Geographies of the ethnic minority children in Chinese cinema (1990s and 2000s):
rurality, ethnicity and nationalism
Zhenhui Yan
A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
School of Humanities and Languages
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
June 2018 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet
Surname or Family name: Yan
First name: Zhenhui Other name/s:
Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD
School: School of Humanities and Languages Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Title: Geographies of the ethnic minority children in Chinese cinema (1990s and 2000s): rurality, ethnicity and nationalism
Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)
The subject of ethnic minority children and childhoods has attracted Chinese filmmakers over the past three decades, yet relevant research is rare. The thesis draws on theories in cinematic landscape and children’s geographies to explore how ethnic minority childhood experience is constructed cinematically. What in particular is made of rurality versus urban living, how are such geographies imagined, and how do these vistas and landscapes facilitate the understanding of the children’s identities and reflect certain ideological agendas of filmmakers in the context of a Han-dominated multi-ethnic nation during its rapid social-political transformations in the 1990s and 2000s? In individual chapters, various theoretical approaches are also deployed, such as the idea of natural space in a musical, a rural idyllic childhood, focalisation in film narrative, relational construction of space, transitional space of play and media’s impact on identity construction.
The thesis concludes that, in different historical periods, the ethnic minority children’s connections with rural space carry different connotations. In the early 1990s, they aspire for the more ‘advanced’ urban space dominated by Han Chinese as a route to better education and upward mobility. In the 2000s, they are returned to rurality, admired for maintaining a harmonious relationship with nature, land and community. The children are also positioned by films in different relationships with ethnic traditions, either forced into creative reimagination of the world by appropriating diverse cultural resources or existing in harmony with their local heritage as imagined by Han nostalgia. In these (Han) narratives, the children adhere to traditional practices and rural spaces, immune to impacts of modernisation. Conversely, in a film directed by a filmmaker of their own ethnicity, the complexity of identity construction in the child protagonist is revealed complete with contradictions and flexibility. Finally, despite convenience, the children are used to embody multi-ethnic unity with surprising nuances. In the 1990s, their aspiration for urban space serves the discourse of development and nationhood. But, in the context of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, their temporary location in the city deconstructs nationalism due to the special circumstances of left-behind children and enforced displacement of ethnic minorities away from their homelands.
Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation
I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.
I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).
…………………………………………………………… ……………………………………..……………… ……….……………………...…….… Signature Witness Signature Date
The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years must be made in writing. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research.
FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date of completion of requirements for Award:
ORIGINALITY STATEMENT
‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’
Signed ……………………………………………......
Date ……………………………………………......
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.'
Signed ……………………………………………......
Date ……………………………………………......
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
‘I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final officially approved version of my thesis. No emendation of content has occurred and if there are any minor variations in formatting, they are the result of the conversion to digital format.’
Signed ……………………………………………......
Date ……………………………………………......
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements i
Notes on Romanisation, Translation, Abbreviation and Image Capture ii
List of Figures iii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Natural Landscapes as Musical Spaces: Utopia and Yearnings of the Uyghur Children in a National Narrative 26
Chapter 2 Nostalgia and Rural Idyllic Childhood: An Idealistic Vision of the Miao Children’s Relationships with Nature, Agricultural Land, Village Community and Ethnic Tradition 55
Chapter 3 Beijing Landscapes in Internal and External Focalisations: Deconstruction and Tension in a Miao Child’s Nationalism 82
Chapter 4 Space of the Grasslands in a Relational Construction: Heroes and a Reconstruction of Ethnic Relationships through Interactions between the Han and Mongol Children 103
Chapter 5 Grasslands as Transitional Spaces of Play: The Mongol Children’s Reimagination of the World 135
Chapter 6 A Young Lama as Sun Wukong: Contradictions and Flexibility in a Contemporary Tibetan Child’s Identity Construction 161
Conclusion 191
References 195
Acknowledgements
This thesis would be impossible without the generous help of many individuals. Most of all, I am extremely grateful to my supervisor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, who encouraged me to pursue Ph.D. studies in the first place. She has helped me tremendously at every stage of my research, offering me critical comments and valuable feedback on every draft of the thesis. I owe many ideas in individual chapters to her creative thinking. I feel fortunate to be a beneficiary of her profound knowledge, academic rigour and originality. In particular, I thank her for trusting me and helping me out at all times and in all circumstances.
I also owe a huge thank you to Zheng Yi, who became my joint (later primary) supervisor at a critical moment when Stephanie was temporally away. During the subsequent years, she has taught me a great deal about academic writing. Her academic critique, intelligence and encouragement have benefited me enormously. I am especially inspired by her insights and comments on my writings and appreciate the time she spares conversing with me. She has stimulated, challenged and guided my thoughts at critical junctures. I thank her for her generous sharing of her research experience and for her consistent support, understanding and company along the way.
My sincere appreciation also goes to Ayxem Eli, who has engaged herself in my research much more than what is normally expected of a co-supervisor. She has read my chapters and provided me with useful advice, comments and extended readings. Her expertise in anthropology has particularly inspired me. I thank all my supervisors for their excellent supervision. Their active engagement and unfailing feedback turn my Ph.D. research journey into a rewarding experience. Furthermore, I thank George Kouvaros, Jon Eugene von Kowallis and Yu Haiqing for their critical comments and suggestions at my annual progress reviews as external readers of my chapters.
I also feel grateful to my colleagues and friends at China Agricultural University for their friendship, trust and encouragement. They are Ye Jingzhong, Xu Xiaocun, Hu Youzhen, Sun Yuefen, Li Zhonghui, Ma Biying, Zhao Jingying, Jiang Fulian, An Wenjun and Zhang Manling. I am most indebted to my husband and two children. I look forward to spending more time with them with my full attention, care and love. Finally, I dedicate this thesis to my parents and parents-in- law. They are very kind-hearted people who are generous with their love and understanding. They cannot read English and would probably never be informed that I thank them here. But I hope my appreciation of their values will bless them with happiness, health and longevity.
i
Notes on Romanisation, Translation, Abbreviation and Image Capture
Throughout this thesis, I use the pinyin system of Romanisation to transliterate Chinese names, terms and film titles unless there are more established English forms. In the case of Chinese people’s names, I follow the Chinese tradition of putting family name in front of given name in the texts and footnotes unless the English forms of their names are preferred.
Chinese sources cited in the texts and footnotes are my own translations unless otherwise specified. The English versions of dialogues and lyrics cited from film texts are my own translations unless alternatively indicated.
Two abbreviations are frequently used in this thesis. They are ‘PRC’ and ‘CPC’, representing ‘the People’s Republic of China’ and ‘the Communist Party of China’ respectively.
Shots from The Drummer of Huoyanshan, Bird’s Nest and Lala’s Gun were captured from screens at http://www.youtube.com.* Shots from Seeking Naadam, Mongolian Ping-Pong and The Silent Holy Stones were captured from screens at http://www.1905.com, an official website of CCTV- 6 – the Movie Channel of China Central Television.
* This applies to a shot from Drummer’s Aspiration. ii
List of Figures
Figure 1.1-1.11 Shots from The Drummer of Huoyanshan / pages 31-46
Figure 2.1-2.13 Shots from Lala’s Gun and Bird’s Nest / pages 55-72
Figure 3.1-3.4 Shots from Bird’s Nest / pages 83-94†
Figure 4.1-4.14 Shots from Seeking Naadam / pages 104-124
Figure 5.1-5.13 Shots from Mongolian Ping-Pong / pages 133-152
Figure 6.1-6.4 Shots from The Silent Holy Stones / pages 169-181
† Exception: Figure 3.2 (right), a shot from Drummer’s Aspiration /page 89 iii
Introduction
In a movie released in 1991 in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), an extremely talented Uyghur boy from a remote rural village is situated in a variety of natural landscapes where he creates outstanding music with his hand drum. Pursuing his dream of becoming a professional instrumentalist, the boy overcomes many difficulties such as discrimination from urban counterparts, and finally merges himself into urban space. He appears in one of the most famous state-owned refineries in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, receiving ‘advanced’ education. In another Chinese movie released in 2008, a Miao boy looks after a nest of baby birds in the forest of his hometown village in China’s southwest Guizhou province. After joining villagers in rescuing a wounded bird and releasing it in a dramatically framed landscape shot, he sets out on a journey to Beijing, the capital of China. He has two missions: to find out how a bird’s nest is built for athletes instead of birds in that city; to persuade his father who works as a construction worker there to return home. When the boy is in Beijing, the film employs many wide-angle landscape shots to show the boy’s movement in this both time-honoured and ultra- urban environment. In particular, the boy is set against the background of Ai Weiwei’s Bird’s Nest – a main venue for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and a national symbol of modern China. When the boy runs towards the building in a panning-up landscape shot accompanied by non- diegetic solemn music, a national narrative of ethnic unity is produced on screen. However, the irony lies in the boy’s desire to persuade his father to leave the site. As his mother says, ‘A wife needs a husband, and a son needs a father.’
These two movies offer a glimpse of cinematic representation of ethnic minority children in contemporary Chinese cinema. Their childhood experiences on screen are closely related to a few dominant discourses in China’s modernisation process, such as industrialisation, urbanisation and migration. The children are deeply embedded in rural spaces, except that in the first movie, the Uyghur boy is eager to leave the rural environment, while in the second movie, the Miao boy seems to enjoy the privilege of a close relationship with nature. These children’s ethnic features are notable as well, such as the Uyghur boy’s talent in music and the Miao boy’s indigenous knowledge about nature. The child protagonists thus conform to a mainstream understanding of minority capabilities, but they are also expected to serve a national narrative of political cohesion. In a Han-dominated multi-ethnic nation, the Uyghur boy’s aspiration for the urban space is equivalent to his pursuit of the Han-dominated social system, while the Miao boy’s situation is more complicated. Within an ostensible national
Introduction
narrative constructed with the Bird’s Nest as the backdrop, an element of deconstruction is embedded because of the boy’s status as a left-behind child of a migrant worker. The different messages of the two films may be attributed to the different ethnic and social statuses of filmmakers. The first movie was directed by a mainstream filmmaker (affiliated to a state-owned film studio), although she is of Xibo ethnicity – another ethnic minority group in China, while the second movie was directed by an independent filmmaker, although he is a Han Chinese. Above all, the two movies demonstrate the significant presence of landscape shots in this type of films and the importance of landscape in the construction and conveyance of meaning.
This thesis focuses on the ethnic minority children in Chinese cinema of the 1990s and 2000s. While there is substantial scholarship on cinematic representation of Han children (Donald 2005; Z. Zhang 2005; L. Ma 2011; Hou 2006, 2010; H. Zheng 2009) and ethnic minority adults (CFCA 1997; Rao et al. 2011; Niu and Rao 2012; GF. Wang 2012; Hu 2013c; Clark 1987a, 1987b, 2005; Gladney 1994, 1995; C. Berry 1992, 2006, 2016; Y. Zhang 1997; Lo 2009, 2016), cinematic representation of ethnic minority children remains under-researched. This contrasts with their significant presence in Chinese cinema in the past and at present. Moreover, western scholarship on the child figure in the global cinema focuses primarily on the children of the mainstream societies (Lebeau 2008; Lury 2010b; Olson and Scahill 2012; Wojcik-Andrews 2000). Their research seldom addresses a multi-ethnic context of a nation and in particular the dynamics between the majority and the minority.
Chinese cinema has featured ethnic minority children as leading characters since the 1960s.1 The children were mostly employed by Han filmmakers to address the themes of class struggle and revolution, facilitating the construction of the PRC as a new nation founded in 1949 (Yue, Xu, and Yan 2014). In the 1990s and 2000s, cinematic representation of ethnic minority children takes on new characteristics. In the Chinese socio-economic sphere, these two decades are
1 The first Chinese film that features ethnic minority children in the leading roles is Wucai lu/Five Color Road (1960, dir. Wei Rong) about Tibetan children. It is the only film of this type in the 17-year-period (1949-1966). During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), one film was produced about ethnic minority children, A’xiahe de mimi/Secret of A’xia River (1976, dir. Yan Bili, Shen Fu, and Wu Zhennian). It focuses on three children from different ethnic groups: Tibetan, Hui, and Han. In the 1980s, films about ethnic minority children increased, such as Huowa/The Fire Boy (1978, dir. Xie Fei and Zheng Dongtain) about Miao children; Hongxiang/The Red Elephant (1982, dir. Zhang Jianya, Xie Xiaojing, and Tian Zhuangzhuang) and Qiang cong beihou dalai/Shooting from Behind (1987, dir. Qiu Lin) about Dai children; Yingsheng a’ge/Echo Brother (1982, dir. Wang Junzheng) about Jingpo children; Xiongmao lixianji/The Adventure of a Panda (1983, dir. Guang Yuan) about Tibetan children; Shenqi de jianta/The Magic Tower (1984, dir. Liang Tingduo) about Bai children. 2
Introduction
characterised by China’s rise in the global arena and by intensified levels of industrialisation, urbanisation and migration during its rapid economic development. Moreover, in the modernisation process, 2 Chinese people’s attitudes towards rural space and natural environment have undergone change. If in the early 1990s, the rural space was considered less progressive and advanced than the urban space, in the 2000s, it is revisited as a land with treasured traditions such as a harmonious relationship between human and nature. This transition partly explains the different attitudes of the Uyghur boy and the Miao boy towards the rural spaces in the two movies mentioned above. Ecological awareness, coupled with the employment of many landscape shots, can pigeonhole this type of films as ‘ecocinema’ (S. Lu 2009; MacDonald 2004, 2013). Nonetheless, what deserves more attention is how these films’ cinematic emphasis on space through many landscape shots contributes to filmmakers’ construction of a certain type of childhood experiences lived by the ethnic minority children on screen, which serves certain ideological agendas of filmmakers and speaks to the larger context of the society in which filmmakers and these children live.3
This thesis draws on theories in the sub-disciplines of cinematic landscape studies and children’s geographies to shed light on the question above. The study of cinematic landscape is a cultural geographical approach to film studies. It interrogates various physical and social environments perceived by film viewers on screen, which are subject to aesthetic and ideological manipulations of filmmakers but critical to character construction (Hopkins 1994; Lukinbeal 2005; Aitken and Dixon 2006; Harper and Rayner 2010b). The research on children’s geographies is a cultural geographical approach to childhood studies. It focuses on various places, spaces, environments and landscapes in which children are situated and through which their identities are constructed (Philo 2000; Holloway and Valentine 2000). Although children’s geographies are traditionally dominated by empirical research, the work shares with cinematic landscape an emphasis on the impacts of environments on an individual’s or a group’s identity construction.
2 Modernisation in this thesis is understood in a sociological sense. It refers to ‘secularization, the development in science and technology, industrialization, urbanization and capitalism’ (T. Cao 2005a, 1). Chinese modernisation is considered by some scholars as a type of ‘market socialism’ (T. Cao 2005a, 1) but by others as ‘capitalist modernization’ or state capitalism (Lo 2009, 234). 3 In earlier films about ethnic minority children, filmmakers also employed some landscape shots. However, many of these shots were taken in studios instead of on real location. When real locations are used, the number of landscape shots employed are not so plenty as that in the 1990s and 2000s. Moreover, the ethnic minority child characters in earlier films were often played by Han children (Rao et al. 2011, 111). These reasons partly explain my concentration on cinematic representation of ethnic minority children in the 1990s and 2000s. 3
Introduction
This thesis examines those landscape shots that reveal the interactions between the ethnic minority child protagonists and their physical and social environments. In the context of strict censorship in Chinese cinema (Calkins 1999; Johnson 2012), a geographical approach is conducive to uncovering certain ideological messages of filmmakers otherwise hidden in their cinematic treatments of landscape shots, which may contradict with dominant ideologies of the nation-state or at least render them more complex.
In individual chapters, a range of theoretical frameworks are also employed, such as the idea of natural space in a musical, a rural idyllic childhood, focalisation in film narrative, the relational construction of space, the transitional space of play, and the relationship between media consumption and identity construction. These are mostly western theories, which are however employed by this thesis to bring new insights into meanings of the films discussed without downplaying the films’ Chinese contexts. Despite specific approaches and arguments in each chapter, the whole thesis argues that the ethnic minority children on screen embody not only the national discourse of ethnic unity in an enforced Han-dominated nation-state but also the confrontation between tradition and modernity, with contradictions and flexibility, in the context of rapid social transformations in contemporary China. These children are endowed with filmmakers’ subjective imaginations of the past, illustrate a creative, alternative way of seeing the world and contribute to a reconstruction of ethnic relationships. The different ethnic identities of the filmmakers shape the way in which the ethnic minority children are represented, but individual differences among them are more significant. Both Han and ethnic minority filmmakers employ ethnic minority children as protagonists in order to reflect through their cinema on the social impacts of industrialisation, urbanisation and migration on Chinese nationals in modern China.
Chinese Ethnic Minority Film and the Identity Issue of Filmmakers
Since implementing its reform and opening-up policy after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), China has achieved rapid economic development, especially following the transition from a planned economy to a market economy in the 1990s. In both the 1990s and 2000s, industrialisation, urbanisation and internal migration of erstwhile farmers from the countryside to cities, together with globalisation, have characterised China’s modernisation process (T. Cao 2005b; McGee, Lin, and Wang 2007; Y. Liu and Li 2013). China has become the second largest economy in the world (Time, August 30, 2010), while negative impacts of the market economy have also emerged. Environmental destruction, unequal development, and intensified social 4
Introduction
stratification and injustice are among the most serious consequences (T. Cao 2005a).
Pushed by the demands of the market economy, Chinese cinema has also experienced huge transformations. Following structural adjustments, it has achieved unprecedented development in terms of revenues generated. Although state-owned film studios have received less funding from the government since the 1990s, Chinese cinema has drawn on imported Hollywood blockbusters since the mid-1990s, taking advantage of movie-going seasons and increased production values to produce commercial films with high box-office income (Y. Zhang 2010; R. Zhang 2005). In the 2000s, big-budget martial arts dramas filled with spectacular audio-visual impacts are produced as part of China’s effort to increase its ‘soft power’, which is defined as the ability of a country to control others based on ‘intangible power resources such as culture, ideology, and institutions’ (Nye 1990, 167). These films, with production values equivalent to Hollywood blockbusters, become the dominant mode of Chinese cinema. Meanwhile, there are medium-budget genre films such as melodramas and comedies appealing to domestic audience (Y. Zhang 2012; Rosen 2010; Yin 2010; Teo 2009). As a result, Chinese mainstream cinema (zhuliu dianying) is dominated by commercial entertainment films, together with state-funded ‘main melody’ films (zhu xuanlü dianying), which used to be called propaganda films (xuanchuan pian). The latter uphold ideologies of the Communist Party of China (CPC), such as socialism, nationalism and patriotism. In this context, documentary-style realistic arthouse urban cinema produced by independent or semi-independent Sixth-Generation filmmakers devoted to chronicling rapid physical and social transformations in Chinese cities were first underground and later remain marginal in China’s cinematic sphere (Y. Zhang 2012; Braester 2010; Braester and Tweedie 2010). Equally marginal are a group of Chinese films directed by either Han Chinese or ethnic minority filmmakers focusing on ethnic minorities who live mostly in the rural areas (R. Li and Zhang 2014). These films bear witness to the physical and social transformations in contemporary rural China. Put otherwise, they reflect on the impacts of Han-dominated modernisation on the lives of ethnic minorities who live primarily away from urban centres of the nation and thus on the periphery of rapid economic development (R. Li and Zhang 2014).
In the PRC, although Han Chinese comprise over ninety percent of the total population, they occupy less than forty percent of the territory. The remaining ten percent of the population and sixty percent of the territory is divided among fifty-five non-Han ethnic groups, usually known as ‘ethnic minorities’ in contrast to the majority Han Chinese (C. Wang 2004, 24; Rao et al. 2011, 6). In terms of their geographical locations, ethnographer Louisa Schein (1997, 71) describes that,
5
Introduction
‘While Han Chinese tend to be concentrated in the fertile plains and trading ports of central and coastal China, minorities occupy the strategic, resource-rich periphery to the north, south, and west.’
Cinematic representation of ethnic minorities in Chinese cinema is usually termed as ‘Chinese ethnic minority film’ (Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying).4 Its production was monopolised by Han Chinese during Mao’s communist regime (1949-1976). Sponsored by state-owned film studios, ethnic minority film of this period tended to the themes of class struggle, anti-espionage activities and socialist construction, carrying a political message of ethnic equality and national unity. It also featured ‘exotic’ and ‘erotic’ folksongs, ethnic dances and romances, appealing to the dominant Han audience (E. Li 1999; Clark 1987a, 1987b; X. Chen and Hao 2014). In the 1980s, ethnic minority film was appropriated by Han filmmakers to contemplate national destiny after the Cultural Revolution (Clark 2005; Y. Zhang 1997; Lo 2009). In the words of film critic Kwai- Cheung Lo (2009, 235), the minority film of this period ‘[sought] the marginalized cultural other as a contrasting mirror to reflect upon the nation’s fate’. Since the 1990s, there has been an increasing number of ethnic minority filmmakers and independent Han filmmakers, privately funded, engaging themselves in the ethnic minority film production (C. Li 2011; Zou and Liu 2010). As mentioned earlier, they pay special attention to the binary divide between rurality and urban living in the context of China’s modernisation. In the 2000s, in particular, as Lo highlights,
… the world of minorities can no longer be fantasized as a closed or self-sufficient part integrated within the national totality. Rather, it has become a fragmented and forgotten realm separated from the rapidly industrializing China, thus rendering the
4 There are various approaches to naming and defining the films about ethnic minorities in Chinese language academics. Other commonly adopted terms include ‘Chinese ethnic minority subject matter film’ (Zhongguo shaoshu minzu ticai dianying) and ‘Chinese minzu film’ (Zhongguo minzu dianying). The debate over terminology and definition centres on ethnic identities of filmmakers and levels of cultural representation. The definition adopted in this thesis is broad in range, imposing no restrictions on the ethnic identity of a filmmaker and levels of cultural representation. It refers to all feature films focusing on Chinese non-Han ethnic groups. Regarding the English translation of the term ‘shaoshu minzu dianying’, there are also different versions, such as ‘minority/minorities film’, ‘racial minority genre of films’, ‘minority nationality/nationalities film’, ‘national minority film’, ‘minority nationality film’, and so on. The diversity of terms originates from the difficulty of seeking an exact English equivalent to Chinese term ‘shaoshu minzu’. In general, ‘(shaoshu) minzu’ is translated as ‘(minority) nationality’ by Chinese government, but its closest English term should be ‘ethnic group’ or ‘ethnicity’. See Wang Zhimin (1997), Chen Jianyu (1997), Wei Guobin (2009), Cheng Yuru (2010), and Rao Shuguang, et al. (2011, 367-372) for relevant debate over terminology and definition. See Chris Berry (2016, 89-90) for an explanation on the difficulty of seeking an English equivalent to ‘shaoshu minzu’. See also Elena Barabantseva’s (2008) article, which argues that, for different purposes of legitimising party-state governance, ‘nationality’ and ‘ethnicity’ are variously employed by the Chinese governments in different historical periods. The ‘nationality question’ is a dominant term during the socialist China, while the ‘ethnic question’ is more commonly used during the reform period. 6
Introduction
ethnic inhabitants the absolute cultural other, the contrasting mirror image of the affluent urban Han – who may now feel closer to the transnational bourgeois class in other capitalist countries. (Lo 2009, 242)
In this period, ethnic minority film is no longer used to ‘symbolize the nation’s fate’ but as the ‘cultural other’ to contrast with urban lifestyles lived by predominantly Han Chinese (Lo 2009, 242).
When ethnic minority film productions are increasingly shared by Han Chinese and ethnic minority filmmakers, much debate arises about the importance of the ethnic identity of a filmmaker and to what extent it may affect the approach and outlook of an ethnic minority film. Film aesthetician Wang Zhimin (1997) famously proposed a framework composed of one ‘fundamental principle’ and two ‘guarantees’ to define ethnic minority film. One of the ‘guarantees’ is the ‘ethnic minority identity of a filmmaker (mainly a director and a scriptwriter)’.5 Some film critics (e.g., X. Chen and Hu 2012) and filmmakers agree with this view. For example, Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden considers that a stable crew consisting of all Tibetans is central to effective communication in his undertaking of shooting a Tibetan film in the Tibetan language and representing authentic Tibetan culture (Caidan 2012). In contrast, film critics Rao Shuguang, et al. (2011, 372-375) argue that a filmmaker’s ethnic identity should not be a benchmark for evaluating the quality of an ethnic minority film, given the diversity of ethnic awareness by birth or by culture among filmmakers. A Han filmmaker may be born and grow up in an ethnic minority area, while an ethnic minority filmmaker may be more influenced by Han culture than by the culture of his/her own ethnic group. Another problem with an emphasis on the ethnic minority identity of a filmmaker, as I see it, is the fact that not many ethnic minority films in the Chinese film history are directed by ethnic minority filmmakers.6 Even if a filmmaker is of ethnic minority, such as Guang Chunlan of Xibo ethnicity, it is arguable to what extent her films can be deemed to actually reflect the subjectivity of Uyghurs, individually or as a group (Hu
5 According to Wang Zhimin (1997), the ‘fundamental principle’ is the ‘principle of culture’, which asserts ethnic minority film as part of ethnic minority culture, exhibiting ethnic minority subjectivity. To achieve this, two ‘guarantees’ are required. Besides the ‘ethnic minority identity of a filmmaker’, the other ‘guarantee’ is the film’s ‘subject matter’, which means the film should focus on the lives of ethnic minorities, past or present. 6 This observation is made based on the film list at the Appendix of Rao, et al. (2011, 385-402). The list provides detailed information about over three hundred films that can be put in the category of ethnic minority film. Statistical analyses concerning ethnic minority film or ethnic minority children’s film in this thesis are all based on this film list. According to this list and my statistical analysis, over two hundred and fifty Chinese Han directors have been engaged in making ethnic minority film, whereas less than forty ethnic minority directors have been involved in this undertaking. 7
Introduction
2013a). Therefore, in this thesis, equal attention is paid to ethnic minority films directed by Han filmmakers and ethnic minority filmmakers.7
Ethnic Minority Children’s Film: Childhood, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Rurality
Among over three hundred ethnic minority films produced up to 2010 (Rao et al. 2011), my statistical analysis indicates that, approximately ten percent of them feature ethnic minority children as leading characters. This type of film is generally known as ‘ethnic minority children's film’. Despite occupying a small proportion, this collection of films reveals the appeal of ethnic minority children to Chinese filmmakers. Indeed, ethnic minority children are a special group of Chinese population who can simultaneously embody childhood, ethnicity, nationalism and rurality in the Chinese social-political context. In contrast to ethnic minority adults, they are ‘minors’ (children); in contrast to the majority Han Chinese, they are ethnic ‘minorities’. As ‘minority minors’, they are in the early stage of acquiring ethnic traditions, and thus their ethnic identification is not fixed or settled. Meanwhile, their identification with the nation can be surprisingly conventional due to a lack of critical thinking more commonly possessed by adults. In a Han-dominated multi-ethnic nation, they also conveniently symbolise child-like citizens from the nation’s periphery paying homage to the father figure of the nation-state. In the 1990s and 2000s, with accelerated trends of industrialisation, urbanisation and migration, their geographies in the rural environments are further endowed with extra significance.
1. Childhood
Why are children favoured by filmmakers? Stephanie Donald (2005, 23) explains that, ‘The figure of the child evokes ideas and ideals in a national or cultural imagination, a contention that is true of possibly all cultures and nations to some degree.’ In terms of how, Donald identifies two modes of manipulating children in a children’s film:
One is to use children in fantasies, which help adults depict the world in which they live, and in which they would like to live. In this world, children are flowers, stars, successors to a perfected future. The other is more market-driven and perhaps of more interest to children themselves; the creation of media product for a specific
7 The circumstance of ethnic minority film in Chinese cinema is indeed resonant with the whole national cinema debate started by Andrew Higson (1989, 1997) in the 1980s (i.e. what constitutes ethnicity and authenticity) and then developed in useful ways by Trinh T. Minh-Ha ([1991] 2013, 1997) and more recently taken to new levels by Lúcia Nagib (2011) and world cinema (Nagib, Perriam, and Dudrah 2012). But it is also influenced by discussions of postcolonial cinema regarding the issues of who owns the story, who is looking and who is being looked at (Wood 2008). 8
Introduction
demographic, or target audience of children. Here children may be all of the above (stars, successors, and hopes) but their images must also reach out to an audience that looks to identify with them in the present. (Donald 2005, 23)
The two modes are respectively adult-centred and child-centred. Donald (2005, 24) asserts that, ‘In the children’s film culture of the PRC, the emphasis on adult needs has undermined the requirements of a child audience.’
It can be argued that cinematic representation of ethnic minority children in Chinese cinema conforms to the dominant mode of imagining children in Chinese children’s film as claimed by Donald. It belongs to the first mode, in which the ethnic minority children are used to express concerns, desires and imaginations of adults and address the needs of either filmmakers or adult audiences. This point is manifested in the language issue of this type of films. Historically, ethnic minority film was dubbed in Mandarin, a common language among Han Chinese, during post- production. This practice, according to literary and film critic Li Daoxin (2012), is inseparable from Han centrism and closely linked to the expected political function of the film as explicated earlier. Since the 2000s, however, many ethnic minority films have employed minority languages in film dialogues.8 In the context of rising attention to Chinese-language film globally in both industrial and academic realms (S. Lu and Yeh 2005), this language choice counters the tide and leads to further marginalisation of ethnic minority film in Chinese cinema. One consequence is that, as Hu Puzhong (2012a) recounts, a strange audio-visual experience appears among Chinese film viewers: in the past, they read subtitles when watching a foreign film, but now they must do the same thing when watching an ethnic minority film. If it is fine for an adult to consume an ethnic minority film in this manner, it is problematic and unrealistic to expect a child audience to act likewise. Thus, those children’s films adopting this language shift, which unfortunately constitute the majority of the ethnic minority children’s film production in the 2000s, have simply chosen to neglect Han child audiences or child audiences of ethnic groups other than the one represented in the film. They have become personal expressions of adult filmmakers for the consumption of predominantly adult audiences, who are mostly Han Chinese.
8 This type of film is usually known as ‘Chinese ethnic minority mother-tongue film’ (Zhongguo shaoshu minzu muyu dianying) or ‘Chinese ethnic minority language film’ (Zhongguo shaoshu minzu yu dianying). According to film critic Hu Puzhong (2012a), the filmmakers’ original choice of using ethnic minority languages in dialogues was to cut cost in post-production dubbing since most of these films were funded by non-state-owned organisations. Later, this language choice, as Li Daoxin (2012) sees it, becomes a deliberate action of preserving the language and cultural diversity. 9
Introduction
The child characters in these films are thus allegorical figures. As in a fable or parable, their stories carry double meanings. Due to their ethnic identity, their stories may significantly reveal ‘real cultural events’, but simultaneously they ‘make additional, moral, ideological, and even cosmological statements’ (Clifford 1986, 98). This thesis aims to shed light on how the figure of an ethnic minority child has facilitated certain ‘ideas and ideals’ of adult filmmakers in the cultural political context of contemporary China. This mission resonates with the assertion of Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart that there is a necessity to ‘politicize’ the seemingly ‘autonomous and asocial sphere’ of children’s media – being comics, literature or film aiming at the consumption of children or simply about children, since they are ‘devised by adults’, ‘determined and justified by their idea of what a child is or should be’ (1975, 29-30).
Although Chinese children’s film, ethnic minority children’s film included, is controlled by the ‘ideas and ideals’ of adult filmmakers, productions in the 1990s and 2000s need to be distinguished. In the 1990s, children’s film was mostly sponsored and produced by state-owned studios, especially the China Children’s Film Studio (CCFS) (Z. Zhang 2005; Donald 2005). In the year of 2000, CCFS was incorporated into China Film Group Corporation – the largest state- owned film enterprise in the PRC (Z. Zhang 2005, 160). Like other sectors of Chinese cinema that are increasingly funded by private sources in the 2000s, the sponsorship of children’s film is diversified. In this thesis, one film was produced by CCFS, while all the others were funded by private companies. If in CCFS’s productions, children as ‘flowers’, ‘successors’ and the ‘future’ of the nation expected to be endowed with ‘a spiritually “unpolluted” system of values’ as in the eyes of the Studio’s leader Yu Lan (Donald 2005, 26), then the images of the child characters in the new millennia are more diverse and plural. My thesis intends to reveal the complex relationship between these characters and the issues of rurality, ethnicity and nationalism.
It is also worth mentioning that the production of children’s film, ethnic minority children’s film included, is often the training ground for new young filmmakers (Z. Zhang 2005, 153; Donald 2005, 30). In the case of several filmmakers discussed in this thesis, children’s film marks the beginning of their directing career. For these filmmakers, children’s film probably provides them with a wider scope of freedom and creativity in filmmaking. Through the seemingly apolitical and relatively non-commercial subject matter of children, these filmmakers can authentically express their ideas with less concern over censorship or box-office return. Moreover, ethnic minority cultures – their geographies, music, costumes, customs, rituals, legends, and so on, are deemed more suitable for cinematic representation (Xie 2012), and thus they open up
10
Introduction
opportunities for these filmmakers’ artistic innovations. Although their films have limited theatrical release domestically due to the marginal status of art film in Chinese cinema and thus their social effects are incomplete, they are screened at various film festivals at home and abroad and received many awards (Rao et al. 2011, 376-378). Some of them manage to reach local audiences in the areas where the films were shot (Caidan 2012). Most of them however end up being shown on television like the majority of Han children’s film (Donald 2005). My analysis of the ideological significance of these films thus concerns more with, in the words of Donald, the ‘expectations of ideal theatrical impact’ (2005, 23).
2. Ethnicity
It has been asserted that ‘since time immemorial there have also been minorities living within China's borders’ (Mackerras 1994, 3-4). However, the totality of fifty-five ethnic minority groups came into being quite recently after a long and tortuous ethnic classification project carried out by the government of the PRC from 1953 to 1979 (C. Wang 2004, 7). Ethnic identity, according to anthropologist Stevan Harrell (2001, 21), is based on recognition of cultural differences, such as ‘the memory of a language once spoken or the consciousness of a shared history’. There should also be ‘a sense of relatedness as a people’, ‘an ideology of descent from common ancestors’ and ‘marriage and affinity within the group’ (Harrell 2001, 21). Apparently, the acquisition of these ‘history-, kinship-, and culture-based’ ethnic features (Harrell 2001, 21) can constitute a long developing process for children. Moreover, as human geographers Aitken and Herman (1997, 83) indicate, unlike adults who have relatively ‘solidified’ and ‘fixed’ perspectives on the world, children are more readily to adjust their views. Thus, ethnic minority children’s observance of ethnic ideologies and practices can be inconsistent, flexible and open for negotiation. Indeed, since they are still in the process of acquiring and experimenting with ethnic traditions, their ethnic identity remains in a dynamic process of construction. This thesis reveals the different ways in which this special feature of ethnic minority children has been taken up by filmmakers for a diversity of ideological agendas.
Moreover, the ethnic minority identity of the child characters caters to Chinese filmmakers’ desire for ‘primitive passions’ as theorised by cultural critic Rey Chow (1995). Chinese filmmakers are eager to transform ‘humanity’ – the ‘consciously ethnicized and nationalized’ Chineseness – into ‘its basic instincts’ (Chow 1995, 20-21). According to Chow, the aforementioned affinity between ethnic minority culture and film is probably due to the ‘democratization’ of the film medium that facilitates the ‘fantasies of an origin’ (1995, 22). In 11
Introduction
Chow’s eyes, ‘These fantasies are played out through a generic realm of associations, typically having to do with the animal, the savage, the countryside, the indigenous, the people, and so forth, which stand in for that “original” something that has been lost’ (22, original emphases). Chow argues that, like Western modernist art that is based on ‘a continual primitivization of non-Western lands and peoples’ (20, original emphasis), Chinese cinema is characterised by the ‘dialectic between formal innovation and primitivism’, which is caused by ‘the hierarchical relations of cultural production’ (21) ‘within a culture’ (23, original emphases) – the dominant Han culture. In Chow’s view, the ‘primitive materials’ utilised by Chinese cinema are the woman (21). In a similar fashion, it can be argued that primitivism is equally at play between different cultures within China’s borders. Han Chinese also ‘primitivize’ ethnic minorities through the film medium, especially when the Han-minority relationship is placed within the framework of ‘internal orientalism’ (Schein 1997). One of the ‘primitive materials’ deployed in this case would be the child – their relationship to the nation as well as their physical geographies.
3. Nationalism
In the PRC, ethnic minorities play significant roles in both the construction and rhetoric of national unity. Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong (1988) has famously advocated ‘plurality and unity’ in the understanding of Chinese people. In Chinese history, the Qin dynasty founded by Qin Shihuang in 221 B.C. was the first united feudal nation established on the PRC territory (Rao et al. 2011, 1-2). Since then, despite overall dominance of Han Chinese, during certain periods, some ethnic groups established their own local or even national governments, such as the Yuan (1271-1368) and the Qing (1644-1912) dynasties founded by the Mongols and Manchus respectively. In contemporary China, over seventy percent of ethnic minorities live in autonomous regions, and most reside in the five provincial-level ethnic autonomous regions: Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Tibet Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (C. Wang 2004, 26-29). These regions are ‘the strategic, resource-rich periphery’ of the nation in the ‘north, south, and west’ in Schein’s recount previously quoted. The political significance of ethnic minority film in relation to national unity is best illustrated by a comment made by Zhang Haitao, deputy director general of the former SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film and
12
Introduction
Television),9 ‘Tibetan film is not an issue of the market but an issue of the battlefield.’ (as quoted in Rao, et al. [2011, 382])
On the other hand, coincidentally and conveniently, like all children, ethnic minority children’s identification with the nation can be surprisingly conventional and unquestionable. Drawing on psychologists on children’s cognitive development (Piaget [1965] 2006; Kohlberg 1969; Crain 1992), Jonathan Scourfield, et al. (2006, 7) suggest that children’s national feelings might start with a stage of ‘conventional’ identification with the nation, in which ‘they would see loyalty towards one’s country as unquestionably right’. Then, as they grow up, they arrive at a later stage of ‘post-conventional morality’, in which their independent thinking like adults can ‘distinguish between situations in which national identification was the right or wrong response by applying such so-called wider and universal values as liberty and justice’ (Scourfield et al. 2006, 7). In the case of ethnic minority children, since they have not acquired independent and critical thinking, their identification with the nation can be likewise conventional and traditional. Moreover, drawing on Lauren Berlant’s (1997, 29) conception of ‘infantile citizen’ (as quoted in Lury 2010a), the ethnic minority child on screen can probably ‘provide a locus for a nostalgic nationalism’ in an adult audience (Lury 2010a, 286). With full recognition of their potential to embody nationalism, this thesis, however, also uncovers that, the ethnic minority children have variously been employed by filmmakers to deconstruct or at least challenge a national narrative.
4. Rurality
As ‘primitive materials’, the ethnic minority child resembles the woman in Chinese cinema of the 1980s and early 1990s who is characterised by the ‘primordial, rural rootedness’ (Chow 1995, 23). Up to 2010, the majority of Chinese population live in the rural areas despite mass-scale internal migration and urbanisation (Xin Jingbao, February 24, 2010). This is particularly the case with ethnic minorities, who, as mentioned earlier, live on the periphery of the nation. Ethnic minority film set in the rural environments being close to nature may thereby be categorised as ‘ecocinema’ for its ability to evoke ‘an ecological consciousness’ among film viewers (S. Lu 2009, 2). Sheldon Lu defines ‘ecocinema’ as an exploration of ‘the relationship of human beings to the physical environment, earth, nature, and animals from a biocentric, non-anthropocentric point of view’ (2009, 2). He identifies six ‘prominent themes and subjects’ in Chinese ecocinema,
9 SARFT, known as SAPPRFT (State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television) since 2013, is an executive branch under the leadership of the State Council of the PRC. It administers and supervises media productions in state-owned enterprises. 13
Introduction
among which, two are particularly relevant to ethnic minority film: ‘Projection and description of an organic communal mode of life distinct from the daily routines of civilized city folks’, which are ‘usually about China's ethnic minorities and are set in remote geographic areas’; ‘A return to religious, holistic thinking and practice and the difficulty of doing so in a commercialized society’ (2009, 7-8).10 The way of expression in Lu’s categories indicates that the significance of ‘ecocinema’ ascends in the context of China’s modernisation process.
Echoing Lu’s emphasis on natural environment and nonhuman species in ‘ecocinema’, Kate Taylor focuses on cinematic representation of rural and urban space in Chinese cinema. Taylor (2010, 228) claims that, since the 1990s, rural landscapes in the mainstream cinema of mainland China have been ‘a far more positive space of development when compared to the representations of urban city landscapes’. According to Taylor, the possible reason is that ‘the rural space is still one that can be marked as local, culturally informed and positive, as opposed to economically controlled, globally informed and ultimately negative spaces of the urban development’ (2010, 229). This comment reveals that people’s attitude to rural space is based on dissatisfaction with urban space. This view, however, is not shared by Chinese scholar Zhang Haoyue, whose studies on rural space in the films about Han rural children in the 1990s and early 2000s point to a different conclusion. Zhang (2006) argues that rural landscapes in these films take on a tragic tone due to the misfortune of the child characters who are either stricken by poverty or confronted with failure as they are forced to drop out of school and hence kept from the benefits of modernity itself. Despite seeing no future in rural space, rural children, as Zhang (2005) observes, still embody traditional virtues and innocent childhood in the cultural imagination of urban filmmakers. Resonant with these research, this thesis explores the diverse ways in which rural space is cinematically manipulated in relation to the ethnic minority child characters. In particular, I am interested in how the children’s interactions with the rural environment, coupled with their occasional migration to the city, shape their identification with ethnic traditions and the nation, while simultaneously accomplishing certain national and cultural imaginations of adult filmmakers.
10 Other ‘themes and subjects’ are as follows. ‘1) How the lives of ordinary people are affected by the destruction of nature and environmental degradation in the relentless processes of revolution, modernization, and industrialization.’ ‘2) The effects of urban planning, demolition, and relocation on the lives of ordinary residents. The fate of migrants in the city.’ ‘3) The lives and struggles of people with physical or mental disabilities.’ ‘4) The relationship between humans and animals.’ (S. Lu 2009, 7-8) 14
Introduction
Cinematic Landscape and Children’s Geographies
An examination of the ethnic minority children in cinematic representation has evoked several theoretical approaches in my study. Overall, this thesis adopts a geographical approach based on a large quantity of landscape shots in this type of films. These landscape shots highlight the interactions between the ethnic minority children and their physical and social environments. Drawing on theories in cinematic landscape and children’s geographies, this thesis deems these landscape shots a combined cinematic version of the ethnic minority children’s geographies, interrogating the diversity of aesthetic and ideological manipulations of filmmakers that shape these children’s identity construction.
The study of cinematic landscape arose in the context of geographers paying attention to cinematic representation of places, spaces, environments and landscapes about three decades ago.11 Film geography is considered an ‘interdisciplinary research arena that links the spatiality of cinema with the social and cultural geographies of everyday life’ (Lukinbeal and Zimmermann 2006, 316). Its most important task is to ‘illustrate how cultural politics is naturalized in film’ through the embedding of ‘meaning and ideology’ in landscape, and the ‘attribution of human or social characteristics to landscape’ (Lukinbeal 2005, 13). Scholars of Chinese cinema have also interrogated the meaning-making of landscape shots in Chinese films. They focus on films directed by the Fifth-Generation filmmakers, such as Chen Kaige’s Huang tudi/Yellow Earth (1984) (C. Berry and Farquhar 1994; Donald 1997, 2000). They also pay attention to urban cinema produced by the Sixth-Generation filmmakers, especially the latecomer Jia Zhangke (Y. Zhang 1996, 2002; Z. Zhang 2007; Kuoshu 2010; Braester 2010; S. Cui 2010; S. Lu and Mi 2009; M. Berry 2009; McGrath 2008).
Cinematic landscape is believed to facilitate the cinematic expression of various meanings. It is famously defined by Jeff Hopkins (1994, 49) as, in its broadest sense, ‘a filmic representation of an actual or imagined environment viewed by a spectator’. A few points are worth elaborating in this definition. Through elaboration as below, I also outline key theorisations in cinematic
11 Early efforts made by individual geographers include Leo E. Zonn’s (1984, 1985) examination of Australian landscapes in Australian cinema, David Harvey’s (1989) interpretation of film texts with the postmodern concept of time-space compression, Stuart C. Aitken's (1991) reading of Scottish director Bill Forsyth's films, and Aitken and Zonn’s (1993) investigation of sexuality in Peter Weir’s two Australian films. Aitken and Zonn’s (1994) edited collection marks a new era in geographers’ investigation of film texts in seeking understanding of the world. Recently, Harper and Rayner’s (2010a) edited collection proposes many theoretical frameworks in examining cinematic landscape. 15
Introduction
landscape studies.
First, seemingly countering many scholars’ emphasis on ‘landscape’ in film (Lukinbeal 2005; Harper and Rayner 2010b), ‘environment’ is used in this definition. In cultural geography,12 ‘environment’ is understood as a given ‘piece of reality that is simply there’ (Tuan 1979, 90). In contrast to specific ‘landscape’, which is, simply put, ‘nearly everything that we can see when we go outdoors’ (Lewis 1979, 12), ‘environment’ is usually broader in range, including ‘associated biophysical and social contexts’ (Winchester, Kong, and Dunn 2003, 4). However, as stated in Hopkins’ definition, the ‘environment’ in cinematic landscape is not just ‘simply there’ but is ‘viewed’ (by a spectator). In this sense, it shares with ‘landscape’ as ‘a way of seeing’ (Cosgrove 1984, 1). In the new cultural geography,13 ‘landscape’ is significantly endowed with social-cultural meanings and thus shares the broad connotation in ‘environment’. Denis Cosgrove, the most famous geographer on landscape studies, argues that landscape is an ‘ideological’ concept, a symbolism and ‘iconography’, and a cultural image that represents and structures our environments. It is not only shaped by cultural process but also plays a constitutive role in and of cultural process (Cosgrove 1984, 15; Cosgrove and Daniels 1988). Thus, in Hopkins’ definition, the word ‘environment’ can be fairly replaced by ‘landscape’. In accordance with common practice in this field of research, this thesis focuses on ‘landscape’ in film. Moreover, the traditional distinction between natural and cultural landscapes is adopted,14 with full recognition that both natural and cultural landscapes are ‘invested with cultural meaning through representations of them’ (Winchester, Kong, and Dunn 2003, 4).
Second, landscape in film can be either ‘actual’ or ‘imagined’, that is, either be ‘found’ or
12 According to William Norton (2000, 3), cultural geography is ‘concerned with making sense of people and the places that they occupy, an aim that is achieved through analyses and understandings of cultural processes, cultural landscapes, and cultural identities’. 13 According to Winchester, Kong, and Dunn (2003, 9-10), the new cultural geography is the third stage in which geographers try to understand the relationship between landscape and culture. In the early stage, geographers placed an emphasis on ‘how physical landscapes influenced (or even determined) cultures’, which is referred to as environmental determinism. The second stage shifts the emphasis to ‘how cultures were imprinted onto landscapes’, which is associated with the superorganicism argument proposed by Berkeley School of cultural geography. In the third stage, the so-called new cultural geography focuses on ‘the textual representations of landscapes’ and explores ‘how power relations are embodied within landscapes’. Landscape is seen as ‘both an outcome and a medium of culture.’ 14 Drawing on Wimal Dissanayake (2010, 194), natural landscapes refer to various ‘manifestations of nature’, such as hills, valleys and rivers. Once they have been reshaped ‘into human settlements, investing it with the force of culture’, they become cultural landscapes. 16
Introduction
‘constructed’ (Harper and Rayner 2010b, 22). In contrast to constructed landscape,15 found landscape is deemed more valuable to a filmmaker who intends to ‘create a strong impression of reality and authenticity’ (Mills 2012, 18). Using found landscape loaded with social, cultural and historical significance of a place can lend complexity to a film because its cinematic representation evokes an ‘underground reservoir’ of meanings (Aumont 2006, 5). Many ethnic minority children’s films are shot on location. Some thereby imbue actual landscapes with significant social and cultural meanings, deploying existing resonances in the chosen location. In the first movie mentioned above, the Uyghur boy’s hometown was shot in the Mazar village of Tuyuq county in Turpan, the oldest village of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In the second movie, the Miao boy’s hometown was situated in the Basha Miao village in Guizhou, the location of the last tribe in China that can carry hunting rifles. These real locations add density to the meanings of the films. Nonetheless, like constructed landscape, found landscape is also subject to ‘aesthetic manipulation, technological enhancement and ideological indoctrination’ (Harper and Rayner 2010b, 22). Rather than being ‘an objective documentation or mirror of the “real”’ (Hopkins 1994, 47), it is, as Hopkins highlights in his definition, ‘a filmic representation’.
As ‘a filmic representation’, cinematic landscape becomes more complicated in its symbolism and interpretation than landscape in life. It becomes ‘double coding’, with landscape as ‘a way of seeing’ in itself being ‘wrapped in another representation’ (Crang 1998, 40). Harper and Rayner (2010b) have pointed out that cinematic landscape may be manipulated by a variety of cinematic devices, such as frame, frame composition, movement, colour, shape, music and sound. These devices influence the outlook of cinematic landscape and its interpretation. In particular, Chris Lukinbeal (2005) proposes two functions of landscape in film, ‘landscape as place’ and ‘landscape as space’, based on differences in frame and frame composition. ‘Landscape as place’ is associated with a key concept in cultural geography – ‘a sense of place’ (Agnew 1987, as quoted in Castree 2003), which underlies the traditional distinction between ‘landscape’ and ‘place’ held by many cultural geographers.16 However, with recent theorisations on embodied practice such as a dwelling perspective on landscape (Ingold 1993), ‘landscape’ and ‘place’ are increasingly conflated (Setten 2006). Specifically, as Lukinbeal (2005, 6-8)
15 According to Harper and Rayner (2010b, 22), constructed landscape is created based on ‘conscious and intentional isolation and emphasis of topographic detail’ or/and ‘application of medium-specific techniques and technologies’. 16 For example, in Cosgrove’s (1989, 104) view, landscape is ‘something seen, viewed from beyond it’ by an outsider, while place is a concept for an insider. 17
Introduction
expounds, ‘landscape as place’ is often achieved through on-location shooting and established through master shots in ‘extreme long shots’, ‘long shots and deep focus shots’ or ‘high angle camera setup’ in the beginning or at the end of a film or a sequence. Conversely, ‘landscape as space’ occurs when there are ‘close-ups of characters with blurry backgrounds’ or in the case of a landscape removed from viewing or ‘action shots that move rapidly through a landscape’. According to Lukinbeal, both ‘landscape as place’ and ‘landscape as space’ impact on the ‘cognitive map’ of film viewers, albeit in different ways. ‘Landscape as place’ establishes a sense of place among viewers through the physical and social geography of the narrative, while ‘landscape as space’ draws the attention of viewers to relevant cultural politics embedded in the narrative (2005, 15).
This thesis focuses on ‘landscape as place’ as it grounds a film within a particular physical and social environment while expressing a sense of place or indeed displacement for the child protagonists. Nonetheless, ‘landscape as space’ is also taken seriously in order to better understand ‘landscape as place’. Both are critical to uncovering the type of childhood experiences constructed by filmmakers and relevant ideologies and politics underlying the construction. As Aitken and Dixon (2006, 331) articulate, the significance of landscape in film lies in the fact that, besides its connotation in the physical world, ‘on-screen milieu is seen to have an agency in the construction of characters, narratives and all manner of ideas, attitudes and sentiments’. This thesis aims to explore various ‘ideas, attitudes and sentiments’ conveyed through cinematic landscape and in particular their functions in shaping the ethnic minority children’s relationships with rural space, ethnic traditions and the nation.
Finally, cinematic landscape is ‘viewed by a spectator’. Drawing on Stuart Hall (1980), a complex process of encoding and decoding can be involved in understanding and interpreting landscape in film. A landscape, actual or imagined, is first encoded by a filmmaker and made into the diegetic world. Then a spectator decodes it according to his/her own ‘frames of cultural intelligibility and grids of recognition’ (Dissanayake 2010, 201). ‘Gaps and slippages’ are apparently inevitable in the process of encoding and decoding, which, as seen by Wimal Dissanayake, makes the interpretation of cinematic landscape more ‘challenging and exciting’ (2010, 201). Because of such potential ‘gaps and slippages’, Martin Lefebvre (2006, 2011) proposes two paradigms of decoding cinematic landscape. One is ‘intentional landscape’, which is based on a spectator’s complicity with the filmmaker's intention. The other is ‘spectator’s landscape’ or ‘impure landscape’, which resonates with the notion of ‘impure cinema’ (Nagib
18
Introduction
and Jerslev 2014). But, it refers specifically to a way of interpreting cinematic landscape in which priority is given to a spectator’s own observation.
