A Site of Investigation

Ultimately, we must return to the basic level of everyday life to understand abstract concepts such as nationalism/culturalism, global consumer culture, and local consciousness. Liu (1997) proposes that the everyday encompasses different temporalities, subjectivities, spaces, and public spheres; therefore, it serves as a site for imagining and practicing cultural transformation and reconstruction.

What I call everyday culture is in the province of everyday life and serves as a valuable site of investigation. Everyday culture, in my opinion, includes both mass or

26 popular culture (which are used interchangeably in this study) and folk culture, and is consumed and practiced in people’s everyday life. MacDonald (1978) distinguishes between mass culture and folk culture, and defines mass culture as manufactured for

“mass consumption by technicians employed by the ruling class,” while folk culture is “a spontaneous, autochthonous expression” of the people, shaped by the people to suit their own needs (pp. 168-169). Mass culture exploits the cultural needs of the masses to make a profit and/or to maintain political domination. Mass culture and folk culture enjoy dynamic interchanges and folk culture proves to be a valuable source for mass culture.

What Greenberg (cited in MacDonald, 1978) says about the relationship between mass culture and high culture can be also applied to that between mass culture and folk culture.

The precondition of kitsch [a German term for mass culture] is the availability close at hand of a fully-matured cultural tradition, whose discoveries, acquisitions, and perfected self-consciousness kitsch can take advantage of for its own ends. (p. 168, italics original)

Therefore, the boundary between mass culture and folk culture is blurred.

The resources for mass culture production are controlled by economically or politically privileged groups. For that reason, mass culture, especially its relationship with ideological hegemony and popular resistance, has become a significant site of investigation since the establishment of mass culture as an area of study (Real, 1989, p.

50). Mass culture has been criticized as “the opium of the masses” for its role in ideological hegemony, especially by the critics of the Frankfurt School. In recent years, a growing body of scholarly works has illustrated that the consumption of mass culture often provokes resistance, parody, and in general, agency (for examples, see Fiske,

27 1989a; McRobbie, 1996; Morley, 1980; Radway, 1984). However, it is far too simple to choose either end of the dichotomy of indoctrination and resistance.

The expropriation of popular culture for ideological purposes—be they nationalistic, anti-imperialist, or Communist—has been a distinct feature of Chinese political culture since the May Fourth Movement in 1919. Meanwhile, in the revolutionary bases of the Chinese Communist Party, folk culture was infused with a new anti-feudalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist content for the purpose of mass mobilization and consciousness raising. The mass line strategy advocated by Mao

Zedong has been integrated into the production of popular-mass culture:

From the people, to the people: this means: take the ideas of the people (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate them until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. (cited in Dean, 1998, p. 153)

After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, culturally, the country turned inward and rejected both the Western and the traditional Confucian cultural norms and practices, especially during the notorious Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). A revolutionary mass culture was fostered through rigid control of production and distribution of any cultural products and practices. The production, performance, and distribution of all forms of popular culture were nationalized and put under rigid control, institutionally and discursively, by the Party-state. Artists were incorporated into the

Party cadre system, and they also underwent continuous re-education programs to master the new discourse of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (Lu, 1996). In accordance with the widely influential cultural policies articulated by Mao in his famous speech Talks at the

28 Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, a cultural army was formed, which was indispensable for the Communist regime (Liu, 1997, p. 12). Also, the regime attempted to bring about an artistic synthesis, which combined the technologies of the urban/Western culture (such as Western musical instruments, cinema, ballet, etc.) and traditional

Chinese folk arts to reach a broader base of masses. Traditional folk art forms, such as folk songs and dances, local operas, story telling, and comic books, have been widely adopted by the CCP to foster nationalistic and revolutionary ideals. The film, Yellow

Earth, illustrates CCP’s folk art gathering process well, featuring a party cadre collecting folk songs in a rural area and turning them into anti-landlord ditties. What is called industrialization of culture in the United States was a process of politicization of culture under the Communist monopoly of cultural production in China. The popularity of most cultural products during the Maoist era (1949-1976) was less a product of market demand than of the marriage of ideological concerns and bureaucratic control of the mass media system. With the highly centralized and politicized cultural production system, there was not much space left for local communities in terms of production.

The configuration of cultural space in China has been radically altered since the reform and the opening to the West in late 1970s and early 1980s. At the same time, the

Chinese national consciousness has been expanded and challenged due to its reentry into the global community. The so-called socialism with Chinese characteristics or a socialist market economy was advocated by China’s new paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping. Lu

(1997) claims that to a large extent, China, along with other developing countries, has become an integral and inseparable part of the global economy and operates in accordance with the mechanisms of transnational production, subcontracting, marketing,

29 and consumption. The West was re-introduced to ordinary Chinese citizens after China’s

30 years of isolation from international discourse. During the post-Cultural Revolution era, scholars argued that there were three stages in the intellectual debates over national identity (cited in Chun, 1996). The first stage (1977 to 1982) was characterized by a general tendency toward restoration of an earlier golden era of socialism. Four

Modernizations, which refers to the modernization of industries, agriculture, science and technologies, and national defense, was set as the goal of national development. The second stage (1982 to 1988) witnessed experiments with Chinese tradition and Western ideologies, eventually prompting a campaign against spiritual pollution in the mid-1980s.

Anti-spiritual pollution campaign was an effort of the nation-state to regain control over the arena of popular culture. During these years, popular culture from capitalist societies such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the West, poured into mainland China in the forms of sunglasses and jeans, sentimental pop songs, and Hong Kong martial arts movies.

Chinese citizens, who had immersed in the official culture of revolution and class struggle for more than thirty years, were merely overwhelmed. As emergent and alternative sign systems, these popular culture elements posited great threat to undermine the nationalistic and revolutionary discourses of the Party-state. The third stage featured the 1988 controversial television documentary River Elegy (He Shang), which led directly to the democracy movement in 1989 and its suppression (Chun, 1996, p. 119).

Through harsh criticism of the kind of nationalism and patriotism that was closed to the outside world and to novelty, River Elegy called for “the construction of a new cultural identity based on the progressive values of an emerging Pacific region.” (p. 119)

30 Supported by reform-minded CCP officials, the television documentary demonstrated a re-emergence in a seemingly new guise of the nationalist mentality amongst intellectuals.

I propose that since the reassurance from Deng Xiaoping about the continuance of the reform and the open-door policy in 1992, China has entered a new era. Lu (1996) claims that contemporary China has showed signs of emergent “postmodern” characteristics, exemplified in an unparalleled process of commercialization in an ever- growing consumer society. The post-Tiananmen era (1989 onwards) has witnessed further commodification of cultural production, which was initiated in the 1980s.

Economic advancement brought about expansion, diversification, and deregulation of mass media system in China in the post-Mao era (Ren & Singhal, 2000). The Chinese government’s control over media system has loosened substantially as the country moved from being a planned economy to a free market economy. Substantial reduction of subsidies to media institutions from the central government has introduced market forces, hence multiplied the channels of production and dissemination and diminished the government’s censorship of the media. Commercial advertisements first appeared on television in early 1979 on the Shanghai station. A year later, China Central Television

Station (CCTV) and provincial stations in Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Chengdu were broadcasting commercials; many other stations followed in the early 1980s

(Howkins, 1982, p. 110). By 1992, one-third of China’s newspapers were completely independent of government subsidies (Pei, 1994, pp. 154-178). The same year, film studios in China were permitted to distribute films independently and form joint ventures with overseas investors. New communication technologies, such as satellite

31 communication, cable television networks, the Internet, and video compact disk (VCD), have multiplied media and cultural choices for Chinese citizens.

Under this global market economy, ordinary Chinese citizens have begun to exert a large influence upon what is to be produced by cultural institutions. The commercialization of cultural production has transformed Chinese citizens from the targets of propaganda to consumers of cultural commodities. Therefore, although the

Party-state still maintains the status of the powerful, it has to negotiate with both commercial and popular interests. CCP propaganda officials had soon learned that the best way to alleviate the impact of popular culture is to “incorporate, appropriate, and

‘domesticate’” it (Lu, 1996, p. 160). A good case here is the subtle manipulation of

China’s domestic television serials, which emerged after the Tiananmen incident. The mushrooming popular culture institutions, whether controlled by the Party, the state, or multinational companies, put television serials, pop music, and best-sellers to the market.

The 1990s also witnessed the revival of a vast array of traditional folk cultural forms, ranging from religious pilgrimages to mahjong (a traditional Chinese game), which were deemed to be superstitious, feudal, or simply not good for public health.

The unique socio-cultural, political and economic circumstances in contemporary

China indicate that Chinese mass culture is a valuable site to explore the complicity of current power configuration in China through its dynamic relationship with the Party- state, global consumer culture, and local communities and ordinary citizens. On the other hand, folk culture still enjoys its popularity among the ordinary Chinese citizens and has been a vulnerable source for cultural appropriation. The Party-state has constantly used

32 and transformed folk culture for revolutionary politics since the Yan’an days in the 1930s and 1940s (Lu, 1996, p. 149).

Scholars from various fields, such as literary and arts criticism, film studies, and mass communication, have engaged in debates on mass culture as well as appropriation of folk culture in China (Jones, 1992; Liu, 1996; 1997; Lu, 1996; 1997; Lull, 1991; Rofel,

1994; Tang, 2000; Zha, 1995). With respect to my research on the Chinese Spring

Festival, this study seeks to understand how, through everyday cultural products and practices, the ideological state apparatuses project nationalistic discourses into the everyday life of ordinary Chinese people and how common Chinese “make do” in the era of socialism with Chinese characteristics and capitalist cultural expansion. Specifically, this study takes an ethnographic approach to one cultural event, the celebration of the

Spring Festival. Rising out of folk tradition, this festival is now replete with mass culture products and practices produced and distributed by the Party-state and commercial sponsors. Along with other cultural traditions practiced across the country, the Spring

Festival tradition has been selectively reinvented by the Party-state, and incorporated into its revolutionary and nationalistic discourses and media system. This reinvention is greatly intervened by the expansion of global capitalism, which has brought about a booming consumer culture that undermines the Chinese Communist Party’s cultural hegemony in China.

Theorizing and Contextualizing the Study

As the previous section provides definitions of terms and illustrates their significance in contemporary China, this section situates the study within a theoretical

33 framework of cultural studies as well as among the on-going debates about nationalism, popular culture, global consumerism, and local consciousness in contemporary China.

Cultural Studies: Thinking Culture Politically

The terms I have defined determine the boundaries of this research as within the realm of cultural studies. The theoretical space within which I locate this field/homework is defined by a cluster of varied but overlapping work. This study, while focusing on local cultural products and practices during a Chinese festival, is thus situated within a global framework of cultural studies. As a set of unstable formations with many trajectories (Hall, cited in Storey, 1996, p. 8), cultural studies provide a site for “an on- going, open-ended, politically-oriented debate, aimed at evaluating and producing critique on our contemporary cultural condition.” (Ang, 1996a, p. 238) Chen (1998) also claims that cultural studies insists on understanding “historical contingencies and local specifities,” and has always “recognized that ‘theory’ is not a universal set of formal propositions but an analytical weapon generated out of and in response to local-historical concerns.” (p.4)

Cultural studies scholars share a consensus that “culture” in cultural studies “is neither aesthetic nor humanist in emphasis, but political.” (Fiske, 1996, p. 115) Although cultural studies cannot and should not be reduced to the study of popular culture, Storey

(1996, p. 1) asserts that the study of popular culture is central to the project of cultural studies. Popular culture is best elaborated by Stuart Hall as “an arena of consent and resistance. It is partly where hegemony arises, and where it is secured.” (Cited in Storey,

1996, p.2)

34 Chinese everyday culture has long been a revolutionized object of the Chinese

Party-state, and recent global commercialization has launched an effort to exoticize the

past and the marginal for sale. To expand and contextualize familiar cultural studies

concepts to the circumstances in contemporary China, cultural studies can provide “a

different lens with which to view the historicized and everyday lives of Natives and

Locals.” (Akindes, 1997, p. 16)

Point of Entry: The Work of the Imagination in China

The specific design of my study stems from Appadurai’s (1996) discussion of the

work of the imagination, which extends to how media and migration, as two major and

interconnected diacritics, impact the work of the imagination as a constitutive feature of

modern subjectivity in contemporary China. Here, imagination is construed as “a

property of collectives”, collectives that Appadurai regards as communities of sentiment,

groups that imagine and feel things together (p. 8). Imagination, Appadurai claims,

especially when collective, can create ideas of neighborhood and nationhood, and is a

staging ground for action, not only for escape (p.7). Appadurai maintains that

imagination has entered the fabrication of social lives for many people in many societies

as the deterritorialization of persons, images, and ideas has taken on new force (1991, p.

198).

I see Appadurai’s theorizing of the work of the imagination as the point of entry for my study in nationalism/culturalism, global consumerism, local consciousness, and everyday culture in China. As claimed by Appadurai, the work of the imagination is neither purely emancipatory nor entirely disciplined but “a space of contestation,” (1996, p. 4) my study is to illustrate the forces of contestation in the realm of everyday cultural

35 reproduction, i.e., the Party-state, global consumer culture, and local communities and individuals. As a communication scholar, my academic interest lies in how the work of the imagination, specifically the imagining of a cultural China, has been transformed through communicative practices made possible by an increasingly globalized world.

Contemporary China serves as a special case to study the work of the imagination in social life. Due to China’s insulation from the larger world for several decades, Chinese citizens’ ability and possibility of global imagination had been tightly restrained by the

Party-state propaganda apparatus. The Party-state’s rigid control over media and migration provoked a unified and officially sanctioned imagined world. Chinese society has become increasingly open and mobile since the end of 1970s, which coincided with the emergence of massively globalized media and migration throughout the world.

Chinese people’s collective imagination has been facilitated by all forms of communicative practices, ranging from globally situated mass media system to increased interpersonal communication with fellow Chinese and foreign residents.

Derived from Appadurai’s theory, my study takes a look at media and migration and their impact on the work of the imagination of Chinese citizens, specifically, the way they imagine China in a globalized world. While Appadurai (1996) identifies five building blocks of the imagined worlds, this study focuses on two of them, mediascapes and ethnoscapes (p. 33). Mediascapes are concerned with both “the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information” and “the images of the world created by these media.” (p. 35) Ethnoscape refers to the landscape of persons who

“constitute the shifting world in which we live,” including tourist, immigrants, refugees, and guest workers (p.33). Appadurai believes that on the globally mobile ethnoscapes,

36 more and more persons and groups have to deal with the realities of moving or the fantasies of wanting to move. While I conceptualize the Chinese Party-state, global consumer culture, and local consciousness are three major contending forces in the work of the imagination, and consider everyday culture as the site of investigation, mediascapes and ethnoscapes serve as the organizing framework for the writing (or the platform for discussion).

The Spring Festival enables me to look at contemporary Chinese mediascapes and ethnoscapes at an intensified cross-section moment; however, the present has to be situated in the historical and academic contexts of contemporary China.

Histories of Mediascapes and Ethnoscapes in China

My introduction of the histories of Chinese mediascapes and ethnoscapes focuses on the aspects of investigation in this study. These include historical accounts of television and the Internet, as well as the urban ethnoscapes created by highly restricted social and spatial mobility since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in

1949.

Television

China’s television broadcast grew out of Chinese Communist Party’s belief that mass media, including entertainment media, were the loyal servants of the Party-state.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established the Chinese mass media system according to the Soviet media theory, which viewed mass media as instruments of the

Party-state to be used to achieve unity of knowledge, and to serve as a collective agitator, propagandist and organizer for the masses, to help gain acceptance and understanding of the Party-sponsored ideology (Schramm, 1956).

37 In the early stage of the Republic, China’s mass media infrastructure relied on radio, newspapers, and touring movie theatres to link the central government to the grass- root cadres and the mass. Due to its ideological significance, the mass media system was solely owned by the Party-state and tightly controlled by an elite group in CCP (Chu,

1979, p. 40). The Chinese Party-state has never denied the propaganda nature of the media; on the contrary, mass media have been often described as the mouthpiece of the

CCP. As Lu has vividly depicted, media in China were turned into “political bulletin boards, propaganda trumpets, and announcers of CCP combat orders” (1994, p. 155).

China’s first television broadcasting started in the late 1950s, as the first television station, Beijing Television, had an experimental broadcast on May 1, 1958

(Hong, 1998, p. 46). However, China’s television broadcast was often disrupted and then stopped entirely during the chaotic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Before the economic reform started in 1978, China had merely 32 television stations across the nation (Hong, 1998, p. 78). There were only 3.4 million television sets in China in 1978, a tiny figure in a country with 1 billion people (Zhao Y. Z., 1998, p. 53). It was not until the late 1970s, after the reform was inaugurated, that television became the country’s most rapidly growing mass medium.

In 1978, Beijing Television was renamed China’s Central Television (CCTV), becoming China’s official national television network. By the early 1980s, CCTV had become established as one of the world’s largest networks with one of the world’s largest television audiences (Hong, 1998, p. 48). At the same time, more and more provincial and municipal television stations signed on the air. At the end of the 1980s, there were more than 400 television stations broadcasting throughout China, of which about 100

38 produced original programming (Lull, 1991, p. 24). The 1980s also witnessed a skyrocketing growth of sales of television set as a common household necessity, as nearly every family bought one, a phenomenon Lull regards as similar to what happened in the

United States in the 1950s (1991, p. 20). By 1990, Chinese families owned about 150 million television sets. The rapid growth of the number of viewers stimulated investment in more stations, more channels, as well as in the extension of daily broadcast hours

(Zhao, Y. Z. 1998, p. 53).

Like other media, for many years, television broadcasting was financed totally by the government, with CCTV supported by the central government and local stations supported by local governments. Since 1982, television stations have been under the administrative umbrella of the Ministry of Radio and Television, with CCTV assuming practical authority over the development of the system (Lull, 1991). CCTV enjoys a paramount position because it is designed to unify the country through “presentation of official news and information, culturally-appropriate entertainment, and use of the official dialect.” (Lull, p. 22) Ultimately, the Chinese Communist Party Central

Committee and the Propaganda Bureau determine policies related to television broadcasting. In 1981, the Secretariat of the Party’s Central Committee passed a resolution stipulating that “broadcasting must keep in line with the Party voluntarily, and serve the Party’s major objectives of the time.” (Hong, 1998, pp. 48-49)

Since the beginning of the economic reform, market mechanism unavoidably entered the tightly controlled media infrastructure, as the Party-state adopted a policy of gradually cutting subsidies for the media and encouraging commercial financing. After the appearance of China’s first television commercial in late 1970s, in 1988, for the first

39 time, Chinese Party-state clearly stated that broadcasting should depend on multiple channels of financing (Zhao, Y. Z., 1998, p. 54). Advertising then became the single most important nongovernmental source of media revenue for television stations. Though previously condemned as an evil of capitalist societies, advertising has been promoted by reform-minded officials as a potential tool for economic advancement. In 1992, television advertising revenue reached RMB 2.05 billion (approximately U.S. dollar 25 million), which was close to the RMB 2.38 billion of broadcast operating funds provided by the governments at all levels that year (Zhao, Y. Z. 1998, p. 55). As market forces were introduced, television stations started to enjoy some financial autonomy, management decentralization, deregulation, and business diversification.

The Chinese Party-state’s unreserved embrace of a market economy after 1992 has accelerated the growth of the television industry. New, financially-autonomous television stations—such as Shanghai Oriental Television, established in 1993,—quickly become fierce rivals of the government-funded and managed stations, forcing them to improve production quality. There has been a swift expansion of cable television stations as the Party-state loosens the restrictions on the development of cable television by provincial or local governments. In 1995, around 3,000 cable stations and networks were set up (Wu, 1996). In 2000, the number of China cable television users reached 79.2 million and television stations covered 93.4 percent of the population (National Bureau of

Statistics of China, 2001b). By the year of 2001, Chinese television stations had more than 2,000 channels nationwide and broadcast 5 million hours annually (“Let’s turn,”

2001). More channels and increasing broadcast hours bring more revenues. In 1999, the annual advertising revenue for the broadcasting industry reached RMB 10 billion (US

40 dollar 1.2 billion), doubled from the RMB 5 billion advertising income in 1994 (“Turn it up,” 2000). It was estimated that advertising revenue for each provincial television station surged by 20 percent between 1995 and 1999. In addition to advertisements, commercial sponsorship of specific television programs gradually spreads from entertainment programming to news programming, as infomercials also become common on television.

Nevertheless, commercialization and management decentralization do not lead to a “free-of-Party-state” media system. After the 1989 pro-democracy movement, while reflecting on media reform and its role during the pro-democracy movement, CCP leaders reiterated the mouthpiece theory, and stressed the Party tradition of positive propaganda (Zhao, Y. Z., 1998, pp. 45-46). To contain the threat from satellite television, the government has long banned satellite dishes (Pei, 1994). CCP propaganda chief Ding

Guangen, also a member of the Party’s Politburo, claimed in March 2001 that media could compete for readers in an expanding market but the state must maintain primary ownership and control content (“Communist Party,” 2001). Party propaganda officials dictate content and squelch reporting of sensitive political and social issues in Chinese media. Though Chinese media mostly remain docile and are engaged in self-censorship, the Party-state has shown in many cases that it will not hesitate to reprimand those testing the limits.

Meanwhile, the Party-state has recognized the unavoidable influence of global popular culture as long as the country remains open for economic development. While keeping a close eye on content, the Party-state largely encourages the development of television as a major entertainment medium. Television sitcoms, soap operas, variety shows, and MTV have started to take over the little screen. Since 1998, a movement of

41 “separating production and broadcasting” encouraged the growth of private television production companies as well as the production of popular entertainment programs. With regard to importing foreign television programs, although Chinese media censors are strict with availability of foreign news programs, they are much more lenient with foreign information and entertainment programs as long as the programs do not contain anti- communist and anti-socialist messages (Hong, 1998, pp. 60-70).

In short, Chinese television broadcasting has developed remarkably under the emerging market economy; however, although the commercialized sector has already gained ground within the current Party-state controlled media system, it is not free of official censorship or control.

The Internet: Emerging New Media in China

The first email sent from China reverberated to the nationalistic and optimistic undertone of the 1980s. On September 20, 1987, Professor Qian Tianbai sent out the first email message: “Crossing the Great Wall into the world” through Chinese Academic

Network (CANET), which indicated the beginning of Chinese Internet age. However, until the mid-1990s, Internet use was mostly limited to academic or governmental use, and was very rare among ordinary Chinese. In January 1995, China Telecom started to provide Internet service to the general public via telephone lines and cable. This explains why the first official regulation regarding the Internet did not come out until February

1996.

In November 1997, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) published the first China Internet Development Report, claiming that by October 31,

1997, there were 299,000 computers connected to the Internet, 620,000 Internet users,

42 and 4,066 domain names registered in the domain “cn,” which is allocated to mainland

China (China Internet Network Information Center, 1997). Since then, Chinese Internet

use has almost doubled every six months. By December 31, 2000, the number of

computers connected to the Internet was 8.92 million, the number of Internet users was

22.5 million, and the domain names registered under “cn” was 122,099. (China Internet

Network Information Center, 2001). The January 2003 report from CNNIC indicated that

the number of computers connected to the Internet was 20.83 million and the number of

Internet users, 59.10 million.

Internet use has dramatically altered the landscapes of everyday life in Chinese

society. Although the per capita Internet access of Chinese is still low, the Chinese

public, especially the urban population, has been swept away by the so-called Internet

wave. The booming Internet development has generated great public interest. Popular

newspapers such as Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend) and Zhongguo Qingnian Bao

(Chinese Youth) dedicate specific sections to the Internet related topics. Radio and

Television anchors debate ethical questions related to virtual extramarital affairs.

Magazines run article after article about the development of the Chinese Internet

industry. Young Internet entrepreneurs such as Zhang Chaoyang (Sina.com’s founder)

and Ding Nei (Netease.com’s founder) have become celebrities in China. By the time of

the 2001 Spring Festival, “Are you online yet (Shangwang le ma)?” became a standard greeting between young friends. Internet-related lingo is used by the young as well as the old, in private conversations and in public debates. New vocabulary such as wangmin

(Netizen, or Internet user), wangyou (Net friends), wangba (Internet café), and kuandai wang (broadband) become buzzwords on media and in daily life. Online abbreviations,

43 such as 886 (bye-bye) and k.k.k. (faster, faster, faster) spill over to mobile phone short messages and everyday conversations. Chinese are not only captivated by the convenience brought about by the Internet, but also fascinated by the idea that China is finally on the “fast track” of internationalization due to its new virtual connections.

The Internet has presented the Chinese Party-state with a dilemma. The regulation of the new medium must not jeopardize the kind of openness to the outside world needed to stimulate economic growth in China. The official monitoring of the medium started as soon as it became accessible to the Chinese public. As early as February 1996, the State

Council issued an interim act to regulate public networks and the Internet (China Internet

Network Information Center, 2000). In December 1997, China’s Ministry of Public

Security issued regulations on managing the security of domestic and international computer information network connections. The regulations outline the duties and responsibilities of China’s Internet service providers. Punishments are also spelled out for producing, providing, and distributing materials that deemed to be harmful to the government or the social system.

China’s computer network infrastructure, especially Internet Access Provider

(IAP) service, is exclusively owned by state organizations or quasi-official market monopolies. For IAPs, the state issues a constantly changing (or growing) list of URLs that should been blocked by Internet firewalls, usually including major foreign media sites such as Cable Network News (CNN) and The New York Times. China’s regulations on the Internet are also directed toward Internet service providers (ISPs) and Internet content providers (ICPs) as well as ordinary Internet users. Chinese Internet service providers are responsible for registering their customers with the Ministry of Public

44 Security. Authorities also require all Internet service providers to keep logs of all users, and even which websites they visit. Internet content providers need to record all information posted on their sites. To comply with the regulations, ICPs routinely engage in self-censorship, with filter software blocks remarks containing certain words or watchful webmasters manually delete sensitive comments made on their Bulletin Board

Systems (BBS). ICPs also withhold news obtained from sources deemed to be problematic. Although Internet regulations are hard to enforce, dissident websites have been shut down. Several arrests related to the Internet were made by the spring of 2001.

These cases were kept low profile and never discussed on mainstream media. In early

2001, Huang Qi, a native Chengdu resident who published information about the 1989

Tiananmen incident on his website, faced trial for subversion of the state. His trial went largely un-noticed by the public, which at the time, was obsessed with a virtual celebration of the 2001 Spring Festival.

On an individual level, Chinese Internet users are constantly reminded that current technology makes it fairly easy to monitor which Internet accounts are used to make online visits to restricted sites, allowing the Ministry of Public Security to gather evidence sufficient for an arrest. By the end of the 2000, local Public Security Bureaus in

China’s urban areas set up special task forces (popularly known as “Internet Police”) to monitor local Internet accounts electronically. However, on a daily basis, the government

Internet regulations are practically out of sight, and out of mind for ordinary Chinese netizens. In reality, to enforce centralized control over the Internet proves difficult. Jia

Tao, an active netizen, said that the government’s blocking of sensitive websites was in fact ineffective: “If an individual is determined enough to obtain access to those websites,

45 this person will find a way to do it.” Jia told me that for those who knew how to circumvent the blocks, existing firewalls were easily overcome by using proxy servers;

Also new websites came online everyday, old websites changed their addresses or made mirror sites.

In these years of Internet boom in China, there has been a subtle change of

Chinese Party-state’s attitude toward the medium, from merely defensive using “virtual censorship” to actively engaging in online propaganda. With a tradition of utilizing media for political and ideological purposes, the Party-state has recognized not only the threats posed by the Internet but more importantly, the unlimited potential of the medium, especially its global reach to Chinese communities around the world. China’s top leaders have urged officials and state-controlled media to beef up Chinese websites to create a positive image of the country. “The popularity of the Internet enables different cultures to influence each other beyond borders. China should take every opportunity to promote its culture to the world.” Guangming Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP claimed

(“What They are Saying,” 2000). In August 2002, People’s Daily issued a clear statement to call on Chinese media to build up their websites for a propaganda fight against “enemy forces at home and abroad.” (MacLeod, 2000) The newspaper believed that the Internet had become “key battlefield” in China’s “political and ideological struggle,” and advocated to “promptly build a corps of experts which have high political consciousness, good news sense, Internet technology savvy and command of foreign languages.”

(MacLeod, 2000)

Major Chinese official media outlets, such as the newspapers, People’s Daily,

China Daily, and China Central Television Station (CCTV), have set up their own

46 websites. People’s Daily, the flagship of the Chinese Communist Party, was among the first Chinese media online, starting its website in 1997 (http://www.peopledaily.com.cn).

Chinese government agencies have been working on their websites too. Recognizing the great influence of the Internet on the youth in China, the Ministry of Culture, the Central

Committee of the Youth League, and six other government agencies established “Internet

Civilization Project” to “gain the initiative to get to the commanding height of the

Internet, a new battlefield for political thought work.” (Xu, Chen, & Yu, 2001) In

February 2001, during the Spring Festival celebration, the United Front Department of the CCP Central Committee, which works to unite all social and political forces for the unification and modernization of China, opened a website (http://www.zytzb.org.cn). The site includes an introduction of multi-party cooperation led by the CCP, policies regarding minorities and religions, status of Chinese in Hong Kong, , Taiwan, as well as overseas Chinese, and research results of the united front work (“United Front”, 2001).

The Chinese Culture Information Net (http://www.ccnt.com.cn), established by the

Ministry of Culture, has served as the Internet forerunner of a “Huaxia Cultural Bond

Project.” The concept of “spiritual/cultural bond as the unifying element” was first advocated by President Jiang Zeming: “The 5,000-year-old splendid culture created by the sons and daughters of various ethnic groups in China has always been the spiritual bond that unifying all Chinese people. It is also the foundation for the realization of a peaceful reunification.” (“Huaxia”)

The Party-state’s cyber projects nourish the rising online nationalism among

Chinese Internet users. These users represent a homogenous group, with about 70 percent composed of males and 84 percent of users being under the age of 35 (China Internet

47 Network Information Center, 2001). Most netizens are rich, young, highly educated Han

Chinese, who live in major metropolitan areas. Before 2001, the most noticeable online nationalist movements included the protest against persecution of people of Chinese heritage during the May riots in Indonesia in 1998 and the NATO bombing of China’s embassy in Yugoslavia on May 8, 1999. Taiwanese and ethnic separatist movements were also often discussed during these intense periods. Chinese netizens were the first to respond to these events with rising nationalistic sentiments. Their responses, though initiated from a grass roots level, were close in line with official nationalism propagated by the Party-state (J. L. Qiu, 2001). The online nationalistic passion was initially shunned by the Party-state for fear of political instability; however, in recent years, it has been shrewdly manipulated by official media and government officials. People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), initiated a Bulletin Board

System (BBS) for the public on its website within 48 hours of the NATO bombing incident. The BBS was later named as Qiangguo BBS, which meant literarily “to make

China strong.” Qiangguo BBS has become one of the largest Chinese language online forums, and has played an important role in the up surging of cyber-nationalism in China.

While the popularization of television is one of the most visible signs of China’s modernization process, the recent rapid growth of the Internet indicates that Chinese mediascapes have finally as the Chinese say, fully “linked up with international rail tracks.” As urban residents make up the greatest television audience and an overwhelming majority of Internet users, I focus my attention on urban populations and space in this study. The following account provides historical background of urban ethnoscapes in China.

48 Maoist City: Design of Urban Space and Power in the New Republic

The Maoist ideal vision of Chinese cityscape, though never fully achieved, would consist of a constellation of urban communes. The city of the new Republic was configured for maximum productivity, not consumption. Uniformed, standardized, and self-sufficient compounds of production units would efficiently serve the purposes of working, housing, leisure, shopping, and childcare for the masses of the New China.

According to acclaimed architect Liang Sicheng, immediately after the establishment of the Republic in 1949, Mao Zedong stood on the rostrum of Tiananmen and grandly pronounced: “We’ll see a forest of chimneys from here,” referring to massive industrialization of urban spaces (Zha, 1995, p. 63).

The new Republic initiated a development framework of “industrialization with minimal urbanization.” (Naughton, 1995) The household registration (hukou) system successfully restricted mobility from rural areas to urban areas, from small cities to big cities to limit the growth of urban centers. On the blueprint of Chinese socialist construction, each city was just one small piece of a larger Utopia, consisting of many production units. Central planning was an important ingredient of socialism, as egalitarianism was the basic principle of Communism. In the pre-reform era, municipal governments were engaged primarily in collecting revenues and handing them over to higher-level provincial or national governments. Under the mandate of “politics in command” and “class struggle as the guiding principle,” local leaders focused their attention mainly on carrying out political and ideological directives.

49 To understand urban space and life during the Maoist era, we have to examine the

work unit compound, which emerged as a principal unit of newly constructed urban space during the Maoist period (Gaubatz, 1995, p. 30).

Work Unit (danwei) was the most basic and powerful social unit in the daily life

of urban Chinese in the Maoist China. Danwei is a generic term that covers all sorts of

institutions, including factories, stores, schools, government departments, hospitals, and

even military units. Work unit, under the traditional, state-ownership system, was usually

referred as an “iron rice bowl” and guaranteed life-long tenure of employment and

benefits. It employed a dual power structure: one was the Communist Party branch

committee, and the other was the administrative arm, which was in charge of production.

Work unit, as an economic, social, and political unit, enjoyed multiple functions, in

charge of productivity, Party indoctrination and surveillance, household registration,

pension, housing, entertainment, and even family planning and domestic disputes of its

employees. The involvement with one’s work unit in Maoist China was much more

intimate than the relationship between an individual and his/her place of employment in a

market economy. A work unit was not merely a place of employment for Chinese but a

marker of identity, and evoked a sense of belonging. An urban resident without a work

unit was considered wuye youmin (unemployed vagrant) and surely would give rise to

looks of suspicion. The extraordinary Party-state surveillance and political control over

urban population through the work unit were partially achieved through the construction

of work unit compounds, which were relatively self-sufficient and combined housing,

workplace, and the provision of social services for urban Chinese.

Work unit compounds are usually walled areas, which offer spaces for work and

50 for play, for home life and for community life. An account by He Yumei, a 50-year-old

Chengdu resident, illustrates life at a work unit.

Yumei grew up in a typical work unit compound in the 1950s, after her father was recruited to work for a state-owned factory located in the eastern outskirts of Chengdu.

After she graduated from the nursing school in 1970, Yumei was assigned to work as a nurse at the clinic of the factory. “At that time, it was not easy to get assigned to our factory.” Yumei said, “My father had been working there for years, so it was taken into consideration. It was a big factory with very good benefits. We had our peak time. At one point we had about one thousand five hundred workers, and everybody wanted to work there or marry somebody working at the factory.”

Upon my request, she described to me the layout of the factory compound and daily life there:

You entered factory through the guarded south gate, and you would see a four-story administrative building. All the factory offices, like director’s office, the Party committee’s office, the union, the accounts department, personnel department, etc, were in that building. The clinic I worked for was in the building next to the administrative building. It also had an assembly hall, a factory library, a broadcast room, and a dining hall. The workshops were in several one-story brick buildings. That was the production quarter (Chang Qu). Workers all lived in the living quarter (Shenghuo Qu). Actually that was where I grew up. It was in the northern half of the compound. Here you would see rows and rows of four or five- story brick buildings. They were very neatly arranged. Some were apartments for families, and some were dormitories for single workers. Besides residential buildings, we had a couple of groceries, a nursery and kindergarten, and a factory club. The grocery stores sold vegetables, fruits, candies, toothpaste, etc. Basic necessities. It was fine for daily needs. We had our own water tower and power generator. We also got a bathhouse and a sports ground, where once a year, we held a sports meeting. We did not have a swimming pool, but in summer we could use the pool in the electrical instrument and meter plant next door. It was a very convenient life….

51 My husband worked for the factory too. In fact we met at work. He was a workshop head. Since we both worked for the factory, we were assigned a one-room dorm by the factory right after we got married, then eventually a two-bedroom when our daughter was about ten years old. As to our daily routines, on workdays normally we walked for no more than ten minutes to work, we had lunches at the dining hall, and on the way back home after work, we picked up food for dinner from the grocery around the corner of our apartment building. Sometimes we went back to my parents’ place for dinner if we were busy, since they were only a few buildings away from us. On weekends, sometimes the Union organized movies or live performances at the assembly hall. My husband loved playing Ping- pong, so sometimes he went to play with his buddies at the club. You could also play cards, Chinese chess, and other games at the club. The Youth League also organized weekend parties and contests to enrich young workers’ life.

However, not every Chinese urban dweller resided within a work-unit compound and lived a communal and self-contained life. In fact, a considerable number of urban

Chinese continued to live in street housing located in the old city center, either because their work units were too small to construct the self-sufficient compounds or because some original urban residents chose to live in their old neighborhoods. However, this did not mean that they were out of the Party-state’s pervasive daily monitoring mechanism.

After 1949, existing houses in streets and alleys of the old city center were registered under a public housing system. According to the principle of egalitarianism and household sizes, these houses were usually re-allocated to families who had been living around the area for a very moderate amount of rent. These so-called jumin hu

(households that were located outside of work unit compounds) were assigned to respective civilian neighborhood committees (jiedao banshi chu), which worked in close coordination with police substations (paichu suo) located in the neighborhood. The police substations kept the official household registration of every resident of the neighborhood.

Under each neighborhood committee, there were approximately 15 to 25 Residents’

52 Councils (jumin weiyuan hui), which worked with about 100 to 200 households respectively. Residents’ Councils served similar social functions as the work unit, and were in charge of propagating policies, birth control supervision, sidewalk cleaning, as well as mediating inter-neighbor and intra-family conflict. Residents’ Councils oft-times organized small production workshops for residents who did not have regular employment. Another important function of the council was to work with the public security bureau in crime prevention and ensuring stability. Council members were usually retired persons who had lived in the neighborhood for years. With such a highly mobilized neighborhood watch, strangers were always noticed and so-called deviant behaviors were easily prevented.

Since a market economy was adapted by the Chinese Party-state in the 1980s, previously highly controlled mediascapes have become more and more lax as traditional media industries (television, film, radio, etc.) became commercialized, and new decentralized media (the Internet) have invaded what was once a controlled space; meanwhile, Chinese urban ethnoscapes have become more and more mobile with the corrosion of the household registration system, the deterioration of work unit compounds, and the rising private home ownership. In the following chapters, I shall present how these deterritorialized mediascapes and mobile ethnoscapes brought changes into the celebration of the 2001 Spring Festival.

The following account focuses on scholarly examination of the topics of nationalism, global consumerism, local communities, as well as everyday culture in contemporary China.

53

An On-going Scholarly Debate

Nationalism, global consumerism, local communities, and their relations to popular and folk culture in contemporary China have been researched from several different perspectives and disciplines, such as film studies, literary and arts criticism, mass communication, and anthropology (Chun, 1996; Dean, 1998; Liu, 1996; Lu, 1996;

1997; Lull, 1991; Jones, 1992; Rofel, 1994; Tang, 2000; Zha, 1995).

Liu (1996) has traced the evolving roles of the revolutionary culture of masses and the commercial popular culture in China. He claimed that the culture of masses

(Qunzhong wenyi), as a legacy of the revolutionary past and an essential component of the revolutionary hegemony, could not be dismissed as merely residual and irrelevant in contemporary China. The culture of the masses, as the intrusion of revolutionary hegemony in Chinese people’s everyday lives, has transformed the everyday into

“spectacles of the noneveryday.” (Liu, 1996, p. 121) The rapid marketization of Chinese economy has significantly reconstructed Chinese social life, and its effect could be felt mostly at the level of everyday life, as consumer culture has infiltrated the society. The author demonstrated that in the domain of Chinese popular culture, the revolutionary legacy of the culture of the masses, together with the legacy of China’s own folk traditions and customs, constituted a distinctively different site and space other than

Western popular culture. Liu claimed that the critical models of popular culture within the Western context, such as that of the Frankfurt school’s theory of culture industry and of Gramscian hegemony, were further complicated by China’s legacies. The author concluded that contemporary Chinese culture of the everyday has increasingly become

54 the site of dialogical contention where a variety of forces, including the cultural industry and China’s local and national forms and styles, intersected and interpenetrated. He proposed that the tension and contradictions inherent in China’s popular culture domain had to be fully analyzed in order to begin a much needed project of cultural reconstruction.

Arguing from the same line, Tang (2000) claimed that the revolutionary culture

has contributed to an impoverishment of everyday life of Chinese, which took the form of

“moralizing feelings, social relations, and quotidian routines.” (p. 278) Throughout the

Maoist era (1949-1976), a collective desire to resist the inertia of everyday life and to

construct a Maoist utopia became an integral part of the grand socialist movement. This

politics of utopia, Tang argued, had to negotiate with consumerism and mass culture in

the late 20th century. Analyzing visual images and literary works from the Maoist age

and from the l990s, Tang concluded that Maoist mass culture emphasized “content over

form, use value over exchange value, participatory communal action over heterogeneous

everyday life.” (p. 283) Maoist mass culture was preachy rather than entertaining,

production-oriented rather than consumption-oriented. Increased Chinese consumerism of

the past two decades has translated the collective rejection of everyday life into consumer

desires, and even the revolutionary past might be made profitable. This blatant

consumerism, Tang argued, had its origin in the revolutionary past when consumption

was suppressed. Tang concluded that both revolutionary mass culture and global

consumerism invited the consumers to participate in a promised utopia overcoming

mundane everyday life, though the former was out of a moral imperative, the later

through imaginary identifications with consumer desires.

55 The complex relationship between government control, global consumer culture,

and local consciousness has also been illustrated in field research, such as the first major

ethnographic account of media and everyday life in contemporary China, James Lull’s

China turned on: Television, reform, and resistance (1991). Lull interviewed ordinary

Chinese urban families from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xi’an in 1986. The book demonstrated the multiple visions and intentions held by employees at every level within the television industry, the inefficient and confused bureaucracy that could not manage in

the era of market economy, and the contradictory values expressed in programs and

commercials. The responses from Lull’s interviewees showed subversive and alternative

readings of Chinese media. Lull concluded that the stream of cultural imaginary that has

penetrated into China since the opening of the country has produced a formidable corpus

of alternative visions, which have encouraged Chinese people to imagine radical new

ways of living and thinking. He believed that television was the foremost instrument in

the evolution of the new consciousness, and a uniform ideology cannot be guaranteed.

The often conflicting perspectives that Chinese television articulates did not simply stand

alongside one another in the popular consciousness, unanalyzed and uncriticized by its

audience. Lull maintained that television exaggerated and intensified each stream of

information in the ideological flood that it cumulatively delivered to the viewers,

producing an electronic amplification of contradiction that has dramatically altered the

nation’s cultural and political landscapes. The most fundamental contradictions in China,

Lull claimed, were glaring disparities within the idealized, unified voice of the

Communist Party and the alternative realities that were made known primarily by

56 television. Lull argued that television culture has contributed to the popular support of the democracy movement in 1989.