My reading of cinematic landscape in this thesis aims to be ‘complicit with both filmmakers and our fellow film viewers’, as advocated by Harper and Rayner (2010b, 20). Nonetheless, my reading may also be influenced by repeated viewings of these films and my ethnic identity. As a Han Chinese growing up and living in the city, I am attracted by ‘exotic’ landscapes in ethnic minority film which may be ‘beautiful and visually pleasant’ in themselves as a spectacle (Lukinbeal 2005, 11). However, attempts have been made to concentrate my reading on the social and cultural significance of these landscapes, especially their roles in serving as the physical and social environments of the ethnic minority child characters. Stuart Aitken (1991, 105) has underlined that a film can provide a vivid portrayal of the ‘interaction between people and their social and physical environments’, which sheds light on the ‘broader social cultural structures’. This insight is very important and indeed inspirational to my project. This thesis views cinematic landscape as the ‘reel’ version of the ethnic minority children’s geographies, aiming to uncover relevant social-cultural politics underlying cinematic construction of these geographies and their impacts on the children’s identity construction.
As a sub-discipline of (human) geography, children’s geographies refer to ‘diverse spaces (types of setting for interaction), places (specific sites of meaning), environments (surroundings full of nature and humanity) and landscapes (visible scenes and prospects)’, in which children are situated (Philo 2000, 245) and ‘in and through’ which their identities are ‘made and remade’ (Holloway and Valentine 2000, 11). Proposed in the context of new social studies of childhood (Prout and James 1990; Jenks 1996; A. James, Jenks, and Prout 1998; Holloway and Valentine 2000; Punch and Tisdall 2012),17 it aims to ‘elucidate the links between childhood as a discursive construction and a variety of spatial discourses, including those focusing on the home, the city street, the rural idyll and national identity’ (Holloway and Valentine 2000, 15). In contrast to the relatively established practice of examining landscape shots in film studies, a concentration on children’s geographies in media representation is rather recent and sporadic (e.g., Nicholson 2001; Lury 2010a). The study of children’s geographies is still dominated by empirical research, the main concern of which is ‘public space’ or ‘the street’ (Valentine 1996, 2004; Matthews,
17 In general, new social studies of childhood assert that childhood is a social-cultural construction. It varies in time and space and is shaped by social differences such as class, gender and race. There is no uniform childhood but different types of childhood experiences. 19
Introduction
Limb, and Taylor 2000). Other areas of interest include children’s play environments, institutional places such as schools, home and neighbourhood or more general domains of the countryside and the city. Overall, the everyday spaces in children’s lives are emphasised because they are seen significantly ‘produced through their webs of connections within wider global social processes’ (Holloway and Valentine 2000, 18).
According to human geographer Chris Philo (2000, 245), there are three aspects of research in this field. The first is ‘the physical aspects’ of children’s geographies, which are ‘found in the forms and layouts of forests, fields, farms, streets and buildings’. The second is ‘the social aspects of these geographies’, which relate to the ‘workings of society as it touches on the lives of children’. The third is the ‘imaginative aspects’ of children’s geographies, which are concerned with ‘the lived experiences, feelings, stories, hopes and fears of children themselves’ (original emphases). All three aspects are critical to understanding children’s identity construction. This thesis first pays attention to ‘the physical aspects’ of the ethnic minority children’s geographies by taking cinematic landscape as main manifestation of their geographies in the diegetic life. Then it interrogates ‘the social aspects’ of these geographies by exploring how the geographies and their cinematic treatments are implicated in certain social-cultural politics of the society, such as rurality, ethnicity and nationalism. In some chapters, the ‘imaginative aspects’ of the children’s geographies are also examined in term of how the child characters perceive landscapes with certain emotions and feelings. All these interrogations aim to uncover the ideological agendas of filmmakers and the broader cultural-political context of the society that collectively prescribe these children’s cinematic geographies and identity construction.
A scrutiny on children's geographies in cinematic representation is justified because, in a modern and postmodern society, representations increasingly become stand-ins for actual lived experiences. Reality becomes a staged social production, and the real is judged against its cinematic counterpoint (Dezin 1991). In this context, ‘reel’ life is taken as seriously as ‘real’ life, which leads to an intersection between film studies and geography in the first place. Human geographer Owain Jones (2000, 30) claims that media representation of childhoods and the reality of ‘lived childhoods’, the ‘imaginative’ and ‘real’, are ‘dialectically bound together in the ongoing (re)construction of both lived childhoods and popular (and academic) accounts of them’. This view echoes Stuart Hall’s argument that representation in culture plays a ‘constitutive’ role
20
Introduction
rather than being ‘merely a reflection of the world after the event’ (1997, 6). Thus, it is significant to interrogate representations of childhoods in addition to their lived experiences.
Film Corpus and Chapter Outlines
The number of films discussed in this thesis is limited. They are only representatives of a larger corpus of films produced in the category of ethnic minority children’s film in the 1990s and 2000s. This is admittedly a limitation of this research. Restricting the number of films discussed is to ensure the depth of analysis achieved in each. The selection of research subject is based on the number of output in films about children of a certain ethnic minority group, with additional consideration on their physical locations within the PRC territory. Historically, as well as in the 1990s and 2000s, the most represented ethnic minority children (as protagonists) are, as my statistical analysis indicates, Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongol and Miao children (Rao et al. 2011, 385- 402).18 My thesis accordingly focuses on these children in cinematic representation. In terms of their geographical locations, they inhabit three of the five aforementioned autonomous regions, with Miao children living mostly in the provinces of Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan (Diamond 1996). Geographically, they can represent the majority of the ethnic minority children on screen.
Specifically, this thesis examines one film about Uyghur children, Huoyanshan laide gushou/The Drummer of Huoyanshan (1991, dir. Guang Chunlan), two films about Miao children, Gun Lala de qiang /Lala’s Gun (2008, dir. Ning Jingwu) and Niaochao/Bird’s Nest (2008, dir. Ning Jingwu), two films about Mongol children, Xunzhao nadamu/Seeking Naadam (2009, dir. Bao Lide) and Lü caodi/Mongolian Ping-Pong (2004, dir. Ning Hao), and one film about Tibetan children,
18 It is understandable that Uyghur, Tibetan and Mongol children are cinematically emphasised, as these ethnic groups are of geographical and political significance to the nation. Some ethnic minority groups such as Manchus are however not favoured by filmmakers. This is probably because ethnic minority film is largely shaped by Han filmmaker’s preference for simple, backward, exotic and erotic aspects of minority cultures and traditions (Clark 1987a), while Manchus possess rather advanced, complex and even urbanised civilisation. It is also worth mentioning that, in Chinese language scholarship, films featuring the lives of Manchus during their reign of the Qing dynasty do not belong to the genre of ethnic minority film (J. Chen 1997). 21
Introduction
Jingjing de mani shi/The Silent Holy Stones (2006, dir. Pema Tseden).19
Besides consistent attention to cinematic landscapes as ‘reel’ geographies of the ethnic minority child characters, a range of theoretical approaches are also adopted in individual chapters to assist with interrogation. Placed in the context of China’s emerging urbanisation in the early 1990s, The Drummer of Huoyanshan, the first movie mentioned in the beginning, reflects a binary relationship between the rural and urban Uyghur children. However, the significance of the film is more than that. Drawing on Richard Dyer’s (2000, 2002) and Kenneth MacKinnon’s (2000) observations of space and in particular natural space in a musical, Chapter 1 examines the predominantly rural landscapes in the film in which the Uyghur children produce music and dance. It argues that the filmmaker Guang Chunlan’s selection of the aforementioned real location of the Mazar village, an old and backward village, coupled with other ‘natural’ and ‘primitive’ landscapes used as musical spaces, manifests the yearnings of the Uyghur children for either an urban space or the national center. The film upholds the mainstream ideology of Han-dominated modernisation and regards Han-dominated urban space as advantageous in facilities, education and social systems.
In the 2000s, when negative impacts of modernisation become increasingly evident, rural space is turned into a locale for a filmmaker’s imagination of an idealistic past. Lala’s Gun and Bird’s Nest, the second movie mentioned in the beginning, were both directed by Han independent filmmaker Ning Jingwu, who employs many landscape shots to portray a harmonious relationship between human and nature. Based on Sheldon Lu’s (2009, 7-8) two particular ‘themes and subjects’ that are relevant to ethnic minority film, the two films, together with others discussed in the thesis (Seeking Naadam and Mongolian Ping-Pong), are ‘ecocinema’.20 In particular, slow images and duration shots which characterise many landscape shots in the two films and others ‘retrain’ the audience’s perception of nature, which is considered a
19 Relevant films excluded from discussion in this thesis are as follows: films about Uyghur children, Guangzhou laile Xinjiang wa/A Xinjiang boy in Guangzhou (1994, dir. Wang Jin), Hui changge de tudou/A Potato Can Sing (1999, dir. Jin Li’ni), Weixiao de pangxie/Smiling Crab (2001, dir. Jin Li’ni), and Mai maiti de 2008/Mai Maiti’s 2008 (2008, dir. Xi’er Zhati · Yahefu); films about Tibetan children, Tanqi wode zha’nian qin/Zha’nian Instrument (1999, dir. Lu Gang) and Dai fozhu de zangwa/A Tibetan Girl Wearing Buddhist Beads (2005, dir. Wu Rina); one film about Mongol children Yonggan shaonian/Brave Children (2003, dir. Yan Gaoshan and Gao Feng); one film about Miao children Kaishui yao tang, Gu’niang yao zhuang/I Want to Dance (2006, dir. Hu Shu); one film about Dai children, Xiaoxiang Xi’na/Little Elephant Xi’na (1996, dir. Wu Tianren); one film about Hani children E’ma zhi zi/The First Light (2008, dir. Li Songlin); one film about Lisu children Zoulu shangxue/Walking to School (2009, dir. Peng Jiahuang). 20 Sheldon Lu (2009, 7-8) also regards the film The Silent Holy Stones as ‘ecocinema’ due to its religious theme. 22
Introduction
fundamental job in ecocinema (MacDonald 2004, 109). Chapter 2 focuses on those landscape shots in Lala’s Gun and the first half of Bird’s Nest, which were shot in the real location of the aforementioned Basha Miao village. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of nostalgia, modernity and rural idyllic childhood (e.g., O’ Shea 2005; Oakes 1992; Powell, Taylor, and Smith 2013; Aitken 1994; Valentine 1997), this chapter argues that Ning has constructed a rather idealistic image of the Miao children’s childhood experiences in the rural space. His construction exhibits a feeling of nostalgia among urban Han Chinese for an idealised rural ‘past’ in the context of modernity. The Miao children are constructed to maintain a harmonious relationship with nature, agriculture land and village community, which constitutes a rural idyllic childhood. Moreover, through a Miao boy’s mobility in neighbouring villages in search of his father, the filmmaker establishes role models for him to carry on Miao traditions. When the boy, with his newly acquired singing skill, dedicates a traditional Miao song to his friend who dies shortly after working in a big city, the filmmaker manages to demonise the urban space and simultaneously consolidate the boy’s persistence in Miao traditional practices and spaces.
Although largely embedded in rural spaces, the ethnic minority child protagonists are mobile in one way or another. They travel in either their own cultural zones such as the Miao boy in Lala’s Gun or traverse to Han cultural zones such as the Miao boy in Bird’s Nest. Chapter 3 focuses on the second half of Bird’s Nest and interrogates the temporary emplacement of the Miao boy in the national centre as outlined in the beginning of this Introduction. The chapter borrows Celestino Deleyto’s (1991) distinction between internal and external focalisations and Lefebvre’s (2006, 2011) conception of ‘intentional landscape’. It questions a seemingly perfect national narrative as identified by previous research thanks in particular to the boy’s physical location near the building of the Bird’s Nest. It argues that elements of deconstruction are implicated in the cinematic treatments of relevant landscape shots. The Miao boy, despite being a convenient embodiment of multi-ethnic unity, is actually isolated and excluded in the Han-dominated urban environment. As a left-behind child, his personal desire for his migrant father as expressed in internally focalised landscape shots, either produced through his gaze or as imagined mind landscape, contrasts with the ostensible national narrative as implied in the externally focalised landscape shots. The film evokes reflections on the difficult circumstances of left-behind children and migrant workers in the context of China’s rapid economic development.
While in mainstream culture, rural children are migrating to urban space to unite with their migrant parents, Seeking Naadam counters the trend by situating a Han boy in the rural
23
Introduction
environment of the grasslands. The film highlights the indigenous knowledge systems of a Mongol girl in helping the boy to interact with the unfamiliar space and its people. Chapter 4, with a focus on this film, draws on Doreen Massey’s (2005) thinking of relational construction of space. It examines many landscape shots in the film that depict a shared journey by the two children on the Inner Mongolian grasslands. This chapter argues that the filmmaker Bao Lide, whose ethnic identity cannot be identified, has strategically used the space of the grasslands to reconstruct social and relational space between Han and Mongols in contemporary China. Although the film portrays the moments in which the Han boy does ‘heroic’ deeds of looking after the girl, it is critical with its emphasis on the power of the Mongols and their practices of civility and hospitality in their indigenous space. The film’s juxtaposition of ‘Naadam’, the most important sports event in the Mongolian culture, with the Beijing 2008 Olympics, an international sports event held in China with national significance, suggests that the Chinese state might as well reconsider its spatial relationship with its power and its people. A reconstruction of ethnic relationships based on ethics of care is indispensable to the presentation of a strong China to the world, especially in an era of rapid transformations in the lives of ethnic minorities away from their homelands.
Indigenous knowledge systems of Mongols are also underlined in the film Mongolian Ping-Pong, which is examined in Chapter 5. Drawing on Donald Winnicott’s (1971) concept of transitional space and its further application to the studies of children’s play (Aitken and Herman 1997; Aitken 2001), the chapter interrogates the Mongol children’s interactions with their environments after their discovery of a ping-pong ball. It argues that the unique space of the grasslands is turned into multiple transitional spaces of play for the Mongol child protagonists due to the employment of landscape shots. In these spaces, the children safely manipulate cultural resources of diverse scales in order to understand the social-cultural identity of the ball, which leads to their creative reimagination of the world. Their alternative views may look naïve to some eyes but valuable to the independent Han filmmaker Ning Hao. A feeling of melancholy is conveyed when one child protagonist sets out on a journey to a city school. The mainstream discourse in a Han-dominated society is bound to terminate these minority children’s creative perspectives on the world.
Most of the films discussed in this thesis are directed by Han Chinese. Guang Chunlan, the filmmaker of The Drummer of Huoyanshan, is of Xibo ethnicity as mentioned earlier, but her film focuses on Uyghur children. Moreover, working for a state-owned film studio, she is expected
24
Introduction
to adhere to state ideologies. Pema Tseden, the filmmaker of The Silent Holy Stones and the founder of the ‘New Tibetan Cinema’ in the PRC (Yü 2014), is the only filmmaker discussed in this thesis who is more likely to express the subjectivity of his own ethnic group (J. Zhu 2015). Chapter 6 examines The Silent Holy Stones, his debut film, which centres on a young Tibetan lama’s encounter with modern media in the context of socio-economic transformations in Tibetan areas. The child monk’s identification with Sun Wukong, a particular media character that deserves close readings from several perspectives in order to understand his roles in the child’s identity construction, coupled with Pema’s trademark employment of landscape shots, conveys the message that the Tibetan child is situated in a particular social context that complicates his ethnic (religious) and national identity, rendering it complete with contradictions and flexibility.
Overall, this thesis addresses an under-researched subject – cinematic representation of ethnic minority children and their childhoods in Chinese cinema of the 1990s and 2000s, by adopting an original geographical approach that focuses on cinematic landscape and children’s geographies. The research aims to shed light on the diversity of attitudes and approaches in contemporary filmmaking regarding the ethnic minority children on screen and increase our understanding of these children’s identities in relation to rural living, ethnic traditions and the nation as constructed and restricted by the ideological agendas of filmmakers and the cultural- political context of the dominant society.
25
Chapter 1 Natural Landscapes as Musical Spaces: Utopia and Yearnings of the Uyghur Children in a National Narrative
Introduction
This chapter draws on Dyer’s (2000, 2002) and MacKinnon’s (2000) theorisations on space in a musical to explore the significance of natural landscapes as musical spaces of the ethnic minority children in a film directed by a mainstream filmmaker. The film discussed, The Drummer of Huoyanshan (1991), is a musical, which is also the first feature film in the PRC that focuses on Uyghur children in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The film’s director Guang Chunlan is of Xibo ethnicity. She is famous for making a variety of genre films on Uyghurs, especially the musical (H. Zhang 2010; Y. Wu 2015; Hasimu 1997). During the 1980s and 1990s, she has made over a dozen Uyghur-themed musicals (Hasimu 1997). Chinese film and cultural critic Dai Jinhua (1994, 1995) claims that Guang, as a mainstream filmmaker, has created a unique and distinctive musical style with minority characteristics.1 Dai does not elaborate on Guang’s musical style but expounds on her status as a mainstream filmmaker. In Dai’s (1994) view, Guang, as a Chinese female director, is no different from her predecessor Wang Ping2 or contemporary Wang Haowei3 who both serve as the backbone of their respective state-owned film studios and create excellent mainstream films. In contemporary China, a mainstream film can be either a commercial entertainment film or a ‘main melody’ film that contains explicit ideologies of the party-state. In the case of Guang, she is distinctive as a filmmaker based in the state-owned Tianshan Film Studio in Xinjiang. Dai (1994) asserts that Guang has emphatically pursued a film’s ‘social educational function’. But as to what kind of ‘social educational function’, for whom and how to achieve it, Dai does not provide further details.
Subsequent researchers have built on Dai’s comments on Guang. In terms of Guang’s Uyghur- themed musicals, it is suggested that Guang’s musicals are characterised by a high integration of
1 Dai (1995) is an English version of Dai (1994), which was originally published in Chinese. 2 Wang Ping (1916-1990), once affiliated to August First Film Studio, is the first female director in socialist China. During the Mao era, she directed many films about Chinese liberation army, soldiers and socialist revolution. Her representative works include Liubao de gush/The Story of Liubao (1957), Yong bu xiaoshi de dianbo/The Eternal Wave (1958), Nihong dengxia de shaobing /The Guard Under the Neon Lights (1964) and the musical epic Dongfang hong /The East is Red (1965). 3 Wang Haowei (1940- ), once affiliated to Beijing Film Studio, has directed many melodramas after the Cultural Revolution. Her representative works include Qiao zhe yi jiazi/What a Family (1979), Cunlu dai wo huijia/Country Road Taking Me Home (1987) and O, xiangxue/Oh! Sweet Snow (1989).
Chapter 1
musical numbers with the film narrative (Y. Wu 2015). To achieve a seamless integration, her musicals often centre on art troupes recruiting new members or a group of music or dance fans entertaining themselves (H. Zhang 2010). In terms of her status as a mainstream filmmaker, researchers highlight Guang’s insistence on only presenting ‘positive and beautiful images’ of Xinjiang and Xinjiang people (H. Zhang 2010; Y. Wu 2015). Guang’s (1997) most famous and often-cited work ethics in making Xinjiang films is that ‘Mom has a pair of beautiful eyes as well as an ugly scar on her forehead. I will display to the outside the beautiful eyes instead of the scar.’ But what are these ‘positive and beautiful images’ and in whose eyes?
Ironically, and probably for the sake of achieving this goal, primitiveness and exoticism of Xinjiang are very much at play in the film The Drummer of Huoyanshan. As with Guang’s other musicals, the film revolves around the recruitment of an art troupe. A talented hand drummer, a Uyghur boy, is discovered by the Urumchi Children’s Troupe when the troupe visits and performs in his hometown village – the village of Huoyanshan. However, the film is special in that it selects the real location of the Mazar village of Tuyuq county in Turpan, the oldest village of Uyghurs in Xinjiang (Xiang, 2006), as the location of the village of Huoyanshan (X. Wang 2015). This location, together with other natural and local landscapes that unfold subsequently with the boy’s admission to the troupe, becomes the main spaces where the Uyghur children produce music and dance.
This chapter focuses on these spaces and discovers that they are not merely integral living environments of the characters, as indicated by some Chinese critics who claim that, due to Guang’s special exilic and return relationship with Xinjiang,4 she has largely broken away from a cinematic tradition of constructing Xinjiang as exotic (H. Zhang 2010).5 Given Guang’s (2012) own claim that she gives constant priority to character construction and refuses to include a musical number merely for its own sake, some key numbers and in particular the spaces in which they
4 According to Guang Chunlan’s (1997, 2012) own accounts, she was born in Xinjiang and spent her childhood there until the age of nine when she moved to Beijing. She claims that, due to her ‘beautiful’ memories about her childhood, she ‘happily’ accepted the invitation of Tianshan Film Studio in Xinjiang after finishing her first film at Nanjing Film Studio in the Jiangsu province in 1980. 5 Zhang Hua is a main critic of Guang’s films. Zhang (2010) argues that Guang differs from those Han Chinese filmmakers who live outside of Xinjiang and have produced the majority of feature films about ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Those Han filmmakers tend to take an outsider’s perspective, which turns Xinjiang, its people and landscapes, into spectacles. 27
Chapter 1
occur deserve special attention in terms of how they contribute to the construction of the child characters.
The chapter argues that Guang’s selection of certain landscapes in the film facilitates a specific aspect of character construction – a feeling of utopia – that helps Guang to fulfil her pursuit of ‘social educational function’ of a film as in Dai’s claim. The so-called ‘positive and beautiful images’ of Xinjiang and Xinjiang people in Guang’s eyes are actually Han-centred (although she is not a Han) or, put alternatively, in accordance with Han-dominated social ideologies. While musical spaces are emphatically established in rather ‘natural’ and ‘primitive’ landscapes of Xinjiang, urban spaces provided by the Han-dominated system are represented as serious, advanced and offering high-quality education and upward mobility. This discovery reveals another characteristic of Guang’s musicals that is specifically concerned with the space in her musical numbers, which works in close conjunction with her national narrative.
The Space in the Musical
Both Dyer (2000) and MacKinnon (2000) perceive that the genre of the musical is about space. As Dyer puts it,
Dancing is by definition about bodies in space, about how bodies relate to other bodies, how they move through space, and how they make use of or submit to the environment around them. Less obviously, singing too is about space. Singing carries differently into space than speech, and different kinds of singing, from crooning to belting, impose themselves differently on the world around the singer. (Dyer 2000, 25)
With regards to who occupies the space in a musical, Dyer (2000) argues that the musical space in MGM-style musicals has been colonised by dominant white groups in the American society. Dyer’s observation is that, not all social groups in a society have the privilege of ‘bursting from the confines of life by singing your heart out and dancing when you feel like it’ (2000, 25), which is the joy of the musical. Rather, it is white people that are given the privilege, while ‘blackness is contained in the musical, ghettoised, stereotyped, and “only entertainment”’ (25). By ‘only entertainment’, Dyer means that black performers in a musical may have roles to play, such as servants or waiters, but ‘all they ever do in those roles is entertain’ (25, original emphasis).
MacKinnon (2000) acknowledges what Dyer has observed – the whiteness of musical space, but further suggests that this type of colonisation may reflect the wish of white people for ‘somewhere, better than the world as experienced diegetically’ (40). MacKinnon points out that ‘musicals abound with the bursting out of spatial and psychological/economic/social 28
Chapter 1
confinement by the disadvantaged, the “underlings” created by social norms of gender and industrial master/servant patterns’ (43). These ‘underlings’ are mostly white, albeit not necessarily white. What is in common is their underprivileged social status.
Moreover, MacKinnon (2000) stresses that wide-open spaces in a musical are as significant as those in the western genre. The power of the musical in expressing a character’s ‘yearning for a better place’ is particularly strong when the character is situated in the background of ‘a uniformly beneficent, appealing version of the natural world’ (40). Taking many films as examples, MacKinnon demonstrates that the lyrics of songs sung in a location of unspoiled nature often express the yearnings of the characters for a better place where they can transcend their mundane life in the diegetic world. MacKinnon indicates that the value of ‘natural’ space lies in its potential to be transformed into ‘the private space’ of the characters when they are in solitude. In that space, ‘the quotidian may give way to power (of emotion, ambition, energy) by means of a musical number’ (41).
In this context, MacKinnon (2000) proposes that the most important message in a musical is that ‘there is space beyond humdrum, burdensome everyday reality’, and ‘that space belongs to the underprivileged, those who experience discrimination’ in the diegetic world (44). The significance of that space lies in its creation of ‘another kind of space, psychical perhaps’, which opens out for the disadvantaged (44). The occupying of that space by ‘underlings’ occurs when their feelings are so intense for their diegetic life that they have to express those feelings ‘in song, or in movements so vigorous and dexterous as almost to defy audience belief’ (44). MacKinnon suggests further that, in that space, ‘there is another, more attractive, more perfectly realised person waiting to burst out of the human limits imposed on the individual’ (44). Underlings can take advantage of that space to exploit their potential because that space is not as restricted as the social environment in which they live in the film narrative.
Admittedly, the ‘seizing of space’ by underlings is not ‘free of potential anxiety’ for an audience of the dominant social groups (43). However, it more significantly produces pleasure for viewers of social minorities. MacKinnon notices that the musical is particularly important to ‘minorities who are marginalised in their social experience’ (40). The possible reason is that their expressions of desire for somewhere better are often restricted or frustrated in real life, while film viewing can provide them with a chance for wish-fulfillment through empathy and identification.
29
Chapter 1
MacKinnon admits his argument echoes Dyer’s claim that musicals are utopian. Before Dyer (1995) articulates the politics of colour in the Hollywood musicals, he indicates that musicals are utopian in the sense that he assumes musicals are an entertainment genre first and foremost (Dyer 1985). As entertainment, the genre is closely linked with two emotions, ‘escape’ and ‘wish- fulfilment’, both of which ‘point to its central thrust, namely, utopianism’ (Dyer 2002, 20). By utopianism, Dyer refers to what musicals provide – ‘the image of “something better” to escape into, or something we want deeply that our day-to-day lives don’t provide’, ‘alternatives, hopes, wishes’, and ‘the sense that things could be better, that something other than what is can be imagined and maybe realized’ (2002, 20).
Dyer’s two main arguments concerning musicals seem contradictory. However, in MacKinnon’s (2000) view, they arise from two different contexts. The politics of colour is derived from interrogating ‘the practices and ethos of the studios’ (45), which intensify a racist configuration of the society. In contrast, the utopianism of musicals is observed from the perspective of spectator reception. As MacKinnon sees it, the intended message of a musical may be widely divergent from its actual impact on viewers. What is memorable to an audience of minorities are likely those musical moments in which they recognise the ‘longings and absences’ of the disadvantaged characters when they possess the musical space instead of a white-supremacist narrative resolution. This is because these audiences resonate with the experiences of the characters who ‘strive towards, though they arguably do not achieve, utopia’ (45-46).
MacKinnon’s attention to musical space occupied by underlings through singing, dancing and music-making is particularly relevant to the film discussed in this chapter. The travel of the theory is rendered possible because of the similar hierarchies of power involved in the new context – between urban and rural, between Han and ethnic minorities, and between the nation’s periphery and the centre. Although Dyer’s and MacKinnon’s theorisations focus on both film production and film reception, my analyses below focus mostly on the film text, especially the relationship between the child characters and their musical spaces. Nonetheless, as the child characters in the film often perform on stage, there is also an issue of spectatorship especially when the underprivileged children occupy the stage. Specifically speaking, the Uyghur boy, together with a local Uyghur girl dancer, is underprivileged because they are rural children in contrast to the children of the troupe, while the Uyghur children from both the rural and urban areas are underprivileged in terms of their ethnic and geographical position in relation to the dominant Han Chinese. Given the importance of ‘natural’ space to the underprivileged in a
30
Chapter 1
musical as observed by Mackinnon, the diversity of natural and local landscapes in which these Uyghur children produce music and dance deserve re-evaluation in terms of their functions beyond being merely living environments. They probably reflect some type of yearnings in the minds of these children. But how does the film convey the message and what exactly is ‘somewhere better’ for these children?
The Musical Space in The Drummer of Huoyanshan
The Drummer of Huoyanshan focuses on the Uyghur boy Kulaixi in the village of Huoyanshan, whose favourite place for spending time alone is the ruins of an ancient city in the village. His talent in playing a hand drum is discovered by the Urumchi Children’s Troupe when its teachers and students ‘go down’ to the village to perform.6 The urban children of the troupe headed by Xilinnayi put on several stage performances. One of them is set amidst the ruins for the entertainment of local villagers, where Kulaixi and Lalaguli, a local girl who loves dancing, watch the performance. The next morning, the children of the troupe are amazed by the performances of Kulaixi’s drum-playing and Lalaguli’s dancing in an old outdoor cinema. Their performance is warmly welcomed by local villagers and evokes more audience participation in comparison to the troupe’s. When Kulaixi is accepted by the troupe and moves to the city, he faces challenges in dealing with relations in a blended family and peer relations in the troupe. On his run-away journey to his hometown, Kulaxi comes across a grotto, where he happily plays his drum in the natural environment. When Kulaixi returns to the embrace of his family and the troupe, all the children and teachers of the troupe are situated in a diversity of local and natural landscapes – a refinery, grasslands, rivers and sand deserts – near Urumchi, the capital of Xinjiang. Following this which can be called ‘carnival sequence’, the film shows the troupe’s performance at a grand auditorium in Xinjiang.
Drawing on Mackinnon’s argument on the space occupied by the underprivileged in a musical, the stage performance of the urban children of the troupe amidst the ruins can be seen igniting the dream of the rural child Kulaixi, together with Lalaguli, for ‘somewhere better’ – a troupe and an urban life. When Kulaixi and Lalaguli take control of the stage in the old cinema with their superb performance, they manage to transcend their mundane life and inferior social status as
6 The term ‘go down’ is quoted from the film text as spoken by an urban member of the Troupe. The term originated from a historical movement called ‘Up to the Mountain and Down to the Countryside’ (Shangshan xiaxiang) initiated by Chairman Mao in the mid-1950s. Since then, the act of going to the countryside has often been described as ‘going down’ in the Chinese context. 31
Chapter 1
rural children in a remote village. Simultaneously, their performance causes anxiety to the urban children of the troupe. The two performances display a dynamic power relationship and even a disturbing power reversal between a dominant social group – the urban children – and the rural underlings. Both performances occur in Kulaixi’s hometown, a cinematic version of the Mazar village, which seems too old to keep its young talented villagers from ‘flying away’.7 However, when Kulaixi finds ‘somewhere better’ – the troupe (tainted with intensified anxiety from the urban children, coupled with their teasing) and the family life in the city, is not what he has imagined, he relocates himself in the natural world. The outside of the grotto is unspoiled nature as highlighted by MacKinnon which provides solitude. This becomes a space in which Kulaixi can relieve himself of the burdens in the diegetic urban life.
So far, the film has emphatically manipulated ‘natural’ spaces to express the yearnings of the underprivileged rural children for a better place – the urban troupe (in its ideal form). Simultaneously, musical spaces and the rural children’s yearnings are used to forge conflicts between the rural and urban Uyghurs. No Han Chinese are involved, and hence there are no ethnic confrontation. This reflects one way in which the filmmaker appropriates musical spaces to endorse an orthodox state ideology.
However, during the carnival sequence, the boundaries between the rural and urban Uyghur children are dissolved, and both are incorporated into the natural world. A special social landscape that starts the sequence plays a critical role in establishing the tone of the sequence. The selection of one of the most famous state-owned refineries in Xinjiang is symbolic. It annotates the significance of Kulaixi’s yearnings for the urban space, which represents seriousness, progress, high-quality education and advanced system. These, however, turn those natural landscapes in the boy’s hometown, albeit safe, comfortable and private, into the very representation of ‘primitiveness’ and ‘backwardness’. The serious urban space does not allow for a carnival. The troupe’s music-making and dancing in the natural landscapes that follow convey their collective yearning for a ‘better’ place – a specific ‘stage’ allocated to them in the urban space. Their subsequent performance at Xinjiang People’s Hall, arguably the most important and prestigious state-owned performance venue in Xinjiang, is considered by them a
7 The term ‘flying away’ is used here to resonate with a song sung by Xilinnayi about doves in the later narrative. The term also reflects a deep-rooted binary structure of rural versus urban in the Chinese geopolitical context. With China’s initiative in urbanisation and modernisation after reform and opening- up, the act of leaving the rural environment is considered a progressive behaviour of ‘flying away’ a ‘backward’ place to reach a ‘better’ place. 32
Chapter 1
tremendous realisation of their dream. Nonetheless, it is still only a performance in preparation for their future opportunity to perform in the nation’s capital. The conspicuous symbol of the nation-state, coupled with the children’s aspiration for a more central stage, which is even a professional pursuit in the case of Kulaixi and Lalaguli, suggests that the film’s cinematic construction of musical space has integrated the children’s yearnings with the upward mobility provided by the state’s modernisation project and facilitated the gaze of the state. In the sections below, I analyse the four broad-brush geographies in depth to illustrate my argument above.
1. The stage amidst the ruins
The first half of the film is set in Kulaixi’s hometown. The opening sequence visually and aurally emphasises the land of the village as the motherland of Kulaixi and Lalaguli, although its surrounding mountain ranges also indicate the village’s isolation and confined geography. The film starts with a high-angle distant shot that cranes downward from mountain ranges in the distance to a village at the bottom and then zooms in on a mosque located in the village. The village is packed with clay houses with flat roofs. The mosque is distinctive for its minarets that rise high above the surrounding houses (Figure 1.1). In the company of a non-diegetic song that sings, ‘I am like fire on the Huoyanshan, burning on the vast Gobi Desert’, a medium tracking shot shows Kulaixi driving a donkey-led cart loaded with many baskets. When the lyrics say, ‘I contribute shiny grapes to the moon in my dream’, there are close-ups of bunches of grapes on the vines. When the lyrics continue with ‘ah, mother, the red moon in my heart’, the mountain ranges reappear in a medium shot, which then pans sideways to reveal the minarets of the mosque.
33
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Kulaixi’s hometown – the village of Huoyanshan
The historical and cultural significance of the village, being shot in the Mazar village of Tuyuq, is conveyed in the opening sequence. It is an ancient, impoverished and religious village. Because it is ancient, the village is regarded as ‘a living fossil of Uyghur folk culture’ (X. Li, Yao, and Liu 2006). The village is poor, because the only source of livelihood for its villagers are white seedless grapes (X. Wang and Fan 2005; N. Li 2011). Its clay-built dwellings, due to which the village earns the title ‘Number One Clay Village in China’, are strategically designed as one or two-storey houses with flat roofs for the convenience of storing and sun-drying grapes, among other reasons (X. Wang and Fan 2005; X. Wang 2015; X. Li, Yao, and Liu 2006). The village’s age and backwardness, coupled with its remoteness and isolation, may trigger the desire of its younger generations to burst out of its limitations and confinement.
Moreover, the mosque, the best building in the village (X. Wang and Fan 2005), is cinematically emphasised in the opening sequence, which suggests to more knowledgeable viewers that this is not merely a Uyghur village with a mosque for Muslims but a special village with historical religious significance. The name of the village is attributed to its geographical proximity to ‘Al- Sahab Kahfi Mazar’ – ‘tomb of saints in the cave’, an Islamic pilgrimage site (X. Wang and Fan 2005; Xiang 2006; N. Li 2011). The cinematic emphasis on the religious significance of the village is indeed resonant with the children’s passion for music and dance. The Islam is practiced by Uyghurs, while music and religion are closely connected. When claiming the important role of musical space in expressing the yearnings of the underprivileged, MacKinnon also suggests that the utopianism of musicals coincides with a non-denominational religious message that ‘the dullness of the world is something passing, only a phase obscuring the intensity of experiences beyond the quotidian’ (2000, 40). In short, the village, as a landscape in itself and in representation, is both ‘a work’ and something that ‘does work’. Borrowing Don Mitchell’s (2000, xix) expression, the village ‘encapsulates the dreams, desires and all the injustices of the people and social systems that make it’, and concurrently acts as a social agent for the development of the place and its people.
Kulaixi is apparently affectionate to his homeland, which is demonstrated through his assistance in harvest. Lalaguli, a girl in the same village, is also gentle with herd animals, which is her way of connecting with the space. In the sequence that follows, Lalalguli comes across some goats in a street in a medium long shot. The music fades away when she murmurs that she is in a hurry to see Kulaixi. A close shot cuts in, which shows her whispering sympathy to a goat that is tied 34
Chapter 1
up by its ‘master’. She then takes off a floral hoop from her head and puts it on the neck of the goat. This episode indicates Lalaguli’s appreciation of freedom, which echoes her later expression of her own desire to pursue a dancing career.
When the background song resumes after Lalaguli’s whisper, the film returns to Kulaixi. Following several close shots of grapes filling up the baskets, Kulaixi is seen sitting on the edge of the cart, holding a hand drum in front of him, playing and singing. However, no drumbeat can be heard as the background music still dominates the soundtrack. When Lalaguli finally manages to locate the position of Kulaixi and catches up with the cart, the film shows a conversation between the two children. The conversation reveals the passion of both Kulaixi and Lalaguli for arts and their dream of leaving the place despite their affection for it. When Lalaguli expresses her wish to become a dancer when growing up, Kulaixi replies that he understands and relates to her feelings because he also wishes to become an instrumentalist. Matching their conversation, the background song sings, ‘I will go everywhere in the world to search for the sanctuary in my dream.’
When Kulaixi asks Lalaguli to listen to his recent composition, the background music fades away, and dynamic sounds of drumbeats take over. A close shot of Kulaixi playing his drum is cut to a close shot of two cocks fighting each other at the beat of the drum. After a brief cut to Kulaixi’s hand that beats the drum head, the sequence ends with a close shot of the two cocks exhausted from fighting at the termination of drumbeats. This sequence displays briefly Kulaixi’s talent in playing a hand drum. Despite its briefness in contrast to other musical sequences in the body of the film, the dynamic power of his drumbeats is well illustrated by the shots on cockfighting. The cockfight may symbolise the inner struggle caused by the boy’s dreaming of leaving home while being affectionate to it. It perhaps also resonates with the filmmaker’s own experience of having to leave Xinjiang and later returning to it. The cockfight also foreshadows the subsequent power struggle between the rural and urban children.
In general, the opening sequence sets up the physical and social environments in which Kulaixi and Lalaguli develop their dreams. This set-up is critical to understanding the two children’s passion for music and dance. When the troupe from Urumchi performs in the village, their passion is strengthened. The troupe’s performance is set in the ruins of an old city in the village. The ruins do not make appearance in the opening sequence but in a later sequence when Xilinnayi, the class monitor of the troupe, searches for Kulaixi in the village after she saw his performance in an old cinema. The ruins also demonstrate the long history of the village. 35
Chapter 1
However, for Kulaixi, this location has special significance. As Lalaguli informs Xilinnayi, the ruins are the place where Kulaixi likes to spend time alone, although the place is scary due to its expanse and desolateness.
When Xilinnayi is situated in the ruins, creepy background music arises. After passing through some ruins taller than her and arriving at an open flat space surrounded by low walls, she hears some drumbeats. Following the sound, she finds Kulaixi sitting in a hole of a tall wall in a corner of the open space, holding his drum in hands (Figure 1.2). The shot is followed by a close shot of Xilinnayi jumping up and down, clapping her hands and exclaiming that she has seen a picture constituted by Kulaixi. When Kulaixi later gets out of the hole, the two children have a conversation in the ruins about a song they both know.
Figure 1.2 Kulaixi alone in the ruins of the village
This is the only sequence in the film in which Kulaixi is situated alone in the ruins. However, the special relationship between him and the ruins, as well as music, is revealed through this sequence. As Kulaixi’s favourite place to stay, the location is important to him psychologically. The two children’s conversation centring on The Song of a Hand Drum, the favourite song of Kulaixi’s deceased mother, suggests that Kulaixi has experienced trauma due to the special circumstances of his family. As a child without a mother and living separately from his father in the city, he has a sense of being deserted as indeed are the ruins. Xilinnayi’s exclamation that he fits in with the environment recognises the metaphor. However, her exclamation also suggests that the ruins, in her eyes, can be a ‘spectacle’, an object of visual attractiveness and beauty (Lukinbeal 2005, 11). This type of gaze, as indicated by Lukinbeal (2005), is encoded with a power
36
Chapter 1
relationship. In the eyes of Chow (1995), this is a moment when primitivism is at play. Xilinnayi, as an urban child, may be complicit with film viewers in taking the ruins as a spectacle. However, for Kulaixi, the location embodies more of his disadvantaged position as a rural child and his desire for somewhere better. As the drum in Kulaixi’s hands suggests, the ruins are probably where he plays the drum in solitude. Making music that expresses his yearning to escape but doing so in a place that he considers private also protects the feelings of his maternal grandparents who have provided him with a loving home. Linking to Mackinnon’s comments on ‘natural’ open space, this outside-in location has been transformed into a ‘private’ space of Kulaixi in which he can rely on music to transcend his real-life trauma and yearn for a better place, a place where he can connect with his parents in a certain way. Seen from another perspective, Kulaixi’s circumstances of connecting with both the rural and urban spaces encapsulate the contradictions of rural minorities in modernity, which predicate their psychological struggle while dreaming of leaving the rural environment.
Set in the ruins loaded with special meanings to Kulaixi, the troupe gives its first performance in the village. Following a zoomed-out shot on the ruins, the teachers of the troupe are first seen performing in the foreground. When Kulaixi and Lalaguli enter the crowd of the audience and later move to the front of the crowd (Figure 1.3), there is a close shot of the female teacher dancing without any physical background behind her. This shot is followed by a close shot of Kulaixi’s concentrated eyes, which suggests that the previous shot is his subjective image. In his eyes, there is no background of the ruins but the performers. This subjective perspective persists in the rest of the sequence. As mentioned earlier, in the eyes of film viewers and Xilinnayi, the ruins amidst which the stage is set up can be a ‘spectacle’. However, for Kulaixi, this ‘spectacle’ has probably been integrated into his body and mind and turned into ‘something else’, which causes him to neglect this background and focus on the performance.
37
Chapter 1
Figure 1.3 Kulaixi and Lalaguli watching the performance of the troupe
When the children of the troupe start to perform, there is initially a medium shot focusing on instrumentalists of the troupe. One of them holds a hand drum high above his head. This cuts to a close shot of Kulaixi and Lalaguli, in which she calls his attention to the presence of a hand drummer in the ensemble. Then a group of girls dressed in white skirts start to dance in a medium close-up, which is followed by Xilinnayi dancing her way to the central stage in a close tracking shot. The camera then pulls back to include all performers in the foreground with a clear view of the ruins in the background (Figure 1.4). Meanwhile, Xilinnayi starts to sing a song while she dances, which says, ‘You are like a dove, dreaming of flying into the distance’. Two close-ups on the girls dressed in white skirts cut in, which are followed by a zoomed-in close-up on Lalaguli’s captivated eyes. The film then cuts back to the framing of Figure 1.4 with a zoomed-in close shot on Xilinnayi. Kulaixi watches attentively in the ensuing close shot. The reverse shot is an extreme close-up of Xilinnayi. After that, Kulaixi is also framed in a close range, releasing a sound from his throat. Simultaneously, Xilinnayi’s singing recedes. Lalaguli asks Kulaixi what is wrong. When he replies he heard Xilinnayi’s voice earlier in the morning, the camera starts to zoom in on him. When his face occupies the whole frame, Kulaixi becomes sentimental. He lowers his head when uttering that ‘The girl can sing The Song of a Hand Drum’. In this moment, Xilinnayi’s song disappears altogether. Instead, a type of slow and soft music arises. Amidst the music, there is an image of a woman turning in circles on a stage. A few seconds later, a light- hearted tune is heard from offscreen, which apparently brings Kulaixi out of his fantasy. The shot then pulls out as Kulaixi raises his head, and we see Lalaguli on his side. The sequence ends with the two children smiling at each other.
38
Chapter 1
Figure 1.4 Xilinnayi dancing and singing on a stage amidst the ruins
This sequence has made excellent use of Kulaixi’s and Lalaguli’s subjective shots to show their admiration for the children of the troupe. Their enthralled gazes, coupled with their physical closeness to the stage (Figure 1.3), reveal their desire to become one of the performers on stage. Their desire does not mean that the children of the troupe perform better than them. However, the troupe members do have more opportunities to receive professional guidance, perform in various places and entertain more people. No matter how talented Kulaixi and Lalaguli are, they are rural children who are confined by their surroundings. Their physical proximity to the stage becomes the very sign of their underling position of being off stage (Figure 1.3). Kulaixi’s attention to Xilinnayi is also attributed to the fact that she is the one who can sing The Song of a Hand Drum. His fantasy image of his mother suggests his missing of her, while the troupe’s arrival from Urumchi, where his father lives, may intensify his desire to leave the village and be united with his father. Moreover, the image of his mother as a successful performer, who has probably inspired him professionally, also echoes his desire to become a professional drummer.
Xilinnayi’s song, in addition to betraying her voice and thereby paving the way for her connection with his family in the later narrative, also speaks directly to Kulaixi’s mind with the metaphor of a dove. Unlike other earthly love-themed and thus quite ‘meaningless’ folksongs that are kept in the native Uyghur language, this is the only diegetic song in the film that is dubbed in Chinese. Like the non-diegetic song in the opening sequence (which is also dubbed in Chinese), the lyrics of this song are manipulated by the filmmaker to express explicitly Kulaixi’s aspiration for a good life and a bright future. The narrative perspectives in the lyrics shift between ‘you’ and ‘me’ as if there is an exclusive communication between Xilinnayi and Kulaixi. The lyrics coincide with
39
Chapter 1
Kulaixi’s love for doves in the narrative. He often releases his doves on the rooftop, which may symbolise his desire to fly away.
In sum, Kulaixi’s desire for a better place and a better self is the ‘something else’ that the ruins are turned into. A tension is created when the troupe’s performance is set amidst the ruins. While in ordinary days, Kulaixi takes the ruins as his private space for yearning with music-making, the performance of the troupe ignites his desire to leave this space to turn his dream into a reality. Although his yearning for the troupe and Urumchi is affected by his desire to unite with his father emotionally and learn from his deceased mother professionally, the selection of Urumchi, the social, economic and political centre of Xinjiang, is not random. His yearning reflects that formal schooling and training in the urban areas are directly linked to his ‘quality’ (suzhi) and future development.8 Although he is extremely talented, as to be demonstrated in the next section, he still needs a platform through which to stage his upward mobility.
2. The stage in an outdoor cinema
Kulaixi and Lalaguli’s performance in an outdoor cinema not only demonstrates they are excellent performers, if not better than the children of the troupe, but also elicits tension between the rural and urban Uyghurs, a strategic deployment of the filmmaker. This scheme works because, in accordance with MacKinnon’s observation, this is the moment when underlings occupy the musical space, which inevitably causes anxiety to their urban counterparts.
The film shows the troupe’s rehearsal in the next morning. Xilinnayi’s dance is frequently interrupted due to the incompetent hand drummer in the ensemble. Just when they are about to give up, they notice their audiences – the children sitting on the side watching them – are leaving. What follows is a shot of many children standing behind a broken wall watching ahead amidst dynamic drumbeats. A medium shot from the back of a stage shows Kulaixi and Lalaguli performing on a stage. When Lalaguli turns her body in consecutive circles, the large audience visible in the background begins to clap their hands. Meanwhile, Xilinnayi and other children of the troupe run to the front of the audience on the side. When Xilinnayi stands still, the camera
8 In the Chinese educational and social context, a person’s ‘quality’ (suzhi) refers to his/her educational level not only in natural and social sciences but also in humanities and arts. The term is often used in the context of improving the general education of school students in addition to their specialised knowledge (L. Li 2000; Yuan 2001). It is also used in the circumstances of improving or civilising the behaviours of under-educated populations such as rural peasants (Xin, Mao, and Luo 2005). Both connotations seem to relate to Kulaixi. 40
Chapter 1
starts to zoom in, which leaves Lalaguli off the frame. Kulaxi is placed in the foreground playing his drum, while Xilinnayi stares at his direction attentively in the background (Figure 1.5).
Figure 1.5 Xilinnayi staring at Kulaixi
A close-up shot follows moving all the way from Lalaguli’s dancing feet to her moving head. After that, some close shots focus on the interactions between Kulaixi and Lalaguli as a performing duet. A long shot cuts in, providing an overview of the two children performing on a stage in front of a large crowd of neatly seated local audience members in the central area (Figure 1.6). The subsequent close shot on Lalaguli’s expressive dance cuts to a close shot of Xilinnayi who looks concerned when noticing the passion of the audience on her side. The film cuts back to the performance of Kulaixi and Lalaguli on stage. When the audience rises with applause, there is a close shot of Kulaixi, who beats his drum forcefully and rapidly with confidence, thrill and attentiveness. A close shot of Xilinnayi follows. She steps forward towards the camera, filling the frame with her anxious eyes. The film cuts back to Kulaixi who beats his drum harder and faster, ready to head for a climax. Another close-up on Xilinnayi’s eyes follows, together with a zoomed- in shot on the incompetent drummer of the troupe shaking his head in disbelief. Following his sight, there is an extreme close-up on one of Kulaixi’s hands in rapid movements. After that, a medium close-up from the back of the stage shows Lalaguli alternating her legs on the ground, then rolling her upper body in circles, and finally standing up and continuing to turn her body. The audience in the background stands up and claps their hands.
41
Chapter 1
Figure 1.6 Kulaixi and Lalaguli performing on a stage in front of the neatly seated local audience
When the teachers of the troupe, located somewhere outside the cinema, quicken their footsteps at hearing the drumbeats, there is a shift in the music. A type of light-hearted diegetic music played by a rawap arises from offscreen. The film cuts back to Kulaixi on stage in a medium close-up surrounded by local children who all move their bodies with the music. An adult man, kneeling on one leg, faces Kulaixi and moves his upper body to the beat of Kulaixi’s drum. Kulaixi then passes his drum to the man and starts to dance on the side. He makes funny gestures and takes over a rawap, a special type of Uyghur instrument, from a young man nearby and plays it opposite to the man who plays his drum. The film cuts to the teachers joining the group of their students in the cinema. After a brief cut to Kulaixi’s playing of rawap, there is a zoomed-in shot on the face of the male teacher, clearly amazed by Kulaixi’s performance.
Figure 1.7 Kulaixi terminating his performance when noticing Xilinnayi in the audience 42
Chapter 1
When the film cuts back to Kulaixi, he notices somebody in the audience. Giving away the rawap and taking back his drum, he jumps off the stage, together with Lalaguli. Staring at the direction of Xilinnayi for a moment (Figure 1.7), whose presence apparently makes him stop playing, Kulaixi turns around and starts to leave. When hearing the male teacher’s hailing, Kulaixi stops, turns back, steps forward and bows in the direction of the teacher before finally running away. Amidst a burst of giggling, the audience in the front rows starts to rise and follows the footsteps of Kulaixi and Lalaguli. The sequence ends with a silent panning shot over the empty rows of seats in the cinema. The teachers and the students of the troupe stand still in the foreground, looking ahead at the depth of screen (Figure 1.8).
Figure 1.8 The empty outdoor cinema
In contrast to the troupe’s performance amidst the ruins, the power relationship implicated in this sequence is totally reversed. Kulaixi and Lalaguli take possession of the musical space on stage, while the children of the troupe are left dumbfounded in the audience. When the troupe are watching the performance, moments of anxiety are visible, especially when they are impressed by the brilliant performance of Kulaixi and Lalaguli and notice the warm reception from the audience. Xilinnayi’s responses are emphatically displayed in many close-ups. Her prominent presence in relation to Kulaixi is highlighted, such as in the background of Figure 1.5 and in the foreground of Figure 1.7, not only because Xilinnayi turns out to be Kulaixi’s step- sister in the later narrative, but also because Xilinnayi is the representative of the urban children of the troupe. Her anxiety stands for the discomfort caused by the power reversal when underlings, the rural children of Kulaixi and Lalaguli, take up the musical space. On the other hand, Kulaixi’s thrilling confidence and Lalaguli’s technique during the performance demonstrate
43
Chapter 1
the power of the musical space in creating utopian feelings for the performers and transforming them into better selves. They are confident, glamourous and enjoy being the centre of attention.
Moreover, the instrument of the drum facilitates Kulaixi’s achievement of utopia. Different from the previous performance by the troupe, this sequence is dominated by ‘instrumental music – pure music free from the burden of words’ (Grout 1980, 552 [as quoted in Laing 2000]), which is believed to have ‘the ultimate ability to communicate the boundless and transcendent emotions’ (Laing 2000, 6-7). The hand drum is specifically selected for this film, as the filmmaker explains, not only because it is a unique instrument of Uyghurs like rawap – a type of ‘long- necked plucked lute’ distinctively associated with Uyghur music, history and culture (Wong 2012, 34). The choice of the drum is also because the drumbeat has explosive, rallying power (Guang 1992). Indeed, this power is very successful in creating a liberating emotion in performers as well as in the audience. Drawing on Mackinnon (2000, 41-42), the transcendental effect is probably created at the moment when Kulaixi ‘pulls out all the stops’ from his beating of drum, while Lalaguli’s dance, as an extension of Kulaixi’s drumbeat, executes a series of ‘dazzling technical feats’.
Furthermore, the space of the old outdoor cinema is a critical setup for Kulaixi and Lalaguli’s occupying of the stage. As a cinema, it is a space for wish-fulfillment of the audience. According to Jacques Lacan (1968), long after a human being enters the Symbolic phase – the world of language – and becomes a social subject, his/her desire for a sense of fullness, plenitude and unity as in the Imaginary stage remains. This unfulfilled desire constitutes a constant feeling of lack in one’s subconscious. In the eyes of Christian Metz ([1977] 1982), the cinema screen satisfies a subject’s fantasy for wholeness and creates pleasure by leading a viewer into a state of ‘walking sleep’ with access to the unconscious. Laura Mulvey’s ([1975] 1989) research reveals that classic Hollywood cinema predominantly enacts male unconscious and facilitates the formation of male subjectivity, which perpetuates the patriarchal social order. However, gender or sex difference is only one of the many discourses that shape a person’s subjectivity. According to Michel Foucault ([1971] 1972), a subject is constituted by multiple and competing discourses (such as race, ethnicity, class and nationality), which are systems of thoughts or domains of knowledge associated with power. Cinematic representation becomes a site for meaning construction, and the spectator is turned into a site for negotiations of various converging and contradictive discourses. In this context, it is easy to understand Lenin’s claim that film is ‘the most important art’ (Liehm and Liehm 1977, 1).
44
Chapter 1
According to Paul Clark’s (2012) review of Chinese socialist cinema, although Chairman Mao was personally not so much a fan of film as that of classic Chinese poetry and traditional operas, the CPC shares with Lenin’s view. Film is thought to be able to ‘take a standardized message’ – propagandist or educational – to ‘even the most illiterate viewers’ and thus contributes to the creation of ‘a new, mass culture’ (45). It serves the needs of the CPC to spread its socialist ideology – the pursuit of communism, which is indeed an idealistic social structure based on common ownership and common welfare. In the context of the Great Leap Forward, an economic and social campaign initiated by Mao in 1958 to rapidly transform the nation into an industrial and collective socialist society, new studios in major cities across the nation were established. Film productions as well as the number of film audiences expanded promptly in the late 1950s and 1960s. Chinese audiences in this period watched both Chinese and foreign productions. The latter was dominated by socialist film from Soviet and Eastern European countries, which is also about the communist ideal.
Moreover, during this period, Chairman Mao put forward the slogan of ‘combining revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’ in cultural production (Clark 2012). ‘Romanticism’, according to Western cultural criticism, is defined as ‘a rebellion against modern capitalist society’. It either takes ‘regressive forms’ of returning to ‘precapitalist ways of life’ or takes ‘revolutionary/utopian ones, when the feelings for the lost paradise are invested in the hope for a new society’ (Lőwy 2002, 95). Chinese art workers interpret Mao’s slogan as an urge for artists to not only reveal the sufferings of the masses under exploitative social systems as in the works of Italian neo-realism, but also point out a direction for a new life, evoking the hope and passion of the people for a more idealistic society as represented by the CPC (J. Yi 1958).
Also in the context of the Great Leap Forward, Xinjiang Film Studio (XFS) was established in 1959 after a few years of preparation following the warm reception of Hasen and Jiamila (1955, dir. Wu Yonggang), the first film about ethnic minorities in Xinjiang produced by Shanghai Film Studio (Hasimu 1997). Between 1959 and 1966, XFS independently and collaboratively produced several successful feature films (Hasimu 1997).9 During the same period, other big studios in the nation also produced a few well-acclaimed films about ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.10 All these
9 These films include Lüzhou kaige/Oasis Eulogy (1959), Liangdai ren/Two Generations (1960), Yuanfang xinghuo/Distant Fireworks (1961) and A’naerhan (1962). 10 The representative works are Bingshan shang de laike/Visitor from the Ice Mountain (1963, produced by Changchun Film Studio) and Tianshan de honghua/Red Flower in Tianshan (1964, coproduced by Beijing Film Studio and Xi’an Film Studio). 45
Chapter 1
films were warmly received by the audience in Xinjiang (Hasimu 1997). These films, dubbed by XFS into minority languages, not only entertained the local audience but also propagated the CPC’s ideology of socialism (Hasimu 1997).
After the Cultural Revolution, the studio resumes production of feature films in 1979 and changed its title into Tianshan Film Studio. Its first feature film Xiangdao/The Guide (1979, dir. Wang Xinyu, Xie Fei and Zheng Dongtian), together with other early productions, was warmly received by Xinjiang audiences (H. Zhang 2014).11 A most significant filmmaker during the 1980s is Guang Chunlan, whose films, mostly musical, were so much enjoyed by the local audience that they started to bring profits to the Studio (H. Zhang 2012; Hasimu 1997; Guang 1997).12 Research indicates that, although Xinjiang was economically backward, its film distribution channel and projection network were rather pervasive and complete (Hasimu 1997). During the 1970s and 1980s, for example, the annual average number of film audiences in the region is 440 million (Hasimu 1997). This corresponds to the situation in other parts of the nation in the early 1980s when film was considered a ‘preferred form of entertainment’ (Y. Zhang 2003, 12).
In these contexts, it can be assumed that films screened in the old cinema, whether being socialist films produced in the 1950s and 1970s characterised by revolutionary romanticism, or Guang’s musicals in the 1980s, or even imported Indian musicals (Hasimu 1997), have brought to the audience a feeling of utopianism, corresponding to what Dyer identifies as the central function of the Hollywood musical. However, with the national film industry shrinking dramatically since the mid-1980s (Y. Zhang 2003), Tianshan Film Studio also sharply decreased its ethnic minority film production (Hasimu 1997). Moreover, due to the cut of government subsidies, film projection in the region was largely downsized (Hasimu 1997). This explains why the old cinema is deserted as represented.
Kulaixi and Lalaguli’s performance in the old cinema is likely to reactivate the mood from the bygone era when villagers gathered there to collectively pursue utopianism. The difference is that the fourth wall of the children’s performance is open for penetration. The villagers can derive pleasure not only from watching but also from participating in performance. This is
11 Examples are Caoyuan qiangshen/Gunshot on the Grasslands (1980) and Ailifu yu Sainaimu/Ailifu and Sainaimu (1981). 12 Guang’s films in this period include Xingfu zhige/Song of Happiness (1981), Rena de hunshi/Rena’s Marriage (1982), Budang yanyuan de gu’niang/A Girl not to be an Actress (1983), Shenmi tuodui/The Mysterious Camel Team (1984), Meiren zhisi/Death of a Beauty (1986), Gunü lian/Love of a Single Woman (1986), Maimaiti waizhuang/Mai’s Love (1987), Xibu wukuang/Crazy Dancers (1988), and Kuaile shijie/The Merry World (1989). 46
Chapter 1
different from the troupe’s performance amidst the ruins where the fourth wall is also sealed up. It is not because of technology as in the case of film but because of the gap between an urban troupe and local villagers. However, there is no such gap between Kulaixi, Lalaguli and villagers. That they are neatly seated in rows of seats (Figure 1.6) alludes to a sense of order and concerted support, while their subsequent participation in performance on stage serves as a consolidated statement that they reclaim the control of the musical space. The conventional power relationship between the privileged urban citizens and the underprivileged rural residents is challenged, especially when the troupe is left behind facing an empty cinema alone (Figure 1.8).
Despite temporal seizure of the musical space and reversal of the power relationship between the rural Uyghurs and their urban counterparts, the urban space is still attractive to Kulaixi. His longing to emotionally connect with his father and professionally carry on his mother’s ideal persists. His action of bowing before leaving the cinema re-inscribes the hierarchy of the urban over the rural. The urban is still considered superior, of high quality and can bring him advancement, albeit perhaps with less community support.
3. Space of solitude
When Kulaixi is situated in the city after being accepted by the troupe, his physical and social environments are totally changed. His physical geographies are confined to the training hall of the troupe and the apartment of his father’s reconstructed family. He makes effort to adjust to the new spaces and new interpersonal relationships. While his drum skills earn the recognition of his teachers, they also elicit jealousy from some members of the troupe. Moreover, the delicacy in handling his relationship with Xilinnayi in front of the troupe without embarrassing her with the ‘secret’ of their family is challenging. When the urban children of the troupe tease his relationship with Xilinnayi as ‘puppy love’ and when his beloved dove is sent away by his step- mother, he decides to return to his hometown.
On his way home, he comes across a grotto where he sleeps through the night. The sequence in the next morning starts with a close-up on a massive statute of a smiling Buddha, whose bust almost occupies the whole frame. Then Kulaixi enters the foreground of the frame. He turns his head towards the Buddha and bursts into laughter. A long shot from the back and side of the Buddha follows, in which the Buddha is situated on the left side of the foreground, while a steep slope of a huge mountain occupies the background. In the midground between the Buddha and the slope, Kulaixi comes out from underneath, running towards a mosque-like building made of
47
Chapter 1
stone, sand and clay (Figure 1.9). His giggles are heard while he runs. When he arrives at the foot of the building, he stops. He bends double laughing before turning around and starting to climb the building.
Figure 1.9 The smiling Buddha and the mosque-like building outside the grotto
The next shot reveals that he is already up in the building. In a close shot, he looks happily around and then starts to play his drum. When he plays, the camera zooms out and stops at a low-angle long shot, showing him standing high on one side of the building (Figure 1.10). The shot is dominated by the sound of drumbeats until it is cut to a medium shot of a moving car approaching and coming to a sudden stop with loud noise. Kulaixi is discovered by passers-by.
Figure 1.10 Kulaixi playing his drum on the mosque-like building
This sequence shows explicitly how Kulaixi occupies a natural environment to produce music. 48
Chapter 1
The location is different from the ruins where it can only be inferred that Kulaxi often plays his drum alone. The musical space in this sequence is fully developed, and Kulaxi is situated in a wide-open space alone. According to Mackinnon, such musical space in ‘natural’ solitude gives rise to a ‘psychical’ space in which an underprivileged character can transcend his/her worries and concerns in the diegetic life. Kulaixi probably yearns for a place where there is no bias or conflict but the freedom to exploit his full potential as a drum player (in the troupe) and a kind- hearted child (in the family). In this solitude moment, the natural environment is transformed into Kulaixi’s private space, where he can be true to himself.
Moreover, Kulaixi’s performance in this sequence, unlike previous staged performances, ‘appears to spring from nowhere, in surroundings apparently not intended for performance’ (Laing 2000, 6). According to Heather Laing, when the music seems to originate from nowhere, it is more likely to arise from the site of the player as ‘a means of self-expression’, which often occurs in the case of ‘composers and musicians as characters’ (2000, 7). Kulaixi can compose music with his drum, as demonstrated in the film’s opening sequence. The explosive force of drumbeats in this sequence probably reflects the power of his emotion that is too intense to be contained in his quotidian urban life.
The juxtaposition of the statue of the Buddha, let alone a smiling Buddha, with the mosque-like building is interesting. It may connote the similarity of music and religion in creating utopian feelings, as mentioned earlier. Historically, the region of Tuyuq was an active centre of multiple religions, including Buddhism, before the arrival of Islam that pretty much wiped out all other religious beliefs since (X. Wang and Fan 2005; Xiang 2006; N. Li 2011). Anthropological findings suggest that local Uyghurs consider historical Buddhist sites dangerous,13 and thus the film’s construction of Kulaixi’s giggles and laughs at seeing the Buddha is likely to betray the truth psyche of Uyghurs. However, the film’s successful manipulation of religious symbols to convey the connection of religion with music and utopian is undeniable. Standing high on the mosque- like building, Kulaixi probably uses his drumbeats to express his yearning for a more ideal urban space where he can obtain advantages provided by modern education and systems but less hostility, misunderstanding and discrimination from his urban counterparts.
13 They believe that visiting these Buddhist sites can invite illnesses. See “Legend of the Seven Saints”, China Daily, March 10, 2009. Accessed 16 February 2018. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2009- 03/10/content_7558120.htm. 49
Chapter 1
4. The musical carnival
After Kulaixi returns to the troupe and reconciles with his step-mother with the return of his dove near the end of the film, there is a rather poetic and hilarious musical sequence. The children and teachers of the troupe are situated in the diversity of local and natural landscapes in Xinjiang. According to the filmmaker, this prolonged sequence was shot in three locations: Dushanzi Oil Refinery, Tianchi Lake Reserves of Tianshan Mountains, and Qumtagh Desert in Shanshan county. The footage was collected after the main story had already been filmed. The filmmaker’s purpose is to show the freedom and happiness of the children (Guang 1992). But what is the actual impact? Since cinematic landscape is capable of imposing ‘order on the elements of landscape’, taking on extra meanings due to cinematic devices deployed (Harper and Rayner 2010b, 16), and expressing various ‘ideas, attitudes and sentiments’ of the filmmaker and characters (Aitken and Dixon 2006, 331), it is important to investigate the symbolic meanings of these landscapes, especially in terms of their function as space in a musical.
In general, the refinery is audio-visually treated in a different manner from others. Except for the refinery, the children dance and play instruments, in addition to having adventures and sightseeing, in all geographies. To overcome disjunction in the children’s music-making in various locations, a type of light-hearted non-diegetic music is consistently used, except for, again, the refinery. Specifically speaking, a type of strong dynamic music starts the sequence and accompanies a downward panning shot focusing on a piece of landmark equipment in the refinery. The children, with helmets on, visit the factory under the guidance of a man, who looks like a Han Chinese (Figure 1.11). A zoomed-in shot shows Kulaixi and the urban children of the troupe standing side by side and holding each other over the shoulders with smiles on their faces.
50
Chapter 1
Figure 1.11 A refinery
After that, all the children are running down a slope of a grassland on a sunny day. Girls hold colourful umbrellas in their hands. Against the background of yurts, the urban girls, with both fear and excitement, ride a camel led by Kulaixi and Lalaguli under concerted gazes of a herd of sheep. Kulaixi plays his drum in a dramatic way to accompany Xilinnayi’s dance, which evokes applause and laughter from the female teacher and the children on the side. This is followed by another shot of the sheep, with the camera panning across their staring eyes. The scene then shifts to a river. There is first a close shot of Lalaguli dancing on a deck accompanied by Kulaixi’s drum. When Xilinnayi is shown dressed up and dancing in a medium shot on the deck, snow- covered mountains and pine trees in the background are visible. Then the geography shifts to a desert, where a dramatic martial arts performance is first presented. It is given by the male teacher on the top of a slope before he rolls down it. Then the female teacher leads the children running across the desert with their instruments in hands. In the ensuing close and medium shots, boys (including Kulaixi) play instruments and dance together, while girls (including Lalaguli) dance with and later without umbrellas over their shoulders. When boys roll down a slope, girls emerge from the top with umbrellas. After waving their hands at the direction of the camera, they throw away their umbrellas, and start to roll down the slope. The sequence ends with an unpeopled shot of different colours of umbrellas rolling down the slope. With two transitional shots of a sunset, the film cuts to the troupe’s performance at Xinjiang People’s Hall.
From the perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1984) carnivalesque, this carnival sequence has liberating power in two aspects. On the one hand, it creates a ‘a special form of free and familiar contact’ in which ‘truly human relations’ are established and experienced in the ‘carnival spirit’
51
Chapter 1
(Bakhtin 1984, 10). This is particularly reflected through Kulaixi’s integration with the urban children of the troupe. In both the social and natural landscapes, interpersonal connections are free from social construction of the rural-urban binary structure. On the other hand, the carnivalesque creates a harmonious relationship between human and nonhuman (the physical environment and other species), evidently demonstrated at the moment when the children are situated in the natural landscapes. Such ecological harmony is a prominent feature of ‘ecocinema’ (S. Lu 2009). However, more notably, the carnivalesque elements as elaborated by Bakhtin (1984) as folk humour, laughter, festivities, parody, comic spectacles, and so on are posed as separate from the social landscape of the refinery in which the children are situated.
There is a clear dualistic approach taken here. The refinery, although briefly presented, is a critical landscape in this sequence. Dushanzi, as a site of one of the largest oil refineries in China,14 is a landscape that represents seriousness, progression and a ‘learning environment’ for the ethnic minority children. To some extent, it symbolises contemporary Han civilisation, a monument to modernisation and industrialisation. The filmmaker’s choice of this state-owned factory exhibits her endorsement of national ideology. More importantly, this ideology underpins Kulaixi’s yearning for the urban space. There is a clear implication that education and the system provided by the urban environment is more advanced.15 Whilst Kulaixi’s aspiration for the urban environment is partly motivated by his family, his yearning also suggests a belief that urban facilities can improve his ‘quality’ and facilitate his development. Despite his talent, his physical resettlement to skyscraper-filled capital Urumchi is a necessity for his upward transformation. The refinery exemplifies the type of advanced education that can be provided by the Han-dominated system in the urban space, and thus constitutes part of the ‘utopia’ defined in the film.
While the refinery is not a place for random musical performance, the natural landscapes in Xinjiang such as the reserves and the desert are sites to be ‘naturally’ carefree, happy and
14 According to Wang Qiming (1991) and Liu Baohong (1991), Dushanzi Oil Refinery was established in 1936 through a cooperation between the Republic of China (1912-1949) and the Soviet Union. Labelled as a ‘pearl’ in the Gobi Desert, it is one of the largest oil deposit fields in China and the top industry in Xinjiang. 15 In other sequences of the film, the child characters’ mentioning of a ‘three-all-round’ student and a score of ‘one-hundred points’ also indicate the influence of Han ideology through school education. When the female teacher reprimands the urban children of the troupe after she finds out they have played a trick on Xilinnayi and Kulaixi, she explicitly says that, ‘By giving you education and providing you with opportunities to sing and dance, I expected you to become respectable/noble persons.’ She was dismayed that the children have failed the system. 52
Chapter 1
humorous in a ‘dramatic’ way. In accordance with Mackinnon’s argument, the Uyghur children’s collective location in the natural environments dancing and playing instruments without boundaries between them can constitute another moment of yearning for the disadvantaged if Uyghurs’ social status is contrasted with the dominant Han. Their subsequent performance at Xinjiang People’s Hall, an extraordinary performance venue that is also politically orthodox, is propounded by Xilinnayi as a culmination of their success. However, what they aspire further is an opportunity to perform in the national centre. When their performance on stage intercuts with shots of a group of Han-looking judges nodding their heads in approval, there is an implication that their performance and their future development are subject to the gaze of the state. What they yearn for – a stage on which to create fantasy and utopian feelings for themselves and for others – may render them an object of gaze, as implied by the gaze of the sheep in the carnival sequence. So, what they yearn for is a specific type of social space in the larger context of the society. Especially in the case of Kulaixi and Lalaguli who wish to become professional performers, their music-making and dance constitute not only their means of expressing their longings but also the very contents of their longings. Such cinematic construction alludes to a type of social space constructed by a mainstream filmmaker for ethnic minorities in which the Uyghur children and the Uyghurs are encouraged to become an object of gaze for the dominant group of the society, and they turn out to be what Dyer calls, in the case of black performers, ‘only entertainment’ (2000, 25).
Conclusion
This chapter argues that Guang has, unconsciously or not, taken advantage of the great power of ‘natural’ space in a musical as recognised by Mackinnon to construct the yearnings of the underprivileged ethnic minorities. She also takes advantage of the social context of modernisation and urbanisation to turn the Uyghur children and their musical spaces in nature into a means of accomplishing a national narrative. The ‘somewhere better’ in the Uyghur children’s yearnings, being an urban troupe, a provincial auditorium or ultimately a stage in the nation’s capital (which is kept off representation in the film), are all spatial, musical and significantly social. Guang achieves her film’s ideological function of consolidating a Han- dominated multi-ethnic nation-state through first constructing social differences within the ethnic group based on occupying of the musical space by underlings and then establishing a contrast between the ‘natural’ musical spaces and a Han-dominated superior system that the Uyghurs long for. Although Guang intends to reflect ‘positive and beautiful images’ of Xinjiang
53
Chapter 1
and its people, her musical turns out to be dependent on a manipulation of the supposedly primitive and backward landscapes of Xinjiang to achieve her pursuit of a film’s social educational function.
54
Chapter 2 Nostalgia and Rural Idyllic Childhood: An Idealistic Vision of the Miao Children’s Relationships with Nature, Agricultural Land, Village Community and Ethnic Tradition
Introduction
In 2008, independent Chinese Han filmmaker Ning Jingwu scripted, directed and produced two feature films about Miao children: Lala’s Gun and Bird’s Nest. Both consist of two parts. The first halves concern the children’s experiences in their hometowns, and the second halves relate to their journeys away from home. Except for the second half of Bird’s Nest which focuses on the child protagonist’s journey to Beijing (see Chapter 3), all of the other parts significantly situate the children in the real location of Basha Miao village and its neighbouring areas. This chapter focuses on these predominantly rural spaces and explores how the filmmaker’s cinematic representation of these geographies reflects his certain expectation and imagination of the Miao children’s childhood experiences in the context of China’s modernisation process.
The Basha Miao village lies in China’s southwest Guizhou province. The village is inhabited by an old Miao tribe that retains many traditional practices and customs.1 The filmmaker is apparently attracted by this place when he claims that, ‘Basha is the most poetic habitat of humans, the spiritual home of not only Basha Miao people but also everyone else’ (Ning 2012). Such a psychological attitude to the location has certainly shaped his cinematic representation of this location and his construction of the child characters, especially when he employs many landscape shots to represent the children’s lives, quests, encounters and decisions. While previous research on the two films has largely focused on cinematic representation of ethnographical practices in a Miao cultural zone, such as rituals, songs, funerals and wizardry (K. Liu et al. 2013; J. Jiang 2013; Nie 2012), this chapter interrogates what has been missed but is significantly presented on screen – the cinematic interactions between the child characters and their environments, as well as the implications of such representations.
The chapter argues that the filmmaker has constructed a rather idealistic vision of the Miao children’s childhood experiences with his landscape shots. Such a vision reflects the filmmaker’s nostalgic feelings towards an ideal past in the context of China’s rapid march into modernity. His nostalgia can be viewed as a social commentary on the negative impacts of Han-dominated
1 For example, according to accounts in Ning (2012) and Zhang Zao (2012), women in Basha weave hemp and dye cloth as in the pre-industrial society; men wear clothes in the style of the Qin dynasty (221 B.C. – 207 B.C.) and wear hair bun in the style of the Han dynasty (202 B.C. – 220).
Chapter 2
industrialism, urbanisation and migration. The idealistic construction is achieved in three ways. First, a harmonious relationship is established between the children and nature, agricultural land and village community. Such cinematic construction amounts to a type of rural idyllic childhood, a key spatial discourse in the study of children’s geographies. Second, through the Miao boy Lala’s mobility to neighbouring villages in search of his father and his encounter with all sorts of Miao men in Lala’s Gun, the filmmaker constructs a collective Miao community on an extended scale. This community significantly sets up role models for Lala as a self-sufficient farmer and an inheritor of an endangered Miao tradition, despite real-life challenges faced by Miao men in the context of a market economy. Third, the idealised ‘rural’ and ‘ethnic’ childhood configured in the preceding two ways is reinforced by the rather negative images of town space and city space in the films. The latter, as a ‘structuring absence’ (Robertson 1997, 271), is forcefully evoked in the case of Guwang, Lala’s friend, whose sudden death after working in a big city for a short period becomes a symbol of demonised urban space, a foil for Lala to consolidate his persistence in traditional Miao practices and cultural spaces.
In the sections below, I set up theoretical frameworks first and then focus on each way of construction. In the end, I situate Ning’s idealistic construction in the context of similar practices in Chinese cinema and his own oeuvre. The chapter suggests that the filmmaker’s idealistic construction reflects his personal preference as well as a dominant Han filmmaker’s tendency to manipulate marginal characters and periphery spaces to address concerns in the centre of the nation.
Nostalgia, Modernity and Rural Idyllic Childhood
In cinematic representation, the subject of children and childhood is often used to express a feeling of nostalgia (Lury 2010a). According to O’ Shea, nostalgia is ‘a means of using the (idealized or simplified) past to redeem the (complicated and painful) present’ (2005, 83-84). Childhood is a convenient symbol of the past because, in the imagination of adults, childhood is a period that is free from ‘tensions and complications of the present’ as in the lives of adults (85). Ethnic minority children in China seem to be more suitable for serving this purpose as their childhoods (despite a diversity of specific childhood experiences) embody double pasts. Besides their assumed innocence and simplicity as imagined in the case of childhood in general as opposed to adults (Faulkner 2013),2 their living environments are often filled with legacies of
2 Indeed, there are two views of childhood, Apollonian and Dionysian, both of which are considered essentialist. They respectively attribute children’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviours to being a ‘natural’ part of 56
Chapter 2
the past, such as in the context of a pre-modern society. In Ning’s films, the Miao children embody the very connotation of the double pasts due to their living environment, the Basha village, which, as mentioned earlier, maintains many traditions even today.
In nostalgia, the past is evoked to reflect on the present, and thus nostalgia and modernity are closely related. The ‘(complicated and painful) present’ obviously points to various problems and challenges arising from modern societies. The feeling of nostalgia held by Chinese social elites such as the filmmaker originates considerably from China’s rapid economic development since the reform and opening-up. As Timothy Oakes (1992, 4) suggests, nostalgia is ‘itself imbedded within the ideals of modernity’. Without socio-economic developments and in particular an aspiration for a better natural and social environment, nostalgia would not be formed. The long-held stereotypical images of ethnic minority children as being pure and innocent living in pre-modern societies, coupled with the emergence of negative consequences of modernity across the nation such as environmental degradation and social alienation, render the Miao children’s childhood experiences in their primitive environments the perfect embodiment of the filmmaker’s nostalgia. While the ‘past’ is not devoid of its problems, like ‘sins’ that accompany modernity, the ‘past’ must be ‘idealised or simplified’ so as to contrast with and then ‘redeem’ the ‘present’.
To express his nostalgia, the filmmaker has emphatically constructed rather idyllic childhood experiences for the Miao children in the rural space. The concept of a rural idyllic childhood is mainly configured in the minority world (Powell, Taylor, and Smith 2013).3 It claims that the rural area is a better and safer place for children to grow up. Living in a rural environment means being beneficially close to nature, open to free exploration of outdoor spaces, and surrounded by ‘a peaceful, tranquil, close knit community’ (Valentine 1997, 137; Aitken 1994). This rural idyllic lifestyle resonates with images conceived by some classical Chinese poetry, such as ‘As I pick chrysanthemums beneath the eastern fence, my eyes fall leisurely on the Southern
what it is to be a child (Jenks 1996). Chinese ethnic minority children are often deemed innocent and good natured and thus fall into the Apollonian view. However, according to new social studies of childhood, the good qualities are not biologically determined but socially constructed (Prout and James 1990; A. James, Jenks, and Prout 1998). The film discussed in this chapter contributes to this type of construction. 3 According to Powell, Taylor, and Smith (2013, 128), based on ‘broad areas of economic privilege and poverty’ instead of ‘geographically inaccurate terms’, the world is divided into the minority world and majority world. The minority world refers to ‘the economically more privileged countries, such as Europe, United States, Australia and New Zealand’. For the definition of the majority world, see note 5 of this chapter. 57
Chapter 2
Mountain’ (Caiju dongli xia, youran jian nanshan) or ‘A clear and bright moon casts its light on the pine woods, while creeks flow above the stones’ (Mingyue songjian zhao, qingquan shishang liu).4 In these poems and others, the countryside is considered a place for spiritual rest, a pure land for an unfettered mind, and a hideout from a boisterous secular life. If the rural environment is preferable for adults to seek serenity, purity and innocence, it should be an ideal location for children to spend their early years of life (Kong 2011).
However, such beautiful, poetic and peaceful images of the countryside have dramatically changed in China since the 1990s, as most of the rural areas are largely deserted due to mass- scale urbanisation and migration. Nonetheless, film critics find that rural children still embody the innocence of childhood and virtues of traditional societies in the cultural imagination of urban filmmakers (H. Zhang 2005). This situation cannot be separated from the role of living environments in their imagined forms in the construction of childhood and child characters. Therefore, despite the changed social circumstances, a rural environment is still closely involved in a filmmaker’s configuration of an idyllic childhood.
In the case of Ning, his means of expressing nostalgia is to construct a rural idyllic childhood that is immune to the negative impacts of modernisation such as industrialisation, urbanisation and migration. Taking advantage of geographies in Basha and its neighbouring rural areas, the filmmaker employs many landscape shots to achieve this end. Specifically, the filmmaker has constructed a pristine forest, a poetic terrace land and a close-knit village community for the Miao children. In contrast to a modern life in the urban space, the three aspects respectively embody an idealistic rural ‘past’ that is harmonious between human and nature, human and agricultural land, and human and human. The Miao children are ideally situated in such an environment to live through their childhood.
Such cinematic construction of a rural idyllic childhood contrasts with a sense of alienation experienced by many urban residents in a modern society. The alienation is believed to be created by a conscious separation of human beings from the rest of the universe. As Albert Einstein elaborates when he contemplates on a human’s relationship with the universe,
A human being is part of the whole…. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal
4 The former is quoted from Drinking Wine (Yinjiu) by Tao Yuanming (365-427), and the latter is quoted from Autumn Evening in the Mountains (Shanju qiumin) by Wang Wei (699-759). 58
Chapter 2
desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures, and the whole [of] nature in its beauty. (as quoted in Weber [1986, 203])
In addition to advocating a return to an idealised past to reconnect with the universe, nostalgia is characterised by a negative attitude towards social change (O’ Shea 2005). That is why it is deemed one of the ‘dissenting voices of modernity’ (Oakes 1992, 4). The filmmaker Ning has cinematically presented rather dismissive images of town space. He also expects Lala to carry on traditional Miao practices despite the difficult circumstances of Miao men in a modern society. Guwang’s symbolic death after his migration to the urban space embodies the filmmaker’s negative attitude to the choice of relinquishing ethnic traditions in exchange for Han-dominated modernity. Lala’s dedicated song at Guwang’s funeral reflects on Guwang’s cause of death and further reveals the filmmaker’s intention of consolidating Lala’s determination to lead a traditional life – being ‘rural’ and ‘ethnic’.
Rural Idyllic Childhood: Nature, Agricultural Land and Village Community
The filmmaker has constructed an idyllic ‘rural’ childhood for the Miao children by focusing on their relationships with nature, agricultural land and village community. This section starts with an examination of how the filmmaker manages to construct a harmonious relationship between the children and the natural environment of a forest.
1. Forest: a ‘synonymous’ relationship and an awe-filled relationship between the children and nature
Situating the Miao children in the natural landscape of the forest is both a realist representation of Miao geographical location and an embodiment of the filmmaker’s idealistic vision of situating the children in the pre-social context of nature.5 Such a vision is reflected in two relationships between the children and the forest: a ‘synonymous’ relationship and an awe-filled relationship. The term ‘synonymous’ is taken from Donald Meinig’s (1979, 34-35) description of the pristine state of nature: ‘There was a time, in the sweet childhood of the human race, when man lived close to nature … the world of nature and the world of man were synonymous.’ In the ‘synonymous’ relationship, the children and the forest are equal, inseparable and homogenous. The awe-filled relationship originates from a religious belief of Miao people that attributes
5 As the film shows, Miao’s residential and production geographies are structured hierarchically. Forests and villages are located on the upland, terrace fields are in the middle, and rivers and grass are at the bottom. 59
Chapter 2
supernatural powers to the forest. This relationship contributes to an ecological consciousness among the Miao children at an early age. The two relationships demonstrate the filmmaker’s inflation of the Miao children with nature, physically and ideologically, as well as in action of protection.
The ‘synonymous’ relationship between the Miao children and the forest is typically illustrated in the opening sequence of Bird’s Nest. The film starts with a close-up tracking shot that follows the protagonist Xiangma’s feet moving cautiously on the forest ground. The subsequent medium shot shows his body swiftly crouching to catch an insect. Framed in a close-up, the insect is put gently inside a small silver container hanging down from his neck. He then stands up and turns his head. An eyeline match shows another Miao boy in a medium long shot busy pushing one of his cattle to move. Xiangma walks in the frame and jokes that the buffalo is as lazy as his ‘young master’. In protest, the shepherd boy pushes Xiangma to the ground. As a result, Xiangma’s insects escape from the container. To make up for the loss, the two boys start to walk through the forest together to catch more worms. When they arrive at an open space, a long shot shows the shepherd boy standing on the ground looking up while Xiangma is climbing up a tree (Figure 2.1). The camera makes a steady ascending track of Xiangma’s climbing until a close-up is edited to show him stopping at a branch and starting to feed a nest of baby birds with worms.
Figure 2.1 Xiangma climbing up a tree (Bird’s Nest)
This opening sequence demonstrates the filmmaker’s attempt to ‘restore nature to her pristine condition’ (Meinig 1979, 34-35). A few primary natural elements in the forest are emphasised cinematically, such as insects, trees, baby birds and the nest. These natural elements share a ‘synonymous’ status with the Miao children in relation to the forest. The children are no different from the animals and plants in the forest in the sense that they fit completely into the
60
Chapter 2
environment. The landscape shot of Figure 2.1 presented in a movement shot highlights the scale and the colour of the forest, while Xiangma is rendered indistinguishable from other creatures such as a monkey when he skilfully climbs up a tree. The duration of the shot plays up the intimate and familiar contact between him and the tree. Xiangma’s ultimate feeding of the baby birds reinforces the ‘synonymous’ relationship between the children and the animals. Both at the stage of childhood, they need care and support especially in case of negligent or absent parents. As informed by the film narrative, the baby birds have a careless mother bird while Xiangma has a migrant father. As if by telepathy, Xiangma takes care of the baby birds in the same manner as he expects himself to be looked after. Such conflation of Miao childhood with nature corresponds with a romantic vision of childhood under ‘a powerful formative effect’ of Rousseau’s utopian configuration of nature and childhood as innocent and pure (A. Taylor 2011, 422-423). In Rousseau’s ([1762] 2003) view, childhood is the pre-social condition of human beings, as nature is the pre-social condition of the classed, raced (modern) world. Childhood shares with nature the state of harmony, equality and innocence. The Miao children’s interaction with nature in this sequence is obviously consistent with this romantic vision of childhood. The filmmaker takes advantage of the ‘synonymous’ relationship between the Miao children and the forest to express his nostalgia for an idyllic past that is pre-social and pre- modern.
The opening sequence also reveals an aspect of the children’s experience that seems to violate an idealist vision: the family chores such as grazing cattle that the Miao children must undertake. Despite this, no hardship is specifically portrayed except for a ‘lazy’ buffalo that refuses to move. Instead, the children are shown to be capable of negotiating some free time to play. For example, the shepherd boy puts aside his chores immediately to help Xiangma catch worms. This situation echoes empirical findings of human geographers on other rural childhoods in the majority world.6 For instance, the children in the rural villages of Africa and South America are found to be good at merging work and leisure (Katz 1994; Punch 2000), ‘so that their work is also fun and allows them the social freedom to play’ (Punch 2000, 57). The Miao children’s experiences on screen are very similar to these rural childhoods. On several occasions, the two films highlight the ease of these children in developing free time and space away from home no matter they are shepherding, doing farm work or running errands. There is no cinematic or narrative
6 According to Powell, Taylor, and Smith (2013, 128), the majority world refers to ‘the world area in which most of the world’s population live, the economically poorer countries referred to as the “developing world”, namely Africa, Asia and Latin America’. 61
Chapter 2
emphasis on the hardship of their chores that jeopardises their childhood experiences as identified by anti-idyll discourse (S. James 1990). What is highlighted instead is their success in engaging with nature such as the forest more freely in time and space.
The other awe-filled relationship between the Miao children and the forest is well demonstrated in the opening sequence of Lala’s Gun. In this case, the forest becomes a sacred place where a coming-of-age ritual is being held. The film starts with a low-angle shot showing the tops of the trees infused with bright sunlight. The shot then moves down slowly to take in a crowd of Miao people standing on the ground. The camera moves closer to the crowd, passing before their bodies and then cuts to a low-angle frontal shot (Figure 2.2). The shot shows three serious- looking adults standing in the front, a row of rifle-holding men standing solemnly straight on the left of the background, and some women and children gathered loosely on the right-hand side. Partly hidden from the view is a boy sitting at the bottom of a tree in the foreground facing away from the camera. A sorcerer is presiding over the ceremony. He begs Tree God to take the boy in as his ‘son’, make Life Tree his father, Disaster-Blocking Tree his mother, and give him a blessing for fast growth and a smooth life. In a high-angle shot that follows, there is a full view of the three adults and the boy as if Tree God has heard the request and is looking down at his new ‘son’. The sorcerer continues his pleading with Tree God, asking him to reward the boy’s good behaviours and punish his mischief. When the sorcerer finally announces he will entrust the boy to Tree God and ask him to take good care of him, the film cuts away from the hotspot of the ritual to the border showing another boy, the film’s protagonist LaLa, approaching quickly to catch a view of the event. When cutting back to the hotspot, the sitting boy is asked to rise to call Tree God ‘Dad’. A close-up shot frames the boy carrying a rifle on his shoulder, raising his head upwards and shouting ‘Dad’.
Figure 2.2 A coming-of-age ritual (Lala’s Gun)
62
Chapter 2
In this sequence, the forest is not only ‘large, immense, great, and mysterious’ but also ‘possesses the power to change lives and alter destinies’, like those in Grimm’s fairy tales (Zipes 1987, 66). The sacredness of the forest and the resulting awe-filled relationship between the forest and the Miao children is achieved in several ways. Firstly, the image of trees is highlighted in the very beginning with a low-angle shot. Trees are bathed in the sunshine as if taking on spiritual charm. There is even a high-angle God’s point-of-view shot, which can be taken simply as Tree God’s perspective in this context. Secondly, the sorcerer’s words reveal a deep ideological relationship between the boy who is coming-of-age and the forest. Trees have spirits and even supernatural powers to give blessings or punishments to the children. They become their transcendental parents and guardians from birth to death. Thus, the forest becomes more than nature but a ‘restorative environment’ (Louv 2008, 102) and a ‘moral teacher’ (189) that provides psychological solace and moral guidance for the Miao children. Finally, such ideology is conveyed in a serious manner. The participation of all villagers, especially the gun-carrying male adults in the background, whether they are relatives of the coming-of-age boy or not, increases the solemnity of such a moment and establishes the authority of the belief. As a result, the awe-filled relationship between the Miao children and the forest further binds the children’s destinies with nature. A conflation of the Miao children with nature is realised not only physically (the ‘synonymous’ relationship) but also ideologically (the awe-filled relationship).
Because of such conflation, the Miao children on screen develop an ecological consciousness at an early age. The filmmaker obviously admires this consequential consciousness of environmental protection as he emphasises on several occasions the environmental considerations that the children take when decision-making. For example, in Bird’s Nest, when a group of Miao children are placed in the forest discussing how to raise funds for Xiangma’s trip to Beijing (Figure 2.3), they think about picking herbs and cutting firewood to sell. However, when speaking of the latter, they remind themselves not to over-exploit nature as the amount of firewood in the forest is limited in each period.
63
Chapter 2
Figure 2.3 A group meeting (Bird's Nest)
In Figure 2.3, the dangling rope in the foreground is a symbol of the ‘synonymous’ relationship between the children and the forest as the rope is part of a standing swing that the Miao children have created to entertain themselves. However, to maintain the forest as a place for fun, the children know they must protect it first. In addition, the awe-filled relationship between the children and the forest, as highlighted in Lala’s Gun, also calls for environmental conservation. As a village head’s explanation to Lala about Miao people’s tradition of carrying firewood on shoulders instead of a cart goes: ‘It is fine to cut some firewood for cooking. But people cannot be greedy. Trees have spirits. Don’t you feel painful when carrying firewood on your shoulders? When branches are cut off from the trees, trees get hurt too.’
The filmmaker’s conflation of the Miao children with the forest both physically and ideologically as well as in action of environmental protection reveals his own attitude to the relationship between human and nature. He apparently advocates a more intimate, reciprocal and sustainable relationship between human and nature, which contrasts with a modern scenario of physical and ideological alienation from nature. Modern society is marred by the reckless exploitation of the natural environment for the sake of economic development, marked by a lack of social responsibilities. What is worse, a lack of awe towards nature renders disenchanted people unafraid of the consequences of their behaviours. In this sense, Ning’s cinematic construction provides a source of reflection and redemption. Its explicit ecological message turns the films into ‘ecocinema’ and echoes what Sheldon Lu articulates as the significance of ‘ecocinema’, that is, to ‘redeem the fallen world of ruins and eco-catastrophes and re-enchant the imperilled planet’ (2009, 14). The long duration of the shot framing Xiangma’s climbing of a tree illustrates what Scott MacDonald highlights as the value of slow images in ecocinema in enhancing the audience’s ‘cinematic experiences of being immersed within the natural world’
64
Chapter 2
(2013, 19). However, such cinematic construction is apparently simplified and idealistic as it contradicts many anthropological reports and empirical findings that delineate alternative images of rural childhoods in contemporary China. They feature deteriorating natural environments, decreasing religious conviction, extreme poverty, hardship and loneliness of young people (Ye and Murray 2005; Ye and Pan 2008, 2011; Ye et al. 2010; Ye 2011; S. Lu et al. 2016). While Ning’s construction is based on some ‘reality’ of the Basha village, his personal expectation and imagination may largely shape the type of childhood experience he selects to put on screen.
2. Terrace land: an inseparable relationship between the children and land
An idyllic ‘rural’ childhood is also constructed for the Miao children through the filmmaker’s establishment of a harmonious relationship between the children and agricultural land. Terrace land features prominently in the two films, especially in Lala’s Gun. The land is different from the forest as the latter is preferred to preserve its pristine condition, while the former is more celebrated as a constructive reformulation of the earth by human beings. It is a product of ‘a collective shaping of the earth over time’ (Crang 1998, 14). The shaping is beneficial to human beings without violating the law of nature.
The filmmaker apparently adores this miracle created by Miao people. Evidence for this is seen in the crane shot that follows Lala’s movement in carrying firewood away from his hometown village shortly after the film starts. The upward movement of the shot marginalises Lala in the foreground and deliberately draws viewers’ attention to the terrace land in the middle range of the mountain in the background (Figure 2.4). The movement of the shot reveals the filmmaker’s personal obsession with the landscape, which even temporarily takes precedence over his child character. As a symbol of China’s thousands of years of agricultural civilisation, the terrace land is particularly important for Miao people who make a living out of it. Thus, it constitutes a key geography for the filmmaker’s construction of an idyllic childhood for the Miao children.
65
Chapter 2
Figure 2.4 A view of the terrace land in the distance (Lala’s Gun)
By placing the children in this environment with either a panorama or an overhead shot, the filmmaker has constructed an inseparable relationship between the children and the land. This reflects his expectation of the Miao children to carry on their agricultural tradition. For example, when Lala walks through terrace fields at the outset of his journey, he is situated in a high-angle panorama shot (Figure 2.5), in which his intimacy with the land is underlined while his figure is swallowed by the surroundings. At harvest season, the fully grown golden crops dominate in colour, shape and scale. By contrast, the boy’s figure is overshadowed by the immense environment. He is simply inseparable from patches of fields.
Figure 2.5 Lala walking through the terrace land (Lala’s Gun)
The shot is reminiscent of landscape shots in Times and Winds (2006, dir. Reha Erdem), a Turkish children’s film. In those shots, Karen Lury describes the child characters as being placed ‘between the animate and inanimate, or the earth and sky … they are not separate from the land; they are not “figures on the landscape” – they are part of the world’ (2010a, 287). In a similar fashion, Lala appears to be absorbed by the overwhelming presence of the land in Figure
66
Chapter 2
2.5. Nonetheless, with his movement, links are established between the animate human and inanimate land. Film viewers are presented with a continuous alternation of the animate and inanimate. At times when the wind blows, the child seems motionless while the land becomes alive. The interchangeability renders the child inseparable from the land in the same manner as the ‘synonymous’ relationship between the children and the forest.
When a high-angle overhead shot is single-handedly used in a sequence at sowing season, the children are not only visible but also constitute an important presence on the land. In this situation, what is highlighted is the visual juxtaposition of the children and the plants in the fields. It occurs on the morning of Lala’s coming-of-age ritual. A high-angle overhead shot situates Lala, together with other Miao children, in a newly sowed rice field (Figure 2.6). They are standing in a muddy field with legs below the knees underneath the water. The children are not doing labour work but trying to catch fish to bless Lala’s future life. The sequence would be commonplace if the overhead shot was taken away. By juxtaposing the children with sprouting young crops, this shot has beautifully drawn a visual analogy between the vitality of the Miao children and the new plants.
Figure 2.6 Lala and other Miao children in a rice field (Lala's Gun)
Moreover, due to the visual analogy, the children’s ‘agricultural work’ takes on a poetic touch. The work is indeed merely a simulation, although the children situate themselves among the same environmental elements as labouring adults: water, field, mud and plants. The anti-idyll discourse of agricultural decline and hardship is avoided (S. James 1990). The shot highlights the inseparability of the Miao children from the land, which is not because the children are situated ‘between the animate and inanimate’ as previously but because the land is still a primary means of livelihood for Miao people. As a child who is coming-of-age, Lala needs to acquire the
67
Chapter 2
knowledge, skills and strength to work in the fields in addition to being physically attached to the land.
In short, the cinematic treatments of the terrace land in relation to the Miao children enhance the filmmaker’s idyllic construction of a rural childhood. They reflect the filmmaker’s admiration for an inseparable relationship between human and land. Contrary to urban children whose activity space is often sealed by steel and cement, the Miao children on screen link the sky and the earth. They act as an ideal intermediary between human and land. The agricultural tradition is suggested to be maintained. The scenes of harvest and sowing are aesthetically and poetically presented, thanks to the deployment of landscape shots, to facilitate a harmonious relationship between the children and the land.
3. Village: a close-knit community
Besides conflating the Miao children with nature and land, the filmmaker also uses many collective images of a village to construct a close-knit community in service of an idyllic ‘rural’ childhood. The aforementioned opening sequence of Lala’s Gun shows a collective image of villagers participating in a Miao boy’s coming-of-age ritual. Such collective images are plenty when the filmmaker focuses the camera on the living area of the village, where the children are physically situated in a community larger than an individual family. The collective images highlight the exemplary and supportive roles of the village community for the Miao children’s behaviours and attitudes. The close-knit community is contrary to the isolated and self-centred profile of an urban society (Wirth 1938; Geis and Ross 1998). As a result, the filmmaker has once again constructed a rather idealistic vision of childhood for the sake of his nostalgia. In this case, it is more about human-human relationship, coupled with human-nature relationship.
A rather impressive image that demonstrates the exemplary role of the village community occurs when the Miao children save a wounded vulture in Bird’s Nest. With the guidance of an elderly villager, they apply herbal medicines to its broken leg. When they get ready to set it free, a long shot pans downward from the top of a tree to a group of villagers standing underneath. The bird is released, and all of the villagers stretch their arms straight upward in a ritualistic fashion (Figure 2.7). In this image, the children and adults all look solemn, serious and unanimous. The image proves, in retrospect, Xiangma’s caring for the baby birds in the beginning of the film is not a rare case but a common practice among Miao people. As Zheng Qian has claimed,
68
Chapter 2
In a pre-industrial society, the human-bird or human-nature relationship is never accidental. Saving a bird can be as serious as any other big events. In contrast, the human-bird relationship in the city is separated by thick walls of industrial civilisation. It is accidental, interruptive and discontinuous. (Q. Zheng 2008)
The image that best illustrates the urban version of human-bird relationship is the rows of bird cages that Xiangma sees in Beijing. They are placed on the roadside of a highway before the commencement of a marathon participated in by volunteers. Birds are caged for the entertainment of urban citizens.
Figure 2.7 Villagers releasing a bandaged bird (Bird’s Nest)
An example of the supportive role of the community comes from a sequence in which villagers help Xiangma to earn a fare to Beijing. In a static high-angle long shot, men and women, old and young, are working together to make bamboo cups (Figure 2.8). While they work, some men are having a conversation about Xiangma’s forthcoming trip and cannot help praising his cleverness at making money (by selling bamboo cups to a local rice-wine festival) without migrating to cities. During the conversation, the filmmaker makes no cuts to specific speakers. Even their positions cannot be discerned by viewers as most men are facing away from the camera. The audience may recognise the voices of some speakers according to preceding parts of the film. However, for the filmmaker, the individual identities of speakers in this moment are probably not as important as the collective image of villagers displaying their generosity to a child of their community.
69
Chapter 2
Figure 2.8 Villagers making bamboo cups (Bird's Nest)
Collectivism has been one of the core ideologies in socialist China. It advocates selfless contribution of an individual to a group and cooperation among group members for the interests of others or a larger community (D. Wei and Shen 2015). Community can be understood as operating on a diversity of spaces and scales (Valentine 2004). It can serve as a foundation for national construction (Anderson 1983) or simply be ‘place or neighbourhood based’ (Valentine 2004, 9). Gillian Rose (1990, 426) defines community as ‘a group of people bound together by some kind of belief stemming from particular historical and geographical circumstances in their own solidarity’ (as quoted in Valentine 2004). This understanding of community applies to an ethnic group properly.
In socialist cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, including ethnic minority film of these periods, collective images of rural community suffused Chinese screens. In either revolution scenes (such as class struggle) or production scenes (such as socialist economic production), the rural environment was imbued with a high morale of collectivism among villagers, such as in Shanjian xiangling mabang lai/Caravans with Ring (1954, dir. Wang Weiyi), Miaojia ernü/Children of the Miao People (1958, dir. Tao Jin) and Wuduo jinhua/Five Golden Flowers (1959, dir. Wang Jiayi). However, since the reform and opening-up, especially in the recent three decades, there has been an increasingly loss in this type of collective images set in the rural environment. Because of migration and urbanisation, Chinese rural areas have been gradually abandoned by young and middle-aged male villagers who seek employment in a city. Children, women and the elderly are left behind (Ye et al. 2010).
For example, in a recent Han rural film Gaosu tamen, wo cheng baihe qule/Fly with the Crane
70
Chapter 2
(2012, dir. Li Ruijun),7 the village is rather desolate and flaccid. There are no young or middle- aged men, nor are there many women. What dominates the village landscape are old men, either playing cards in the street corner or simply dozing under the sun, while children play with sand near a ruin. The left-behind children are particularly worth attention. They lack care and love from parents and villagers. Their state of being left behind is detrimental to their physical and psychological well-being (Ye and Murray 2005; Ye and Pan 2008, 2011; Ye 2011; S. Lu et al. 2016). In Ning’s films, however, at least from the collective images illustrated above, we still see young and middle-aged Miao men staying in the village. Moreover, they play important roles in the upbringing of the local children. In this sense, the collective images probably reflect the filmmaker’s expectation and imagination of the Miao children growing up in a caring and close- knit community. As for the anti-idyll discourse of unemployment, poor service facilities, and so on (S. James 1990), they must be placed in a subordinate position.
The exemplary and assisting functions of the village in relation to the Miao children contrast with indifferent city environment in which urban children are brought up. Children’s geographies in the city are dominated by institutional spaces of schools and home, coupled with play environments (Mckendrick, Bradford, and Fielder 2000). Public spaces and social interaction within are rather limited and strictly controlled, if we exclude the virtual space provided by information and communication technology (Valentine 2004). Although the ‘street’ is found to be crucial to the identity construction of children and young people (Matthews, Limb, and Taylor 2000), there is a lack of reliable communities resembling the Miao village that can provide children with the right support. Ning’s cinematic construction probably reflects his desire for a much closer interpersonal relationship for the sake of children’s well-being.
Ethnic Childhood: Lala’s Mobility to Neighbouring Miao Areas
Besides a ‘rural’ idyllic childhood, the filmmaker also constructs an idealised ‘ethnic’ childhood for the Miao children to ensure their persistence in ethnic traditions. Lala’s mobility in neighbouring Miao areas in search of his father is an extension of the Miao community beyond the boy’s hometown village. Through his mobility, Lala is placed in a Miao cultural zone on a larger scale, subject to influences of more diverse Miao cultural traditions. In Lala’s encounters
7 Fly with the Crane tells the story of an old man who does not want to be cremated after his death. He prays that one day a crane will take him away. At the end of the film, he succeeds in tricking his grandson and granddaughter into burying him alive under the ground near a lake where he believes he has seen a crane. 71
Chapter 2
with the larger community, the film emphatically shows his interactions with a diversity of Miao men. Ostensibly, this is justified because the purpose of his trip is to look for his father. However, it might as well be understood that, on the verge of adulthood, the boy is keen to obtain knowledge about how to be a Miao man. His mobility has conveniently provided him with various role models so that he can decide what kind of man he wants to become when he grows up.
Lala makes altogether four encounters with individual Miao men or a group of Miao men. These men all face challenges in life in one way or another, which provide lessons for Lala to learn from. Wu Bala, Lala’s first encounter, lost his wife and retreats to the forest living alone due to a failed investment in farming. His story shows the challenge of a market economy to Miao men, which has basically stripped Wu of his dignity as a man. Wu’s experiences may render Lala cautious about his future engagement with the modern financial world. The story of Wu’s father, a famous hunter who once scared a tiger to death in the forest but ends up grazing cattle on the mountain, suggests modernity has also deprived Miao men of a crucial manifestation of their manhood through illegalising hunting. As mentioned earlier, carrying a rifle is legally allowed in the region, but it has become a symbol of a past tradition and masculinity rather than of any practical function. Lala’s encounter with a group of Miao men who witness their houses being burned to ashes probably symbolises the loss of a homeland, which occurs more often due to urbanisation and migration rather than fire as represented in the film. The filmmaker’s negative attitude towards modernity and social change is obvious in these men’s stories, which is consistent with his nostalgic feelings.