While celebrating the liberating role of mass media culture in China in the late

1980s, Lull (1991) was unable to predict the Party-state’s skillful appropriation and subtle manipulation of popular culture in the 1990s, which was exemplified in Yearnings

(Kewang), a highly popular television soap opera aired in January 1991, 18 months after the Tiananmen Incident in June 1989 (Wang & Singhal, 1991). Rofel (1994) traced the complex “passion for meaning” that animated the consumption and interpretation of

Yearnings. The author employed an ethnographic approach that asked socio-discursive questions about the operation of popular culture as a site for the constitution of national subjects. Rofel argued that this seemingly innocent and apolitical dramatic miniseries narrated political allegories of nation-ness. Though the viewers in China experienced

Yearnings as a realm separated from those themes most facilely associated with the state, meanings that have circulated through post-Mao official discourses were intertwined throughout the narrative. Rofel maintained that Chinese nation-state was continuously re- imagined and contested through the creation of interpretive communities that had complex stakes in specific narratives of nation-ness. The viewers of Yearnings seized upon the ambivalences within the story to challenge the potential hegemony of meanings within the text. Rofel concluded that the popularity, as well as the controversy, of

Yearnings signaled an emergent process, a contested moment in the making of Chinese national political culture. Furthermore, Rofel argued that popular culture as a site offered complicated possibilities for oppositional practices.

57 Lu (1996) used the production of Yearnings as an example of how popular culture

was incorporated in the official discourse of Chinese Party-state. The rise of popular

culture in the 1980s signaled a rebellion against official communist, Maoist ideology and

language, and the initial response from the Party-state was a mixture of uneasiness,

embarrassment, opposition, and denigration. Lu argued this response was due to that the

Party-state was perplexed by the emergent, unfamiliar system of signification. The

official propaganda apparatus have soon learned that the best way to fight emergent,

unfamiliar cultural forms was to appropriate them. The propaganda machine skillfully

neutralized and assimilated many of the resurgent forces in popular culture, and

Yearnings served as a good case of subtle manipulation.

Lu (1996) analyzed the production and hegemonic forces behind the creation and promotion of Yearnings, and pointed out that the Communist Party quickly saw the effectiveness of this melodrama that praised the virtues of tolerance, harmony, and faithfulness. Lu claimed that the television drama softened and detached the viewers from immediate political action, and was acclaimed by Li Ruihuan, then head of ideology and propaganda, as a model to be learned by all artists and writers:

The influence we exert must be subtle, imperceptible, and the people should be influenced without being conscious of it. In order to make socialist principles and moral virtues acceptable to the broad masses, we must learn to use the forms that the masses favor.(cited in Lu, 1996, p. 162)

Lu concluded that popular culture would remain one of the most interesting, protean, fluid forces in China in the years to come. It presented abundant opportunities and challenges, and was subject to appropriation and use by all interest groups. Lu warned that if applied in the appropriate way, popular culture might neutralize any remaining

58 opposition to the rule of the Party, as popular culture brought with it instant gratification and a forgetfulness regarding history.

However, along with other scholars, Lu (1996) has recognized the simultaneously subversive nature of popular culture in China. Examining parodies embedded in the songs of pop singer Cui Jian and narratives of novelist Wang Shuo, Lu claimed that the parodies in their multilayered discourses actually subverted two dominant cultures: the official discourse of Maoism and revolution and the time-honored tradition of the

Chinese intellectually high arts. In both Cui Jian and Wang Shuo’s works, the typical discourse of official culture was often inserted into the discourse of the marginalized subculture, ridiculing the solemnity and holiness of the revolutionary spirit. The result was a devastating subversion of official culture and a disillusion with grand revolutionary myths upheld by the Party-state. Lu confirmed that the effect of Chinese popular culture was double-edged and should be grasped dialectically. Scholars exploring popular culture in China should be aware both of the decentering potential embedded in it and of its appropriation by the Party-state.

Focusing on popular music in contemporary China, Jones (1992) distinguished between pop music (Tongsu yinyue) and rock music (Yaogun yinyue) and analyzed the texts of each. Drawing on extensive interviews with singers, songwriters and critics, as well as cultural, sociological, musical, and textual analyses, Jones suggested that Chinese popular music in the post-Mao era has become a crucial component of mass media and an important participant in the public sphere. Jones followed the typology developed by

Stuart Hall in the analysis of popular culture in the West, and claimed that the reception of contemporary Chinese popular music could be either hegemonic, negotiated, or

59 emancipatory. Hegemonic uses (preferred reading) of popular music passively transmitted the lyrical and ideological content of state-sanctioned songs; negotiated uses accorded the privileged position to the dominant definition of social relations while reserving the right to make a negotiated application to local conditions; emancipatory

(oppositional) uses of popular music directly subverted hegemonic codes embedded in all kinds of official discourses by the nation-state. Jones concluded that the relation of pop music to the public sphere was more of a negotiated and participatory nature. Rock music, on the other hand, was the product of a sub-cultural group and posed more of an opposition (a cultural opposition, not necessarily a political opposition) to the dominant official culture.

Global consumer culture has been largely conceptualized as a counter-force to the

Party-state. Scholars have also explored how local cultures and globalism interact in

China. Zha (1995) has presented an account that illustrated how global consumerism offered pragmatic and escapist resistance to the Party-state in the post-Tiananmen era.

She examined the ways in which the proliferation of popular culture and mass media was changing China to a consumer society. Zha discussed the major individuals involved in the production of Yearnings, Beijing’s urban transformation, the production of award- winning movies such as Farewell My Concubine and Raise the Red Lantern, pervasive corruption in the journalistic world, the wholesale promotion of the novel The Abandoned

Capital, and the proliferation of the avant-garde via a Hong Kong media conglomerate. A journalistic more than a scholarly account, China Pop featured Zha’s autobiographic account and her interviews with a range of educated, urban professionals, including writers, architects, filmmakers, artists, critics, and publishers. Zha focused on the big

60 cities, the intellectuals, and the cultural industry to illustrate the emerging cosmopolitanism that is pulling China into a global culture, and chronicled how cultural productions were commercialized and professionalized, and how such processes have complicated and profound implications for the future of Chinese society. Zha concluded that a sense of fatigue and cynicism about politics in the post-Tiananmen era has geared the energies of urban Chinese to a global consumer culture, focusing on money, lifestyle, and professional success.

However, scholars have also illustrated the prospects of Chinese local communities and marginalized groups to resist and challenge global consumerism culture as well as nationalist discourse (Dean, 1998; Dutton, 1999; Yang, 1997). White (1990) claimed that diversified social and economic structures brought about by economic reform in both urban and rural areas have flourished and undermined the once powerful central government. The nation-state was no longer a monolithic, vertical entity, but a many-layered, horizontal structure. The decentralized government system led local governments to place higher priority on their own development rather than the central government’s ideological directives.

In his essay “Despotic empire/nation-state,” Kenneth Dean (1998) located possibilities arising out of local practices as a challenge to Party-state power. Through his fieldwork on religious practices in South and Southeastern China, Dean has identified the way traditional popular cultural forms in local systems of exchange responded to, and operated beyond, the nationalism formulated by the nation-state. Dean demonstrated that the heavy trafficking of popular religious organizations across borders, between Fujian province, Taiwan, and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, was made possible by

61 global capital flows. This interaction, Dean argued, seemed to be in effect a desire to resist the “totalizing project of nationalist modernity.” (p. 159) Dean also discovered countless instances of the popular appropriation of imperial codes, nationalist codes, ritual codes, or hagiographic codes for purposes of local self-definition. Although whether the popular cultural practices could transform the rigidity of nation-state remained an open-ended question, Dean suggested that the very existence of such practices indicated cultural resources available for “creative local responses to global capitalism and nationalistic cultural hegemony.” (p. 180)

Michael Dutton (1999) focused on how different forces in contemporary China played out in street culture. The author examined the emergence of a market-driven consumer culture and analyzed strategies of the nation-state and consumer culture and tactics of the subaltern groups who occupied the cultural spaces in streets temporarily. In the essay, Dutton demonstrated how the revolutionary past was commodified and reinvented, exemplified in Mao-themed restaurants, the construction of the massive Mao theme park, the collections of Mao badges, and the popularity of “Red Rock.” While the government attempted to control the street population through work unit system and harsh laws, subaltern groups such as migrant workers and street gangs employed their own tactics of survival, and responded with an alternative code system, in which the actions of their enemies were sardonically mimicked and the heroes of myth appropriated as their own. Dutton concluded that commodification has killed the “aura” of communism and created space for cultural resistance.

Employing an ethnographic approach, Yang (1997) explicated the influence of

McDonald’s on the everyday life of ordinary Chinese and the local resistance to global

62 consumer culture. Yang maintained that as an effort to revitalize Chinese market forces, consumption has become an important feature of the political agenda underlying the government’s promotion of economic reform. On one hand, Yang’s research showed the localization effort of McDonald’s; on the other hand, it also demonstrated Chinese consumer’s appropriation of McDonald’s food and culture (manifested in the multifunctional use of its outlets) and how McDonald’s has stimulated the rise of

Chinese-style fast foods. Yang concluded that the emerging global consumer culture has been marked by diversity rather than uniformity due to local appropriation.

This emerging body of scholarly works has demonstrated the significance of and the ascending intellectual attention to nationalism, global consumerism, local consciousness, and cultural production and consumption in contemporary China. With a few exemptions (Lull, 1991; Rofel, 1994; Yang, 1997), existing studies primarily focus on macro-level analysis of production not on a micro-level analysis of reception and participation. There is a need for more empirical, ethnographic studies on everyday life, on the ways Chinese entertain, eat, and move around. This dissertation is a response to

Liu’s (1996)’s call for research on the everyday serving as a site that unravels and critiques the contradictions and fallacies of contemporary Chinese cultural condition.

Organization of the Dissertation

The present chapter introduced my research project and situated it within theoretical, historical, and academic contexts, including clarifying key concepts and terms, mapping out the terrain of nationalism, global consumer culture, and rising local/individual consciousness in contemporary China, presenting theoretical framework, and reviewing relevant scholarly works.

63 Chapter Two details the methodological framework and lays out the specific research design for my fieldwork in Chengdu, China. Chapter Three probes Chinese mediascapes with the focus of analysis on two image-centered media, television and the

Internet, and explicates the complexity of Chinese media with regard to production and circulation of the ideas of a cultural China during a traditional Chinese festival. A mobile and deterritorialized ethnoscape is the center of discussion in the Fourth Chapter. With a focus on the emerging consumer culture in urban China, I present my fieldwork in two sections. The first section explicates the reconfiguration of urban spaces and power that makes way for a rising global consumer culture as well as changed national image. The second section focuses on holiday tourism, problematizing the touristification of the

Spring Festival, when traditions are revived as packaged tourist spectacles. Chapter Five is the concluding chapter, where I reiterate my interpretations, reflect on methodologies, and acknowledge limitations and future implications of present study.

64 CHAPTER TWO

METHODOLOGY: COSMOPOLITAN ETHNOGRAPHY IN A GLOBAL TERRAIN

In this chapter, I explicate the formation and evolution of my research methodology during the process of writing proposal, conducting fieldwork in China, and writing the dissertation. I went into the field with the belief that I was going to do ethnographic fieldwork similar to that which I had done in local communities in Athens,

Ohio as a graduate student. However, as the fieldwork unfolded, I realized that I was on very slippery ground, slippery in the sense that the site of my fieldwork was receding into a much broader, deterritorialized site that stretched across the globe. It seems nothing is local. As I watched nationally and internationally broadcast media spectacles, as I surfed the Internet and joined discussions in cyber chat rooms, as my respondents were constantly moving in and out of the fieldwork location, I realized the challenges I faced conducting ethnographic fieldwork without being constrained by a specific locale.

One of the joys as well as nuisances of ethnographic fieldwork is learning through doing, which allows an ethnographic study to invent and reinvent itself during the process. This section begins with the mega-narratives of my methodological framework—ethnography. Following this general introduction, I discuss the cosmopolitan ethnography proposed by Appadurai (1991, 1996), which can better capture the deterritorialized nature of today’s ethnographic reality. Before I introduce the fieldwork location and specific research activities, I discuss implications of being a native ethnographer.

65

Ethnography: the Methodological Framework

Bishop (1999) claims that ethnographic inquiry, based in a cultural context, presents a phenomenological and empirical approach to research. It is “holistic and naturalistic,” and ethnographers seek to document the cosmology of a culture (p. 13).

Bishop proposes that a multiple-method approach, with interviews, direct observation, and analysis of artifacts, can achieve the thick description advocated by Geertz.

Geertz (1973) maintains that human beings are suspended in cultural webs of significance that they have spun themselves; therefore, the analysis of culture is an interpretive process in search of meaning. The process, Geertz proposes, is thick description, and social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be thickly described within the context. Geertz also emphasizes that anthropological writings are interpretations of the cultural process rather than exact understandings of what it means, and we are “explicating explications.” (p. 9) The ethnographer inscribes social discourse, turning it from a passing event that only exists in its own moment of occurrence into an account that exists in its inscriptions and can be reconsulted. The interpretation of culture is to rescue the “said” of social discourse, and anthropological findings are specific and circumstantial (pp. 19-20).

The positivist view of culture maintains that culture is fixed and constraining.

Artifacts are collected, rituals recorded, and languages analyzed. Culture is the sum of these concrete entities documented by anthropologists, which determine individual personalities and consciousness. Culture is not considered as lived by persons within a particular cultural community, but as a text documented by outside researchers. This view

66 of “culture as fixed text” privileges the describers (usually the “detached” Western

scholars) and therefore perpetuates an imperialistic ideology.

Geertz’s belief that culture is an interpretation rather than an existing fact, a lived

process rather than an end product (the “text” written by certain scholars), suggests a

paradigm shift with regard to ontology, epistemology, and methodology. Geertz (1973)

notes:

They [ethnographic findings] are interpretations, or misinterpretations, like any others, arrived at in the same way as any others, and as inherently inconclusive as any others, and the attempt to invest them with the authority of physical experimentation is but methodological sleight of hand. Ethnographic findings are not privileged, just particular. (p.23)

Culture is an ongoing experience, and there is no objective “truth” about any society, but

rather continuous and competing reconstruction of cultural realities by its members. This

process also applies to researchers who come into the community and interact with its

members. As Geertz declares, ethnographers should think not only realistically and

concretely about fieldwork findings, but, what’s more important, “creatively and

imaginatively with them.” (p. 23) With regard to epistemology, thick description involves immersing oneself in a culture’s routine daily engagements and documenting the process of immersion. The interpretive epistemology that posits knowledge as lived experience challenges the positivist approach to culture as a detached observer. This embodied knowledge, manifested through the statement “the researcher is the instrument”

(Conquergood, 1991, p. 180), privileges communication and the interaction in the field.

The ontological and epistemological shift leads to changes in methodology. The thick description advocated by Geertz redefines the functions of ethnography through grounding knowledge in a researcher’s personal and participatory experience with the

67 actors in the field. The active collaboration between the researchers and the actors during fieldwork represents “a shift from monologue to dialogue, from information to communication.” (Conquergood, 1991, p. 182)

Rofel (1994) has proposed an ethnographic approach toward the study of popular culture. The ongoing methodological debates in popular culture studies oscillate between two alternative poles: a purely textual approach focusing on the power of the dominant shaping “the contours of fantasy, identity, and social practice of popular culture consumers” versus a celebration of the consumers’ autonomy from and resistance to the text (p.702). Rofel criticizes that the textual approach tends to view the audiences as uncritical, passive consumers, and the meaning of text is fixed by the producer. On the other hand, the emphasis upon consumption of texts rejects the assumptions of a sovereign producer and the exercise of cultural power of the dominant. Aden (1999) joins

Rofel to reject the vision of popular culture as either constraining or enabling. Since this dichotomy is built upon the more general binary opposition of resistance versus incorporation, Rofel suggests that only through employing an ethnographic approach incorporating both perspectives, can we fully explore the domination, opposition, and cultural creation exemplified in popular culture production and consumption. By focusing on popular culture as a site of investigation, we acknowledge the significance of everyday life, hence, that of ethnographic endeavor. Only with ethnographic fieldwork can we immerse ourselves in the cultural practices and pay attention to the contingent way in which social categories emerge from everyday practices and become naturalized in people’s perception of themselves and the world.

68 Appadurai (1996) maintains that a central challenge to ethnographers now is conducting fieldwork in a globalized, deterritorialized world, where “the ethno in ethnography takes a slippery, nonlocalized quality.” (p. 48) He proposes a new approach of cosmopolitan ethnography to capture the impact of deterritorialization on the lived, local experiences (1991, 1996). Not a paradigmatic but strategic shift, cosmopolitan ethnography embraces a global approach in addition to the traditional localizing strategy employed by ethnographers.

Cosmopolitan Ethnography

Choosing a site for an ethnographic fieldwork implies, in a traditional sense, an enclosed location to which the ethnographer enters, stays for an extended period of time, and exits. That was what I had in mind when I traveled to my research site of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province in southwest China. However, as pointed out by Fox

(1991, p.12), everyday life in any local community is lived out globally and the local community should be treated as “the end point of a cultural jet stream.” Appadurai’s cosmopolitan ethnography, or macro-ethnography (1991, 1996), provides insight in conducting ethnographic fieldwork in a globalized world.

Recognizing that ethnographers have to confront the brutal reality of a deterritorialized globe, Appadurai calls for an original and productive ethnographic strategy. This strategy requires a new understanding of the deterritorialized world that

“many persons inhabit and the possible lives that many persons are today able to envision” (1991, p. 196). The complex negotiation between imagined lives and deterritorialized worlds, Appadurai maintains, cannot be captured by the localizing strategies of traditional ethnography alone (1991, p.196). Ethnographers can no longer

69 simply be satisfied with the “thickness” they bring to the local and the particular, nor can they assume that as they approach the local, they approach something more elementary, more contingent, and thus more “real” than life seen in larger-scale perspectives. Taken together, Appadurai points to the importance of embedding large-scale realities in concrete life-worlds, and also opens up the possibility of divergent interpretation of what

“locality” implies.

Intending to portray a traditional festival in a transnational, deterritorialized world, a cosmopolitan ethnographic approach is a natural choice for my fieldwork.

Instead of simply entering and exiting the location of my research, my homecoming journey is considered a force from larger-scale realities, among others such as media spectacles, international migrations, national policies, and global business.

To explore the cosmopolitanism of the Spring Festival celebration, I included the production and audience interpretations of rituals and cultural texts/activities in my analysis. Real (1996) has suggested several methodological approaches for analyzing media culture. Among them, ritual analysis, textual analysis, reception analysis, and production analysis are incorporated into my research to capture a comprehensive picture of the Spring Festival celebration. Ritual participation refers to active interaction with cultural events and text; textual analysis explicates cultural text itself; reception studies try to explain the decoding process of the text by the audience; and production analysis explores the creation and distribution of the text.

Carey (1989) has proposed a shift from a transmission view of communication— that communication is a “transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control” (p. 15)—to a ritual view of communication. From the ritual

70 perspective, the relationship between communication and culture is integral and dynamic.

Communication is regarded as “a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.” (p.16) Communication is directed “not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time” and is

“not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs.” (p. 18)

Real (1996) claims that during this symbolic communication process, the receiver acts simultaneously with the transmission and text, interacting with it in an active way. A ritual approach to media culture, Real maintains, will offer a dynamic sense of how “we construct and carry on our interactions with the world around us.”(p. 46)

While the ceremonies in temples and lantern fairs fall under the classic category of rituals, watching the China Central Television (CCTV) Spring Festival eve gala can be understood as a mediated ritual. Honigmann defines ritual as “the symbolic expression of the sentiments which are attached to a given situation.” (cited in Kutsche, 1998, p.51)

Kutsche points out that while a certain publicly-expected emotion is regarded to be culturally appropriate, rituals can be dysfunctional and participants may only go through the motions without believing the emotions or things symbolized. Through a ritual analysis that combines the viewing of the CCTV gala, religious ceremonies, and the lantern fair, I was able to capture people’s ritualized experiences including physical participation as well as the emotional reactions generated by ritual participation in the

Spring Festival celebration events.

As the umbrella term for different approaches for reader-centered interpretation, reception studies help researchers explore media culture by analyzing “the complex, varied, and intriguing ways” that readers decode and interpret the texts of media (Real,

71 1996, p. 94). Reception studies have gained strength in media cultural research due to the emergence and recognition of the many-layered, polysemic media texts. The encoding- decoding model of Stuart Hall (1993) suggests that although preferred meanings can be encoded into a media text by the author or production institutions, the polysemic nature of media texts makes possible negotiated and oppositional readings by the audience.

Critical audience reception studies have illustrated that audience readings and use of content are typically quite diverse, and people don’t always perceive context the way that media producers intended or as media critics assume (Morley, 1980; Radway, 1984). In my research, I employed in-depth interviews to explicate people’s diverse interpretations of different cultural texts, especially the CCTV gala.

Although reception studies call attention to the fact that the author or production institutions do not wholly determine the meanings generated by the interaction of the text and audience, the encoding-decoding model (Hall, 1993) suggests a balance of all the states in the process of media culture. Reception analysis opens up important dimensions of media culture; however, it alone cannot explain the structures of dominance in the encoding infrastructure or the textual characteristics of media messages. Cultural texts include the words said in the news, the images presented on the television screen and commercial billboards, as well as the music played through loudspeakers in department stores. The analysis of various texts can shed light on how media experiences are shaped by specific forms and conventions. Real (1996) suggests that textual analysis should explore narrative structure, semiotic coding, genre conventions, use of language and discourse, and political economic context. Therefore, a textual analysis is able to detect the subtle messages only implied in texts and seek a richer sense of meaning in media

72 texts. In the exploration of the Spring Festival as a cultural event, textual analysis provides further understanding of sign and code systems embedded in official discourses and commercial advertisements, of genre conventions recognized in the CCTV gala and other media texts, of intertextuality—the relationship of one text to other texts—among television shows, film, news, bestsellers, and posters.

One last question remains: how do the Party-state and commercial forces control the meanings made out of the cultural products and practices? Production analysis pays particular attention to hegemonic power over the production and distribution of cultural texts. It leads my investigation beyond textual analysis to exploration of production of cultural practices and artifacts in the festival. Real (1996) suggests that we ask some seemingly obvious questions in exploring production of media texts and culture:

Who made this cultural practice or product? Under what conditions was it created and with what purposes? Who owns the product and gains financially from its sales? How is the product distributed, and who benefits from it? Are corporate and financial interests influencing other aspects of the process? Is there a competitive environment and a level playing field among all participants? (p. 149)

Due to the complexity of production system in the contemporary Chinese socialist market economy, Real’s questions need to be modified; however, they still remain salient and valid in the Chinese context. An analysis of production illuminates the asymmetrical dominance structured by political (the Party-state) or economic (the market) power. The influence of the imbalanced power structure is inherently embedded in widely circulated cultural products and practices, especially during the celebration of the most important holiday in China.

73

Inscribing Myself as a Native Ethnographer

Ethnography is a method of fieldwork derived largely from Western anthropological tradition. Traditionally, Western ethnographers studied the cultural

Other, usually colonized natives, and represented the “natives” in writings presented to colleagues within the Western academic establishment. The rise of critical ethnographers, especially native ethnographers, has greatly challenged the representation of the Other in traditional anthropological texts. Native ethnographers, more than others, must confront the dilemmas of perspective and representation. As Appadurai claims, traditions of perception and perspective, as well as variations in the situation of the observer, may affect the process and product of representation (1996, p. 48).

Native ethnographers, most of whom grew up in former colonies and conduct academic research in their native country after being trained in Western educational systems, are qualified “thrice-born” researchers. “Thrice-born” ethnographers who turns her/his attention back toward her/his own native nation and cultural heritage, Turner

(1978, pp. xiii-xiv) maintains, are perhaps in the best position to be reflexive in their research.

During the 1960’s, there was a reflexive turn in the study of culture. Reflexive analysis, Lindlof (1995) claims, holds the researcher accountable for her/his role in social action. Social realities are created and interpreted by both the subjects we study and by ourselves as researchers, and research accounts are fundamentally rhetorical. Reflexivity places the researcher, the researched, and the process of research in interaction (Altheide

& Johnson, 1998). Reflexivity is closely related to the commonly acknowledged value-

74 laden research and researcher-as-instrument in interpretive inquiry. Conquergood (1991) terms it “embodied practice,” that is, immersing oneself in the process of research. The inquirer is part and parcel of the setting, context, and culture s/he is trying to understand and represent. Altheide & Johnson (1998) claim that “good ethnographies show the hand of the ethnographer,” and enable the readers to engage the inquirer in a symbolic dialogue about a host of routinely encountered problems that compromise the work (p.

301). Only then can the readers assess the claims made by the researcher.

My inquiry of Chinese culture is a “thrice-born” experience since China is my native country and I spent four years studying in the United States. However, being a native ethnographer does not guarantee an “insider’s insight” of the various communities

I interacted with. As Akindes (1999, p. 129) claims, native ethnographers assume a few constantly shifting subject positions and negotiate multiple/infinite spaces. Native ethnographers choose to acknowledge their multiple positions and their limbo state, which bring challenges as well as enrichment to the field/homework.

The Base: Entering the Heartland of China

For my fieldwork, I was based in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province, from January 17 to March 24, 2001; however, I often reached beyond the city, to other metropolitan and rural areas, physically or virtually. Sichuan lies in southwestern China, and its population is more than one hundred million. Situated on the periphery of China, the “central country,” Sichuan was regarded as a barbarian area in ancient times and was eventually incorporated into the “great Chinese civilization.” Centrally located in the western Sichuan Plain, Chengdu is renowned for its fertile land and agricultural wealth, which has earned the city the nickname “Storehouse of Heaven.” The administrative

75 coverage of Chengdu stretches to 3,861 square kilometers, of which only 50 square kilometers is in the city proper. The population living within the city proper is 2.47 million (“Chengdu’s Population, 2001).

As an inland city surrounded by mountains as natural protection against external influence, Chengdu enjoyed a colorful traditional culture well-maintained for thousands of years. Compared to major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, or coastal cities such as

Guangzhou and Xiamen, Chengdu had been less known to Westerners and less modernized. However, in recent years, benefiting from the government new policy of exploring the West of China (xibu da kaifa), the landscape of Chengdu has been changing drastically, both culturally and economically.

Chengdu is a city rarely researched by communication scholars, but the vibrant and ever-changing nature of the local culture makes it an ideal location for my research.

As a native of the area, my familiarity with its local environment, culture, and dialect as well as the personal networks my family and I established helped me to locate and access fieldwork sites and informants.

The old Chengdu, laid out on the same plan as Beijing, represented traditional

Chinese urban design—a compound city centered on the imperial court. The Ming

Imperial Court and major gates were set along the slightly tilted north-south axis, which divided the city neatly into two districts, the eastern and the Western. The rectangular- shaped city was enclosed and protected by city walls and Jingjiang and Fuhe Rivers.

In the 1960s, the Imperial Court was demolished and, from then on, the prominent subject located in the city center is a larger-than-life statue of Mao Zedong, standing in front of the solemn building of Sichuan Exhibition Center and Municipal Governmental

76 offices. The paramount leader of the new Republic faces the south, just as an emperor would do. With his left arm behind him, the status of Mao raises the right arm, as if Mao is waving to thousands of cheering citizens. Mao’s statue has become a usual spectacle of urban landscape in many Chinese cities in the post-revolutionary China. For years, it has been the focal point of the city, representing Mao’s symbolic presence in every Chengdu resident’s daily life. Meanwhile, Chengdu outgrew its original city limits and, with the city’s unrelenting aspiration for industrialization, work unit compounds mushroomed in the outskirts of the old city center.

The city of Chengdu of the 1970s, in my memory, was overwhelmed by Stalinist sternness, which deprived the urban space any color but grey austere walls decorated with revolutionary red banners. The social and functional undifferentiated cityscape was easily found in other Chinese cities such as Zhengzhou, Wuhan, and Changsa, with stern municipal or provincial office buildings in the city center, endless grey walls surrounding work unit compounds, unadorned department stores, and rows of uniform low-rise residential buildings. Road construction in Chengdu virtually came to a stall because there was little need for long-distance mobility within the city. Although there was a constant stream of commuters on bicycles, motor traffic was minimal, and traffic volume was no comparison to that of a real urban center. Two-lane streets and narrow old alleys were common in the old city proper. Even the north-south main artery, which was renamed as People’s Avenue (Renming Lu) after 1949, was just a two-lane road except when it crossed the city center, where it became four-lane. In short, Chengdu in the pre- reform era was static and closed, lacking most of the characteristics of a metropolis under a market economy. However, as my fieldwork will illustrate in later chapters, through the

77 forces of a market economy, Chengdu is currently undergoing transformation into an international metropolis.

Doing and Learning

My fieldwork activities involved gathering artifacts (such as newspapers, magazines, tapes of television shows, movies, posters, and photos), conducting participatory observation in public places (such as streets, parks, and stores) and private homes, interviewing selected informants, and participating in online communication.

Although I wanted to enjoy some quality time with my family during the festival without thinking about the research, it turned out to be very hard to separate my professional persona and my native persona while in the field. My daily interaction with family, friends, and the surrounding environment, though not intended, often worked into my research agenda and provided relevant information. Put another way, I was living an ethnographic life.

Artifact Gathering

Intertextuality suggests that interpretation of one text depends on its relationship with other texts; hence, gathering a variety of popular culture texts was pertinent in my research. While in Chengdu, I spent considerable time reading and collecting locally- circulated newspapers and magazines. I recorded television programs, including those made specifically for the celebration of the Spring Festival and those on regular television schedule. I also recorded television commercials as well as collected advertising materials such as pamphlets and promotional items. With a digital camera, I took photos of street scenes, billboards, and posters.

78

Participant Observation: Professional Observer or Observing Native

Native ethnographers give a different meaning to a phrase used by Western anthropologists, “Going Native”. Native ethnography also entails new implications for the method of participant observation. While it takes a considerable amount of time for an outsider ethnographer to become a converted, temporary insider and observe events only accessible to members of a specific community, native ethnographers naturally blend in the community, especially when the community is their own. However, as a native ethnographer, I was in a state of “professionally induced schizophrenia” between the “native self” and “profession self.” (Mascarenhas-Keyes, 1987p. 180) While conducting participant observation, my role constantly oscillated between a professional observer and an observing native. Beginning in January 2001, I participated in and observed various festival activities at Buddhist temples, at a lantern fair, and in business districts. On the Spring Festival eve (January 23), I spent the evening with my father’s neighbors, the Zhao family, having a reunion dinner and viewing the China Central

Television Spring Festival eve gala together. I mostly took notes during the observations, and sometimes I taped my observations, thoughts, and reflections with a cassette recorder.

Interviewing

I conducted 14 face-to-face, in-depth interviews with residents of Chengdu, ranging in age from 20 to 60. Nine respondents were females and five were males. Their occupations varied from college student to unemployed worker, from migrant worker to retired government official. A networking method was employed to locate informants for

79 interviews. I asked my family and acquaintances to recommend their friends, relatives, or co-workers to participate in this research project. For example, the migrant worker I interviewed, Aunt Yan, was a nanny working for a high school classmate of mine. I usually approached potential informants via telephone or in person to brief them about the study and make sure each was willing to participate.

Although the interview itself lasted only about one hour, most meetings, especially those conducted in homes, took a long time, as the Spring Festival is the ultimate time to exhibit hospitality. Usually I was invited to have lunch or dinner with the whole family, allowing me more contextual information about informants. The physical locations for the interviews were chosen by the informants themselves, since I wanted them to have control and comfort in the environment. Most interviews were conducted in homes; however I also met a few informants in public places such as teahouses or parks.

With the permission of the informants, all but one interview was taped. Though some initially showed nervousness with the tape recorder running, they soon became at ease.

The one informant who insisted on not being tape recorded was Aunt Yan, the migrant worker. I took detailed notes during the interview with her.

Roadmap for the Interview

While preparing for the interviews, I wanted to ask the informants the following questions: What does the Spring Festival mean to you? What activities do you participate in during the festival? What is your opinion on the China Central Television Spring

Festival eve gala and other media spectacles? How important is Spring Festival today and what is the Spring Festival spirit? How do you compare the Spring Festival now to what it was ten or twenty years ago? While conducting my first interview, I had in mind a

80 neatly organized open-ended questionnaire, which began with the informants’ demographic background. However, I soon realized instead of following my designed order of questions, it was much more productive for me to engage in conversation and follow the flow of discussion led by the informant. I simply made sure that their topics were hinged around the festival itself. By letting go, by allowing the narratives to evolve naturally, I was led to many unanticipated directions, and was able to better appreciate occasionally unsettling and ambivalent positions of some of my informants.

Surfing the Internet

While designing the study, I did not expect cyberspace to play a major role in the

Spring Festival celebration. I was caught off guard in the field, but was fortunately able to access the Internet while doing fieldwork. I logged on to many popular Chinese websites frequently. Websites observed included Sina.com, Tyfo.com, Chinese.com,

CCTV.com, and Ctrip.com. All had chat rooms and bulletin boards that were open to the public. Usually I browsed through the postings and conversations without joining the online discussions. I took notes of some chat room conversations as well.

Unintended Field/homework

While in Chengdu conducting research about the Spring Festival, I was also home to celebrate the festival with my family and friends for the first time in four years. My personal life and professional life were tightly intertwined together, much more than I had expected. Much of my casual conversations with friends and family yielded insights into my study and a couple of private incidents had further implications, which I will illustrate in the following chapters.

81

Transcribing and Translating

Whenever possible, I transcribed taped interviews immediately following the interview, thereby preserving as much non-verbal and contextual information as possible.

I transcribed most interviews before I left China, and spent several weeks upon my return to the United States translating transcripts into English; However, I found myself often referring to the original Chinese transcripts, and even the tapes during the writing process. I realized that it was reassuring to look at the originals to make sure that no content was inadvertently taken out of context. That said, I am not suggesting the process of transcribing and translating was futile. The act of transcribing forced me to re-live the moments, and the act of translating forced me to give academic meanings to these sound bits since my professional language is, I have to admit, English.

Chapter Summary

This chapter first situated my study within the framework of ethnographic inquiry,

which seeks to document the cosmology of a culture (Bishop, 1999, p. 3). In light

of the deterritorialized nature of the subject of my study (or that of any other

ethnographic fieldworks in this globalized world), I further presented Appadurai’s

(1991, 1996) cosmopolitan ethnography, a methodology that embraces a global

approach in addition to the traditional localizing strategy employed by

ethnographers. After addressing my position as a native ethnographer, the

methodological discussion centered around a detailed account of my ethnographic

field/homework as well as the problematics that emerged in the process. The next

chapter explores mediascapes during the 2001 Spring Festival.

82

CHAPTER THREE

MEDIASCAPES: FLOATING IMAGERY OF “CHINESENESS”

The word Nian, which in modern Chinese means “year”, was originally the name of a monster beast that began to prey on people on the Chinese New Year’s eve. One legend goes that the beast Nian had a very big mouth that would swallow a great many people with one bite. People were very frightened. One day, an old man came to their rescue, offering to tame the beast. He said to Nian, “I have heard that you are very capable, why don’t you swallow the other beasts of prey on earth instead of people?” So, it swallowed many of the beasts of prey on earth that also harassed people.

After that, the old man, who turned out to be an immortal god, disappeared while riding the beast Nian. Now that Nian was gone and other beasts of prey were also scared into forests, people began to enjoy the New Year. Before the old man left, he had told people to put up red paper decorations on their doors and set off firecrackers at each year’s end to scare away Nian in case it sneaked back again. From then on, the tradition of observing the conquest of Nian is carried on from generation to generation. The term Guo Nian, which may mean “Surviving the Nian,” becomes today’s “Celebrating the (New) Year.”

Red is the color of happiness. Images of red dominated media celebrations during the 2001 Spring Festival: red lanterns appeared on the covers of magazines, red borders graced the front page of newspapers, and news anchors showed themselves in traditional red costumes on television. People had seemed to forget that not long before, red was a designated color of the communist revolution. In the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) vocabulary, red represents the blood of the martyrs who have sacrificed their lives to the founding of the Republic. Red national flags and red Chairman Mao badges have been replaced by red Chinese knots (zhongguo Jie) and red Taoist magic figures on front doors. Never before have traditional Chinese symbols and images been so massively produced and disseminated, the reasons being an unsophisticated lack of media vehicle, a

83 simply scarcity of resources, and, in most cases, CCP’s opposition to feudal/superstitious ideas. For example, the now commonly displayed sign of “gongxi facai” (getting rich!) was banned in the pre-reform years when wealth was condemned, and only after Deng

Xiaoping proclaimed that “getting rich is glamorous” in 1978 did it publicly spread around mainland China.

Growing up in the 1970s, I had not heard about the mythical origin of the Spring

Festival, which may have been dismissed by CCP’s official discourse as being feudal and superstitious, until I read the legend of Nian on a Taiwanese website in the late 1990s.

Mao Zedong used to say that a blank paper is ideal to draw the newest and the most beautiful picture. Relentless CCP-led attacks on traditional Chinese value system, especially during the Cultural Revolution years (1966-1976), had made most traditional cultural/religious practices obsolete in mainland China, though given these practices remained strong in other bastions of Chinese populations like Taiwan and Hong Kong

(Chu & Ju, 1993). Due to the experiential gap most mainland Chinese have with traditional practices, Chinese people are especially vulnerable in front of the Party-state and commercial powers that constantly manipulate the concept of “Chineseness” to suit their purposes. The most powerful and effective vehicle to convey “Chineseness” to

Chinese is the mass media. Appadurai claims that the new power of the imagination in the fabrication of social lives is indispensably tied up with images and ideas, often moved around by the vehicles of mass media (1991, p. 199). The Chinese Party-state cannot imprison fields of imagination, because its own claim to legitimacy rests in part on the work of the imagination. The Party-state has learned to gather images and narratives and

84 knot them together around a revolutionary-nationalistic discourse since its establishment in 1949.

In a society where the old way of life had been condemned for years, traditions can be reinvented or even concocted as media is used to define what is authentically

Chinese and what is not. The Spring Festival, a moment that is regarded as the most

“Chinese,” presents an opportunity for media to address the definition of “Chineseness.”

On the eve of the 2001 Spring Festival, Chinese Central Television’s influential Evening

News (Xinwen Lianbo) described what made up “an authentic Chinese-style Spring

Festival” in one of its feature stories:

Red couplets and red lanterns are displayed on the door frames and light up the atmosphere. The air is filled with strong Chinese emotions. In stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, and other cities, products of traditional Chinese style have started to lead fashion trend. Buy yourself a Chinese style coat, get your kids tiger-head hats and shoes, and decorate your home with some beautiful red Chinese knots, then you will have an authentic Chinese-style [italics added] Spring Festival. (China Central Television Station, 2001a)

This chapter focuses on what Appadurai (1996) identifies as mediascapes in mainland China during the 2001 Spring Festival. Mediascapes refer both to the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information and to the images of the world created by these media (p. 35). This inquiry explicates the complexity of Chinese media with regard to production and circulation of the ideas of

“China” and “Chineseness” during a traditional Chinese festival. There is much to suggest that the very idea of “authentic Chinese” created by media is ambiguous and questionable. The questions include: What is the nature of authentic Chineseness

85 presented via mass media? What imagery representations are produced and circulated out there? And of course, who has the authority to speak of authentic national identity?

My analyses of Chinese mediascapes focus on two image-centered media: television and the Internet. A politically orchestrated media spectacle, the Spring Festival eve gala (Chunjie lianhuan wanhui) produced by China Central Television Station

(2001b), is the center of investigation with regard to television. The CCTV gala has become a large and complex repertory of images and narratives from which modern

Chinese subjectivity forms with regard to the celebration of the festival. The Internet as a booming new medium without boundaries has lately played an increasingly important role in the cultural imagination of “Chineseness” and in the forming of virtual Chinese communities in this information age. Both media exemplify how everyday life is now lived out globally and the locality (festival celebration in the living room of every household or in front of personal computers) can be at the end point of a global/national

“cultural jet stream,” (Fox, 1991, p. 12) made possible by mass produced and disseminated media products.

CCTV GALA: A Televised Re-invention of Festival Celebration

In my childhood memory, the Spring Festival eve (Chuxi) was a time to set off firecrackers with my cousins outside of my grandparents’ house while the grown-ups chatted about the past and the future at the dinner table. In 1977, a 9-inch black-and-white television set was brought home by my father, and gradually our activities on the Spring Festival eve began revolving around the “little magic box.” Our extended family, with four generations and more than thirty members, stopped getting together on the Spring Festival eve in the mid-1980s. Instead, we got together for the family reunion feast on the first day of the New Year. The reasons for the change were obscure, but it did give every nuclear family the chance to sit in front of the television set and watch the Spring Festival eve gala on China Central Television. A typical Spring Festival eve in my family started with my father setting up the dinner table in the living room and

86 my mother bringing out a variety of delicious dishes. We were usually ready to eat around 6:30 p.m. so when the CCTV gala started at 8 p.m., dishes would be done and everybody settled on the couch to be greeted by the gala hosts. Around midnight, my sister and I used to go out to the streets to set off firecrackers and cheer with the crowd. However, since 1993, firecrackers were banned in our hometown for public safety and the streets were abandoned.

The China Central Television’s Spring Festival eve gala is a “Chinese” tradition

invented by Party-controlled media apparatus, first introduced on the Spring Festival eve

(Chuxi) of 1983. The director of the 1997 gala admits that CCTV’s creation of the yearly gala is meant to “tap the cultural significance of the traditional Spring Festival.” (cited in

B. Zhao, 1998, p. 45) According to Zhang Ziyang, the 1993 gala director, the CCTV gala

“combines the strongest medium and the most unifying and traditional Chinese folk festival together” (China Central Television Station, 2002). Since 1983, the CCTV gala

has been an institutionalized part of the celebration ritual of the Spring Festival, and is

regarded as “indispensable for the Spring Festival culture itself.” (B. Zhao, 1998, p.44)

The institutionalization of the gala was furthered by the construction of a 2,000-square

meter and high-tech CCTV Spring Festival eve gala studio in October 1997. In addition,

in 1993, CCTV rented three satellite channels in Asia and two satellite channels in North

America to broadcast the gala live worldwide. Since then, the CCTV gala has reached

Chinese communities around the globe via the satellite broadcast of CCTV. On January

23, 2001, 94 percent of Chinese families in mainland China tuned their television sets to

the live telecast of the 2001 CCTV gala (“Survey results,” 2001). As Bin Zhao (1998, p.

44) points out, being “Chinese” in the age of globalized television broadcast means one

more thing—to watch the CCTV Spring Festival eve gala.