More importantly, the filmmaker has established role models for Lala to persist in traditional practices. His encounter with a farmer’s family is set in the aforementioned poetic geography of terrace land. In contrast to Wu Bala who lost his family and the group of Miao men who lost their houses, the farmer’s life is perfect in many ways. He possesses a house, and he heads a family with a wife and two children.8 Moreover, his rice fields achieve bumper harvests year after year as described in his songs. The filmmaker obviously celebrates the life of this character because he employs many pictorial landscape shots to feature the farmer harvesting in the
8 The farmer has a personal dilemma in his life as well, as presented in his secret date with a woman other than his wife. However, his wife’s forgiveness – ‘It is not a bad thing to be loved’ – indicates that he must have done something great that deserves her forgiveness. He should be basically a good man. The wife’s forgiveness is probably more related to Miao people’s tradition of free and open expression of love than to the larger social context of the relaxed attitude toward marital infidelity. 72
Chapter 2
terrace fields with his family. Moreover, these shots are accompanied by the family’s singing about their joys in harvest and contentment with life (Figure 2.9).
Figure 2.9 The farmer’s family harvesting and singing in an extreme long shot (left) and in a medium close shot (right) (Lala’s Gun)
The farmer probably represents a type of agricultural life that the filmmaker expects Lala to follow. It used to be a normative lifestyle for Miao men in addition to hunting (L. Jiang 1999). However, this vision of prosperity in agriculture as well as satisfaction with life, especially in the case of a strong married middle-aged man, is rather idealistic. It represents more of an ideal image of a bygone era in which farming is a self-sufficient economy in the rural environment. In the social reality of modern China, it is doubtable that a mere dependence on agricultural yields in the auspices of nature, as their songs suggest, can lead to a decent life. Physically strong and married men with family responsibilities are more likely to migrate to cities to seek employment and make money, while their fields are either deserted or left in the care of the elderly or women (Ye et al. 2010). This is illustrated in the case of Xiangma’s father who migrates to Beijing to work as a construction worker in Bird’s Nest (see Chapter 3). In this sense, the idealistic image of the farmer serves more to establish a role model for Lala, which reveals the filmmaker’s expectation of the boy to lead a traditional agricultural lifestyle despite the transformed social context.
To secure Lala’s commitment to the tradition, the filmmaker also makes Lala an heir of a traditional practice in Miao people’s funerals – singing death-guidance songs. As the songs are at the risk of vanishing, Lala’s acquisition of the singing skill embeds him firmly into the Miao community as a link between the past and the future. The songs are considered crucial to guiding the path of the deceased person to his/her family members and ancestors in the other world. The central message is to express one’s gratitude to one’s parents at the time of death. The songs also reflect on constituents of a meaningful life and advocate a human’s appreciation of the natural world in raising him/her.
73
Chapter 2
The filmmaker apparently sees value in this cultural practice. The film employs many landscape shots to depict Lala’s acquisition of the skill from a ship repairman. These shots are set against a long river with huge gum trees growing on the riverbank (Figure 2.10). The river and the trees evoke the metaphors of a life course, continuity of time and relative eternity of the material world. In this sense, they are suitable geographies for the guidance of an old Miao man to a Miao youth on issues of life. Like the river seen in the film flowing constantly to one direction, the life course is an irreversible journey. Set in this background, the inquiry about how to spend one’s life meaningfully and how to understand the nature of one’s life is critical as well as natural. The death-guidance songs provide exactly the insights that are needed to tackle these issues.
Figure 2.10 Lala and the ship repairman (Lala’s Gun)
Making Lala an inheritor of a critical Miao cultural tradition exhibits the filmmaker’s intention of securing Lala on the track of ethnic identification. Lala’s acquisition takes on a historical significance for the Miao community when few Miao youths are willing to learn the singing, including the repairman’s son who prefers to work as a migrant worker far away from the Miao community. Lala’s subsequent singing at his friend Guwang’s funeral, as to be elaborated in the next section, not only reveals his understanding of Guwang’s death but also displays his strengthened determination to stick to Miao traditions and live as a Miao man.
Town Space and City Space – Guwang’s Death
The filmmaker’s idealistic construction of a ‘rural’ and ‘ethnic’ childhood for the sake of nostalgia is also accompanied by his negative attitude towards urban space. He presents dismissive images of a neighbouring town near the Basha village, where the children often go to exchange goods for money. While the market economy has impacted the lives of these children living on the periphery, the filmmaker maintains a cinematic treatment that shows a minimal level of transformation in their lives by modernity. This demonstrates an attitude of the filmmaker that is implicit in nostalgia: an ‘impulse to reverse or deny change’ (O’ Shea 2005, 83-84).
74
Chapter 2
For example, in a sequence from Bird’s Nest, Xiangma cooks bamboo rice as his lunch in town. A movement shot first shows a river and some modern buildings on both banks. Then it gradually lowers its angle to include Xiangma and his open fire near the river (Figure 2.11). Such low-angle framing is unusual. It highlights the precarious state of urban landscapes even though they are made of steadfast concrete and steel. Moreover, although the deep focus of the long shot renders both the background buildings and the boy in focus for viewers, the backlighting separates the boy from the modern environment. A sense of detachment looms large as if modernity has taken people’s lives away from what used to be fundamental elements of human existence: land, rocks, river, and so on. This feeling echoes Edward Relph’s observation that, when modern landscapes manifest ‘technical accomplishment’ and ‘material prosperity’, they also lead to ‘aesthetic confusion, ethical poverty and a disturbing degree of dependence on technical expertise’ (1981, 14-15). By positioning the camera near the river and proximate to the boy’s cooking, the filmmaker succeeds in stating his negative attitude towards technology advancement and a modern way of life. Suppose the camera is placed on the top of a building with a high-angle shot looking down at the boy, the reversed message of extolling modernity and lamenting the past would be conveyed.
Figure 2.11 Xiangma cooking his lunch in town (Bird’s Nest)
In Lala’s Gun, the first appearance of town space occurs shortly after the first appearance of terrace land in the sequence when Lala carries firewood on his way to town. The same ascending crane shot is employed by the filmmaker to draw viewers’ attention to what is in the background – high buildings at the bottom of the mountain (Figure 2.12). However, different visual impacts are created. In the case of terrace land (Figure 2.4), the shot movement conveys a sense of admiration for the geographical miracle created by Miao people. In contrast, the same technique employed here reveals a sense of intimidation and concern, probably because the
75
Chapter 2
town space looms large in the shot, while its geographical proximity to Lala’s hometown is threatening. There is a sense of encroachment and a feeling that modernity is going to expand and wipe out the traditional space, which the filmmaker probably abhors.
Figure 2.12 The adjoining town (Lala's Gun)
To show his negative attitude towards modernity, the filmmaker constructs the Miao children as victims of the market economy in the town space in terms of the devaluation of firewood. Moreover, he demonises urban space through the character of Guwang, who takes advantage of the town’s transportation system to walk out of the Miao cultural zone. Guwang’s migrating experience oscillates between two geographical locations: his hometown village and the metropolitan city of Guangzhou. What is dramatic about this character is his short stay in the city as a migrant worker and his subsequent early death after returning to the village. At the age of twenty, he leaves for Guangzhou, a large modern city in the south of China, for an opportunity of employment. He has an accident in Guangzhou and injures his head. Though the film provides no images describing his actual experiences in Guangzhou, his oral accounts in front of Lala restore how he transforms from an aspiring Miao man with dreams about an urban life to a man defeated completely by modernity. Until his death, he fails to fully understand why he dies. Back in his village, his corpse is carried to a burial ground uphill (Figure 2.13), where he belongs as a member of the Miao community. A gloomy atmosphere imbues the scene. Following the funeral procession from behind, Lala dedicates a death-guidance song to him. The lyrics as follows reflect Lala’s understanding of Guwang’s death,
You head for your home along this road. You open your closet to put on favourite clothes. On this road, you bid farewell to your parents and return to the ancestor’s side. You should thank your parents for giving you the life, because when you were born, your mother breathed like a cow, and her eyes protruded like those of a cow. It is not easy for your parents to bring you up. Guangzhou is not your home. Karaoke is 76
Chapter 2
not as good as the songs in our village. Give your last glance at your parents and at our village. After that, move along down your road with a peaceful mind to the ancestor’s side.
Figure 2.13 Guwang’s corpse on the way to a burial ground (Lala's Gun)
In this song, Guwang’s relationship with the city and hometown village is well elaborated. Besides expressing gratitude to the Miao ancestor, Lala’s song outlines his understanding of two opposing geographies in Guwang’s life and their divergent meanings to him. ‘Guangzhou is not your home’ best epitomises Lala’s reflections on the cause of Guwang’s death. For Guwang, his accident in Guangzhou – jumping off a vehicle to catch his wind-blown cap and as a result hitting his head on an asphalt road is, to a large extent, a performance of a wrong behaviour in a wrong environment. He was unaware of how hard the urban road is in comparison with earthy tracks in his Miao village. More importantly, he mistakenly worshipped his uniform cap as a symbol of his identity as serious and unique as his Life Tree in Miao culture,9 without realising that the cap was merely a product of mass production. Guwang’s symbolic abandonment of Miao culture is represented through his action of shearing off hair bun – a symbol of Miao man identity – for his delivery job. Deep down, his aspiration for personal development is crippled by his attempt to interpret modern ideologies of professionalism and urbanism with Miao traditional ideologies. There is apparent contradiction between tradition and modernity here.
The filmmaker probably uses Guwang’s symbolic death to indicate the tragic consequence of Miao men in abandoning their homeland and ethnic traditions in exchange for alternatives. Guwang’s death precludes Lala from taking the same route. Thus, the character of Guwang and
9 As the film describes, in Miao culture, when a boy is born, a Life Tree is planted for him. When he dies, the Life Tree is cut down to make into a coffin. Because Guwang dies early, his coffin is made from his father’s Life Tree with the permission of the village sorcerer. 77
Chapter 2
his deadly fate serve as a safety valve on Lala’s future, making him resistant to external temptation from Han modernity and consequently persistent in ethnic traditions and rural spaces.
Ning’s Preoccupation in Comparison with Other Han Filmmakers
Ning’s idyllic approach to Miao rural landscapes and negative attitude towards urban spaces differ from other Han filmmakers, such as Han Wanfeng, whose description of a Miao village in Hunan in Qiuli zouming qu/A Song from Qiuli (2010) confronts many realistic issues in the village’s transformation in the context of China’s modernisation and urbanisation. For example, the film shows Miao villagers being encouraged by the government with financial support to move downhill to a neighbouring town; the young and middle-aged Miao men are employed in the construction of a local highway that is planned to facilitate the opening of the region to the outside; Miao singing, dancing and traditional practices are exhibited in the village as cultural products for urban tourists to consume.
Ning’s binary approach to pitting the past (tradition) against modernity resembles more of Shen Chongwen’s literary treatments of West Hunan. As Ning’s favourite contemporary writer (Ning 1999), Shen Congwen (1902-1988) has been praised for creating a type of ‘pastoral prose and landscape painting in modern Chinese literature’ with his employment of ‘primitive natural landscapes and characters and the symbolism of mountains, rivers, rocks, and trees’ (Y. Zhang 1996, 33). Shen’s novels uphold ‘rural values of continuity and stability’ while ‘references to modern life are ironic and playful’ (McDougall and Louise 1997, 128). Instead of condemning the backward traditions of folk culture, Shen is full of sympathy and compassion for local people.
Ning holds the same affection and admiration for the Miao people’s traditional practices and values in addition to their geographical spaces as represented in the films. Moreover, Ning’s cinematic construction is an idealistic imagination of the future and the present of the Miao ethnic group moving in a circle on a track of its own continuity from generation to generation, immune to the impact of modernisation. No discernible attempts have been made to describe how the Miao children think of, deal with or get transformed by modernity, although they are confronted with challenges every day. The filmmaker seems to be more obsessed with his own expression of nostalgia than caring about real-life circumstances of the children.
Such preoccupation resonates with a cinematic tradition established by Han filmmakers who manipulate spaces and characters of ethnic minorities to serve their own agendas. Stories about 78
Chapter 2
ethnic minorities are often endowed with subjective imagination and cultural transference of Han filmmakers who prioritise the psychological needs of Han audiences in a certain era (W. Zhang 2012). Ethnic minority films of the 1980s directed by the Fourth and Fifth Generation directors are typical examples, such as Qingchun ji/Sacrifice of Youth (1985, dir. Zhuang Nuanxin), Liechang zhasa/On the Hunting Ground (1984, dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang) and Daoma zei/Horse Thief (1986, dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang). These films were made by Han filmmakers to address concerns over national destiny after the Cultural Revolution (Y. Zhang 1997; C. Berry 2006; Clark 2005; Lo 2009; Hu 2012b). In Dru Gladney’s words, these films ‘use minorities in their quest to be politically and socially relevant to majority audiences’ (1995, 166). Lo has summarised some strategies employed in this type of representation:
… it shows the ethnic characters in their own space, and their otherness is explored without direct interference. The appropriation functions as dramatic ethnography, which is not to seek a truthful or realistic representation of the other, but highlights differences and similarities between Han viewers’ perceptions of their own culture and the alterity of the ethnic characters’ culture, generating a sort of mirror to reflect, refract, and re-evaluate the notion of selfhood, and to allow the self to understand its inevitable and defining link to alterity. (Lo 2009, 236)
Tian Zhuangzhuang has famously confessed that his Mongolian and Tibetan films were made for his own sake of cultural reflections (Marchetti 1988).
Like Tian, Ning Jingwu has admitted that his initial motivation to make Miao films was not to protect Miao culture but to seek references from other cultures for solving confusions in his own culture (Zhongguo minzu bao, May 1, 2009). After all, as Lo (2009, 234) puts it, in an era of market modernisation, ethnic minorities are still conceived to be ‘another world’, a world that exists ‘beyond the corrupting influences of capitalism’.10 Before making Miao films, Ning had expressed his interest in pre-modern spaces and characters in order to contrast with modern people’s attitude to nature, animal and environment (Ning et al. 2004). Ning’s previous films Jidi caihong/Polar Rainbow (2002) is set on a remote piece of grassland in the north of China,11 and Jingqing Shennongjia/Lost in Shennongjia (2003) is set in the primitive forest of Shennongjia in the Hubei province.12 Both films reveal Ning’s preference for marginal spaces such as pristine
10 As mentioned in the Introduction of the thesis, Lo (2009, 234) describes China’s modernisation process as ‘capitalist modernization’. 11 Polar Rainbow focuses on a female veterinarian working on a remote desertified grassland whose love for the grassland and animals moves the heart of an intern who comes from Beijing. 12 Lost in Shennongjia dramatises a battle between local monkey protectors and the poachers and explores the moral ambiguity of research and publication on golden monkeys there. 79
Chapter 2
nature, as well as his concerns over animal and environmental protection.
Meanwhile, Ning’s interest in pre-modern environments and people illustrate his ‘romantic redemptive complex’, in which he reflects on mainstream social-cultural issues by romantically endowing marginal people with extra cultural resources (Y. Wang 2001).13 A case in point is Ning’s well-acclaimed film Wusheng de he/The Silent River (2000), which tells stories of a class of junior high school students who are deaf and mute. Despite hardship in their lives, they are determined to help their beloved intern teacher to realise his dream of music before he completely loses his voice to a tumour. Chinese film and literature critic Wang Yichuan (2001) points out, the film constructs physically healthy persons as lacking in morals and virtues whereas all the dignity and redemptive power is resided in the disabled, so that the disabled have the capacity to redeem the abled.
Ning’s ‘romantic redemptive complex’ echoes the feeling of nostalgia expressed through his Miao children’s films as ‘redemption’ is the main purpose of nostalgia. To a large extent, Ning’s idealistic construction of the Miao children’s childhood experiences in a remote Miao community is both a realisation of Ning’s preference for pre-modern environments and characters and a fulfilment of his complex to redeem modern Han Chinese who are increasingly alienated from nature, land, human and tradition while marching towards modernity. Nonetheless, fascination with ethnic places in the name of ‘protecting the environment and preserving the traditional lifestyle from the infringement of economic growth’, as indicated by Lo’s comment on Tian’s Delama (2004), may turn out to be simply a means adopted by urban citizens to ‘purify themselves and escape the tension of the anxiety-ridden capitalist life’, and prove that they are still ‘good, caring person[s] in a world that places capitalist development above all else’ (2009, 243). Thus, the extent to which these films bear real care to the ethnic minority children is doubtful.
Conclusion
This chapter examines two films about Miao children directed by Ning Jingwu in which the children’s interactions with their environments are cinematically emphasised through landscape shots. The chapter argues that the filmmaker has constructed an idealistic vision of the Miao
13 Jiang Rong’s novel Wolf Totem (2004) (the film adaptation to a lesser degree) provides another good example of this theme of redemption in Han approaches to minority narratives. See more details on the discussion of the film version in Chapter 4. 80
Chapter 2
children’s childhood experiences for the sake of his nostalgia. The Miao children are represented as maintaining a harmonious relationship with nature, agricultural land and village community, which constitutes a rural idyllic childhood. They are also expected to carry on Miao traditions despite challenges involved. Urban spaces are demonised for the sake of confining the children to Miao geographical spaces. These strategies reveal a Han filmmaker’s manipulation of ethnic minority children for his/her own ideological agenda. The cinematic construction serves the psychological needs of the dominant Han, aiming to redeem a problematic present in a rapidly transforming society. As a result, the dynamics of the children’s negotiation with both tradition and modernity in the context of social change is kept offscreen.
81
Chapter 3 Beijing Landscapes in Internal and External Focalisations: Deconstruction and Tension in a Miao Child’s Nationalism
Introduction
This chapter draws on Celestino Deleyto’s (1991) theorisation on ‘focalisation’ of a shot in narrative cinema and Martin Lefebvre’s (2006, 2011) configuration of ‘intentional landscape’. It examines how a seemingly perfect national narrative in an ethnic minority film is strategically deconstructed by its filmmaker due to the landscape shots in which the ethnic minority child character is situated. The film discussed is Bird’s Nest (2008), the first half of which has been examined in Chapter 2 through the lens of a Han filmmaker’s nostalgia in the context of China’s modernisation. This chapter focuses on the second half of the film in which the child protagonist walks away from his Miao community and arrives at the nation’s capital.
The film tells the story of a Miao boy in Southwest China who hears of a ‘bird’s nest’ in Beijing in a letter from his father. He is then determined to make a trip to the capital city to find out how a bird’s nest is built for sportsmen instead of birds. Knowing his ambition, his mother asks him to persuade his father, a migrant worker in Beijing, to return home. She believes that family union is more important than material well-being. The boy successfully raises enough money and then realises his dream of travelling to Beijing. With the assistance of residents of Beijing and policemen, he manages to get to the ‘bird’s nest’ and meets with his father. He discovers that the ‘bird’s nest’ is in fact a sports stadium. It is the Bird’s Nest that was constructed as the main venue for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. His father has been working as a labourer on the construction site of the Bird’s Nest. These revelations are extraordinary, but he fails in his secondary quest – to bring his father home.
Previous critiques of this film agree that it is a ‘main melody’ film based on the observation that the film upholds party-state ideologies of nationalism and multi-ethnic unity (Hu 2013b; Q. Zheng 2008). From one perspective, this argument makes sense. After all, what is more emblematic of national unity than embracing an ethnic minority child into the bosom of its capital with warmth and generosity from Beijing residents in such a multi-ethnic nation as China? This narrative also evokes an image of ‘infantile citizen’ (Berlant 1997, 29). As Hu Puzhong (2013b) argues, the symbolic meaning of the father figure as a metonym of the nation is effectively conveyed when an ethnic minority child heads for the nation’s capital in search of his father. Moreover, since the film was released shortly before the commencement of the Beijing Olympics,
Chapter 3
this identification of the film as a national narrative was both imperative and urgent in the context of protests to what were experienced as multiple threats to Chinese unity both domestically and internationally during the torch relay (W. Smith 2009; Horne and Whannel 2010). In addition, the film performs a communicative function. The media report at the very end features the boy’s voice as if he is a national subject bearing news for the distant regions of China. He announces that, when he returns to his hometown, he and his friends will take the model of the Bird’s Nest and build a real nest for birds. This announcement, miraculously but appropriately for the context of the film’s release, brings a message from the headquarters of China all the way to a remote village in Southwest China. This type of message transmission, meaningful or not – do birds truly need a huge nest in his hometown? – has value in and of itself as a proclamation of commitment from ethnic minorities to the nation-state. It assures the spectator that the periphery of the nation will act in accordance with its centre.
This chapter however proposes that the theme of nationalism described above is simultaneously deconstructed or at least questioned in its process of construction. It argues that the Miao boy, despite being conveniently embodied as an avatar of nationalism and multi-ethnic unity through his ethnic minority identity, is actually isolated and excluded in a Han-dominated social environment. In particular, he is endowed with the subjectivity that calls into question the prospect of a happy life promised by the development discourse of modern China. In the context of mass migration and urbanisation in China, the film evokes reflections on the difficult choices of rural parents between material well-being and family union as well as the impact of their choices on the lives of millions of left-behind children.
This argument is based on the analyses of many landscape shots employed by the filmmaker. When the first half of the film shows how the child protagonist succeeds in fundraising, the second half focuses on his journey to Beijing and his experiences while being situated in Beijing. In the description of both the journey and the arrival of the destination, the filmmaker devotes a great deal of screen time and space to representing the landscapes that the boy sees and interacts with on his trip. The boy’s engagement with the landscapes is reflected not only in the camera’s foci on his enraptured gaze full of wonder and excitement at seeing the diversity of rural and urban landscapes on his way to Beijing but also in tracking his movement as he runs through the geographies of the city itself. The theme of nationalism as pinpointed by previous critiques may be attributed to the boy’s frequent location in the vicinity of the Bird’s Nest – one of China’s great national symbols of the early 21st century. However, as this chapter illustrates,
83
Chapter 3
evidence of deconstruction can be discerned as being implicated in the cinematic treatments of these landscape shots, especially in terms of how the vision of a landscape is produced and how the relationship between the child and his environment is set up.
Focalisations and Cinematic Landscapes
Deleyto (1991) takes Mieke Bal’s definition of focalisation as a point of departure to theorise focalisation in film narrative. According to Bal ([1980] 1985, 100), focalisation is ‘the relation between the vision and that which is “seen”, perceived’ (as quoted in Deleyto 1991). In this definition, Deleyto identifies two components in a focalisation: focaliser and focalised. Deleyto defines a focaliser as ‘the origin of the vision or agent that performs the vision’, while the focalised is ‘the object of that vision’ (1991, 160). Furthermore, Deleyto (1991) proposes two types of focalisation in narrative cinema from which a spectator can receive information. One is ‘internal focalisation’, which is initiated by an agent in a story, such as a character in a film. The other is ‘external focalisation’, which is motivated by an agent external to the story, such as the camera or the film director. The distinction between ‘internal focalisation’ and ‘external focalisation’ is important, because, while ‘internal focalisation’ is largely equivalent to a character’s point-of-view shot, ‘external focalisation’ originates from the filmmaker’s intentions or perspective. In the latter, the character is situated in a certain environment with the filmmaker’s conscious purpose of initiating an active view from a keen audience.
Deleyto (1991) also points out that there is ‘permanent tension between internal and external focalisation’ (176). This arises from ‘the tension between the cinema’s natural tendency towards objectivity and the centrality of the gaze in film narration’ (176). Since ‘external focalisation’ has the natural ability to bring objectivity to the film medium, whereas ‘internal focalisation’ reveals moments of subjectivities that spring up from the characters, the tension between the two is inevitable. On the other hand, Deleyto suggests that there is a tendency among the audience to ignore such tension, as the film medium is capable of ‘combining simultaneous internal and external gazes in such a way that, most times, the coexistence of both is taken for granted by the viewer’ (176). As a result, Deleyto asserts that the tension ‘constitut[es] a permanent source for subtle fibula [story] manipulation and irony’ on the part of the filmmaker (176). Namely, the viewer’s disregard for the distinction between internal and external gazes provides the filmmaker with a field of manipulation.
Drawing on Deleyto’s theories of focalisation, Rocha and Seminet (2012) propose the notion of
84
Chapter 3
‘multiplicity of focalization’ to examine children’s film. They argue that the ‘fragmentation’ of focalisation on different points of a frame or sequence opens up an opportunity in which ‘ideological content is constructed by careful selection of the position of the focalizer/focalized’ (4). This view is a step further on Deleyto’s revelation of chances of manipulation created by the tension between internal and external focalisation. Indeed, the multiple shifts of internal and external focalisations in ‘multiplicity of focalization’ produce space for a filmmaker to embed divergent ideological contents in internal and external focalisations. As far as children’s film is concerned, Rocha and Seminet (2012, 4) suggest that ‘it is the representation of the child’s point of view, either as the focalizer or as the focalized, that determines the ideological content, which in turn reflects the concerns of the adults who both produce and watch films’. This argument reveals the possibility of a child character’s ‘internal focalisation’ in either conforming to or intervening in the ideological content expressed through ‘external focalisation’. Therefore, instead of scrutinising either side separately, the tension itself between internal and external focalisation constitutes the real message of the filmmaker.
On the other hand, from the perspective of landscape in film, Lefebvre (2006, 2011) has proposed two approaches to interpreting cinematic landscape: ‘intentional landscape’ and ‘spectator’s landscape’. They are based on two origins of vision respectively: the filmmaker’s and the spectator’s. In contrast to ‘spectator’s landscape’ which often occurs with repeated viewings when the audiences ‘momentarily break the narrative bond of subordination’, ‘intentional landscape’ comes into being when viewers are complicit with the intention of the filmmaker as the narrative develops (Lefebvre 2011, 66). This chapter is concerned with ‘intentional landscape’ of the filmmaker.
Having reviewed Deleyto’s internal and external focalisation and Lefebvre’s ‘intentional landscape’, a connection may be established between the sub-disciplines of children’s geographies and cinematic landscape. Two types of cinematic landscape can be identified to embody children’s geographies: the filmmaker’s ‘intentional landscape’ in ‘external focalisation’ and a landscape produced through the child character’s gaze in ‘internal focalisation’. In this distinction, the former has the filmmaker as the source of vision (‘focaliser’) while the child character is located within the ‘focalised’ landscape. In the latter, the child character is the ‘focaliser’ of the landscape. Different from the traditional point-of-view shot, in the latter, the child can either be included or excluded from the ‘focalised’ landscape in his/her actual or imagined vision.
85
Chapter 3
Admittedly, both types of cinematic landscape can be subsumed under Lefebvre’s categorisation of ‘intentional landscape’ in the sense that they are subject to the manipulation of the filmmaker and reflect his/her intentions. However, marking the distinction between ‘externally focalised intentional landscape’ and ‘internally focalised landscape through gaze’ significantly underscores the difference between ‘geography of children’ and ‘children’s geographies’ as highlighted in Roger Hart’s framework. In Hart’s (1984) view, ‘geography of children’ is concerned with what children actually do in an environment and how these activities interact with the society in the larger context. This geography is out of the control of children. It is the external social structure that determines and shapes it. In contrast, ‘children’s geographies’ concentrate on how children experience, perceive and represent their environments in their internal realms of cognition, interpretation and meaning-making. It reflects children's agency and their creative insights into and responses to the surroundings. When the term ‘children’s geographies’ is used to refer to the whole sub-discipline, it is asserted that it should take both aspects into consideration (Philo 2000). Thus, a particular attention to the differentiated focalisations in cinematic landscapes speaks to this imperative. The distinction sheds light on the tension between the ostensible objectivity of the film medium and the intervening subjectivity of the character, as well as the tension between the controlling social structure and the resistance from individual agencies.
This chapter interrogates the externally focalised landscapes of the filmmaker that reflect the cultural politics of the society regarding the ethnic minority children and their physical and social positions as seen through the film. Meanwhile, it examines the internally focalised landscapes produced through the child character’s gaze including those imagined in mind landscapes, because they are believed to reveal the inner world of the child and establish his subjectivity that may contradict the social structure. Nonetheless, it should be reiterated that both representations of the children’s geographies are subordinate to the ideological agenda of the filmmaker, except that in the internally focalised landscapes, the filmmaker’s intention is relayed to the domain of the child character’s subjectivity. Therefore, as proposed earlier, it is necessary to juxtapose the internally and externally focalised landscapes so that the tension between them can be fully revealed to uncover the full message of the filmmaker. In the sections below, I first examine the implications of landscape shots in external focalisations that deconstruct the ideology of nationalism, and then focus on the tension between internal and external focalisations.
86
Chapter 3
Deconstructing Nationalism in the Implications of Landscape Shots
If the ostensibly intended argument in Bird’s Nest is the national narrative undertaken through the journey of an ethnic minority boy, then the focus of this section is to uncover some ‘constitutive “contradictions”’ (Gasché 1987, 5, original emphasis) in this narrative by way of reinterpreting the film’s landscape shots. The landscape shots scrutinised are all ‘intentional landscapes’ of the filmmaker in external focalisations. They have opened up space for ambiguous interpretations of the ethnic minority child’s interactions with the urban environment.
Deconstruction, as Rodolphe Gasché defines, is
… the attempt to ‘account’, in a certain manner, for a heterogeneous variety or manifold of nonlogical contradictions and discursive inequalities of all sorts that continues to haunt and fissure even the successful development of philosophical arguments and their systematic exposition. (Gasché 1987, 4, original emphasis)
This section undercovers that the filmmaker Ning Jingwu has evoked an alternative modality of contemplation on a Miao boy’s national identity and his role in the nation’s capital. The same traditional landscapes of Beijing, such as the Bell Tower, hutong and siheyuan, have taken on different outlooks in Bird’s Nest from those in Ning’s other films. The differences in cinematic treatments of landscapes demonstrate an ‘ethnicised’ and ‘classed’ version of person- environment relationship, which constitutively leads to fissures in an otherwise neatly articulated national discourse.
The Bell Tower, hutong and siheyuan are all historic and cultural relics in Beijing. The Bell Tower is a building that was used to report time through the percussion of a bell (Kiang and Min 1996). It was built during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) (Y. Huang 2002). A hutong is a ‘narrow alleyway’ that divides ‘single-storey brick and stone courtyard houses’, known as siheyuan (Heath and Tang 2010, 156). Hutong is a Mongol word, meaning ‘the space between tents or the way to the well’ (Heath and Tang 2010, 156). Both hutong and siheyuan took their preliminary forms during the Yuan dynasty when Kublai Khan, a Mongol leader, first turned Beijing into a capital, known then as Da Du (Heath and Tang 2010; Kiang and Min 1996). In the subsequent Ming and Qing dynasties, the original forms of these buildings (the Bell Tower, hutong and siheyuan) maintained, although there were constant renovations (Heath and Tang 2010; G. Zhang 2012; M. Wang 2012). There were also differences in rules. As the Qing dynasty was ruled by Manchus, only the Manchurian enjoyed the privilege of living in the ‘inner city’, where the Bell Tower, hutong and siheyuan are
87
Chapter 3
located. People of other ethnicities, including Han, had to live away from the city centre (G. Zhang 2012).
It is ironic that, while the Bell Tower, hutong, and siheyuan are historically related to ethnic minorities, they are alienated from the Miao boy in Bird’s Nest. The Bell Tower and hutong are traversed externally through his running with all their entrances tightly shut in the eyes of the boy and film viewers (Figure 3.1). The resulting sense is that the Miao boy is excluded from the city’s interior geographies, and there is intangible alienation between the boy and Beijing’s physical landscapes. Arguably, such exclusion and alienation stem from a lack of historical, cultural and emotional intimacy between a person and his/her environment. For Beijing locals, the Bell Tower, hutong and siheyuan are all closely related to their traditional customs and folklore. They represent the ‘soul’, the unique and ‘true urban identity of Beijing’ (Heath and Tang 2010, 155). For instance, hutong is endowed with a philosophy of harmony between human beings and the universe, while siheyuan is characterised by both a high level of privacy and a considerable amount of cohesion (H. Tang 2009). The Bell Tower used to set the standard Beijing time. It has stopped performing this function since the early 20th century, but its architectural and historic value remains (Kiang and Min 1996; Y. Huang 2002).
However, for a Miao boy coming from a distant rural region, it is impossible for him to establish a historical vision and recognise the ‘enormously rich store of data’ associated with these landscapes (Meinig 1979, 42-43). Instead, he traverses them through bodily movement. The filmmaker effects this in the scenario that the boy must chase a criminal for snatching his bag, where the criminal and his partner secretly hid drugs to avoid detection by police. The event gives the boy the motivation for seemingly random mobility through the inner city. This strategy successfully evades the need on the boy’s part to intellectually interpret or extensively engage with the environments that are unfamiliar to him. The visual implications of these closed-off architectural or geographical icons in relation to the boy are nonetheless conspicuous, especially due to the visual impact of walls that characterise both the landscapes of the Bell Tower and hutong.
88
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 The Miao boy running through the Bell Tower and hutong
Chinese cultural geographer Tang Xiaofeng (2012, 173) suggests that ‘the ideology of a wall is to keep strangers out’, as most famously illustrated by the function of the Great Wall of China. Ronald Knapp has done much research on China’s walled cities and argued that city walls serve forcefully as ‘visible and symbolic markers separating inside and outside, family and stranger’ (2000, 2). Placed in the context of regional differences, city walls mark the boundary between urban and rural spaces (Knapp 2000). The courtyard houses of siheyuan, albeit smaller in scale, are characterised by one-storey walls on all sides. As traditional houses of Beijingers, they demarcate the internal and the external, home and public (Reuber 1998). Similarly, the exterior walls of ancient buildings, especially imperial ones painted in red, mark the division between the imperial and the commoner (Reuber 1998; Heath and Tang 2010). As a visitor to Beijing, the Miao boy is not entitled to the intimate personal geographies of Beijing locals, who are mostly Han in contemporary China. Instead, he is physically excluded from these interior geographies by the boundary of walls. In this sense, the walls of hutong, together with the walls of the Bell Tower, have acted as the ‘psychological and symbolic markers’ as phrased by Knapp (2000, 2), which demarcate migrant ethnic minorities from Beijing locals in the eyes of keen audiences.
In contrast, in Ning’s films about Han children – his first three films, all set in Beijing – hutong and siheyuan are intimately inhabited by the Beijing children. The Bell Tower is also integrated into their daily lives physically and emotionally. They are part of the system of inclusion in contrast to the Miao boy who is not able or permitted to negotiate those closed doors or walls. The distinction between the Beijing local Han children and the non-local Miao child is geographically conspicuous. For example, The Han boy in Chengzhang/Growing Up (1998)1 was
1 Growing Up tells the story of a Han boy born in an ordinary working-class family in Beijing. When he is about 15, he suddenly realises the hardship of his parents, especially that of his father, and he is determined to take up more responsibility for himself and his family. As the boy’s birthday is on 1st October, Chinese National Day, his growing progress is accompanied by 15 years of social and economic transformations in the nation from 1984 to 1999. 89
Chapter 3
born and growing up in a siheyuan. The primary school he attended lies in a nearby hutong. Like many children and adults living there, as displayed by the black-and-white pictures inserted in the film (Ning 1999),2 his life has been merged with the geographies of siheyuan and hutong. In addition, the boy often meets up with his best friend, a girl living in the same siheyuan, at the top of the Bell Tower after school. Under their sharp eyes, the landscapes of imperial and modern layout of Beijing down below and far away follow the regular transitions of four seasons as the two children grow up. Similarly, in Gushou de rongyu/Drummer’s Aspiration (1999),3 the two leading girl characters are often positioned against or within traditional Beijing landscapes. One girl lives with her grandparents in an independent siheyuan near the Imperial Palace, and the other girl is set against the Bell Tower every day while she waits for her mother to finish her work at a nearby bus terminal. The third film, The Silent River (2000), as mentioned in Chapter 2, is no exception. Although the protagonists are deaf and mute youngsters, the film features their intimate interactions with the capital city. One protagonist is frequently positioned against the red wall of the Imperial Palace, practicing a fighting sequence from a Beijing opera. Such selection of filming location may be attributed to his geographical identity as a Beijing local. In the eyes of the filmmaker, the red wall is possibly the best location for a Beijing youth to rehearse the traditional Beijing art (Xu 2001).
It is evident that the Han children are filmed in an interactional relationship with the Beijing landscapes, which is quite different from that afforded to the Miao boy in Bird’s Nest. The neat national narrative is thus fractured. The nation, with its capital as the most important and symbolic geographic space, is disparately experienced by the Han children and the Miao child. The ethnic minority other’s association with the nation is marked by spatial exclusion, cultural and emotional alienation. This is one way in which the national narrative is deconstructed through landscape shots. It posits an ‘ethnicised’ variation of person-environment relationship.
Moreover, the Miao boy’s interaction with the environment is ‘classed’, revealing his social status. His running – his dominant mode of contact with Beijing landscapes – remarkably coincides with
2 Ning (1999) states that, to restore an authentic living environment for his characters in Growing Up, he inserts Shen Taiyan couple’s photographs about life in hutong. 3 Drummer’s Aspiration focuses on two primary school girls in Beijing. Their friendship must withstand a test when both of them aspire to be the leader of a drum squad that will pass through Tiananmen Square on the 50th National Day of the PRC. 90
Chapter 3
a large quantity of running sequences in Ning’s adult film Duozi/Running for Son (2002).4 In the adult film, a foster mother runs around Beijing to prevent her non-legally adopted son from being taken away by his biological mother.5 Despite being a Han Chinese, the foster mother is part of a rural migrant population, as is the Miao boy. Frequently running through a variety of Beijing landscapes – the Bell Tower, hutong, the grand Chang’an Street or high-end residential or office buildings – she always ends up sheltering herself in shabby rooms or ghetto residences in the shadows and on the margins of the city. Similarly, after traversing the Bell Tower, hutong and other grand landscapes in Beijing as to be discussed, the Miao boy settles down in makeshift shacks on a construction site, sharing a bed with his migrant father. Their similarity exemplifies a ‘classed’ version of person-environment relations, which equally produces fissures in an otherwise harmonious national discourse. For disadvantaged people at the bottom of the society, the geographies of both traditional and modern Beijing can only reinforce rather than erase the marginalisation of their social status and the alienation between them and the environments.
Apart from differentiated implications of city landscapes for ethnic minority ‘other’ and lower- class migrants, the symbolic national landscapes in Beijing also form different relations to the Miao boy and the Han children in Ning’s films. This concerns two specific national symbols: Tiananmen Square and the Bird’s Nest. As the capital of China during ‘much of the later dynastic period’ – Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the Forbidden City (also known as Imperial Palace) was ‘the mystical centre of imperial power’ and ‘the symbolic heart of Beijing’ (Dutton, Lo, and Wu 2008, 25-28). Chairman Mao announced the founding of the PRC at Tiananmen, a gate south to the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City. Since then, Tiananmen has become a most famous national landmark, ‘the glorious place where New China was proclaimed’ (Dutton, Lo, and Wu 2008, 11). In 1959, Tiananmen Square, a square area to the south of Tiananmen,6 was renovated during the movement of the Great Leap Forward. As part of the ‘Ten Great Projects’, albeit ‘the
4 Running for Son focuses on a migrant couple making a living in Beijing and simultaneously taking care of a deserted child as their own son. When the boy’s biological mother returns from the United States to claim the child in exchange for a generous legacy promised by the child’s biological father, the migrant couple starts to hide away and move around among various rental rooms and ghetto shelters in Beijing. 5 The nonprofessional actress playing the role of the foster mother is Wang Junxia, China’s first Olympic gold medallist in the long-distance running. According to the filmmaker (as quoted in Xiao 2003), the running sequences in Running for Son are not specifically designed for the actress because of her athletic expertise but the imperative of narrative. The sequences aim to exhibit the hardship of a migrant woman in the city, especially when she must protect her informally adopted son. 6 The square is marked out by Tiananmen on its north, Zhengyangmen on its south, the National Museum of China on its east, and the Great Hall of the People on its west. The area is about 440, 000 square meters. 91
Chapter 3
most spectacular’ one, the renovation of Tiananmen Square aimed to redevelop the capital city for the celebration of the nation’s tenth anniversary (Dutton, Lo, and Wu 2008, 21-24).7 With the renovation, Tiananmen and Tiananmen Square ultimately ‘displaced the Forbidden City as the unquestionable centre of Beijing’ (Dutton, Lo, and Wu 2008, 25).
In the new millennium, ten new great buildings in Beijing were selected based on public opinion polls. One of them is the National Olympic Stadium Centre and Asian Games Village (Jin 2001). After Beijing’s successful bid to host the 2008 Olympics, many sports stadiums were built. The Bird’s Nest (also known as the Beijing National Stadium), together with the Water Cube (also known as the National Aquatic Centre) and the Beijing National Indoor Stadium, was built in the Olympic Park near the National Olympic Stadium Centre and the Asian Games Village (Z. Lu 2013). The Bird’s Nest, together with the Water Cube, the Beijing National Opera House, and the New CCTV Tower, constitutes the four symbolic buildings in contemporary Beijing (F. Zhang 2008). If the Forbidden City is symbolic of old China, Tiananmen and Tiananmen Square represent the socialist new China, then the four symbolic buildings become landmarks of globalised modern China. The Bird’s Nest has particularly become ‘a world-renowned sports landmark’ (Z. Lu 2013, 434). It is the location for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics and the main venue for many events during the Olympics. Moreover, the building is situated on the extension line of central axis of Beijing, constituting part of ‘central axis architecture group’ revolving around the Forbidden City (F. Zhang 2008, 97). Its geographical position exhibits its political significance.
Drawing on Meinig’s ‘ideological’ way of seeing a landscape, one sees that both Tiananmen Square and the Bird’s Nest have characteristically taken on the ideological significance of the nation during its social, political and economic development. They symbolise ‘the values, the governing ideas, the underlying philosophies of a culture’ in different periods (1979, 42). If Tiananmen represents an authoritarian socialist regime, then the Bird’s Nest stands as ‘a symbol of the modernisation of China’ (Z. Lu 2013, 434).
The national landscapes of Tiananmen and Tiananmen Square frequently appear in Ning’s Han children’s films with the implication of nationalism for the Han children. For instance, both
7 According to Dutton, Lo, and Wu (2008, 21-24) and Visser (2010), the ‘Ten Great Projects’ include the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, the Beijing Railway Station, the Cultural Palace of Nationalities, the Worker’s Stadium, the National Minorities Hotel, the Military Museum, the National Agricultural Exhibition Centre, the State Guest House, and the Overseas Chinese Hotel. 92
Chapter 3
Growing Up and Drummer’s Aspiration begin and end with documentary footage of national-day parades at Tiananmen Square. The footage is used to forge a close link between national development and the children’s growth. In particular, the narrative of Drummer’s Aspiration centres on how a working-class girl aspires and finally succeeds in becoming a squad leader in a parade. This narrative is reminiscent of Chen Kaige’s Da yuebing/Military Parade (1985) which also focuses on the preparation of protagonists for a national-day parade passing through Tiananmen Square. However, in terms of endorsing a national discourse, Ning’s Miao children’s film Bird’s Nest resembles Chen’s film more than his Han children’s film Drummer’s Aspiration.
With regards to the national discourse in Chen’s Military Parade, Zhang Yingjin has argued compellingly that Chen’s film ‘tactfully challenges while explicitly celebrating the concept of the nation in the state discourse’ by way of ‘bracket[ing] off or eras[ing]’ the sufferings of individual soldiers (1997, 83). Such a tactful ‘subtext’ can hardly be found in Drummer’s Aspiration but is discernible in Bird’s Nest. Admittedly, Drummer’s Aspiration involves a rivalry between two Han girls from different social classes as both of them aspire to be the squad leader. However, their friendship ultimately triumphs. Furthermore, it is the girl from the working class who finally wins the ‘honour’. In doing so, the film celebrates fair competition and social mobility even among the children. Meanwhile, no cinematic devices are evidently employed to intervene in the children’s national pride. It is constructed to be unanimously and unconditionally sought after by all Han children regardless of their social classes, success or failure in participating in the parade. They exhibit pride and respect for the nation’s birthday both in front of television screen viewing the parade and on-site.
In contrast, Ning’s Bird’s Nest shares with Chen’s Military Parade an intervening ‘subtext’ that challenges the national discourse. Cinematic treatments of the national landscape in relation to the Miao boy are strategically employed to achieve this end. The Miao boy’s movement towards the Bird’s Nest in search of his father seems to be ‘explicitly celebrating the concept of the nation in the state discourse’ (Y. Zhang 1997, 83). However, if explored further by analysing different focalisations of landscape shots in this moment and others, ‘tactful challenges’ to the notion of nationhood can be discerned. To elaborate on this point, the next section examines three moments of tension between internal and external focalisations, which simultaneously construct and deconstruct the boy’s nationalism.
93
Chapter 3
Three Moments of Tension between Internal and External Focalisations
This section interrogates how different ideological messages are embedded in internal and external focalisations which are either reinforced or made ambivalent by each other. It discovers that three moments of tension between internal and external focalisations have given rise to an alternative understanding of an ethnic minority child’s national identity. The tension reveals the gap between social structure and individual agency. Drawing on Paul Willemen’s (2006, 30-31) observation of national identity and personal subjectivity, the gap can be understood as a confrontation: while the external focalisations impose ‘a never-quite-fitting straightjacket’ of national identity to the Miao boy, the personal subjectivity conveyed through internal focalisations instead manifests ‘many diverse clusters of discourses’ other than the nationhood that ‘traverse’ in his life, such as care for nature and a longing for a father’s company. In this sense, the filmmaker deserves credit for highlighting these moments in which ‘subjective individuality’ breaks through the ‘institutionally orchestrated’ formula of identity formation (Willemen 2006, 30-31).
1. The Bird’s Nest: a symbol of nationalism or a means of livelihood?
The first moment of tension occurs when the Miao boy is situated in the aforementioned national landscape of the Bird’s Nest. When the boy first arrives there, the camera pans up from the ground to the sight of the distant architectural landmark while placing the boy in the middle of the frame. In this external focalisation, the boy runs in the direction of the building facing away from the camera in the company of non-diegetic solemn music (Figure 3.2, left). This moment does evoke a resemblance of a citizen’s physical and emotional attachment to the nation to that of an infant to its parents (Berlant, 1997). The nation is symbolised as a father figure, while the child becomes a perfect embodiment of a national citizen. This is true for either a Han child or an ethnic minority child except that the symbolic value of the latter is more meaningful and powerful in a multi-ethnic nation. There is no wonder that Hu Puzhong (2013b) has taken this shot as evidence to argue that the filmmaker has successfully accomplished a national narrative.
94
Chapter 3
Figure 3.2 The Miao boy running in the direction of the Bird’s Nest (left); the Han children passing through Tiananmen Square (right)
However, this chapter contests that nationalism has not been seamlessly constructed within the scene. First, unexpected visual impact is implicated in the above externally focalised shot. In contrast to a similar landscape shot that describes the Han children passing through the national landscape of Tiananmen Square in Drummer’s Aspiration (Figure 3.2, right), the Miao boy looks lonely and isolated in relation to the environment. While the thousands of Han children march through the spectacularly decorated Tiananmen Square in organised squads, the Miao boy’s physical location in the national landscape of the Bird’s Nest appears random. Presumably, the difference lies in the Miao boy’s difficulty in achieving the same amount of intimacy and pride in the national landscape as that of the Han children in Drummer’s Aspiration. After all, he is a temporary rural migrant. However, in the case of using a displaced person to embody a sense of belonging as required in a national identification (A. Smith, 1991), this lack of persuasion can hardly be ignored.
In concrete terms, the Miao boy’s geographical ‘closeness’ to the Bird’s Nest is only made possible by the fact that his father is a construction worker on the site. Like the makeshift shelters they inhabit near the building, migrant workers and their children’s engagement with the national landscape is bound to be temporary. When the construction is in process and the building is in its unpolished state, migrant workers as ‘others’ in the city are, as David Clarke (1997, 5) suggests, ‘the very agency necessary for the institutional structures of modernity to function’. However, once the building is completed and turned into a stadium for an international event and later a national symbol invested with socio-cultural significance, migrant workers and their children are kept away. They are deemed either culturally less refined or economically less well-off, and as such are precluded from entry or approach (Solinger 1995, 1999; Cohen 1994; Davin 1999). Thus, the embarrassment of construction workers, as Dror Kochan (2009) observes, lies in the fact that they are both included and excluded by urban space. 95
Chapter 3
In comparison with the visual impact of the external focalisation, a more compelling element of deconstruction in this scene is the fact that the boy’s father is physically located near the Bird’s Nest, working as a labourer in front of the building. This not only gives the boy the motivation to run towards the symbolic father of the nation as expected of by the nationalist claim, but also basically deconstructs the boy’s nationalism through his real intention of running. Indeed, the subsequent cinematic devices, especially those concerning the boy’s internal focalisations, have lent considerable support to this nuance. Following the external focalisation as an establishing shot (Figure 3.2, left), a series of close-ups focus on the boy’s upper body or running feet, intercut with shots of the building first in a long range (from the same direction as the boy’s movement) and then in a medium range (in a shot-reverse-shot). In common practice, an internal focalisation of a landscape consists of a close-up on a character’s gaze and a landscape shot as the reverse shot showing what is gazed upon from the character’s point of view. However, in this sequence, no close-ups are oriented at the boy’s gaze. Moreover, the shot-reverse-shot that is often used in ordinary internal focalisations does not apply to the case of a landscape because a landscape, as an object, does not normally return a gaze. In this circumstance, a probable explanation for the reverse shot is his father’s location near the building and his imminent welcome gesture to his son’s arrival (see details in the third moment of tension discussed below).
Bal ([1980] 1985, 114) has named such moments of being unable to tell whether a character or an external agent is the focaliser as ‘ambiguous focalisation’ (as quoted in Deleyto 1991). The film has provided us with clues that are inadequate for us to decide whether the boy’s sight focuses on appreciating the grand building ahead of him or spotting his father among a group of workers. This may suggest the filmmaker’s strategic employment of ‘ambiguous focalisation’ to challenge the ostensible national narrative in the establishing shot. Furthermore, when the medium shot of the Bird’s Nest is followed by an image of the boy’s father working on the side of a digger, this montage incidentally proves that the boy is more likely to focalise on his father instead of the building during his running.
If there is a moment on screen in which the boy does gaze at the Bird’s Nest, it is when he urinates outdoors on his first night in Beijing. In his sightline, the distant building is lit up by dim light from street lamps and passing vehicles. The boy’s facial expression is calm during the few seconds of looking. Drawing on Jon Goss’s (1988) four approaches to seeing a building: as a cultural artefact (from an architectural perspective); as an object of value (a piece of real estate); as a sign (a symbol of ideological expression); or as a spatial system (a focal point of spatial
96
Chapter 3
structure), one could speculate that for the Miao boy who loves birds and takes care of a few nestlings in his hometown, his first and foremost impression of the Bird’s Nest should be its shape. In fact, the initial doubt that motivates his trip to Beijing centres on the question of how this shape of a bird’s nest is scaled up to hold a sports meeting. As for to what extent he relates to the symbolic meanings of this building and other Olympic signs, the next two tensions can provide more insights.
2. An Olympic countdown monument: a symbol for a sports event or a resting place for birds?
The second moment of tension between internal and external focalisations is more evident and straightforward than the first one. There is a clear transition from an externally focalised shot to an internally focalised one and then back to an externally focalised one. In the beginning, a low- angle tracking shot shows the Miao boy walking towards an Olympic countdown monument in an external focalisation. He looks up at the monument and later pauses in front of it (Figure 3.3, above). The shot is followed by a close-up on the boy’s shining eyes (Figure 3.3, left below), indicating that he is gazing at something offscreen with great interest. The gaze is cut to a close shot at the upper portion of the monument. Presumably, there are objects over there that have drawn his attention. Yet the shot is not focused enough to reveal what the objects are. Thus, another close-up from the same angle is employed by the filmmaker to focus more specifically on the upper-middle portion of the monument (Figure 3.3, right below). In this shot, a bird flies away from the Chinese characters of ‘奥运会’ (Olympic Games/aoyunhui) on the monument and lands on the number of ‘2008’ in black. A reaction shot follows immediately, directed at the boy’s face. His blinking eyes and brimming smiles indicate that he is apparently excited at seeing the bird(s). The sequence ends with another low-angle shot externally focalised and symmetrical to the beginning one, showing the boy walking away from the monument in a full view.