87 With textual analysis and inter-textual analysis, I shall first present the layered images of a cultural China that were embedded in the 2001 CCTV Spring Festival eve gala and other media texts. Then I will explore how the commercialization of television in China affects the production of televised images and narratives during the Spring

Festival gala. Lastly, I will present narratives from ordinary Chinese citizens to analyze how the gala was incorporated into their celebration and how they identify with the

“Chineseness” presented on the CCTV gala.

An (Inter)National Family Reunion

Traditionally, the Spring Festival has been a time of family togetherness in China.

However, since the debut of the CCTV live broadcast of the Spring Festival Eve gala in

1983, family gatherings have taken on “a distinctive national character.” (B. Zhao, 1998, p. 43) While the televised celebration is inserted into the living rooms of Chinese households, people’s imagination about the festival is greatly expanded and they are constantly reminded that they are celebrating with the entire Chinese nation and beyond.

The age-old Chinese tradition of staying up on the eve of the Spring Festival to greet the first day of the New Year (shousui) made this entertainment program an instant hit (as television sets had become increasingly common in Chinese households in the 1980s).

According to Bin Zhao, the gala helps to strengthen traditional family-oriented culture on the one hand, and to unify families into the “imagined community” of the Chinese nation on the other. The cultural China that is not bounded by the physical territory of the nation-state has been discussed by both Tu (1994) and Townsend (cited in Dean, 1998).

An (inter)national Chinese family image emerged during the CCTV Spring Festival Eve gala on January 23, 2001. An ethnic Han Chinese nation lay at the very core of this

88 Chinese subjectivity, while three outer layers stretched globally—from the “56 ethnic groups” inside mainland China, to Chinese in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan (which are regarded as sovereign territories of the People’s Republic of China), and eventually to the overseas Chinese diaspora around the world.

Delineating Official Boundaries

The evening celebration began with an official tone on January 23. The CCTV

Evening News (Xinwen Lianbo), as usual, preceded the CCTV Spring Festival gala at 7

O’clock in the evening. The news opened with a story of the tuanbai hui (group celebration meeting) of Chinese Communist Party leaders, central government officials, representatives from ethnic minorities, and citizens from all walks of life. At the meeting,

President Jiang Zemin first congratulated Chinese people from all ethnic groups on the festival. He also offered his “sincere good wishes to fellow Chinese (tongbao, which means born of the same parents) in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Special

Administrative Region, and in Taiwan as well as to overseas Chinese around the world.”

Premier Zhu Rongji advocated in his speech that in the coming year “we should continuously be united and advance our endeavor to revive the great Chinese nation.”

Later, a feature story under the name “Celebrating the first spring in the new millennium in Shenzhou [a legendary name for China]” took the audience across the country’s official physical territory. With carefully chosen locations, CCTV featured the temple fair in Beijing, flower market at Victoria Park in Hong Kong, Spring Festival shopping in Taipei, and feast preparation in minority households across the country. The

Chinese nation’s physical territory was exemplified by a routine story about soldiers guarding the north, south, and ocean borders, who pledged to “firmly defend the safety of

89 our motherland.” Another story of our extended “Chinese global family” followed, depicting overseas huaren (people of Chinese descent) and huaqiao (expatriate Chinese) celebrating the Spring Festival in the United States, Sweden, India, and Thailand.

While the evening news laid out the layered image of “Chinese family” in a direct and official way, the 2001 television gala created a subtle popular cultural space for its audience to imagine “a greater China” in the 21st century. To mobilize popular patriotic sentiments has always been the objective of the CCTV gala. In addition to solidifying the so-called “56 ethnic groups” within China’s” physical territory, the gala extended the national family beyond the geographic boundaries to overseas Chinese communities.

Being huaren (people of Chinese descent) was virtually regarded as the equivalent to being zhongguo ren (Chinese state citizen).

Minorities as the Other

Although the Spring Festival is a traditional Han Chinese festival, representatives of minority groups are routinely displayed on the gala. At occasions such as the gala, minorities are exposed to three types of potential exploitation: political, cultural, and commercial. Politically, the CCTV gala carries an overriding concern of harmony and unity, and representation of minority groups promotes a myth of ethnic harmony in contemporary China despite increasing ethnic unrest and conflicts in areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang. Culturally, minority cultures and art forms are constantly appropriated by

Han Chinese and minority groups are represented as the exotic “Other” for Han Chinese to imagine “Us.” Commercially, minority cultures and people themselves are increasingly being treated as commodities for domestic and international consumption.

90 According to the 2000 census, Han Chinese made up 91.6 percent of China’s 1.3 billion citizens, which left 8.4 percent of the population, or 1.09 million Chinese, who did not claim Han identity and were classified as being shaoshuminzu, or ethnic minorities

(National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2001a). Han Chinese is a problematic category due to historic evolution and ethnic assimilation. Historically, “China,” with Hua and Xia tribes (the ancestors of Han Majority) as its main body and Yellow River region as its center, has been extended geographically and ethnically since the Warring States period

(475-221 B.C.) (Ge, 1994, p.16). Huaren has become the equivalent to Chinese, though

China is regarded as a multi-ethnic nation. Yanhuang Zishun, the descendents of Yan and

Huang emperors (legendary leaders of Hua and Xia tribes), are used to describe Chinese in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and other regions of the world. The powerful Yanhuang and huaren discourse obscures the existence of ethnic diversity within China, even within the Han ethnic group. The current Han population has been made up by numerous minority groups assimilated into the original Han Chinese tribes throughout the history. The historical practice of Han majority has been cultural assimilation—that is, as long as minorities accept Han civilization, they become members of the Han majority and huaren. Ge (1994, p. 24-25) claims that due to massive assimilation over the years, the actual descendants of Yan and Huang emperors have become minorities among Han Chinese. The mindless use of huaren and Yanhuang

Zishun in spite of the historical origins of these terms indicates an implicit exclusion of ethnic minorities in official discourses.

In the dynastic past, Han Chinese often referred to minorities by terms for the

“barbarians” of the four directions (Man Yi Rong Di). The current classification of

91 China’s 56 ethnic groups was established after the founding of the People’s Republic of

China in 1949 (Blum, 2000, p. 73). “Fifty-six ethnic groups are fifty-six flowers” is what

I have learned since the kindergarten; however, few Chinese would know the “56 ethnic groups” was an arbitrary category set up by the Party-state’s ethnic identification project

(minzu shibie). This project, carried out to establish Chinese national unity, classified over four hundred groups claiming separate ethnic identity into 55 minority groups (See

Oakes 1998, pp.102-106 for a more detailed account of the minzhu shibie project).

Though ethnic groups were seen as the building blocks of a modern nation-state out of a dynastic empire, and ethnic differences were considered by the new Communist regime as inevitable innitially. It was believed that in a distant Communism utopian future, these differences would wither or die eventually. Over the years, minority policy of the Chinese Party-state has been a swing between repression and tolerance, while in public media harmony and unity among ethnic groups has been promoted.

The images of minority groups I had encountered in movies or television programs while growing up were either oppressed serfs before their liberation by the

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or singing and dancing men and women praising the

CCP who had brought happiness to their lives. We used to dress up as Tibetans during holiday celebrations in elementary school, singing a “Tibetan” song to praise the great savior:

The rays of lights from the gold mountains in Beijing have reached everywhere, and Chairman Mao is the gold sun. How bright, how splendid, He has brought lights to the hearts of serfs. We will walk together and advance on the gold path of Socialism.

92 Songs like those appropriated minority music and filled it with Party-state sanctioned lyrics in mandarin. The idea was that our minority brothers and sisters, who had been oppressed and unenlightened, finally were liberated and happily joined the great modernization project initiated by Han majority and the Party-state.

Officially, the controlled images of minorities harmoniously living within the country has not changed much over the years since I was a child; however, cultural exploitation of minority groups has been intensified and complicated with the increasing commercialization of cultural production in contemporary China. In contrast to the official discourse of civilizing (or should we say “mainstreamizing” or “Hanizing”?) minority groups and cultures, there has been an increasing commercial interest to keep minority culture distinctive and intact for tourism, artistic appropriation, and marketing of cultural artifacts. At present I explore issues related to artistic appropriation in mass produced culture.

In 1995, an album about Tibet, Sister Drum, was first released. Produced by

Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd., Sister Drum was an instant hit and became Warner’s first

1 million CD in Asia (Sharma, 1996). The producer and songwriter, He Xuntian, and the singer, Zhu Zheqin (who is better-known for her self-designated Tibetan name, Dadawa) are both Han Chinese, who claim in the sleeve notes that “we did not go to Tibet to find

Tibet as such, we went to find ourselves.” (He, 1995) The producer proclaims that Sister

Drum is “the finest example of music that celebrates the dignity of the Chinese [italics added] spirit” instead of Tibetan spirituality, which is considered as the inspiration for this “authentic Chinese album coming from China [italics added] and representing China

[italics added].” In the CD booklet, the producer writes:

93 For ages, Chinese [italics added] music has been seeking a type of spiritual release, a doorway to vitality. It is like looking for spirituality with a unique dignity of its own. Now, we are starting to see the religious sounds heard from the pious and faithful people throughout Tibet slowly being infused into the beautiful music we hear everyday, bringing us a quiet, serene peace of mind.

On one hand, commercial interests have become complicit with the Party-state in its

claim that Tibetan music is part of Chinese (Han) music, attempting to “incorporate”

minority culture into an over-reaching “Chinese culture.” On the other hand,

contradicting years of modernizing (Hanizing)Tibetan culture by the Party-state,

commercial producers seek to maintain the “authenticity” and further “exoticize”

minority cultures for sale. Although claimed to be respectful of Tibetan culture, the

album has been criticized for its insensitivity toward Tibetan spirituality. A Tibetan

friend of mine strongly opposed the use of “An Ma Ni Ba Mi Hong,” a 6-word sacred

phrase in Lamaism, in the lyrics. “These are holy words and should not be treated as

entertainment,” he complaint. The United Kingdom based Tibet Support Group claimed

that:

In its present form, “Sister Drum” demonstrates a worrying insensitivity to Tibetan feelings. The CD’s packaging and promotion tacitly conform to a Chinese nationalistic—if not overtly Communistic—view of China’s relationship to Tibet: that Tibet is a unique, mystical, ancient, backward and romantic region, but not necessarily a different country. (“Dadawa’s ‘Sister Drum,’ 1996)

Nonetheless, Sister Drum had created a fad within Han Chinese music circles and, in

1997, Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd. produced another album by He Xuntian and Zhu

Zheqin, Voices from the Sky. Following suit, more and more Tibetan and other minority music is appropriated by Han artists, which demonstrates in the performances at the

CCTV gala.

94 The 2001 CCTV gala carried on both the Party-state discourse of minority as

members of an all-embracing, harmonious Chinese family as well as the image of the

commercialized and exoticized Other for entertainment. Ethnic representation was

ensured by a token minority singing and dancing program and constant cultural

appropriation of art forms from minority groups. In singing and dancing (ge wu) programs (if not labeled as minorities programs, programs were tacitly regarded as Han

Chinese), costumes and music instruments from different minorities were borrowed and tunes from famous folk songs of minority groups could be detected in songs written solely for the gala. For example, part of the music in the song “Celebrate the New Year” had apparent Yi and Miao minorities folk music influence. The song “Dear China, I Love

You” resembled partly the music in Sister Drum and Voice from the Sky. A group of singers’ modern rendition of the well-known “Kangding Love Song” obscured its Tibetan origin.

Singing and dancing minorities was a staple at every CCTV gala to promote the

“happy multi-ethnic family” image. To introduce the singing and dancing medley

program performed by minority groups at the 2001 gala, hosts Cao Ying and Zhang

Zheng claimed:

The 56 ethnic groups in China are like 56 pearls, scattering around the vast territory of our homeland. They [italics added] sing on the prairies, by the snowcapped mountains, and on the lakes. Different tunes express the same true words from the heart: our motherland is the lovely home for all of us.

What can say more than the veiled reference to minorities as “they” in the words

above? As Townsend (cited in Dean, 1998, p. 161) points out, the “Chinese nation” in

Chinese mentality is first and foremost an ethnic Han Chinese nation. Although the so-

95 called 56 ethnic groups include Han people, when the phrase “56 ethnic groups” is

mentioned, it is implicit that the majority group is excluded, as indicated in the comments

above. As a politically correct phrase, “56 ethnic groups” has been usually used to

emphasize the “minorities-friendly” atmosphere at events when such accentuation

deemed to be necessary.

The singing and dancing medley program by minority performers at the 2001 gala

was the only marked minority program, and was directed by Su Dongmei and Chen

Xiang, two Han Chinese. It served as a political and cultural showcase of a multi-ethnic

China, featuring Dong, Uygur, aboriginal Taiwanese, Yi, Hui, Tibetan, and Mongolian

performers dressed in their festive costumes. Although these minority groups were

geographically dispersed across a vast area and culturally diverse, they were assembled at

the CCTV gala as one accent piece to celebrate a festival not even of their own.

Despite the overall portrait of the harmonious multi-ethnic family at CCTV gala,

deeply embedded in this form of entertainment is an image that minorities are exotic,

primitive, and “Other” vis-à-vis the Han majority. The minorities are then not celebrating

with us—they are performing for us, and are reduced, as usual, to happy singers and dancers. “Authenticity” here is the discursive selling point for minority performances. In recent years, the gala has increasingly used minority performers who sing in their own languages with Chinese subtitles rolling across the bottom of the screen. This is quite a change from the common practice in earlier years of the telethon, when minority songs were performed in Mandarin by Han singers. While presented as more “authentic,” minority performance serves as a token for political unity and also as an exotic reminder

96 of the Han culture core in the imagined “Chineseness,” though sometimes this Han

“Chineseness” is packaged with the appropriated minority cultural aspects.

Return to the Motherland

The second layer of this (inter)national family included Chinese residing in Hong

Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. As noted by B. Zhao (1998), the age-old tradition of celebrating Spring Festival provided a good opportunity to address the issue of reunion with Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. The CCTV gala has long been exploited to establish a united front (tong zhan) with fellow Chinese (tong bao) in those regions that have been regarded as sovereign territory of China nation-state.

The practice of inviting pop stars from Hong Kong and Taiwan to perform at the gala began in 1984, only the second year of the CCTV gala. Zhang Mingmin, an amateur singer from Hong Kong, won the hearts of mainland Chinese audience with a song entitled “My Chinese Heart”:

My homeland is only in my dreams I was forced to part with her years ago But wherever I go, I can never forget My Chinese heart

The fact that a Hong Kong native craving for his Chinese heritage while living under the British colonial governance resonated well with mainland Chinese’s nationalistic sentiments toward Hong Kong. “My Chinese Heart” has since become a popular choice in karaoke bars across China. In 2001, “My Chinese Heart” was chosen by the audience as one of the most loved songs in the 18-year history of annual televised spectacle (“2001 Spring Festival,” 2001). Another beloved song, “Clouds from My

Homeland,” was performed at the 1987 CCTV gala by Fei Xiang, a Taiwanese singer and

97 movie star. The song expressed the Chinese diaspora’s longing for a cultural and spiritual reunion with the motherland:

Clouds from my homeland call me softly from the distance The breeze brings me the fragrance of the soil of my homeland Please come back, wandering children in strange lands Please come back, stop drifting along by yourself

Despite obvious political purposes promoted by these songs, there was also an underlining economic consideration. During the Cultural Revolution, numerous overseas

Chinese who returned to mainland China after 1949 were persecuted for alleged “spying” activities or merely for their personal ties abroad. However, China in the 1980s was in great need of attracting foreign investments for economic takeoff and the Chinese diaspora was called upon to join the modernization project of their homeland, as implied in the song “Clouds from My Homeland.”

The popularity of the CCTV gala over the past two decades has now attracted big- name entertainers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, eager to explore the huge market in mainland China. During the 2001 CCTV gala, there were four pop stars from Hong Kong

(Maggie Chang, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Cheng Xiaodong, Zheng Yijian), and two from

Taiwan (Cai Qing and Jiang Yuheng). Their places of origin were clearly identified on the screen as they were performing. The presence of Hong Kong and Taiwanese entertainers served dual purposes. On one hand, their participation in the annual televised celebration embodies the common cultural bond among Chinese in mainland, Hong

Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, and contributes to audience’s imagination of a greater

Chinese nation-state not confined by current differences in political/economic systems.

Politically, this is inline with the Party-state’s long-term principle of reclaiming

98 sovereignty over Taiwan. On the other hand, the name recognition of these pop stars among Chinese communities worldwide adds to the entertainment value of the gala, and increases the ratings of the spectacle.

In the 1980s, entertainers from Hong Kong and Taiwanese performed solo; however, in recent years, joint performance by mainland performers and Hong

Kong/Taiwanese stars has become more and more common. Hong Kong singer Chen

Xiaodong opened the 2001 gala, singing “Feeling Great Today” with mainland Chinese singer Sun Yue. This hand-in-hand scene symbolized the harmonious Hong Kong- mainland relationship since Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997. As the Taiwan issue remained unresolved, a special portion of the program, which was called “the chapter of reunion (tuanju pian),” was devoted to the mainland-Taiwan relationship. Using the age- old symbolism of family reunion as the major event of Spring Festival, the gala emphasized the significance of the return of Taiwan to its “motherland.” Hosts Cao Ying and Zhu Jun opened the reunion portion of the show with a emotional statement:

The reunion with our loved ones is the happiest moment in our life. By the same token, the unification of our motherland is the long-cherished wish of people from all ethnic groups in our country. Mazu’s [a local deity worshipped mainly by people living on both sides of the Taiwan Strait] descendants are praying for an early reunion of beloved ones.

Following these remarks, Taiwanese singer Jiang Yuheng and mainland

Chinese singer Zhu Hai performed a song—“Longing for the Reunion.” The lyrics of the song not only expressed the eagerness of the people, both in mainland China and Taiwan, to see Taiwan reunited with the motherland as soon as possible, but also implied hope of solving the conflict in the new millennium due to the common cultural heritage and a shared destiny.

99 We long for the reunion, the reunion The moon in the sky is already full Same ancestors and same blood Same root and same concerns On this side of the strait, people’s hair is turning gray On that side of the strait, people’s eyes are tired of waiting What a fortune for a family to reunite The unification of the country is our ultimate happiness Hand-in-hand we enter the new millennium And together we greet the new spring with one heart

The reunification theme was also reinforced by other media events during the

Spring Festival. After the handover of Hong Kong and to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 and 1999, respectively, these two Special Administrative Regions are made examples of the “one country, two system” policy advocated by Deng Xiaoping.

Successful integration with mainland China and continuous prosperity of the two regions are regarded by Chinese Party-state being crucial to the reunification of Taiwan. The

Shanghai Television Station (STV) telecast live the 2001 Spring Festival parade in Hong

Kong on January 24, 2001, and the telecast was relayed simultaneously by more than

1,000 television networks in mainland China. This was the first time a mainland Chinese television station broadcast live the annual event in Hong Kong since it was initiated in

1996. Zhu Yonglei, director of STV claimed that television viewers in mainland China would watch the telecast because it reflected “Hong Kong’s increasing prosperity and stability after China resumed the exercise of sovereignty over the region.” An official with the Hong Kong Tourist Association said that the telecast enabled people in mainland

China and Hong Kong to share the happiness of the Chinese New Year (“Shanghai to telecast,” 2001).

100 Just before the Spring Festival, the Twenty-third Hong Kong Top Ten Music

Awards were announced on media. A new series of awards, the National Awards, was created. These awards, for the first time, put mainland Chinese singers and Hong Kong singers under the same category (“Hong Kong 2001,” 2001). In early Feburary of 2001, a

CCTV crew, led by Tian Dan, vice director of the Chinese Culture Association, went to

Hong Kong and Taiwan to shoot a special program for the Lantern Festival, the official ending of the Spring Festival. The program, “The Same Song” featured popular songs that were familiar to and liked by people in mainland China, Hong Kong, as well as

Taiwan.

Such media events have reflected a cultural China entertainment phenomenon, which has reunited mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan culturally through mass produced entertainment before unification is resolved politically.

A Celebration All Over the World (putian tongqing)

The third, and the most extended layer, of the (inter)national Chinese family represented the classical Confucian ideal of the great unity—da yitong (B. Zhao, 1998).

Townsend (cited in Dean, 1998, p. 161) identifies the world-wide Chinese community as the out-layer of the “Chinese nations.” Officially, da yitong exemplifies in an increasing use of huaren (people of Chinese descent) instead of the term zhongguo ren (Chinese state citizen) in Chinese official discourses and Chinese media, especially at the CCTV gala.

The notion of putian tongqing (a celebration all over the world) is mostly embodied in the song, “Cherish the Night (Nanwang Jinxiao),” which was written for and

101 performed first at the 1983 gala and then becomes the official ending song for every

year’s CCTV gala:

Cherish the night, cherish the night, No matter where you are in this world Laughter has filled the hearts of all Chinese Praying together for the wellbeing of our motherland

The image of a world-wide Chinese community celebrating together through the

power of television was also strengthened by the tradition of the gala’s announcers

reading telegraphs, telephone calls, and, in recent years, emails from Chinese

communities around the world. During the 2001 gala, endless congratulation messages

poured in from Chinese embassies, student organizations, and local Chinese communities

in Yugoslavia, South Africa, France, the United States, Japan, Russia, Austria, Uruguay,

Kenya, Israel, Germany, India, and so on. A typical message might read, “In this new spring and new century, we send our best wishes for the New Year to our beloved motherland.” While reading messages, announcers deliberately blurred the line between

Chinese expatriates and foreign nationals with Chinese heritage to create an image of a harmonious world-wide Chinese community.

This concept of global Chinese community was illustrated in the words of Zhang

Zheng, one of the four hosts of the gala. At one of the climax moments during the 2001

gala, Zhang Zheng asked several audience members on the set to say “Dear China, I love

you” in their own dialects. He commented, “On this night, no matter where we are,

Chinese (Huaren) around the world all wanted to say from the bottom of our hearts: Dear

China, I love you.” The use of the term huaren (people of Chinese descent) was devoid of the geographic and political connotation in the term Zhong guo ren (Chinese state citizen)

102 and focused only on cultural heritage instead; the hosts then projected patriotic

sentiments from citizens of the People’s Republic to those of a borderless imagined

global Chinese community. Right after Zhang’s comments, on the background screen, an

image of the morning sun rose up while singer Ye Fan started to sing the song, “Dear

China, I Love You.” Its lyrics evoked an image of one great China that was bound by

cultural heritage but not limited geographically or politically. Blood united descendents

of the Hua and Xia tribes; being physically outside of the country did not alter their status as huaren.

I chose you at the moment I came to this world There are billions of people who look just like me Leaders or ordinary people, we are all children dear to you I feel courageous wherever I go The yellow faces I see are Chinese flags My joy or sorrow, I want to tell you all You never say a word But you inspire me at every minute Because I always carry you in my heart No sad tears will ever be shed from my eyes My dear, dear China, I love you The more I love you, the more I understand the hardships you have endured in the past 5000 years My dear, dear China, I love you, The more I love you The more I realize that nobody is as beautiful as you.

With these carefully chosen lyrics, China was personified as a devoted and

strong-willed mother who was loved by her sons and daughters all over the world. The

notion of putian tongqing was also highlighted by another CCTV-sponsored media

spectacle during the 2001 Spring Festival, the New Millennium Global Chinese Music

Awards. As part of the CCTV entertainment package to attract younger audience during

the Festival, the award ceremony was aired on its Channel Four on January 24, 2001, the

103 first night of the New Year. Channel Four is CCTV’s recently-developed satellite channel aiming at reaching out to a global Chinese community. The Awards had been solely sponsored by Global Channel V Music Video of Star TV for the past six years before

CCTV’s participation in 2001. People’s Daily noted that the goal of the Awards was to

“promote Mandarin pop music throughout the world, improve communication between

Chinese composers, music producers and singers, and to publicize their works.” (“Gala of

Chinese,” 2001). CCTV’s partnership with Channel V generated “unprecedented attention worldwide,” as claimed by Chengdu Evening News (“Global Chinese,” 2001).

The awards reflected an emerging great China entertainment circle phenomenon, which has been formed with its center in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and with influence over the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asian countries as well as in other parts of the world. By the voting campaign deadline, there were 3.6 million votes from global

Chinese speaking regions, which was much more than what had been received in previous years. Candidates were mainly from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and campaigned, either at concerts or on the Internet, for support of their fans from these three regions and other Chinese communities.

Beijing’s bid to host the 2008 summer Olympics became a sub-theme of the Great

Unity at the 2001 CCTV gala to bring together global huaren community. The disappointment and frustration of Beijing’s failed bid to host the 2000 Olympics had evoked passionate patriotic feelings during the 1994 CCTV gala (B. Zhao, 1998). In

2001, the Olympics became a trigger for nationalism once again as the 2000 Sydney

Olympics and Beijing’s bid for the 2008 Olympics were the two hot topics of the media spectacle. As performing at the gala can ensure a star’s popularity and is intensively

104 competitive, keen writers and actors all “played Olympic cards and tailored their works

accordingly.” (“Focusing on,” 2001) According to the reporter, a mini-drama, “Let Me

Try” benefited from its Olympic spin and easily passed several examinations by the

authorities.

Hosts Zhu Jun and Zhou Tao introduced the portion of the gala devoted to the

Olympic theme with these following words:

Zhou: At last year’s Olympic Games in Sydney, the sons and daughters of Zhonghua (China with a reference to the culture instead of the nation- state) [italics added] won 28 gold medals with their hard work. Zhu: Seeing the Chinese national flag rise slowly and hearing the Chinese anthem echo in the sky, billions of Chinese (huaren) all over the world cheered in tears! Passionate patriotism evoked by those gold medals has set off another high wave of support for the bid forthe Olympics among Chinese.

Again, the words zhonghua and huaren projected an image of a universally-united

Chinese community not bounded by physical or political territories. The 5,000-year-old glory of Chinese civilization has been one of the main official discourses in history textbooks throughout mainland China. On the other hand, China’s century-long subjection to Western colonial powers following the Opium War in 1841 serves the

Party-state well as it constantly uses history to manipulate nationalistic sentiments. The

Chinese mentality is obsessed with restoring the glorious Chinese civilization before the

Opium War. In accordance with an old Chinese saying, “The glory and decline of a nation lies on the shoulders of every ordinary man (guojia xingwang, pifu youze).” Being

“Chinese” means that you should contribute to this restoration project. Winning medals and hosting the Olympics have become symbolic with regard to rebuilding Chinese civilization in the global community.

105 During the designated Olympic portion of the 2001 gala, a big banner with the

Beijing’s Olympic logo provided the background of the stage, “Beijing 2008, Candidate

City.” Two programs were dedicated specifically to the Olympic theme, which lasted twenty minutes. The mini-drama—“Let Me Try”—featured a group of comedians and real-life Olympic medal winners. Employing a comic approach, the program centered around the theme that it was the responsibility of every Chinese, either inside or outside of China, to support Beijing’s bid. A gewu (singing and dancing) program, “Let’s Work

Together,” followed. The lyrics linked a successful bid for the Olympics to the glory of an old civilization:

Beijing is the place for your dreams to start Billions of eyes longing for the Olympic fire lighting up the sky Let’s work together, with the heroic spirit to realize our age-old dreams Let’s work together, with the lively rhythm we walk toward the glorious future

The CCTV Spring Festival eve gala, with its global reach, has become a

celebration all over the world, and an occasion for the Chinese Party-state to rally

worldwide Chinese communities around Party-state sanctioned Great China restoration

projects, including Beijing’s 2008 bid. Most important of all, through entertainment

propaganda during a traditional festival, the Chinese Party-state has established an

imagined cultural China that is not constrained by national borders or citizenship, but

bonded by a shared cultural heritage.

Censored Happiness: For Sale

On the evening of January 29th, the first working day after the Spring Festival holiday, I was watching CCTV Channel One with my sister and her husband. “Focusing on the Moment”, a highly-rated in-depth news program, showed five Falun Gong practitioners setting themselves on fire while policemen were running around at Tiananmen Square. Followings

106 were images of the severely burned hands and face of an 11-year-old girl, Liu Chunyan, who was treated in a Beijing hospital. “These crazy Falun Gong people!” exclaimed my brother-in-law in disbelief. Stunned by the incident, I was also upset by the fact that it happened on January 23, the Spring Festival Eve. After I expressed my surprise about how well the incident was kept away from the public for a whole week, my sister dismissed my reaction: “Don’t be naïve. You know how effective the government is. Besides, it’s a good thing that the government spared us the news. Who wants to watch those pictures during the festival? It would have just spoiled the fun of the holiday for everybody.”

Staged happiness comes with a price tag, both in a political sense and commercial sense. The Party-state propaganda apparatus had to be on constant alert for images and discourses that threatened the image of a prosperous and united China. Mediascapes during the Spring Festival promoted the national amnesia and neglectfulness mainland

Chinese have suffered collectively since the 1989 student movement. As ideological apparatuses of the Party-state, Chinese media institutions are openly under continuous censorship from authorities. The State Administration of Radio, Film, & Television

(SARFT, formerly named as Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television) reports directly to the State Council, and is responsible for approving the content of radio and TV programs as well as films, overseeing film imports, and stipulating the proportion of time allotted for foreign television programs. In accordance with the requirements of the Chinese

Communist Party’s (CCP) Propaganda Department, the media should unconditionally propagate Party policies and may not put forward any views opposing the Party’s major decisions (Y. Z. Zhao, 1998, p. 20).

However, with the fast commercialization of Chinese media industry in years since the reform, television stations have to manage to meet both political premises and economic demands. Bin Zhao (1998, p.54) has noted that if subjected to the strict law of

107 the market, the CCTV gala would have probably either come to an end or taken on a very different form. It is the imperative of the Party-state that has invited the gala back every year. However, in this era of economic pluralism, the producers of the show are considerate of market forces.

The complex relationships between official political agenda and commercial forces are demonstrated in the production of the 2001 CCTV gala. Commercial interests saturated the selection of the programs and performers, the promotion of the gala, and the actual over four-hour long telecast, while political interests of the Party-state struggled to hold the front. On one hand, the sense of “Chineseness” and nationalistic sentiment aroused with political purpose during the gala was strengthened and capitalized on by business corporations. On the other hand, commercial interests undermined the Party- state efforts to build a consistent national culture.

To ensure the ideological and political correctness of the messages beamed out from the CCTV Spring Festival Eve gala, programs submitted to CCTV are censored in advance by top leaders in charge of propaganda and ideology. The State Administrative of Radio, Film, & Television (SARFT) directly oversees the operation of China Central

Television. Program proposals must be presented to a special committee of directors at

CCTV months before the telecast. The proposals and the final programs are subjected to several examinations of the committee and higher authorities in the SARFT and the

Propaganda department of the Party Central Committee. Preparation for the 2001 gala lasted for four months, including six dress rehearsals. However, each program of the gala was not finalized until a few days before the telecast. Everything was so closely

108 scrutinized that the script for the hosts’ narrative had to be rewritten just one week before the telecast to meet the censors’ requirements.

In the following sections, I will first discuss the genres of performances permitted and banned at the gala. Then through an examination of advertisements and sponsorship,

I shall investigate how commercial interests saturated the 2001 gala and how corporations used nationalistic rhetoric to capitalize rising nationalism of the gala. Lastly, I shall explore a trend toward localization in television broadcasts as well as how provincial and municipal television stations attempt to compete with the CCTV gala.

The Genres

The genres of performances at the CCTV Spring Festival Eve gala were closely monitored. Since 1983, the gala has evolved into a more or less fixed formula, with singing and dancing (gewu), mini-comedies (xiaoping), and cross-talks (xiangsheng) as its three pillars (B. Zhao, 1998, p.44). Mini-comedy takes the form of a short play involving a small number of characters with a simple and amusing storyline. Cross-talks are comic two-person dialogues in the Beijing dialect, which originated from folk tradition. Mini-comedies and cross-talks, with their humorous approach, could be readily turned into effective political/ideological vehicle conveying officially sanctioned messages and inducing predictable emotional responses. For example, in the height of implementing state family planning program, a mini-comedy “Overbirth Guerrilla” depicted a couple with two daughters who fled their village and wandered to avoid authorities so they could keep trying until they gave birth to a son. The humorous dialogues between the husband and wife ridiculed the son-preference tradition, and eventually the couple realized they would be much happier if had followed the

109 government’s family planning policy. During the 2001 CCTV gala, a widely applauded mini-comedy, “Selling the Crutch” depicted a crook trying to sell his used crutches to a healthy passer-by in the street. Using psychological hinting, the crook convinced the passer-by that one of his legs was shorter than the other and he was in desperate need for a pair of crutches. To uncover the cunning scheme of the crook, the story clearly tried to raise public awareness of such practices, especially those related to Falun Gong. Falun

Gong leaders were accused of using psychological hinting to convince and control their followers. Since July 1999, the Falun Gong group has been officially banned in China, and has been portrayed as an evil cult group that was detrimental to its followers and

Chinese society.

However, laughter can be a dangerous business for an authoritarian state because it evokes imagination. The excessiveness (of body language) and exaggerations

(linguistically) of mini-comedies and cross-talks echo elements of medieval carnivals described by Bakhtin (cited in Fiske, 1989b, p. 81), qualifying as a form of oppressed pleasure of the subordinate who mock the disciplined social order and morality. Chinese

Party-state walks a thin line using humor in its propaganda. During the last round of censorship for the 2001 CCTV gala proposed programs, a cross-talk program by a well- known comedian was rejected due to its “excessive” irony. He commented: “Cross-talk takes the form of satire. Without mocking and criticizing contemporary social phenomena, cross-talk would lose its charm” (“Chicken Ribs,” 2001).

To exercise more control over the live gala, the gewu (singing and dancing) programs employ lip-syncing. Only in 1995 and 1999 did the performers actually sing live, but CCTV eventually switched back to more controllable lip-syncing technique. As

110 for the program selection, three main genres of songs dominated the CCTV gala: those expressive of emotions (shuqing gequ), pop songs (liuxing gequ), and folk songs (min ge). Shuqing music can be seen as a hybrid product of Party-state ideology and popularized music techniques borrowed from folk music and popular music imported from the West. The sentimental tunes and lyrics of popular music were rejected by the

Party-state as “spiritual pollution” from capitalist societies when they were first smuggled into China from Hong Kong and Taiwan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, the same tunes have now been dubbed to serve political and ideological purposes of the

Party-state. At the 2001 gala, songs such as “Dear China, I Love you”, “Feeling Great

Today”, and “The First Morning of the New Century” intended to stir up audiences’ emotion as well as to convey an ideological message. Songs in this category were usually written specifically for the Spring Festival eve gala. Songwriters were to make sure their work serve political and social ends and at the same time, catering to the popular taste.

According to Jones (1992, pp. 48-49), songs written for the 1990 CCTV Spring Festival

Eve gala revealed the pressing ideological concerns of the CCP in the wake of the unrest of 1989. Those songs, titled as “Our Banner is Communism” and “China, China, I Love

You,” displayed patriotism and praised CCP’s dominance. Shuqing songs at the CCTV gala offered the audiences hegemonic visions of the happiness and abundance that would accompany the attainment of a socialist modernity. However, placed on the open market, these songs usually did not sell, which was evident by their absence from the cassette/CD market.

Pop (liuxing) songs, with their light-hearted modern beats and lyrics, are often performed by teenaged groups and quite distinctive from other programs of the gala. The

111 genre is heavily influenced by Western pop musical style as well as Hong Kong and

Taiwan pop culture industry. The inclusion of pop music represents the effort of the

Party-state to cater for the music taste of young audiences. Two combinations of pop songs were performed during the 2001 gala, one named as “Lively Beats” and the other,

“Youthful Songs.” Unlike shuqing songs, pop songs are often already popular with the public and the music market. Their lyrics cater to commercial interests, and less likely to be a vehicle for ideological objectives. For example, Dream Team, a popular band among young Chinese teenagers, merely imitated Korean and Japanese youth music style. The song they performed at the 2001 CCTV gala, “Please Dance with Me,” had been out in the market for months before the show. Since such pop performances usually are not directly produced by the Party-state, their lightness in effect dilutes heavy-handed Party propaganda. However, in some cases, the selection of the songs does compliment some ideological purposes of the gala. The lyrics of “Internet Era” served as an example:

Click, click, the clock is ticking, I am longing for something new Click, click, the Internet is changing You and me are ahead of others Forget about the far and the near Together we fly towards the new future

Whatever you want to talk about, I will talk with you Whatever you want to see, you are allowed Wherever I want to go, I have my options Whenever you are ready, I am here for you

This song was performed as the fourth program on the most prominent stage. On one hand, the song exploited booming Internet use in China, especially among young people. On the other hand, the song was tightly tied to the overall theme of happiness and prosperity. However, despite the free spirit demonstrated in the lyrics, the freedom of

112 information in China, as the young singers tried to demonstrate in the song, was in reality limited.

Folk songs (min ge), including tunes from minority groups, have been a staple of the CCTV gala and serve a dual purpose. On one hand, there is an ideological and political need to incorporate ethnic minorities in the grand celebration; on the other hand, folk songs, with their origins from the masses, tend to appeal to a general audience.

Absence speaks as loud, if not louder, as presence. Some genres of popular culture, such as rock (yaogun) music, were largely rejected by the Party-state and never performed at the CCTV gala despite their popularity among young audience members.

According to Jones (1992, p. 91), the central concern of Chinese rock musicians and their fans lie in the genre’s capacity for authentic self-expression and emotional release in the face of oppression, be it political or cultural. The inherent subversive nature of rock music has long been noticed by the Party-state. Cui Jian, the foremost rock musician in

China, was banned from giving concerts in China. The rhythm and lyrics of Cui Jian’s music, as well as this new music form from the West, have created uneasiness in the

Party-state propaganda apparatus. Cui Jian’s rock rendition of one of China’s holy revolutionary song, “Nan’ni River Bend,” has been accused of “making the revolutionary blasphemous.” Despite his immense popularity among Chinese, Cui Jian was never invited to perform at the CCTV gala. Nor were other acclaimed rock musicians invited, such as Zhang Chu and He Yong.

The censors of the CCTV gala exert tremendous control over what can and cannot be seen at a national media celebration. In restricting the genres of performance, they

113 balance the gala’s popular appeal to Chinese audience and the Party-state’s ideological dominance.

Commercializing the (Inter)National Celebration

Average viewing time of CCTV per person nationwide is 58 minutes per day. CCTV’s prime time share of national television market is 34%. More than 160 million audience members watch CCTV’s Evening News daily. The audience of CCTV has higher social status, higher educational level, more money and stronger spending desire.

Highlights from the CCTV 2002 Prime-time Advertising Bidding Brochure (2001)

Commercialization of Chinese media has left no media space untouched, not even

CCTV, which is under direct control of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and

Television. Due to its protected status as the only national television network, CCTV is the hottest advertising medium in the country. In 1992, the advertising revenue of the network was RMB 500 million (U.S. dollar 62.5 million), accounting for 25 percent of the total national television advertising revenue (Y. Z. Zhao, 1998, p. 57). CCTV’s monopolistic access to a national audience enabled the station to introduce a bidding system in prime-time advertising pricing in 1995, with a beginning price of RMB 7 million (U.S. dollar 875,000) for a five-second spot over a period of one year.

Competition was fierce. In 1995, a Shangdong-based liquor advertiser ended up paying

RMB 38 million (U.S. dollar 4.75 million) a year for a five-second prime-time advertising contract.

What was on the bidding block here were not only CCTV’s vast coverage areas and audience base, but also the authority and credibility attributed to the CCTV due to its

114 Party-state sponsored status. A CCTV 2002 Prime-time Advertising Bidding Brochure

(2001) proudly claimed:

Buying CCTV’s prime-time advertising time slots means that you have acquired the programs’ authority and credibility. The advertising value of this authority and credibility can not be evaluated with numbers. Ratings and coverage only indicate whether the audience watches your advertisements or not; however, more important issue is whether the audience trust your advertisements….CCTV prime-time news programs enjoy high authority and credibility. For example, “The Evening News” is considered by the audience as the voice from the Central Committee of the Party, and many reports of “Focus on the Moment” have raised attention from government departments and enterprises. This authority and credibility accompanying the television station and the programs will form a “glorifying effect” and create authority and credibility for your brand names and products accordingly. To be honest, this outstanding advertising environment cannot be provided by any other television station.

Hard advertisements and soft sponsorships bombarded the CCTV audience on the eve of the 2001 Festival. Prices for commercial spots soared for special programs and celebrations. On its website, CCTV promoted packaged advertisement deals for the 2001 gala (“Advertisement,” 2000). For example, a five-second commercial between 7:55:50 p.m. and 7:59:50 p.m. on January 23, just before the opening of the gala at 8 p.m., cost

RMB 1.7 million. The prices for a 15-second and 30-second commercials were respectively RMB 3.18 and 5.72 million. The same commercial would be repeated several times during other Festival programs.

On January 23, 2001, during the 30 minutes after the end of the CCTV Evening

News at 7:30 p.m. and before the beginning of the gala at 8:00 p.m., there were 81 commercial spots running for a total of 18 minutes. Thirteen 5-second spots were aired during the break after the news and before the weather forecast. Thirteen 20-second spots were aired during the break after the weather report and before a special edition of

115 “Focus on the Moment” about the preparation of the Spring Festival Eve gala. The rest of the commercials with varied lengths were grouped together and aired right before the program’s opening.

In addition, the four-minute weather forecast was also commercialized. The picture that accompanied weather reports for most provincial capitals was a hidden commercial. Rather than taking a birds-eye view of the whole city or a picture of a place symbolizing the city, each picture featured a specific company building, a shopping center, or just a logo of a company that was from that province or city. At the end of the program, the screen was divided into two parts: on the left, a rolling weather forecast for some major cities that were not provincial capitals, and on the right, a flashing commercial for a liquor company from Shangdong province.

Two time announcements appeared during the 2001 gala. One was at 8 p.m., and the other was at midnight. Both announcements were made primary commercial spots by

CCTV, at a fee of RMB 2 million and 2.8 million respectively (“Advertisement,” 2000).

The announcements ran as “Xiahua Electronics Group sends its New Year’s wish to the people of China” with the company logo or name showing on the screen.

Commercial sponsorship of the gala was another form of the commercialization of this CCTV special program. This sponsorship was solicited by the committee of gala directors in return for product placement, use of services, as well as a place on the list of sponsors at the end of gala.

Examples of product placement were ubiquitous during the program. Several of the dancers for the opening song, “Feeling Great Today,” dressed like the “China TV

Guide” newspaper or as China Post mailboxes. Gigantic video screens with conspicuous

116 signs of Bubu Gao, an electronic company, were placed at prominent spots on the gala sets to show video clips or make announcements.

Use of certain services during the CCTV gala also generated revenues for the television station. At the very beginning of the gala, hosts announced that CCTV cooperated with China Telecom to open a lottery-drawing 168 hot line in every city for the CCTV gala audience. 168 was an information phone line of China Telecom which charged the caller RMB 2 per minute for the call (compared to 20 cents for three minutes normally). The hosts assured that winners would receive prizes and other gifts provided by one of the commercial sponsors, Shanghai Money King Food Company.

Mentions of certain sponsors by the hosts were also a pay back to commercial sponsorship of the gala. Kunming World Garden was praised for providing flowers so the stage “was full of the spirit of the spring,” claimed a grateful hostess. Wahaha Group was mentioned often during the live broadcast because it sponsored the audience voting program for best programs of the CCTV Spring Festival Eve gala, as it has been doing since 1998.

Some commercial interests saturated the CCTV gala in a more subtle way. There were two well-known songs written specifically for commercial products performed at the 2001 gala. “In a Good Mood” by Coco Lee was written for soft drink Extraordinary

(feichang) Lemon, a product in the Extraordinary Series of Wahaha Group, the biggest and loyal sponsor of the CCTV gala over the years. The song and Coco Lee’s youthful image had often appeared in Extraordinary Lemon’s television commercials. Another song, “Choose My Love,” was written for a television commercial of Chuangwei TV, and was aired the same evening right before the live telecast began. The song was performed

117 by mainland movie star Zang Ziyi and Hong Kong singer Zheng Yijian, who were considered as spokespersons of Chuangwei TV.

Commercial interests for the CCTV gala were well protected by the authority of the television network. During the 2001 televised event, comedian Huang Hong made a self-ridiculed joke about CCTV’s plethora of commercials in his mini-comedy. “Even dogs are bored with the endless commercials on TV,” he said. However, this comment was immediately deleted from the replay of the gala the next day.

Nationalism for Sale

The heightened nationalistic sentiment at the CCTV gala is oftentimes appropriated by commercial sponsors. The use of nationalistic rhetoric in commercial advertisements, mostly made specifically for the festival season, was common during the

2001 gala. Several advertisements used pictures of the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and other national symbols as backgrounds. Nationalistic rhetoric in commercials can be demonstrated by two examples, Wahaha and Chinese.com.

The strategy of Wahaha to promote its soft drinks as the “Chinese” product capitalized the overwhelming nationalist theme of the CCTV gala. Wahaha largely made its name nationally through its association with the gala. In 1998, Wahaha decided to enter the carbonized soft drink market that had been dominated by Coca Cola and Pepsi

Cola with its own “Extraordinary (Feichang) series” soft drinks. “Extraordinary Cola” by

Wahaha has been heavily promoted on CCTV with the image of “Chinese cola of our own.” The promotion of the Extraordinary series has always been closely associated with the CCTV gala. In 1998, Wahaha started its annual sponsorship for the televised gala as well as an audience voting program, “Extraordinary Cola Cup for My Favorite CCTV

118 gala programs.” As a traditional Chinese festival, the Spring Festival enhanced Wahaha’s

authentic Chinese image. The Wahaha commercial shown right before the opening of the

2001 gala successfully associated the brand name with authentic Chineseness, creating a

traditional Chinese festive atmosphere with images such as firecrackers, lion dance, red

lanterns, and family members in traditional costumes at the reunion dinner table.

Another example is a five-second commercial spot of the Internet content

provider Yanhuang Online aired before the 2001 gala, which claimed that “the Internet

connects the globe.” Its website Chinese.com represented “our own name and our own

Net.” Yanhuang Online joined the fiercely competitive Chinese Internet content provider

(ICP) market in July 2000. The founders of Yanhuang Online claimed that the website

advocated the concept of global huaren (Chinese) community. The name Yanhuang, legendary tribal leaders in ancient China, exemplifies the ambition since it stands for a historical and cultural heritage.

Commercial interests also helped create the image of a harmonious multi-ethnic

Chinese family during the CCTV celebration. The advertisement for 999 Ganmaoling, a cold medicine, promoted images such as Yangtze River, Miao girls in their festive silver headdress, Tibetan children running outside of their huts, a Korean family on a sleigh.

China Telecom’s commercial featured dancing Dai minority youths in festive costumes as part of the image of a modern and connected China it promoted. Commercial interests exploited minorities as commodities, as exotic objects that enhanced the visual appeal of advertisements for the audience. However, such television commercials did coincide with the Party-state’s political objective of promoting a harmonious multi-ethnic image of

China.

119 Nevertheless, commercial interests do not always synchronize with the Party- state’s attempt to build a cohesive national identity. Indeed, they often undermine the effort. The fact that Wahaha’s product is called “cola,” and its package looks exactly like that of Coca Cola’s, demonstrated the ambiguous state such “made in China” products are in. Often, the popularity of the products depends on their ability to mimic a Western counterpart. Despite the Party-state’s attempt to purify the Chinese language, citing that foreign words threaten to dilute China’s national identity, commercial sponsors continue to use foreign words to name their products since most Chinese consumers associate high quality with goods and services with foreign names. Among the commercials broadcast before the gala, several Chinese cosmetic products bore names that sounded like translated foreign words, such as Na’aisi from Zhejiang province and Lisida from

Shengzhen. The imagery promoted by Amoisonic Electronic’s mobile phone commercial was a Chinese version of an American cowgirl.

Though the CCTV Spring Festival eve gala is mostly a politically staged spectacle, commercial force has become so prominent in the production and broadcast of the CCTV gala that it cannot be overlooked. Mostly, commercial interests fit into the existing structure of the national network and its ideology, even capitalize on the nationalistic sentiment of the gala for its own profit. However, the Party-state’s national interest still collides with commercial interests, as commercial sponsors often follow market force, instead of Party-state’s doctrine.

Local Challenges to the Monopoly of the Festival Celebration

The China Central Television Station’s (CCTV) Spring Festival eve gala intends to revive traditional culture on a national scale. In an effort to create a national tradition

120 recognized by all the members of the imagined community, CCTV tries to fuse diverse

local and ethnic customs and tradition into the centralized national culture. On one hand, the gala demonstrates the unifying force of a single festival; on the other hand, regional and ethnic gaps have become more visible while the differences were all presented and contrasted during a single staged show. This public realization of differences and local identity contributed to local challenges to the CCTV monopoly of television screen on the Spring Festival eve.

New broadcast technologies such as cable television and satellite broadcast as

well as localization of programming may yet threaten the influence of the CCTV gala. By

1999, China had eight national channels and 1,100 provincial and local channels

(National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2000). The magic power of the television screen,

as demonstrated by the success of the CCTV gala, has been noticed by provincial and

municipal television stations striving to generate increased advertising revenue. While

provincial television stations are usually under direct supervision (though not as tight as

the central control) of provincial authorities, municipal or county level television stations

enjoy much more freedom with programming. The rapid development of local television

stations and cable networks has greatly reduced audiences for centralized propaganda,

particularly for CCTV.

In 1985, China began to lease international satellites to improve signal reception

and to expand the reach of domestic stations, particularly CCTV and stations in Sichuan,

Yunnan, Guizhou, and Xingjiang, where geography has made microwave transmission

difficult (Y. Z. Zhao, 1998). By 2001, almost all provincial-level television stations had their satellite channels that had national reach through cable systems, and several of them

121 have become influential nationally, such as Hunan satellite channel, Guangdong satellite channel, and Beijing satellite channel.

Local television stations have started to challenge CCTV for their share of the television audience on the Spring Festival eve. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, some local cable television stations started to run their own programs on the Spring

Festival eve in order to obtain local commercial support. Due to local stations’ limited production capability, most of the programs were Hong Kong action movies or popular music programs. In 1993, the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television made a deliberate move to avoid regionalism and localism in favor of centralism, and required regional and local television stations to relay the CCTV gala on Spring Festival eve. On a chat room at

Sina.com, one audience member joked about the high ratings of the CCTV gala: “Ninety percent rating was not too much considering that almost every television station around the country was relaying the gala. There was no point to flip the channels because they were of the same color (personal communication)!”

At the beginning of the 21st century, CCTV’s monopoly of the Spring Festival eve celebration faced challenges from provincial and municipal television stations once again. In 2000, Shanghai Oriental Television station (OTV) produced eight entertainment programs aired each evening from the Spring Festival eve to the seventh day of the New

Year. Oriental Television station was established in 1993 as an experiment of the further commercialization and marketization of media institutes, with one hundred percent of its financial resources coming from market activities. In 2001, Beijing satellite channel produced a Spring Festival eve gala of its own, titled “New Century, New Beijing”, which focused on the city’s 2008 Olympics bid. Hunan Satellite Television channel, with

122 its flexibility of programming and high reputation for its entertainment programs among

national audience, promoted its first Spring Festival Eve gala in 2001. Hunan Satellite

Television channel is one of the seven television stations owned by Hunan Radio, Film,

and Television Group (HRFTG). HRFTG was China’s first TV industry conglomerate

that was set up in December 2000 with assets totaling RMB 3 billion (U.S. dollar 360

million) and has become a listed company on the Shenzhen Stock Market (“China to

launch,” 2000). The marketization of Hunan Satellite Television channel has brought

enormous autonomy and flexibility into programming its Spring Festival gala, and was

highly praised by its audience.

Localization of television programming during the Spring Festival celebration has

brought local flavor into previously centralized television programs. With heightened

emphasis on diverse local customs and practices during the Spring Festival designed to

appeal to local audiences, Spring Festival galas produced by regional and local television

stations may, in fact, undermine the unifying force of the national CCTV gala.

The Watching Game

On the 2001 Spring Festival eve, my father and I were invited to a family reunion

party hosted by my father’s long-time neighbor, Uncle Zhao. The extended Zhao family

spent a whole day at a rural resort, Meigui Garden. Meigui Garden was one of many mini resorts built by farmers around the town of Pengzhou, my hometown. Those mini resorts, called Longjia Le (Farmer’s Joy), were minimally decorated farm houses that provided a place for get-togethers and served home-made meals for an all-inclusive per capita charge. From 10 a.m. that morning, adults of the Zhao family were mainly playing mahjong in the rooms while kids played around in the yard.

123 After a hearty dinner, the party crowd left Meigui Garden around 9 p.m. Some retreated to their own homes with their nuclear families, and some went on to the apartment of the host family. The 34-inch color television was turned on in the living room, and then everybody realized that we had missed the beginning of the CCTV Spring

Festival eve gala. “I am sure we did not miss much!” Aunt Zhao claimed while preparing snacks and setting up two mahjong tables. Eight people joined the mahjong game right away, while a few were watching the game and advising their spouses. The clanging noises of mixing mahjong bricks, the chatter, and joyous shouts of the winners from the mahjong table often overwhelmed the sound from the television set. The audio effect in the living room was more than confusing. At times an onlooker would get in on the game so one of the players would be able to watch her/his favorite performer on the television.

Zhao Jian, the only son of the Zhao family and a sophomore in college, was obviously bored by the CCTV gala. He flipped a few channels; most of them relayed the gala, and the rest of stations had similar celebration programs on. He and his young cousin went out and returned with several VCD movies, including Dr. Seuss’ How the

Grinch Stole Christmas and a few Hong Kong movies. Aunt Zhao said: “Take the VCD player to my bedroom and watch them there. We want to have the CCTV gala on in the living room.”

The mahjong game continued in the living room with the television beaming out images and noises from the gala.

Yang Xing, a 31-year-old office manager, described to me a similar scene in her in-laws’ house on the Spring Festival eve:

124 We spent the Spring Festival eve with my husbands’ family this year. We always do. The whole family was playing mahjong while watching the CCTV gala. The evening was pretty noisy and messy. We watch the CCTV gala every year. It’s not so attractive, but we put it on anyway so the house felt more lively.

At these family reunion occasions, the television’s presence in the living room is not the primary focus, but still is indispensable. A Spring Festival eve like this makes me wonder about the officially released survey results about the 2001 CCTV gala. A telephone survey of families in 200 cities across the country indicated that among the

3,885 families surveyed, 3,640 families watched the 2001 celebration, i.e., the 2001 gala reached 94 percent of Chinese families. Among the families who watched the gala, 75 percent watched from the very beginning to the end (“Survey results,” 2001).

While ratings are an important indicator of the coverage of the 2001 gala, they do not tell the entire story. The questions I asked my respondents focus on how television watching is integrated into family events during the festival celebration.

Once a television set is introduced into a family’s living room, the room is no longer a private space but intruded by constant public images and narratives. By allowing a staged public spectacle like the gala inside a family get-together at the most important evening of the year, Chinese benefit from a sense of cultural fulfillment and security, of rootedness and fraternity, as they believe they share the moment with others in this imagined national/cultural community. Therefore, watching the CCTV gala has become a ritualistic practice in the life-worlds of ordinary Chinese, at a time the withdrawal of communist ideologies from Chinese’s private sphere has left a vacuum of meaning of life. What we see on the screen of the little magic box has increasingly been influential in defining our identities, suggesting who we are and who we are related to.

125 Watching Patterns: Formal versus Casual

When the CCTV gala was introduced to the Chinese public in 1983, very few owned television sets at home. At that time, only a few hours of programs were scheduled each day, and there were rarely television advertisements. Television viewing was more like movie watching, with family members and neighbors sitting attentively side by side in living rooms and in community centers every evening. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the 9-inch black-and-white television in our home used to attract a crowd from the neighborhood every evening, who ritualistically watched CCTV Evening

News at 7pm followed by an evening movie or television drama. Sometimes the crowd got too big for our little living room and we had to move the television set to the window, facing outside, so people could bring their own little stools and sit in the front yard to watch. People usually watched in the dark, either outside or inside, so the images on the television screen would stand out. The formal watching ritual at the early stage of television adoption in China is also recorded by Lull (1991) in his late 1980s’ ethnographic research of Chinese television audience. Formal watching forced the viewers to face one direction towards the magic screen, and, because it was a group activity, not much conversation was allowed during the viewing.

Several facts have altered the formal television viewing ritual of Chinese. The first is the gradual saturation of homes with television over the years. In the 1980s, the television set was a rare commodity that was rationed. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (2000), there were 32 black-and-white television sets per 100 urban households in 1978, and the number increased to 67 black-and-white sets and 17 color television sets in 1985. In 1997, there were 100 color television sets and 26 black-and-

126 white television sets per 100 urban households (Tang & Parish, 2000, p. 39). An audience survey conducted in 1999 indicated that more than 98 percent of the respondents

(N=1563) in both rural and urban areas owned television sets at home (Singhal, Vaughan,

Ren, & Zhang, 2001). Most families I visited in Chengdu had a second television set in the bedroom, usually a smaller one that was bought in the early 1990s and was later replaced by a newer, bigger, and showier model. The bigger television set occupied a prominent position in the living room, grouped together with a VCD player, Karaoke machines, and stereo equipment and indicating the social status of the family. With the increasing number of television sets in homes, watching television has become more private and less formal. Wu Minzhen, a 50-year-old elementary school teacher, explained to me the television viewing situation in her home:

We used to have disputes over which programs to watch. My husband wanted to watch soccer games, but my daughter would rather watch music programs, which my husband just hated. I like television soap operas, mostly from Taiwan or Hong Kong. It was hard to keep everybody happy. Our television set was getting old anyway, so we decided to buy a new set and put the old one in our bedroom. Whoever wants to watch his/her [In Chinese, he and she cannot be distinguished phonetically] special program while others are watching something else in the living room or we have guests, s/he can go to the bedroom and watch it there.

Another fact that has contributed to the decrease of the formal and attentive television viewing is the plethora of television commercials. China now has one of the largest television markets in the world, with its 5 million hours of television programming bringing in more than 50 billion RMB (approximately 6.25 billion U.S. dollar) commercial income annually (“Let’s turn,” 2001). While profit-making has become a major goal of media institutions since the state ceased to fully subsidize them in the 1980s, the Chinese television screen has become overwhelmed by long and

127 frequent commercials. Constant commercial breaks interrupted the viewing process, and eventually caused the collapse of the formal, attentive watching patterns of Chinese. In early 1990s, a senior citizen in Chengdu was said to have become so frustrated by long commercial breaks during his favorite program that he smashed his television set against the wall. Today, Chinese viewers are so accustomed to excessive commercials that they adjust their viewing rituals accordingly. People tend to engage in channel flipping with remote controls and household activities while watching television.

There is also a gradual change of urban living space that has affected television viewing habits. Before the housing reform started in the mid 1990s, housing in China was owned collectively and was assigned mostly by work units to their employees, who only paid minimal rent. A new housing policy that allows tenants to purchase their apartments from their respective work units and the gradual opening of a real estate market have made it possible for urban Chinese to own private homes. Rapid urban development has erected numerous large, impersonal, concrete apartment complexes. Alleys with residential compounds that several families shared are disappearing and neighborhoods developed by large real estate companies have mushroomed. Per capita living space was

20.1 square meters in major cities in 2000, compared to 3.6 square meters per capita in

1978 and 5.2 square meters per capita in 1985 (Tang & Parish, 2000, p. 39). The average size of urban homes in Chengdu in 2000 was 86.8 square meters (“Four point two,”

2001). More than two decades of the one-child policy has created a generation of small nuclear families, which now live separately from grandparents. Individual household members enjoy more privacy at home since floor space per family has increased dramatically. The Western-style apartment, together with small family size, has created a

128 different living environment for contemporary Chinese. While television still poses the omnipresent influence as described by Lull (1991) in most households, the increasing private spaces enable family members to avoid the television set in the living room and reduce its influence to minimum. On the other hand, living under separate roofs even in the same city makes gatherings of the extended family such as the Spring Festival eve reunion special occasions for conversations and fun; therefore, television viewing is an entertaining option but can not be the center of people’s attention at the festival get- togethers.

Get-togethers: Watching as socializing

My observation during my fieldwork in Chengdu indicated that daily television viewing was constantly interrupted and distracted by household chores, games, channel surfing, and conversations among viewers. Television viewing in the living room is a social experience, especially during holiday seasons. While making social visits to homes of friends and relatives in Chengdu during the 2001 Spring Festival, I noted that almost every family left the television on during my visit. A few hosts even turned the television on after we walked in. “It livens up the atmosphere,” my aunt once explained to me. At several occasions, I was handed the remote control by the hosts. “Choose whatever channel you like!” they insisted, as if it was the ultimate hospitality to let the guests gain control over the television set. Tea was served with candies and snacks, while hosts and guests chatted about what had happened in the past year and the plan for the coming year.

Though not playing a central role, television participated in social events at home with its constant noise and fleeting images on the screen. At times, an image might catch our attention and evoked comments: “Zhao Lirong was the best comedian who ever

129 performed at CCTV gala, and too bad she passed away last year.” “What have you heard

about Falun Gong people in the U.S.?” “Who do you think will win Australian Open?”

Socializing during the Spring Festival has a distinctive character of being renao

(lively and full of activities), with kids running around, guests laughing and talking, and

television emitting sounds and images. The word, renao (literally means bustling with noise and heat), was used by almost all the respondents to describe an ideal Spring

Festival. Wu Minzhen admitted that “no matter how bad the gala was there was a lively, festive atmosphere” that kept her watching every Spring Festival eve. “Since the ban of firecrackers, the streets are almost too quiet, not renao at all.” Sun Bin complained. “You can only find some liveliness on television, no matter what is on.” In a sense, television noise (official culture) substitutes the noise of firecrackers (folk tradition) to create a festive ambiance that is “bustling with noise and heat.”

As the Spring Festival eve is a family-reunion event, television serves as a

unifying element in the choice of entertainment for the evening. Wang Xiaochun

explained why her extended family watched the CCTV gala every year:

We watched the CCTV spring festival eve gala every year, one hundred percent, never missed one, no matter how terrible the gala was. Spring festival is traditionally a family reunion holiday. Even if there have been troubles in our lives, we would not mention them at all during the festival. We really cherish those few days of peace and harmony. Usually you would not be able to spend all the time with your family during the festival. On the Spring Festival eve, after the dinner, you want to have some activities involving the whole family, since it’s so hard to get everybody together. We do have a lot of choices nowadays; however, with old parents, you can not arrange activities that are too lively, like what you do with your friends such as playing bowling, dancing, etc. Therefore, the CCTV gala becomes the most solidifying activity for the whole family. On the Spring Festival eve, everybody longs for a better new year. It’s time for people to be happy, to have fun, to chitchat with family members, to

130 have some snacks together, while watching the CCTV gala. That’s when I feel the atmosphere of the Spring Festival.

The CCTV gala is designed to be a vital element of extended family get-togethers.

Its extensive programming combines traditional operas with pop music, ballet with cross- talks, which attempts to attract the old and the young, the traditional and the modern, and folk art lovers and high art lovers. The presence of television in the daily life of ordinary

Chinese has been widely accepted as social reality; therefore, the CCTV gala, as the mega-program on the Spring Festival eve, is welcomed in family living rooms like a family member who entertains everybody. Designating television as a “cool” medium,

McLuhan (1964) has claimed that television leaves much more room for viewers’ participation than “hot” media such as film (p. 278). The CCTV gala invites audience participation as it creates an illusion of immediate presence through employing the format of live telecast and the rhetorical strategy of direct address to the viewers. According to

Ang (1996b), through the device of direct address, television explicitly invites viewers to join it in its looking at the world (pp. 23-24). As long-time CCTV gala host Zhao

Zhongxiang explains, the format of the gala (the name lianhua hui literally means a get- together or a social) mandates communication and connection between those who are on the screen and who are in front of television sets (China Central Television Station,

2002). Throughout the 2001 gala, the hosts and hostesses apparently spoke directly to

“Dear audience friends” at home, constantly reminding them of the fact that the gala was

“a happy gathering under the same roof” (huanju yitang) no matter where they were.

Audience participation was also encouraged through telephone hotlines and, in recent years, instant online chat rooms set up by the network. As announced by the hosts and

131 hostesses at the gala, audience participation came from all corners of China and the

world. While television watching becomes a part of socializing, watching the gala is

elevated to a level of socializing among members of a nationally/internationally extended

family.

“At least we have something in common to complain about”

“It has become such a routine practice!” Hu Yunhang claimed. “Every year before

the Festival, newspapers are filled with speculations about the gala: who will be the hosts,

whose programs did not pass the examination of the authority, and which Hong Kong

superstar will appear at the gala, etc. It is all packaged so to raise the level of public

anticipation. Then, the day after the gala, every newspaper and magazine is out to

criticize the gala: loose organization, too many congratulating telegrams, phony

emotions, and so on.”

It is not only media critics who can become disappointed with the program, but

also the general public. Most Chinese hold a contradictory opinion about the CCTV gala:

looking forward to watching it, unfulfilled afterward, another waiting for next year. Sina, one of the most popular Internet content providers in China, conducted an online survey of its users about the 2001 CCTV Spring Festival eve gala. Research shows that 87 percent of 282,000 survey respondents were displeased by the gala. Another online survey by Tyfo.com indicated an overall response to be unsatisfactory, with 23 percent respondents claimed that nothing at the gala impressed them at all (“Survey results,”

2001). But what keeps the Chinese people watching every year?

To make sense out of this love-hate relationship between Chinese audience and

the CCTV Spring Festival eve gala, we must contemplate the historical development of

132 the country that has left many Chinese a sense of displacement in their own cultural environment. The Maoist era zeal for building a brand new socialist nation has contributed to “an impoverishment of everyday life,” as Tang (2000) notes.

This impoverishment takes the form of moralizing feelings, social relations, and quotidian routines; it is thus an impoverishment paradoxically sustained by an immense richness in political meanings and consequentialities. The ultimate injunction of this mode of social life is stated in a slogan popular during the radical 1960s: “Make a revolution in the depths of your soul.” With such an imperative for ethical politics, everyday life is not without its excitement or content; on the contrary, it is nothing but ritualized content, and it can be full of pious passion and longings. With ideology or political identity as its sole content or depth, everyday life is organized, rendered meaningful, and effectively reduced in form. (p. 278)

This CCP “politics of utopia,” Tang argues, has failed and been negated by late

20th-century consumerism and mass culture. The post-Maoist mass culture has its own utopian appeal that translates collective displacement and disillusion after the Cultural

Revolution into consumer desires. The new consumer culture projects a secular existence that is full of materialistic expectations and fulfillments. To further Tang’s arguments, I propose that consumer culture fails in restoring everyday life deliberately so to provide fantasies of another utopia with images like that of a smiling Colonel Sanders in front of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.

Public discourses spin fantasies about the past, the present, and the future for all

Chinese. The CCTV gala exemplifies the combination of fantasies from the Communist utopia as well as the materialistic utopia, which are, as Tang claims, necessary in overcoming “the inertia of everyday anxiety.” After more than 20 years of reform and open-door policy of the country, ordinary Chinese enjoy higher living standards and more individual freedom in today’s society; however, they also face higher crime,

133 unemployment, and deteriorating social responsibility. Chinese audience members are happy to escape from the anxiety of everyday life by participating in both the Communist utopia and the promised good life with abundance of commodities present at the CCTV gala. The grandiose staging with flashing neon-lights, the young and beautiful hosts and hostesses, songs boasting about the good life Chinese people enjoy, all help audience members to envision a socialist utopia with Chinese characteristics, a strange marriage of communism and capitalism. At the 2001 gala, one program that earned general applause was an old Soviet song: “Ode to the Communist Youth League Members.” Yangcheng

Evening News in Guangzhou rated the choir as the top program of the gala, claiming that the song clearly resonated with the audience and has been the symbol of a whole generation’s dream of bright communist future (“Review of Songs,” 2001).

“A celebration all over the world,” as claimed by CCTV, the gala offers Chinese a sense of fraternity and rootedness with its predominant nationalist zest, its integration into the Spring Festival tradition, as well as its high popularity among mainland Chinese.

Chen Xianbo explained:

Of course we watch the gala every year….The gala represents entertainment, relaxation, and leisure. I like to check out whose performance is good, who is the funniest, etc. The gala impresses us the most that the festival is celebrated all over the world [italics added]. There are always congratulation telegrams, telephone calls, and pictures from embassies, overseas Chinese organizations, overseas students, etc. Seeing those makes me feel that Spring Festival covers a large population, and only during the Spring Festival, you can feel that the whole China is very lively and active, and feel very proud that those overseas Chinese from all over the world are celebrating the same festival. Spring Festival feels much more lively and active than it was before.

134 Even among Chinese who were disappointed in the CCTV gala, there were those who still felt the need to watch the show every year. Lu Xiaoyan commented that her viewing of the gala helps her relate to others:

Every year I watch the CCTV gala. I feel like something was missing if I did not watch it, but am always disappointed if I did. In my opinion, it’s getting worse and worse. Everybody says it’s not worth watching, but they still watch it. To tell you the truth, it doesn’t feel like Spring Festival to me without watching the gala. If you don’t watch the show, you don’t have anything to chat with others after the festival. At least we have something in common to complain about.

Other people I talked to expressed similar opinions. Wang Xiaochun claimed:

The gala is definitely getting more and more meaningless, but why do we keep watching it? Because it is the most recognized and highest rated program ever, period. Good or bad, after the holiday, everybody cannot help discussing about it and you want to be part of the conversation. So no matter people curse it or praise it, they watch it every year.

Millions of Chinese had watched the once-a-year televised spectacle, which has entered a collective memory reservoir from which ordinary Chinese tap for a sense of community and connectedness. During my interviews, conversations about past galas and specific programs or performers always brought closeness and warmth into the relationship between the interviewees and me. Mentalities of belonging are created and reproduced from a common televisual experience.

“We Will Continue Watching the Gala with Critical Eyes”

My Spring Festival Eve was miserable and boring….While I was watching (the CCTV gala), I felt suffocated. Most of the time during the gala, I was half-asleep. I majored in fine arts and I am confident to say that I have some good taste and appreciation for arts. I admit that the stage design and costumes were fine. However, the directors were not capable at all. The gala seemed to be out of control and there were endless mistakes. Also, it has existed for almost twenty years; however, it still follows the same tone and style. The hosts were either too stiff, or too serious, or too sentimental. The dialogues among the hosts must have been rehearsed

135 many, many times; in spite of this, they still pretended to be spontaneous. No matter how much the hosts appeared to be overwhelmed with emotions, we could only see the big word “fake”. I dare to say, the CCTV gala is the most phony show among all the entertainment programs in China. A fake is a fake, no matter how loving and caring you pretend to be, it is still fake. I am no idiot, and would never hand over my emotions to you just because you said some boring stuff you believed to be funny and loving. In addition, after watching the gala for almost twenty years, I have become immune and apathetic to it. CCTV is the No. one Chinese television station; however, its fatal drawback is that it is too political. Everything on CCTV has to be inline with the high-sounding words from the top, and the Spring Festival eve gala is no exception. The whole gala was shrouded with a dense fog of blind happiness that did not originate from the people, which only indicates its weakness in gripping the real traditional culture.

Netizen Cai Zhuo Personal communication on Sina, January 25, 2001

As a tactic of resistance (de Certeau, 1984), Chinese audiences, either through traditional media or the Internet, uses the program to create a forum to legitimately voice their criticism of and opposition to official culture. CCTV, the Party-state’s prominent mouthpiece and television’s equivalent of People’s Daily, represents the ultimate official culture of Chinese Party-state. Like audiences in other authoritarian states, Chinese are very critical and cynical readers of official media content. In general, their criticism of official media remains private and only demonstrates in their cautious media consumption since most Chinese are still afraid to oppose to official media publicly.

However, since CCTV has repeatedly claimed that the gala is “for the ordinary people,” the assertion provides a legitimate foundation wide open for public criticism.

Furthermore, thanks to the public’s immersion into a global consumerism, Chinese audiences have realized that they now are media consumers and do exert certain influence upon media culture, no matter how limited this influence is.

136 In recent years, CCTV has implemented an audience voting program and a telephone survey to gauge public reaction to its gala. However, more and more official or unofficial channels have been opened for professional media critics and ordinary Chinese to voice their concerns and criticism. In 2001, Chengdu Commercial Daily initiated a special column for audience response to the gala. “We sincerely welcome your comments, no matter they are praises or criticism,” the newspaper claims (“CCTV gala,”

2001). Headlines such as “High quantity but low quality,” “CCTV gala pleased commercial sponsors tremendously,” “Four disappointments about the CCTV gala,” and

“Censors cancelled programs just before the live telecast” were in a variety of newspapers and magazines. Perhaps the most vehement and boldest criticism of the

CCTV gala came from the Internet, where the users remained relatively anonymous and in control of the content they published. Major Internet content providers (ICPs), such as

Sina, Tyfo, Neteast, and even CCTV’s own website established specific billboards to gauge public comments on the CCTV gala. Most of my data was obtained from Sina, since I was frequently monitoring the site during and after the festival. In January 2001, for the first time, Sina’s entertainment division set up a widely popular website

(http://ent.sina.com.cn/cjwh.html), collecting media and audience reactions to the CCTV gala. Since then, Sina has provided an online forum every year for public opinions on the gala.

In addition to criticism that was directed at the organization and production quality of the gala, performers, or the hosts, two types of criticism are worthy of special attention. First, criticism of commercial influence of the gala ran high among audience members. Reader An Shuxian complained to Chengdu Weekly that “those familiar

137 commercial phrases were cleverly inserted into the performance [of the comic skit

“Reach for a yard after getting an inch”] by the creators of the program, and the performers did a ‘free’ promotion for calcium supplements, underwear, cordless phone, and band-aids” (“Everybody Criticizes,” 2001). An Internet user, Fengjuan Hongqi claimed that:

To thank Wahaha’s strong support, CCTV puts Coco Lee out on the stage to sing the advertisement song of Extraordinary Lemon. Even laypersons like us understand the tricks here….Who cares if the audience likes it or not, as long as their [directors and producers’] moneybags are filled (personal communication, January 25, 2001).

A parody of CCTV gala awards was published by Sina—“CCTV gala awards”

(2001)—criticizing the rampant commercial influence on the program by giving the award of “shamelessness” to the 168 hotline set up by the gala, which charged the audience members who called to participate. “Whenever the hosts or hostesses announced the number of 168 hotline callers had reached 1 or 2 million, they smiled so hard that I wonder if they were counting how much more bonus they were going to get,” the author ridiculed. “It is a shame that the CCTV gala still uses the name of audience participation to make money. If CCTV is really China’s No. 1 [television station], open a free 800 hotline instead.”

A second type of criticism targeted the Party-state official culture, and tended to blur the line between criticizing a televised entertainment program and criticizing the

Party-state. Most criticism in this group came from the Internet, and in the two years following the event, criticism on the gala had become increasingly heated and direct.

138 CCTV gala critics often voiced their outrage at the corrupted process of the commercialization of the gala, which viewers claimed was often related to the rampant corruption within the Chinese Communist Party and the state government.

“The CCTV gala has become a vanity fair, filled with politics, power, money, fame, and ambition,” Internet user Fengjuan Hongqi claimed on the billboard of Sina

(personal communication, January 25, 2001). “The only thing absent is the voice of the audience. It has become the darkest and most deceiving game played by sponsors and producers.” An article on Sina’s website also announced that the CCTV gala audience voting process had been corrupted and the results were not believable because some gala performers and producers were involved in hacking on the online voting site (Song,

2001). The author concluded at the end of the article that “cheating has become a normal, natural, and open activity in the voting process.”

More heated criticism was directed toward the so-called “high, exaggerated, and phony” official mainstream culture. In the previously quoted comment, Cai Zhuo sharply pointed out on Sina.com that “the CCTV gala is the most phony show among all the entertainment programs in China.” (personal communication, January 25, 2001) Another

Internet user quickly followed up with a response:

At the end of the gala, my brain was filled with nothing but the nonstop congratulation telegrams and phone calls from all the corners around the country and the world. I think most Chinese do not even know where those places are, nor do they care. The military officials and soldiers stationed in South Sand Isles should take a break from now on. CCTV can replay the videos (they have sent in) from previous years. Anyway, their words of congratulations never change.…I suggest that next year, CCTV offer another program specializing in reading congratulations (personal communication, January 25, 2001).

139 This attack of official culture continued in 2002 and 2003. After the broadcast of the 2003 CCTV gala, Li Xiangrui posted on Sina.com a widely responded to message entitled “Can you and me refuse the grand feast?”:

Among the mainstream cries praising the new folk tradition of the CCTV gala, dissenting noises, such as “When would the gala come to an end?” and “Holding the CCTV gala exhausts the people and drains the treasury,” clamored, annoying the masterminds who created this glossed-over work to depict a peaceful and prosperous dynasty (personal communication, February 12, 2003).

Li called the CCTV gala “a man-made spectacle with Chinese characteristics and bogus happiness.” He observed that many spectacular holiday celebrations in China were accompanied by curfews or tightened security and limited access. “The display of happiness with the people” on these occasions was deceitful, Li said, since the official celebrations were inaccessible for the ordinary people, though televised celebrations created an illusion for the audience that they were close to the scene. In a follow-up posting, an internet user with the screen name of Niqiuzzz claimed:

This is the 21st century, not the ill-informed 80s or 90s [of the 20th century] anymore. We would not buy such programs [at the CCTV gala]. Everybody can feel the resentment of the public from the endless criticism every year. We have the right to choose (personal communication, February 12, 2003)!

In summary, the CCTV gala has created the most active forum for popular criticism and opened discussions about official culture in China, both in mainstream official media and on the more autonomous Internet. As Li Xiangrui claimed in his online posting, the Chinese audience will “continue watching the CCTV gala with critical eyes.”

However, while the censors have shown tolerance toward public criticism of commercial influence on the program, they are quick to eliminate comments detrimental to the image

140 of the Party-state. Most online postings I cite here now have been deleted from the Sina website due to the Internet content provider’s self-censorship under pressure from the

Party-state.

VCD: The Power over Time and Space

“More choices” was the major improvement cited by many of my respondents while talking about Spring Festival entertainment now compared to that of 10 or 15 years ago. Chinese audience members definitely have more options on television than they had when the CCTV gala started in 1983. In Chengdu, including outskirt rural areas, affordable cable television has reached almost every household. Cable fees vary from

RMB 150 to 200 per year, depending on the specific cable company. Each of the five urban districts and counties in Chengdu area has its own cable service and channel(s).

Through cable services, Chengdu residents had access to more than two dozen satellite channels (including eight CCTV channels, three Sichuan TV channels, two Beijing TV channels, Shanghai TV, Hunan TV, Guangdong TV, and satellite channels of other provinces or regions) and another two dozen municipal and cable channels (Chengdu TV,

Chengdu Commercial TV, five Chengdu Cable TV channels, five Sichuan Cable TV channels, and several district and county cable channels).

However, it is VCD (video compact disc) that gives the audiences power over time and space with regard to choice of home entertainment. VCD is a crude forerunner to the digital video disc (DVD), with lower resolution and video compression. VCDs are at the heart of China’s home entertainment industry, the role once played by videocassettes in the United States and elsewhere. With a late start for home electronic appliances, most Chinese families have skipped the VCR era and advanced directly into

141 the VCD and DVD age. I realized how unpopular VCRs were with Chinese families when I had a hard time finding one to record television programs for my fieldwork.

However, almost every household I visited in Chengdu had a VCD or DVD player.

Nationally, the number of home VCD players per 100 urban households averaged 36.4 sets in the third quarter of 2000; that of VCD players in rural areas, averaged six sets

(“Domestic demand,” 2001).

Since VCD players have no recording capability, the function of VCD players is different from that of VCRs. Chinese audience members rely heavily on pirate VCDs for home entertainment. Pirate VCD quality varies from crisp copies of legitimate laserdiscs to awful versions of videotapes shot clandestinely in cinemas. The so-called “cinema version,” complete with the audience’s laughter and heads blocking portions of the screen, allows bootleggers to get popular titles like Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole

Christmas into Chinese customers’ hands just days after their debut in American or Hong

Kong cinemas. Pirated VCDs account for up to 95 percent of China’s video market, claimed Li Yixin of the State Pornography and Illegality Crackdown Office (McDonald,

2000). In 2000, police seized 40 million illegal audio CDs and VCDs and shut down 25 illegal factories, 18 of which located in southern Guangdong province, which borders

Hong Kong (McDonald, 2000). The factories that produce VCDs in Hong Kong can now make more than five million discs daily, 70 percent of which are believed to be aimed at markets in mainland China (“More smuggled,” 2001).

Pirate VCDs, along with music CDs and computer software, are sold semi-openly in the streets or in computer or video shopping centers. Every day near Chengdu’s busy shopping districts pedestrians are confronted by bands of youths carrying heavy bags, and

142 calling, “CD! VCD! Music! CD-Rom!” On the top floor of Bainaohui, the biggest computer shopping mall in the southwest region of China, vendors display their treasures of latest American action movies and hard-to-find European independent films. The price for a VCD movie was about RMB 8 to10 (U.S. dollar 1.20).

Since the mid-1990s, VCD rental places have mushroomed like convenience stores in urban neighborhoods. In the residential area where my sister lived, there were three VCD rental stores in one block. Rentals, almost all pirated, cost RMB 1.5 (U.S. dollar 0.18) per day. Liu Rong, the owner of a local VCD rental store in Chengdu, told me that although American action movies or thrillers are among the favorites of renters for their high-quality special effects, the most popular rentals were domestic television soap operas and crime dramas. “Usually pirate discs come out before the show even ends on the television,” Liu said.

With a quick adoption of VCD players by Chinese and easily-obtained pirate

VCD copies of popular television programs, Chinese viewers reserve their attention for

VCD viewing, and television viewing has become much more casual and less attentive, especially for family gatherings on the Spring Festival eve.

VCD viewing has become an important alternative to the Spring Festival holiday entertainment. Liu Rong, the VCD rental store owner, told me that she had to skip her family reunion dinner to keep the store open on the Spring Festival eve, since it is one of the busiest evenings of the year. “Business remained busy throughout the holiday week,”

Liu claimed. Wang Qi, a 27-year-old female secretary, told me that her family ritual for the past several years was to watch “Tang Bohu Teasing Qiuxiang,” a Hong Kong

143 comedy based on a folk story about a scholar in Ming dynasty, at Spring Festival get-

togethers:

We played mahjong and watched the movie. Zhou Xinchi (the leading actor in the movie) was very, very funny. My cousin owned this movie so we watched it every year when we got together for the Spring Festival reunion dinner. Everybody laughed so hard and just loved it. It makes you laugh no matter how many times you’ve seen it. A good movie to watch during the festival.

Wang continued to tell me that the Spring Festival is a good time for her to

shop for new movies due to increased demand during such times.

My boyfriend and I often shopped at the computer mall, where I bought a lot of VCD movies. Actually we were just there yesterday. We bought Chicken Run, which we wanted to watch with his parents. However, the quality of that VCD was so bad that it could not be played. You know about those pirate copies…

Zhou Xinming, a 45-year-old manager of a township shoe factory, told me that

she had always been too busy with work to go to movies or watch television. During the

one-week Spring Festival holiday, each night she rented four video discs of Huanzhu

Princess, a popular Taiwanese soap opera, for five nights. “We watched eight episodes

every day, starting around 7 p.m. and ending around 12 midnight. It was wonderful to watch the soap to our greatest satisfaction without the hassle of television commercials!” she claimed. Wu Minzhen, a 50-year-old elementary school teacher, echoed similar sentiments, “I always rent my favorite Taiwanese or mainland soap operas rather than waiting every day for the next episode. Everyday they only show one or two episodes, with long commercial breaks. That’s very annoying. Pirate VCDs come out almost as soon as the soap opera starts on television…it is very convenient.”

144 Piracy serves as a tactic of the powerless, one of the “clever tricks of the ‘weak’

within the order established by the ‘strong’.” (de Certeau, 1984, p. 40) Pirate VCDs are

widely used by ordinary Chinese consumers not only to evade the centralized control of

the Party-state and television networks, but also to reclaim some autonomy from the

increasingly commercialized leisure life. Bootlegging is so pervasive in China that the

commercials for VCD players, mostly domestically made, always boast the players’

error-correcting function, tacitly acknowledging the fact that most consumers will use

VCDs to play pirate movies. The decline of movie theatres in China can be contributed to

abundance of pirate VCDs. In 1995, China started to import newly-released big-budget

Hollywood feature films, though the government limits the number to 10 films per year.

In 1994, Chinese movie theatres were filled with crowds watching True Lies and The

Fugitive, and the price for movie tickets soared from RMB 5 to RMB 20. Expensive tickets hurt business, and a lot of theatres started to divide their roomy theatres into smaller ones and show pirate movies on laser discs with a lower price. Crouching Tiger,

Hidden Dragon, a box office hit in the West, fared badly in mainland China. The movie

garnered only half of the estimated RMB 40 million revenue, due to the fact that pirate

copies came out before its official premier in September 2000 (“Crouching tiger,” 2001).