97
Chapter 3
Figure 3.3 The Miao boy and an Olympic countdown monument
The smooth transition and the balanced structure in this sequence offer a perfect illustration of the gap between internal and external focalisation, revealing a contradiction between ideological contents embedded in each. The external focalisation can be easily interpreted as an ethnic minority boy’s passion for the Olympics as an athletic and social event given his physical location and direction of vision in relation to Olympic symbols and logos. However, the internal focalisation reveals precisely the opposite. What truly draws his attention are the birds resting on the monument instead of what is inscribed on the statue. In the Mao era, the decrease of birds in the city was partly attributed to the campaign against ‘four pests’ (rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows) (S. Zhao and Su 2011). In contemporary China, the scarcity of birds in the city is more likely to be associated with environmental deterioration as a result of rapid economic development (M. Wang and Huang 2015; J. Huang and Chen 2011). Thus, what the internal vision of the boy reveals with the aid of close-ups and reaction shots is a discordant note in the national discourse of development. The internal focalisation constitutes a direct deconstruction to the national narrative intended in the external focalisation.
3. The marathon sequence: a national sentiment or a longing for a father?
The third moment of tension between internal and external focalisations occurs in the marathon sequence. In a dominant external focalisation, a strong national sentiment permeates the scene. The Miao boy throws away his shoes and starts to run barefoot on a highway. Soon afterwards, the initial light-hearted popular song is changed into a piece of solemn music. Concurrently, the boy’s running is rendered in slow motion, and he smiles as he runs. During this shift in music and motion, the boy is again seen framed against the background of the Bird’s Nest (Figure 3.4, above). In this external focalisation, the boy’s smiling face and agile gesture in slow motion is most likely to be interpreted as a recognition of his national identity. The slow motion prolongs the duration in which the boy’s smiling face is set against the background of the national symbol. Moreover, the choice of the solemn music indicates a fact that the filmmaker comes to terms 98
Chapter 3
with what the Bird’s Nest stands for – nationalism and national pride. As Saeed-Vafa (2002, 213) has argued, ‘Depiction of spectacular landscapes – usually accompanied by music … reflects a filmmaker’s cultural harmony with those places, or a desire to identify with them and what they represent culturally.’ Thus, the external focalisation succeeds in articulating a national narrative.
Nonetheless, the filmmaker also adds to the sequence the boy’s ‘landscape of the mind’ (Harper and Rayner 2010b, 21), which reveals his psychological state and establishes his subjectivity. During the boy’s running, he turns his head either towards or away from the audience for three times, which constitutes a series of transitions to his inner landscapes. When he first turns his head to the audience, a close-up shot of running water follows. Soon the shot moves upward to reveal the boy and his father in the background of the frame, standing in a creek in their hometown. After that, a few shots from different angles and in different lengths are edited together to show the father’s affection for his son. In one of the shots, the boy is lifted by his father to skip some stones in the creek (Figure 3.4, left below). After this sequence, the film cuts back to the boy’s running on the highway. When he turns his head to the audience for the second time, his movement is followed by a shot of his father running towards him and holding him up in front of the Bird’s Nest (Figure 3.4, right below). This moment apparently occurred when they first met in Beijing but is inserted here. In the third transition to his inner landscapes, the boy unexpectedly turns his head to the opposite direction of the audience. There is no immediate cut-away to follow up his view. Instead, he continues running for approximately twenty seconds before an idealistic image of the Bird’s Nest appears. In this image, the Bird’s Nest is set between a blue sky and a patch of fully grown golden wheat that occupies half the frame in the foreground. The image is followed by the boy turning his head away from the audience and back to his front, seeming to indicate the preceding image is his third landscape in mind. After that, the running proceeds for another thirty seconds or so before the boy reaches the final point of the marathon.
99
Chapter 3
Figure 3.4 The Miao boy and his internal focalisations in the marathon sequence
The three moments of turning his head signal three moments of internal focalisations for the boy. The ideological contents of these focalisations can be examined separately by dividing these internal focalisations into two categories. The first two internal focalisations belong to the same category in which the boy recalls the moments when he and his father stay together. Their relationship is affectionate and intimate. In particular, the second moment in which the father lifts up the boy is deliberately taken out of its original sequence (see the first moment of tension) to be inserted here. This indicates the filmmaker’s intention of highlighting this moment as the boy’s inner landscape. Indeed, this inner landscape is concerned less with what actually happened in the past but more with the boy’s most immediate perception of his relationship to his father. It serves to represent the true feelings of the character and his desire. In short, the first two internal focalisations both manifest the boy’s affection and desire for his father.
This message however challenges the national sentiment conveyed through the external focalisation as explained earlier. From a child’s perspective, family unification is probably of paramount importance. It is hard to imagine that a boy would love the idea of living without his beloved father for the sake of expected identification with the Olympics or endorsement of his national identity. As a member of millions of left-behind children in Chinese rural areas due to massive migration of rural adults to cities for employment (Ye and Murray 2005, Ye and Pan 2008, 2011; Ye et al. 2010; Ye 2011; S. Lu et al. 2016), the Miao boy would probably choose, if he could, to live with his family instead of being separated from them, even with the prospect of improved living standard.
For the father, the reasons behind his choice of staying in Beijing may be more complicated. In the film, the Miao boy’s father offers two reasons for not being able to return home with his son. One is the lack of livelihood back in their hometown, and the other is his part in the busy construction schedule at the Bird’s Nest. The first reason indicates a ‘personal’ choice of a father who considers himself first and foremost the ‘breadwinner’ of his family instead of a ‘caregiver’, 100
Chapter 3
a ‘playmate’ or a ‘guide’ to his son among other roles (Lamb 2010, 4). In contrast, the second reason demonstrates a type of ‘social responsibility’ in the awareness of a migrant worker, which is possibly misguided but nonetheless sympathetic.
Regarding himself as part of a team devoted to the building project of the Bird’s Nest is of course ideologically consistent with the national discourse. Gladys Chong (2017) has observed that the Chinese government was very successful and strategic in its mobilisation of its citizens to prepare for the Olympics. However, the inconvenient truth is that, as a migrant worker, he is a member of an enormous body of replaceable labour force in Chinese cities. In the year of the Olympics, there were over two hundred million migrant workers across the nation (Gallagher, Lee, and Kuruvilla 2011). They could be either Han Chinese or ethnic minorities. Because of a lack of an urban hukou, a unique household registration system in China, these migrant workers face constant discrimination, unequal treatment and social exclusion in urban spaces (Solinger 1995, 1999; Q. Li 2012; Davin 1999). The lack of hukou also makes it difficult for their children to receive education in the cities where they work. This stands opposed to the ‘free mobility’ in other parts of the world where entire families migrate for better economic opportunities (Moses 2006). As a result, as Lo indicates, China’s modernisation project has engendered ‘a new kind of racism in contemporary China, targeting its exploited proletarian population’, which includes not only ‘peasants of Han origin’, but also ‘poor, backward, and culturally different ethnic minorities’ (2009, 234). Despite this, migrant workers choose to stay in the city, because, to improve the economic condition of their families, few choices are reserved for them in the countryside (Lü 2012; L. Zhang 2001; L. Ma and Xiang 1998; Chan 2002). Thus, underneath the Miao father’s ostensibly ‘individualistic’ decision of prioritising his ‘breadwinner’ role in fatherhood are the ‘large-scale social processes’ which ‘shape the opportunities and constraints that fathers experience as they attempt to embrace specific fatherhood roles’ (Marsiglio 1993, 495). In the Chinese economic and social context, it is the process of modernisation and migration that has largely restricted a father’s commitment to his roles in the family and resulted in the boy’s inability to bring his father home. Expecting underclass citizens such as migrant workers and their children to think on behalf of the nation or contribute to the national discourse is unjustifiable. After all, in many cases, the basic needs of these people to live a decent life with their families have not been met by the state.
On the other hand, in this particular case, the idealistic image of the Bird’s Nest in the third internal focalisation can be taken as an attempt on the part of the filmmaker to relieve the
101
Chapter 3
tension created by the first two. In contrast to the symmetrical structures in the first two internal focalisations that show the boy turning his head to and then away from the audience, the third internal focalisation is characterised by a pair of contradictory transitions. When the boy turns his head away from his direction of movement for the third time, he is facing the direction of the Bird’s Nest instead of the audience. However, after the idealistic image of the Bird’s Nest, the boy is shown turning his head away from the audience. A question thereby arises: if he was not looking at the audience’s direction in the first place, why did he need to turn his head away? Because of this contradiction, the idealistic image before the boy’s returned gaze is ‘out of place’ in the running sequence. A likely explanation for inserting this image despite its displacement is to reduce the tension between previous pairs of internal and external focalisations. When the national discourse has been questioned in the previous moments of tension, the filmmaker is careful not to go too far. The idealistic image of the Bird’s Nest serves to re-inscribe a national narrative by making it part of the boy’s landscape in mind.
Conclusion
This chapter argues that, in Bird’s Nest, the filmmaker has constructed a national narrative for his ethnic minority child character with nuances. The Miao boy is simultaneously included and excluded by the landscapes in Beijing. A sense of alienation is evident in the boy’s interaction with the Beijing environment. In particular, with regards to the symbolic national landscape of the Bird’s Nest as well as other Olympic logos, the boy is both integrated in the national discourse through the externally focalised landscape shots and breaking away from nationalism with his subjectivity through the internally focalised landscape shots or mind landscapes. The three moments of tension indicate that this ostensible leitmotif film is not ideologically steadfast, like for instance previous productions of Chinese cinema under the state ownership. Instead, there is strategic compromise on the part of the filmmaker who produces the film independently but seeks distribution by catering to the system. The filmmaker has managed to achieve personal expressions through tactful deployments of landscape shots, such as creating the discrepancy between the intended national narrative in external focalisations and the child character’s personal agencies in internal focalisations as demonstrated in this chapter. In doing so, he has successfully opened up space for an alternative understanding of an ethnic minority child’s subjectivity and national identity in the context of modernisation and migration in contemporary China.
102
Chapter 4 Space of the Grasslands in a Relational Construction: Heroes and a Reconstruction of Ethnic Relationships through Interactions between the Han and Mongol Children
Introduction
This chapter draws on Doreen Massey’s (2005) idea of relational construction of space to explore how cinematic space contributes to a reconstruction of ethnic relationships. The film discussed in this chapter, Seeking Naadam (2009), focuses on a Han boy’s experience when he is taken to the rural space of the Inner Mongolian grasslands away from his home in the nation’s capital Beijing. Although such narrative of Han characters in Inner Mongolia is not rare in Chinese cinematic tradition such as in Xin Jin’s Muma ren/The Herdsman (1982) and resonant with that of transnational production Lang tu teng/Wolf Totem (2015, dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud), it runs counter to a dominant narrative in contemporary Chinese popular culture, where attention is increasingly paid to rural children’s adaptation to an urban space when they migrate with their parents to cities in the context of intensified urbanisation and migration. The Han boy is taken the grasslands against his will to counteract his addiction to internet games. Once there, he is left alone with the host herder’s family. Discomfort is a common experience for migrant children in any new environment. The Han boy is no exception. He attempts (and fails) to escape shortly after arrival. This failed attempt gives rise to his subsequent resort for help from a Mongol girl from the host family. This ploy results in a shared journey that occupies the main body of the film. There is one key difference between the boy’s experience and that of other migrant children. Rural children displaced in cities, ethnic minority children included, are often subject to discrimination and segregation, while the urban Han boy in this film receives significant hospitality from locals even though they are victims of Han-dominated socio-economic reform.
Both The Herdsman and Wolf Totem feature the hospitality of Mongols to Han characters. But Seeking Naadam differs from Wolf Totem where there is explicit political allegory of ridiculing the week human nature of Han Chinese (Varsava 2011). It also differs from The Herdsman’s real emphasis on the power of a Han woman serving as ‘the active figure’ to ‘maintain’ the politically victimised Han man (Browne 1996, 51), an issue of gender relationship within the dominant culture. Seeking Naadam appears to be a ‘main melody’ film on several levels. It ostensibly celebrates the leadership of the Han-dominated nation-state. ‘Naadam’ in the film’s title is the most important sports event for Mongols on the grasslands and coincides with the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in the year when the film was produced. Like Bird’s Nest in Chapter 3, identifying the film as a national narrative is imperative in the social-political context of the Beijing Olympics.
Chapter 4
Moreover, as Chong (2013, 243) observes, the Olympics are ‘never just about sports’. Due to China’s long history of being subject to western imperialism and regarded as ‘the sick man of Asia’, Chinese Olympic gold medallists are regarded as heroes/heroines for bringing honour to the nation (Chong 2013). Correspondingly, the theme of heroes and heroism is underscored in the film’s narrative. The children fail to arrive at their destination Naadam to see athletic Mongol heroes due to the girl’s illness. But the Han boy’s carrying of the sick girl on his back near the end of the film conveys an undeniable message that Han Chinese are the real heroes. However, this chapter suggests that a celebratory reading of Han leadership as well as a totalising reading of gender relationship is not the full message the film delivers. A film’s title, even a film’s narrative, let alone its narrative resolution, can be functional, such as for the sake of censorship. What deserves real attention is the process by which the film unfolds cinematically while telling a seemingly straightforward story that corresponds to national preoccupations.
This chapter argues that the film has manipulated the space of the grasslands to produce critical reflections on the social and relational space between Han and Mongols in contemporary China. The director of the film, Bao Lide, is not well known in China, and his ethnic identity by birth cannot be confirmed. However, he has effectively constructed two alternating spaces with the two children’s mobility – the grasslands and their neighboring towns, in which power relations between the Han and the Mongols shift with space. The two spaces, seen from a ‘relational’ perspective, are constructed through the children’s interactions and negotiations with multiple trajectories in each. As their bodies form different relations with other trajectories in the two spaces, they respectively facilitate the interactions of the other child with his/her unfamiliar space. Although the film is strongly in line with the rise of both Han and China on the domestic and international stages through negotiated and benign heroism, it also takes note along the way of other indigenous knowledge systems and practices of civility which give pointers to how this might be enacted. The film suggests that both Hans and Mongols can be heroes if they are situated in proper space. The Chinese state needs to reconsider its spatial relationship with its power and its people – other ethnic groups – it governs. The relational space between Han and ethnic minorities needs to be contested, made more intimate and allow different ways of seeing.
A ‘Relational’ Construction of Space
Space is a key concept in cultural geography. Based on Gill Valentine’s (2004, 8) summary, geographers’ understandings of space go through three stages. In the first stage, which occurred after the 1950s, space was valued for its objective physical features. It was taken as a discrete 104
Chapter 4
and autonomous container for social relations and processes. In the second stage, space was perceived as a product of social relations and processes instead of being merely a container. Finally, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, geographies started to underscore the active role played by space in reproducing social relations and processes when produced by them. ‘Spatiality’ is a term used to describe how space and social relations are made through each other (Soja 1980).
Edward Soja’s (1980) famous configuration of the ‘socio-spatial dialectic’ is a useful way to understand ‘spatiality’. Soja argues that the organisation of space is neither ‘a separate structure with its own autonomous laws of construction and transformation’ nor ‘simply an expression of the class structure emerging from the social (i.e. aspatial) relations of production’ (1980, 208). Instead, it represents ‘a dialectically defined component of the general relations of production, relations which are simultaneously social and spatial’ (208). According to Soja, it is important to examine this ‘socio-spatial dialectic’ because ‘the demystification of spatiality and its veiled instrumentality of power is the key to making practical, political, and theoretical sense of the contemporary era’ (1989, 61).
Soja’s configuration resonates with arguments of other key geographers of the era, such as David Harvey, Neil Smith and Doreen Massey. Harvey (1973), a pioneer of Marxist geography, agrees that space is not a given, a container for non-spatial things, but an active agent to social relations and processes while being created by them. Smith (1991) develops the concept of ‘relative’ space to refer to the dynamic condition of space as both an effect and cause of socio- economic relations and processes. It contrasts with the conventional conception of space as ‘absolute’, i.e. an empty container. Massey (1994) advances the understanding of space from ‘relative’ to ‘relational’ condition. She perceives space as ‘porous networks of social relations’ and identifies different positionalities of different groups and individuals in those networks constituting what she calls ‘power geometry’ (Massey 1994, 121). She also stresses all ‘things’ – places, identities and socio-spatial formations – should be configured relationally (Massey 1995). She (2005) has recently developed her proposition of a ‘relational’ construction of space. Her perspective is considered significant because it solves a critical question that has beset geographers for decades – ‘how to uncover, explain, and represent the interrelationships between spaces and objects [social relations and processes]’ (M. Jones 2009, 490, original emphases).
In Massey’s (2005) ‘relational’ thinking of space, space is not simply ‘there’ as a smooth 105
Chapter 4
continuous surface. Instead, it is presented ‘as the sphere of coexistence of a multiplicity of trajectories’ (2005, 135). It is constructed through ‘practices of material engagement’ and ‘unfolds as interaction’ (132). The practices and interactions, as seen by Massey, constitute the ‘social dimension’ of space, which is however not in the sense of ‘exclusively human sociability’ but in the sense of ‘engagement within a multiplicity’ (132, original emphasis). In particular, Massey emphasises that the multiplicity of trajectories even exists in a ‘place’, which is traditionally conceptualised as spatially bounded and culturally coherent. The reason for this is that we must acknowledge the presence of ‘fractures’, ‘dynamism’, and ‘inherent instabilities and creativities’ even in that space (139).
Moreover, multiple trajectories in the sphere of space are not ‘discrete’ or ‘inert things’ but ‘a heterogeneity of practices and processes’, which constitute a dynamic simultaneity of ‘becomings’ (Massey 2005, 221, original emphases). However, Massey stresses that the simultaneous ‘becomings’ do not prescribe that the sphere is ‘an already-interconnected whole’ (221). Instead, it is ‘an ongoing product of interconnections and not’ (221). It is in a constant process of being made and thereby always unfinished and open. In particular, the sphere of relations is subject to the influence of new arrivals, and thus rendered undetermined due to new relationships to be constructed. In Massey’s words, the sphere is full of ‘loose ends and ongoing stories’, where there are ‘connections yet to be made, juxtapositions yet to flower into interaction, or not, potential links which may never be established’ (222, original emphasis). From Massey’s standpoint, it is those ‘practices which form relations’ that collectively produce ‘entities and identities (be they places, or political constituencies, or mountains)’ (295).
Although Massey emphasises that space is in constant construction, she also identifies that there are ‘temporary cohesions of articulations of relations, the provisional and partial enclosures, the repeated practices which chisel their way into being established flows’ (2005, 347). According to Massey, ‘these spatial forms mirror the necessary fixings of communication and identity’ (347). Despite these moments of convenience, identities or entities of human or nonhuman can be opaque to each other due to a diversity of spheres of multiplicity and relationships in each. Therefore, when we (human or nonhuman or both) are ‘being together’, the ‘mutual opacity’ in the ‘spatial’ demands the aforementioned ‘social’ dimension of space to establish relationships through practices and interactions (307). Negotiations become ‘inevitable’ in this state of ‘throwntogetherness’ (356).
While every identity or entity needs to negotiate, Massey points out that, challenges involved in 106
Chapter 4
those negotiations are ‘shockingly unequal’ for different groups and individuals (334). The ‘politics, economics and cultures of space’ marked by social differences of class, gender, ethnicity, and so on can give rise to that inequality (334). As a result, ethics is required in our negotiations of ‘throwntogetherness’. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s articulation of ‘ethics is hospitality’ (2001, 16-17, original emphases, as quoted in Massey 2005),1 Massey suggests ‘relational’ ethics be adopted in accordance with ‘relational’ space (2005, 369). Ethical commitment that is locally bounded in a conventional way might as well be reframed through its interconnectedness with other trajectories on a larger scale. The purpose is to imagine and establish ‘very different geographies of affect and of loyalty’ (371). On a fundamental level, Massey’s idea of ‘relational’ ethics coincides with feminist ethics of care, which argues for openness to others, situated understanding, and awareness of mutual dependence (Held 2006; Gilligan 2003). Here ‘others’ can be either human or nonhuman. The ‘nonhuman’ refers to both the physical environment and other species. Like humans, they are entitled to inhabit the planet (Gruen 2011).
Massey’s ‘relational’ perspective on space construction and her advocation of ‘relational’ ethics in coordinating our relationship with each other offers a potential for intervention in social relations and processes. On the one hand, the relational thinking reveals the power geometries in various structures of time-spaces devoted to regulating ‘the range and nature of the adventures and chance encounters which are permissible’ (Massey 2005, 354-355). On the other hand, opportunities are opened up for making change. As Massey claims, if entities and identities ‘of ourselves, of the everyday, of places’ are relational (2005, 374), then ‘it is in the relations of their construction that the politics needs to be engaged’ (354-355). Through intervention, a reconstruction can be achieved in interpersonal relationships, human-nonhuman relationships, and ‘spatialities of responsibility, loyalty, care’ (374). This type of reconstruction nonetheless does not dismiss the connotation of ‘one-way-ness’ in ethics like ‘hospitality’ or ‘responsibility’. Massey admits that these ethics are unavoidably ‘hierarchical’ in spatiality and ‘arrogate’ unto the ‘responsible’ figure or the provider of ‘hospitality’ a superior position of power (383).
Finally, Massey (2005) states that her relational conception of space is not confined to urban spaces. Admittedly, cities are characterised by ‘peculiarly large, intense and heterogeneous
1 Derrida (2001, 16-17) states that ‘hospitality’ is ‘a manner of being there, the manner in which we relate to ourselves and to others, to others as our own or as foreigners’. 107
Chapter 4
constellations of trajectories, demanding of complex negotiations’ (308). However, all places can be ‘home to the weavings together, mutual indifferences and outright antagonisms of [such] a myriad of trajectories’ (334). Indeed, Massey (2005) suggests that ‘reimagining countryside/Nature is more challenging’ because it involves more trajectories of nonhuman in addition to those of human in its ‘politics of negotiation’ (318). In extreme cases, the negotiations between human and nonhuman can be framed as either human’s ability to conquer or nature’s overwhelming might. However, in most situations, their negotiations fall on the spectrum in-between. Moreover, ‘purely human negotiations’ in one place can exert impact on human or nonhuman negotiations in other places (319).
This chapter argues that Seeking Naadam may be considered a reconstruction of Han-Mongol relationships through an intervention in space construction. The space of the grasslands, together with the space of adjoining towns, is made available to the two children so that they can interact with a cohort of ‘adventures and chance encounters’ that is completely different from their past experiences. However, space does not take effect by itself. The children must make interactions with other trajectories in those spaces before the spaces become helpful in creating social relations that are relevant to them. The two children respectively facilitate the other’s interactions and negotiations with multiple trajectories (human or nonhuman) in his/her unfamiliar space, which demonstrates a relational construction of space and ethnic relationships. Power is implicated in the process of space construction. Indigenous knowledge systems of the Mongols and their practices of civility are particularly emphasised in the space construction and their interactions. In the sections to follow, I first examine how the two spaces are constructed relationally and how power is shifted with space. Then I address the climactic moment in which the boy carries the girl on his back. The chapter argues that, although a sense of hierarchy is displayed in that moment conferring upon the Han a superior position, the film has emphatically constructed a two-way ‘hospitality’ with the Mongols as significant providers before cinematically presenting that moment.
The Space of the Grasslands
Drawing on Massey, the grasslands are a space of multiple ‘becomings’. For the Han boy who is unfamiliar with this environment, the space is however opaque. It is hard for him to connect with mountains, herds, grass, paths and Mongols in this space. As a child displaced by force, he suffers from abrupt disconnection with relationships in his old space. As to whether he intends to establish new relationships in the new space, his initial answer is negative. He wants to escape. 108
Chapter 4
Sneaking out of the yurt of the host family amidst sounds of bleats early in the morning, he runs wildly on the grasslands accompanied by strong dynamic non-diegetic music. In a long shot, he is juxtaposed with a herd of running horses, and nearby are a herd of sheep (Figure 4.1, left). The dark skins of horses and white fleeces of sheep, together with blue mountain ranges in the distance and green grass under his feet, form multiple trajectories in that space. The boy’s running turns him into one of the trajectories that are in a state of simultaneous ‘becomings’ with others. However, instead of engaging with these ongoing stories on his side, he is persistent in his running. When he stops to take a breath, a monologue voiceover informs the audience that he is eager to find a ‘road’ but frustrated at not being able to find one after a long period of running. He takes out an electronic device wherein lies his virtual pet and friend. He confides to the device that he will not give in to his father’s plan of abandoning him to that space. When he starts to run again, he is framed in another landscape shot seemingly running towards a herd of sheep which forms a thick line in front of him. However, the camera cuts to a medium shot showing him gradually coming to a halt. When he stands still, the camera tracks in, cranes up, and turns around him from a high angle. In this shot, the boy raises his head towards the sky (Figure 4.1, right), and then kneels down to the grass with a scream of desperation. Concurrently, the high-angle shot is shifted to a low-angle close shot of him buried by the grass.
Figure 4.1 The boy’s attempt to escape from the grasslands
This sequence exhibits what Lo articulates as the ‘radical otherness of minority life’ that remains largely ‘unknown and impenetrable to the Han subjects of the so-called civilized centre’ (2009, 239). The boy’s sense of desperation as cinematically highlighted in the ending shot ostensibly arises from his failure to find a road. However, the real reason is that he fails to establish connections with multiple trajectories in the unfamiliar space. He is too eager to get out of the space to pay any attention to the trajectories in that space. He makes contact with the grass by running through it. Nonetheless, no real connection is made due to his inability to identify a path
109
Chapter 4
through it. His sphere of multiplicity and relationships – his friend and virtual pet, his father, and his desire for a road with a clear sense of direction – simply does not intersect with trajectories around him in that space. He is, in a sense, rendered immobile by his own modernity – his reliance on a road. His emotional detachment from the inhabitants of the grasslands denies him a chance to gain a sense of direction across the space. The landscape shots employed in this sequence highlight the juxtaposition of his trajectories with others instead of interactions. This situation of nonconnection changes gradually in his subsequent shared journey with a Mongol girl. She becomes an agent to the boy’s later interactions with the grasslands. She contributes to his connection with the space on both human and nonhuman levels. She first helps the boy to recognise a path in that space.
1. Paths on the grasslands
Informed by the girl from the host family that there is an asphalt road beyond the mountains on the way to Naadam – the place where she desires to go, the boy lies to her that he will take her there. In an unpeopled distant shot of herds, the girl’s voice is heard offscreen. She asks the boy whether he possesses prowess in riding, hunting or wrestling since they are going to Naadam. The boy replies immediately that he does. In the subsequent static landscape shot, the composition of which is repeatedly used in this sequence, the two children emerge from one side of the frame one after another walking on the horizon formed by the grass and the sky (Figure 4.2, left). In the shot, the boy asks the girl for assurance that they will reach an asphalt road on the way to Naadam.
Figure 4.2 The children’s interval at the outset of the journey
The interval between the two children when they enter the frame indicates their psychological distance at the outset of the journey. Although they are ‘thrown together’, there is apparently massive space between them in terms of their experiences, understandings and desires. The
110
Chapter 4
boy’s dishonest claim about his athletic prowess reveals his lack of real intention to connect with the girl at this stage. His request for assurance indicates that he is not interested in taking her to Naadam but obsessed with finding an asphalt road to get out of the grasslands. Nonetheless, it seems imperative for them to negotiate their relationship because their relational space is both collapsed with old space and brought together in the same space due to their shared mobility. As the frame composition of Figure 4.2 highlights, they are isolated from the outside world. Sandwiched by the earth and the sky in a state of ‘throwntogetherness’ as phrased by Massey, they must interact with each other in one way or another. The film has centred on their negotiations since this moment. It is worth mentioning that their mode of mobility, walking, also provides them with opportunities to interact because walking is a slow manner to ‘appropriate space and give it a shape’ (Wojcik 2016, 23). As they walk, they construct space through negotiating with each other and with other trajectories in the space of the grasslands.
In what follows, the girl starts to sing a Mongolian song while walking. A frontal medium shot is edited in showing the two children marching towards the camera when the boy abruptly cuts off the girl’s singing. Being asked ‘Why?’, the boy replies, ‘No reasons. Just boring.’ Hearing this, the girl takes on a serious look. She questions the boy, ‘Don’t you like singing? All contestants in Naadam love singing. If you do not like singing, we cannot go to Naadam.’ Sensing a tone of seriousness in the girl’s words, the boy has no choice but to agree to sing a song. The two children are reframed in the aforementioned landscape shot (Figure 4.2, right), in which the boy stands closer to the girl in comparison with the previous moment. Although they are physically close, the boy’s song makes them socially distant. What he sings is a song by Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (Zhou Jielun), who is famous for uttering lyrics in a fast and unclear manner. Despite Chou’s great popularity in Han areas at that time, his song is totally beyond the comprehension of the girl.
In this part of the sequence, Chou’s song miraculously constitutes a trajectory in the space of the grasslands due to the Han boy. Drawing on Massey, a new relationship is likely to be established because of the new arrival. However, this trajectory fails to connect with the girl and ends up sustaining a state of disconnection between the two children instead of making them closer. Admittedly, the act of ‘singing back’ itself is a way in which the children are negotiating their relationship. According to Massey, it constitutes the ‘social’ dimension of the space construction. However, the ‘mutual opacity’ between the two children is strong. They are culturally distinct and simultaneously bear different relationships with the space. As the
111
Chapter 4
sequence demonstrates, the girl possesses a greater sense of ease in that space. In a sense, she has not left her home. She has left her family’s yurt but not the grasslands. Her connection with multiple trajectories in that space is reflected through her practices of Mongolian culture such as singing, which is a Mongolian way of connecting with space. Mongolian songs contain many descriptions of the sky, clouds, grasslands, rivers, horses, herds, and in particular mountains, which are closely related to the daily lives of Mongols. The songs reflect Mongols’ admiration for the physical environment and living creatures (M. Yu and Dou 2011; L. Yang 2013; Chao 2007). The Mongol girl’s relatively stable relationship with the grasslands, from Massey’s standpoint, is the foundation for her ethnic identity as a Mongol. In contrast, the boy is displaced. His culture as exhibited through his singing of Chou’s song fails to make connections with other trajectories in the space. The song pertaining to the traditional Chinese medicine and a sense of Han nationalism as a response to social symptoms of worshiping things foreign is, in a sense, also displaced.2 As they walk along, the girl’s competence in connecting with the grasslands, such as locating directions with the position of mountains, will bring about transformation in the boy’s interactions with the space, although the boy is rather reluctant at this stage.
When the two children resume walking after singing, the camera frames them on the horizon formed by the grass and the sky in a distant shot. The next shot employs a cinematic device of fast motion, in which the movement of clouds casts shadows on the grass to indicate the passage of time. This shot incidentally illustrates the sky and the grass as multiple ‘becomings’ in the space alongside with the children. When the children reappear in a medium long shot following a dissolve, a mountain range is visible in the background (Figure 4.3, left). When the boy asks the girl how long they still need to walk, the girl points ahead, answering that there is another mountain to pass. The boy becomes impatient, complaining that they have already crossed several mountains. When the two children are seen again in a medium long shot (Figure 4.3,
2 The song sung by the boy is Jay Chou’s ‘Compendium of Materia Medica’ (bencao gangmu), the same title with a great work of medicine compiled by pharmacologist Li Shizhen (1518-1593) during the Ming dynasty, which is incidentally the last feudal dynasty established by Han Chinese. Before and after Ming are the Yuan and Qing dynasties established by the Mongols and Manchus respectively. The song begins with a hypothesis that, ‘If Huotuo, a famous Han doctor (145-208) during the Eastern Han dynasty (25- 220), were alive, worshiping things foreign would be cured. Foreign countries would learn Chinese characters, and our nationalism would be motivated.’ The song then lists many herbs in the traditional Chinese medicine before making a bold and proud claim that ‘A history would be rewritten in our way’. The lyrics also state that, ‘Chinese traditions should be valued, while foreign countries, despite their effort, cannot emulate us because immense power lies in what we inherit from our ancestors’. Apparently, the song carries a strong sense of Han chauvinism opposing not only foreign countries but also ethnic minorities. 112
Chapter 4
right) after a brief cut to the girl’s grandma who just discovered the children’s absence from home, there is a better view of mountain ranges in the distance. The girl is energetically walking ahead, while the boy is lagging and looking exhausted.
Figure 4.3 The girl using the position of mountains for directions on the grasslands
When the camera moves to the front of the children and shows the boy’s warning of punishment in the case of still failing to see a road, he is thrilled to discover that a road lies right ahead of them. In a static frame, facing an asphalt road in the background, the boy jumps up and down with excitement in the foreground (Figure 4.4). When he jumps, he exclaims happily that he can finally leave ‘the damn place’. The girl, standing nearby, shares the boy’s happiness without any idea that he is going to dispatch her to return home since, in his mind, she has fulfilled her ‘mission’ of showing him the ‘road’.
Figure 4.4 The boy’s excitement at seeing an asphalt road
In the whole sequence, the girl uses the position of mountains to find directions on the grasslands. She can see them, while he cannot. She is confident, assertive, and equipped with knowledge about the space, while he is not. This dualistic approach demonstrates a type of 113
Chapter 4
power relationship that is associated with space. While the boy is assumed to represent a more advanced civilisation, he needs the girl’s help in navigating the space. Moreover, when the boy is convinced that the asphalt road is going to lead him somewhere, hopefully an urban space he can better connect with, he finds the ‘road’, albeit a familiar trajectory in his assumption, has a unique sphere of relationships when it is embedded in the grasslands: the boy cannot communicate with the hitchhiked Mongol driver. To the space of the grasslands, the asphalt road is a new arrival, which practically serves to bring about ‘fractures’, ‘dynamism’ and ‘creativities’ in that space, echoing Massey’s idea of relational construction of space in a ‘place’. The narrative deployment, which is spatial in a relational sense, endows the asphalt road with a magic power, enabling the girl to get on the same automobile as the boy does when she is asked to help. Due to her company in his subsequent adventure, his change of mind – real commitment to taking her to Naadam – is rendered possible. It also becomes possible for her to assist in his interactions with the grasslands when they return to the space from nearby towns. In the later narrative, she shows him another way of recognising a path on the grasslands. Different from the asphalt road, the path to be identified is inherent to the grasslands like the position of mountains. It is closely related to the trajectories of herds, herders and grass.
It occurs in a sequence when the children have gone through two towns and are only two hours’ walking distance away from Naadam. A moving distant shot shows them walking on a winding earthy track on the grasslands. In correspondence with a downcast sky in the background, the girl comments on the imminent rain. When the boy urges her to quicken her steps, she walks away from the track. With a sound of bleat, there is a medium shot of a lamb. The children then walk towards to the lamb in a long shot (Figure 4.5, left). The shot indicates the two children are going to make a connection with the ‘ongoing story’ of the lamb in the space. However, in accordance with Massey, they still need to decide whether to turn this chance encounter, a ‘juxtaposition’, into real interaction.
114
Chapter 4
Figure 4.5 The children’s encounter with a lost lamb and another way of identifying a path on the grasslands
When the girl, picking up the lamb in her arms, remarks that the lamb has lost her mom – her connection with her herd, the boy’s first response is to ignore this lamb and continue their own journey due to the imminent rain. However, the girl puts on a face that makes the boy immediately realise she has determined to save the lamb first. In this context, the boy raises his question after looking around, ‘How can you find her herd when there is no sight of sheep anywhere?’ A medium close-up shows the girl pointing a finger at the ground with a smile on her face. The boy looks down accordingly. Following his sight, there is a shot of some dark droppings scattered on the land. Wondering what they are, the boy is about to bend down to touch them when the girl tells him they are sheep dung. Hearing this, the boy immediately straightens his body and grimaces. The next shot cuts back to the girl, ready to walk on ahead. She informs the boy confidently that the trail of dung leads to the lamb’s home. After that, the two children walk together on the grass (instead of a track) in a series of long shots. On one occasion, the boy draws the girl’s attention to his discovery of a big mass of dung, which he claims in an amusing tone must have been left by ‘dinosaur sheep’ only to be told that it is dung of cattle. Following a transitional shot of a herd of sheep in a close range, the children run towards the camera in a medium shot. When they stop in the foreground, the girl points to a direction offscreen exclaiming happily that, ‘There are many sheep over there.’ The boy adds immediately with more excitement, ‘The sheep are not just many but numerous.’ The children are next framed in a distant crane-up shot, running towards the depth of screen where there is a lateral line of white sheep (Figure 4.5, right).
In this sequence, the boy has found a way to move across the wide space of the grasslands without a road. He knows the way because the girl, as confident and assertive as before, provides him with knowledge about livestock dung. The medium close-up on the girl during her explanation defines the space, and the boy enters it when they walk on together. He knows the way also because of his motivation (also thanks to the girl) – taking the lamb back to the herd – that makes sense in the environment. Due to his knowledge and motivation, his initial indifference to herds and blindness to paths as demonstrated in his escaping attempt are reversed. When the boy is finally seen in a medium shot putting the lamb in a sheep pen, his trajectory accomplishes a connection with the trajectory of the herd following an interaction with the trajectory of the path. A sense of direction is produced through the children’s
115
Chapter 4
movement, which differs from the asphalt road that cuts through the grasslands. Like the experiences of the two Indigenous children in Australian film Beneath Clouds (2002, dir. Ivan Sen), where the road stops for them at certain places that overcome the logic of modernity and refer them to Indigenous histories of place and trauma (Gall and Probyn-Rapsey 2006), the boy’s sense of orientation in this sequence is enhanced because of his connection with natural inhabitants of the grasslands.
2. Interactions with Mongols
Besides helping the boy to recognise paths on the grasslands, the girl also facilitates his interactions with the space on the interpersonal level based on her stronger connection with other Mongols. The children’s first encounter with a pastoralist occurs when they return to the asphalt road after spending a night in the first town. By then, the boy has decided to take the girl to Naadam. They need a lift to get to the second town. After some failed attempts to hitchhike in an automobile, the boy asks the girl to try her luck. A moment later, the boy is woken up from a nap by the girl’s claim that she has found a vehicle. In disbelief, the boy looks around and sees no cars. Then, in a dramatically framed long and static shot, the girl drags the boy from one side of the frame towards a cattle-driven cart and its driver on the other side (Figure 4.6, left). When they arrive at the middle of the horizontal foreground, the camera moves to the back of the man, which shifts the cart to the foreground and the children to the background of the frame (Figure 4.6, right). A conversation takes place between the two children in the static frame. When the boy displays surprise and doubt about the hitchhiked vehicle, the girl assures him that a leleche can move fast on the grasslands.3 In the whole process of negotiation between the children, the Mongol man stands still and silently beside his cart.
3 Leleche is a type of vehicle specifically designed for the grasslands with its wide wheels. It is often used by nomadic Mongols to move their yurts to a new patch of land (Tule 2012). 116
Chapter 4
Figure 4.6 The boy’s juxtaposition with a leleche driver, a Mongol man
The long shots and static frames employed in this sequence reveal the boy’s difficulty in accepting a leleche as a feasible means of transport. He apparently prefers a combination of an asphalt road and an automobile for its speed and a clear sense of direction. If the girl did not push him to try it, he would probably never associate his mobility with a leleche. Moreover, the cinematic devices imply the distance between the boy and the Mongol man. They are physically juxtaposed. According to Massey, real connection and interaction between them have not yet been made. Linking this sequence with the boy’s first encounter with a Mongol man in the urban space before this sequence (see the beginning of the next section), it would be easier to understand the boy’s reluctance to approach the cart driver in this moment. Correspondingly, the Mongol man’s trajectory in that space is also rendered uncertain due to the ‘new arrival’ of the two children. However, his steadfast posture suggests that he commands more confidence and readiness to establish ‘new relationships’ due to his more profound interrelations with other trajectories in that space.
When the man invites the children to get on the cart, non-diegetic music arises. A medium tracking shot shows the boy sitting on the cart actively involved in driving the cattle. When the man turns to the boy and says something in Mongolian, the boy turns to the girl sitting next to him for translation. Learning that the man has praised him for his ability to drive the cattle, the boy immediately asks the girl to teach him the Mongolian expression for ‘thank you’. When the man hears the boy reply ‘thank you’ to him, he points up his thumb in praise. The boy makes the same gesture in return. The camera then moves to the back of the cart and focuses it in a long range. After an unpeopled shot of roaming horses, the two children are seen again, lying down on the cart and falling asleep. The background music has faded away. It is replaced by the man’s deep singing voice as he leads the cart passing by the camera. Following the cart’s movement, the camera starts to turn around and crane up, showing the cart moving towards the depth of screen (Figure 4.7). Meanwhile, the non-diegetic music resumes, gradually overwhelming the man’s singing.
117
Chapter 4
Figure 4.7 The children falling asleep on the cart
In this sequence, harmonious relationships are established between heaven and earth, human and nonhuman, and in particular among people of different ethnic groups. In the space of the cart, there are smooth interactions among a multiplicity of trajectories – between the boy and the cattle, among the three characters who speak two different languages, and between the Mongol man and the two children who sleep on the cart. The cart itself forms a trajectory under the sky linked to the trajectory of the land through its movement across the space. Real trust has been established between the Mongol man and the two children as it is a precondition for a person willing to be led by another person in a state of sleeping. The man’s deep singing voice provides a sense of assurance that the children carried by the cart are on track. Although no clear path can be seen on the grasslands, the movement of the cart led by the man gives out a sense of direction. With the cart’s movement, there is a feeling that the children are smoothly embedded in the space linked to the trajectory of a path in addition to that of the cart. The driver is offering the children a type of ‘hospitality’ based on his sense of control over multiple relations in that space, such as the cart, the ox and a path. As children’s free rides in adult-owned vehicles are subject to the moral, motivational and ethical trajectory of adult drivers (Donald 2015), these children are lucky in the sense that the Mongol man, together with other pastoralists in their later encounters, are all kind-hearted, friendly, and ready to offer them compassion and love.
The children’s next encounter with a pastoralist and his family occurs as a follow-up to their rescue of the stray lamb. A sense of reciprocity seems to be implicated in their relationship. However, due to the introduction of a new trajectory in the space of the grasslands, a sandstorm, the pastoralist’s hospitality is made more eminent. The trajectory of sandstorm is introduced as
118
Chapter 4
a disturbance to the relatively stable sphere of relationships on the grasslands. It is associated with uncontrollable forces outside the area – those interconnected trajectories on a larger scale in which Han Chinese are main players. This trajectory complicates the interactions between Han and Mongols. However, this complexity in return highlights the generosity of the Mongols in providing support and care for the children.
When the children bring the lost lamb to its herd, the owner of the herd, a Mongol pastoralist, is on his way to the sheep pen to fasten it because of the imminent wind and rain pour. After a brief communication about the lost lamb, which, according to the herder, can return to its herd by itself, the girl asks the herder how many sheep he has. The man replies, ‘Over eight hundred.’ To express her admiration, the girl reveals that her family has only one hundred sheep. Hearing the girl’s family are also herders, the man asks with great interest where her family lives. Once being informed of the location, he expresses his admiration for better grass and water in the girl’s hometown. He sighs that the grass in his area has been invaded by flown sands, and his family is compelled to leave the area and move northwards in the coming year. Hearing ‘flown sands’, the boy cuts in and asks the herder, ‘Do you mean sandstorm?’ The man gives an affirmative answer. When he drives away on his motorcycle, there is a long shot of the girl crouching to touch sands on the land (Figure 4.8). A close shot follows, moving all the way from the sands to the girl’s face. She makes an earnest remark to the boy that, ‘If there is no sand, sheep will have enough grass to eat.’
Figure 4.8 The trajectory of sandstorm
As before, the girl plays an active role in initiating the boy’s interactions with the herder. She is not dragging him to the herder this time as his rescue of the lamb has justified his interaction
119
Chapter 4
with the herder. Instead, she pushes further interaction through her questions, actions and comments. She engages him with the trajectory of sands on the land and gives rise to a binary structure among multiple trajectories in that space. In the long shot (Figure 4.8), there is a feeling that she and the sheep are connected as trajectories of victims, especially with her sympathy for them, while the boy becomes complicit with sands as culprits. As the boy comes from Beijing, a capital city that is notorious for frequent sandstorms in the early 2000s despite its ascending status in world economy, he is involuntarily entangled in the trajectory of sands. Indeed, in the context of the Beijing Olympics, sandstorms in Beijing are considered a major challenge that has to be tackled for a successful organisation of the event (Jing 2002). In the dominant Chinese discourse, the sandstorms are attributed to the desertification of the Inner Mongolian grasslands (Song 2002; L. Li and Gao 2001; G. Chen 2002). However, it is more likely that Han- dominated industrialisation, urbanisation and modernisation have tremendously reshaped natural environments of the nation in a negative way, which, in turn, determines the negotiations of pastoralists with their local trajectories (Williams 2002; X. Zhao 2003; G. Feng 2008).
The trajectory of sandstorm resonates with the ecological narrative in Wolf Totem, where the initial well-balanced relationship between wolves and Mongols is disrupted due to Han’s ignorance as well as the misbehaviours of some money-obsessed individuals. In that film, when wolves start to attack herds, Mongols pay price for Han’s wrong decisions. In Seeking Naadam, due to the trajectory of sandstorm, the film is turned into ‘ecocinema’ (S. Lu 2009). The sequence demonstrates the interconnection of multiple trajectories on a diversity of scales, between human and nonhuman, local and national, Han and Mongols. The grass, water and sands are nonhuman trajectories on the grasslands. However, they are subject to the consequences of human negotiations beyond the local, such as the Han-dominated economic development in the urban centres (G. Feng 2008; F. Chen, Hao, and Tang 2000). In this sense, Han Chinese are hidden players on the grasslands, whose roles so far are not admirable. In this context, the ensuing ‘hospitality’ of the herder (as elaborated below) represents a higher moral ground he commands in additional to what Massey points out as the conventional connotation of ‘hierarchy’ in the ethics. He is a victim, but, instead of taking revenge, he doubles his beneficence. Since, in the herder’s eyes, the children’s favour of bringing back the lost lamb is not essential, the intervening trajectory of the sandstorm becomes a foil for his subsequent generous ‘hospitality’ to the children, especially the Han boy.
120
Chapter 4
The herder rescues the two children at a critical moment when they are wet and the girl is not feeling well after the rain. He brings them to his yurt. Changed into a Mongolian robe, the boy is turned into a ‘spectacle’ for the girl, who looks fully recovered and cannot stop giggling while watching him. In a full view shot of the interior of the yurt (Figure 4.9, left), the girl makes a benign comment that he is turned into a Mongol. The herder is sitting comfortably in the centre of the yurt. Pouring some tea for himself and for the children, he informs them that he will send them back on track after they take some rest. When the herder’s wife brings in the children’s dry clothes, the boy trips over the robe while attempting to reach out, which fills the yurt with joy. The children then get on the herder’s motorcycle and bid farewell to the herder’s wife. In a shot focusing on the wife’s waving hand, a type of warm and light-hearted music arises on the soundtrack. What follows are a series of medium and long shots showing the children sitting on the back of the motorcycle, stretching their arms and uttering happy tunes (e.g. Figure 4.9, right).
Figure 4.9 The herder’s hospitality in his yurt and on his motorcycle
The whole sequence illustrates the herder’s sense of control in the space of the grasslands, inside and outside the yurt. The herder takes initiative to entertain the children in his private family space, the ‘home domain’, which signifies great ‘hospitality’ across cultures (Cai 1994; Y. He 2006; Othman, Buys, and Aird 2014). The Han boy’s metamorphosis through dress symbolises a collapse of ethnic boundaries. A new space of ethnic relationships is created through the interactions between the herder’s family and the children. Moreover, the herder’s motorcycle becomes magical. It not only transports the children across space but also reconstructs the relational space between Han and Mongols through the minimal physical distance between the children and the herder. The light-hearted music, coupled with the children’s happy tunes, conveys a sense of harmony and emotional proximity in their relationship. The sequence suggests that the physical and psychological distance between Han and Mongols can be shortened if sincere interactions are made and proper ethics such as
121
Chapter 4
hospitality is adopted.
In general, in the space of the grasslands, the Mongols – the girl and the pastoralists – take control. They have the power to connect with multiple trajectories in the space, look after themselves and care for others. They provide generous hospitality to the Han boy and contribute to his interactions with the space. In their interactions with the boy, they are powerful characters, with the power afforded by space. Moreover, their power is not abused but serves to construct a harmonious inter-ethnic relationship. Their hospitality should not be viewed as a demonstration of their subordination to the dominant Han because it is full of dignity, initiative and generosity. While the power of the Mongols is closely related to the space of the grasslands, which occupies the majority of the children’s mobility and accordingly conveys the film’s emphasis, the filmmaker also constructs the space of neighbouring towns in which the Han boy takes control. Such a parallel and indeed oscillating structure can better illustrate how power is implicated in space and how an intervention in ethnic relationships is possible.
The Space of Towns
In the urban space of towns, the girl becomes a character who feels disconnected with ‘ongoing stories’ in that space. She represents the challenges of pastoralists when they shift to an urban way of life (Jankowiak 1993). The children’s first encounter in town, a Mongol man, is a typical example. He has moved to an urban space but has not completely fitted in with the new environment. This man, different from his counterparts on the grasslands, lacks a sense of power and control over his surroundings. Moreover, the space of towns is where the girl first identifies the ‘heroic’ side in the boy. Her definition of a ‘hero’ diverges from traditional connotations of heroes in the Mongolian culture (S. Chen 2014).4 It is based on a Mongolian proverb repeatedly mentioned in the film, ‘A hero is a person who is courageous enough to overcome difficulty and surpass oneself.’ Seen ‘relationally’, the boy’s ‘heroic’ deeds are his ‘hospitality’ to the girl, which is closely linked to his strong connection with the urban space. It is important to realise the
4 According to Chen Shuanglian (2014, 87-88), traditional images of heroes in the Mongolian culture can be divided into two types. One consists of those ‘fictitious’ figures who are endowed with ‘magic power’ such as Gada Merin. The other refers to those real characters in history who are ‘outstanding’ for performing ‘some heroic deeds for his people’. An example of the latter is the story of Longmei and Yurong, two Mongol girls who risked their lives to save the collective property of their community in 1964. According to Bulag (1999), the two girls were regarded as the ‘heroic little sisters of the grassland’ in numerous stage and cinematic renderings of the event. One example is the Chinese animation Caoyuan yingxiong xiao jiemei/Two Little Heroic Sisters on the Grasslands (1965), which will be discussed later in this chapter. 122
Chapter 4
significance of space in giving rise to his identity as a ‘hero’, just like it is important to acknowledge that the space of the grasslands is conducive to a sense of control and power in the Mongols. The girl’s recognition of the boy’s ‘heroic’ side also leads to his later decision to take her to Naadam. This commitment is however made after considerable negotiations between the children, as well as between them and their encounters in the first town. Before the boy changes his mind, he remains disconnected with the girl. Indeed, the first thing he attempts to do after getting off the hitchhiked automobile is to get rid of her since he did not mean to take her with him while leaving the grasslands.
1. A Mongol man in the urban space
In the first appearance of town space, the film employs a series of medium and long shots from opposing directions to show the process in which the children cross a street. The boy holds the girl’s hand while walking (Figure 4.10). At the same time, he is increasingly irritated by the girl’s incessant questions about the urban space: ‘Where to live without yurts?’ ‘How can fixed houses be moved on a leleche?’ ‘Where can sheep get grass to eat?’ and ‘How to trade for other objects, money included, without sheep?’ When the boy answers these questions impatiently, the medium and long shots provide views of houses, buildings, cars, asphalt roads, and Han Chinese in their surroundings. These shots, serving as visual answers to her questions, indicate the girl’s disconnection with multiple trajectories in that space. In contrast, the boy looks assertive, exhibiting a sense of control much stronger than he did on the grasslands. He is familiar with the urban space and indeed eager to make interactions with what the space provides.
Figure 4.10 The girl questioning the boy about the urban space
Before the boy finds an internet café to reignite his addiction to internet games, he notices a
123
Chapter 4
public telephone hanging on a wall in the street when he passes by. Accompanied by creepy sound effects, the boy steps back. The ensuing shot shifts its focus between the boy and the phone, suggesting a dynamic working process in his mind. He then comes back to the girl. After confirming that she does not know his name, he asks her to stand in front of a shop. While walking away with the excuse of going to the toilet, he calls the police in a fake voice through the public phone. When asked to provide more details about the location of the ‘stray’ girl, the boy sticks out his head from behind the wall. He is surprised to find that a Mongol man is talking to the girl in that moment. In a medium long shot from the boy’s perspective, the man bends down to the girl and even touches her arms (Figure 4.11). Wondering what happened, the boy immediately puts down the phone and rushes forward. However, he stops in mid-way. In a hesitating manner, he turns around slowly and faces away from the girl. In a close shot on his face, the audience can see clearly his psychological struggle. When he finally turns around to face the girl, to his horror, he finds she is out of his sight.
Figure 4.11 A Mongol man talking to the girl in town
This is a complex moment. The boy’s first reaction to the man’s relational space to the girl, which is physically very close, is to rescue her. This indicates that he identifies the man as a threat. His perception conforms to Gill Valentine’s (2004, 15) finding that public space is often constructed as ‘geographies of fear’ for children due to the ‘terror talk’ of global media that represents the male body predominantly as a figure of threat. The man’s physical contact to the girl is perhaps particularly unbearable for modern eyes, which prefer zero body contact between strangers (Classen 2005). Although, at this stage, the boy has not formed a deep connection with the girl except for tricking her into showing him a road out of the grasslands, his modern ethics elicits his immediate response. However, the boy later withdraws from his impulse to rescue her. The
124
Chapter 4
film does not provide follow-up explanations. It is likely that his desire to get rid of her temporarily takes an upper hand. Alternatively, he assumes she is acquainted with the man after a second thought. His final decision of coming back to her suggests that he is still convinced that the man is a bad person. He is compelled by his ethics to stand out. In his mind, it is probably better for the girl to be picked up by the police than be left behind with a stranger man.