Nevertheless, piracy does not automatically imply a conscious intentionality

(Ang, 1996b, p. 11) on the part of the VCD users to “resist,” especially to resist the Party-

state ideology. Most circulating pirate VCDs were programs that had passed official

censorship and were shown on television. In her discussion of VCR usage, Ang (1996b)

maintains that living within an increasingly media-saturated culture, audience members

would opt for “choice” whenever given the opportunity. The use of pirate VCDs disrupts

145 the television system of “centralized transmission and privatized reception” because it displaces the locus of control to more local contexts (pp. 11-12). The VCDs give Chinese audience power over time and space. As Wu Minzhen claimed:

Watching VCDs gives you more freedom. You can watch more episodes every time, and you don’t have to wait during the commercial breaks. Watching television is not too flexible either. Sometimes you have to work or run errands during the televised time. Now a lot of families rent VCDs instead of watching television or going to cinema. You don’t have to make a trip to the theatre to watch movies. Everything is right here in the living room.

This power over time and space is, of course, limited and subject to the Party- state’s erratic crackdowns. From time to time, police or government agencies would raid local computer markets and rental stores for pirate VCDs; however, Liu Rong, the rental store owner told me that local government agents tended to “open one eye and close one eye” in carrying out the directives from the central government, and she was always secretly notified by her inside connections so she would close her store during the crackdowns. “As long as [we are] not counter-revolutionary, they gotta let us have some fun, right?” said a regular customer in the store who overheard our conversation. The semi-openness of the pirate VCD market in China indicates that it is getting more and more difficult for the Party-state have centralized control over the local populace.

In conclusion, television as a medium for popular entertainment has grown to be an indispensable element of the Spring Festival celebration, and the CCTV Spring

Festival eve gala has become a mediated national ritual for Chinese audience. Though official media constantly label the gala as “a new folk tradition (xin minsu),” it is undeniable the gala is saturated with the Party-state’s political agenda as well as unending commercialization. Cultural China advocated by the Chinese Party-state as a

146 new framework for Chinese nationalism was embedded in the narratives and performances at the 2001 CCTV gala (as well as other televised events during the festival), provoking the audience to imagine a China that was not constrained by national borders.

One important function of rituals is to arouse appropriate sentiments (Kutsche,

1998, p. 51), which in this case, a sense of nationalist/culturalist pride, unity, and collective joy. While the gala did give rise to a sense of fraternity among some of its worldwide Chinese audience, others expressed suspicion, indifference, resentment, and mockery toward this representative official media event. The nationally and internationally televised spectacle was undercut by businesses that prioritized profit over

Party-state’s agenda, and the increased audience criticism. More entertainment options allowed viewers to evade centralized control and to daringly voice opposition to official culture.

The Internet: Virtual Spring Festival, Virtual China

This year, due to her busy work schedule, Miss Wang has to spend the Spring Festival away from her parents who live in another city. However, on the Spring Festival eve, Wang does not feel lonely at all because she spends the night with her numerous online friends on the Net. Wang is a true Internet addict, and using chat room has become an indispensable part of her everyday life. According to tradition, people watch the CCTV gala on every Spring Festival eve. Wang is no exception; however, she moves her television set next to her computer, listening to what is going on with the gala, while typing in messages on the keyboard. Wang and her friends exchange good wishes, and at times, opinions about the CCTV gala. Wang says: “Through watching the gala while chatting online, I not only keep the tradition of observing the night by watching the CCTV gala, but also get in touch with my friends via Internet. It’s cool.”

Mr. Zhang’s college classmates now work all around the country and do not often have the chance to get together. On the eve of the 2001 Spring Festival, all the classmates make arrangements for a meeting in a private

147 chat room online. Zhang says: “Spending the Spring Festival eve online is very special. At midnight sharp, we exchange electronic cards, and the whole screen is covered by good wishes. Friends living in areas where fireworks are permitted have taped the sound of firecrackers and sent it to everybody. The Internet has shortened the distance between families and friends.”

“A New Way,” 2001

At midnight on the Spring Festival eve of 2001, I logged on to a few popular websites: Sina.com, Tyfo.com, and Netease.net. In addition to the red-colored front pages dedicated to the Spring Festival, almost every chat room was crowded with people exchanging good wishes, thoughts and reflections, and information. Internet service providers (ISPs) offered special rates for the Spring Festival to promote the virtual celebration of the most traditional holiday in China.

The Internet has offered Chinese Internet users a new way of staying in touch, observing the traditions of the festival, and expressing of tradition and individuality. The rapid development of the Internet in mainland China has created various virtual communities online, where national borders are virtually non-existent. While the world is becoming more interconnected via high technologies, the “implosion” of the globe has changed fundamentally the ways in which human beings relate to each other and to their social networks (Smith, 1995, p. 1). On one hand, the Internet brings people together, incorporating a diversity of others—other cultures, other peoples, other ways of life— into self-images and social relations. On the other hand, the Internet can solidify national and ethnic identities, providing a tangible zone for such imagined communities

(Anderson, 1991) to exist.

148 Virtual celebrations of the Spring Festival have become increasingly popular

among Chinese communities around the world in recent years, and have created a “virtual

China” online, which coincides with the image of a cultural China promoted by the Party- state in China. Online celebration activities include sending personalized Spring Festival electronic greeting cards, online broadcasting of the CCTV Spring Festival eve gala, online chatting and emailing, playing online games, and even enjoying the sounds and video tracks of firecrackers that are banned in China’s major cities.

This new way of celebrating has not gone unnoticed by the Party-state. “Cyber

surfers found a whole new way to celebrate the traditional Chinese Lunar New Year,”

claimed People’s Daily, the official national newspaper of China (“Surfers,” 2000). The

China Central Television station (CCTV) started its online live broadcast of the CCTV

Spring Festival Eve gala in 1998 to appeal to young netizens who were increasingly

losing interest in this staged spectacle. In 2001, as a joint effort of the Party-state and

commercial Internet service and content providers, a “72-Hour Online Festival” was

celebrated from January 22 to 25, hosted by People Online, Sohu, Sina, Netease,

Xinhuanet, CCTV network, China.com, and others (“72-Hour Online,” 2001). Party and

state leaders were invited to appear on the “largest get-together” online.

This section looks at how a new medium, the Internet, is incorporated into the celebration of a thousand-year-old festival. Analysis includes how the traditional mythical image of “China” is promoted in a virtual reality and how virtual communities are formed to connect Chinese people around the world. Although I visited local Internet cafes and interviewed locals for the fieldwork, the deterritorialized nature of the Internet mandates that the fieldwork go beyond the city limits of Chengdu.

149 Tu verses Yang: The Return of Myth

I like Spring Festival e-cards that are simple and traditional, those with red lanterns and firecrackers, upside-down “happiness” (fu) characters, even gaudy peonies. Those images are usually considered tu by most people; however, the Spring Festival is a tu holiday anyway. If you want something yang, you get that during the Christmas or the New Year. Tu is the characteristic that makes the Spring Festival stand out.

Netizen Hu Yunhang

Originally, Tu means soil while Yang means foreign. In China, the meanings of tu and yang vary according to the subject of discussion in different contexts. Tu is rural and inland, while yang is urban and coastal; tu is traditional and backward, while yang is modern and advanced; tu is unsophisticated, while yang is chic; tu is Chinese, while yang is Western; tu is local, and yang is global. In recent years, Christmas is called “yang

Spring Festival” and Qixi, a Chinese festival for two fairy lovers separated by the Milky

Way to reunite once a year, is promoted as “tu Valentine’s Day.” In an increasingly open

Chinese society, people have a better grasp of the sharp contrast between tu and yang, and also consult the contrast to define their cultural identities.

Initially, tu had a negative connotation while yang was more positive. In the early

days of the reform, young people proudly showed off the foreign labels on their

sunglasses and jeans. However, in recent years, being tu takes a sharp turn from being

“unsophisticated” to being “chic” and “trendy,” though this tu is actually a refined or

even re-imported tu in most cases. The Party-state has made a conscious decision to

allow previously deemed superstitious traditions to return to the public domain; Chinese

avant-garde artists have been exploring traditional motifs to define their cultural and

150 creative identities; Western fashion designs using Chinese characters and symbols are

constantly seen in Chinese versions of Elle and Vogue.

I propose that the chic tu represents a return of myth, “a culture’s way of understanding, expressing and communicating to itself concepts that are important to its self-identity as a culture.” (O’Sullivan, Montgomery, Hartley, Saunders, & Fiske, 1994, p. 192) Cassirer maintains that the power of myth may be tamed and subdued by superior forces during periods of relative stability, but in transitional eras when chaos is prevalent, mythical thought then “starts to rise anew and to pervade the whole of man’s cultural and social life.” (1955, p. 375) In China’s case, mythical beliefs were condemned as feudal and superstitious since the establishment of the Communist regime, especially during the notorious Cultural Revolution years (1966 to 1976). The mythical past was oppressed, and replaced by the myth of communism. Orthodox communism advocated internationalism, the unity of worldwide proletariats that transcended national or ethnic boundaries, and collective identification on the class-struggle basis instead of cultural basis. This was exemplified in the slogan of “Worldwide proletariats, United!” However, the void left by China’s transition toward a capitalist economy and the collapse of communist Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union has dissolved the communism myth, and opened the door for the return of mythical cultural past of Chinese civilization.

Contemporary Chinese people seek a new way of relating to one another through traditional cultural myth. At the end of 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the mythical past has been turned into a nationalistic spectacle. The chic tu is a

result of a traditional culture becoming the object of the “exoticizing” gaze, which is

151 promoted by either the Chinese Party-state with a nationalistic zest or global consumerism forces with profit as the sole purpose.

The following account discusses mythical images and narratives circulated on the

Internet during the Spring Festival. The popularity of tu images and exploration of folk origins and near-extinct customs have been accelerated once the dragon is equipped with electronic wings.

Mythical Dragon with Electronic Wings

On the first morning of the year of snake, I opened my email box and found at least 15 “Happy Spring Festival” electronic cards from friends and family who lived in

China, Hong Kong, the United States, Canada, and Australia. The e-cards ranged from simple still imagery to sophisticated multi-media animated card accompanied by sounds of firecrackers. However, one common characteristic of these e-cards was the use of traditional Chinese symbolic motifs, including images of dragon, fish, peony, plum blossom as well as upside-down characters such as fu (good fortune) and chun (spring).

This section focuses on mythical images and narratives circulated on the Internet during the Spring Festival, specifically on Chinese websites as well as in Spring Festival electronic cards. While similar imagery and stories were seen on television, billboards, and newspapers during the festival, the Net provided a unique space to study such culture-specific images and narratives. The Internet has been claimed as a medium blurring national boundaries and the best representative of globalization; however, it is also a site for people to seek a sense of belongingness in collective identification.

Although imagined worlds created by the World Wide Web are global, the relatedness of human beings can still be local. In addition, even in an authoritarian society such as

152 China, publications on the Internet are less constrained compared to traditional print and

broadcasting media. The Net is interactive and in theory, everybody can be the author of

online texts and images. Given such a decentralized production process and netizens’

relative autonomy in cyberspace, I shift the focus of studying mediascapes away from

macro ideologies of traditional media to micro processes of collective identification

online, from top-down institutional commands to the significance of imagined worlds

(Appadurai, 1996, p. 33) that provide meaning at grassroots. However, we have to

recognize that the creation of an online culture-specific space is a part of the macro-

cultural environment that is still mostly controlled by ideoscapes of the Party-state

(Appadurai, 1996, p. 36).

During the 2001 Spring Festival, almost all major Internet content providers in

China, including Sina.com, Tyfo.com, 163.com, Sohu.com, and Chinese Yahoo, offered

Spring Festival e-card service. Their web pages were also specifically designed,

including images and stories about the festival. Festival websites and electronic cards, to

a large extent, are explorations of Chinese traditional customs and rituals recreated

through the new electronic medium.

The creation of Spring Festival websites and e-cards usually involves use of

traditional Chinese symbolic and mythical motifs. Websites and e-cards use red and gold

predominantly. Red is the most auspicious color in traditional Chinese culture, signifying

happiness and luck. Gold is reminiscent of riches. The pronunciations of many of the

traditional images are homophonic with the good wishes they represent. For example, the

word for bat, fu, sounds similar to “fortune,” and the character fish, yu, sounds the same as “surplus.” The upside-down fu (good fortune) or chun (Spring) are ubiquitous on the

153 Internet. The images often generate remarks such as “fu (or chun) is upside-down,” which

sounds exactly like “Good fortune (or the spring) has arrived!” Some images, such as

dragons, phoenix, plum blossoms, peaches, cumquats, magpies, happy kids dressed in

traditional costumes, and coins, carry wishes for prosperity and longevity traditionally for

any occasions. Other motifs, including firecrackers, spring couplets, and lanterns, are

specifically related to the Spring Festival.

Because the 2001 Spring Festival marked the ending of the Chinese Year of the

Dragon and the beginning of the Year of Snake, the images of dragons and snakes were

abundant. Chinese people regard the snake as a relative of the dragon, so they sometime

call the snake a “small dragon,” which reflects the significance of the image of dragon in

Chinese (Han) culture. Dragon, a mythical animal, was the totem of the Hua and Xia

tribes, the ancestors of Han people. Han Chinese regard themselves “descendents of the

dragon” (longde chuanren) and dragon is officially recognized as “a symbol of the

country’s future” (“Last Year”, 2000). Almost all Internet content providers’ websites I

visited during the 2001 Spring Festival displayed dragon images. This cyber-obsession

with dragon icons reflected the predominance of Han culture in Chinese cyber-world.

The annual survey on China’s Internet development by China Internet Network Center

(CNNIC) did not include questions concerning netizens’ ethnic background, which

implied that the Han ethnicity was regarded as the “natural” ethnicity of Chinese

netizens. Chinese (Hanyu, the language of Han people) is the official language for the

Chinese online community, though English is also used. No ethnic language, such as

Tibetan and Mongolian, was ever used on Chinese websites, nor was input/display software for those languages available (J. L. Qiu, 2001). The Han-dominated mythical

154 culture online echoes the exclusion of minorities in the official discourses of the Party-

state, and online homogeneity of demographics may have facilitated the intensification of

online nationalism (Hanism).

Cyber-images circulated during the 2001 Spring Festival were close in line with

the Party-state sponsored nationalism. An online exhibition on China Central Television

Station’s 2001 Festival website featured winning screen-savor images submitted by

ordinary netizens. One screen saver created by Zhang Xinzhen highlighted the theme of

national unification with images of a national flag, dragons, Temple of Heaven, and a

bold manifesto: The unification of China is the wish of all the descendents of Yan and

Huang emperors. Zhang also claimed: “On July 1st, 1997, Hong Kong was returned to its

motherland, on December 20th, 1999, Macao was returned to its motherland. Our

beloved ones across the (Taiwan) Strait, when are you going to reunite with your

motherland?”

Most Spring Festival related web pages recalled ancient days for narratives

related to the Spring Festival. Numerous cyber texts related to the Spring Festival, such

as legends about the origin of Nian, the pasting of door gods and spring couplets, and

detailed accounts on local festival customs and rituals, have appeared on Chinese

websites. Most of the online texts were excerpts from books such as Chinese Folk

Custom (Zhongguo Minsu Daguan) and Festival and Social Customs (Jieling Fengsu).

One goal of the Party-state sponsored “Patriotic Education” program is to inform the population traditional Chinese culture, since the “rich cultural legacy provides us with valuable resources for conducting education in patriotism.” (“Patriotic Education,” 1994)

Cyberspace has provided a more far-reaching forum than print media for educating

155 contemporary Chinese about their cultural heritage, which was disrupted and condemned

for years.

There were also texts that appeared in cyberspace and then spread to mainstream

print media. For example, a widely-circulated text about a review of the celebrations of

the Spring Festival in the past five decades since 1949 first appeared on the Internet

(“Reflections,” 2001). Focusing on changing (improving) lifestyles reflected in the

celebration of the festival, the text conveniently ignored the effects of political turmoil such as Cultural Revolution had on people’s everyday life, and promoted the “politics of utopia” of the Party-state (Tang, 2000). This online article mirrored not only the selective education of the Party-state with regard to contemporary history but also the collective amnesia of the Chinese public.

Interestingly, cyber-celebration of the Spring Festival works as a double-edged

sword for the Party-state. On one hand, Spring Festival-related cyber images and

narratives did endorse the unity of Chinese that was not bounded by locality, and

contribute to the establishment of a worldwide Chinese community with a shared cultural

heritage. On the other hand, the “unity myth” was often undermined by cyber images and

narratives that presented diverse local/ethnical customs. The Chinese Spring Festival Net

(http://www.chunjie.net.cn) established a page with global and local Spring Festival

customs, which illustrated the case well. World-wide Festival celebrations in Hong Kong,

Macao, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, the United States, and even Mauritius

were featured on the website, with an emphasis on shared heritage. The reinstate of the

Spring Festival as a legal holiday in 2001 after a 30-year ban in Indonesia was especially

celebrated as a triumph of worldwide Chinese community. However, within the boundary

156 of the People’s Republic of China, diverse local/ethnic customs were the focus of the

website.

Han Spring Festival is institutionalized as it is made an official national holiday.

The Chinese Spring Festival Net website claims that while the 55 minority groups have

their own languages, lifestyles, and customs, most of them celebrate the Han Spring

Festival as an important festival of their own culture (“Spring Festival Customs”).

However, a closer look at minority festivals described on the website shows that they are

mostly New Year Days, which vary greatly in terms of names, time of year, mythical

origins, and customs, and are very different from the Spring Festival of Han Chinese. For

example, Yi minority group’s New Year’s Day falls at the end of Fall, while Dai people

celebrate their the beginning of the New Year during the Water Sprinkling Festival in

April. Tibetans follow their own calendar and their New Year’s Day falls on different

dates every year. The origins of these festivals have nothing to do with the beast Nian,

and letting off firecrackers is usually substituted by horse racing and other activities. By

incorporating those festivals into the Han Spring Festival mega-culture and imposing the

name “Spring Festival” on other ethnic groups, Han Chinese enjoy a cultural privilege

and superiority over minorities.

Regional differences are also highlighted by the Chinese Spring Festival Net

website. Instead of going to temple fairs like the northerners, Chinese living in southern

regions visit flower markets during the Spring Festival. Northern Chinese eat jiaozi

(dumplings) on their reunion dinner table, people in the southeast region enjoy niangao

(rice pudding) with their family members, and people in Sichuan regard tangyuan (sweet glutinous rice dumplings) a must during the Spring Festival. In Southern Fujian, people

157 put red paper wrapped sugarcanes on both sides of the front door instead of the regular red couplets. Those rarely publicized regional festival customs were ubiquitous on the websites that explored festival traditions, undermining the unity image of a homogeneous

Chinese (Han) community.

Virtual Chinese Community

We, a group of ambitious youths from Bright Moon Studio, fantasize about gathering the essence of Chinese culture and have established a series of holiday websites. We are collecting local customs with the purpose of promoting the quintessence of Chinese tradition, preserving Chinese culture, and compiling cultural conventions and artifacts on this boundless and ever-presenting Internet. We hope that through these websites, Chinese sons and daughters around the world would be able to appreciate our heritage, understand where our roots are, and know where to express our nostalgic longings for our homeland.

About Us The Chinese Spring Festival Net

In Chinese society, one of the most significant means to define an individual is through his or her social relationships. A person’s association with family and friends reinforces a sense of personal and collective identity. The historically tight clan culture is fading in an increasingly mobile and fast-paced society, especially in urban areas.

Chinese are practicing new ways to relate to each other. The Internet offers connections with fellow men and women who ordinarily usually might never met in person. Exchange that takes place in cyberspace between netizens forms communities that are based on connectivity instead of proximity. The establishments of numerous Internet communities allowed debates, dialogues, and relationship building among individuals who are otherwise territorially divided. The word netizen (wangmin) reflects the nature of online communities, as they refer themselves as “citizens of the Net” who are not confined by

158 citizenship of nation-states; however, the Net is not a culturally or ethnically blind space

but a “super space” where cultural and ethnic identities offer collective faith, dignity, and

hope that used to be provided by the territorial bonded community of nation-state.

Everyday anxieties over national/cultural identities while surfing on a global medium

predispose Chinese netizens to be receptive of Chinese Party-state’s nationalist/culturalist

discourse, especially the worldwide cultural China concept, which is to bloom readily in

a cyberspace without boundary.

Chinese.com (yanhuang zaixian) was established as an online alliance of Chinese

language Internet content providers (ICPs) and personal websites around the world based

on the concept of “global Chinese (huaren)” in July, 2000 (“About Us,” 2001). By

January 2001, more than 500 ICPs and more than 3 million personal websites joined the alliance, and Chinese.com had expanded to include members from Europe, North

America, and Asian-Pacific area. At the same time, Sina also opened its North American version, while Yahoo expanded to include a Chinese version. The globalization of

Chinese language Internet content providers has provided the infrastructure for a worldwide virtual Chinese community on the Internet.

The cyber celebration of the Spring Festival offers Chinese netizens solidarity

bonded by a shared heritage in a virtual reality where a sense of veracity and that of time

and place seem could have slipped through your fingers at any moment. Homogeneity of

Chinese netizens and shrewd manipulation by the Party-state might have contributed to

the escalating of hot nationalism on the Internet (J. L. Qiu, 2001); however, it is a quieter,

subtler sense of belonging and rootedness in a time of transition that brings together

Chinese all over the world to a virtual festival celebration.

159 On the 2001 Spring Festival eve, I visited a public chat room located at

Sina.com.forum. People in the chat room were mostly strangers, but a few of them seemed to know each other from previous online conversations. They exchanged good wishes for the coming year, expressed their opinions and thoughts, and consoled depressed Internet friends (personal communications, January 21, 2001). Just before midnight, a netizen with the screen name Wrsq wrote:

Happy Spring Festival to everybody! Believe or not, I am going to spend the festival alone. The Spring Festival is no longer the same as it was in my childhood. The Spring Festival, which brought endless happiness to my childhood, is bringing me endless loneliness and annoyance now. Hyzou responded right away: “Do you want to come to Shanghai to participate in our celebration? You are more than welcome.” Songlim also encouraged Wrsq: “Hi, you are too pessimistic. I am from Singapore, and working in Shanghai right now. I am celebrating the festival by myself. Yes, just myself—BTW, typing Chinese is too much work!—but there are a lot of people just like you, spending this special evening by themselves, that’s why we are all here…” Dxj2 claimed that “I am living in a foreign country and am jealous of the celebration activities you might pay no heed to. All I can do is to make a few phone calls to my family.” Some participants recommend new computer games that can be played during the one-week holiday. Then the chat took a turn to criticize Chinese tourist manner abroad. One participant with the screen name

Ymjqq proposes five rules for Chinese traveling during the Spring Festival:

I call on all the Chinese traveling abroad during the festival that we will abide the following rules: One, we will not spit on the ground; two, we will not make noises in public; three, we will watch the traffic light while crossing the road; four, we will not jump the queue; five, we will not walk around after the meal with the toothpicks sticking out in our mouths. Another member of the group agreed:

160 I am going to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand in a couple of days. As a college student and a decent person, I would not do such things. Anyway, thank you for your kind suggestion. I been [sic] to Korea, Europe before, and I saw many Chinese traveler [sic] do that, so I can understand your advice. Thank you [original text partly in English]. Those exchanges in the chat room illustrated, on an everyday communication level, the ability of Chinese netizens to form a virtual bond (although in most cases an ephemeral one) with fellow Chinese despite the fact that some of them either were not citizens of the People’s Republic of China or were located outside of the physical territory of the nation-state. The Chinese language requirement (not only the linguistic ability of the netizens but also the computer capability of displaying and inputting

Chinese characters) excluded non-Chinese participants as well as marginalized non-Han minorities. However, the relative autonomy, especially the cyber-authorship available to individual netizens, ensured that alternative voices that were silenced by mainstream media could be heard online.

Minority voices were also heard online. Qiu Lin, an active Naxi minority who used Naximan as his screen name on Sina and Ctrip’s online forums, initiated numerous online discussions with regard to marginalized minorities, booming tourism, and environmental issues in ethnic regions. He proudly uploaded a scanned picture of his identity card, which indicated his ethnic background as Naxi. In a posting titled, “Please listen to the voice from Lugu Lake,” Qiu Lin (2001) claimed: “Under the oppression of a powerful mega-culture, the voices from the minorities are too weak to be heard. The differences of languages and education deepen the misunderstandings between the majority and the minorities.” Presenting himself as the online spokesperson for minorities, Qiu has also published articles written by his friends who had no access to the

161 Internet or other media outlets, reviewed books speaking sympathetically for the minorities, and expressed his resentment against cultural exploitation and encroaching.

His postings generated various responses from netizens. While some shared sympathetic views, others resorted to chauvinist Hanism. “You must also be one of those who distributed advertisements to promote tourism, right? Hypocrite. ” A netizen with the screen name Seanzt (2001) responded to a posting by Qiu Lin, “We have pumped in money for local economy and also brought the civilized world into your world….that was how you could get the education to be able to criticize us on the Internet.”

To sum up, the forming of Chinese language virtual neighborhoods (Appadurai,

1996, p. 195) has, in most cases inadvertently, contributed to the construction of the

Party-state’s cultural China. However, at times, dissenting voices are heard due to individuals’ access to online authorship. The Chinese Party-state also seizes the opportunity of the Spring Festival to promote Chinese heritage in cyberspace, reaching out to Chinese communities inside or outside of China. Various traditional Chinese symbols and images circulate on the Internet during the Spring Festival, and a virtual celebration of a common holiday among Chinese netizens has created a virtual China on the borderless Net.

Conclusions

Chinese mediascapes in 2001 were dramatically different from that of 1983, when the CCTV Spring Festival eve gala was telecast live for the first time. Industry that produces and disseminates media texts and images, especially television, has gone through extensive commercialization and decentralization. New forms of media technology, such as the Internet, further complicate the process of cultural production and

162 dissemination. Chinese mediascapes during the 2001 Spring Festival demonstrate a combination of the Chinese Party-state political agenda as well as the commercial interests of an increasingly globalized economy. The Spring Festival provides an opportunity for the Party-state to gather a nation as well as international Chinese communities under the name of a shared heritage. The nationalist/cultural framework of cultural China is embedded in various forms of popular entertainment. A Party-state endorsed media spectacle, the CCTV Spring Festival eve gala, has established an institutionalized authority among Chinese audience in (re)defining the most “Chinese” festival. Official participation in a virtual celebration of the 2001 Spring Festival on the

Internet further confirms that the Party-state is eager to maintain its authority to speak of an authentic Chinese identity and to delineate what is authentically Chinese and what is not.

163 CHAPTER FOUR

CELEBRATION OF COSMOPOLITANISM: MOBILE AND DETERRITORIALIZED

ETHNOSCAPES

The many displaced, deterritorialized, and transient populations that constitute today’s ethnoscapes are engaged in the construction of locality, as a structure of feeling, often in the face of the erosion, dispersal, and implosion of neighborhoods as coherent social formations. Appadurai, 1996, p. 199

Before I left China in 1996 to attend graduate school in the United States, my aunt took a special trip to the village where my father was born and brought me back a bag of soil from the field. “This will cure your homesickness,” she said. “If you fell sick because that you were not accustomed to the soil and water (shuitu bufu) in the United States, mix this soil with water and drink it.” Her belief in the soil remedy reflected a century-old tradition of land-attached Chinese people, who considered leaving one’s homeland and family roots the greatest misfortune in life. This agrarian society’s love for land and soil has bonded Chinese to their native places for centuries. It also might have contributed to the traditional significance of the Spring Festival, since it was a time dedicated for family reunions and ancestor (land) worship.

This chapter is concerned with the increasingly global and mobile Chinese ethnoscapes (Appadurai, 1996), as illustrated in the celebration of the Spring Festival.

Ethnoscape, a concept coined by Appadurai, refers to “the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world,” (p. 33) in which groups are “no longer tightly territorialized, spatially bounded, historically unselfconscious, or culturally homogeneous.” (p. 48) As the face of life-worlds becomes frequently in flux, traditional ways of cultural reproduction and identity formation would be unavoidably and

164 fundamentally altered, especially the imagination of the nation-states. As Appadurai maintains, the cultural space of the nation-state is subject to the externalities of migration and mass media. Migration, when juxtaposed with the rapid flow of global mediascopes, creates “a new order of instability in the production of modern subjectivities.” (1996, p.

4)

Increasingly mobile and global Chinese ethnoscapes are exemplified by two new features of Spring Festival celebration: holiday consumption and tourism. “Holiday economy”, which promotes consumption and vacationing, is perhaps the most successful government-initiated economic activity in recent years. Since October 1999, when the

Chinese government decided to give ordinary Chinese a one-week holiday, “holiday consumption” has become a household term in China. By 2001, there were three weeklong official holidays around the year, the Spring Festival, the May Day, and the

National Day (October 1). The three holidays were considered “golden weeks” for retailers, restaurants, and tourism industries. According to Xinhua news agency, the holiday economy generated tremendous revenues and revived domestic demand that had been dull for quite a period of time (“People-centered,” 2001).

Although all three holidays generate a tremendous amount of tourism revenue, the

Spring Festival is perhaps the most appropriate occasion to promote a shopping spree.

Traditionally, the Spring Festival has been the time to put on new clothes and jewelry, to prepare sumptuous reunion feasts, and to give generously to family and friends. As holiday shopping has become a part of the Spring Festival tradition, having a reunion dinner in restaurants and Spring Festival vacation are both newly-invented traditions of recent years. Booming holiday economy indicates an aspiring Chinese consumer society

165 as Chinese are eager to immerse themselves in global consumer culture. Global consumer culture plays a significant role in constructing and sustaining a new version of nationalism, which I identify as cosmopolitan nationalism, in contemporary China. I also maintain that cosmopolitan nationalism is, in a sense, global consumer culture’s response to a cultural China promoted by the Chinese Party-state. While in the pre-reform years,

Chinese nationalism had been “native nationalism,” with the emphasis on rural, local, closed, and traditional interests, the rising cosmopolitan nationalism is urban, global, open, and modern. This chapter seeks to investigate how the global has become the lens through which ordinary Chinese look at themselves and their everyday life, and how this global gaze affects their way of imagining “China,” i.e. the emerging cosmopolitan nationalism.

Urbanity, Cosmopolitanism, and Consumerism:

Reconfiguration of Space and Power in Urban China

The taxi is running smoothly on the new airport expressway connecting the Chengdu International Airport to the city. “The expressway was just finished,” my sister tells me, “and they are expanding and renovating the terminal building too.” The reason, as claimed by a promotional video by the city shown on the flight, is to accommodate the increasing traffic and also make a face-lift of the run-down old airport to bring the city up to the level of an “international metropolis.” Along the expressway, red banners greet every visitor of the city: “Let Chengdu meet the world! Let the world know about Chengdu!” both in Chinese and English. The bold letters and exclamation points indicate the determination of a city to play a role on the world stage. From the car, I can see that the world and Chengdu have collided, in the luxurious villa complexes built along the expressway, named “European Garden,” “Beverly Hills,” “Paris Sunshine,” or “Roman Holiday Garden.” Big posters promote special Spring Festival sales events, claiming: “Whatever Americans have, now Chengdu residents can have too…”

166 As the principle policy of Chinese Party-state has now shifted from politics to the economy, the cityscape in Chengdu has become increasingly urban and cosmopolitan with each passing day. Starting in the mid-1980s, Chengdu, like any other city in China, has become one massive construction site. The transformation of the physical landscape is a constant fact of daily life for Chengdu residents. Department stores cluster in revitalized downtown business district that bustle with new vitality. Mirrored towers mark a nexus of office complexes, housing a growing number of independent institutions that are the core of urban economies in market regimes, such as financial institutions, stock exchange, advertising agencies, and consulting firms. Joint venture luxury hotels such as Holiday Inn Crown Plaza and Sheraton cater to foreign business travelers.

Commercial billboards, previously reserved for political banners, promote Western products and life style. Major streets have been widened to four to six-lane roads to accommodate ever-growing traffic, and in addition to broadening the old First Ring

Road, two more ring roads and a highway have been constructed to divert traffic from city streets. The awe expressed by Chengdu residents when the first highway bridge was erected in the late 1980s soon faded as more and more bridges and viaducts appeared. In short, Chengdu has strived to be the replica of Western metropolises that are seen in

Hollywood movies and magazines. Sun Bin, a young Chengdu resident described the craze of “linking up with the international rail-tracks” (yu guoji jiegui) of city officials:

Officials of all ranks in Chengdu, from the Mayor to a section chief, have been obsessed with these magic letters, W-T-O. They always talk about we have to link up with the international rail-tracks as we are joining WTO, W-T-woe, W-T-woe [imitating the accent of officials]. Every official report or speech has mentioned “international rail-track”. It’s all over the media, and even those old grannies can tell you about it. Some municipal officials visited New York City and would come back with the

167 idea of building more and more skyscrapers so we would be linked with New York! There are even talks about building a Sichuan World Trade Center downtown.

The urgency and anxiety Chengdu residents felt collectively as their city tries to catch up

with global modernity was also expressed in a front-page Chengdu Commercial Daily

article: “Well-known foreign cities all have CBDs [Central Business Districts]—New

York’s Manhattan, London’s Oxford Street, and Tokyo’s Ginza. In China, Beijing and

Shanghai has started construction of their own CBDs. What about Chengdu?” (“Planning

Chengdu’s CBD,” 2001).

This section investigates the emerging Chinese urban and cosmopolitan ways of

life and spatial practices as well as how they affect the celebration of the Spring Festival and the collective imagination of a nation. Traditional Chinese festivals have their roots in agricultural activities coordinated with farming seasons. For example, the Mid-Autumn festival was a harvest celebration. The Spring Festival was to celebrate the accomplishments from the hard work in the past year and to commemorate the renewal of a new cycle of farming activities, namely plowing, sowing, cultivating, and harvesting.

Traditional celebrating activities during the Spring Festival, such as offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors, were meant to show appreciation for their blessings in the past year and to solicit their good will for the coming year. As contemporary urban life is far removed from agricultural activities, urban residents’ way of celebrating the Spring

Festival is re-shaped and re-invented by the configuration of power and space in the city.

A city is not only constructed by architects and urban planners, but also by the

power structure and the quotidian ways of life of its dwellers. In the process of theorizing

everyday practices, lived space, and the “disquieting familiarity of the city,” de Certeau

168 proposes “spatial practices in fact secretly structure the determining conditions of social life.” (1984, p. 96) The articulation of urban space planning and allocation, in a larger sense, is the articulation of dominating ideologies of the society. In China, the dominating ideologies shaping city space has been shifting in the past two decades. The spatial practices in Chinese cities are recast by the invisible hand of the market, which has dismantled or diminished the visible, tangible control apparatuses such as work unit, rationing, household registration (hukou), or Residents’ Councils. Chinese urban life is overwhelmed by a collective desire of modernization, of being linked up with the

“international rail-tracks.” High-rise office towers, construction of foreign investment zones, and booming business districts have not only bought about lifestyle changes, but also have tapped deeply into mentalities of urban Chinese, especially their collective imagination.

The following section examines at how the reconfiguration of power and space in the city, specifically with regard to the work unit, changes the way people celebrate the

Festival.

Reclaiming Private Space and a Personal Celebration

Collectivity became the characteristics of the Spring Festival celebration in the 1960s. The work units distributed movie tickets, organized parties, and leaders paid New Year calls to workers. The residents’ councils issued food coupons and purchase booklets, and organized neighbors to clean public areas. Open the doors of any two households, the dishes on their dinner tables were alike, the furniture in each room was alike, the clothes on each person were alike, and the aspirations of people were alike.

“Reflections,” 2001

As Chinese urban life was organized in a communal way under the control of the work unit (danwei), Spring Festival celebration in the first thirty years of the new

169 Republic was marked by collectivity. Work units replaced the clan in rural communities and played a vital organizing role in urban residents’ celebration of the Spring Festival.

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, one major characteristic of the new Republic was the Party-state’s full penetration into governing everyday life of its citizens. Work unit compounds were usually walled areas, which offered self-sufficient office, production, and living spaces for the employees. This pervasive and intrusive work unit compound lifestyle has contributed to the collectivity of the Spring Festival celebration.

Chen Xianbo, a 60-year-old retired official, recalled what a typical Spring

Festival celebration was like with his work unit:

The fiscal year ended before the Western New Year, but the summary of work of each work unit generally wouldn’t be done until right before the Spring Festival. The distribution of fish, rice, cooking oil, and eggs, etc for the holiday was usually a few days before the Spring Festival. It was a type of work unit benefits, so every work unit had different things to distribute. One year, every home in our work unit had the same wall calendar because it was issued by our work unit during the festival. Since our dorm building was right next to the office building, families, including kids and old parents, would usually come to the courtyard to pick up the stuff. That was when we started to feel the atmosphere of the Festival. Our work unit had one whole day dedicated to some celebrating activities each year, and our families were invited too. We would have some sports activities, games, etc and there were always prizes. We also had a festival feast organized by the work unit each year, a time for people to chat casually and convey their good wishes to each other. The municipal officials would go around and visit various work units to congratulate people for the good work they’d done in the past year and make good wishes for the coming year. Also, since Spring Festival was considered an important holiday, like the Western New Year’s Day and the National Day, there would always be a public flag-raising ceremony during the festival. Sometimes it was at the town square, sometimes it was in a high school’s playground. Usually it was on the first morning of the lunar New Year. Every work unit had to send representatives to attend. Nobody really wanted to go so usually department heads had to take turns.

170 This work unit style celebration still lingers in the part of Chinese society where the Party-state remained in rigid control. However, as work unit compounds are now disappearing in the cityscape and residences have now often been separated from their work places, and more and more people work in semi-state-owned or private enterprises, the collective way of celebration has had to give way to the diversity of individualized activities.

From A Person of Work Unit (Danwei Ren) to a Social Person

“Work unit organized activities?” Li Ying, a 29-year-old working for a state- owned travel agency, asked me in amusement.

Now who would care? We used to have a festival feast at work, but not many people would attend. Even the distribution of commodities stopped because the logistics office did not want to bother. Our general manager finally realized that instead of giving meat, eggs, or fish, converting them to bonus money would be much more appreciated by the employees. That makes everyone happy, so we can take the money and go our separate ways to really enjoy the festival. We are not elementary school kids and we don’t need to be organized.

Li told me that her work unit is so loosely organized that as long as the employees bring in revenue, they are mostly left alone.

Li’s comments reflect a socio-psychological transition from “the person of the work unit to the social person.” (Zhu, 1998, p. 216) Zhu claims that Chinese urban residents’ work unit consciousness has weakened while social consciousness has become stronger. Although eight of my 14 informants worked for state-owned work units, only two of them actually participated in any work-unit organized festival activities. State employees have become less rigidly organized since the reform started and their relationship with the work unit has been much weaker. During the second half of the

171 1990s, state-owned enterprises started painful restructuring and privatization. The “iron

rice bowl” is broken, thus, the guarantee of lifetime state employment. Many state

employees have become de facto self-employed entrepreneurs as they sign so-called

responsibility contracts (chengbao hetong) with their work units. This urban version of

household responsibility contract only requires that contractors bring in a certain amount

of revenue. Li Ying has signed such a contact to take over the domestic travel department

of her travel agency. “I am basically working for myself,” Li told me. “If I work harder, I

make more money. If I don’t work hard, I earn less.” At the same time, millions of state

employees have become so-called xiagang workers, off-post workers who no longer have

any work due to closure of production lines or entire factories. After two years of being

laid off, xiagang workers’ employment with their work units is officially terminated.

They can then register as unemployed and collect meager unemployment benefits. The

lucky ones who retain their positions are required to sign term contracts with the

management that may be terminated any time.

The decline of traditional work unit is also brought about by employment

opportunities arise from private sectors. Many state employees plunged into the ocean

(xiahai) of private business in hope of wealth and better opportunities. In 1996, domestic private endeavors and joint ventures together employed nearly 17 percent of the urban labor force, as compared with only three percent in 1984 (Tang & Parish, 2000, p. 32).

The number of this new class of private workers has risen dramatically since more than

50 percent of the newly hired work outside of the state sectors. Private sectors and foreign companies have produced a considerable amount of salaried professionals who make up an emerging middle class in Chinese society. These salaried professionals often

172 refer themselves as “urban white collar” (dushi bailing) or yuppies (yapi). With such labels, they associate themselves with the Western white collar classes that are perceived as exemplars of urbanity and modernity.

As urban Chinese have gained more mobility in their choices of employment, the state-owned work unit is now much less authoritative in today’s Chinese society. People are either less loyal toward their work units or simply no longer attached to work units in the traditional sense. Since the work unit is withdrawing its previous pervasive and intrusive role from Chinese urban residents’ life, Chinese’s celebration of the Spring

Festival has become a social and much more individualistic event.

“I think people are really making good use of the one-week holiday to enjoy a festival of their own.” Zhou Xinming told me.

Before, we had almost no recreation, and even showing a movie at a playground would attract a big crowd. Now you have so many choices. You can stay at home playing mahjong or watching television; you can go to temple fairs or go shopping; or you can take your whole family to a trip. Young people always like to go to Discos or Karaoke bars to spend the evenings with their friends. Then you have to allocate some time for the family to get together. Anyway, you make your own choices. It is a time for relaxation and leisure, and it is a time to get away from work.

Wang Xiaochun, a young woman working for a Japanese company, told me that since she was the only employee working for the Chengdu office, “I am the work unit and the work unit is me.” The policy of foreign companies is to observe official holidays in China. “The person in charge of Chinese offices usually would call me from Beijing and say some auspicious words. That’s about it.” Wang told me that she was not bothered by the lack of festive atmosphere at work, “I never expect much relationship with the company outside of the work place, anyway. Actually that is one good thing about

173 working for foreign companies. When I was working for my old work unit, they

interfered so many personal things in your life it was very annoying.”

The weakening of the work unit grants Chinese urban residents social mobility,

leading to a more individualized and private Spring Festival celebration. As more and

more Chinese leave work unit compounds and become independent homeowners,

residential area separates from work place, which further contributes to the separation of

work unit and leisure/festival celebration.

A Home of My Own to Celebrate

“This is the outcome of my seven-day Spring Festival holiday!” said Song

Xiaoqin, a pharmacist in her early thirties, continuing our conversation after a tour of her

new two-bedroom apartment in Shuangnan xiaoqu. Song finished decorating the apartment with crown molding and shining hardwood floor, and moved in just before the

Spring Festival. “I moved into an empty apartment and spent the whole festival shopping for furniture,” Song said, looking relaxed on the big leather sofa. After living in a dormitory room shared with another woman for eight years, Song decided to take charge of her life. “I just could not wait to have a private space of my own to celebrate the festival.”

Shuangnan xiaoqu (xiaoqu means residential area), is a massive development

located in a booming area around the second Ring Road, which housed approximately

230,000 residents (“Shuangnan’s,” 2001). By the time of the 2001 Spring Festival,

although a considerable amount of Chengdu residents still live within work units, the

compounds are demolished almost daily. Xiaoqu has replaced the work unit compound as

the established and desirable urban living space in today’s Chengdu. Xiaoqu represents a

174 new way of life, a lifestyle that is more urban, more modern, and more cosmopolitan.