When the boy runs around in search of the girl anxiously, shouting her name and asking for information from passers-by, the girl exits from a shop, waving her hand towards him in happiness. Rushing to her side immediately and grabbing her hand, the boy turns to the man who also walks out of the shop and questions him sternly, ‘What are you up to?’ The man replies in Mongolian and explains that he wants to buy some stuff in the shop. Then the man hails the girl, thanks her and bids farewell. When the girl waves her goodbye, the man walks away.
This sequence is the boy’s first ‘interaction’ with a Mongol man presented by the film in great detail. By then, the boy has not formed any connections with the Mongol pastoralists on the grasslands, the leleche driver or the herder’s family, who appear later. The man’s ethnic identity is confirmed because, unlike other encounters of the children, he is distinctively dressed in a Mongolian robe. Because the stranger is a Mongol, the boy’s misconception that he is a bad person is inevitably tinged with ethnic bias. The Mongol man may look more dangerous to him because of his ignorance of the psyche in a man from another ethnic group. The filmmaker probably uses this sequence to call attention to ‘psychic decolonisation’ (hooks 2001, 225), which is crucial to establishing trust, care, knowledge and respect between people of different ethnic groups. Seen ‘relationally’, the sequence echoes Massey’s advocation of ‘relational’ ethics. Real interactions without preconceptions can enhance the understandings of different people. Unfortunately, this does not occur between the Han boy and the Mongol man in this sequence. Indeed, the boy forms a straightforward antagonism to the man based on his assumption, while the man also evades further communication with the boy with a quick farewell. In addition to the language barrier, the man’s decision is probably based on his perception that the boy is already angry at him. Although both the boy (despite his hesitation to ‘rescue’ the girl) and the man (the departing moment suggests that he is a nice person) are not bad people, an unpleasant encounter resulted due to their lack of openness, acceptance and real communication. This incident serves as a foil for the film’s subsequent construction of a more harmonious relationship between the Han and the Mongols on the grasslands. The filmmaker apparently aims to reconstruct Han-Mongol relationship through a shift of space.
125
Chapter 4
After all, the urban space has been dominated by Han, which indicates a more general condition of socio-economic control.
The Mongol man’s difficulty in the urban space is directly attributed to his inability to speak Mandarin, the dominant language of Han Chinese and the official language of the State. According to anthropologist Uradyn Bulag, the language maintenance struggle of Mongols is not a ‘primarily cultural’ issue but a political one, revealing their circumstances of being ‘deinstitutioinalized, depoliticized, and deterritorialized’ (2003, 753). The Mongol man’s misfit reflects profoundly the disadvantaged position of Mongols in the Han-dominated socio- economic structure of the urban space. As the film suggests, business in town is mostly run by Han Chinese. In accordance with Massey’s observation, challenges involved in negotiating with the town space can be strikingly unequal for Han and Mongols. When power geometries in the town space are characterised by Han dominance in socio-economic relations, the spatial inequality, according to aforementioned Marxist geographers Soja, Harvey and Smith, can reproduce socio-economic inequality between Han and Mongols. The boy’s courage to confront the man, probably without his awareness, cannot be separated from his identity as a dominant Han, although he is a child. This however does not mean that ethnic relationships and socio- economic relationships simply add to each other or operate discretely. Han Chinese can exploit Han Chinese or help Mongols as well. There is a diversity of scenarios operating at the micro level when the socio-spatial structure at the macro level is relatively fixed. For example, when the boy spends a night at an internet café in the first town, he is ripped off of all his money by the café boss, a Han Chinese and self-described zhiqing (‘educated youth’).
Zhiqing are ‘those urban middle school students who were sent to receive re-education from the peasants during the Up to the Mountain and Down to the Countryside Movement between 1968 and the late 1970s’ (Meng 2015, 672). According to Chairman Mao’s directive, they were sent down to China’s rural areas to learn from local farmers or herders. As Wolf Totem shows, they learn about indigenous knowledge while being there. However, they may also suffer as well as bring disaster to the lives of locals due to their ignorance of natural laws on the grasslands. In contemporary China, as represented in Seeking Naadam, Han Chinese, including those sent- down youth who have chosen to stay, have moved away from the grasslands. They have given up the idea of colonising the grasslands with Han civilisation as shown in Wolf Totem. Instead, they set up towns on the periphery, dominate the local economy, and indirectly guide Mongols away from their traditional lifestyle.
126
Chapter 4
What also occurs at the café is a narrative turning point when the boy in a state of absorption in computer games reveals to the girl that he cannot ride, hunt or wrestle and has no intention of going to Naadam. The girl claims in great despair that he is a cheater. This claim apparently touches the boy as he locks himself up afterwards in a toilet to interrogate himself. The girl’s claim and the boy’s self-interrogation contribute to his subsequent change of mind. In what follows, he starts to turn his familiarity with the urban space into positive interactions between him and the girl, which leads to the girl’s later claim that he is a hero.
2. The boy’s ‘heroic’ deeds in the urban space
In the next morning out of the café, the children pass by a breakfast stall. When the girl pauses at the stall due to hunger, the boy reminds her of the rip-off. He is about to walk away when he notices her real craving for food. Unlike his previous pausing in ‘rescuing’ her, he musters his courage to act on her behalf immediately this time. In a carefully framed medium close shot, the boy steps forward to negotiate with the stall owner, while the girl is seen standing behind him through the stall window (Figure 4.12, left). He asks for a pancake on a rain check only to be told that small business does not accept a rain check. He tries to explain that his money was robbed, while his ‘sister’, the Mongol girl, is hungry. Although he is telling the truth and has indeed stopped lying since he confided to the girl, he ironically sounds like he is lying. This may indicate the difficulty of telling the truth in some circumstances because people do not believe that they are being told the truth. Receiving no responses, the children are about to leave when the owner, a Han Chinese, hails them. He suggests that they yell for the stall and he pay them with pancakes. The boy accepts the offer immediately in happiness. Amidst light-hearted music on the soundtrack, the boy starts to yell. A moment later, he gently touches the girl on her head urging her to join. The subsequent close and medium shots focus on their hawking in Chinese and Mongolian respectively. The camera then frames the children in a long shot showing customers entering the frame from all directions (Figure 4.12, right). The shot then cranes up, gradually leaving the children out of the frame and revealing an overview of the townscape.
127
Chapter 4
Figure 4.12 The boy’s negotiation for breakfast on the girl’s behalf
In this sequence, the boy exhibits more negotiation power than the girl due to his experiences with the urban space. He proposes a deal on a rain check, albeit ineffective, and then readily accepts a deal of payment after labour. An uplifting space is constructed in Figure 4.12 (right) through his active engagement with the trajectories of the stall owner, the girl, and customers. Because the boy is brave enough to ‘stand out’ to solve the girl’s problem as visually illustrated in Figure 4.12 (left), the girl later claims that he is a ‘hero’ based on the aforementioned Mongolian proverb. Although the boy does not consider himself a ‘hero’, and neither could he understand the meaning of the proverb as she cannot explain it in Chinese, her claim makes him curious about why she did not go to Naadam with her father as planned. When hearing that the girl was left behind because of his arrival, he decides to take her to Naadam instead.
When the children arrive at the second town, the boy further demonstrates that he has more negotiation power in the urban space, which contributes to his image as a ‘hero’ in the girl’s eyes. His heroic image nonetheless does not suggest the girl is passive. On the contrary, she plays a critical role even in the urban space. She elicits his initiative and interaction in one way or another. Without her acting as a stimulating factor, he might have given up on several occasions. For example, when eating on a roadside, the boy recognises his mother’s voice over a radio from a nearby store. He wants to make a phone call, but he does not have any money. When he is about to give up and leave the store, the girl steps forward. She takes off from her back a pair of boots which she saves for Naadam and suggests trading the boots for a call. The store owner, a middle-aged woman, throws back the boots and claims they are old. In anger, the girl argues back that the boots are made by her grandma and she has never worn them. Seeing this scenario, the boy takes up the boots and urges the girl to leave the store. In this moment, the girl reminds him that his mother is crying. The boy gives in. When he puts back the boots on the counter, the woman accepts the offer this time. After the call, the children walk
128
Chapter 4
out of the store when the boy notices the girl’s reluctance to leave her boots behind. A few shots-reverse-shots between the girl and the woman are employed to reveal the girl’s unwillingness to tear her sight away from her boots in the woman’s hands (Figure 4.13, left and middle).
Figure 4.13 The girl and her boots
In this moment, the boy does his ‘heroic’ deed. He takes out his virtual pet and friend, an electronic device that is precious to him no less than the boots are to the girl. When he runs back to the store with the intention of trading back the boots, there is a medium shot of the boy standing close to the woman, showing her how to operate the device (Figure 4.13, right). The shot is taken from the girl’s perspective. It is powerful to illustrate the boy’s sacrifice for the girl, which reinforces his image as a ‘hero’ in her eyes. The boy’s final success in bringing back the boots is based on his better knowledge of what appeals more to the woman: a modern device for an urban dweller. The girl is happy to receive her boots but sorry for his loss of a ‘friend’. The boy replies that, ‘It is a machine, not a friend.’ This comment indicates not only his changed perception of the device but also a closer relational space between him and the girl. He considers her a real friend at this stage.
The two sections above have demonstrated how the two children respectively facilitate the interactions of the other child with his/her unfamiliar space. With a shift of space, there is a shift of power. The power is largely based on their ability to make interactions with other trajectories in each space. While the Han boy looks after the girl in the urban space, the girl and other Mongols look after the boy in the space of the grasslands. The two spaces are alternatingly constructed, while the space of the grasslands is more highlighted in terms of cinematic delineations and screen duration. This reveals the filmmaker’s real emphases – the power of the Mongols and their hospitality. However, the audience may neglect this by focusing on the climactic moment when the boy carries the girl on his back. This sequence, as to be elaborated below, is subject to an alternative interpretation beyond an obvious observation of the hierarchy.
129
Chapter 4
A Climactic Moment of Intimacy
When the children return to the grasslands after leaving the second town, they rescue the lost lamb. Because of the delay, they are caught by the rain pour. Although they are brought to the herder’s yurt later, the girl still gets a fever after they return to the track. Realising the girl is sick, the boy decides to give up the trip and send her to a hospital. The film first shows him walking on a track with the girl on his back. Then a delicately composed landscape shot follows, in which the children are placed in the middle of the frame in line with the descending sun (Figure 4.14). The sky is filled with dark and golden clouds, and the sun is half-sunk beneath the horizon. The sky occupies most of the frame, and the grassland at the bottom is in complete darkness. Walking against the sun, the two children’s figures are also cast in darkness. When the boy trips over and falls, the descending sun shines through. When he rises to his feet with difficulty, the sun is covered by the children’s bodies, while the sun’s golden aura falls over their heads. The non-diegetic music sung by a woman in Mongolian with a slow and holy voice adds a transcendental touch to the shot.
Figure 4.14 The boy carrying the girl on his back in the climactic moment
The filmmaker apparently emphasises this moment because, as an ‘ephemeral landscape’ (Brassley 1998, 123), the special ‘colour and texture’ of the sky, the sun and the land need to be captured in a specific moment with much effort. With the employment of the sun as a compositional device, coupled with the ‘holy’ music, the shot highlights the ‘heroic’ deeds of the boy. Admittedly, the filmmaker’s construction of the Han child as an elder boy and the Mongol child as a younger girl coincides with Gladney’s (1994) observation that, in Chinese visual culture, ethnic minorities are often represented as feminine while Han Chinese are masculine to serve
130
Chapter 4
the Han-dominated nation-state. One may even suspect that the filmmaker is appropriating ‘the weakened ethnic other’ as an ‘antithesis’ to ‘the self’ for the purpose of ‘rejuvenation and self- reflection’, which, in the eyes of Lo, could be morally ‘exploitative or illegitimate’ (2009, 236). Alternatively, according to Asian and Hollywood film critic Gina Marchetti’s argument, such indeed cross-cultural narrative of a ‘white knight’ hero ‘finding’ himself through rescuing a woman from another ethnic or racial group may ‘deliver a conservative adherence to the racial and gender status quo’ (1993, 109). However, it should not be ignored that the film’s main body focuses on the hospitality of the Mongols to the Han boy. In those moments, the Mongols are heroes. They give rise to the boy’s shift in moral, ethical and emotional relationships with the grasslands and with themselves. His transformation serves as the foundation for this moment. Therefore, it is more proper to claim that the filmmaker is smart to hide his attitude and political position behind the orthodox message. While the boy as a ‘hero’ is explicitly expressed and cinematically highlighted, the girl and the pastoralists as ‘heroes’ become a hidden message of the film.
Moreover, the shot suggests that a more intimate relationship can be established between Han and Mongols. Drawing on Massey, the shot can be interpreted as a spatial reconstruction of responsibility, affect and care, despite the inevitable hierarchy of power implicated. The girl’s illness is strategically employed by the filmmaker to reformulate the relationship between Han and Mongols. The narrative deployed does not mean that Mongols must be weak but indicates that an intimate relationship is already there but needs an incentive to take form. In this context, the girl is not only a hidden ‘hero’ to facilitate the boy’s interactions with both human and nonhuman trajectories in the space of the grasslands but also contributes to a change in his relational space to herself. In contrast to their initial disconnection at the outset of the journey, the children are cinematically represented in oneness in this moment. One cannot fall without the other. Their shared journey has provided them with opportunities to ‘redefine and recontextualise’ their relationship and create ‘new intimacies’ as often achieved in the genre of a road movie (Stringer 1997, 166). However, what is really significant about their physical and emotional closeness is the fact that they come from different ethnic groups. This is not happening in most American road movies (Stringer 1997). Nor is the closeness of the two leading child characters the same with that in the heroic tale of Caoyuan yingxiong xiao jiemei/Two Little Heroic Sisters on the Grasslands (1965), a Chinese animation featuring two Mongol sisters’ heroic deeds of protecting the sheep of their community against a fierce storm. In the animation, the elder sister also heroically carries her younger sister on her back when her foot became
131
Chapter 4
frozen due to the loss of a boot while saving a lamb. However, unlike Seeking Naadam, the heroic behaviour of the elder sister and her intimate relationship with her younger sister in that film are not a surprise as they are sisters of the same ethnic group. In contrast, Seeking Naadam is outstanding in terms of realising a ‘dialogic coming together’ (Stringer 1997, 167) of Han Chinese and Mongols. The two children’s relationship constitutes an imaginative reconstruction of ethnic relationships, an achievement of real compassion based on situated understandings and recognition of interdependence (Blum 1994).
Also different from the animation in which the Han-dominated nation-state makes its presence through the Mongol children’s devotion to Han ideologies of socialism and collectivism, in Seeking Naadam, the nation is embodied through the metropolitan space of Beijing. As the capital of China, Beijing is not so much a home for the boy as a destination of national significance. In contrast to Beijing, the national centre, which was ironically established largely by the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty when they ruled the country (Bulag 2006), the grasslands and their neighbouring towns constitute the space of the margin. Drawing on Bell hooks, marginal space offers ‘the possibility of radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds’ (1990, 149-150). The film ends with the Han boy sitting in his father’s car on a highway in Beijing, intercut with landscapes of Olympic venues outside the car window. The boy’s images are also superimposed by images of the grasslands where he and the Mongol girl are walking hand in hand and the girl is singing a Mongolian song while walking confidently ahead.
This ending is reminiscent of the opening sequence of The Herdsman in which two spaces – Beijing and the grasslands intercut with each other. In that film, the main story takes place in the capital city, while the flashbacks of the leading Han man are set on the grasslands in the historical background of the first three decades of the PRC. Both resonate with Lo’s observation that ‘the minority communities on the border or at the limit of the Chinese nation-state’ are often employed ‘for the representation of the inner space’ of the Han-dominated Chinese life (2009, 239). If in the socialist Mao era, Mongols were ‘colonised’ by Han ideologies of socialism and collectivism as reflected through Two Little Heroic Sisters on the Grasslands and The Herdsman,5 in contemporary China, it is Han-initiated urbanisation and modernisation and the market economy that have largely reshaped the lives of Mongols, deviating them from their
5 According to Duncan and Gregory (1999), the act of colonisation is as much a cultural and ideological project as it is an economic and political one. 132
Chapter 4
traditional space as reflected through Seeking Naadam. The Han boy’s moral obligation to carry the Mongol girl on his back may suggest that the Han-dominated nation-state should take responsibility for looking after Mongols during such significant social transformations. This however does not mean that the film advocates an assimilationist view of ethnic relationships because ethnic differences and indigenous knowledge systems are celebrated in the film. The film even conveys a message that Mongols might as well maintain their space of the grasslands as, in this space, they have power and confidence.
The film’s ending also makes a statement that the Chinese state should reconsider its spatial relationship with its power and its people. The Chinese state, as Chong (2017) observes, was very successful in achieving its people’s support for the Beijing Olympics with the consensus that the event would advance China’s global status and facilitate the nation’s dream of rejuvenation. Borrowing Michel Foucault’s contention that ‘power’ is ‘a productive network that runs through the whole social body’ that ‘traverses and produces things’, ‘induces pleasure’, ‘forms knowledge’ and ‘produces discourses’ rather than being merely ‘repressive’ (Foucault and Gordon 1980, 119, as quoted in Chong 2017), Chong argues that China’s governing and mobilisation strategies before and during the Olympics had effectively turned its people – athletes, volunteers, taxi drivers, and so on – into ‘self-directed subjects of their own, having internalised state-defined norms/ideals in embracing the nation’s dream’ (2017, 2). Although Chong does not describe how ethnic minorities are mobilised in this national event, films like Bird’s Nest (Chapter 3), Seeking Naadam (this chapter), and others all suggest that ethnic minority film productions have been actively involved in the national discourse by underlining multi-ethnic unity.
Although the ethnic minority child characters are made to associate themselves with the event in one way or another, the filmmakers of these films have strategically embedded nuances in the national narrative. The left-behind Miao boy in Bird’s Nest is brought to Beijing to create a tension between his personal desire for his father – a migrant worker, and what the nation expects of him – an embodiment of multi-ethnic unity (see Chapter 3). Although the Mongol girl in Seeking Naadam is kept on her homeland, an intervention is achieved through the Han boy’s displacement on the grasslands where he becomes a receiver of hospitality from the minority Mongols. The juxtaposition of Naadam with the Beijing Olympics can remind the Chinese state that, while a successful sports event can demonstrate its ascending status in the global arena (Chong 2017), it should not ignore its care for its people, especially the marginal population
133
Chapter 4
within its territory. The rapid development of the Chinese economy is accompanied by ‘treacherous social stratification’ (P. Yang, Tang, and Wang 2015, 208) as mentioned in Chapter 3. The nation needs to devote as much, if not more, care and support to disadvantaged people, such as left-behind children, migrant workers and ethnic minorities, as on the organisation of the Olympics, if it aims to build a real harmonious society and a real strong nation.
Conclusion
Ethnic relationships need to be reconstructed. This is the most important message that Seeking Naadam has managed to send out. When a harmonious relationship is expected across a narrative within the borders of the PRC, a relational construction of space is turned into a strategic deployment of the filmmaker to convey his message. The film does not show that it is only the Mongols who are heroes, neither does it show that it is only the Han who are heroes. It shows that both the Mongols and the Han can be heroes in certain spaces. The message is under the disguise of both a seemingly orthodox ‘main melody’ film due to its resonances with the Olympics, and a children’s film. Children are considered less restricted by social stereotypes of gender, race, ethnicity, and so on. Moreover, the attitude of adults to children is generally much nicer. In this context, a reconstruction of ethnic relationships is made easier through children’s interactions and encounters.
While discussing China’s rise in the global system, Lo (2009, 242) states that, ‘China no longer posits itself as simply the marginalized ethnic (with which it has previously identified)’ as in the films of the Fifth Generation filmmakers in the 1980s and early 1990s, where ethnographic or autoethnographic approach was pretty much at play (Chow 1995). When the nation has successfully freed itself from the operation of western orientalism (Said 1978), Lo (2009) suggests that it should not maintain a simplified or biased view towards its own marginal places and peoples. The Han boy’s transformation in Seeking Naadam is important as highlighted in the climactic moment. But what is more important is his encounters with space and the developing understanding that you cannot just encounter people and ideas outside their context. Here their context is both spatial and social. A more tolerant, open-minded and caring relationship may be established between people of different ethnic groups, if a ‘relational’ perspective is taken to construct both their spatial and ethical relationships.
134
Chapter 5 Grasslands as Transitional Spaces of Play: The Mongol Children’s Reimagination of the World
Introduction
This chapter draws on paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s (1971) proposition of transitional space and the concept’s further development in studies of children’s play and children’s geographies (Aitken and Herman 1997; Aitken 2001). It intends to illuminate how, in cinematic representation, a particular physical, social and cultural environment in which the ethnic minority child characters live gives rise to their alternative views on the world. The film discussed in this chapter, Mongolian Ping-Pong (2004), is directed by Han filmmaker Ning Hao. He is famous for his subsequent film Fengkuang de shitou/Crazy Stone (2006), which was a commercial and critical success (Q. Zhao 2010; Berra and Yang 2012). Following his fame, critics began to pay retrospective attention to his earlier films, one of which is Mongolian Ping-Pong (Y. Zhao 2014; Y. Liu 2008).1
The film tells the story of a seven-year-old Mongol boy, Bilike, who finds a white plastic ball floating down a creek on the Inner Mongolian grasslands. Not knowing what the object is, Bilike and his friends, Dawa and Erguotou, embark on a quest to identify it. They discover through access to media that the ball is a ping-pong ball, a ‘national ball’, and they logically decide to return the ball to the nation. However, their adventure through a Gobi desert ends in failure. Soon afterwards, Bilike leaves for town to attend a primary school. The film ends at the moment when Bilike opens the door of a school stadium and discovers the truth about the ball. Much of the film features prominently on the landscapes of the grasslands in which the three protagonists move freely and play independently. Andrea Barnes (2007, n.p.) states in a review that the film’s charm lies in ‘watching these boys in early childhood, living with extraordinary freedom and safety and able to embark fearlessly on childhood adventures’.
Despite Barnes’s keen observation of the children’s play experiences on the grasslands, no research has been done to explore how the children engage with the grasslands through their play. Previous research mainly focuses on the adult characters in the film, emphasising their aspirations to connect with the outside world at both national and global levels, and their frustrations in the process of adapting modern objects and lifestyles to Mongolian geographies
1 Xianghuo/Incense (2003) is another film directed by Ning Hao before Crazy Stone. It is his graduation work from the Directing Department of Beijing Film Academy.
Chapter 5
and traditions (Y. Zhao 2014; G. Zhou 2009; J. Wang 2009). When attention is paid to the child characters, researchers either consider them the embodiment of the binary divide between tradition and modernity (Y. Zhao 2014) or suggest that the children’s quest for the ball’s identity connects them with both their ethnic traditions and the nation (G. Zhou 2009), which is a most obvious and usual reading of the film from the perspective of the narrative. With regards to the function of the grasslands as visually represented in many landscape shots in the film, researchers agree that these images create a sense of a slow pace and a tranquil mood (Y. Liu 2008; Rao et al. 2011, 310; Y. Zhao 2014; G. Zhou 2009).
This chapter argues that the cinematic space of the grasslands also plays a critical role in constructing transitional spaces of play for the Mongol children on screen. This constitutes a more significant role of the grasslands because they are integrated into the daily lives of the children. The grasslands are turned into several discrete transitional spaces embedded in specific geographies where the children play. These transitional spaces are created because the filmmaker takes time to unfold the delicate interactions between the children’s subjective world and the objective world. These spaces are important because they provide the children with safe environments to experiment with a diversity of cultural practices and traditions at their disposal. They also allow them to incorporate their creative interpretations into their understandings of the world, and thus open them up to alternative views different from the dominant discourse in a Han-dominated society. These views are however terminated with the child character Bilike’s entry into town space to accept formal acculturation at the end of the film. This ending suggests the vulnerability of alternative discourse in an authoritarian state, which serves as a foil for its precious presence in the main body of the film.
Transitional Spaces of Play and the Ping-Pong Ball
Play is a very important part of a child’s life. With regards to what constitutes play, Winnicott (1971) states that play is doing an action which requires a place and a time. The activity of play – playing – also requires something to play with. This ‘something’ can be general or specific. In Winnicott’s view, the ‘something’ can be anything ‘that which is objectively perceived’ (1971, 50). Alternatively, in the eyes of cultural geographer John Horton, the ‘something’ may refer to specific ‘popular cultural texts, objects and phenomena’ (2014, 728). Moreover, Winnicott stresses that playing is ‘a creative experience’ (1971, 50). This is a critical point of departure for his proposal of transitional space, as the significance of transitional space lies in its recognition of creativity in a child’s playing. 136
Chapter 5
Winnicott defines transitional space as a psychological state during a child’s playing that is situated ‘on the theoretical line between the subjective and that which is objectively perceived’ (1971, 50). This concept is further elaborated by Stuart Aitken and Tomas Herman who regard transitional space as ‘an interplay between the internal and the external’, and ‘the psychic environment within which interpretations are formed and used’ (1997, 74). According to them, transitional space features at least three key characteristics. It is the space in which children experiment with their culture and environment. It is also a safe space for children’s experimentation, immune from consequences as in the adult society. Most importantly, the space allows children to incorporate part of their inner selves into understanding the order of the external world. Thus, it is a ‘psychic environment’ in which meanings are open for negotiations, and creative interpretations are encouraged. To facilitate the creation of transitional space, Aitken (2001) and other scholars (Holt et al. 2015) suggest that children might as well be engaged in a type of free play or ‘thick play’ as termed by Aitken. The play should be ‘child-initiated’, ‘spontaneous and voluntary’ (Holt et al. 2015, 73), and allow for ‘unmitigated potential, creativity and imagination’ (Aitken 2001, 177). The significance of such play lies in the manner in which children make ‘active exploration of individual and social imaginaries, built up in the spaces of everyday life and unfettered from adult tutelage’ (Aitken 2004, 582).
The child characters in Mongolian Ping-Pong are apparently constructed to enjoy the privilege of ‘thick play’. They play on the space of the grasslands independently, away from their parents’ supervision. They also invest a lot of creativity and imagination in their interpretations of the world as demonstrated below in this chapter. The ball discovered by Bilike is an object for them to play with. It is a ping-pong ball, a ‘fact’ that is however unknown to Bilike and his friends in the beginning. The whole process in which the children quest for the ball’s identity can be taken as their playing activities with the ball. Many psychological activities are involved because they seek understanding of the ball both in terms of its physical attributes and its social-cultural meanings. Like other popular cultural objects consumed by children (Horton 2010; Brown et al. 1994), the ball possesses meanings specific to its social, historical and geographical contexts.
A ping-pong ball, in the dominant discourse of the Chinese nation, is more than a ball used for playing table tennis. It is associated with a sport that has been acclaimed as a ‘national sport’ in China since the 1960s (Q. Chen 2009). According to sports historian Chen Qihu (2009), reasons accounting for the high status of table tennis in China include national pride brought by Chinese
137
Chapter 5
athletes in international games,2 political influence as exemplified by ‘ping-pong diplomacy’,3 and the game’s popularity among the Chinese masses.4
Despite the popularity of table tennis in the Han-dominated nation, knowledge about the ping- pong ball and ‘national sport’ is not a priori to all residents in China. This is due to differences in media access, education, geographical location, ethnic practices, and other factors. Children can live in a diversity of physical and social environments on screen as in real life (Holloway and Valentine 2000; Punch and Tisdall 2012; Moore 1986), which explains the validity of the story.5 When the Mongol children in Mongolian Ping-Pong first lay hands on a ping-pong ball without any knowledge of table tennis and the ball’s function in the sport, the ball is no more than a small light plastic white ball. This is the same case with a pokémon card6 or a Harry Potter wand,7 which are no more than a paper card or a stick to those who are unaware of their social-cultural meanings.
The plot of Mongolian Ping-Pong resembles that of South African film The God Must be Crazy (1980, dir. Jamie Uys). In that film, ‘the clash of peoples and ideologies’ (Davis 1985, 52) also occurs. A coca cola bottle, as a symbol of capitalist ideology of private ownership (Gugler 2004), disrupts the communal living of the Bushmen. Cinematically, however, different from Mongolian Ping-Pong, the leading Bushman’s perspective is not emphasised. His ‘thoughts’ are conveyed either through the film’s voice-over due to the director’s ‘penchant for direct-address narration’
2 For example, Chinese athlete Rong Guotuan won a gold medal in the 25th World Table Tennis Championship on 5 April 1959, which was a milestone in modern Chinese sporting history. It was an extraordinary achievement for the then relatively new PRC. Up to 2009, China had won over 155 gold medals in the three key international competitions in table tennis – World Table Tennis Championship, Table Tennis World Cup and Table Tennis in the Olympics. Moreover, many technical innovations, more than 50% of the total, were made by Chinese athletes to the game (Q. Chen 2009). 3 For example, table tennis paved the way for the establishment of a formal relationship between China and the United States in 1972. 4 The game was deemed suitable for Chinese national conditions. It is not demanding in terms of space, and there were advantages for expense and for an even access across gender and age-groups. 5 Some critics question the validity of the story. They do not believe the Mongol children in the film can be so ignorant as not knowing about a ping-pong ball (as quoted in J. Wang 2009). 6 In the words of John Horton (2010, 394), Pokémon is ‘formidably complex micro-ontology of toys, games, technologies, cartoons, comics, texts, collectible cards, etc. involving a formidably complex cast of “Pocket Monsters”; a major cultural phenomenon in South-East Asia, USA and UK since 1996; rules and appeal are famously opaque to many adults’. 7 John Horton (2010, 394) describes Harry Potter as ‘boy wizard; hero of seven globally successful novels (since adapted as Hollywood movies) for young people since 1997, which have spawned a vast complex of action figures, toys, merchandising etc.’. 138
Chapter 5
(Tomaselli 2006, 171), or through the role of an interpreter. This deployment may be consistent with the film’s general tendency of what critics identify as racism (Davis 1985). Namely, the ‘garbage’ of the advanced whites becomes a ‘source of wonder’ to the Bushmen (53), although the latter consider it ‘an ominous stuff’ subsequently and choose to get rid of it and manage to return to the old lifestyle in the end.
This chapter highlights that, in Mongolian Ping-Pong, the Mongol children’s creativity is cinematically underlined. The children make creative appropriations of their local, national and global cultural resources in the process of playing with the ball and seeking its identities. The grasslands are transformed into specific transitional spaces to assist with their experimentations and interpretations. These transitional spaces give rise to their alternative thinking and creative reimagination of the world. Until the very end of the film, these children are not aware of the difference between a ping-pong ball and its social-cultural identity as fixed by the dominant discourse of the nation as a ‘national sport’. This deployment reveals that the filmmaker celebrates the children’s creativity, while sympathising when they eventually must lose it. In the following sections, I focus on each main geography occupied by the children on the grasslands – Dawa’s home, a stone heap, aobao and a Gobi desert, where transitional spaces are created through the filmmaker’s employment of landscape shots. Then I address Bilike’s entry into town space and interrogate connotations of relevant cinematic constructions.
Geographies of the Mongol Children and Creations of Transitional Spaces
1. Dawa’s home
Upon the opening credits, the film features prominently the location of Dawa’s temporary home on the grasslands. In a static distant shot, Bilike and Erguotou move respectively on a horse and a motor scooter from the foreground to the midground of the frame, where there are signs of settlement near a creek (Figure 5.1). The ensuing medium and close shots show that Dawa’s family have just started to set up their yurt in the area. As nomadic herders, they turn the grasslands near the creek into their homestead. This location becomes a key geography in which several critical transitional spaces are created when the children play with the ball after discovering it.
139
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Dawa’s home
First, the film highlights a transitional space in which Bilike spots the ball in the creek while fetching water for Dawa’s father. A close shot shows Bilike scooping a pail of water from the creek, and then standing still and staring at something offscreen. A static long shot follows, in which a tiny white object floats down the creek before him (Figure 5.2, left). A close shot cuts in, revealing the object is a ball. In a high-angle medium shot that follows, the ball passes through the reflection of Bilike in the water (Figure 5.2, right). When the ball passes by, Bilike is reframed in the previous long shot. It shows Bilike standing still on the bank and staring at the ball for some time before putting down the pail and walking into the creek. A close shot is edited in, focusing on his silent gaze at the ball which is offscreen. The shot is then directly cut to a close shot of the three children staring at the ball floating on a pail of water instead of showing Bilike actually picking up the ball.
Figure 5.2 Bilike discovering a ball floating down a creek
The action of picking up the ball is not so important because what the sequence highlights is a transitional space created through a series of gazes instead of actions in the process of Bilike’s
140
Chapter 5
discovery of the ball. An action is often a result of a decision indicating a temporary resolution of thoughts, while a silent gaze implies concurrent thinking activities that have not been sorted out. Bilike’s ‘inaction’ and his silent gazes exhibit ‘the theoretical line between the subjective and that which is objectively perceived’ in Winnicott’s (1971, 50) definition of transitional space. The shot on the ball floating over Bilike’s shadow is interesting. It graphically illustrates what transitional space is – a space of in-between and a space of interaction between the internal (embodied in Bilike’s shadow) and the external (the ball). In what follows, the three children conduct a primary investigation into the ball’s identity. They endeavour to understand the physical attributes of the ball through a type of ‘sensorimotor play’, in which the children make direct communication with the object through their bodies (Änggård 2016, 77). During their experiments, transitional spaces are also created.
When the ball is floating on a pail of water under the gaze of the children who squat on the grass, curious about it, Dawa presses it down with a finger only to find that the ball rebounds and keeps floating. Erguotou grabs the ball and stands up. A close shot focuses on him, showing him staring at the ball while turning it in his hands. The other two children stand up accordingly, occupying half the frame with their backs. Erguotou is seen in the other half knocking the ball against his teeth. When Dawa grabs the ball, a close shot shifts to his front showing him scratching the ball with his fingers. Erguotou soon takes back the ball and starts to lick it with his tongue. While he is doing the licking, Dawa leans his cheek on one hand, looking puzzled and seemingly thinking hard. He takes back the ball and starts to lick it himself. Then, the three children, together with Dawa’s younger brother, are framed in the midground of a static long shot, standing close to a wooden cart – a type of traditional Mongolian vehicle (Figure 5.3, left). In the foreground, the tail of a horse sways in the frame. In the background, a group of horses run around while the children are discussing the ball. At the end of their discussion, the children all turn their heads to the direction of the camera in silent gazes. This moment is followed by a landscape shot of a creek in the foreground with some horses in the background, which ends the sequence (Figure 5.3, right).
141
Chapter 5
Figure 5.3 The children’s discussion following their ‘sensorimotor play’ with the ball
The above investigation conducted by the children on the ball occurs in Dawa’s ‘home range’ (Moore 1986, 17-18), which miraculously has not been interrupted by Dawa’s parents. The children take time to investigate while the film also takes time to showcase their explorations. Their eagerness to communicate with the ball with their hands, tongues and eyes conform to what Aitken and Herman have observed, ‘Objects often call out for the young child’s attention and exploration’ (1997, 83-84). Research has suggested that, different from adults who often distance themselves from unknown objects unless they discern their potential use (Aitken and Herman 1997), children are willing to make direct engagement with any object through touching, observing and tasting to discover its meanings and thereby learn about the world (Winnicott 1971; Kennedy 1991). In this sequence, a transitional space is created at the moment when the children are watching and thinking silently, while their peers are handling and experimenting with the ball. Their subsequent discussion in the static long shot (Figure 5.3, left) reveals the result of their thinking in the previous transitional space. Their conversation also gives rise to another transitional space when all three of them turn their eyes to the creek offscreen.
Specifically, when their conversation suggests that they must rely on cultural resources they heard about the creek and gods living in the upper reaches to seek answers, they make a transition from one transitional space to another. In the process, the environment of the grasslands shifts from being non-relevant to essential. In the static long shot (Figure 5.3, left), the majority of the frame is dominated by the grasslands, where the image of the horses and the cart sends out a message that this is a land of vitality, albeit with its own special inhabitants and culture. In this geographical environment, the ball is an alien, while the horses are natural occupants. Instead of paying attention to those horses which are apparently too familiar to them, the shot exhibits that the children are attracted by the tiny plastic ball that does not belong there. In particular, during the children’s ‘sensorimotor play’, they are totally absorbed in the
142
Chapter 5
transitional space created around the ball, and thus separate themselves from their surroundings. However, when their discussion guides them to resort for answers from cultural traditions they have acquired, their silent gazes towards the creek where the ball was found (Figure 5.3, right) generate the latter transitional space. Simultaneously, they are brought back to their connection with the environment. The grasslands become critical to their quest, and they are eager to find out whether the ball is the treasure of gods as told in the tales of Bilike’s grandma. This sequence illustrates a feature of transitional space in which cultural resources, including environmental factors, are appropriated by children to understand the world.
Another key moment in which transitional space is created at Dawa’s home occurs when the children ‘watch’ a sports program about the ball on a newly purchased television. Previously, a film projectionist at a state-sponsored film carnival held on the grasslands told them that the ball is a ping-pong ball. However, they mistook the function of a ping-pong ball as that of a golf ball as shown in a movie at the carnival. The children later acquire further information about a ping-pong ball through the television owned by Dawa’s family.
The sequence starts with a shot of a blue sky interspersed with a few white clouds. An antenna loaded with metal plates and empty tins then enters the frame. A medium shot follows, showing Dawa’s father standing on the top of a tractor holding the pole of the antenna with a long electric wire attached to one end. This cuts to a close-up on a television screen. No images are visible except for the reflection of the three children who are out of the frame but apparently sitting before the television. A medium shot from the back of the children is edited in, showing them gazing attentively at the television by sitting very close to it. Dawa’s mother sits on the side, holding Dawa’s younger brother in her arms. Realising it is the wrong channel, Dawa rises to pick up the remote controller. At the same time, the camera moves to the front of the children. In a medium shot, the three children move even closer to the screen after Dawa claims that he has found the right channel. This is followed by another close-up on the television screen. Again, there are no images on it but the reflection of the children. When the camera returns to the children, they are shown in a zoomed-in close shot, leaving Dawa’s mother out of the frame (Figure 5.4, left). They stare at the screen and listen attentively to the program, which says, ‘ping- pong is a strong sport ... of our nation … and ping-pong is regarded as our national ball (game) …’.8 This is a moment in which a transitional space is created through the children’s
8 This English translation of the Chinese subtitle is provided by the bilingual subtitles of the film. The translation hints at the potential confusion between the ‘ball’ and the ‘game’. 143
Chapter 5
absorption in the program, albeit audially instead of visually. They listen to the information about the ball and simultaneously interpret its meanings in their minds. Their interpretations will be communicated among themselves in their later conversation.
Figure 5.4 The children discovering the ping-pong ball as a ‘national ball’ from a television program
This transitional space continues when a static long shot follows in which the tall antenna returns to the frame (Figure 5.4, right). A plate falls off the antenna, which means a reduction in the already poor reception of electric signals. While in the previous moment, a transitional space is created between the children and the television through their concentration, that transitional space is disrupted with the fall of the plate. The ensuing close shot reveals that the children are thrown into bewilderment by the incident because they cannot hear anything anymore. Dawa’s mother rises to walk away, while Dawa hits the frame of the television in despair. In what follows, the children strike up a discussion about what they heard from the program.
Different from their previous ‘sensorimotor play’ with the ball to discover its physical attributes, the children in this sequence are compelled to analyse a discourse about the ball. They find it difficult to comprehend both the literal meaning of a ‘national ball (game)’ and its symbolic meanings. The children are confused by the fact that the film projectionist identifies the ball as a ping-pong ball, while the program describes it as a sport. They cannot believe the ball can be used to play a sport, because, as one of them says, ‘It’s too light to be a sport! Wrestling is the real sport!’ Then, what does a ‘national ball’, as they heard from the program, mean? The children do not continue their discussion on this question in this sequence because, whatever the answer is, they agree that the ball is important and they need to retrieve the ball first (it has been dropped in a rat hole after Bilike mistook it for a golf ball and saw no value in it).
The children’s confusion about whether the ping-pong ball is a ball or a sport in this sequence is
144
Chapter 5
understandable. In standard Chinese, both the sport of table tennis and the ball used in the sport are known as ‘ping-pong qiu’. Confusion can occur when linguistic translation is involved. It is possible that, in Mongolian, there are different words for ‘ball’ and ‘sport’, like in English.9 Because ‘qiu’ means both ‘ball’ and ‘sport’ in Chinese, ‘guoqiu’, the Chinese term for ‘national sport’, thus can be mistakenly translated as ‘national ball’ in English.
Despite easy confusion, the children’s conversation indicates that they do not take what the television says literally. In the transitional space created through their attentiveness to the program, they make critical thinking about the ball’s identity as a sport. Their later discussion manifests that they associate their understandings with their own culture and reach the consensus that the ball cannot be a sport, because it is so different from sports such as wrestling in the Mongolian culture. This sequence demonstrates that, while appropriating their cultural resources, the children have incorporated their initiative and creativity in interpreting a cultural text, which characterises the psychological state in a transitional space of play.
Despite their creativity, an unintended consequence of their interpretation is that, when they dismiss the ‘sport’ aspect of table tennis, they accentuate the ‘ball’ aspect of a ping-pong ball. However, as it is generally known, the ball used in a game should not be equated with the game itself. The balls can be produced in large quantities, and therefore the value of each is insignificant. In table tennis, whichever ball is played, the game’s significance as a national sport is not altered. This understanding of the difference between a ping-pong ball and a ‘national sport’ is however unknown to the children, which miraculously catalyses more of their creative interpretations of the term ‘guoqiu’. Their discussion on the ‘national ball’ continues when they move on to another key geography in their daily lives – the stone heap. In this geography, transitional spaces are also created by the filmmaker in which the children employ extended cultural resources to explicate the social-cultural meanings of the ball.
2. The stone heap
The stone heap makes repeated appearances in the film. In the first appearance, the film provides a 360-degree view of the heap by way of two landscape shots, which effectively delineates the physical texture of the heap and its geographical position on the grasslands. The stone heap is comprised of huge stones of different sizes and shapes. Its height and intricacy
9 The film uses Mongolian as the dominant language of dialogues. Seen from the English subtitles, the children seem to use different vocabularies for ‘ball’ and ‘sport’. 145
Chapter 5
render it an ideal location for both prospect and hideout. But, except for that, it possesses no utility due to its isolation. While such a location can be easily neglected by adults, the three protagonists have practically ‘colonised’ (Ward 1978) the place to serve their diverse purposes and activities. As the film exhibits, the three children play games, drink wine, look out, chat, contemplate, sleep, and tease others in this location. All these activities endow the stone heap with memories, feelings and meanings that are specific to these children, which may have persistent impacts on their lives (Moore 1986). Some of these memories, feelings and meanings are created when the stone heap is turned into the children’s transitional spaces of play.
A critical moment in which a transitional space is created in this geography happens when the children retrieve the ‘national ball’ from a rat hole. Following an image of the ball emerging to the surface of a hole with Erguotou’s urine, the film cuts to a close shot of Bilike playing cheerfully with the ball under the lenses of a telescope while standing on the stone heap. The ball is then passed to Erguotou. In the subsequent medium shot in a static frame (Figure 5.5, left), the ball is handed to Dawa. After that, the three children embark on a discussion about what a ‘national ball’ is and where the nation is. They make three conclusions in their discussion.
First, a ‘national ball’ is the ball of the nation, as claimed by Dawa. Dawa’s conclusion is based on two observations. For one thing, the ball cannot be a sport in the context of their ethnic traditions as mentioned earlier. For another, he makes a creative analogy between a panda as ‘national treasure’ (in his words) and the ball as the ‘national ball’. The analogy indicates that he manipulates his knowledge about a panda to further his understanding about the ball. Dawa’s conclusion coincides with a common misunderstanding of the phrase based on Chinese grammar. In Chinese, ‘guoqiu’ is easily understood as a type of ‘qiu’ that belongs to the nation, according to the ‘modifier + noun’ structure of Chinese phrase. This is another reason why translating ‘guoqiu’ into ‘national ball’ is a mistake that is rather likely to occur. After all, a ‘ball’ is a more concrete object that can be claimed to be in the possession of the nation.
Second, in Bilike’s words, ‘The nation must be very worried for losing the national ball, and we should return it to the nation.’ This understanding of their relationship with the nation is based on the traditional ideology of ‘lost and found’. The children believe that they found what the nation has lost, and therefore they should return the found item to the owner.
Third, they agree that they should return the ball to Beijing, the heart of the nation. This conclusion is a follow-up to the analogy between a panda and the ball. In their assumption,
146
Chapter 5
pandas are living in Beijing,10 and thus the ball should be returned to Beijing. However, as to ‘where is Beijing?’, they seem to disagree. When Dawa raises this question, the camera shifts to a position behind Bilike. From this perspective, the space of the grasslands in the distance is revealed (Figure 5.5, right). Within this shot, Bilike replies, ‘On the golden mountain, the place where the sun rises. My grandma told me that.’ Erguotou cuts in, ‘How can she know? She may be lying again!’ Their conversation ends with the children lowering their heads and returning to their play.
Figure 5.5 The children’s discussion about the ‘national ball’ on the stone heap
Erguotou’s comment is based on Bilike’s grandma asserting that the ball was a ‘glowing pearl’ and treasure of the river gods, while the children failed to see the ball glow in any circumstances. Despite Erguotou’s disbelief in her words, the shift in the camera position reveals that there is significance in Bilike’s claim that Beijing is ‘on the golden mountain’. The moment in which the children return to their silent play in a static frame after the shift of the camera’s perspective is the transitional space I want to emphasise (Figure 5.5, right). This transitional space is set against a physical background where there is a hill in the distance echoing ‘the golden mountain’ in Bilike’s claim. Moreover, the new position of the camera provides an unimpeded view of the grasslands extending to the distance. Such an expansive physical landscape is probably symbolic of the psychic environment of the children. In the transitional space created following their silence, their minds are allowed to navigate freely what they have discussed. During the discussion, they contributed to the conclusions, but each simultaneously has obtained new information to digest. This transitional space is reserved for their contemplation and deliberation, a process of interactions between the internal and the external.
This transitional space is significantly created because time is allocated on screen for the
10 Actually, pandas in China live mostly in the provinces of Sichuan, Shanxi and Gansu (Yi and Jiang 2010). 147
Chapter 5
moment to unfold. Cinematically, a shift in the camera position also engenders a reading from this perspective. A consequence of this transitional space is the children’s decision to return the ball to Beijing by traversing the distant terrain of the grasslands as implied by the physical landscape in Figure 5.5 (right), although they disagree on the location of Beijing. Evidently, this decision is not expressed explicitly with words but through the filmmaker’s creation of the transitional space. The unique geography of the stone heap as a location for prospect facilitates the cinematic construction of this moment. The next section aims to illustrate that the stone heap, together with other locations such as aobao, is also where Bilike contemplates individually. His introverted personality contributes to the film’s construction of transitional spaces.
3. Bilike’s contemplations at various locations
Among the three leading child characters, Bilike is key. He is not only the child who discovers the ball but also the mastermind behind a series of quests and experiments on the ball. His leadership is not reflected through his words (indeed, he does not say much) but through his thinking, observation and meditation. Transitional spaces created at the moment of his contemplation play a critical role in constructing this character and establishing his leadership among the three children. Transitional space, as a psychic environment in which a child interprets the external world with a strong sense of subjectivity and self-consciousness, seems more likely to occur frequently and naturally in an introverted child. The film shows Bilike’s contemplations at various geographies: on the stone heap, at aobao – a site of worship, and in a Gobi desert. In accordance with Aitken and Herman’s (1997, 83) observation that children’s perspectives are significantly flexible and modifiable in contrast to adults whose standpoints are relatively ‘solidified, fixed and immutable’, Bilike’s contemplations may be interpreted as his moments of ‘re-evaluating and readjusting perceptions and practices’. Transitional spaces are created to indicate the moment when Bilike alters his perceptions on the world.
In the first appearance of the stone heap when the children have just finished their enquiry about the ball with local lamas, they have a brief discussion on what lamas do in the temple. The camera follows Erguotou moving across some stones on the stone heap towards Dawa. A high- angle shot (Figure 5.6, left) and a follow-up close shot are employed to show Erguotou and Dawa playing a game with goat joints. When they play, they review what lamas said about the ball. One of them says, ‘Lamas are the closest to gods! If lamas don’t know, it can’t be gods’ treasure.’ The other replies, ‘Young lamas don’t know. Old lamas said it will glow if you have faith.’ At the end of their conversation, the camera cuts to Bilike in a static long shot, showing him sitting 148
Chapter 5
alone on the edge of a huge stone in the foreground and looking ahead away from the camera with a telescope (Figure 5.6, right). Without putting down his telescope, he cuts in, ‘So let’s go and pray!’ When Erguotou expresses his reluctance from offscreen because it is getting dark, Bilike puts down his telescope and sits quietly for a moment before the film cuts to the scene of aobao.
Figure 5.6 Bilike’s contemplation in contrast to his friends’ playing of a game
A transitional space is created when the film shows Bilike sitting away from his friends in silent observation in the static shot. With a deep focus, the shot provides a high-angle view of the grasslands merging into the sky in the distance from Bilike’s perspective (Figure 5.6, right). For Bilike, the heap affords him not only an unimpeded vision of the grasslands but also a place for contemplation. Instead of playing with his friends, he is thinking alone. When his friends are discussing the comment of lamas about the ball, he is paying attention to their words and immediately follows up with his suggestion. The ensuing shift of scenes indicates the result of his thinking. Despite Erguotou’s unwillingness, the children pray at aobao to make the ball glow. This transitional space demonstrates Bilike’s initiative in appropriating traditional culture and practices for his own end. He may not have a consolidated religious belief, but he is eager to experiment with religious traditions so as to understand the ball as well as religion.
A close shot of the ball being moved over smoke from an incense slot starts the sequence at aobao, a place consisting of a pile of wood, stones and sands for religious worship (Fan and E’erdun 2014). Another close shot follows, focusing on a piece of paper laid down on the grass and the ball being placed on it. Afterwards, a static long shot reveals the three children kowtowing in front of aobao (Figure 5.7, left). After lying on their stomachs, the children rise to their knees and then to their feet, and finally start to circle aobao and spray something at the central pile as they walk. When they return to the front, a close shot cuts in, showing them kneeling down and having a conversation. They wonder why the ball, as a ‘glowing pearl’, 149
Chapter 5
remains dim after they have demonstrated their sincere faith by following the instruction of lamas. In the shot, Erguotou drinks the wine used as an offering. He explains to Dawa that he wants to warm up his body. Then the group image is shifted to a close shot of Bilike alone, who looks disappointed. When he raises his head and watches ahead in puzzlement, a full view of aobao from his perspective unfolds (Figure 5.7, right), which ends the sequence.
Figure 5.7 The children kowtowing in front of aobao
A transitional space is first created when the children pray and walk around aobao silently in the static long shot. In their view, they are displaying their deep faith in gods, a type of internal communication with gods. They are apparently imitating the behaviours of adults. Traditionally, Mongols pray for rain, victory, prosperity and auspice in front of aobao (Xing 2013). The children appropriate this religious practice for their own purposes – to make the ball glow, which simultaneously shapes their understanding of religion. Bilike’s silent gaze at aobao at the end of the sequence gives rise to the second transitional space, in which Bilike starts to question the power of religion. His contemplation and questioning are highlighted through the filmmaker’s shift from a group image to an individual image. In both transitional spaces, the children are experimenting and searching for a proper relationship between them and ethnic (religious) traditions, except that their attitudes change from hope to disappointment. The sequence demonstrates that the children are prone to recurrent adjustments in their perspectives. Bilike’s transitional space is such a moment in which he calibrates his perception on religion.
Meanwhile, the aobao sequence illustrates how transitional space provides a safe environment for the children’s experimentation with ethnic traditions. Aikten (2001) has pointed out that children have the potential to bring challenge to social rules in a transitional space. Erguotou’s consumption of wine at aobao may be understood as such type of challenge. In the adult world, the behaviour of drinking wine at aobao, let alone the wine used as an offering, is strictly administered if not prohibited (Y. Chen 1994). However, in the case of these children, they are 150
Chapter 5
exempted from religious consequences, on the one hand, because they do not have a stable religious belief. On the other hand, their behaviours at aobao, in the eyes of adults, can all be considered play and thus imbued with a transitional space in general. Unlike adults, they still enjoy the privilege of a safe environment in which they can negotiate their understanding of and relationship with ethnic traditions.
It is notable that Chinese ethnic minority film tends not to deal with religion in detail although they do feature folk customs and informal practices (e.g. Tree God in Chapter 2). Admittedly, most ethnic minorities in China have religious belief and some ethnic minority groups hold unanimous belief in certain religion, and religious practices, wizardry, rituals, legends, myths, and so on are integral parts of their lives (Rao et al. 2011, 5-6). The Constitution of the PRC also stipulates the religious freedom of Chinese citizens. However, there seems to be a restricted scope of religious representation, as in other public spheres, on Chinese screen. During the Mao era, religion is usually depicted as a tool manipulated by the ruling class to persecute the mass and is perceived as dross of the feudal society that should be discarded (Y. Li 1997). In the more liberal post-Mao period, religious elements are still not the focus of representation. A significant exception is perhaps The Silent Holy Stones (Chapter 6), which indeed tells a story occurring during the New Year Holiday, and the mundane lives of Tibetan monks are more described than their religious activities.
The filmmakers’ self-censored choice is probably based on their perception of risk in representing something contradictory with socialist ideology in the context of the atheist Han- dominated nation. Moreover, because most filmmakers of the minority film genre are Han Chinese, who are indeed not acquainted with religious systems of ethnic minorities. It is hard for them to reveal the real psyche of minority characters when the latter perform religious activities (Q. Cheng 1997; M. He 1997; Z. Yang 1997). As a result, informal practices, which are obviously less a threat than organised religions (e.g. Islam and Tibetan Buddhism), are often represented in the genre, as demonstrated in the films discussed in this thesis.
Nonetheless, the Han filmmakers in this thesis have manifested their attempts to make up for this lack of religious allure. The enchantment of childhood helps to fill this spiritual vacuum. Cinematically, while Ning Jingwu employs landscape shots from different angles to highlight the sacredness of a Miao boy’s coming-of-age ceremony (Chapter 2), Ning Hao deploys transitional space to create a psychic environment of a Mongol child that is subject to numerous interpretations. Also, because the children are soon to discover the ball’s identity as the 151
Chapter 5
‘national ball’, there is a dialectic between religion and the nation. The narrative deployment signals not only a transition from one value system to another, from the sacred to the secular, and from the context of a minority community to that of the Han-dominated society, but also the triumph of the latter in each case.
4. The Gobi desert
The children’s biggest experiment with social practices takes place when they set out on a journey to return the ‘national ball’ to Beijing. The journey turns out to be an adventure filled with challenges and risks, especially when Bilike and Dawa are situated in the desolate landscapes of a Gobi desert with no food and little water. However, their safe return due to the rescue of the police suggests that the grasslands are still a safe environment for their experimentation.
The whole adventure can be taken as a transitional space in which the children play with both tradition and invention, that is, ‘creative invention built on tradition’ (Factor 2004, 150). Their adventure is creative in the sense that, following their discussion on the identity of a ‘national ball’ on the stone heap, they not only regard the ball as a precious possession of the nation, but also assume that Beijing is not far away and can be reached on horseback. In their imagination, Beijing lies right beyond the Gobi desert. Their adventure is built on traditions in the sense that, besides traditional practices of ‘lost and found’, they probably draw on a reciprocal relationship between Mongols and the nation. On the one hand, as represented in the film, the nation regularly organises film carnivals and performance troupes to entertain local herders. Thus, the children’s determination to return the ball can be understood as an act of reciprocity to repay the nation’s favour. On the other hand, their decision resonates with conventional loyalty of Mongols to the nation as manifested particularly in the song ‘Upon the Golden Mountain of Beijing’ sung repeatedly by Bilike’s grandma. The song was popular in socialist China. Its lyrics were originally written by a Tibetan artist to express his admiration for Chairman Mao and the CPC for liberating Tibet. Later, the song was revised and used to convey the loyalty of not only Tibetans but also people of all ethnic groups, especially ethnic minorities, to the leadership of Chairman Mao (X. Zhang 2013). The filmmaker’s construction of these Mongol children’s loyalty to the nation reveals the film’s ideological appropriateness in a Han-dominated nation-state. However, Bilike’s subsequent contemplation and silent gazes at the endless grasslands before he decides to stop the journey create a specific transitional space in which he re-evaluates the distance between Mongols and the nation. 152
Chapter 5
The three children start the journey together. However, when they arrive at the spot in which they expect to find water, there is no water there. Throughout the journey, environmental deteriorations, such as drying up of rivers, poisonous water, and sandy grasslands are both articulated in the children’s conversations and represented with landscape shots. Seen in this light, the film belongs to ‘ecocinema’, intending to draw viewers’ attention to negative impacts of industrialisation and urbanisation on the nation’s environments even those on its periphery (S. Lu 2009). Moreover, the changed physical landscapes constitute a narrative deployment, which both showcases the children’s determination to take the journey and facilitates their safe return. Despite environmental challenges, Bilike and Dawa decide to continue the journey, while Erguotou decides to return because, besides the lack of water, there is not much fuel left in his motor scooter. From this moment on, the three children are set on two divergent paths in their adventures before they finally reunite.
Following Erguotou’s request for his friends to give up the journey is a distant shot of a Gobi desert in ambient silence, in which Bilike and Dawa are situated in the middle of the frame walking away from the camera. Their figures look small in comparison with the expansive environment, but their presence is highlighted due to their dark clothes, together with the dark skin of their horses, contrasting drastically with the surrounding whiteness of the land (Figure 5.8, left). The shot is followed by a frontal view of the children leading their horses towards the camera. They are placed on the right margin, with the rest of the frame occupied by the barren whiteness (Figure 5.8, right). The two landscape shots from opposing directions provide a 360- degree view of the Gobi desert, underlining an image of bleakness with no water or grass but sands.
Figure 5.8 Bilike and Dawa in a Gobi desert
The film then intercuts between the two children and Erguotou. When Erguotou realises Dawa’s food sack is left in his scooter, he decides to catch up. Meanwhile, Bilike and Dawa take a rest 153
Chapter 5
on a grassland with poor vegetation conditions, sitting next to a small water hole marked out by a circle of stones. They wonder why the grasslands are endless while Beijing is still far away. Dawa is apparently hungry and starts to miss home, despite his denial. Their conversation ends with Bilike’s decision to find out whether the grasslands finish beyond a hill ahead. After that, the two children move up a hill. The ensuing frontal shot shows Bilike has already reached the top of the hill staring ahead while Dawa moves gradually close (Figure 5.9, left). As Dawa approaches, he declares that his horse is very tired and he himself is very hungry. When both of them reach the top, an unpeopled shot of the grasslands from their high-angle perspective unfolds. In this moment, the two children decide to stop the journey. Before they leave, the camera provides another view of the grasslands in a long take over their shoulders (Figure 5.9, right). As they gaze at the distance, they talk about the consequences of their adventure – beatings by their parents, and they agree to find shelter before dusk to avoid wolves. After that, they walk away from the hill.
Figure 5.9 Bilike and Dawa staring at the endless grasslands
The prolonged gaze of Bilike at the endless grasslands creates a transitional space, in which he persuades himself to give up the journey and starts to think about the consequences he must confront for his action – no more than a beating. Although the endless grasslands do not change his perception of the ball as a precious possession of the nation, it does make Bilike realise that the imaginary proximity between him (the grasslands) and Beijing is wrong. He cannot reach Beijing or get out of the grasslands on his own by riding a horse. The physical distance between him and Beijing, which frustrates his loyalty to the nation, is probably symbolic and ironic. In the context of rapid economic development in cities in contemporary China, the geographical and economic marginality of Mongols exacerbates their insignificance in national concern. The nation may not have cared for them adequately in many important aspects, but it will definitely
154
Chapter 5
reshape their perceptions on the world while they leave the grasslands.
Concurrently, the sequence demonstrates that the grasslands are a safe environment for the children’s adventure. When Erguotou is rescued by the police after his scooter runs out of gas, he manages to help the police find Bilike and Dawa, who have taken shelter in an empty house on the grasslands which they guess is a winter camp ground. According to the police, the children have travelled in the wrong direction to Beijing. They have almost reached Russia, where a visa is needed for entry in the adult world. The children’s adventure through the Gobi desert and their safe return manifest that, the grasslands, as an overarching transitional space of play for these Mongol children, are still relatively safe and immune from social restrictions and obligations. Moreover, the space nurtures their alternative views on the world. Although they fail to realise the goal of returning the ball to the nation, their creative interpretations of the social-cultural meanings of the ball by drawing on various cultural resources are evidently encouraged by the filmmaker and protected by the environment of the grasslands. However, Bilike’s subsequent experiences at a town school exhibit that the children’s creative imagination of the world is soon to be challenged. The Han-dominated social-cultural discourse prescribes the only feasible way to understand the ball.
Formal Education in Town and the ‘Truth’
Near the end of the film, Bilike leaves the grasslands for a town school. The filmmaker allocates ample screen time and space to unfold the journey he takes on the way to town. Despite the bright sunshine on the day of the trip, Bilike looks dismal. The sideboard frame of the truck in which he sits casts stripes of shadow on his Mongolian robe. He turns his head to the side and starts to look at the grasslands attentively as it gradually fades away (Figure 5.10, left). Then he turns his eyes to the rear of the truck. Following his vision, there is an image of a rusty door and its broken windows through which a view of two paralleled earthy tracks can be seen made out of the grasslands (Figure 5.10, right). This subjective shot is cut to an externally focalised distant shot showing the truck running through the expansive grasslands (Deleyto 1991).11
11 For a detailed explanation of Deleyto’s (1991) theorisation on focalisation, see Chapter 3 of this thesis. 155
Chapter 5
Figure 5.10 Bilike leaving the grasslands for a town school
After that, the camera returns to Bilike’s perspective. A view of an asphalt road is projected from the back of the truck. It is later revealed that it is Bilike’s vision that now focuses on the direction of where the truck is heading (Figure 5.11, left). Then Bilike looks back, giving rise to a view of the road fading gradually into the distance (Figure 5.11, right). This is followed by another externally focalised landscape shot (Deleyto 1991), which is static initially showing the truck travelling in the direction of the camera along a wide and longitudinally extended road. When the truck exits the screen, the camera starts to pan sideways and stops at a lingering view of the grasslands on one side of the road. The whole journey does not contain any dialogues but is accompanied by a Mongol man’s singing from the depth of his throat in a Mongolian singing style of Khoomei on the soundtrack.
Figure 5.11 Bilike staring at an asphalt road in two directions
The entire journey on the road may be viewed as a transitional space in which Bilike silently observes the shift of roads and ponders its implications for him. There is evident melancholy in his eyes reinforced by the background music. His melancholy at the moment of staring at the
156
Chapter 5
grasslands is likely attributed to his unfulfilled reconciliation with Dawa after their break-up,12 in addition to his enforced separation from his parents. The grasslands also contain many geographies where he plays with his friends, including those specific meanings, memories and emotions inscribed in the geographies and established particularly through transitional spaces of play as demonstrated previously in this chapter. These can lead to his sadness when he must leave the grasslands. On the other hand, he is also attracted by the landscape of the asphalt road. His persistent gazes at the road suggest that, despite being ordinary in the eyes of modern viewers, the asphalt road can be a spectacle in a child’s eyes. For Bilike, the road probably contrasts sharply with the endless grasslands he saw in the Gobi desert and is significant in taking him out of the grasslands.
Meanwhile, the road is subject to a metaphoric reading. Given the filmmaker’s cinematic emphasis on the landscape, a symbolic interpretation of the road pertaining to Bilike’s migration to town is imperative. Bilike’s migration first gives rise to several dichotomies that he must confront and negotiate with from then on: past and future, childhood and growth, home and school, rural and urban. As in the eyes of Giuliana Minghelli, the road can be a ‘central figure’ in a film, embodying ‘the past, present and future of the characters’; it can also symbolise ‘the radical homelessness of human desire and at the same time a place of possibilities’ (2008, 181). Bilike’s lingering and meditative gazes at the road in two directions convey the inevitable tension between these relationships.
More significantly, the road leads to a different way of thinking. It will open up a world that shatters many of Bilike’s presumptions and imaginations, such as the connotation of a ‘national ball’, and simultaneously close down his alternative ways of seeing the world. When Jonathan Rayner suggests that the road is linked to ‘nostalgia of the pastoral, with an inherent yearning and lament for an idyllic past (both as physical place and idealised repository of values)’ (2010, 265), the ‘idealised repository of values’ in Rayner’s description might contain an open and unfettered mind to see the world. A free mind is essential to an alternative way of thinking. As I see it, the significance of the film lies in its creation of many transitional spaces on the grasslands
12 Bilike and Dawa’s friendship breaks up due to the damage done to the ball by Bilike’s mother after their adventure in the Gobi desert, coupled with Dawa’s subsequent trading of the broken ball for an iron loop. Although the ball is finally retrieved, it is further cut into halves by Bilike’s father who intends to teach his son a lesson about the value of sharing. Bilike and Dawa are each given half of the ball. Before Bilike reconciles with Dawa, Dawa’s family has moved on to another area of the grasslands. Before he left, Dawa asked Erguotou to pass his half of the ball to Bilike. 157
Chapter 5
through the children’s free play, in which the children make creative interpretations of the world by drawing on cultural resources of diverse scales and manage to reimagine the world.
However, once these children receive formal education, their mind will be irreversibly ‘colonised’ by the dominant way of thinking. Here ‘colonisation’ occurs in the cultural and ideological realms (Duncan and Gregory 1999), which is particularly effected by discursive practices of naming, textualising and knowledge production (Gibbons 2002). Due to acculturation, the unique ethnic and innovative way of thinking will be substituted by a more uniform structure. School education, which is not only a discourse but also an institution of modernity, aims to bring enlightenment and sustained progress to both individuals and society. As part of ideological state apparatuses, it reflects and serves the interests of the dominant social group (Althusser [1971] 2001). The so- called ‘scientific knowledge’ disseminated at school is actually socially ‘constructed’ instead of being ‘found’ or ‘proved’ (Haraway 1991). Power is implicated in the process of knowledge production. As Mike Crang (1998, 180) recounts, ‘Science, the arts, local belief systems all work to create different knowledges about the world. Saying which one is valid is thus a political issue – it is about empowering the group who sees the world in that way and disabling the arguments of other groups.’ In contemporary China, the Han social-cultural system is obviously taking control of knowledge production. Thus, the road and Bilike’s melancholy on the road may be interpreted as a type of agony at an inevitable prospect of disappointment when discovering the ‘truth’ about the ‘national ball’ at the town school.
As the film represents, Bilike’s school is dominated by Han Chinese and Han ideologies. In an opening distant shot, the dominant landscape of the school are two modern buildings – landmarks of modern education, and the Chinese national flag flying on the top of a pole (Figure 5.12, left). A crowd of students sit on the playground. A medium shot follows, showing a stage in front of the crowd performing some Mongolian dances and recitals for the first-year students. Then a close shot focuses on Bilike sitting among a group of Mongol children dressed in either blue or pink robes according to their genders (Figure 5.12, right). In the background of the shot are a group of Han children wearing uniform jackets. Referring to the opening distant shot (Figure 5.12, left), the number of Han students apparently far exceeds that of Mongol students. Judging from their distinctive clothes, Mongol students only constitute a small proportion on the left side of the crowd. The composition of the student population with the national flag as a backdrop epitomises a Han-dominated multi-ethnic structure of the Chinese nation.
158
Chapter 5
Figure 5.12 Bilike’s school in town
Sitting uncomfortably in the crowd, Bilike stands up and asks a nearby teacher for permission to go to the washroom. When he passes by the school’s stadium, he pauses in his steps outside the building and tries to peek in through the windows. Later, he turns around to search for its entry. The film ends with a close-up of Bilike’s face when he discovers the ‘truth’ about the ball after opening the door of the stadium (Figure 5.13). The shot is not followed by any image of ping- pong balls but accompanied by amplified sounds of many ping-pong balls hitting the ground from offscreen.
Figure 5.13 Bilike’s discovery of the ‘truth’
Bilike’s silent gaze at the discovery of the ‘truth’ gives rise to the last transitional space created by the film. Unlike earlier on the grasslands, no discussion among peers or follow-up actions can be employed to infer what might be in his mind. Because the film ends here, it is left to film viewers to figure out how he might interpret what he perceives in the stadium. What is certain is that school education will instil Bilike with more ‘scientific knowledge’. He has found out in this moment how a ping-pong ball is used in a sport and will soon learn why it is labelled as a
159
Chapter 5
‘national sport’. However, what is lost – maybe more valuable and precious than these taken- for-granted knowledge and understandings – is the three children’s original quest for the ball’s identity in many transitional spaces of play constructed on the grasslands.
Conclusion
In this chapter, ideas in transitional spaces of play have been drawn to examine the interactions between the Mongol children and the grasslands in Mongolian Ping-Pong. The chapter argues that the filmmaker has cinematically constructed several transitional spaces on the grasslands, in which the children safely experiment with various cultural traditions and practices, and invest their creativity into their understanding of the ball and the world. These transitional spaces are created because the filmmaker employs many landscape shots to unfold the children’s engagement with the environment in a delicate manner. This cinematic choice reveals the filmmaker’s appreciation of these children’s agency and initiative in reimagining the world, which is probably lacking among Han children living in the urban environment. Despite being a civilised Han filmmaker, Ning Hao does not perceive or treat these children’s ignorance of the ball in a negative light. Instead, he underscores these children’s creative thinking in the process of the quest,13 and sympathises that they cannot escape from the fate of acculturation since formal schooling in China is controlled by the Han social-cultural system. The film reflects a discursive struggle between the dominant and the alternative (Laclau and Mouffe 1985), both of which are dedicated to affording meanings to the ball. The fact that table tennis is a ‘national sport’ instead of wrestling demonstrates the Han hegemony in a multi-ethnic nation. Since alternative views face inevitable suppression, the film’s construction of transitional spaces for the Mongol children on the grasslands becomes more eminent and deserves credit.
13 Ning Hao’s personal admiration for creativity is best illustrated in his next film Crazy Stone, which caught Chinese audiences by surprise with its unconventional narrative structure, a factor that probably led to the film’s great success. 160
Chapter 6 A Young Lama as Sun Wukong: Contradictions and Flexibility in a Contemporary Tibetan Child’s Identity Construction
Introduction
This chapter draws on a detailed reading of a media character to understand a young Tibetan monk’s identity construction in an era of rapid social transformations in the PRC’s Tibetan areas.1 The special circumstances of Tibet and Tibetans in the social-political sphere of the Chinese nation and the world make their cinematic representation a battlefield for different ‘political agendas’ and ‘ideological purposes’ (Lo 2016, 154). ‘Tibetan Cinema’, the cinematic representation of Tibet and Tibetans in its broadest sense, can be classified into four groups. The first group of films is made by Han Chinese filmmakers in the PRC under the sponsorship of the Chinese nation-state. The films are characterised by the propaganda of Chinese ethnic policies and aim to consolidate the leadership of the party-state. The emphasis is placed on the role of the CPC in liberating Tibetans from ‘old Tibet as a feudalist hell on earth’ (Lo 2016, 154) and modernising it into a socialist ‘New Tibet’ (Yü 2012). A famous representative of this group of films is Nongnu/Serfs (1963, dir. Li Jun). The second group of films is sponsored and made by filmmakers in the Western world. Hollywood cinema, for instance, has long been devoted to creating a ‘virtual Tibet’ that sustains ‘exoticising, romanticising and mystifying stereotypes of Tibet and Tibetans’ (Frangville 2016, 107; Schell 2000). Representative works include Little Buddha (1993, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci) and Kundun (1997, dir. Martin Scorsese). The third group is produced by the Tibetan diaspora, such as the Tibetan government in exile. This group is keen on ‘hyperreal’ images of indigenous Tibetans (Klieger 1997), featuring an ‘idealised and pasteurised’ version of Tibetan culture (Frangville 2016, 108). Both the second and third groups tend to perceive Tibet as a site of ‘timeless, romantic repositories of spiritual and natural resources, a treasured and immutable authenticity in the face of the vagaries of capitalism and secular modernity’ (Grewal 2016, 136). An exception to this scenario in the third group is the film The Cup (1999, dir. Khyentse Norbu), which tells a story similar to the one in the film discussed in this chapter.
The film discussed here, The Silent Holy Stones (2006), is one of the films directed by Pema Tseden, whose films belong to the fourth group. This group is famously known as the ‘New
1 Tibetan areas in the PRC include ‘the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR)’ and ‘Tibetan prefectures distributed in the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan and part of the traditional Amdo and Kham regions’ (Frangville 2016, 116).
Chapter 6
Tibetan Cinema’, which refers to ‘Tibetan-language motion pictures directed by Tibetans and not by the state or by non-Tibetan filmmakers’ (Yü 2014, 129). Different from the films made by the Tibetan diaspora, the ‘New Tibetan Cinema’ is often confined to Tibetan filmmakers within the territory of the PRC. This group of films is committed to bringing a more realistic lifeworld of Tibetans to the audience, representing life as it is without postulating any positions (P. Zhu and Caidan 2016). Pema is regarded as the founder of the ‘New Tibetan Cinema’ (Yü 2014). As his first feature film, The Silent Holy Stones has won several domestic and international awards (Xinhua, August 26, 2006). The film was shot in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in the Tibetan area of the Qinghai province (Caidan and Li 2006). It focuses on a young Buddhist monk (nicknamed ‘little lama’), who becomes fascinated with the character of Sun Wukong in the television drama Journey to the West – the 1986 adaptation of a classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West (Xiyouji) (hereafter cited as Journey).2 The events take place during his three-day visit to his parents’ home in a village. He ends up bringing his family’s television to the monastery to share the drama with his master (nicknamed ‘old lama’) during the Tibetan New Year.
Previous research on the film in both Chinese and English language scholarship has been relatively thorough (e.g., B. Chen 2006; Zhuoma 2013; Yü 2014), especially thanks to a whole issue of Journal of Chinese Cinemas (volume 10, issue 2, 2016) devoted to Pema and his films. Scholars agree that, like Pema’s other films, this film reflects on the impact of Han-dominated economic development and modern lifestyles on traditional Tibetan culture, which is ‘synonymous with Tibetan Buddhism’ in Pema’s view (as quoted in Yü [2014, 130]). Even the filmmaker himself admits that, in conceiving the film, the theme of Tibetan culture in the process of transformation comes first, while the story of little lama going home for the New Year holiday comes later (Caidan, Xu, and Tian 2017). Indeed, the film features the lives of Tibetans under huge transformation in many ways, including their clothes, food, transportation means, school education and entertainment. Little lama’s obsession with the television drama and Sun Wukong is made possible because his elder brother made money doing business in town and bought a television set, a VCD (video compact discs) player and VCDs of the drama for the family. In this context, little lama’s attraction to the drama is situated in the context of impacts of modernisation on traditional Tibetan life. However, as Chris Berry (2016, 100) has significantly observed, that particular drama about a Buddhist monk taking a pilgrimage to India to obtain sutras ‘complicates’ the dialectic relationship between tradition and modernity. But how? Sun
2 The novel is commonly regarded as being authored by Wu Cheng’en (ca. 1500-1582) from the Ming dynasty (A. Yu 1983). 162
Chapter 6
Wukong is one of the disciples, notably the most important of them, escorting the monk during the pilgrimage. How do we understand the filmmaker’s establishment of little lama’s attraction to Sun?
Symbolic media characters can play a significant role in a child’s identity construction (Brown et al. 1994; Buckingham 2007; Horton 2010). This chapter explores the complexity of the film’s message brought about by the drama and in particular little lama’s strong identification with Sun Wukong. The boy’s identification is demonstrated by his constant wearing (or carrying) of the mask of Sun whenever and wherever it is possible after he purchased it. Previous research has suggested that little lama shares his childlike naughtiness and identity as a disciple with Sun (B. Chen 2006; Zhuoma 2013; Yau 2016). However, as many critical scenes in the film indicate, when little lama wears or carries the mask while being situated in long takes and static landscape shots, a humanistic reading of Sun as a naughty child or a faithful disciple simply does not explain much. This chapter proposes that the filmmaker’s establishment of little lama’s identification with Sun should also be appreciated from a religious reading and a cultural-political reading of Sun in the original literature and television adaptation of Journey. A comprehensive reading is necessary for those moments in which cinematic space is strategically constructed for little lama by the filmmaker with his trademark employment of long takes and static landscape shots under the influence of his favorite Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (Grewal 2016; Lo 2016). Meanwhile, the mask, as an externalised sign of little lama’s identification with Sun, evokes different readings of Sun for a better understanding of little lama’s engagements with his physical and social environments.
This chapter focuses on those moments and argues that the filmmaker is very smart in using Sun Wukong as a character for little lama’s identification. This is the case because Sun represents so many contradictions and flexibilities in his identity in all readings, from a humanistic perspective, a religious perspective or a cultural-political perspective. Little lama’s identity construction is also filled with contradictions and flexibility and resists a fixed interpretation. This could be the exact message that the filmmaker intends to convey. On the one hand, the mask contrasts with the relatively constant physical environment and the conspicuously stable identity symbol of a lama’s red robe. In this regard, it serves as a sign of a dynamic process of transformation among young Tibetan lamas in a context of a transformed world. Like the ‘silent holy stones’, which, in Pema’s explanation of the film’s title, symbolise silent changes occurring in Tibetan areas with no significant differences on the surface but constant variations underneath (Caidan 2012), the
163
Chapter 6
mask covers up the underneath. However, it paradoxically exhibits a more fundamental level of change among Tibetans that has reached their spiritual realm and integrated with the social- political context of the nation. On the other hand, Pema is using little lama’s identification with Sun to assert that no authentic Tibetan identity can be identified for redemption or romanticisation as in the films made by Han filmmakers, western filmmakers or the Tibetan diaspora. In a state of constant transformation, a prescription of the future of Tibetan Buddhism – a key component of Tibetan tradition, is forestalled.
Media and Identity: Tangsen Lama’s stories, Journey and Sun Wukong
Studies on mass media, popular culture and identity formation reveal that, ‘mass media, and the cultural views they present, are a significant source of possible identities’ (Brown et al. 1994, 814). For children and young people who are at a critical period of performing ‘identity work’ (Snow and Anderson 1987, 1348) – ‘the process of creating a sense of self in the context of the immediate and larger social world’ (Brown et al. 1994, 813) – mass media and popular culture may play a more significant role. The identities of children and young people are believed to be ‘modeled by both real life and media figures’ (Brown et al. 1994, 814). They not only make efforts to act out all the possible selves as called forth by daily experiences, but also get inspired by alternative identities embodied in media characters. Their interactions with media collaborate with other social institutions, such as family and schools, in determining the forms of their behaviors and emotions – how they ‘look, talk, feel, and act’ (Brown et al. 1994, 814). Indeed, in modern societies, ‘mediated symbolic materials’ (Strelitz 2002, 460) play an increasing role in constructing a narrative of self-identity, concerning the formation of a sense of self (Giddens 1991). Mass media become an important ‘tool kit’ (Swidler 1986, 273), where children and young people can choose a variety of ‘cultural symbols, myths, and artifacts’ to shape their identities (Brown et al. 1994, 813). Because of this, the ‘unprecedented prevalence of popular cultural consumption’ has become a prominent feature of contemporary childhoods (Horton 2010, 381). As David Buckingham (2007) points out, the widespread consumption of mass media and popular culture exists not only among children in the developed countries but also among children in the developing countries. In the less developed areas of the latter, Buckingham states that, ‘the advent of electronic media is often an early harbinger of “modernization”; and growing numbers of children have access to globally- and locally-produced media material’ (2007, 43).
Little lama’s identification with Sun Wukong occurs in the context of modernisation in a remote Tibetan village. Before we examine this identification, distinctions must be made between 164
Chapter 6
Tangsen Lama’s stories, which little lama claims old lama enjoys telling to him, and the original novel of Journey, as well as the 1986 television adaptation. In each of these sources, Sun Wukong either does not exist or plays different roles. The stories of Tangsen in the classic novel of Journey is loosely based on the historical figure of Xuanzang (596-664), a well-known and respectable Buddhist monk from the Tang dynasty (618-907), who went to India to acquire Buddhist sutras (A. Yu 1977; Plaks 1987). However, the novel has also drawn on a variety of literary resources that have combined in a creatively rewritten version of Xuanzang’s pilgrimage. In particular, inspired by the character of ‘Monkey Novice-Monk’ (Hou Xingzhe) in The Poetic Tale of the Procurement of Scriptures by Tripitaka of the Great Tang (Datang sanzang qujing shihua), Sun Wukong is created as one of Xuanzang’s disciples (A. Yu 1977, 7; Z. Wang 1992). Moreover, Sun features prominently in the novel and even overshadows his master Xuanzang (Z. Zhou 1982). The 1986 adaptation of Journey, as shown in the film dubbed from Chinese into Tibetan, is famous for its faithful adaptation of the original novel, especially in terms of the priority of characters in the drama (W. Feng 2012; GS. Wang 2012; Lin and Fan 2012). As in the novel, Sun is placed in a dominant position.3 Furthermore, the drama maintains the narrative structure of the novel when adapting the one-hundred-chapter novel into twenty-five episodes (J. Yang 2008). Both the original literature and the television drama can be divided into three sections: the stories of Sun Wukong before Tangsen takes him on as a disciple, Sun’s protection of Tangsen during the pilgrimage, and the team’s final procurement of sutras in India.
The distinctions are important because they are variously taken up by little lama to achieve his end, which may reveal his active consumption of the drama. He knows exactly what he wants. He takes advantage of the Buddhist theme of Journey based on Xuanzang’s stories to justify his attraction to the drama. Meanwhile, he underplays the distinction between Journey and Xuanzang’s stories in terms of the character of Sun Wukong. For example, on his way back to the monastery, when a shepherd questions his idea of bringing a television and a VCD player into
3 The 1986 version is directed by Yang Jie under the sponsorship of CCTV. There are two other famous versions produced afterwards: one is directed by Cheng Lidong (2009) under the sponsorship of Zhejiang TV, and the other is directed by Zhang Jizhong (2011), funded by a private media organization. In Cheng’s version, the character of Tangsen and Sun Wukong are equally important. In Zhang’s version, Tangsen is a more dominant character. See Feng Wei (2012), Wang Gansheng (2012), Lin Rongqing and Fan Pengnan (2012) for a comparison of three versions of adaptation. It is also worth mentioning that, before the 1986 version of Journey, there was a very influential animated version produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in the 1960s. The animation entitled Uproar in Heaven focuses on the early period of Sun Wukong. It successfully constructs Sun as a heroic figure with a combination of a monkey’s attributes, a God’s power and a human’s emotions (Z. Zhang 2005, 220). This animation probably influenced the later production of other versions of adaptation. 165
Chapter 6
the monastery, little lama defends himself with the fame and legitimacy of Tangsen Lama’s stories. This is arguably the biggest trick little lama plays in the film. On many other occasions, little lama discloses what attracts him most is Sun – the real centre of the drama. For example, he brags about Sun’s extreme talents in front of Living Buddha and other young lamas in the monastery when they are invited to share the drama. Also, when the television is set up at old lama’s house, he suggests watching the drama from the beginning, which focuses on Sun.
Although the film narrative highlights little lama’s admiration for Sun Wukong’s extreme talents, the filmmaker’s construction of his identification with Sun in cinematic space, especially with the prop of the mask, is more complicated than his self-recognition. Interrogating the actual impact of the scenes in which the mask interacts with the space in constructing the character is crucial to understanding the filmmaker’s intentions and the film’s meanings. This chapter proposes three ways of reading Sun in Journey in order to understand Pema’s construction of little lama’s identification: a humanistic reading, a religious reading, and a cultural-political reading. Previous research can be traced back to the first reading but failed to provide a detailed analysis of Sun to explain little lama’s affinity with him. This chapter bridges the gap. A religious reading is also recommended because it is concerned with the way in which Buddhism is inscribed in the film. Growing up a Buddhist, Pema is famous for incorporating Buddhist teachings throughout his films (T. Wei 2012). Yet, far from being essentialised as in the second and the third groups of Tibetan films, Buddhism is embodied in the everyday lives of Tibetans, such as the Buddhist proverbs quoted in their daily conversations (W. Cui 2018). Establishing little lama’s connection with Sun from a religious perspective may be another way in which Pema embeds Buddhism in his film. A cultural-political reading is equally necessary because, as a religious figure, Sun is also strongly Sinicized. Similarly, little lama is living in an era in which Tibetan Buddhism is increasingly influenced by China’s social and economic reform. While all three ways of reading can be insightful independently (as demonstrated in the next section), this chapter later adopts a holistic approach to examining some critical scenes in the film. The chapter argues that a recognition of Sun Wukong as a character full of contradictions and flexibility in each reading is central to understanding little lama’s identity construction and the filmmaker’s intentions.
Three Ways of Reading Sun Wukong
1. A humanistic reading
A humanistic reading takes Sun Wukong as a human-like character who has feelings and
166
Chapter 6
emotions and develops rationality and social knowledge gradually with time. In the beginning of the drama, Sun is at the stage of childhood (J. Liu 2006). He was born as a simian out of a stone. He leads a carefree life in the Flower Fruit Mountain (Huaguoshan). As an animal, he is cute; as a human, he is clumsy. As he has not acquired many social rules, he shares much with children, which increases his affinity with child audiences, including little lama. When Sun admirably attains many talents under the tutoring of Patriarch Subhodi (Puti zushi), who gives him the name of ‘Sun Wukong’, he accomplishes children’s imagination of super powers and a heroic character.
Although his magic powers and extreme talents make him a leader in the Flower Fruit Mountain, Sun cannot hide his attribute as a naughty trickster, which also resonates with child audiences. He is most famous for the havoc he wreaks in Heaven. He secretly consumes all the big peaches at the Peach Garden (Pantaoyuan), which he is commissioned to oversee. He lies to the Barefoot Saint (Chijiao daxian) to obtain the location of a party held by the Queen of Heaven (Wangmu niangniang) who does not invite him. To express his anger, he feasts himself generously and lavishly on food and wine at the party before its formal commencement. In a state of drunkenness, he bumps into the alchemy room of Lord Laozi (Taishang laojun) and consumes his Elixir of Life without permission. These mischievous behaviours all occur in the first three episodes of the drama, which, as the film indicates, are what little lama emphatically and repeatedly watches in different locations – his parents’ home, old lama’s house and Living Buddha’s house. These episodes, without the appearance of Tangsen, therefore play an important role in little lama’s identification with Sun.
Nonetheless, little lama does get exposed to what happens later in the middle section of the drama while staying at his parents’ home. 4 The middle section is based on what happens following Sun Wukong’s havoc in Heaven. Because of his misuse of powers without constraint, Sun is imprisoned under the Mountain of Five Phases (Wuxingshan) in the fourth episode until Tangsen rescues him in the fifth episode and becomes his master. To express his gratitude, Sun is committed to protecting Tangsen in his pilgrimage to India by pulling through altogether eighty-one ordeals. The pilgrimage constitutes the middle section of the drama in which Sun
4 When little lama and his younger brother watch the drama behind the backs of their parents, the television screen shows the characters of Sun Wukong, Tangsen, and Zhu Bajie, another disciple that looks like a pig. Zhu’s funny behaviours make the two children laugh. The screen images signify that the episode being watched is taken from the middle part of the drama, where Tangsen and his disciples have embarked on the journey. 167
Chapter 6
gradually acquires more rules of the human world. Moreover, his extreme talents are used for good purposes – protecting Tangsen from all sorts of monsters and evils in the journey. His dedicated protection displays his commendable loyalty to his master (Z. Zhou 1982).
This humanistic reading of Sun Wukong contextualises two aspects that little lama shares with Sun as identified by previous research: a naughty child who plays tricks and lies; a faithful disciple who dreams of Sun’s powers to protect his master (B. Chen 2006; Zhuoma 2013; Yau 2016). The film has set up little lama as a trickster before he watches the drama, which paves the way for his later identification. For example, he tricks Living Buddha for an opportunity to watch his television by deliberately losing a game to him and later bribing him with colored goat joints. He also lies about what he has watched in Living Buddha’s house to other young lamas. Instead of telling them he has watched the VCDs of the Tibetan opera Prince Drime Kunden,5 he tells them he has watched Hua Ergong’s tanchang,6 which he is interested in and so are other young lamas. He also plays tricks when playing shuttlecock with his younger brother on the rooftop of their family’s house. His trickster nature becomes an evident characteristic shared with Sun Wukong after he watched the drama and purchased the mask. With the mask on, he proposes to his younger brother to watch television behind the backs of their parents with their grandpa as a lookout. On the other hand, despite being a naughty child, little lama is a faithful disciple, like Sun Wukong. His loyalty is best illustrated at the moment when he is invited by old lama to join his pilgrimage to Lhasa – the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Little lama puts on the mask and assures his master that he will protect him with as much power as Sun. This moment, as Chinese scholar Chen Baoguang (2006) articulates, miraculously creates a few paralleled structures: between little lama and Sun Wukong, between old lama and Tangsen, and between the pilgrimage to Lhasa and the pilgrimage to India.
While a humanistic reading is fruitful to explain little lama’s trickster behaviours in some sequences as listed above, other nuances remain unexamined. After all, little lama is not just a child. His identity as a Buddhist monk problematises him as a trickster. Like the red robe he cannot take off, his interactions with the external world carry along his religious identity anytime,
5 According to Lo (2016) and Yü (2014), Prince Drime Kunden is one of the eight national operas of Tibetans. It focuses on compassionate deeds of Prince Drime Kunden while he is banished by his father. When he is in exile, he generously gives away all his possessions, including his three children, his wife and his eyes. His altruism touches Brahmins, members of the highest caste in the traditional Indian society, who make him return to his kingdom and become a king. 6 Hua Ergong is a popular Tibetan singer. Tanchang is a singing style adopted by Tibetan singers who accompany their singing with the playing of a string instrument. 168
Chapter 6
anywhere. Thus, a religious reading of Sun Wukong is imperative to contextualising this special type of trickster. When little lama puts forward the idea of secret watching with the mask of Sun Wukong on, a low-angle shot utilised by the filmmaker amplifies a restless mind occupied by desire behind the mask. This chapter suggests that the film also establishes little lama’s similarity with Sun in terms of his incomplete adherence to Buddhist doctrines, a central issue in a religious reading of Sun, which previous research has failed to underscore.
2. A religious reading
A religious reading of Sun Wukong reveals that his biggest problem in the early stage of his life and even during the journey is his restless mind. In Buddhism, a figure of a monkey can have dual connotations. It is, on the one hand, celebrated for providing smart and powerful protections to scriptures in Buddhist accounts in both India and China (such as in Tibetan Buddhism) (Z. Wang 1992). On the other hand, it is used in Buddhist teachings as a metaphor for a restless mind that demands self-cultivation (A. Yu 1983). As written in the classic novel of Journey (A. Yu 1977, 168, as quoted in A. Yu 1983), ‘Mind is a Monkey – this, the truth profound.’ Sun’s restless mind in the opening episodes of the drama is demonstrated by his several voluntary interruptions of his carefree life in the Flower Fruit Mountain. Each interruption is caused by his curiosity and desire for something else, elsewhere. He begs Patriarch Subhodi to accept him as an apprentice because he wants to learn how to become immortal. He goes to the East Sea to see the Dragon King because he yearns for his best weapon – Will-following Golden-banded Staff (Ruyi jin’gu bang). He accepts the position of ‘Protector of the Horses’ (Bima wen) appointed by the Jade Emperor (Yudi), who plans to strategically tame this trickster, because he has never been to Heaven before. When he leaves Heaven in a fit of anger after discovering the position is a low-ranking role, he agrees to return expecting that the Jade Emperor will officially approve his self-claimed title of ‘Great Sage Equalling Heaven’ (Qitian dasheng). Although he is given the name of ‘Sun Wukong’, which means ‘awakened to emptiness’ (H. Li 2003), his mind is far from empty.
To reign Sun’s restlessness, Buddha uses a scroll of six-syllable mantra (‘Om mani padme hum’), which means the purity of mind as a lotus (X. Cheng 2004), to press him firmly under the Mountain of Five Phases. When Xuanzang passes by the Mountain five hundred years later and attempts to rescue him, the scroll flies away by itself. Taking on Sun as a disciple, Xuanzang gives
169
Chapter 6
him a hat on which ‘fo’ (Buddha, the ‘awakened one’)7 is inscribed and gives him an alternative name ‘Sun Novice-Monk’ (Sun Xingzhe). From this moment, Sun Wukong is formally converted and becomes a Buddhist monk. His subsequent escorting of Tangsen can be taken as his own journey of self-cultivating to a state of ‘no mind’. In the journey, when he dispels evils and monsters in the external world, he also cleans the internal world of his mind (G. Wu 2007). As the fictive Xuanzang in the classic novel explains, ‘when the mind is active, all kinds of māra (or, demons) come into existence; when the mind is extinguished, all kinds of māra will be extinguished’ (A. Yu 1977, 283, as quoted in A. Yu 1983). In the final section of the drama, which is partly watched by little lama at old lama’s house, Sun succeeds in his self-cultivation. He becomes a Buddha, a saint, together with his master, while meeting with Buddha in India.
This religious reading of Sun Wukong as a monk in a tortuous trajectory of cultivating his mind can best explain some sequences in the film in which little lama’s behaviours contradict with Buddhist doctrines of emptiness but contribute to his later bonding with Sun. This explains why the film does not refrain from representing his restlessness, although he is a monk. For example, when asked to clean up Living Buddha’s living room, little lama cannot control his curiosity with the television in the room. He runs his fingers over the surface of the screen and examines its remote control. In Pema’s static wide-angle interior shot, his restless mind contrasts strongly with a serene portrait of the tenth Banchan, a religious leader in TAR, on the top of the television. The shot creates a tension between little lama’s curiosity and Buddhist teachings of emptiness. In Kundun, Dalai Lama is also represented as a young boy with great curiosity. He drives a car and watches the footage of early silent film from the West. However, there is a lack of a constant signifier like the mask of Sun Wukong that problematises his curiosity. Indeed, in that film, Dalai is constructed as a ‘modern man’. By contrast, in The Silent Holy Stones, numerous comments of supporting characters on the issue of restless mind render little lama’s curiosity and desire questionable.
In another sequence, little lama’s desire to watch a video in a video hut near a village square in his hometown motivates him to interrupt his elder brother’s live performance as Prince Drime Kunden on stage. In a static long shot, the filmmaker shows little lama, together with his younger brother, running on the periphery of a crowd of spectators who are shedding tears in the center of the frame for the Prince’s generosity in giving away his eyes. A wide-angle long shot from the
7 See “The Life of the Buddha”, Diamond Way Buddhism. Accessed 16 February 2018. https://www.diamondway-buddhism.org/buddhism/buddha/ 170
Chapter 6
opposite direction follows, in which the audience still form a dense presence in the foreground while little lama arrives at an edge of the stage on the right side of the frame in the midground. The frame compositions in both shots convey the message that social order resides in the public, while little lama chooses to ignore it by taking a route from the side. His forceful intrusion on the fourth wall of the live performance is not attributed to his childlike naughtiness as suggested by some researchers (B. Chen 2006), but because of his uncontrollable desire to entertain himself with the fourth wall of a video sealed by technology in the video hut. Like Sun Wukong’s decision to accept the Jade Emperor’s first invitation to go to Heaven simply because he has never been there before, little lama’s curiosity for some other way of seeing and encountering the world different from the traditional mode is the main motivation behind his behaviour. Due to his obsession with a television, his world has become realised as a televisual world rather than a devout one or one that is ruled by propriety. In contrast to devout Buddhists in the audience who are touched to tears by the compassion and altruism of the Prince, little lama prioritises his personal desire over the emotional cathexis of the audience. Although the first example occurs before little lama watches the drama, and the second occurs after he watches it but has not purchased the mask, both sequences manifest little lama’s restless mind. This trait, which is in common with Sun Wukong, can unconsciously facilitate little lama’s identification with Sun.
The filmmaker’s construction of little lama as a young monk with a restless mind to tame corresponds with two other objects other than the mask that little lama gains from his journey home. The mask, as a sign of requiring constant cultivation before achieving emptiness, becomes a symbol equivalent to the unfinished mani stone engraved with incomplete six-syllable mantra left behind by a deceased craftsman, and the empty disc container left behind by his father at his request at the time of farewell. The mani stone resonates with Buddha’s deployment of the scroll to control Sun Wukong’s restlessness under the Mountain of Five Phases, while the empty box can signify the emptiness that is lacking in little lama. Thus, the religious reading of Sun contextualises little lama’s restless mind and coordinates the three symbols – the mask, the mani stone, and the empty box – that thread the body of the film.
A religious reading also points to Sun’s developing understanding of two other Buddhist doctrines that are particularly relevant to him: karma and compassion (Bantly 1989; Y. Zhou 1990). Like ‘emptiness’, Sun Wukong takes the whole pilgrimage to become committed to the tenets of karma and compassion, from initial disbelief to gradual acceptance (Y. Zhou 1990).
171
Chapter 6
Karma is concerned with cycles of life and cause-and-effect relations (Bantly 1989; Y. Zhou 1990). The incarnation of Living Buddha as shown in the movie Little Buddha exemplifies the cycles of life. Sun’s imprisonment under the Mountain of Five Phases is due to his havoc in Heaven. This is an operation of karma, but he does not accept this cause-effect logic immediately. It takes him over five hundred years to contemplate his behaviours and confront the consequences. His subsequent role as an escort can be taken as his continued redemption from his wrongdoings by conquering evils and monsters on the road, in addition to paying back for Tangsen’s rescue (G. Wu 2007). Sun’s attitude to compassion – ‘the salvation of all beings’ (Bantly 1989, 518) – during the pilgrimage does not comply with Buddhist principles in a strict manner either. Different from Tangsen whose compassion is unconditional, Sun reserves his compassion for only the innocent and the disadvantaged (Y. Zhou 1990). It is hard to tell which is better. By doctrine, Tangsen is right, but, in practice, Tangsen’s unconditional compassion extending to evils and monsters causes trouble to the pilgrimage, which must be resolved by Sun’s conditional compassion.
Like Sun, little lama is slow in figuring out the significance of karma, and his attitude towards compassion is also ambiguous. The mechanism of karma is elaborated in the film by little lama’s grandpa when he takes little lama to feed the family’s livestock on New Year’s Day. The grandpa criticises little lama for his ignorance of the fact that karma works on animals, whose wrongdoings in their former lives result in their incarnation as animals in the present lives. Little lama’s indifference to karma is demonstrated by his lie about watching tanchang. Under the spell of karma, he subsequently trips over on an upward ramp while inviting other lamas to share the drama. When he falls, he wears the mask. The scene resonates with Sun Wukong’s suffering from imprisonment under the Mountain. Little lama’s ambiguous attitude towards compassion is reflected in the sequence when he and his younger brother escort their grandpa to return home from the village square. When encouraged by their grandpa to do good deeds on the way, little lama expresses his doubt about whether to give away his eyes like the Prince in Prince Drime Kunden if needed. His uncertainty, albeit different from his younger brother who gives a definite negative answer, exposes his hesitation in living by Buddhist creeds in real life. The mask he wears when uttering his ambiguous attitude evokes Sun Wukong’s practice of conditional compassion.
So far, a religious reading has proved effective in explaining little lama’s identification with Sun in terms of his restless mind, indifference to karma, and ambiguity in compassion. As a young
172
Chapter 6
Buddhist monk, little lama probably also needs time to become fully devoted to Buddhist tenets, like Sun. This may be a key contradiction in Sun’s identity as a Buddhist monk that suits the filmmaker’s purpose. Little lama’s imperfection is justified. Indeed, another contradiction in Sun’s religious identity lies in the fact that he manages to outperform Tangsen in his understanding of Buddhist canons at the end of the pilgrimage (B. Cao 2004; G. Wu 2007). For example, when the team arrive in India in the last episode of the drama, Sun is quicker to figure out the meaning of a bottomless boat – relieving the sufferings of all beings, while Tangsen fears boarding the boat. Even during the later leg of the journey, Sun often acts as an advisor to Tangsen and helps him see more clearly (G. Wu 2007). This contradiction in Sun’s trajectory of cultivation forestalls any prescription of little lama’s future, which may be what the filmmaker intends to achieve. Unlike other groups of filmmakers, Pema pursues a realistic representation, as mentioned earlier. Yet realism can be both an ideological and an artistic apparatus if the filmmaker takes advantage of the ambiguous nature of the real (McGrath 2016). Little lama is as much likely to quit monkhood due to his restless mind as overtake his master through later self-cultivation.
Simultaneously, little lama’s incomplete adherence to Buddhist doctrines turns him into an attractive character, like Sun. Chinese scholar Zhou Yanbin (1990) points out that Sun has never given up his self-awareness during the journey, which contradicts with the Buddhist guideline of ‘no self’ but renders him a more lively and lovable character than Tangsen and other Buddhas. Many psychological struggles and negotiations occur at the moment when his self-awareness contradicts with the religious ideal, which however appeals to the readers and the audience. This also applies to little lama. The film features vividly his negotiations and struggles in many critical scenes (as demonstrated later). He has evident self-awareness, but how does the mask of Sun facilitate our understanding of his psychological activities, and how does the social structure in which he lives either enable or delimit his sense of self? A cultural-political reading of Sun Wukong can offer some insights into this question.
3. A cultural-political reading
A cultural-political reading of Sun Wukong underlines the character’s symbolic values in the Chinese cultural-political context. Sun has been engaged by Chinese popular culture and the Chinese state for different purposes. In Chinese popular culture, Sun is a symbol of a righteous swordsman and a savior (Z. Zhou 1982; Y. Zhou 1990; Y. Jiang 1986). At the same time, he is described as marginal, dangerous and multi-dimensional (X. Chen 2016). He wreaks havoc in 173
Chapter 6
Heaven, but he is also a humble culprit pressed under the Mountain; he robs the rich and helps the poor, but he is also vulnerable to his master’s spell; he is gentle and caring to his master, but he also ruthlessly commits killings. Conversely, the Chinese party-state takes advantage of his image as a fighter for its revolutionary cause in the socialist period. Sun is perceived as an optimistic revolutionary figure (Y. Zhou 1990; Z. Zhou 1982; J. Yang 2008). He challenges the rule of the Jade Emperor by claiming himself as ‘Great Sage Equalling Heaven’. He destroys the plaque of ‘Spirit Halls of Clouds’ (Lingxiao baodian) in Heaven and provocatively claims his turn to act as the Jade Emperor has arrived. Because of these behaviours, Sun is endowed with a political tone and becomes a revolutionary hero of anti-feudalism and anti-oppression. Its trickster role is receded, while its abstinence is maintained as a virtue of proletariat revolutionaries. Moreover, he is beautified. Chinese researcher Chen Xin (2016) suggests that, although the 1986 adaptation is faithful in general, it features a rather beautified image of Sun Wukong, which corresponds with the Chinese political discourse. In the drama, Sun is not only talented and powerful but also handsome. In contrast to his literature source, he is far more good-looking and famously known as ‘Beautiful Monkey King’ (Meihouwang). While the drama cannot be considered propaganda work because of this, its popularity undoubtedly spreads the image of Sun Wukong as a rather perfect revolutionary hero, such as that represented by the CPC.
Tibet was, in the official Chinese discourse, liberated by Chinese revolutionaries (the People’s Liberation Army led by the CPC), so that Tibetans could be freed from the ‘oppression’ of landlords, the old system, and religious persecutions. Because of this political maneuver, Tibetan lamas become Chinese, although they are in so many ways different from the majority Han Chinese. The contradiction in forging Sun as a revolutionary figure lies in the fact that the Chinese party-state has disguised Sun’s real intention. He does not intend to overturn the old social system. What he advocates instead is a redistribution of power within a feudalist bureaucratic structure, such as appointments based on merits. Thus, what Sun represents is an internal struggle within the ruling class rather than an uprising from the bottom (S. He 1982; Y. Jiang 1986; Y. Zhou 1990; Z. Zhou 1982). While Sun’s fighting spirit is celebrated, the extent to which his action can bring about real liberty, freedom and equality for ordinary people is uncertain. This reading is concerned with little lama because he is living in an era when the political battle in Tibet seems to have receded, while the real challenge arrives in terms of how Tibetans seek equal status in the Chinese social, cultural and economic sphere in a more liberal age.
174
Chapter 6
Little lama’s identification with Sun Wukong occurs in the context that the drama and the mask of Sun are brought to Tibetan areas as part of Han-dominated modernisation process. As consumer products and embodiments of dominant Han popular culture, the drama and the mask are implicated in a process of economic and cultural Sinification, which follows the aforementioned political march of Han Chinese into Tibetan areas. Despite ostensible equality in the political sense, Tibetans are confronted with inequality economically and social-culturally. Tibetans must transform themselves into fighters for their own survival and development in contemporary China. They need to negotiate their identity as both legitimate Chinese and Tibetans. This is the case although they lie on the periphery of the nation geographically. Such a cultural-political reading is central to understanding some critical scenes in the film, as to be demonstrated in the next section.
The three ways of reading indicate that Sun Wukong inhabits many levels of human nature, Buddhist traditions, Chinese politics and popular culture, as an animal, a human, a trickster, a Buddhist, a revolutionist or a hero, let alone he is neither a Han nor a Tibetan ethnically.8 A holistic mode of reading is essential to some critical scenes in the film because the filmmaker’s long takes and static landscape shots evoke an examination of little lama’s engagement with his physical and social environments on the one hand, and encourage an open-ended and multi- dimensional interpretation of little lama’s identity construction on the other. Besides flexibility in his identity, Sun Wukong also represents many contradictions in each of his role and thus resists a simple judgement. Similarly, little lama’s identification with Sun may convey the film’s message that little lama is also situated in a social context which renders his identity construction complete with contradictions. Sun’s profound, contradictory and flexible nature can significantly explain and contextualise little lama’s special state of being in contemporary China.