Like other Chinese cities, the construction of new housing in Chengdu since the 1980s

has focused on the development of xiaoqu. Referring to housing districts that mix

residential, service, and commercial functions, xiaoqu differs from work unit compound

due to the separation of workplace and home. Xiaoqu, as large-scale commercial

developments, are designed to house people from all walks of life, whose places of

employment are spatially disconnected from their residences. Residents’ Councils still

function in xiaoqu; however, they act more as a community support agency facilitating services than public policing mechanisms that used to scrutinize and monitor residents.

As an indicator of this role change, Residents’ Councils in some areas of Chengdu have

changed their names to Community Service Centers (shequ fuwu zhongxing), especially

in newly-developed xiaoqu. The Residents’ Council also serves as the frontline for grass-

root democracy in China. Based on the Law on the Organization of Urban Residents’

Committee, passed in 1990, local community committees have adopted direct elections

(voting by all residents, not only a few representatives of residents) and experimentd in

new systems of running neighborhood affairs. The Residents’ Councils deal more with

local concerns than national policies, and are much less intrusive in residents’ lives than

the old work unit.

The rise of xiaoqu greatly challenges the authority of the former dominance of

work unit, a major social control mechanism of the Party-state in the Maoist era. With the

separation of workplace and home, the work unit plays a much less important role in the

employees’ social activities outside working hours. Many aspects of Chinese life now

take place outside of the spatial and organizational bounds of the work unit. For example,

175 many informants told me that despite the ban on setting off firecrackers in areas within

the second Ring Road, many xiaoqu were lit up by colorful fireworks and overwhelmed

by sounds of firecrackers when the New Year was approaching around midnight on the

Spring Festival eve. Chen Xianbo told me that violation of firecrackers ban were easily

prevented in work unit compounds since the work unit officials in charge of enforcing the

ban lived within the compounds, and the work unit would be fined if any violation was

found within the compounds. However, in xiaoqu, residents come from all walks of life

and few would have to authority or even bother to enforce the ban.

The ongoing public housing reform has further diminished the work unit’s control

over its employees. A key component of China’s emerging sense of personal freedom is

the choice of work and place of abode, missing in the life of every Chinese national

living during the Maoist period. Housing, as a critical part of the work unit benefit

package, was generally a means for a work unit to control the mobility of its employees.

In the first decade of reform, privatization of urban real estate was not a major objective.

A comprehensive housing reform was initiated in 1996 as the central government saw

private home ownership as a boost of consumption, therefore, stimulating economic

growth. Instead of being allocated as benefits from work units, houses are now sold to

individuals in the open real estate market. If the lax hukou system has already reduced the level of dependency of employees on their work units, housing reform severs the umbilical cord that was connecting the employee to her or his particular work unit.

People who have been living in the work unit allocated housing are now often required to purchase their residences. Once acquiring ownership of their own homes, employees no

176 longer feel the need to stay at the work unit just to maintain previously guaranteed housing benefits.

Song Xiaoqin immediately began a job search after she bought her first apartment. She had waited in vain for years for her work unit, a state-owned hospital, to assign her an apartment. “That was the only reason I let go a lot of good job opportunities in the last eight years.” Song told me, “Now I feel really relieved and liberated, finally.”

Song started working for a Hong Kong-based pharmaceutical company in March, for a salary four times higher than that of her old work unit.

To sum up, the work unit once played a vital role in the collective and homogeneous celebration of the Spring Festival in urban China; however, the prime time of work units has passed and control of the Party-state excised through it has been eroded. Chinese urban residents now enjoy a much more private and diverse style of

Spring Festival celebration. Meanwhile, as the Chinese Party-state is struggling with maintaining social stability and Party domination during an emerging collision with capitalism and the market economy, it is learning the value of stimulating consumer desires in economic advancement. Instead of sacrificing materialistic well-being on behalf of a greater national good as was the case in the pre-reform era, Chinese citizens are now motivated by ever-growing consumer choices. Chinese urban living space and lifestyles are being constantly re-constructed through the rising power of global consumerism.

We Consume Therefore We Exist

One fundamental change in Chinese society since the reform is a shift of economic focus from production to consumption. In the socialist era, production was

177 stimulated by more production and workers were motivated by the fantasy of an ultimate

Utopian future and by nationalist zeal. In the market economy age, the Chinese Party- state has realized that production can be sustained only by a near-insatiable consumer desire, which not only creates a constant demand for products, but also motivates workers to work harder to increase their income. As John Berger (1972) says of Western capitalism:

The interminable present of meaningless working hours is “balanced” by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment. In his or her day-dreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consuming self. (p. 149)

The shift of policy was greeted by Chinese public with tremendous enthusiasm, as the citizenry envisioned, through mass media and interpersonal contacts, a better life that a mature consumer society could offer.

Breaking from the Maoist “industrialization without urbanization” doctrine, contemporary Chinese cities follow their Western models and city life today is largely shaped by consumption rather than production. Urban centers are widely viewed as glittering markets where China and the cosmopolitan affluence emblematized by the

West collide, where modernity takes the form of incessant flow of global commodities, and where a modern and “gone-global” China is in the making. Global consumer culture stirs up an acute commodity fetish linked to social status that has saturated all sectors of

Chinese society. Chinese consumers’ fantasy of participating in a global culture is satisfied not only by actual purchases, but most significantly, by fascinated gaze at what is available. The “imagined cosmopolitanism” (Schein, 2001, p. 226) deeply embedded in

178 Chinese consumer culture was ubiquitous during the time of the 2001 Spring Festival celebration as the Chinese public immersed in holiday consumption.

The Chinese public’s holiday consumption desire has been stirred by government’s intense discourses to promote consumption as the center of the country’s economic strategy. In the mid-1990s, the Chinese economy became soft and the Chinese

Party-state adopted all possible incentive measures to stimulate the economy, with little effect. With personal bank deposits totaling RMB six trillion (U.S. dollar 722 billion) in late 2000, China was one of the highest-saving countries in the world (“China tries,”

2000). Chinese citizens were strongly encouraged by government efforts to start spending a portion of their savings. In the new millennium, “to be rich” is not “glorious” enough, as first advocated by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s; Chinese have to consume conspicuously to be glorious. A program entitled three “golden weeks” was installed in

October 1999 by the government as a major effort to jump-start consumer spending in tourism and consumption activities. In his report to National People’s Congress, Zeng

Peiyan, minister in charge of the State Development Planning Commission, claimed that

China’s economy took a turn for the better in 2000, as the three extended holidays boosted national consumption 11.4 percent (“Chinese economy,” 2001). The National

Statistics Bureau asserted that the GDP growth of 7.5 percent in 2000 was driven by domestic consumption, investment, and export, with domestic consumption contributing

58.8 percent to the growth (“Official,” 2000).

China’s new consumerism also has changed the relationship between the Party- state and the Chinese people. In the pre-reform era, the Party-state was the monopolized supplier of consumer goods in the Chinese society. When the government reduced its

179 control over the flow of commodities at the beginning of the reform era, commercial

forces started to play a role in the reconfiguration of social power structure. Chinese

people, formerly only known as the mass (qunzhong) or the people (renming), are now aspiring consumers (xiaofei zhe) and customers (guke). Through their buying power,

ordinary Chinese, for the first time, acquired some power, because of the ability to decide

whether, when, and where to spend their money. This consumer power, though quite

limited for reasons of economic capability, has brought some sense of individual control.

Many scholars claim that consumption can be a tactical raid upon the system of the

powerful and shopping malls can be turned into battlefield of guerrilla warfare for the

powerless (de Certeau, 1984, Fiske, 1989a).

The following section deals with urban consumption during the Spring Festival,

and how holiday spending is linked to an collective experience of cosmopolitanism that

directly contributes to urban Chinese’ work of the imagination, especially the imagination

of a modern and advanced China in a globalized world.

Walking verses Consuming: Enchanting Public Space

One local Spring Festival custom in Chengdu is for the family to take a walk after dinner everyday for the first seven days of the New Year. “Its name is ‘walking off hundred of sickness’ (you baibing),” My father explained. “While walking, the spirit of one hundred kinds of diseases would get away from you, and for the whole year, you will be blessed with health.” During my 2001 visit, my family was walking along the Jinpeng street, which was turned into a night market at seven p.m. My father and my stepmother often stopped to ask for prices of certain items displayed at the stands. Then they led me into a newly-opened supermarket. “But Dad,” I protested, “We are supposed to walk off sickness, not to get stuff.” My father smiled and said, “We are just taking a look. It is a new store.” We walked out of the store twenty minutes later with a couple bottles of liquor and some candies. For the rest of the evening, we made stops at a shoe store, a record store, and an appliances store. “Well, you might call it a leisure walk (sanbu), but I call it a shopping trip (guangjie).” I

180 complained. My father turned to me, and said, “How can you distinguish the two? Once you get out to the streets, you always see something to get your attention.”

Walking is a relatively new practice in Chinese cities. By “walking,” I refer to a cultural practice, a way to see and to be seen, to attract and to be attracted in the city.

Walking is an individualized practice, one way people inscribe themselves into the urban landscape. In Maoist China, streets were strictly functional, and an individual walked or bicycled in the streets for solely practical reasons, to pass by from one point to another point of the city. Public spaces, with an imposed austerity, were deprived of newspaper kiosks, ice-cream stands, or other such things that would distract passer-bys and stop their steps. Any individual strolling idly in the streets and other public spaces would draw suspicious looks and possibly even police questioning. Streets and city squares were for collective activities, as the main stage for organized political parades, banners, and exhibition, where national and Party holidays were rejoiced, various Party-state enemies were denounced, loyalty to the Party and leaders was displayed, and national pride was provoked.

The practice of public “walking” started in the early 1980s in China, when groups of urban youth in flared trousers, long hair, and sunglasses swarmed the streets, playing loud music from portable cassette record players and while showing off their Disco dance steps. Contemporary Chinese novelist Yu Hua’s novella, The Year of 1986 (Yijiubaliu

Nian), best captured the unsettling nature of walking in the urban life of that era.

Some pop song echoed inside of the cafe. The music spilled over to the streets from the open door, and a few young fellows rushed out with the music. With Marlboro cigarettes in their mouths and songs hummed from their noses, they came out to the street. They came here everyday, for a cup of Nestle coffee, then they walked in the streets. They walked in the

181 streets until midnight. They were either talking loudly or singing loudly. They hoped all the people in the streets would pay attention to them.

…. After young people came to the streets, the night turned passionate. The light was unsettled, and the tranquility was disrupted too. Although they walked their separate ways to movie theatres, to nightclubs, and to their friends and lovers, the streets were still full of people walking back and forth. Waves of crowds swarmed into the door of the department store, and then retreated to the street from another door. They walked in the streets for the sake of walking. Even walking into the department stores was for the sake of walking….because they needed to walk. Only when they were walking did they feel that they were young.

Urban public spaces, once solely reserved for the Party-state and the collective masses, were suddenly open for individual displays of fashion and youthful rebellious spirit. This can be seen as a tactical resistance to the strategic control (de Certeau, 1984) of the Party-state control over urban space. However, since the 1990s, Chinese society, especially in urban communities, has immersed in the global consumerism, as urban space was overwhelmed by consumer desires. The smaller trickle of commercial billboards, bus advertisements, neon signs during the 1980s suddenly blanketed virtually the entire city. Under the lights of nightclubs and fleeting images of Coca Cola painted on the sides of passing buses, the previously liberating experience of “walking” became corrupted and overshadowed by the act or aspiration of consumption.

While “walking” as a cultural practice was disapproved of and even restricted by authorities when it first appeared in the 1980s, “consuming” public spaces is greatly encouraged today by local officials to stimulate the economy and generate revenue for local retailers as well as for the city government. Billboards have replaced political banners in the streets as municipal governments realize that urban space can be turned into advertising resources and bring in a handsome amount of income.

182 During the 2001 Spring Festival, the streets and city squares of Chengdu were

adorned with billboards, banners, balloons, and neon lights with specific festival

messages. Tianfu, the main city square, was turned in to a venue for intensified holiday

advertisements. Tianfu, i.e. the land of heavenly abundance, is the nickname of Sichuan.

The Square was a much-publicized city beautifying project and was designated to be the

center of leisure and relaxation for Chengdu residents. Tianfu Square was a locale that

held memories of the historical evolution of the relationship between space and power in

the city. The square was built in 1997 in the old city center, where the original imperial

court was located and where the Statue of Mao Zedong was erected in the 1960s. Tianfu

Square attracted a big crowd day and night during the festival. I did not know how many

of the pedestrians there, if any, were “walking off sickness” but I was sure that they could

not walk off the commercialization of urban space. As my friend Yang joked: “Mao

would not be able to rest in peace in his coffin if he saw his image was next to all those

capitalist evils.”

Behind the statue of Mao, a huge red banner fluttered in the wind on the south

wall of the Exhibition Center. It claimed, “Quanxing Group wishes Sichuan people a happy and prosperous Year of the Snake!” Mao stood side by side with colorful balloons

floating high with advertising banners. Streetlights around the square were covered with auspicious red light boxes, advertising liquor and cookies, the two most popular gifts for holiday visits. Benches stamped with logos of sponsoring companies were built along the lawn for pedestrians’ rest, where they could leisurely appreciate surrounding billboards, neon-signs, and promotional balloons. Commercial temptations were everywhere. On billboards, Arnold Schwarzenegger was trying to convince pedestrians that a Bubugao

183 DVD player was the best Spring Festival gift for aging parents, and Gong Li, with impeccable make-up and branded as an “internationally-renowned movie star,” promoted

Revlon facial lotion. Any conspicuous space was turned into a spot for commercials as advertising campaigns intensified for the Festival. Coca Cola, Levis, and Whirlpool washing machines attempted to seduce city walkers. Occasionally, young salespeople would hand out promotional brochures or balloons. The square also served as a display stage for a Food and Liquor Expo in early March, and the construction of a gigantic promotional boat for Five Star beer started before the Spring Festival ended in early

February. The lawn of the square, supposedly a public space for relaxation, was slowly encroached as more and more promotional objects were erected. Tianfu Square during the Spring Festival was a symbolic example of commercially encroached public space.

The city’s beautification project was mainly aimed to attract city walkers to places where they could be exposed to commercial influences.

Chengdu, years earlier equipped with only two unembellished department stores with limited stock, has been turned to a shopping paradise with several department stores erected next to each other. Those new shopping arcades, brightly adorned with lights, mirrors, and glamorous signage, were designed to enchant and entice, especially during the time of the Festival.

A Collective Festival Shopping Spree

Since beginning my fieldwork in January 2001, I spent a couple of hours almost everyday at the Chunxi area, observing the festival shopping crowd. The area, stretching along Shudu Boulevard from the entrance of Shunchen Street to the intersection of

Hongxin Road, was crammed with mega department stores, such as People’s Department

184 Store (Renmin Shangchang), Ito Yokado, Shudu Plaza, Parkson, and Pacific, as well as numerous boutiques and jewelry and gift stores. As early as nine in the morning, this section of Shudu Boulevard was jammed with taxis, pedicabs, bicycles, and private cars.

Taxis and pedicabs lined up along the bicycle path, waiting to pick up people with armfuls of goods until late at night. The shopping season started about one month before the Festival, when all stores put out promotions and extended store hours. The Spring

Festival shopping spree brought the retailers tremendous revenue. According to Chengdu

Commercial Daily, the total retail revenue of 19 major department stores between

January 20 and 30 was RMB 37.1 million (“Chengdu residents,” 2001). Ito Yokado’s daily sales revenue was over RMB 5 million everyday in the week before the festival officially started on January 23. As claimed by a man next to me waiting in the long line at the check-out in Ito Yokado with his shopping cart piled with goodies, “Wow, you just blow away Renmingbi (Chinese currency) as if they were pieces of paper now!”

To understand the seemingly unabashed consumerism displayed during the 2001

Festival, we need to recognize the condemnation and suppression of consumption in the

Maoist era. When consumer goods were strictly rationed, the Chinese government advocated frugality and opposed “extravagance” during the Spring Festival. According to several of my respondents, in the month of the Spring Festival, every city resident was allowed to buy one extra half jin [One jin equals half kilogram] vegetable oil and one half jin meat, on top of the monthly ration of one jin meat and half jin vegetable oil. Each urban household was also issued coupons to buy cotton fabric, liquor, sugar, fish, and peanuts. “I always remember when I was little, I was so anxious to wake up on the morning of Chuyi (the first day of the lunar year), because my parents always put a set of

185 new coat and new pants, and a pair of new shoes next to my pillow the night before and I was not allowed to wear them until morning,” said 35-year-old Wang Xiaochun, as she recalled her childhood.

Like everybody else, my family led a very meager life. My sister is three years older than me, so I always wore her leftover clothes. On an ordinary day, we hardly had a meal with more than two dishes, so the Spring Festival feast was a big luxury for us. Sausages, bacon, chicken or duck were rare delicacies and would be gone fast once they were on table.

Almost directly, the booming consumerism comes as Chinese attempt to compensate for the impoverished life they had to endure for decades. Wang continued our conversation, pointing to the new clothes and shoes she just bought from a shopping trip:

Sometimes I look at those teenage girls and really feel sorry for myself. Yesterday my sister and I took my Mom to the Pacific and bought her a very nice wool coat. You know our parents’ generation. They would never spend too much money because they are used to living frugally. As for myself, of course I don’t have to wait for the Spring Festival to get new clothes or other stuff any more, but for some reason I especially feel like buying things now. Television and newspapers always talked about ‘holiday consumption’ and how hot it was. Maybe during the Spring Festival, since everybody else is so crazy in buying and spending, I feel like I am participating in something bigger than just holiday shopping.

That “something bigger than just holiday shopping” Wang mentioned was the sense of participating in national economic strategic advancement and, of being a part of the big picture painted by the Party-state as China was emerging as a new economic giant worldwide. After holiday consumption was first endorsed by the Party-state, shopping during the Spring Festival has turned into a collective experience.

Because a materially well-off society, termed as xiaokang, has been officially recognized as the mid-range goal of the reform inaugurated by the Chinese government, mass consumption has been seen as the indicator as well as the boosting force for a

186 prosperous nation. Although the Party-state still speaks against “extravagant spending”, conspicuous consumption during the Spring Festival was praised as the showcase of

“stability and prosperity,” (“First Chinese,” 2001) and as “the farewell to the consumption of basic necessities and the arrival of xiaokang consumption.” (“Xiaokang,”

2001) As one of my interviewees, Sun Bin, exclaimed, “Holiday mass consumption is the best way to whitewash the picture of stability and prosperity and to cover up social problems.” The official Party newspaper, People’s Daily, even exalted Chinese participation in holiday consumption as rising to “patriotic duty” and spending more money to boost the holiday economy (“China racks,” 2000). Holiday consumption, therefore, is largely shaped by nationalist aspirations and collective modernizing ambitions.

Since the initiation of the first golden week in October 1999, government statistics bureau track and publicize figures of holiday consumption, and state run media promote the phenomenon as the indicator of a strong economy and a modern consumer society. Engel coefficient, which indicates the proportion of food expenditure in total consumption, became a household term in Chengdu during the 2001 Spring Festival due to a series of highly publicized city government reports, indicating that Chengdu residents were enjoying xiaokang life. As claimed by the statistics bureau director, the

Engel coefficient for Chengdu urban residents dropped from 54.2 percent in 1990 to 38.8 percent in 2000, close to the 30 percent average of advanced countries (“Xiaokang,”

2001). The message was that, if China spends more, it would catch up with the global modernization process.

187 The Spring Festival shopping spree was also enthusiastically promoted by local governments, exemplified in the use of gift certificates. Many local government agencies and state-owned enterprises issued store gift certificates to their employees as a form of holiday benefits. Issuing gift certificates instead of a cash bonus was a way for local governments to evade national taxes and to stimulate local retail business. During the

2001 Festival, approximately one-third of local retail revenue in Chengdu came from gift certificates (“Gift certificates,” 2001). In January of that year, the State Council issued an emergency ban on the use of gift certificates, citing its impact on tax evasion, disturbing financial order, and promoting corruption. The ban announced that late February would be the final deadline for the use of gift certificates. The imposed deadline only created a frantic shopping spree by gift certificate holders. Wu Minzhen had a RMB 500 Hongqi

Supermarket gift certificate issued by the elementary school where she was teaching, which she was urgently used to buy a huge quantity of rice, cooking oil, spices, and even toilet paper. “Those will supply my family for a whole year,” she said, “But what else could I do? I did not want to waste it.”

In short, mass consumption during the Spring Festival was a Party-state endorsed collective activity, which pumped a huge amount of cash into the softening economy and stimulated economic development. Conspicuous consumption, especially during a holiday when a materialistically better life was brought to light, created a prosperous image of the nation as well as a sense that while we consume, we are catching up on the train to modernity.

188

A Taste of the Global: Consuming Cosmopolitanism

My sister and I passed waves of crowds on Qinlong Street. The Spring Festival was less than one week away. It was the peak time for retail sales since people were buying gifts for families and friends. We passed by the Printemps (Chinese name is Paris Spring, Bali Chuntian) department store, which displayed a big banner at the storefront: “Paris is the most romantic city in the world, and Paris Spring from Paris promises to bring its romantic atmosphere to Chengdu.” Finally, we walked in Carrefour, the four-story French hypermarket that was the new favorite for Chengdu residents. It was so crowded that we had to move along with streams of people, like sleepwalkers. On the forth floor, which was the food section, much to my surprise, I saw a group of people tasting samples of Jewish style smoked salmon, or lox. “I had no idea that Jewish food was sold here!” I told my sister. She went over and picked up a sample, says: “Well, we are definitely linked-up with the international rail-tracks, aren’t we?”

Spring Festival shopping activities in Chengdu were highlighted with a sense of

“imagined cosmopolitanism,” (Schein, 2001) of participating in global consumer culture.

For ordinary Chinese, daily life has been linked up with “international rail-tracks” through an act or aspiration of consuming international goods and the immersion in international values of consumption. The owner of the first Ferrari in China, Li Xiaohua, allegedly told reporters after he bought the car in 1993, “I buy Ferrari so to let the world see that whatever cars Westerners can afford, Chinese can afford too.” It was this same mentality that created real estate commercials such as “Whatever Americans have, now

Chengdu residents can have to.” Chinese citizens regard mass consumption, especially consumption of foreign goods, as a boost to the nation’s low collective self-esteem and a way to relocate China into a dynamic global landscape.

Ordinary citizens see the abundance of consumer goods as an indicator of modernization and internationalization. “We have everything,” my friend Xie Yuan

189 stated calmly as a matter of fact while I accompanied her on a shopping trip along Shudu

Boulevard. “Twenty years ago, or even five years ago, anybody coming back from a trip abroad returned with suitcases full of goods, some even brought home television sets.”

Xie said. “Now look around you.” We were staring at a conspicuous display of foreign goods. In the streets, gigantic billboards displayed Nokia cell phones, Kohler bath tubs,

Italian designer jewelry, and even Centrum nutrition supplements. Inside elaborately decorated stores, filled with lively festive shopping crowds and Festival decorations such as red lanterns and red paper-cuts, sales representatives proudly showed off their enticing goods, Sony flat screen televisions, Channel perfume, Ralph Lauren shirts, and Bass shoes. Most foreign brand names put original posters on their counters; Elizabeth Hurley smiled at passerby at Pacific Department Store in Chengdu just as in the Macy’s in New

York. “I’ve been to American malls,” Xie said, referring to her business trip to the United

States two years earlier. “I don’t think you can tell much difference between American stores and stores in Chengdu. If anything, Chinese stores definitely enjoy better business.”

The enthusiasm shown in 1980s’ demonstrations protesting against foreign products and advocating national goods (guohuo) have been long forgotten as Chinese see indulging in consumerism elevate the nation’s image to the platform of modernity.

“International renowned brand” was always the most alluring enticement for Chinese brand names (though some of them were never heard of outside of China), and English was commonly used to increase the prestige of the product. Inside of the Pacific

Department Store, “Fun” Jeans, originated in Singapore and made in China, advertised a poster that boosted, “Season’s Greetings! New Trendy, New Style, Life in U.S.” Bolton

190 Casual Wear, manufactured in Guangdong province, advocated “Dress in your own style:

Pursue the romance of life.” Both posters were in English, the same as with most Chinese brands. Though many advertisements had specific Spring Festival messages and motifs, a majority depicted images of Westerners to promote their products. In fact, there was rarely any billboard or poster in the city depicting images of Chinese. Embedded in these commercial images and texts was a claim of cosmopolitanism, the claim that if you wear

Levis jeans, eat at McDonalds, or listen to a Sony Walkman, you would be a true modern, urban, and cosmopolitan participant of a global culture.

As department stores were filled with holiday shoppers, restaurants were crowded as family and friends gathered for reunion feasts. During the Spring Festival, restaurants in Chengdu showcased distinctive local dishes and culture, which accentuated a sense of diversity.

Palate of Diversity and Locality

One of the Spring Festival reunion dinners I attended was at Imperial Court Grandma Hotpot Restaurant (huangchen Laoma). My cousin, who was the host of the dinner, told me that he had to make the reservation one month before. “Just a few years ago, restaurants were closed during the festival and everybody went home. Now, if you don’t open (during the festival), you lose a lot of good business. Every family wants to have Spring Festival dinner in restaurants. It is convenient and also you have a better taste of the festival atmosphere.”

Imperial Court Grandma Hotpot provides a perfect atmosphere for Chengdu locals. It is a magnificent five-story restaurant that has just been relocated and reopened. In the middle of the lobby, a sunken glass box contains a miniature old town model of Chengdu. The lobby is a showcase of Chengdu local culture, decorated with artifacts representative of local flavor (difang fengwei). The decorative scheme for the whole restaurant is “Approaching old Chengdu,” and every floor is dedicated to different themes, such as “imperial court plaza” and “ordinary household.” There is even a library to keep documents about the old town of Chengdu. The restaurant has been praised by local officials as promoting “economy with

191 local characteristics” (difang tese jinji). As the brochure in the restaurant claims: “We not only provide a civilized dining environment, but also to revive local traditions.”

Later, while dipping marinated beef tongue in the steaming herbal duck hotpot soup, my cousin looked at me and said: “Americans may have everything, but I bet they don’t have this!”

Food has always been an integral element of the Spring Festival. When I was in

elementary school in the 1970s, the festival was the only time of the year that there

seemed to be enough dishes for the dinner table, as our everyday food supplies were still

strictly rationed. For so many years, Chinese had been deprived of one of the basic

human needs—that was, to eat to their heart’s content. This was especially painful for

Chinese as its people have always been proud of culinary tradition. Food had played a

significant role in forming China’s regional/local identity. From immense geographic

diversity has emerged the manifold varieties of Chinese cuisine. The bodily experience of

different Chinese locales always begins with the stomach: Beijing for its roasted ducks,

Shanghai for its little basket buns (xiaolongbao), Chongqing for its fiery hotpot, and

Chengdu for its delicate snacks (xiaochi). Every Chinese knows that southern food is sweet, northern food is salty, eastern food is sour, and western food is spicy (Nantian,

Beixian, Dongsuan, Xina). The discussion of a locale by Chinese invariably touches upon experience of local food and flavor (fengwei). Fengwei, originated from food culture, eventually became a term to describe any local cultural practices and products. However, during the Maoist era, Party-state’s rigid emphasis on a uniformed and unified national culture oppressed diverse regional culinary culture. At the same time, severe food scarcity reduced Chinese culinary creativity to daily survival skills.

192 The ancient sage Mencius once said, “For ordinary folks, food is heaven.”

Chinese are now really in heaven with regard to food. The most savored aspect of the reform is the revival of eating as an art instead of a means to survive. “We are a super power in culinary art,” the chic magazine New Weekly claimed, “and eating is ritualized.”

(“An Era,” 2001) As restaurants have mushroomed in urban centers, and as foreign chain restaurants appeared on the cityscapes, fierce competition has forced Chinese entrepreneurs to resort to “culture” to reinvent themselves and their dishes. Fengwei is commercialized for popular consumption.

The Spring Festival is the most sumptuous time of the year. Although traditionally reunion dinners (tuannian fan) were prepared at home so food offerings could have been made to ancestor shrines, the custom of feasting with family, friends, and colleagues has prepared a ready market for restaurant business during the Festival.

Before it began, local media campaigned intensely about “having reunion feasts at restaurants.” A restaurant reunion dinner is in line with the urban leisure life style; it is a metropolitan cultural trend; and is a fine gift for any hard-working spouse who deserves a break at the end of the year. “Have a relaxed Spring Festival (qingqing songsong guonian)” was the advertisement slogan of a popular restaurant. The intense campaign brought about a stunning 53 percent increase in local restaurant revenue during the 2001

Spring Festival golden week, compared with the same week in 2000 (“A Glance,” 2001).

I was invited to some kind of feast almost every evening during the Spring

Festival, mostly in restaurants. This may have been due to the fact that I had been absent from home for a long time. I was amazed by the availability of diverse cuisines in

Chengdu, from renowned Cantonese to obscure Shaoxing food, from Taiwanese beef

193 noodle soup to Hong Kong Dim Sum, from Japanese sushi to American barbecue. My

friend, Jia Tao, claimed that

Only through eating, we can really feel globalization and diversity with all of our senses. Only through our tongue, we can fully understand words such as ‘vast in territory and rich in resources’ in our Chinese geographic textbook. Most Chengdu folks have never been to all the places within China, let alone America or Europe. However, now you can get a taste of lives of people living in all the quarters of the world without actually traveling.

This sensual experience of culinary diversity definitely stimulates Chinese

people’s imagination of a diverse nation. Since each unique Chinese cuisine integrates

geographic characteristics, historical accounts, and local beliefs, the introduction of every menu onto Chengdu townfolks’ dinner table was accompanied by a detailed account of the culture of the location of the origin. During the Spring Festival, Chengdu Evening

News, a prominent local newspaper, introduced a new column called Gourmet News

Report (xinwen xieshi), which featured a regional cuisine every day with details on its

historical and cultural background. “Culinary exchange between regions is made

meaningful!” the columnist exclaimed (Liu, 2001). In a sense, diversity of food

undermines the image of unity the Party-state adheres.

The “invasion” of global and diverse cuisine has generated strong local response.

Chengdu local restaurant entrepreneurs have resorted to innovative reinvention of

traditional Sichuan cuisine to contest out-of-town forces, especially during the Festival.

Many restaurants claimed the debut of newly-revived Sichuan dishes, and also appealed

to the palate of nostalgia. Homeland Flavor (jiaxiang wei) restaurant’s advertisement said, “In my childhood, when the Spring Festival came, my old grandma always...”

Large-scale restaurants, such as the Imperial Court Laoma Hotpot, increasingly integrate

194 local culture into food, and local fengwei is the emphasis. A prominent restaurant named

Ordinary Folks in Ba State (baguo buyi) resorted to an ancient state located in today’s

Sichuan province for its unique decoration and cuisine. Da Renhe Teahouse invited

Sichuan opera masters to perform mask changing (bianlian) while people enjoyed their

Spring Festival feasts. Fengwei restaurants flourished and gained support from local government under the name of reviving local culture, while local culture and history were turned into mere packaging materials.

Nevertheless, nothing else has contributed as much as China’s delicious food culture to the upsurge of local identity and self-esteem. One banner in front of a Sichuan fengwei restaurant proclaimed, “Have an authentic Sichuan reunion feast, have an authentic Sichuan Spring Festival.” Local pride and identity was intertwined with local cuisine. Food is the sensual awakening power that has made Chengdu citizens historically and culturally conscious of the uniqueness of their locality. “Sichuan State Flavor

(chuanguo wei)” as a new culinary concept emphasized reinstating the stately status of local cuisine and claimed it was “unique and all-embracing.”(“Sichuan state flavor,”

2001) “Homeland style,” or “homeland flavor” were buzzwords for restaurants in 2001.

Slogans like “Revitalizing Sichuan Cuisine (zhenxing chuancai)” elevated ordinary folks’ stomachs to a level of being essential in rescuing and maintaining a distinctive regional cultural identity.

Food and nationalist sentiments or regional identities have always been intertwined in China. My sister told me about an incident in front of the downtown

McDonald’s back in 1999, when a NATO plane bombed the Chinese embassy in

Yugoslavia. “The little boy was begging for a big Mac, and the mother obviously did not

195 want to spend the money. She pulled him away and said, ‘Americans bombed our embassy, how can you still want to eat big Mac!’” In the market era, for profit, diversity of food culture has been brought into the foreground of people’s daily life. Strong local color and fengwei generate strong local pride and identities, which have presented a challenge to a homogeneous national culture. However, the Party-state’s ambiguous cultural China discourses, which advocate diversity and unity at the same time, accommodate such diversity and local identity.

We consume, therefore we exist. In a unique totalitarian consumer society like

China, people talk more openly about consumer rights than citizens’ civil rights. As un- authorized political association is practically banned by the Party-state, consumer affiliation, either formed through using the same internationally renowned brand or dining at the same restaurant, gives Chinese a safe way to relate to each other outside of the Party-state sanctioned political collectives. The golden week during the Spring

Festival, aptly named by Chinese government, is promoted as the ultimate time for

Chinese to spend gold (money) on shopping, dining, and entertaining. A collective consuming experience provides a base for Chinese to relate to one another during the most important festival of the year, as they see themselves marching into a xiaokang

(materially well-off) society together.

From the Rural to the Global: The Changing Façade of Chinese Imagined Worlds

The Spring Festival is the ultimate holiday for family reunion, and for

“wandering” children to return to their homes. In this atmosphere of reunion, two transitional groups are especially conspicuous on Chinese urban ethnoscapes: rural migrant workers and representatives of global Chinese diaspora. While rural migrant

196 workers have often worked for a year in the cities and exited the urban scene to celebrate the festival with their families back in the villages, there is, at the same time, also the influx of overseas Chinese who visit their families and friends in urban China. Their respective absence and presence in urban Chinese landscapes during the Spring Festival celebration is symbolic of how China is collectively imagined in this global era.

Rapid urbanization certainly has shifted the focus of the Chinese social imaginary from the rural to the urban and cosmopolitan. Mobile groups, or as they are called in

China, “floating populations,” de-stabilize communities and traditional networks of kinship, friendship, and other forms of affiliation. As rural reality is left behind by

Chinese imagination of modernity, increasing international contacts generate more aspirations of Chinese residents to live a global lifestyle, either in China or overseas. This section deals with the virtual absence of the rural and constant presence of global Chinese diaspora as the façade of Chinese nationalism is changing from rural to cosmopolitan.

The Absent Presence of the Rural

January 19, 2001, Chengdu North Railway Station

The atmosphere at the station is a mixture of happiness and anxiety. Big red lanterns and banners decorate the entrance of the station, where railway policemen set up checkpoints to admit only passengers with tickets dated January 19th in the station. Thousands of passengers, mostly migrant workers who are on their way back to their home villages for the festival, are waiting patiently in the plaza in front of the station for the long lines to move, while those without tickets swarm the ticket office on the east side of the plaza. Temporary ticketing windows are open, and billboards are showing additional train numbers and corresponding destinations that are only run during what Chinese transportation authority calls “the Spring Festival Peak Season,” which usually lasts for forty days. From January 13 to 17, more than 40,000 passengers traveled through the station daily, a record high.

197 Tens of millions of migrant workers form the Spring Festival rush traffic as a part of China’s festive milieu every year. Sichuan province is a major exporter of labor to

Guangdong, Shanghai, and Beijing. According to the Sichuan Youth Daily, an estimated

3.5 million Sichuan migrant workers flocked to wealthier urban areas outside of the province in early 2001 (“Three point five million,” 2001). Chengdu was the major transit point for them to change trains or buses. One month before the Spring Festival, millions of Sichuan migrant workers from around the country began their homebound trips to their villages. Some even started their return trips immediately after the first day of the Spring

Festival so they could be ahead of others to compete for a scarcity of jobs in their cities of destination.

Throughout the festival, migrant worker traffic information was reported daily to

Chengdu residents. Headlines in newspapers and on television in Chengdu read, “The

Nation Fights the Looming Spring Festival Traffic Peak,” “Migrant Worker Tide Roaring toward the City,” “Number of Migrant Passengers Stays High: the Railway Station is under ‘Siege’.” As migrant traffic was often seen as “pressing” or “emergent,” the municipal government assured urban residents to use all means to “evacuate” migrant worker traffic so as to “alleviate” pressure on the city (“Number”, 2001). The railway station opened additional ticket windows and operated temporary passenger trains. The city government also allocated 500 policemen and military soldiers to be on duty at the railway station as well as around the station square. In short, the rural workers were largely seen as a nuisance that the city needed to flush out. Thus, the celebration of the festival would not be disrupted.

198 Before every holiday, major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou normally initiate campaigns to purge out migrant workers who have no official permits to work in cities, so that urban celebration can be carried out without so called destablizing elements. This Spring Festival was no exception. An incident during the celebration was illustrative of the social status of rural labors in Chinese cities. Before 17 Olympic inspectors visited Beijing to complete their assessment of its bid for the 2008 Games, migrant workers who had not paid for a special fee for temporary Beijing residential cards were swept out of the capital’s streets with other unwanted people such as street beggars.

Migrant laborers have provided the sweat and muscle that has transformed

China’s economy into one of the fastest growing on Earth. They are producing shoes, clothes, and toys for the likes of Nike, Adidas, Wal-Mart, and Sears. They have risked their lives atop scaffolding to build the glass and steel skylines that transform the cityscapes in Shanghai, Beijing and other big cities into modern metropolises. Rural migrant workers, through their cheap and pliant labor, are the major force linking China’s economy with the “international rail-tracks.” However, such low wage workers remain at the bottom of the society and are never considered to be a part of the new international and modern image that China is presenting to the world.

The exodus of rural laborers during the Spring Festival symbolizes the absence of the rural, the people as well as the locale they represent, in Chinese national consciousness. A Spring Festival celebration without a rural focus is a relatively new phenomenon. The Spring Festival originated from an agrarian society and has its deep roots in rural clan/kinship system, In the pre-revolutionary years, despite some level of

199 urbanization, ordinary Chinese did maintain close ties with the rural due to powerful and pervasive clan/kinship connections, and most Spring Festival rituals could only be performed at ancestral temples, which were always located in rural areas. As a part of the communist revolution against feudalism, ancestral temples were abandoned and clans were disbanded and replaced by communes in rural areas, which effectively diminished the centripetal force of the rural for Chinese. During the pre-reform years, the hukou or household registration system, in conjunction with the system of the People’s Communes and grain rationing, effectively segregated the rural and the urban, with only minimal interaction between the two. As a result, contemporary urban Chinese’s life trajectories have become quite removed from the lives of the rural.

In the reform era, urban China has moved into the center of nationalist consciousness as rural areas lag behind. The contrast between the urban and the rural is often seen in such dichotomies as modern/feudal, progressive/backward, wealth/poverty, and global/local, with the rural representing a negative image. This indicates a move away from the “native nationalism” advocated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Straying from Marxist orthodoxy and the Soviet model, CCP relied on the peasantry instead of urban workers as its main revolutionary force in its struggle to seize political power. Mao Zedong’s indigenous strategy of “encircling the cities with rural revolutionary bases” led the Party to victory in 1949. Mao, like elite Confucians throughout history, extolled the virtues of rural life. Cities were viewed as hotbeds for social evil such as crime, prostitution, drug addiction, gambling, and begging. The city embodied the humiliation of the Chinese nation-state and the people under foreign colonial powers, and as Meisner suggests, is associated with “what is foreign and

200 reactionary” while the countryside being related to “what is truly national and revolutionary.” (cited in Chen, Clark, Gottschang, & Jeffery, 2001, p. 3) This sentiment was fully expressed in a popular movie of the 1950s, The Guard under the Neon Lights.

In the film, a naïve country boy PLA (People’s Liberation Army) soldier was seduced by a corrupted urban lifestyle, as represented by a sophisticated city girl who turned out to be a spy. Eventually, his sincere and native rural fiancé brought him back to redemption.

In the Maoist version of a new China, the city was merely the extension of the rural, consisting of a constellation of urban communes (work units) for maximum production to build a socialist state. The revolutionary discourse of the Party-state tapped deeply into the national psyche that regarded the rural as the home base, the place where bourgeois intellectuals or urban youths were sent down to get re-educated with the country’s revolutionary roots during the Anti-Rightist movement and the Urban Youths

Send-Down movement (Shangsan Xiaxiang). The Chinese rural depicted as the wholesome Utopia during the heydays of the socialist revolution was also the locale for nationalist sentiment, as illustrated in the lyrics of a widely popular song of the 1950s,

“My Motherland (Wode Zhuguo).”

(There is) a great river surging forward with great momentum The soft breeze caresses the paddy fields Carries the scent of rice to both shores My home is right next to the river We are used to the songs by the fishermen And the white sails passing by

Beautiful mountains, beautiful rivers What a great land Each and every road is wide and broad When friends come, we serve them delicious wine When jackals and wolves come, our rifles will welcome them

201 This is my great motherland, The place where I was brought up On this vast and broad land, Bright and beautiful sun shines at every corner

However, far from the Utopian picture depicted by the Party-state, peasants had remained in the bottom of the socialist state under Mao. Rural to urban migration was kept under very tight control despite the existence of huge differences in living standards and in welfare provisions. Peasants were tied to the land and would have lost their very means of existence once they left their commune without proper papers (Gong, 1998).

The red-cheeked and strong-muscled image of modern Chinese peasants, either happily riding on tractors or attending village meetings, was ubiquitous in children’s cartoon books, movies, newsreels, and posters in the Maoist era. However, this vision stands in sharp contrast with today’s image of rural laborers who roam in the cities, sleep under bridges and in construction sites, and are willing to take any job for a roof over their heads. If the Urban Youth Sent-down movement (Shangshan Xiaxiang) dismantled a whole generation’s dream of the wholesome rural communal life in the 1960s and the

1970s, migrant workers who wash their hair with dish detergent at construction sites in today’s urban centers have totally destroyed the illusions urban Chinese had about

Chinese peasantry. Rural residents are uprooted from the land, and the rural as the place and the rural as the people are both receding from Chinese national consciousness.

Although rural China was a major part in the imagination of a Chinese nation- state in the Maoist period, in the reform era, the state has come to conclude that modernity equals urbanization. Although about seventy percent of the population still lives in rural areas, the imageries from China urban, high-rises, bullet train, and highway

202 overpass, have become window images of the prosperous modern China. An illustrative

case was the official website of Beijing’s 2008 Olympic Games bid committee, on which

the prominent photo was an aerial view of Beijing’s forest of skyscrapers. During the

2001 Spring Festival, a hot topic was Shanghai’s plan to build the highest skyscrapper in

the world, which could become a landmark of a nation entering the world stage of

modernity.

As often expressed in popular and official discourses, China needs to be “linked

up with international rail-tracks.” (yu guoji jiegui) The Party-state has been trying to join

the globalizing process, including its joining the World Trade Organization as well as its

bidding for the Olympic Games. One embodiment of linking up with international rail-

tracks was the globally mobile Chinese ethnoscapes, exemplified in the global festival

reunion.

Global Reunion: The Constant Presence of Overseas Chinese

On the seventh day of the Year of Snake, my aunt made arrangements to take me to pay a visit to Jichen, a legendary local monk at Longxing Temple. Longxing Temple was located outside of the northern gate of the town of Tianpeng. This Buddhist temple was once occupied by a high school until the early 1990s, when the city decided to revitalize it. Legend had it that under the pagoda of the Longxing temple, there was a well that was connected to the ocean. The well, known by the locals as “the eye of the sea”, would have flooded the whole town if not suppressed by the pagoda. When the high school moved out, the pagoda had been in ruins after years of neglect and intentional damage during the Cultural Revolution. Now a new pagoda was erected and the temple was expanding.

While waiting with a group of people, my aunt told me how hard it was to get an appointment to see Master Jichen. At last, it was our turn. First, my aunt and I knelt down at the cushions to pay respect to the Buddha, then my aunt put a red envelope with money into the donation box. When we stood up, I noticed an old monk in his seventies sitting by the side. My aunt walked up to him and asked him to give his blessing to a Buddhist

203 symbol we bought at the temple. “It is for my niece, Master Jichen,” my aunt said, pointing to me. “She lives in the United States and needs blessings from the Buddha.” “The United States?” Jichen raised his eyebrows. “I was just invited to attend some Buddhism seminar in the United States.” Taken by surprise, I asked: “Are you going?” “Oh, no, no,” he smiled, “You know, Falun Gong is making too much noise in the United States. Furthermore, I’ve been to San Francisco once before, and I cannot go to every place I am invited to, right?” After he blessed my symbol, Jichen told us that during the festival, the temple had received quite a few overseas Chinese visitors, from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, all over the world. “Our overseas patrons have contributed a lot,” Master Jichen said, “Have you paid your respect to the jade Buddha in the pagoda? It was invited into our temple right before the festival and was donated by a Chinese expatriate from Thailand.” The arrival of the jade Buddha was a prominent local story during the festival. I learned that the donor also opened a food processing business locally.

My Spring Festival encounter with Master Jichen can be interpreted in conjunction with many underlining cultural anxieties and aspirations. My aunt, worried that I lived alone in a strange and faraway country filled with Hollywood-like violence, was comforted in the fact the Master Jichen spent quite a long time with us and gave me his good wishes. Being away from my homeland for almost five years, I had been feeling an unsettling anxiety of losing touch with reality back home, and hoped to reconnect with local communities by getting to know this legendary local Buddhist master. Master

Jichen, having spent his golden years in a small mountainous monastery to avoid being targeted during the Cultural Revolution, was invited by local government to be in charge of the restoration of an ancient monastery, which was part of the city’s plan to link up with global trade and culture. As a resourceful Buddhist master with worldly wisdom,

Jichen had to maneuver in between the Party-state rules and his ambition to take a local temple global.

204 Similar aspirations and anxieties have become the propelling force to circulate the

Chinese population around the globe, and this encounter illustrates how the imagination

as a social practice (Appadurai, 1996, p. 31) works locally on a global level. Longxing temple is part of a worldwide passageway through which the global Chinese population circulates. It has become a local site of global cultural flow of ethnoscapes, a locale that the imagined worlds of the local and the global intersect. The global connections are partly exemplified by overseas Chinese, who are now enjoying a constant presence in the psyche of Chinese citizens, as family, friends, investors, business partners, tourists, and even devoted benefactors for a Buddhist temple such as Longxing temple. Overseas

Chinese, in theory, are absent in mainland China, due to their citizenship or permanent residency status with another country or special regions such as Hong Kong, , or Taiwan; however, their presence is a result of constant interactions and exchanges between global

Chinese communities and Chinese in mainland China. On the macro level, the country has established global connections through governmental, economic, financial, cultural, and educational institutes. On the micro level, ordinary Chinese enjoy tremendous interpersonal contact with overseas Chinese through personal networks of family, friends, and colleagues.

Interestingly, the history of “exclusion” and “inclusion” of overseas Chinese in the imagination of Chinese as a cultural group instead of a national group parallels the history of “the eye of the sea,” the well under the pagoda in Longxing temple. For years,

“the eye of the sea” was concealed under the ruins of the original pagoda and was a source of fear in local legend; however, in this global era, “the eye of the sea” was adorned and glorified with a brand new pagoda as well as a beautiful jade Buddha. While

205 there were earlier generations of expatriate Chinese before the 1949 Communist revolution, in the Maoist era they were largely excluded from nationalist discourse of the

Party-state and, therefore, absent from national consciousness and imagination. In the years of Cultural Revolution, due to the paranoid xenophobia infused by the Party-state, any personal contact between Chinese residents and their families and friends overseas was prohibited. After the reform was inaugurated, overseas connections (haiwai guanxi) suddenly became a status symbol and advantage, not a liability nor an excuse for persecution. On one hand, old generations of Chinese diaspora have re-established their ties with mainland China; on the other hand, as more and more Chinese have started pursuing education, better living environments, and better life opportunities outside of

China, new overseas connections emerge. Between 1978 and 1999, some 320,000

Chinese citizens left the country to study overseas. Most popular destinations included the United States, Canada, Singapore, Japan, and Australia (Lawnham, 2001). This figure was 22 times the number of the previous thirty years when the Party-state discouraged foreign contacts.

Although the actual presence of overseas Chinese inside of Chinese borders is limited in time and number, their virtual presence in the construction of Chinese national consciousness and social imagination is constant and evident. As the globe has become more and more inter-connected, the Chinese diaspora keeps very close ties with family and friends back in China. Telephone, electronic mail, and traditional mail keep the global Chinese community in touch on a daily basis. Every year, millions of overseas

Chinese return to China to visit families and friends, conduct business, and tour the rapidly changing country. This interpersonal contact, either face-to-face or via phone and

206 mail, intensifies during the Spring Festival, the traditional time of family reunion. During the 2001 Festival, as a response to increasing number of overseas phone calls, the

Chinese Telecom gave its users a 30 percent discount, which was increased to a 50 percent discount for calling after midnight. At the same time, as rural migrant workers were disappearing from urban landscapes to return to their home villages, overseas

Chinese traveled back to celebrate the once-a-year reunion. According to Hong Kong

Special Administrative Region Immigration Office, there were about 256,000 Hong Kong residents traveled to mainland China to celebrate the 2001 Spring Festival (“Hong Kong residents,” 2001). While waiting for a delayed Northwest flight at Detroit’s airport, several passengers I talked to were going back to China to spend the holiday with families or friends. Most were working in the United States, and one couple was taking their daughter back to Shangdong, where “she could really celebrate the Spring Festival like we did, not the [American] Chinatown version.”

At one of the reunion dinners for my high school class during the 2001 Festival, I and two other so-called “overseas fellow Chinese (haiwai tongbao),” Jing and Bei, virtually served as a panel, as we were bombarded with questions ranging from how to apply for graduate schools in the United States to what daily life was like abroad. Bei, like me, went to the United States for graduate study, and was working for a software company in Seattle. He had been back to China to visit his family several times and had obtained permanent residency in the United States. Jing belonged to a popular category of

“Chinese holding foreign passports,” a growing group. She and her husband had obtained

Canadian citizenship a couple of years before, and had been traveling back and forth between Vancouver and Chengdu to do business. For Chinese holding foreign passports,

207 their foreign citizenship was viewed by fellow Chinese at home as a measure of convenience instead of pledge of affiliation to another nation. Jing told me they had applied for skilled worker immigration status in Canada mainly for the convenience and the freedom of global mobility. “We want to have the ability for us and our son to move freely to wherever we want,” she said.

The freedom of Chinese to move on a global terrain and their constant personal contact with friends and family on the mainland exemplify globalized lifestyles on a personal level. The freedom to move on a global scale, in a sense, has dramatically expanded Chinese citizens’ capability to imagine.

In review, I argue that the urban celebration of the festival have become more individualized due to the declining urban control mechanism (i.e. work unit and house registration) and more commercialized as Chinese are lured into a commodity fetish by their anxiety to catch up the global modernity while at the same time, retain a distinctive local identity. Festival celebration in urban centers also demonstrates the rising status of the urban and the global in Chinese national consciousness, as the status of the rural is diminishing, despite the rural origin of the festival.

Looking at Self through a Global Gaze: Mass Consumption of a Touristic Festival

Because of Orientalism the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action. This is not to say that Orientalism unilaterally determines what can be said about the Orient, but that it is the whole network of interests inevitably brought to bear on (and therefore always involved in) any occasion when that peculiar entity “the Orient” is in question.

Said, 1979, p. 3

Returning home to celebrate the Spring Festival is the tradition of millions of ordinary Chinese. At the same time, “leaving” home to celebrate the

208 Spring Festival has become the new option for more and more modern Chinese citizens. …According to a national survey of 31 provinces and autonomous regions as well as 237 cities conducted by China National Tourism Administrative and China National Statistics Bureau, during the golden week of this Spring Festival, national tourism revenue reached RMB19.8 billion [approximately U.S. dollar 2.4 billion]. The number of domestic tourists received was 44.96 million, which more than doubled the number 20 million during last Spring Festival.

“Chinese New Year behind the Numbers,” 2001

The Spring Festival, a traditional time of family reunion, had been a standard off-

season for Chinese tourism industries for years; however, in recent years, the festival has

been reborn as a tourism spectacle, not only because of the week-long official holiday

that enables Chinese citizens to travel across the country, but also because of the

numerous festival pseudo-events (Boorstin, 1961) staged to showcase the glorious traditions of Chinese culture as tourist attractions. With booming domestic tourism, the incorporated touristic Spring Festival has geared more and more toward domestic crowds, who, traditionally, would be participants of the festival instead of spectators. On a certain level, the Spring Festival has been losing its spontaneous historical and ritualistic significance as a folk festival, and been turned into a packaged touristic spectacle, a performance-for-others (MacCannell, 1992, p. 234), which the others sometimes are the locals-turned-tourists or the participants-turned-spectators.

This section focuses on various tourist activities during the 2001 Spring Festival

and explores the phenomenon of “touristification of festivals”, to paraphrase Picard’s

notion of “touristification of society” (cited in Wood, 1997, p. 10). With touristification

of festivals, I refer to such cases in which tourism—and therefore, global consumerism—

has become an integral part of festival celebration, especially ritualistic celebration, and

209 the tourist gaze (Urry, 1990) has become a critical filter in defining authentic “China” and “Chineseness,” including the authenticity of ethnic minorities encompassed by the broad definition of “Chineseness.”

Appadurai (1996) claims tourists are one of the essential groups that constitute the landscape of the shifting world in which we live, i.e. ethnoscape. Tourism has formed a culturally specific habitus for Chinese since tourism has become a mode of perception and experience, which obviously contributes to imagination of the nation as Chinese citizens tour within and outside of the physical boundaries of China. Here “tourists” are not limited to people who travel over some distance to a destination. I embrace a much broader definition of tourists, as the clear boundaries between tourists and locals/natives, spectators and participants, backstage and frontstage (MacCannell, 1973) become blurred. I propose that because that social landscape of the Spring Festival was so fundamentally touristic itself, any local and/or native could be turned into a tourist once the person acquired the exoticizing global gaze to filter her or his perception of the festivities. To further Urry’s discussion on tourist gaze, AlSayyad (2001) invents the term engazement to describe the process through which “the gaze transforms the material reality of the built environment into a cultural imaginary.” (p. 4) As this section will illustrate, local residents enjoyed consuming the same representations of an “authentic”

Spring Festival that were the mainstay of tourist programming geared toward international, mostly Western, tourists.

MacCannell claims that tourism is a key ground for the production of new cultural forms on a global base (1992). He argues that tourism is “not just an aggregate of merely commercial activities; it is also an ideological framing of history, nature, and tradition; a

210 framing that has the power to reshape culture and nature to its own needs.” (p.1) During

the Spring Festival, the Chinese Party-state and commercial tourism industry joined

forces to frame history, nature, and heritage of a great cultural China.

The Party-state plays a central role in shaping the tourism industry in China. At

the very beginning of 2001, for the first time, the State Council announced the exact dates

of the three “golden weeks of consumption” for the year of 2001, as a measure to

encourage Chinese to plan better in advance for tourist activities during the three week-

long holiday. At the first ministerial coordination meeting for national holiday tourism in

August 2000, Vice-Premier Qian Qichen claimed that all government departments

needed to increase cooperation to push holiday tourism to a new high. As a result, the

National Holiday Tourism Ministerial Coordination Office (i.e. National Holiday Office)

was created (“Ministerial,” 2000). Beginning in 2000, the National Holiday Office put out holiday travel forecast information—including hotel reservation, transportation, road status, and ticketing information. Thus, it facilitated a massive national holiday tourism operation.

Holiday tourism has greatly boosted the domestic tourism industry in China.

Domestic tourism is a new industry in reform-era China. Travel for leisure during the

time of Mao was virtually impossible due to the Party-state’s stringent control over the

mobility of the Chinese population. In the early years of reform, domestic tours were

mostly unorganized and spontaneous, often combined with family visits or business trips.

The Chinese tourism industry was developed with its primary focus on international

tourists, mostly from Western countries. The goals of the Chinese tourism industry were

to increase a national foreign currency reserve and promote a positive image of an open

211 China. When I was working for the China Youth Travel Service in the early 1990s, most travel agencies did not even have domestic travel department. The Chinese domestic tourism industry, therefore, has been built on China’s international tourism infrastructures and shaped by strategies and agendas to attract international tourists, which inevitably superimposed a Westernized tourist gaze on domestic tourism. AlSayyad (2001) maintains that in today’s climate of global economic and cultural exchange, a common tourism policy of many Third World governments is to project the same national imagery in the international arena as well as internally to the native population (p.7). As Said points out, the modern Orient participates in its own Orientalizing (1979, p. 325).

The increasing number of domestic travelers as a result of higher living standards in China caught official attention in the mid 1990s. The China National Tourism

Administration (CNTA) initiated its review of domestic tourism in 1996, when the number of domestic tourists was 639 million person-times, and domestic tourism revenue was RMB 163.7 billion. The number of domestic tourists reached 744 million person- times in 2000. Holiday domestic tourism also proved to be a driving force for economic development, as domestic tourism revenue jumped 12.1 percent from 1999 to 2000, totaled RMB 317.6 billion (approximately 39 billion U.S. dollar) (China National

Tourism Administration, 2001).

In addition to the economic benefits it has brought, tourism exemplifies how culture can be manufactured, manipulated, and marketed for nation building as well.

According to People’s Daily, the Party-state’s mouthpiece, cultural tourism was promoted as the top priority of the State Planning Commission’s long term strategic plan

(Wang, Wang, & Shi, 2001). Cultural tourism, originated from the West, is characterized

212 by visitors’ (usually Westerners) interest in being exposed to and experiencing some form of cultural otherness (usually of the Orientals and other underdeveloped primitives)

(Wood, 1996, p. 1). As a country claiming more than 5,000 years of history and 56 ethnicities, Chinese Party-state’s cultural tourism discourse put its emphasis on ancient traditions and exotic customs. For the Chinese government, cultural tourism has dual objectives. First, cultural tourism resorts to heritage preservation for management of internal heterogeneity and resistance against the homogenizing forces of Western modernity. Second, cultural tourism exploits cultural/ethnical resources to attract international and domestic tourist dollars.

The commercial tourism industry took advantage of such official cultural

discourse. Domestic tourism has been encouraged as a way to learn about national

culture, to solidify national unity, and to appreciate the greatness of the country. Many

national tour promotions during the 2001 Spring Festival were named “Cultural Heritage

Tour (wenhua you)” or “Ethnic Customs Tour (minzhu fengqing you),” encouraging

tourists to learn Chinese heritage by touring historical sites or the diverse and exotic

customs by visiting minority villages. A promotional pamphlet from the Chengdu

Kanghui Travel Service claimed that a tour to Beijing incorporated the essence of history,

culture, and social customs as group members visited the Great Wall and the Forbidden

city, and participated in the Changdian Temple Fair and ceremony at Yonghe Monastery.

The same pamphlet advertised a tour to the bordering region of Sichuan and Yunnan

provinces—where dozens of ethnic minorities live—promising that tourists would meet

“naïve and honest peoples, and learn unique regional cultures, including their distinctive

lifestyle, customs, food, architecture, marriage and burial customs, religions, and festival

213 activities, which together form a rich and colorful portrait of Chinese ethnic ways of life.”

Ironically, rising numbers of domestic tourists during the Spring Festival, a Han festival, experienced homogenized and Hanized ethnic ways of life. For example, one of my interviewees, Fang Gang, visited Lijiang, Yunnan province, where the Naxi minority live.

He told me that local Naxi people, who traditionally did not celebrate the Spring Festival, were ordered by the county officials to dress up in their ethnic attire on the gala’s first day to create a festive atmosphere for large groups of Han tourists spending the festival in

Lijiang.

This section explores the interaction of domestic tourism and the Spring Festival celebration. It consists of two parts, dealing with touristic revitalization of urban festive activities and the romanticization of the rural as the urbanity seeking for an “authentic”

China.

Staged Festivity: Urban Fanggu Project

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

Guy Debord, 1983 Society of the spectacle, 1:4

First, let me share with you the content of an article from local newspaper in

Chengdu before the 2001 Spring Festival.

If you cannot go out of town for the Spring Festival, do not worry. The curtain has been lifted in Chengdu for colorful folk festival activities such as lion dances and welcoming “the god of happiness (xishen).”

National Holiday Office Chengdu branch announces that at Temple of Marquis Wu, a series of activities related to “visiting the locality of the god of happiness (you xishen fang)” will be held during the festival. On Chuxi [the Spring Festival eve], the bell will be hit at midnight, and fanggu performance of ancient sacrifice ceremony honoring the god of

214 happiness will be presented in front of the temple of brotherhood [which is located inside of the Temple of Marquis Wu]. On the first day of the New Year, at the front gate of the Temple of Marquis Wu, there will be performances of “golden lions welcoming the spring,” Sichuan opera, as well as fanggu performance of “welcoming the god of happiness.” On the second and the third day of the New Year, various performances will be held on the fanggu stage inside of the temple.

At the Yonglin Museum, “Shu [an ancient state located in Sichuan] Palace Music and Dance” fanggu performance will let Chengdu town folks deeply feel the charm of Tang Dynasty over one thousand years ago.

At the first Ba-Shu [two ancient states located in Sichuan] Folk Art and Customs Festival, visitors are going to enjoy wonderful folk art performances and exhibitions displaying handcrafts, antique collections, paintings and calligraphy, root sculptures, and tea culture.

“Endless Festival Activities in Town,” 2001

Fanggu, in Chinese, literally means to emulate or copy the antique. It has often been used to refer to architecture, performances, artifacts, and cuisine. Organizing fanggu performances, as well as the construction of fanggu streets in virtually every urban center in China, has formed a new mode of tourist development, which reflecting the momentum of a major trend in local efforts to stimulate economy since the 1980s.

Chengdu media has claimed that “visiting the locality of the god of happiness (you xishen fang)” had been an ancient local Spring Festival ritual in Chengdu, and the god of happiness brought auspiciousness, joy, and wisdom to people in the new year. However, despite high publicity, little information was given to the public and no one seemed to be able to trace the real origin of this ritual. “Visiting the locality of the god of happiness,” therefore, appeared to be another obsolete folk tradition resurrected by the local government and tourism industry to add antique “color and flavor (guse guxiang)” to local celebration.

215 To compete with other cities for holiday tourism dollars, Chengdu organized various fanggu activities during the 2001 Spring Festival, including “visiting the locality of the god of happiness”, “Lantern Fair”, and “Fiery Dragon Festival.” (“Chengdu

Cultural,” 2001) Fanggu activities attracted a large number of visitors to various parks around town, an average of 350,000 visitors and RMB four million (approximately U.S. dollar 500,000) admission revenue daily during the seven-day holiday, a ten percent increase compared to 2000 (“Millions of Chengdu,” 2001).

Evidently, fanggu activities were geared toward tourists and were intended to be performances for spectators instead of genuine rituals for participation. Fanggu created a virtual place for deliberate representation of cultural tradition. Anagnost (1993) contends that the fanggu trend re-creates the antiquity of the nation in the very process of its commodification, and its popularity can not be explained only by the desire to satisfy the demands of international tourism for an authentic “old” China, as fanggu products and practices are equally produced for domestic consumption and contemplation (pp. 591-

592). Fanggu streets, performances, and artifacts have invented a landscape of nostalgia on which a sense of national identity was constructed. One anecdote is illustrative in showing this Chinese-style modernity. Former mayor of Beijing, Chen Xitong, was nicknamed “Hat Mayor” for adding traditional Chinese style roofs on all the high-rises in the city.

As Oakes (1997) argues, domestic tourism thrives on “the experience of anxiety, ambivalence, and disorientation brought by modernity.” (p. 42) China’s modernizing ambition delineates the “present” and the “future” of the country; however, a widespread anxiety of rootlessness and a sense of loss accompanying China’s modernity project

216 requires “the calming certainty of a timeless identity.” (Anagnost, 1993, p. 590) This

“timeless identity,” of course, is mainly grounded on the continuation of cultural heritage

and the assumed eternal validity of the ideal of “China” as a cultural entity. While facing

the unsettling future of modernity, Chinese have to restore the past and situate the current

modernity project as one of the chain events in the history of the Great China.

The fascination of Chengdu’s people with a fanggu Spring Festival also has deep

roots in the socio-cultural rupture Chinese experienced in the first thirty years of the

People’s Republic (1949-1979). Before the communist revolution, ritualistic sacrifice to

various deities and ancestor worship ceremonies had been essential components of

Festival celebration. Imposing its dialectic materialism world outlook to the entire

Chinese population, the CCP condemned any religious or spiritual practices. While the

image of “the revolutionary family” was promoted for any spiritual and emotional needs,

traditional rituals and worship for ancestors quickly disappeared from Chinese cultural

practices. In particular, during the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976), temples and

ancestral halls were destroyed, and anything labeled as the Four Olds (sijiu, referring to old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits) or “feudal superstition” was condemned. The reform era has witnessed the revival of a vast array of traditional popular cultural forms, secular or religious, as the Party-state loosened control due to its desire for economic development (see Dean, 1998, for a detailed account of the revival of the conference of gods in Southeast China). Inevitably, the revival of a majority of traditional cultural practices was related to tourism development; therefore, they could be, at the most, only re-invented traditions, or fanggu traditions, and the reinvention was a commercialized process as well as a politicized process controlled by the Party-state.

217 The socio-cultural rupture created during the socialist revolution years deems that the Chinese population has to reacquaint with most century-old cultural traditions, and to change perceptions of things previously condemned. This educational project is mostly carried out by the Party-state and the tourist industry. It fits their agendas. Theme parks have been constructed (Splendid China in Shenzhen serves as a great example. See

Anagnost, 1993), temples have been restored, rituals have been revived, and fanggu town centers have been erected in virtually every city. The Spring Festival, as a traditional festival, serves as the most appropriate time to introduce revived traditional cultural spectacles to the public. The 2001 Chengdu Lantern Fair provides an example that demonstrates how an ancient Spring Festival tradition was revived as a tourist attraction as well as a Party-state propaganda event, and how the citizenry ceased to be participants, and became only spectators in this traditional activity.

Lantern Fair: The Return of Tradition as a Spectacle

Raising lanterns has been a time-honored way to celebrate the Spring Festival in

Chengdu. Legend had it that one year, the Jade Emperor—the deity in charge of heaven—was angry with local people and wanted to burn down the town during the

Spring Festival. However, a kind-hearted fairy advised Chengdu residents to light up lanterns across the town. The brilliance from the lanterns made the Jade Emperor believe the town was on fire, and Chengdu residents escaped the catastrophe. The history of lantern fairs can be traced back to the year of 711, during the Tang dynasty, when every household and business would put out lanterns at the front door and people would hold lanterns and parade across the town, as vendors sold all kinds of handcrafts and food along the streets. This tradition lasted until the 1940s. Lantern fair as a spontaneous folk

218 activity slowly faded away in Chengdu after 1949, and in 1962, the first government organized lantern fair was held, however, it was interrupted during the Cultural

Revolution. Chengdu’s lantern fair was fully resurrected by the municipal government in

1977, and has been held annually since then.

The 2001 Chengdu lantern fair was quite different from its traditional form before the Communist revolution. As a staged spectacle, which was “the opposite of dialogue,”

(Debord, 1983, 1:18) the Party-state sponsored lantern fair deprived ordinary Chengdu residents of any level of participation. Residents had no way to be engaged in the lantern fair except be as tourists/spectators, since the fair was organized solely by the Chengdu

Lantern Fair Bureau. The bureau, which was established in 1991, is both a governmental agency and an economic entity. Therefore, the Lantern Fair carried dual tasks of adhering

Party-state policies and bringing in profits. The official tasks of the Lantern Fair Bureau were to “advocate Chinese national culture, to revitalize Chinese spirit, to develop local economy and tourism industry vigorously, and to promote exchange and cooperation with foreign countries” (“Chengdu Lantern fair,” 2001). The bureau monopolized the organization of the annual lantern fair, from selecting the theme of the fair, mapping the layout, to contracting out the manufacturing of lanterns. Therefore, the fair became separate from everyday life and displayed an endless stream of marketable images. It was converted into another officially staged festival spectacle, just like the Spring Festival

Eve gala on the China Central Television. The spectacle, according to Guy Debord (1983,

1:23), is “where all other expression is banned,” and power is “at the roots of the spectacle.” Spectators are kept remote from the origin of the spectacle, and because communication is unilateral, dialogue is impossible and criticism difficult to make

219 consequential. While gazing at the spectacle, the active agency of participants is replaced

by the passive consumption of images by spectators. Debord explains:

The alienation of the spectator to the profit of the contemplated object (which is the result of his own unconscious activity) is expressed in the following way: the more he contemplates the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his own desires. The externality of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears in the fact that his own gestures are no longer his but those of another who represents them to him. This is why the spectator feels at home nowhere, because the spectacle is everywhere. (1983, 1:30)

The 2001 lantern fair was held in Wenhua Park, and spilled over to the adjacent

Qingtai Road, the newly constructed fanggu district of Chengdu. Qingtai Road was a

major tourist destination of the city, presenting groups of fanggu buildings with white

walls, glazed tiles, and red doors. Ironically, during the early 1990s, the same period of

time when Qingtai Road was under construction, traditional style houses in the old town

center were bulldozed to make room for modern skyscrapers. The décor of Qingtai Road

with its “antique color and flavor (guse guxiang)” provided a perfect setting for the

Lantern Fair, whose locale was then limited to the designated fanggu part of the city, not

the modernizing city center.

While walking through Chengdu’s 2001 lantern fair, “spectacular” and

“magnificent” were the only words I could think of to describe group compositions of

lanterns that illustrated folklore, historical events, and current affairs. The extremely

large-scaled lanterns exaggerated the images almost grotesquely, and everything was

magnified to be larger than life, including the dragons, fish, flowers, lions, elephants,

fairies, and human figures. Since the beginning of the 1990s, lantern fairs had focused on presenting only medium to large lantern compositions to create the atmosphere of a

220 spectacle. The images were complimented by high-tech sounds, glitzy lights, and

animation techniques. The visual impact was so powerful that one could not help but be

immediately drawn to the dazzling array of objects. The focus on such large and showy

presentation also effectively prevented any spontaneous popular participation.

The theme of the 2001 lantern fair, as determined by Chengdu municipal

government, was “exhibiting the history and turning in the direction of the future.”

Walking into the fair, the first prominent group of lanterns that caught my eye was named

“The Rising Dragon and the Olympics (longteng Aoyun).” A giant dragon was winding along a gigantic red post, which was topped by a torch marked with “New Beijing, Great

Olympics,” the slogan for Beijing’s bid for the 2008 summer Olympic Games. The lantern fair was saturated with traditional images intertwined with Party-state interests and nationalist themes. Another group of lanterns illustrated the great unity of all ethnic groups in China, which has been a staple of the annual Lantern Fair. Fifty-six human figures dressed in ethnic costumes, representing the fifty-six ethnic groups, were standing hand in hand in a circle, with the Chinese national emblem and a giant dragon in the center.

If we have to characterize the tourist gaze at the lantern fair, it is the collective

gaze Urry (1990) proposes. The collective gaze, Urry claims, necessitates the presence of

large numbers of other people, who give atmosphere to a place (1990, p. 31). The

congregation of Chengdu residents at the lantern fair indicates that this is the place to be

during the Spring Festival. Fang Gang, a young and chic man, surprised me when he told

me that he went to the lantern fair almost every year. “Like everybody, I want to have

some fun with others,” he said. The 2001 lantern fair was the result of the strange

221 marriage of the Party-state and tourism industry. It was a typical case of urban tourism project targeting the locals, turning the natives into tourists, the participants into spectators.

Global Looking Glass: The Village of the “Other”

While the Chinese urban landscape has become more and more modern and global (except touristic fanggu district; however, in a sense, fanggu district ironically displays the modernizing and globalizing desire of the city), Chinese, especially urban

Chinese, increasingly resort to visiting rural areas to search for the “authentic Chinese

Spring Festival (yuanzhi yuanwei de chunjie),” since the Festival originated from an agrarian society. An article in the January 2001 issue of a popular magazine, Traveler, called on urban residents to “return to the village to celebrate the Spring Festival”

(Zhang, 2001):

The Spring Festival in the cities has no flavor of the Spring Festival anymore. …Thousands-year-old tradition has formed a stubborn “Spring Festival complex” in Chinese’s psyche. Every Spring Festival, Chinese long to light up firecrackers, just listening to the noises; they long to see eyeful of red color; they long to watch opera accompanied by applauses; they long to eat delicious and homemade dumplings and meat. It is easy to satisfy wishes like those. Just follow me to return to the village to celebrate the Spring Festival.

Squeezing yourself into the crowd that look everything but fashionable. There you can listen to high-pitched and impassioned Qin opera; walking along hundred-year-old stone alleys, you would see the incenses burning for gods in front of every household; strolling in the dark, you could watch colorful fireworks in the sky near and far; you would be able to touch the marks left by the vicissitudes of life, and see through the dust of history. You might have tears in your eyes, because this is our ultimate home.

You have to hurry up. Old towns and villages are encroached daily, and folk traditions and customs are disappearing. “How can humans gain their souls? Through the past.” Our past is in the rural, in the fields, and in our ultimate home. (p. 4)

222

Victor Turner claims that the “journey” between times, statuses and places is a

meaning-creating experience (cited in Anderson, 1983, p. 53). Tourism has become a

significant element in constructing/reinforcing national identity. As the author of the

article in Traveler claims, people can only gain their souls (i.e. identities) through their

journey to locales that global modernity has not touched. However, this nostalgic soul-

search for authentic “Chinese” identity is through a global looking glass, i.e., through a

global consumer filter known as “tourism”. The global modernization process, through

the Party-state’s persistent institutional effort over the last 20 years and a pervasive media

and consumer culture, has reached virtually every corner of China. In a People’s Daily

article about how Chinese farmers benefit from the influx of urban holiday tourists, the

author claimed that “change in the way urbanites enjoy their leisure time has brought

market economy nearer to the countryside, making it possible for farmers to get adapted

much more quickly to market competition.” (“Chinese farmers,” 2000) Also, the article

urged that farmers should “turn their hospitality and enthusiasm into various services

compatible with market economy.” In the earnest desire of the rural and the ethnic to

catch up so to benefit from the processes of modernity, the products (tourism attractions)

have to meet the requirement of a globalized consumer culture, and are no longer as

authentic or untouched by modernity as claimed by the Traveller article.

Furthermore, the highly-stylized “villages”—either rural or ethnic—presented in travel magazines or online promotions are created by a popular consumer fetish of nostalgic imagination, which is based on a global view of what “Chineseness” is. As a popular slogan claims, the more ethnic, the more cosmopolitan (yueshi minzhu de, yueshi

223 guoji de). The following online conversations in the Ctrip.com’s community chat room during the 2001 Spring Festival illustrates how an “authentic Chinese” can be created through a Western gaze (personal communication, January 15, 2001).

Illa: I am going to Pingyao. There I can sleep on kang [a heated brick bed used widely in northern rural areas]. I heard that kang is so big that you can sleep anyway you want. Also going to Hukou Waterful, where there are old farmers who have very, very Chinese [italics added] facial features; And Yan’an, where there is very, very Chinese [italics added] yellow earth…I’ve been thinking about this trip for a long time, but flights tickets were sold out in summer. This Spring Festival, I got the tickets!

Gigi: Illa, what a creative idea! I believe that your Spring Festival will be absolutely typical Chinese [English original], the China of Zhang Yimou [Chinese filmmaker], the China in the eyes of foreigners!

It would be relevant to discuss the viewing position of filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s films and how their recognition by the global (Western) consumer culture re-inserts a rural China into the cultural imagination of tourists such as Illa and Gigi. Zhang’s films include Raise the Red Lantern, Judou, and Red Sorghum. Both Raise the Red Lantern and

Judou were nominated for Best Foreign Film of Academy Awards. Zhang’s films have been criticized within China for being “shot for the casual pleasures of foreigners” so they can “satisfy their oriental fetishisms” (Dai, 1993, p. 336). His films offer a strikingly exotic, highly ritualized and mythologized China, especially rural China, to the West.

Freeman (2000) claims that despite Zhang’s apparent commitment to the “Chineseness” of his films, they directly cater for the Western gaze through the invention and concentration on traditional ritual, the exoticization of rural landscape, and the fetishization of the female body– all designed to appeal to the Western audience and for commercial success in the West. Zhang’s richly-colored portrait (or invention) of rural

China presents a palatable, mythical place that conforms to Western ideals of the East.

224 This exoticized rural China has apparently re-generated urban Chinese’s interest in experiencing village life as tourists. However, this is a rural China imagined with a

Western gaze and “authenticated” through its acceptance by global, mostly Western, consumers. Hence, the traveler Illa’s Spring Festival experience was “authenticated” by a global consumption of those “Chinese” images. What they consumed was the representation of “Chineseness” under a global consumer culture.

Also relevant to this discussion is Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism (1979).

Said claims that the Oriental is not an inert fact of nature, but a constructed imaginary throughout colonial history. Rather than attempting to truly understand the Orient, the

West is in many ways guilty of enforcing preconceived views and mythologizing the East by responding to its Oriental “Otherness.” Under Said’s concept of Orientalism, the East becomes exoticized by the West, functioning merely as a mystical contrast to “us” and the “norm,” it’s rituals, culture, history, and society are rendered significant only due to its marked difference. From the cinema of Zhang Yimou that evokes the exotic, mythological image of China and the Chinese general public’s acceptance and pursuit of his version of “Chineseness” in rural China, we prove Said’s point that the modern Orient

“participates in its own Orientalizing” (1979, p.325). I see this as an inevitable consequence of expanding global consumer culture, as the only way to see our way of life is through mediated spectacles.

Interestingly, although Zhang’s films were originally banned in China, the

Chinese government lifted the ban in the early 1990s, and Zhang was later chosen to direct the television spots for Beijing to bid for the 2008 Olympic Games. Even if the

225 choice was not an official endorsement of Zhang’s version of China, it at least showed the Party-state’s compromise with a powerful global consumer culture.

The interaction of commercial cinematic images and tourism was also illustrated

during the 2001 Spring Festival in the sudden popularity of Bamboo Sea (zhuhai), a

scenic area about 200 miles south of Chengdu. While talking about how she spent her

Spring Festival holiday, Wang Qi told me that she took a trip to Bamboo Sea with her

boyfriend. “That was where they shot that scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

You know, the one when Zhou Runfa and Zang Ziyi are fighting on top of the bamboo,”

She explained excitedly. Her enthusiasm had a global connection. In February 2001, the

movie was nominated for Best Foreign Picture of the Academy Award. “It is a Chinese

movie directed by a huaren! [italics added]” Wang Qi claimed. Crouching Tiger, Hidden

Dragon, however, with Taiwanese director Ang Lee who made his name in America and

American co-screen writer James Shamus, was truly a Hollywood production of a

marketable China. The success of the movie stirred up public excitement as well as

desires to see the “China” presented in the movie. “I heard that the movie was shot all

across China, and every place shown in the movie is so beautiful and I want to go there,

every and each of the places, someday,” Wang Qi told me. “You have to see it [the

movie]. The Bamboo Sea was like fairyland on earth [in the movie]. At one point in the

movie, Zhou Runfa and Yang Ziqiong are sitting next to a window, and window frames

the bamboo outside. It was like a classic painting!”

But in reality, Wang Qi was quite disappointed with her visit to the Bamboo Sea

since the place was congested with Spring Festival tourists and its serenity shown in the

movie was nowhere to be found. So was Illa, our traveler who set out to search for a

226 “typical Chinese” Spring Festival as would be presented in Zhang Yimou’s films. In her travel journal published on Ctrip.com’s community center after the trip, Illa, a young woman from coastal city Guangzhou, explained her disillusion of her imagined China:

I did not expect Yan’an to be a town that has modern buildings and a town center. In my own wishful imagination, I only saw the yellow earth and rows of caves [cave homes in loess plateau are common in rural Shanxi, Sanxi, and Henan], as well as people wearing old-style cotton coat and coming in and out of their cave homes. …I had thought this trip to Jin- Shan region would be very “Chinese;” however, there was no striking scenery or extraordinary romance waiting for me. There was no mysterious folk customs, nor thousands-yea-old legends. (2001)

The tourism industry, together with other commercial cultural production industries such as cinema, television, advertisement, has invented a China rural as a romantic getaway and an exotic place to be gazed upon even by Chinese themselves. This romanticized and exoticized version of rural China ignores the harsh reality in Chinese villages. As urban Chinese swarm into the villages to search for “native and authentic”

Chinese Spring Festival, groups of rural labors have to desert the land for meager wage in urban areas. Aunt Yan, a 50-year-old who worked as a babysitter in Chengdu, told me about the Festival celebration in the remote mountainous village where she was from:

People from my village are now in every city, Chengdu, Shanghai, Ningbo, Shengzhen, Guangzhou, everywhere across the country. Very few of them come back for the Spring Festival. They usually just send money back home. Some of them have not been back home for years….I think at least two-thirds of the people in our village are migrant workers in cities, and only one-third stay home, most of them are old people or young kids. I myself spent a couple of Spring Festivals in Shanghai when I was working there. This year, my second daughter who works in Zhejiang did not return for the festival. The reunion dinner was not too much fun when the family was not complete. It is the same with some other households in the village. The festival used to be very lively, but it has been quieter in recent years.

227 The kind of “authentic” Chinese festival experience that urban tourists are seeking in rural areas is almost like chasing one’s reflection in water—the moment your hand touches it, it vanishes. Commercialization is that magic hand. The rural resort my father and I went to for the reunion dinner with our neighbors’ family on the Spring Festival

Eve, Meigui Yuan, was constructed the year before and had become a popular destination for nearby town folks. The owner, who supposedly had powerful connections, rented 12 mu land (about 2 acres) from local farmers with RMB 12,000 (about U.S. dollar 1,500) per year, approximately the value of rice produced from the land. Ironically, the owner expelled real farmers and took away their livelihood to build a so-called “farmer’s joy”

(Nongjia Le) to satisfy urban residents’ romanticized imagination of everyday life and holiday leisure in the rural area.

As I have discussed in previous sections, rural China as a reality has been receding in Chinese national consciousness as urban China now represents the modernizing nation; however, a “cosmopolitan” version of Chinese rural, a China rural as an objectified fetish, is emerging. Under the power of global consumer culture, it is easy for Chinese to internalize the dominating Western gaze within this cosmopolitan culture.

Conclusions

The mobility of Chinese ethnoscapes is exemplified during the Spring Festival.

For instance, urban residents enjoy social mobility and materialistic well-being as a result of the reconfiguration of space of power in urban centers; rural laborers move into the urban areas but at the same time, move out of the national window image; overseas

Chinese frequently commute between their foreign residences and China and enjoy a constant presence in nationalist discourse. The advancement of the tourism industry,

228 together with explicit assistance from the Party-state, facilitates the mobility of Chinese for economic benefits, and at the same time, turns a traditional festival into a packaged spectacle.

229 CHAPTER FIVE

REACHING CONCLUSIONS

What are we to make of this wide range of descriptive and experiential accounts stemming from a single festival, including media rituals, virtual celebrations, commercialization of urban spaces, as well as touristic spectacles? Can we claim the cultural practices and products circulating during the festival are articulations of a modern Chinese subjectivity under construction in a globalizing world? Is the work of social imagination motivated by trans-national and multi-national mediascapes and ethnoscapes demolishing or strengthening Chinese nationalism and Party-state ideologies? At this point, I wish to reiterate interpretations, draw conclusions, reflect on methodologies, and acknowledge the limitations of the study.

Cultural China Revisited

The social/cultural imagination of a cultural China was ubiquitous in both the mediascapes and ethnoscapes during the first Spring Festival of the new millennium, widely regarded by Chinese to be the age for an invigorated Chinese civilization. The

Spring Festival as a unique “Chinese” festival remains one of the most exploited cultural phenomena to advocate for a cultural China, an officially-endorsed vision of an

(inter)national, multi-ethnic, but still united Chinese family. Cultural China as an imagined community (Anderson, 1991) is mobile and deterritorialized. A response to the increasingly integrated and multi-dimensional world, cultural China has transformed a national entity into a cultural entity, no longer bound by the physical borders of the nation-state.

230 A cultural China is rooted in something ‘higher’ and ‘larger’ than a nation-state, i.e., Chinese civilization (Chen, 1998). What used to be practiced under the name of the

Communist ideology and revolutionary ideals is now under the name of the glorious great

China. A cultural China is a reaction and response to the post-colonial condition, under which the West was expanded through global consumer culture instead of acquiring physical territories. Cultural China provides Chinese a sense of safety in a world full of cultural identity crisis. As Chen (1998) points out,

For the (ex-)colonized, nationalism is no longer the panacea, once magnified into global capitalism, the hierachical structure of the nation- state more or less continuing the established order of colonialism with which one could not compete with its forerunners; at this moment, perhaps only by bringing out a “higher” and “larger” category, civilization, could seal the unsealable scar. In inventing and reinventing signs familiar to the popular imaginary and then articulating them as a higher form of universalism, the ex-colonized regains confidence in civilization, and thereby ‘at least’ beats the West in terms of cultural imagination. (p. 18)

However, Chen asks, while the large non-Western civilizations struggle over representing the Other of the West, isn’t the center still the opposing West? Many recent events have boosted Chinese’s national esteem on the world stage since I conducted my fieldwork in China in 2001. China officially joined the WTO; Beijing finally became the host city of the 2008 Olympic Games; Shanghai also won the bidding for hosting the

World Expo in 2010. Each news item seems to strengthen the image of a strong cultural

China; however, it in fact validates the authority of the systems established by the West that a cultural China supposedly opposes. The “developed” West allocates authority and legitimacy to ideals such as modernity, progress, globalization, and consumption.

Therefore, in China’s pursuit of global modernity, Chinese “nationalism” is still alive and well. When China joined a global market, China’s nationalism did not subside as some

231 scholars had predicted. Quite the contrary, the most “hot” nationalistic sentiments are usually found within communities that are well-educated, materially-better off, and globally-connected such as Chinese Internet users. While I was talking to a friend of mine who was a freelance writer in Beijing about my dissertation, he said: “We used to have a blind nationalist passion in the first three decades of the Republic, even in the early 1980s, which was stirred up by ignorance, fear, and arrogance. Now it is quite different. Once you have your door open, people see things differently. Nationalism today is seen against the backdrop of the global. China’s nationalism is now a deliberated sentiment. It is an informed choice.”

Cultural China is a cultural imaginary invented in the age of global modernity.

China’s persistent pursuit for global modernity has been a collective goal and desire for the Party-state, global market forces, and individuals. For the Party-state, global modernity is the miraculous Savior of the failing Communism ideology; for multinational corporations, global modernity is the ideological entry point to profit from the vast market of 1.3 billion potential consumers; for ordinary Chinese folks, it means better life and more personal freedom. Cultural China as a multi-layered concept embraces a calculated ambiguousness that at times focuses on unity and at other times favors diversity; as such, it can be appropriated by any player and stakeholder in the field of cultural production and consumption. For the purpose of this dissertation, I have discussed three players, the Chinese Party-state (the national), the global market force

(the global), and the local communities and individuals (the local).

Here, I want to again mention Appadurai’s discussion of the role of imagination as a social practice in a global reality, as cultural China is obviously a creation of

232 imagination. Appadurai recognizes the split character of the work of the imagination: on one hand, it is “in and through the imagination that modern citizens are disciplined and controlled, by states, markets and other powerful interests.” On the other hand, he claims, imagination is also “the faculty through which collective patterns of dissent and new designs for collective life emerge.” (1999, p. 231) Cultural China as a cultural imaginary shares the same controlling and emancipating capacity.

By officially endorsing the concept of cultural China, the Party-state is capable of claiming authority over every choice that is made under the name of the Great China. The

Party-state is then able to extend its influence from the Hanized core to the most extended global Chinese community of the multi-layered cultural China. During the 2001 Spring

Festival, the ubiquitous huaren (people of Chinese descent) discourse (unity) and the presentation of “a happy multi-ethnic family” (diversity) at the CCTV gala could only be presented in harmony under cultural China, a term filled with ambiguousness and conflicts. Also, only under the name of the glorious cultural China, can the Party-state justify its economic compromises within the communist ideology, such as intensive commercial sponsorship of the CCTV gala and rigorous promotion of holiday consumption and tourism presented in previous chapters.

Meanwhile, a global consumer culture has promoted a shift of national consciousness from native nationalism (rural, native, and production-oriented) to a consumer culture based cosmopolitan nationalism (urban, international, and consumption-oriented). Native nationalism, or nativism as Chen calls it (1998, p. 15), was a “self-rediscovery” response to the colonial imagination after World War Two, as ex-colonies were seeking independence and engaging in nation-building projects. The

233 circumstances in China were different from other ex-colonies, not only because the colonization of China never went beyond trade port cities, but also because the Chinese

Communist Party and its leader, Mao Zedong, took a strong anti-urban stance in economic development as well as political and cultural indoctrination. As the country was isolated from the world community for over thirty years, Chinese native nationalism was also deepened.

However, under the growing influences of consumerism in the past two decades, a cosmopolitan nationalism has been fostered. This “cosmopolitan China” corresponds with the official cultural China, requiring collective imagination that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of nation-states. Both cosmopolitan China and cultural China share interest in promoting a traditional Chinese festival like the Spring Festival. While cultural

China focuses on political and ideological ends, cosmopolitan China advocates a globally marketable China. Cosmopolitan China was widely employed in promoting consumer goods during the “Chinese-style” Spring Festival: the pride and comfort derived from the fact that Chinese were finally consuming and living like Westerners, the widely-used traditional “Chinese” imageries in festival advertisements, the marketing strategies that invoked a global Chinese community (such as website like Chinese.com), and the exoticized minority and rural images. The underlying implication was, to make China modernized and global, all Chinese citizens needed to do is to consume like global consumers. Cosmopolitan China represents pop culture nationalism that is filled with packaged and commercialized traditions. It is “the national” with the backdrop of “the global” or the “globalized national.” A fundamental characteristic of cosmopolitan China is looking at the self through the optic of the global or the West.

234 The third player in this collective cultural imagination project is the local

communities or individuals. On one hand, they are the targets of the Party-state’s

propaganda and markets’ consumption promotions; on the other hand, they do exercise

“guerrilla tactics” (de Certeau, 1984) to avoid control and discipline of the powerful.

Local communities/individuals’ search for a collective cultural identity and a new way to

relate to each other after the worldwide collapse of communism is easily manipulated by

both the Party-state and the capitalist market. During the 2001 Spring Festival, various

examples demonstrate that the efforts of the locals rallying around disappearing

traditional cultural forms, whether it was festival ritual or traditional cuisine, were subject to political appropriation and commercial exoticization.

Nevertheless, individual Chinese, like persons under any other system of control,

did find gaps between the state power and commercial power to “make do” (de Certeau,

1984) and enjoyed their own celebration. Chinese citizens escape the Party-state’s

propaganda and commercials by watching pirate VCD movies as an alternative festival

entertainment; they exercise the power of media consumers to criticize official culture;

they use official television spectacles as background noise that adds liveliness to the get-

togethers at home. Local communities and marginalized minority groups found their

voices during the virtual celebration of the festival on the Internet. State policies and

market forces allowed ordinary Chinese to own their own homes, reject work-unit

organized collective celebrations, and migrate around the country and the globe for

personal advancement. Just as de Certeau (1984) has claimed, ordinary people use the

resources provided by the powerful for tactical evasions or resistance of the social order

in their daily practices. Although the Party-state and commercial forces enjoy strategic

235 power over ordinary Chinese in defining the most important Chinese festival in public/media discourse, in people’s private, daily practices, individuals are the ones that often made conscious or unconscious choices to make the festival their own. Even with ubiquitous cultural China discourse, the social/cultural imagination generated through it has stimulated the rise of collective patterns of dissent and new designs for collective life.

Under the umbrella of a cultural China, local communities have brought back religious or indigenous festive rituals, ethnic minorities publicly display their differences and voice their frustration with state policies, and even regional or local television stations produce programs with local flavor to compete with the national CCTV gala. Cultural China as a work of the imagination also plays a strong role in the formation of global Internet communities that convene on a virtual space to celebrate a festival they share.

In conclusion, cultural China as a work of the imagination has emerged in the post-Cold war China and was the most conspicuous and powerful public imagery produced and circulated during the 2001 Spring Festival. Like all other works of the imagination, it can not be viewed as purely emancipatory nor as simply controlling, but a complex and contested space in which the powerful and the weak, groups and individuals, the global, the national, and the local seek to gain their own ground with divergent strategies and tactics. Imagining China in the 21st century is both a globalized and localized practice mediated by the Chinese Party-state and market forces.

Reflections on Ethnography in a Global Age

As to methodology, I wish to share my thoughts on two major issues: The first concerns doing ethnography in a transnational and deterritorialized world. The second is related to being a native ethnographer.

236 This study can be considered as an experiment of Appadurai’s (1991, 1996) proposed cosmopolitan ethnography. The project was different from traditional ethnographic work, especially in the sense that there was no “confined” research site and my research activities often stretched out to national and global realms. The subject matter, the work of the imagination, requires the boundaries of the physical research location be expanded as imagination is inevitably tied up with images, ideas, and opportunities brought around by mass media and migration. At the same time, due to increasing mobility in Chinese society, my research had to answer the challenge of the instability of spatial and social realms and be carried out with people on the move in a constantly shifting terrain, as they traveled and moved in and out of Chengdu during the festival. As my informants watched a national media spectacle that was also accessible globally, as I interacted with fellow netizens on the virtually borderless Cyberspace. As migrant workers left the cities by trains to their remote home villages, as global tourists put labels of “authenticity” on local festival rituals, my research has broken the confines of the locale.

It is also hard to pinpoint my “exiting” the research location. I completed my fieldwork and left Chengdu in late March 2001; however, in a sense I never leave my field. In June 2001, I was back in Chengdu again for another research project. During that time, at social gatherings, I talked with a few people I interviewed earlier. I stay in touch via email with Fang Gang and Wang Qi, two of my interviewees. During the writing and editing process, I continued to be a part of global Chinese ethnoscapes, communicating with family and friends back in Chengdu, seeking additional information related to the festival on the Internet, and actively participating in online Chinese debates on

237 nationalism and globalization. This leads to my discussion about being a native ethnographer.

While writing this dissertation, I was married to an American citizen and applied for permanent residency in the United States, which had a tremendous impact on my status as a Chinese, legally, psychologically, and socially. Although officially I remain a

Chinese citizen, I ceased being an overseas Chinese student (most are expected to return to China after finishing school) and became an overseas Chinese (those who assume long-term residency in foreign countries). I did not fully embrace these issues until one day, when I was debating with my sister on the telephone about issues of moral deterioration in China. She said, “You don’t understand. How could you? You are now an overseas Chinese (haiwai huaren).” Her remarks led me to reflect on my role during the fieldwork: What kind of identity markers did I carry while interacting with people?

Was I still native? Can I claim more authority as a native ethnographer than a non-native, say, a Western ethnographer, and therefore, claim that I present a “truer” account of

Chengdu residents’ celebration of the Spring Festival?

I believe that while I was interacting with informants in Chengdu, my positioning and identity constantly shifted with their own perceptions of me. As Akindes (1999) points out, a native ethnographer has to “negotiate multiple/infinite spaces” and to acknowledge her/his hybridity by locating and dis-locating the self in multiple ways throughout the research (p. 129). During the fieldwork, sometimes my interviewees called me an overseas Chinese jokingly. Oftentimes, the label worked to my advantage during the interview process, as informants tended to describe their experiences and activities in more detail and also talked with more openness and frankness. Sometimes,

238 however, the interviewees and I would converse in a way that I was definitely “one of

us.” At these times, a lot of messages were embedded in the process of interviews, such

as a glance of mutual understanding, gestures, facial expressions, or even the phrase,

“You know what is like…” Hence, the interviews I recorded to a large extent reflected

the informants’ perception of me (as one of “us” or not). As a researcher, I was therefore

inescapably inscribed into the research texts and contexts. As Akindes (1999) claims: “I

cannot speak of my research subjects without speaking of myself.” (p. 127)

Although all ethnographies are to some extent auto-ethnographic, native

ethnographers have to face the challenges of a state of “professionally induced

schizophrenia” between the “native self” and “profession self.” (Mascarenhas-Keyes,

1987, p. 180) My native self and profession self often merged during the fieldwork, as I

had become part of the phenomenon I was investigating. My longing to spend the Spring

Festival with my family as well as my presence was inextricably woven into the globally

mobilized Chinese ethnoscapes; I joined in the holiday consumption of an “authentic”

China, trying to bring back to the United States some real “Chinese” souvenirs; I served

as a consultant for family and friends who made inquiries about life and study

possibilities in North America. Willingly or unwillingly, I participated in the construction

of the Party-state’s cultural China project, and was an element circulating in the global

cultural, political, economic, and financial system.

My experiential account as a native, however, does not have privilege over other

research texts, such as media texts (newspapers, magazines, television, and the Internet),

in-depth interviews, and observation notes, as different types of texts provided a range of different positions for the researcher to examine and analyze the phenomenon under

239 investigation. Just because I originally grew up in the same meta-cultural realm or even because I am a Chengdu native do not mean that I automatically obtain “the native’s view point,” let alone the fact that there were multiple view points within different communities. We have to recognize that nobody can really see things through the eyes of the natives, though theoretically research projects are designed to achieve that never-can- be-reached ideal. Therefore, I conclude that as long as ethnographers acknowledge their subjective positioning, native ethnographers do not present an epistemologically ‘truer” account than non-native ethnographers, but just different truths.

Limitations and Implications

This dissertation began as an extremely ambitious project, as I wanted to present a multifaceted description and interpretation of issues with regard to the imagination of the global, the national, and the local during the 2001 Spring Festival celebration. As I discovered during the research process, setting limits for a research project is crucial. As much as I immersed myself into the fieldwork, I had to constantly remind myself of staying in focus and sticking to my central subject matter. Any topic in my dissertation, such as media diversification, maturing consumer culture, Internet communities, and tourism in China, deserves full attention and could become a dissertation in itself; however, I have attempted to keep each under the umbrella of my theoretical propositions. Further studies can certainly be conducted, focusing on specific communities with regard to the imagination of a cultural China during the celebration of the Spring Festival or other festivals, and the global Chinese Internet community, migrant workers, and ethnic minorities. Also, I chose to focus on the traditional festival so to set up a time limit for the fieldwork and data collection; however, the research on the role of

240 imagination in the construction of a cultural China can be approached from various

angles without this time constraint, such as media expansion, international migration, and

so on.

Ethnographic fieldwork allows the research to take unexpected turns and the

researcher to constantly re-examine and re-design the fieldwork during the process. I

started reading Appadurai’s Modernity at Large (1996) on my flight to China. By then my dissertation proposal had been presented to and approved by my committee.

However, the theoretical and methodological framework he presents in the book fits my agenda perfectly, and I decided to adjust my dissertation accordingly. This decision led to a re-invention of my project, and Appadurai’s work provided the organization framework for the writing process; however, it did not have much impact on my gathering of research materials during the fieldwork. Once in the field, as Akindes describes, one simply surrenders to the moment (1999, p. 193). My specific interactions with informants and situations, not a pre-conceived framework, led me to what to be collected for the study, thus providing assurance that the data collected were grounded in informants’ and the researcher’ actual experiences.

Epilogue: Living in the Borderland

The borderland, where two worlds collide, is always the place where assumptions

are challenged, tensions rise, and extraordinary potentials can be realized. My research

journey to China was located in an intercultural borderland in two different ways. It is

intercultural as I constantly referred to my experience and knowledge of American

culture while looking at cultural events in China. It is also intercultural in a sense that my

academic culture, which is located in the Western educational tradition, ran into the

241 everyday culture, both traditional and contemporary, in China. The writing process of the dissertation, with a Western or Western-trained academic readership in mind, somehow disconnected me from the everyday life I am trying to investigate. Ironically, as a native

Chinese scholar trained in the United States, I am not capable of writing my research in

Mandarin, my native language. I am linguistically paralyzed by my academic language,

English; however, the agitation and frustration that emerged in the process of writing reminded me of the limbo state I was in, which strengthened my writing with a keen sense of reflexivity.

Contemporary China is situated in a borderland as well, while the global modernity and China’s century-old traditions crash and struggle to gain ground. The emotions aroused from my journey are both personal as well as representative of Chinese collective sentiments. There was a collective sense of nostalgia and loss, the loss of the past, of the places we came from, especially during the Spring Festival celebration. I, in some ways, try to hold on to the most significant tradition that partly defines who I am individually (as well as collectively), no matter how much the tradition has been appropriated or manipulated by the Party-state or global consumerism. On the other hand, people like me feel a sense of gain as the material life of Chinese people improves, as well as some sense of “psychic” empowerment brought about by China being an important global player. Personally, I feel strongly against the encroachment of global consumer culture on local traditions; however, I also have to admit that Chinese people deserve a good life, which at present, seems to have come at a price: the loss of traditional way of life. The question I am left with is what kind of agency will rise from this collision of tradition and modernity, from this borderland of tremendous potentials.

242

References

About us. (n.d.). The Chinese Spring Festival Net. Retrieved February 16, 2002,

from http://www.chunjie.net.cn/other/home/aboutus.asp

About us. (2001). Yanhuang Zaixian. Retrieved February 10, 2001, from http://

www.chinese.com/common/jie.htm

Aden, R. C. (1999). Popular stories and promised lands: Fan cultures and symbolic

pilgrimages. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press.

Advertisement package for the CCTV 2001 Spring Festival eve gala. (2000, November

15). Retrieved March 12, 2002, from http://www.cctv.com.cn/advertisement/

sanji/baojia.html

Akindes, F. Y. (1999). Hawaiian-music radio as diasporic habitus: A rhizomatic study of

power, resistance, & identity. (Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 1999).

ProQuest Digital Dissertations, AAT 9944764

AlSayyad, N. (2001). Global norms and urban forms in the age of tourism:

Manufacturing heritage, consuming tradition. In N. AlSayyad. (Ed.), Consuming

tradition, manufacturing heritage: Global norms and urban forms in the age of

tourism. (pp. 1- 33). London and New York: Routledge.

Altheide, D. L. & Johnson, J. M. (1998). Criteria for assessing interpretive validity in

qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln. (Eds.), Collecting and

interpreting qualitative materials. (pp. 283-312). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Anagnost, A. (1993). The nationscape: Movement in the field of vision. Positions, 1:3,

585-606.

243 Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and

spread of nationalism. (2nd ed.). New York: Verso.

Ang, I. (1996a). Culture and communication: Toward an ethnographic critique of media

consumption in the transnational media system. In J. Storey (Ed.), What is

cultural studies? A reader. (pp. 237-254). London, UK: Arnold.

Ang, I. (1996b). Living room wars: Rethinking media audiences for a postmodern world.

London and New York: Routledge.

Appadurai, A. (1991). Global ethnoscapes: Notes and queries for a transnational

anthropology. In R. G. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing anthropology: Working in the

present (pp. 191-210). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization.

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Appadurai, A. (1999). Globalization and the research imagination. International Social

Science Journal, 160, 229-238.

Beijing stocking up for enjoyable Spring Festival. (2003, January 25). Xinhua News

Agency. Retrieved February 20, 2003, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe

database.

Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. London: Penguin.

Bernstein, R. (1981, November 23). Revolution down to the farm, Time, 51.

Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Bishop, W. (1999). Ethnographic writing research: Writing it down, writing it up, and

reading it. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Blum, S. D. (2000). China’s many faces: Ethnic, cultural, and religious pluralism. In

244 T. B. Weston & L. M. Jensen (Eds.), China beyond the headlines. (pp. 69-96).

Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Boorstin, D. J. (1961). The image: A guide to pseudo-events in America. New York:

Harper & Row.

Carey, J. W. (1989). Communication as culture: Essays on media and society. Boston,

MA: Unwin Hyman.

Cassirer, E. (1955). The myth of the state. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.

CCTV gala awards. (2001, January 29). Retrieved March 1, 2001, from http://

ent.sina.com.cn/r/m/31435.html

CCTV gala in the eyes of the audience. (2001, January 18). Chengdu Commercial Daily

(Chengdu Shangbao), p. A12.

CCTV 2002 prime-time advertising bidding brochure. (2001). Retrieved March 12,

2002, from http://www.cctv.com.cn/advertisement

Chen, K. H. (1998). Introdution: The decolonization question. In K. H. Chen (Ed.),

Trajectories: Inter-Asia cultural studies. (pp. 1-56). New York: Routledge.

Chen, N. N., Clark, C. D., Gottschang, S. Z., & Jeffery, L. (2001). Introduction. In N. N.

Chen, C. D. Clark, S. Z. Gottschang, & L. Jeffery (Eds.), China urban:

Ethnographies of contemporary culture. (pp. 1-22). Durham, NC: Duke

University Press.

Chengdu cultural activities soar during the first Spring Festival of the new millennium.

(2001, February 8). Chengdu Evening News (Chengdu Wanbao), p. 7.

Chengdu population reaches new high. (2001, February 13). Chengdu Evening News, p.1.

Chengdu residents spent 37.1 million in stores. (2001, February 3). Chengdu Commercial

245 Daily, p. A1.

Chengdu lantern fairs. (2001, January 18). Chengdu Evening News, p. 3

Chicken ribs on the dinner table of the Spring Festival eve. (2001, January 8). Sichuan

Radio and Television Weekly (Sichuan Guangbo Dianshi Zhoubao), p. A3.

China Central Television Station (Producer). (2001a, January 23). The CCTV evening

news. Beijing: China Central Television Station.

China Central Television Station (Producer). (2001b, January 23). The Spring Festival

Eve gala. Beijing: China Central Television Station.

China Central Television Station (Producer). (2002, February 12). Spring Festival eve

special program. Beijing: China Central Television Station.

China Internet Network Information Center. (1997). Statistical Report of the

Development of China Internet (1997.10). Retrieved November 11, 2001, from

http://www.cnnic.net.cn/develst/9710/e-9710.shtml

China Internet Network Information Center. (2000). Evolution of Internet in China.

Retrieved December 1, 2002, from http://www.cnnic.net.cn/evolution.shtml

China Internet Network Information Center. (2001). Semiannual Survey Report on the

Development of China’s Internet ( Jan. 2001). Retrieved November 11, 2001,

from http://www.cnnic.net.cn/develst/e-cnnic200101.shtml

China Internet Network Information Center. (2003). Semiannual Survey Report on the

Development of China’s Internet (Jan. 2003). Retrieved April 13, 2003, from

http://www.cnnic.net.cn/develst/2003-1e/index.shtml

China National Tourism Administration. (2001). Facts and figures. Retrieved September

1, 2002, from http://www.cnta.gov.cn/lyen/2fact/index.htm

246 China racks up $2.7 billion in holiday tourism turnover. (2000, October 8). People’s

Daily (Renmin Ribao). Retrieved October 7, 2002, from http://fpeng.peopledaily.

com.cn/200010/08/eng20001008_52043.html

China to launch first TV industry conglomerate. (2000, December 21). People’s Daily.

Retrieved November 17, 2001, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200012/21/

eng20001221_58412.html

China tries to loosen consumer purse strings with ‘holiday economics.’ (2000, September

29). People’s Daily. Retrieved October 7, 2002, from http://english.peopledaily.

com.cn/200009/29/eng20000929_51529.html

China’s tourism sector records US $3B during Spring Festival. (2003, February 10).

Global News Wire - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire. Retrieved February 20, 2003,

from Lexis-Nexis Academic database.

Chinese economy takes turn for significant improvement. (2001, March 6). People’s

Daily. Retrieved October 7, 2002, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

features/lianghui/2001030600B120.html

Chinese farmers benefit from holiday economy. (2000, April 18). People’s Daily.

Retrieved November 3, 2002, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200004/18/

eng20000418_39125.html

Chinese New Year behind the numbers. (2001, February 6). People’s Daily, p. 1

Chinese Renminbi: Strong currency in Asia. (2003, March 29). Xinhua News Agency.

Retrieved April 3, 2003, from Lexis-Nexis Academic database.

Chu, G. C. (1979). Communication and cultural change in China: A conceptual

247 framework. In G.C. Chu & F. L. K. Hsu. (Eds.). Moving a mountain: Cultural

change in China. (pp. 2-24). Honolulu: the East-West Center.

Chu, G. C. & Ju, Y. N. (1993). The great wall in ruins: Communication and cultural

change in China. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Chun, A. (1996). Fuck Chineseness: On the ambiguities of ethnicity as culture as

identity. Boundary 2, 23(2), 111-138.

Communist Party propaganda chief reasserts control over media. (2001, March 31).

Associated Press Worldstream. Retrieved January 17, 2003, from Lexis-Nexis

Academic database.

Conquergood, D. (1991). Rethinking ethnography: towards a critical cultural politics.

Communication Monographs, 58, 179-194.

Crawford, L. (1996). Personal Ethnography. Communication Monographs, 63, 158-

170.

Cross-Straits chartered flights conclude. (2003, February 10). Xinhua News Agency.

Retrieved February 20, 2003, from Lexis-Nexis Academic database.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will be in the theater again. (2001, February 16). West

China Metro Daily (Huaxi Dushi Bao), p. 11.

Dadawa’s ‘Sister Drum’ CD causes international outrage amongst Tibetans. (1996,

February 27). Retrieved February 1, 2003, from http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/

1996/2/27_2.html

Dai, Q. (1993). Raised eyebrows for Raise the Red Lantern. (J. Tai, Trans.). Public

Culture, 5, 333-337.

De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. (S. Rendall, Trans.). Berkeley, CA:

248 University of California Press.

Dean, K. (1998). Despotic empire/nation-state: Local responses to Chinese nationalism in

an age of global capitalism. In K. H. Chen (Ed.), Trajectories: Inter-Asia cultural

studies. (pp. 153-185). New York: Routledge.

Debord, G. (1983). Society of the spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red.

Dirlik, A. (1996). Looking backward in the age of global capital: Thoughts on history in

Third World cultural criticism. In X. Tang and S. Snyder. (Eds.), In the pursuit of

contemporary East Asian culture. (pp. 183-215). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Domestic Demand for VCD Players. (2001, February 7). Xinhua. Retrieved February 5,

2002, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database.

Dutton, M. (1999). Street scenes of subalternity: China, globalization, and rights. Social

Text, 17 (3), 63-85.

Dutton, M. (Ed.). (1998). Streetlife China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Endless festival activities in town. (2001, January 21). Chengdu Commercial Daily, p. A2

An era without gourmet. (2001, March). New Weekly (Xin Zhoukan), p. 36.

Everybody criticizes the CCTV Spring Festival eve gala. (2001, February 6). Chengdu

Weekly (Rongchen Zhoubao), p. 20.

First Chinese New Year in the new millennium. (2001, January 18). Chengdu Evening

News, p. 7.

Fiske, J. (1989a). Reading popular culture. London, UK: Unwin Hyman Ltd.

Fiske, J. (1989b). Understanding popular culture. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman Ltd.

Fiske, J. (1996). British cultural studies and television. In J. Storey (Ed.), What is

cultural studies? A reader. (pp. 115-146). London, UK: Arnold.

249 Focusing on the hot spot and playing Olympics cards at the CCTV gala. (2001, January

19). Chengdu Evening News, p.11.

Four point two percent families will buy homes this year. (2001, February 12). Chengdu

Commercial Daily, p. A10

Fox, R.G. (1991). Introduction: Working in the present. In R.G. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing

anthropology: Working in the present (pp. 1-16). Santa Fe, NM: School of

American Research Press.

Freeman, M. (2000). Eastern culture, western gaze: The cinema of Zhang Yimou.

Retrieved November 26, 2002, from http://home.vicnet.net.au/~freeman/theory/

zhangyimou.htm

Gala of Chinese pop music. (2001, January 18). People’s Daily. Retrieved September 5,

2001, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200101/18/eng20010118_60767.

html

Gaubatz, P. R. (1995) Urban transformation in post-Mao China: Impacts of the reform

era on China’s urban form. In D. S. Davis, R. Kraus, B. Naughton, & E. J. Perry.

(Eds.), Urban spaces in contemporary China: the potential for autonomy and

community in post-Mao China. (pp. 29-60). New York, NY: Woodrow Wilson

International Center for Scholars.

Ge, J. X. (1994). Tongyi yu fenlie: Zhongguo lishi de qishi [The unification and the

division: Inspirations of Chinese history]. Beijing: Sanlian.

Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Gift certificates stimulate Spring Festival shopping. (2001, February 1). Chengdu

Commercial Daily, p. A11.

250 A glance at the Spring Festival restaurant market. (2001, February 23). Chengdu Evening

News, p. 9.

Global Chinese Music Award will be unveiled tonight. (2001, January 17). Chengdu

Evening News, p. 6.

Gong, X. (1998). Household registration and the caste-like quality of peasant life. In M.

Dutton (Ed.), Streetlife China. (pp. 81-85.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Hall, S. (1993). Encoding, decoding. In S. During (Ed.), The cultural studies reader. (pp.

90-103). London, UK: Routledge.

Hall, S. (1996). The local and the global: Globalization and ethnicity. In A. McClintock,

A. Mufti, & E. Shohat (Eds.), Dangerous liaisons: gender, nation, and

postcolonial perspectives. (pp. 173-187). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press.

He, X. T. (1995). Sister drum [Recorded by Zheqin Zhu]. [CD]. Hong Kong:

Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd.

He, X. T. (1997). Voices from the sky [Recorded by Zheqin Zhu]. [CD]. Hong Kong:

Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd.

Hobsbawm, E. (1992) Introduction: Inventing traditions. In E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger

(Eds.) The invention of tradition. (pp. 1-14). Cambridge University Press.

Hofstede, G. (1984). Culture’s consequences. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Hong, J. H. (1998). The internationalization of television in China: The evolution of

ideology, society, and media since the reform. London and Westport, CT: Praeger.

Hong Kong residents rushed into mainland for holiday. (2001, January 23). Chengdu

251 Evening News, p. 2.

Hong Kong 2001 top ten music award bring forward the first time “National Most

Popular Singers” in China. (2001, January 21). Chengdu Commercial Daily, p.A8

Hooper, B. (1998). ‘Flower vase and housewife’: Women and consumerism in post-Mao

China. In K. Sen and M. Stivens (Eds.), Gender and power in affluent Asia. (pp.

167-193). New York: Routledge.

Howkins, J. (1982). Mass communication in China. New York: Longman.

Huaxia cultural bond project. (n.d.). The Chinese Cultural Community Net. Retrieved

September 25, 2001, from http://www.sinoct.com/friend.htm

Illa. (2001, February 12). At Yan’an. Message posted to Ctrip.com community center,

http://www.ctrip.com.cn/Community/ItineraryWri/ShowWriting.asp?writing=538

052&area=&user=1

Jones, A. F. (1992). Like a knife: Ideology and genre in contemporary Chinese popular

music. Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University.

Kutsche, P. (1998). Field ethnography: A manual for doing cultural anthropology. Upper

Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Last year of the dragon of the 20th century. (2000, February 5). People’s Daily. Retrieved

November 17, 2001, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200002/05/

print20000205R100.html

Lawnham, P. (2001, October 3). China puts out call to students. The Australian.

Retrieved May 2, 2002, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database.

Lee, G. B. (1996). Troubadours, trumpeters, troubled makers: Lyricism, nationalism, and

hybridity in China and its others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

252 Let’s turn 5 million hours of television time to money. (2001, March 1). New Weekly,

102. pp. 62-65.

Lindlof, T. R. (1995). Qualitative communication research methods. Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage.

Liu, D.Y. (2001, February 23). Delicious Huaiyang dishes. Chengdu Evening News, p. 9.

Liu, K. (1996). Is there an alternative to (Capitalist) globalization? The debate about

modernity in China. Boundary 2, 23(23), 193-218.

Liu, K. (1997). Popular culture and the culture of the masses in contemporary China.

Boundary 2, 24(3), 99-122.

Lu, K. (1994). Press control in ‘new China’ and ‘old China.’ In C. Lee (ed.), China’s

media, media’s China. (pp. 147-161) Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Lu, S. H. (1996). Postmodernity, popular culture, and the intellectual: A report on post-

Tiananmen China. Boundary 2, 23(2), 139-169.

Lu, S. H. (1997). Global POSTmodernIZATION: The intellectual, the artist, and China’s

condition. Boundary 2, 24 (3), 65-97.

Lull, J. (1991). China turned on: Television, reform, and resistance. New York :

Routledge.

MacCannell, D. (1973). Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist

settings. American Journal of Sociology, 79(3), 589-603

MacCannell, D. (1992). Empty meeting ground: The tourist papers. London and New

York: Routledge.

MacDonald, D. (1978). A theory of mass culture. In P. Davison, R. Meyersohn, & E.

253 Shils (Eds.), Culture and mass culture (Literary taste, culture and mass

communication; Vol.1). (pp. 167-186). Cambridge, UK: Chadwyck-Healey Ltd.

MacLeod, C. (2000, August 9). China cracks down on “enemy” web sites. United Press

Internationl. Retrieved April 15, 2003, from Lexis-Nexis Academic database.

Mascarenhas-Keyes, S. (1987). The native anthropologist: Constraints and strategies

in research. In A. Jackson (Ed.), Anthropology at home. (pp. 180-195). New

York: Tavistock Publications.

McDonald, J. (2000, December 12). Chinese video piracy thriving. Associate Press.

Retrieved February 5, 2002, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Ontario, Canada:

Signet Books.

McRobbie, A. (1996). More!: New sexualities in girls’ and women’s magazines. In

J. Curran, D. Morley, & V. Walkerdine. (Eds.), Cultural studies and

communication. (pp. 172-194). London, UK: Arnold.

Millions of Chengdu residents visit parks (2001, January 30). West China Metro Daily,

p.1

Ministerial cooperation called for holiday tourism. (2000, August 28). People’s Daily.

Retrieved October 11, 2002, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200008/27/

eng20000827_49049.html

More smuggled VCDs seized in Guangdong. (2001, March 7). Xinhua. Retrieved

February 5, 2002, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database.

Morley, D. (1980). The Nationwide audience. London, UK: British Film Inistitute.

National Bureau of Statistics of China (2000). Annual statistic data: Education, science

254 and technology, and culture. Retrieved January 5, 2002, from http://www.stats.

gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/index.htm

National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2001a). The Fifth National Census Report, 2000.

Retrieved August 5, 2002, from http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjgb/rkpcgb/qgrkpcgb/

200203310083.htm

National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2001b). Statistical communiqué of the People’s

Republic of China on the 2000 national economic and social development.

Retrieved January 17, 2003, from http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/newrelease/

statisticalreports/200203290018.htm

Naughton, B. (1995). Cities in the Chinese system: Changing roles and conditions for

autonomy. In D. S. Davis, R. Kraus, B. Naughton, & E. J. Perry. (Eds.), Urban

spaces in contemporary China: the potential for autonomy and community in

post-Mao China. (pp. 61-89). New York, NY: Woodrow Wilson International

Center for Scholars.

A New Way of Celebrating the Spring Festival. (2001, January 27). Chengdu

Commercial Daily, p. 3.

Number of migrant passengers stays high: The railway station is under ‘siege’. (2001,

February 1). Chengdu Evening News, p. 1.

Oakes, T. S. (1997). Ethnic tourism in rural Guizhou: Sense of place and the commerce

of authenticity. In M. Picard & R. E. Wood (Eds.), Tourism, ethnicity, and the

state in Asian and Pacific societies. (pp. 35-70). Honolulu, Hawaii: University of

Hawaii Press

Oakes, T. S. (1998). Tourism and modernity in China. London and New York:

255 Routledge.

Official: Chinese economy on fast lane. (2000, October 8). People’s Daily. Retrieved

October 7, 2002, from http://fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn/200010/08/

eng20001008_52006.html

O’Sullivan, T., Montgomery, L. M., Hartley, J., Saunders, D., & Fiske, J. (1994). Key

concepts in communication and cultural studies. (2nd ed.). London and New York:

Routledge.

“Patriotic education” campaign: Xinhua issues “a programme for education in

patriotism.” (1994, September 8). BBC Summary of World Broadcasts. Retrieved

November 10, 2001, from Lexis-Nexis Academic database.

Pei, M.X. (1994). From reform to revolution: The demise of Communism in China and

the Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

People-centered socio-economic development. (2001, March 14). Xinhua. Retrieved

September 5, 2002, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database.

Planning Chengdu’s CBD. (2001, March 2). Chengdu Commercial Daily, p. A1.

Pomfret, J. (2003, April 2). China’s slow reaction to fast-moving illness: Fearing loss of

control, Beijing stonewalled. The Washington Post. Retrieved April 3, 2003, from

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database.

Qiu, J. L. (2001, November). Chinese nationalism on the Net: An odd myth with

normalcy. Paper presented at National Communication Association Annual

Convention, Atlanta, GA.

Qiu, L. (2001, May 21). Please listen to the voice from Lugu lake. Message posted to

256 http://www.ctrip.com.cn/Community/ItineraryWri/ShowWriting.asp?writing=600

462&area=&user=1

Radway, J. A. (1984). Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy, and popular literature.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Rao, N, Singhal, A, Ren, L, and Zhang, J. Y.(2001). Is the Chinese Self-Construal in

Transition? Asian Journal of Communication, 11(1), 68-95.

Real, M. R. (1989). Super Media: A cultural studies approach. Newbury Park, CA:Sage.

Real, M. R. (1996). Exploring media culture: A guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Reflections on the celebration of the Spring Festival in the past 50 years. (2001, January

29). Chengdu Commercial Daily, p. A8.

Ren, L, & Singhal, A. (2000). How Yugong moved the mountains: The rise and decline

of mass mobilization campaign in China. Journal of Development

Communication, 11(1), 16-34.

Review of songs: Criticism of the 2001 Spring Festival gala programs. (2001, January

26). Yangcheng Evening News (Yangcheng Wanbao). Retrieve February 14, 2001,

from http://ent.sina.com.cn/r/m/31362.html

Rofel, L. B. (1994). Yearnings: Televisual love and melodramatic politics in

contemporary China. American Ethnologist, 21(4), 700-722.

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Schein, L. (2001). Urbanity, cosmopolitanism, consumption. In D. S. Davis, R. Kraus,

B. Naughton, & E. J. Perry (Eds.), Urban spaces in contemporary China: the

potential for autonomy and community in post-Mao China. (pp. 225-241).

Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

257 Schramm, W. (1956). The Soviet Communist theory. In F. S. Siebert & F. S. Siebert

(Eds.), Four theories of the press: The authoritarian, libertarian, social

responsibility, and Soviet communist concepts of what the press should be and do.

Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Seanzt. (2001, September 11). Please do not come to Lijiang [Msg 6]. Message posted to

http://www.ctrip.com.cn/Community/ItineraryWri/ShowWriting.asp?writing=674

043&area=&user=1

“72-hour Online Festival” scheduled for the New Year. (2001, January 17). People’s

Daily. Retrieved November 17, 2001, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

200101/17/eng20010117_60719.html

Shanghai to telecast live Hong Kong New Year parade. (2001, January 18). People’s

Daily. Retrieved November 6, 2001, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

200101/18/eng20010118_60768.html

Sharma, Y. (1996, February 5). China-Tibet: Chinese singer at the center of new row.

Inter Press Service. Retrieved on January 15, 2003, from Lexis-Nexis Academic

Universe database.

Shuangnan’s new location. (2001, February 24). Chengdu Commercial Daily, p. A12.

Sichuan state flavor concept. (2001, February 23). Chengdu Evening News, p. 9.

Singhal, A., Vaughan, P., Ren, L. & Zhang, J. Y. (2001). Effects of Baixing, a television

soap opera, on gender equality and family planning in China. Beijing, China:

Ford Foundation.

Smith, A. D. (1995). Nations and nationalism in a global era. Cambridge, UK: Polity

Press.

258 Song, X. P. (2001, February 7). Online voting for the Spring Festival gala awards

encounters hackers. Everyday News (Meiri Xinbao). Retrieved March 2, 2001,

from http://ent.sina.com.cn/v/32097.html

Spring Festival customs. (n.d.). The Chinese Spring Festival Net. Retrieved February 16,

2002, from http://www.chunjie.net.cn/rite/gdfs/home.asp

Storey, J. (1996). Cultural studies: An introduction. In J. Storey (Ed.). What is cultural

studies? A reader. (pp. 1-13). London, UK: Arnold.

Surfers celebrate lunar New Year in cyberspace. (2000, February 9). People’s Daily,

Retrieved November 17, 2001, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

200002/09/print20000209T101.html

Survey results afford food for thoughts. (2001, January 26). Chengdu Evening News, p. 5.

Tang, W. F. & Parish, W. L. (2000). Chinese urban life under reform: The changing

social contract. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Tang, X. B. (2000). Chinese modern: The heroic and the quotidian. Durham: Duke

University Press.

Three in four Chinese people watched Lunar New Year TV bash. (2003, February 1).

Agence France Presse. Retrieved on February 20, 2003, from Lexis-Nexis

Academic Universe database.

Three point five million migrant workers are floating out of Sichuan. (2001, February 1).

Sichuan Youth Daily (Sichuan Qingnian Bao), p. A.1.

Tu, W. M. (1994). Cultural China: The periphery as the Center. In Tu W. M. (Ed.), The

living tree: The changing meaning of being Chinese today. (pp. 1-35). Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press.

259 Turn it up: TV, radio industries still booming in China. (2000, October 9). ChinaOnline.

Retrieved January 17, 2003, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database.

Turner, V. (1978). Foreword. In B. Myerhoff. Number our days: A triumph of

continuity and culture among Jewish old people in an urban ghetto. (pp. xiii-

xvii). New York: Simon & Schuster.

United Front Department of CCP Central Committee has opened its website. (2001,

February 9). People’s Daily, p.6.

Urry, J. (1990). The “consumption” of tourism. Sociology, 24 (1), 23-35.

Wang, M. and Singhal, A. (1992), Ke Wang, A Chinese television soap opera with a

message, Gazette, 49(3), 177-192.

Wang, Y. C., Wang F. F., & Shi, Y. (2001, March 2). Traditional culture has become the

propelling force for Chinese tourism industry. People’s Daily, p. 11.

What they are saying: Cultural exchange. (2000, September 23). China Daily, p. 4.

White, T. (1990). Postrevolutionary mobilization in China: The One-child policy

reconsidered. World Politics, 43, 53-76.

Wood, R. E. (1997). Tourism and the state: Ethnic options and constructions of otherness.

In M. Picard & R. E. Wood (Eds.), Tourism, ethnicity, and the state in Asian and

Pacific societies. (pp. 1-34). Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.

Wu, Y. (1996, May). The development of China cable industry. Paper presented at the

Symposium on media and economic development, Hong Kong.

Xiaokang consumption arrives in Chengdu. (2001, February 8). West China Metro Daily,

p. 1.

Xu, J. S., Chen, H.G., & Yu, J. (2001, April 8). Challenges and thoughts brought

260 about by Internet café. Xinhua News Agency. Retrieved November 24, 2001, from

http://education.163.com/edu_2001/edit/010817/010817_67528.html

Yang, Y. X. (1997). McDonald’s in Beijing: The localization of Americana. In J. L.

Watson (Ed.) Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia. (pp. 39-76).

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Yu, H. (2000, December 8). The Year of 1986. Retrieved October 24, 2002, from

http://www.shuku.net:8082/novels/yuhua/1986.html

Zha, J. Y. (1995). China pop: How soap operas, tabloids, and bestsellers are

transforming a culture. New York: The New Press.

Zhang, A. L. (2001, January). Return to the village to celebrate the Spring Festival.

Traveler (Luxing Jia). 4-7.

Zhao, B. (1998). Popular family television and party ideology: The Spring Festival eve

happy gathering. Media, Culture & Society, 20, 43-58.

Zhao, Y. Z. (1998). Media, market, and democracy in China: Between the Party line

and the bottom line. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Zhu, H. X. (1998). From a “person of the work unit” to a “social person”: Psychological

evolution under the impact of reform. In M. Dutton (Ed.), Streetlife China. (pp.

215-220). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.