Contradictions and Flexibility
This section offers detail analyses of some critical scenes in the film in which little lama puts on the mask of Sun Wukong or hides it in his robe. In these scenes, the mask does not represent or simply represent little lama’s identity as a naughty child, a faithful disciple, an incomplete convert or an imperfect fighter, but represents a convergence of multiple trajectories in a
8 According to Anthony Yu (1977), Wang Zheng (1992) and Ge Weijun (2002), Sun Wukong possesses both Chinese and Indian origins. ‘Hanumat [Hanumat adventures in the Rāmāyana story in India]’ is probably Sun’s architype (A. Yu 1977, 11). 175
Chapter 6
process of interaction, contestation and negotiation with contradictions and flexibility.
1. Observing a dancing crowd at a village square
On New Year’s Day in little lama’s hometown, when the elderly Tibetans finish watching the stage opera Prince Drime Kunden and have not recovered from the sadness derived from the opera, the young actors start to dance wildly to disco music. A high-angle panorama shot shows little lama, together with his younger brother, running back to the village square after a short break (Figure 6.1.1). In the shot, a building roof tiled in yellow and styled like a temple forms a huge contrast with the rest of the frame, which is dominated by the geographical texture of earthy ground and the colour of grey. When little lama arrives at the periphery of the dancing crowd, the camera moves to one side of the interior square (Figure 6.1.2). In the ensuing landscape shot, the yellow building is almost completely kept offscreen. Although the distant mountain range is still clearly in view, what constitutes the center of the frame is a crowd of young Tibetans, still dressed in colourful costumes, either forming a circle on the periphery with clapping hands or dancing passionately with the music within the circle. In this shot, little lama’s younger brother invites little lama to join the dance. Little lama replies he does not know how to dance. Asking little lama to put on his mask and watch, the younger brother merges himself into the crowd. Little lama is left alone standing on the periphery, close to those who clap hands. A medium long shot follows, in which the camera is placed behind little lama (Figure 6.1.3). With little lama standing in the foreground, the yellow building and the dancing crowd constitute much of the screen. Little lama’s younger brother is evidently in view, dancing in the crowd. The camera then shifts to the front of little lama in a long shot with a deep focus (Figure 6.1.4). Little lama stands still and alone in the foreground with his mask on. On his sides, some smaller children run back and forth through the square gate behind him, and some villagers sit near the gate watching ahead in silence. In the background through the gate, a crowd of people are gathering around where little lama previously bought the mask of Sun Wukong, a vendor’s truck. Finally, the camera shifts its position to where the yellow building is located (Figure 6.1.5). In the foreground, little lama’s elder brother and his girlfriend are dancing on the periphery. A few steps away from them is a drunkard who has previously interrupted the stage performance. In the midground of the frame is the dancing crowd. Peeping through the gaps created through their moving bodies, little lama is visible in the background, still standing near the gate. In this shot, the drunkard, playing a traditional Tibetan instrument, tries to seduce the elder brother’s girlfriend first with his song and later with provocative words. The elder brother bursts into a fight with the drunkard.
176
Chapter 6
When they are broken up by the dancing crowd, little lama steps up to meet with his brother. The siblings then walk away from the camera towards the gate, while the crowd continues their dance. All the shots described above are static, and no camera movements are involved.
Figure 6.1 Little lama staring at a dancing crowd at the village square of his hometown9
In this sequence, the filmmaker has employed landscape shots from all directions and positions to create a cinematic space in which little lama is compelled to engage with the dancing crowd despite his physical ‘inaction’ once entering the scene. Physically, he is first shown attached to the crowd, albeit marginally situated (Figure 6.1.2), thanks to his younger brother serving as a mediator. However, when he is left alone with the camera shifted to behind his back (Figure 6.1.3), a physical distance is created between him and the crowd. There is a sense of alienation due to his posture of observation. When the camera is placed between him and the crowd (Figure 6.1.4), the sense of alienation reaches a climax. With the dancing crowd kept completely offscreen, little lama looks extremely isolated, separating himself completely from the noisy, hilarious scene. In the final shot (Figure 6.1.5), the filmmaker’s cinematic focus seems to deviate from little lama and direct more at young adults and the drunkard. However, a holistic reading of Sun Wukong (see below) sheds light on the significance of this shot in spatially mapping out different choices of young Tibetans in response to changed social-cultural circumstances in Tibetan areas. What little lama represents, with his increasing physical distance from the dancing
9 The shots, from left to right, up to down, are respectively referred to as Figure 6.1.1, Figure 6.1.2, Figure 6.1.3, Figure 6.1.4 and Figure 6.1.5. The same rule applies to other figures in this chapter. 177
Chapter 6
crowd in cinematic expressions, is the furthest distance young Tibetans can maintain from a scene of modern popular culture.
Coming back to the first shot (Figure 6.1.1), the filmmaker emphasises that the dancing scene takes place in a geographical background of bare mountains and earthy ground. The most eye- catching architecture, the yellow building, becomes a symbol of tradition as the performance stage of the opera. It is in this remote and naturally disadvantaged village that modern popular culture practices and products are consumed with great passion. The odd presence of little lama in his red robe attached to the boundary of the dancing crowd (Figure 6.1.2) is as strong as the odd presence of modern popular culture in this geographical location. For the dancing crowd, he may be ‘an existence that does not matter’ (Zhuoma 2013, 59). However, for little lama himself, his physical proximity to the crowd is a statement that he is not resistant to popular culture. He may be unfamiliar with it and even uninterested in it in this moment, but he has definitely not excluded himself from any connection with it. When the crowd is seen from little lama’s subjective point of view (Figure 6.1.3), a type of psychological engagement is established. Little lama’s eyes and mind in a state of observation and contemplation are probably as active as the dancing crowd. He is physically away, but his mental world could not be any closer to the crowd. He is probably busy sorting out intellectually what he has perceived. Such a contrast between corporal ‘inaction’ and psychological ‘activeness’ reaches a climax when the camera moves to his front (Figure 6.1.4). His ‘inaction’, like ‘an isolated statue’ (Zhuoma 2013, 59), contrasts with boisterous running children and male adult spectators in the midground. It also differs from his prior active shopping at the vendor’s truck in the background, where he selected Wahaha drink (a type of formulated milky drink imported from Han areas) at his sister’s advice, but refused to taste ‘Tangsen Meat’ (a brand for a type of snack) for its disreputable name.10 Most importantly, when the camera moves to his front, the newly bought mask that covers up all his facial expressions becomes an embodiment of all the contradictions in the scene.
In this sequence, little lama is not a naughty child or a faithful disciple. A religious reading of Sun Wukong informs that little lama resembles Sun in this moment in terms of his active mind. He is not a devout monk because he is drawn to modern popular culture which is secular. However, the contradiction lies in the fact that a restless mind does not necessarily doom one’s self-
10 In Journey (both the novel and the drama), many evils and monsters desire to eat Tangsen because they believe Tangsen’s flesh can bring them immortality. As Tangsen is a respectable Buddhist, little lama refuses to taste the snack. 178
Chapter 6
cultivation. As mentioned earlier, Sun unexpectedly outperforms his master Tangsen at the end of the pilgrimage. Thus, little lama’s restless mind should not be seen in a negative light. Rather, his restless mind should be placed in the context of the era in which he lives. The vendor’s truck in the background (Figure 6.1.4) is no less randomly composed in the frame as the modern dances – the central cultural scene in the whole sequence. Both, from economic and cultural perspectives respectively, signify the powerful intrusion of Han-dominated modernity into the region. In this context, a cultural-political reading of Sun Wukong is required to understand little lama’s dynamic process of identity construction in this moment. This reading addresses Han hegemony on the one hand and views the mask as a media product that comes with Han economic and cultural domination on the other.
Little lama might as well be viewed as a fighter in the sense that he represents enforced negotiations that Tibetans must undertake to survive and thrive in contemporary China. He is thereby both on the periphery of a popular cultural scene and at the center. He is on the periphery because he does not belong to the dancing crowd that occupies much of the screen. His stillness contrasts with the movement of the crowd. His red robe reveals his identity as a monk that differs from other Tibetans on the scene. However, with the mask on, he is also at the center of Chinese politics and popular culture. As informed by the cultural-political reading of Sun Wukong, the mask may evoke the revolutionary discourse of the Chinese party-state in politically transforming the national status of Tibetans, which is then followed by transformations in their economic and cultural lives through modernisation. The special circumstances of little lama are the consequence of this historical process. In the first group of Tibetan films directed by Han filmmakers, the message of party-state liberating Tibetans and ushering in more advanced lifestyles in creating a ‘new’ Tibet, would be dominant and highly celebrated. For example, the last scene of Serfs features the leading character’s gratefulness to Chairman Mao for his rebirth in a new life (Clark 1987a, 21). However, Pema’s film instills ambiguity in such a hegemonic discourse. As a contradiction in this reading of Sun indicates, the revolution is not so much a liberation for ordinary Tibetans as a political struggle within the ruling class. Tibetans must turn themselves into fighters to seek survival, development and equality in the subsequent social and economic fields. With the mask on, the filmmaker is symbolically turning little lama into a fighter to confront the consequences of Han domination. His physical posture of standing and observing is a statement made by him and by the filmmaker on his part: he is there on the scene and he cannot be not there because these are the contingencies and contexts in which he is living. He is a contemporary embodiment of that
179
Chapter 6
confused set of contradictions and possibilities, dangers and gains that this geographical political nation and its cultural space have placed within. He inhabits both Tibetan Buddhism and the Chinese cultural-political influence. As the mask is brought to Tibetan areas with Han-dominated modernisation and implicated in a process of economic and cultural Sinification, little lama represents the very future of Tibetan tradition with contradictions and flexibility. He is quintessentially Chinese in the political sense and even social-culturally influenced by Chinese mainstream culture, but he is also quintessentially not Chinese in affirming Tibetan tradition.
Little lama’s distinction from other groups of Tibetans in terms of how far they have variously deviated from their spiritual tradition is spatially configured by the filmmaker (Figure 6.1.5). The dancing crowd in the midground represents an overwhelmingly embracing attitude to Chinese popular culture among ordinary Tibetans. The drunkard in the foreground, as suggested by Lo (2016), is a symbol of self-destruction among a small proportion of Tibetans who deny both their past and their future. Little lama, in contrast, embodies both the past and the future of Tibetan tradition. However, with regards to how little lama and what he represents – Tibetan tradition will turn out to be, no rigid judgement should be made. As Sun Wukong is a character full of contradictions and flexibility in either a religious reading or a cultural-political reading, the mask becomes a symbol that differs from the fixed signification of little lama’s red robe. It stands for a dynamic process of transformation and negotiation within a young lama in the context of Han hegemony and Han influence in every aspect of his life.
2. Running in the monastery
When the VCDs of the drama are consumed by lamas in the monastery, little lama is commissioned with the task of transporting discs between two geographies: old lama’s house and Living Buddha’s house. After sharing one of the beginning episodes with Living Buddha, little lama is asked by Living Buddha’s scripture master to fetch the discs on the final acquisition of Buddhist sutras, as he sees more value for Living Buddha to watch this section of the drama given a limit of time.11 Little lama then runs from Living Buddha’s house to old lama’s house by passing three landmarks successively (Figure 6.2.1 – 6.2.3). When he is situated at each landmark, a static long shot is employed by the filmmaker to show his movement within the frame. After getting
11 Both old lama and Living Buddha’s scripture master have chosen to skip the middle section of the drama – the adventures during the journey – to watch the ending section instead. They consider the obtainment of sutras and meeting with Buddha as the most important part of the drama. Apparently, they are more committed to Buddhist doctrines. 180
Chapter 6
one of the discs at old lama’s house, he runs back to Living Buddha’s house by following the same route in a reversed order (Figure 6.2.4 – 6.2.6). Again, the filmmaker employs static long shots to show little lama’s figure running through each of the three landmarks. Throughout the running, he wears the mask of Sun Wukong. No music is used to accompany his running, but his action is emphasised through the sound of his feet hitting the ground, coupled with crisp sounds of bells blowing in the wind in the monastery.
Figure 6.2 Little lama running through three landmarks in the monastery, transporting VCDs
Interestingly, this sequence of repeated running, presented in a series of long takes and static landscape shots and edited together in reversed orders, is resonant with a sequence from Where is My Friend’s Home? (1987), directed by Pema’s favourite director Abbas Kiarostami. The child protagonist Ahmad in that film runs between Koker and Poshteh for three times to return his classmate Mohammad’s notebook. Ahmad feels obliged to return the notebook because Mohammad has been criticised by their teacher and given a final warning for successively failing to write his homework on his notebook. Ahmad is compelled to run because he also needs to buy bread for the family before the bakery is closed. In Kiarostami’s cinematic rendering of Ahmad’s running route, a zigzag path on a hillside is used to symbolise ‘hurrying-around in modern life’, while a landmark tree on the top of the hillside represents friendship (Chaudhuri and Finn 2003, 49). If Ahmad’s repeated running exhibits his effort to overcome the hustle of life to achieve friendship, little lama’s running differs in connotation. His running is more indicative of his negotiation between a personal desire for the drama and a responsibility to run an errand. He runs to save time on the road so that more time can be spared for watching the drama. The hardship in Ahmad’s running is posed as the zigzag path on the hillside, which
181
Chapter 6
enhances by contrast the boy’s determination to find his friend’s home and thus glorifies friendship (Chaudhuri and Finn 2003). In contrast, little lama’s trek is reflected through the pound of his feet hitting the ground, signifying more of his desire for the television drama.
Lo (2016) has observed the similarity of little lama’s running to the behaviours of a monkey and drawn attention to the Buddhist ideology of ‘mind as a monkey’. Moreover, he highlights the role of the physical environments in these shots as a foil. In Lo’s words,
The Buddhist teaching compares our mind to a monkey that is wild, crazy, never resting, reaching out toward one thing after another, messing all up and racing from here to there. In the sequence, the restless monkey-masked little lama is contrasted by the muteness and sturdiness of the religious architecture. (Lo 2016, 157)
Lo’s observation coincides with a religious reading of Sun Wukong proposed in this chapter that contextualises little lama’s restless mind. The filmmaker has strategically constructed a series of cinematic spaces that diegetically belong to a serene monastery, which is however forcefully penetrated by little lama’s rapid movement of his body. This apparently contributes to a depiction of little lama’s restless mind as a monkey. However, a religious reading of Sun Wukong also indicates that a monkey is a powerful figure in protecting Buddhist scriptures. Little lama’s running could be seen more positively as his commitment to his mission of transporting the discs. Despite his personal desire for the drama, little lama hits the road. Less time on the road means more time, not only for him but also for Living Buddha, to watch the final section of the drama, which is religiously significant. He is in general an obedient child who follows instructions. His restless mind may contradict with the ‘mute and sturdy’ space of the monastery, yet his devotion to masters’ instructions justifies his disturbance to the space.
Although a religious reading of Sun Wukong sheds light on little lama’s double roles in the sequence, the visual impact of little lama’s movement in these landscape shots deserves further exploration. With little lama’s running, the plastic mask, as a product of mass production and media consumption in Han-dominated areas, also makes forceful penetration into the space of the monastery. It disrupts the homogenous nature of the space and hints at two discrete sites of restless mind and media consumption – old lama’s house and Living Buddha’s house, linked up by little lama’s running. Little lama’s desire is shared by Living Buddha and other young lamas. Instead of containing this desire in the two living quarters, the filmmaker makes little lama carry it to different geographies of the monastery. The mask represents a contradiction: while in living quarters of lamas, television, together with radio (old lama has a radio kept for years until finally given to little lama at the end of the film), is transforming the visions of lamas, what the 182
Chapter 6
monastery represents – the public space of professional Buddhism, remains solemn, holy and homogenous. With little lama’s rapid movement across the space which pierces the very fabric of the monastery, the filmmaker is making a statement that the homogenous nature of the monastery is fractured. The mask declares an entry of a popular cultural icon produced by mainstream Chinese into a marginal space of China on its periphery. The space is no longer a secular space of a village square. Different from the Miao boy’s running in Bird’s Nest which occurs in the capital city and is thus directly linked to the notion of the nation (Chapter 3), little lama’s running brings the presence of the nation (through the mask) implicitly to the most sacred space of Tibet that is reserved for its ethnic tradition, and thus constitutes a confrontation of minority tradition with the nation.
3. Bidding farewell to his father
In the open space outside of the monastery, a static long shot shows little lama and his father, in the company of other lamas, walking towards the camera to their departing site. The background of mountain ranges suggests this is a plateau area, isolated and remote. Little lama’s father bids farewell to each lama and assures them that he will seek another opportunity to play them the complete drama. He then turns to little lama, asking him to follow old lama’s instructions and learn scriptures by heart (Figure 6.3.1). After that, he walks out of the frame. The camera then focuses on the other direction of the diegetic space, showing little lama’s father, with the television on a horseback, walking slowly away from the screen. After a short cut to two lamas blowing bugles on top of a building signaling the imminent Prayers’ Assembly, the film returns to the departing site, where, with the father walking away in the distance, little lama and other lamas are placed in the foreground of a static long shot (Figure 6.3.2). In the shot, little lama requests to send his father further. After giving permission and a reminder that he needs to hurry up, old lama, together with other lamas, exits the frame through the foreground. After a brief cut to a panorama view of lamas in the monastery walking out of their living quarters to head for Prayers’ Assembly, the film returns to little lama who has caught up with his father in a frontal shot. Stopping his father in the foreground (Figure 6.3.3), little lama reiterates his desire to watch the drama. When his father emphasises that he has agreed to bring back the drama sometime in future, little lama asks his father whether he can keep the container of the VCDs. The father agrees. Holding the container in hand, little lama walks away from the camera towards the monastery, while his father continues to walk towards the camera until out of the frame. A long shot from the opposite direction follows, showing little lama standing in the foreground with his
183
Chapter 6
back against the camera. He looks at the direction of his father who moves gradually towards the depth of screen (Figure 6.3.4). The next shot focuses on little lama in a frontal medium close- up, in which he first gazes ahead and then looks down at the empty box in his hands before finally taking out the mask of Sun Wukong from his robe and putting it on (Figure 6.3.5). Following his sight, his father is shown in another long shot approaching the horizon formed by the sky and the land. The film then cuts to a few shots of other lamas heading towards Prayers’ Assembly. After that, an extreme long shot places little lama in its midground, showing him standing alone in the space of the departing site, looking at the direction of his father who is already out of sight (Figure 6.3.6). He then turns around and starts to run in the direction of camera. His running is continued in the subsequent long shot from the opposite direction, which shows him running towards the residential buildings of the monastery (Figure 6.3.7).
184
Chapter 6
Figure 6.3 Little lama seeing off his father at the outside of the monastery
Previous research on this sequence has focused on the symbolic meanings of the empty container, arguing that it is a metaphor of little lama’s body which has lost its heart with the departure of his father (B. Chen 2006). Lo (2016, 159) regards the symbolic function of ‘the empty box’ the same as ‘the plastic mask’, which, ‘for the new Tibetan generation, could be the placeholder of a subject in search of itself, a void that various attempts at identification try to fill out.’ This observation is inspiring. While this chapter has suggested the mask shares with the empty box based on a religious reading of Sun Wukong as a Buddhist monk who needs to cultivate his mind to achieve a state of ‘emptiness’, Lo’s observation opens the interpretation of the mask to a reading beyond the religious one. On the one hand, little lama’s request for the box indicates his desire for the drama, which contradicts with Buddhist doctrine of ‘no mind’. On the other hand, his request displays his autonomy in negotiating with multiple relations and emotions in his internal world.
A humanistic reading of Sun Wukong, coupled with a cultural-political reading, would inform little lama’s dilemma in this moment. Like Sun who is often compelled to reassess his choice between a carefree life in the Flower Fruit Mountain and protecting Tangsen in the pilgrimage 185
Chapter 6
when there is conflict between him and Tangsen on issues like conditional or unconditional compassion, little lama is cinematically situated at a ‘crossroad’ of his life. Chris Berry (2016, 100) has noticed Pema’s employment of ‘the 180-degree cut’ in establishing a ‘360-degree space’ with his landscape shots. What is signficant with this cinematic device in this sequence (as illustrated in Figure 6.3.1 vs. 6.3.2; Figure 6.3.3 vs. 6.3.4; Figure 6.3.6 vs. 6.3.7) is how it creates a metaphoric space with two directions signifying two life choices confronting little lama in this moment – the family and the monastery. Unlike Sun Wukong’s reassessment that is initiated by his different religious view to his master, little lama’s reconsideration is ignited by his exposure to media products during his visit to hometown. The lifestyle represented by little lama’s father is secular and mainstream in Tibetan areas, while the lifestyle of lamas is marginal. The binary relationship between secular and monastery has historical resonance, yet little lama’s case takes on a new perspective due to the era in which he lives. The mask is taken from the mainstream society in Tibetan areas, while Sun Wukong represents so many contradictions and flexibilities in Buddhist tradition and in Chinese socio-political context. When little lama puts on the mask (Figure 6.3.5), it becomes a symbol of divergent desires and considerations in his negotiation with his two life choices. His negotiation both possesses historical resonance and a potential for subversion at the time – a possibility to distablise the status quo by converting a marginal lifestye into a mainstream one.
As Chen Baoguang (2006) suggests, this is the moment where little lama can make a second choice about his future. Visually, he is differentiated from old lama and other lamas (Figure 6.3.1 and 6.3.2), which may signify his privilege to re-negotiate with his family in this moment. He certainly has the right to ask his father to bring him home and make him return to a secular life. After all, many erstwhile young lamas in his hometown village have already left the monastery as informed by a conversation between a shepherd and his father on his way back to the monastery. But little lama does not ask his father for that. He only expresses his desire to watch the drama. His ‘inaction’, with the mask on (Figure 6.3.5), like his previous silent and motionless observation in the village square, may again serve as a foil for his active psychological state. With the mask on, little lama is exercising his autonomy and re-negotiating among various desires and considerations. A family life is attractive, where he can entertain himself with an increasingly modernised Tibetan life, including plenty of access to television, let alone family affection. However, he cannot easily give up the monastery as he has missions to fulfil. He is the only lama in his hometown village, a fact that brings honour to his family. He is also a disciple who just promised his benevolent master to escort him on his pilgrimage to Lhasa. The mask materially
186
Chapter 6
shields little lama’s psychological world from perception but paradoxically exposes the very dynamics of struggle he experiences in that moment. The audience can feel a child’s strong longing for his family. As Anup Grewal observes, this is a moment of ‘a tense either/or confrontation, almost to the point of breakdown’ (2016, 142). But there are so many more negotiations. It is in such moments of contradictions and negotiations, where the mask plays a critical role, that the film is added with complexity and charm.
Little lama does not make a subversive choice. His physical ‘inaction’ in both a close view (Figure 6.3.5) and a faraway view (Figure 6.3.6) constitutes a declaration of his temporal decision. Through an occupation of a definite space, he indicates his persistence with the status quo. When his father is completely out of sight (Figure 6.3.6), which terminates a potential subversion, he turns around and starts to run towards the monastery. His running signals a settlement of his struggle. Like Sun Wukong’s loyalty to his master – being voluntary or fearful of Tangsen’s spell – that always gets an upper hand in resolving their conflicts, little lama’s choice of returning to his religious community reverses the prior crisis and restores the original order. The filmmaker’s cinematic construction of little lama’s struggle before the resolution indicates that Pema does not take for granted the devotion of a lama to professional Buddhism. It is not as simplified or romantic as lama images in Tibetan films made by other groups of filmmakers. Little lama’s dilemma, hesitation and negotiations are highlighted cinematically in the sequence. The mask, as an embodiment of all the contradictions and flexibility as in Sun Wukong, apparently facilitates Pema’s expression of this message.
4. Attending the Prayers’ Assembly
After sending away his father, little lama runs back to old lama’s house. Once entering the living room, he takes off the mask of Sun Wukong and hangs it on a peg on the wall. He then puts the empty container on a desk and starts to dress himself properly for the New Year Prayers’ Assembly. When he finishes, he picks up the container, takes a second look and then puts it back. He then turns to the mask. After a second look, he starts to walk towards the door. When he is about to reach the door, he turns around and walks back to the mask. He takes the mask off the peg and hides it in his robe before finally leaving the room.
This moment of struggle and hesitation about whether to leave the mask behind or take it with him cannot be explained by little lama’s trickster role or restless mind. Wai-Ping Yau (2016, 126- 127) argues that little lama’s final decision of taking the mask to the Assembly ‘need not be
187
Chapter 6
considered in a negative light’, given a few previous occasions on which he has performed religious praying with the mask hidden in his robe, although the Assembly is more serious occasion. In Yau’s view, what should be celebrated is little lama’s final return to ‘his religious community with the insights gained from his attempts to reach for a connection between tradition and modernity’ (2016, 126-127). In Cui Weiping’s (2018) interview with Pema, Cui asks about the filmmaker’s intended message with little lama’s decision of taking the mask with him to the Assembly. Pema replies, ‘I think little lama’s inner world has gone through change after what he has experienced. However, what he chooses to do is taking some fragmentary memory of the secular world into the grand religious ceremony. This is his temporary belonging.’ The filmmaker meant to use the mask as a symbol of a memory.
Admittedly, little lama’s re-incorporation into the religious community is significant as it restores the social order even with the mask tucked in his robe. It is also true that the mask carries his memory of the past holiday. What is more important is the film’s actual visual impact when little lama runs to the Assembly with the mask hidden. It is notable that the filmmaker has employed a series of contrasting images, each framed in a long take and static landscape shot, between groups of lamas walking out of their quarters to march towards the temple of the Assembly at the earlier moment when little lama is sending away his father (Figure 6.4.1 – 6.4.3) and little lama rushing to the temple alone in the final moment before the Assembly starts (Figure 6.4.4 – 6.4.6). These pairs of contrasting images demand a re-examination of the mask hidden in little lama’s robe.
Figure 6.4 Groups of lamas and little lama respectively heading for the Prayers’ Assembly
The contrast between the group images and the individual images may suggest that little lama’s 188
Chapter 6
story as told in the film is only one of the many. Little lama’s identity struggle and negotiation due to the impact of mass media and popular culture in his annual visit to hometown can happen to any other lamas in the collective images. Like the group of monks in The Cup who are attracted to the World Cup and end up bringing in a rented television and a satellite disc into the monastery, the mask becomes a symbol. It represents a deconstruction of the seemingly homogeneous collective community of lamas in the monastery. It is a deconstruction not only in terms of what Sun Wukong represents religiously – contradictions in his understanding and practices of Buddhist doctrines, but also in terms of what Sun represents cultural-politically – the infiltration of Chinese politics and popular culture into the very central space of the monastery, which is also a very central space of Tibetan tradition. The mask brings about intervention, and Sun carries contradictions and flexibility. As such, the identity of a collective community of Tibetan lamas becomes dynamic and fluid, resistant to a definite configuration.
Conclusion
This chapter proposes three ways of reading Sun Wukong in the original literature and the television adaptation of Journey in order to understand Pema’s construction of little lama’s identification with Sun. In particular, a holistic approach is adopted to examine some critical scenes in the film. The chapter argues that the filmmaker has brilliantly established little lama’s identification with Sun to exhibit his special state of being in contemporary China that is replete with contradictions and flexibility. His complex identity is the combined product of Tibetan Buddhist tradition and Chinese social-political context in which little lama lives. The latter is a context of Han domination and rapid social transformations in Tibetan areas under the influence of modernisation. Little lama, despite being a child, is caught between his life as a lama and therefore a key embodiment of Tibetan tradition, and his life as a Chinese within the Han hegemonic party-state situation. The religion and colonial situation are difficult positions that adults put him in, but he must make room for his child self within these social constraints. Choosing Sun Wukong as a character for little lama’s identification reveals the filmmaker’s real understanding of the nature of Tibetan life and Chinese cultural-political life. It speaks to the Buddhist tradition of Tibetans while simultaneously revealing the impact of Han hegemony on Tibetans cultural-politically and economically. Most significantly, it uncovers the remarkable contradictions and flexibility in the identity construction of Tibetans. With the mask on, little lama is declaring his identity construction in a dynamic process of conversation, negotiation and recreation. His future precludes a prescription of a fixed trajectory. Such ambiguity in the
189
Chapter 6
identity of a character can exactly distinguish the ‘New Tibetan Cinema’ – what Pema represents – from Tibetan films made by other groups of filmmakers. No authentic Tibetan identity can be identified because millions of Tibetans are living in a state of constant transformation.
It is also worth mentioning that Pema had planned to make sequels to this film to follow up little lama’s development by situating him in a larger social context through old lama’s pilgrimage (Xinhua, August 26, 2006). However, his scripts failed to pass the state censorship (Robin 2009, as quoted in Lo 2016). If this film can be taken as an open sally in a longer series that explores a contemporary Sun Wukong – a child and a Tibetan monk in modern China, it is apparent that the journey of this monkey is denied a stage in Chinese cinematic representation. Pema uses little lama’s identification with Sun to show the fundamental change in the spiritual world of Tibetans as well as the unpredictable future of Buddhism. It remains unclear how Tibetan Buddhism is going to evolve and how a younger generation of Tibetan monks are going to cope with the changing world.
190
Conclusion
The subject of ethnic minority children and childhoods has proved attractive to Chinese filmmakers over the past three decades. Operating simultaneously as an embodiment of childhood, rurality, ethnicity and nationalism, the ethnic minority child on screen has much to teach us about attitudes and approaches in contemporary filmmaking. Relevant research is quite rare, however, perhaps because of this febrile mix of difficult and sensitive topics. This thesis seeks to explore how ethnic minority childhood experience is constructed cinematically. What in particular is made of rurality versus urban living, how are such geographies imagined, and how do these vistas and landscapes reflect the attitudes, expectations and imagination of filmmakers in the larger context of mainstream society?
Drawing on theories in cinematic landscape and children’s geographies, original approaches to children’s film studies, this thesis interrogates various places, spaces and environments in which these children are situated by filmmakers. It questions how films of the 1990s-2000s may have contributed to the understanding of such children’s identities, subject, as they are, to the ideological agenda of filmmakers and restricted, as they must be, by the social-political context of a Han-dominated multi-ethnic nation. In particular, the thesis explores how hidden messages may be embedded, intendedly or unintendedly, in the cinematic treatments of landscape shots that are critical to our understanding of these children’s roles in cinema.
The thesis also employs a wide range of theoretical approaches in individual chapters in order to understand these films. The approaches include the idea of natural space in a musical, the concept of a rural idyllic childhood, focalisation in film narrative, the relational construction of space, the transitional space of play, and the relationship between media consumption and identity construction. Overall, the thesis makes three manifest conclusions.
First, in different historical periods, the ethnic minority children’s connections with the rural space carry different connotations. In the early 1990s, they aspire for the more ‘advanced’ urban space dominated by Han Chinese as a route to better education and upward mobility. The rural space ends up being primitive, backward and deserted. In the 2000s, however, with negative impacts of industrialisation and urbanisation becoming evident, the ethnic minority children are returned to the rural environment and admired for maintaining a harmonious relationship with nature, agriculture land and village community. Such cinematic construction may evoke an ecological awareness among urban film viewers and thus coincide with what ecocinema
Conclusion
advocates. More importantly, a rural idyllic childhood is consequentially constructed, which is endowed with idealistic imagination of a filmmaker for the sake of nostalgia.
Second, in the context of particular challenges posed by modernisation to ethnic minorities, the ethnic minority children are placed by films in different positions with their ethnic traditions. For the sake of nostalgia, they are constructed as adherent to traditional practices and rural spaces, immune to the impacts of modernisation. Alternatively, their ethnic traditions facilitate their creative imagination of the world or contribute to a reconstruction of ethnic relationships. In particular, before the start of formal acculturation in Han-dominated urban space, the children are characterised by open mind and creative thinking. They represent a unique way of seeing the world that differs from the outcome of formal education dominated by Han social-cultural systems. When the children of different ethnic groups interact with each other, especially when one child is from the majority Han, the children’s interactions are used to reformulate ethnic relationships, which may serve as an intervention in the dominant mode of ethnic relationships in the adult world. Nonetheless, these predominantly Han narratives still differ from a film directed by a filmmaker of their own ethnic group, in which the children are made to confront the challenges of modernisation and reconsider their relationship with ethnic traditions. Pema’s film reveals the delicate psychological struggle of the child protagonist, whose identity construction unfolds as complete with contradictions and flexibility.
Third, despite being convenient avatars of multi-ethnic unity, the ethnic minority children’s contribution to a national narrative take on different outlooks for different filmmakers and in different historical periods and social contexts. There are surprisingly nuanced expressions in some instances. In the cinematic deployment of a mainstream filmmaker, the rural ethnic minority children’s aspiration for urban space in the early 1990s conforms to the state ideologies of development and nationhood. However, in the 2000s, when the ethnic minority child character seems to perform a perfect national narrative in an independent Han filmmaker’s frame by running towards the embrace of a symbolic national landscape, elements of deconstruction are also embedded in the film text. Two films discussed in the thesis make notable references to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games – a significant sporting and social event serving as a milestone in China’s economic development and its rise in global status. But, both films hide subtexts that challenge the national discourse. In one case, the rapid economic development based on mass migration of rural farmers is recommended to be reconsidered from the perspective of left-behind children. In the other, ethnic relationship is suggested to be
192
Conclusion
reconstructed in the context of urbanisation and enforced displacement of ethnic minorities away from their homelands. In the latter, the film points to the civility and hospitality of the ethnic minorities based on their indigenous knowledge systems and traditional space. Both films indicate the filmmakers’ strategic appropriation of the ethnic minority children for making serious social commentary in the context of strict film censorship on the one hand and intensified social stratification on the other.
Films discussed in the thesis are predominantly directed by Han filmmakers. It seems that the ethnic identity of a filmmaker matters in the type of childhood experiences constructed on screen, but as to what extent they matter, there are individual differences. In general, Han filmmakers take an ‘outsider’s perspective’ (Rao et al. 2011, 373), endowing their child characters with subjective imaginations. Mainstream filmmakers working for state-owned studios tend to espouse party-state ideologies regardless of their ethnic identities. Independent filmmakers are more likely to hide their personal expressions under the disguise of seemingly orthodox ‘main melody’ films. Filmmakers like Pema take an ‘insider’s perspective’ (Rao et al. 2011, 373), revealing the delicacy in a Tibetan child’s identity construction that cannot easily be achieved by a Han filmmaker. However, it is not just because of ethnicity but also because of the vastly different power dynamics and life experience which a member of a dominant group, however sympathetic, will find difficult to understand.
As mentioned in the Introduction of the thesis, media representation and real-life experience are increasing constituting one another, although not always in pre-determined ways. It is important to be aware of what is represented on screen and look into relevant ideologies and cultural politics underneath and how they are supported or challenged in the text. With regards to the ethnic minority children, their childhood experiences on screen may not only shape the audience’s perception of these children in both discourse and reality but also end up impacting the real circumstances of these children in life. As Chris Philo suggests in the study of children’s geographies, a better understanding of ‘structure-based geographies of childhood’, i.e. how they are ‘shaped by broad-brush political-economic and social-cultural transformations’, is ultimately for the sake of ‘[heralding] “real” changes in the conditions of existence for children who are in poverty, being excluded, suffering abuse or simply enduring neglect’ (2000, 253). My research could not bring direct changes to the lives of ethnic minority children, who still live on the periphery of the nation and deserve more attention. But I hope the thesis has provided a better understanding of how these children are appropriated on screen and in particular how
193
Conclusion
their cinematic geographies and identity construction are shaped by ideological agendas of filmmakers and implicated in the on-going process of China’s modernity project.
Further research is needed to examine how ethnic minority child characters are geographically constructed in Chinese cinema of other periods and how the spatial representation responds to the social-political context of a given era. Moreover, it is worth interrogating how children’s film focusing on a certain ethnic minority group evolves historically in terms of its spatial construction. More reflections also need to be made on other aspects of representation in ethnic minority children’s film and its role in the cinematic sphere of minority film and Chinese film in general.
194
References
Agnew, John A. 1987. Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and Society. Boston: Allen & Unwin. Aitken, Stuart C. 1991. “A Transactional Geography of the Image-Event: The Films of Scottish Director Bill Forsyth.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 16 (1): 105-118. Aitken, Stuart C. 1994. Putting Children in Their Place. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers. Aitken, Stuart C. 2001. Geographies of Young People: The Morally Contested Spaces of Identity. London: Routledge. Aitken, Stuart C. 2004. “Placing Children at the Heart of Globalization.” In WorldMinds: Geographical Perspectives on 100 Problems: Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Association of American Geographers 1904-2004, by Donald G. Janelle, Barney Warf and Kathy Hansen, 579-584. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Aitken, Stuart C., and Deborah P. Dixon. 2006. “Imagining Geographies of Film.” Erdkunde, 60 (4): 326-336. Aitken, Stuart C., and Thomas Herman. 1997. “Gender, Power and Crib Geography: Transitional Spaces and Potential Places.” Gender, Place and Culture, 4 (1): 63-88. Aitken, Stuart C., and Leo E. Zonn. 1993. “Weir(d) Sex: Representation of Gender-Environment Relations in Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (11): 191-212. Aitken, Stuart C., and Leo E. Zonn, eds. 1994. Place, Power, Situation, and Spectacle: A Geography of Film. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Althusser, Louis. (1971) 2001. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation).” In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by Ben Brewster, 85- 126. New York: Monthly Review Press. Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Änggård, Eva. 2016. “How Matter Comes to Matter in Children's Nature Play: Posthumanist Approaches and Children's Geographies.” Children's Geographies, 14 (1): 77-90. Aumont, Jacques. 2006. “The Invention of Place: Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's moses and aaron.” In Landscape and Film, by Martin Lefebvre, 1-18. New York: Routledge. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bal, Mieke. (1980) 1985. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Translated by Christine von Boheemen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bantly, Francisca Cho. 1989. “Buddhist Allegory in the Journey to the West.” The Journal of Asian Studies, 48 (3): 512-524. Barabantseva, Elena. 2008. “From the Language of Class to the Rhetoric of Development: Discourses of 'Nationality' and 'Ethnicity' in China.” Journal of Contemporary China, 17 (56): 565-589.
References
Barnes, Andrea. 2007. “Childhood Adventures on the Mongolian Steppe.” PsycCRITIQUES, 52 (33): n.p. doi: 10.1037/a0008424. Berlant, Lauren. 1997.The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Berra, John, and Liu Yang. 2012. “Cheap Laughs: The Mass-Production of Low-Budget Chinese Comedies from Fengkuang de shitou/Crazy Stone (Ning Hao, 2006) to Gao Xing (Agan, 2009).” Asian Cinema, 23 (1): 45-58. Berry, Chris. 1992. “'Race'(民族): Chinese Film and the Politics of Nationalism.” Cinema Journal, 31 (2): 45-58. Berry, Chris. 2006. “Where Do You Draw the Line? Ethnicity in Chinese Cinemas.” In China on Screen: Cinema and Nation, by Chris Berry and Mary Ann Farquhar, 169-194. New York: Columbia University Press. Berry, Chris. 2016. “Pema Tsden and the Tibetan Road Movie: Space and Identity beyond the 'Minority Nationality Film'.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 10 (2): 89-105. Berry, Chris, and Mary Ann Farquhar. 1994. “Post-Socialist Strategies: An Analysis of Yellow Earth and Black Cannon Incident.” In Cinematic Landscapes: Observations on the Visual Arts and Cinema of China and Japan, by David Desser and Linda Channah Ehrlich, 81-116. Austin: University of Texas Press. Berry, Michael. 2009. Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures: Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy'. London: British Film Institute. Blum, Lawrence. 1994. Moral Perception and Particularity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braester, Yomi. 2010. Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Braester, Yomi, and James Tweedie, eds. 2010. Cinema at the City's Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Brassley, Paul. 1998. “On the Unrecognized Significance of the Ephemeral Landscape.” Landscape Research, 23 (2): 119-132. Brown, Jane D., Carol Reese Dykers, Jeanne Rogge Steele, and Anne Barton White. 1994. “Teenage Room Culture: Where Media and Identities Intersect.” Communication Research, 21 (6): 813-827. Browne, Nick. 1996. “Society and Subjectivity on the Political Economy of Chinese Melodrama.” In New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics, by Nick Browne, Paul G. Pickowicz, Vivian Sobchack and Esther Yau, 40-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buckingham, David. 2007. “Childhood in the Age of Global Media.” Children's Geographies, 5 (1- 2): 43-54. Bulag, Uradyn E. 1999. “Models and Moralities: The Parable of the Two 'Heroic Little Sisters of the Grassland'.” The China Journal, (42): 21-41. Bulag, Uradyn E. 2003. “Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China.” American Anthropologist, 105 (4): 753-763.
196
References
Bulag, Uradyn E. 2006. “Municipalization and Ethnopolitics.” In Mongols from Country to City: Floating Boundaries, Pastoralism and City Life in the Mongol Lands, by Ole Bruun and Li Narangoa, 56-81. Copenhagen: NIAS. Cai, Zhichun. 1994. “Mantan mengguzu de yincha wenhua [The Tea Culture of Mongols].” Beifang wenwu, (1): 60-65. Caidan, Wanma (Pema Tseden). 2012. “Yong dianying zhenshi biaoda zangqu de shenghuo [Using Film to Authentically Represent a Life in a Tibetan Area].” In Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film], by Song Niu and Shuguang Rao, 45-48. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Caidan, Wanma (Pema Tseden), and Ren Li. 2006. “Jingjing de mani shi - Wanma Caidan fangtan [The Silent Holy Stones: An Interview with Pema Tseden].” Dianying yishu, (1): 30-33. Caidan, Wanma (Pema Tseden), Feng Xu, and Yanru Tian. 2017. “Wanma Caidan: Zangwenhua yu xiandaihua bingfei eryuan duili [Pema Tseden: A Non-Binary Relationship between Tibetan Culture and Modernity].” Dangdai dianying, (1): 42-49. Calkins, Mary Lynne. 1999. “Censorship in Chinese Cinema.” Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, 21 (2): 239-338. Cao, Bingjian. 2004. “Duochong wenhua yiyi xia de tansuo yu zhuiqiu - 'Xiyouji' Sun Wukong xingxiang xinlun [The Exploration and Quest in the Context of Multi-Culturalism: A New Understanding of the Character Sun Wukong in Journey to the West].” Nanyang shifan xueyuan xuebao (shehui kexue ban), 3 (11): 52-59. Cao, Tian Yu. 2005a. “Introduction: Modernization, Globalization and the Chinese Path.” In The Chinese Model of Modern Development, by Tian Yu Cao, 1-15. London: Routledge. Cao, Tian Yu, ed. 2005b. The Chinese Model of Modern Development. London: Routledge. Castree, Noel. 2003. “Place: Connections and Boundaries in an Interdependent World.” In Key Concepts in Geography, by Sarah L. Holloway, Stephen P. Rice and Gill Valentine, 165-185. London: Sage. CFCA, (Zhongguo dianying jia xiehui [Chinese Film Critic Association]), ed. 1997. Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Chan, Anita. 2002. “The Cultural of Survival: Lives of Migrant Workers through the Prism of Private Letters.” In Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society, by Perry Link, Richard P. Madsen and Paul G. Pickowicz, 163-188. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Chao, Lu. 2007. “Mengguzu minjian gequ zhong de shan chongbai guannian [The Notion of Worshiping Mountains in Mongolian Folk Songs].” Neimenggu daxue yishu xueyuan xuebao, (2): 47-50. Chaudhuri, Shohini, and Howard Finn. 2003. “The Open Image: Poetic Realism and the New Iranian Cinema.” Screen, 44 (1): 38-57. Chen, Baoguang. 2006. “Paihuai yu jianshou - Du 'Jingjing de mani shi' [Hesitation and Persistence: Reading The Silent Holy Stones].” Dianying xinzuo, (2): 5-8.
197
References
Chen, Fu, Jiming Hao, and Junhua Tang. 2000. Zhongguo renkou ziyuan huanjing yu ke chixu fazhan zhanlüe yanjiu [A Study of Chinese Population, Resources, Environment, and Strategies for Sustainable Development]. Beijing: Zhongguo huanjing kexue chubanshe. Chen, Guangting. 2002. “Beijing qiang shachenbao shi he zhouwei shengtai huanjing bianhua [A History of Strong Sandstorms in Beijing and Ecological Changes in its Neighbouring Areas].” Zhongguo shamo, 22 (3): 210-213. Chen, Jianyu. 1997. “Zhongshi shaoshu minzu dianying chuangzuo [Attention to the Production of Ethnic Minority Film].” In Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival], by CFCA, 96-102. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Chen, Qihu. 2009. “'Guoqiu wenhua' gainian bianyi [Distinction and Discussion on the Concept of 'National Sport Culture'].” Sanxia daxue xuebao (renwen shehui kexue ban), 31 (4): 110- 113. Chen, Shuanglian. 2014. “From Gada Merin to Jesse James: A Comparative Study on the Images of Heroes in Mongolian Horqin Folk Songs and American Western Cowboy Songs.” English Language and Literature Studies, 4 (4): 86-92. Chen, Xin. 2016. “Cong 'Xiyouji' de dianying gaibian tanqi - Dangdai shenmei xia guochan chaoji yingxiong de renwu suzao [Film Adaptation of Journey to the West: Contemporary Aesthetics and Domestic Construction of Super Hero Characters].” Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao, (4): 58-63. Chen, Xuguang, and Zhe Hao. 2014. “'Shiqi nian' shaoshu minzu ticai dianying: Yishi xingtai jiangou yu leixing xing de yinxing chengxu ji kaituo [Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film in the '17-Year-Period': Ideology Construction and Tacit Continuation and Development of Genres].” Shanghai daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban), 31 (4): 13-23. Chen, Xuguang, and Yun Hu. 2012. “Quanqiuhua yujing xia de Zhongguo shaoshu minzu ticai dianying de jiazhi yu luxiang [The Value and Direction of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film in the Context of Globalisation].” In Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film], by Song Niu and Shuguang Rao, 313-320. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Chen, Ye. 1994. “Mengguzu de jisi xisu jiqi bianqian [Mongolian Worshiping Customs and Their Evolutions].” Neimenggu shehui kexue, (5): 32-36. Cheng, Qiang. 1997. “Xiandai wenming yu wanggu xisu de zhuangji: Lüelun shaoshu minzu dianying jiqi zhuti kaijue [Clash between Modern Civilisation and Bygone Folklore: A Brief Discussion on Ethnic Minority Film and Its Thematic Exploration].” In Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival], by CFCA, 245-257. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Cheng, Xiaohui. 2004. “Lun 'Xiyouji' de foxue yiyun [On the Religious Connotations of Journey to the West].” Qiusuo, (6): 122-125. Cheng, Yuru. 2010. “Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying yanjiu xiangguan gainian bianxi [Distinctions of Relevant Concepts in Chinese Ethnic Minority Film Studies].” Minzu yishu yanjiu, 23 (6): 139-144.
198
References
Chong, Gladys Pak Lei. 2013. “Chinese Bodies that Matter: The Search for Masculinity and Femininity.” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 30 (3): 242-266. Chong, Gladys Pak Lei. 2017. Chinese Subjectivities and the Beijing Olympics. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Chow, Rey. 1995. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. Clark, Paul. 1987a. “Ethnic Minorities in Chinese Films: Cinema and the Exotic.” East-West Film Journal, 1 (2): 15-31. Clark, Paul. 1987b. “Film Genres, 1956-1964.” In Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949, 94-118. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, Paul. 2005. “From the Margins: Tian Zhuangzhuang's Films.” In Reinventing China: A Generation and Its Films, 106-121. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Clark, Paul. 2012. “Artists, Cadres, and Audiences: Chinese Socialist Cinema, 1949-1978.” In A Companion to Chinese Cinema, by Yingjin Zhang, 42-56. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Clarke, David B. 1997. “Introduction: Previewing the Cinematic City.” In The Cinematic City, by David B. Clarke, 1-41. London: Routledge. Classen, Constance, ed. 2005. The Book of Touch. Oxford: Berg. Clifford, James. 1986. “On Ethnographic Allegory.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 98-121. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cohen, Myron L. 1994. “Cultural and Political Inventions in Modern China: The Case of the Chinese 'Peasant'.” In China in Transformation, by Weiming Du, 151-170. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cosgrove, Denis E. 1984. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books. Cosgrove, Denis. E. 1989. “Power and Place in the Venetian Territories.” In The Power of Place: Bringing Together Geographical and Sociological Imaginations, by John A. Agnew and James S. Duncan, 104-123. Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman. Cosgrove, Denis E., and Stephen Daniels. 1988. “Introduction: Iconography and Landscape.” In The Iconography of Landscape, by Denis E. Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, 1-10. New York: Cambridge University Press. Crain, William C. 1992. Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Crang, Mike. 1998. Cultural Geography. London: Routledge. Cui, Shuqin. 2010. “Boundary Shifting: New Generation Filmmaking and Jia Zhangke's Films.” In Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema, by Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen, 175-193. Aberdeen: Hong Kong University Press. Cui, Weiping. n.d. “Wanma Caidan fangtan: Wo zhuzhong de ke'neng shi yizhong zhuangtai [An Interview with Pema Tseden: What I Care About is Probably a State of Being].” Jintian shiye [Today Perspective]. Accessed 16 February 2018. http://www.jintian.net/fangtan/cuiweiping3.html.
199
References
Dai, Jinhua. 1994. “Bukejian de nüxing: Dangdai Zhongguo dianying zhong de nüxing yu nüxing de dianying [Unseen Women: Women and Women's Film in Contemporary Chinese Cinema].” Dangdai dianying, (6): 37-45. Dai, Jinhua. 1995. “Invisible Women: Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Women's Film.” positions, 3 (1): 255-280. Davin, Delia. 1999. Internal Migration in Contemporary China. New York: St. Martin Press. Davis, Peter. 1985. “The Gods Must be Crazy by Jamie Uys.” Cinéaste, 14 (1): 51-53. Deleyto, Celestino. 1991. “Focalisation in Film Narrative.” Atlantis, 13 (1/2): 159-177. Derrida, Jacques. 2001. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. London: Routledge. Dezin, Norman K. 1991. Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema. London: Sage. Diamond, Norma. 1996. “Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing, and Contemporary Views.” In Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, by Stevan Harrell, 92-116. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Dissanayake, Wimal. 2010. “Landscapes of Meaning in Cinema: Two Indian Examples.” In Cinema and Landscape: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography, by Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner, 189-202. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk. 1997. “Landscape and Agency: Yellow Earth and the Demon Lover.” Theory, Culture & Society, 14 (1): 97-112. Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk. 2000. Public Secrets, Public Spaces: Cinema and Civility in China. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk. 2005. Little Friends: Children's Film and Media Culture in China. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk. 2015. “Landscape in the Mist: Thinking beyond the Perimeter Fence.” In The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos, by Angelos Koutsourakis and Mark Steven, 206-218. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dorfman, Ariel, and Armand Mattelart. 1975. How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic. New York: International General. Duncan, Jim, and Derek Gregory, eds. 1999. Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing. London: Routledge. Dutton, Michael Robert, Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo, and Dong Dong Wu. 2008. Beijing Time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dyer, Richard. 1985. “Entertainment and Utopia.” In Movies and Methods, vol. 2, by Bill Nichols, 220-232. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dyer, Richard. 1995. “The Colour of Entertainment.” Sight and Sound, (5): 28-31. Dyer, Richard. 2000. “The Colour of Entertainment.” In Musicals: Hollywood and Beyond, by Bill Marshall and Robynn Stilwell, 23-30. Exeter, UK: Intellect. Dyer, Richard. 2002. “Entertainment and Utopia.” In Only Entertainment, 19-35. London: Routledge. Factor, June. 2004. “Tree Stumps, Manhole Covers and Rubbish Tins: The Invisible Play-Lines of a Primary School Playground.” Childhood, 11 (2): 142-154.
200
References
Fan, Yongzhen, and Qiqige E'erdun. 2014. “Mengguzu aobao jisi xisu kao [Archaeology of Mongolian Aobao Worshiping Customs].” Xibu menggu luntan, (2): 48-53. Faulkner, Joanne. 2013. “Vulnerability of ‘Virtual’ Subjects: Childhood, Memory, and Crisis in the Cultural Value of Innocence.” SubStance, 42 (3): 127-147. Fei, Xiaotong. 1988. “Plurality and Unity in the Configuration of the Chinese People.” Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 167-221. Chinese University of Hong Kong. Feng, Gang. 2008. “Jingji fazhan yu huanjing baohu guanxi yanjiu [The Relationship between Economic Development and Environmental Protection].” Beijing linye daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban), 7 (4): 48-53. Feng, Wei. 2012. “Zhengwei, huaxiangwei, hunhe shuiguowei - Sanban dianshiju 'Xiyouji' gaibian de shenmei chayi [Orthodox Flavour, Flower Flavour, and Mixed Fruit Flavour: Aesthetic Differences Among Three Versions of Television Adaptation of Journey to the West.” Dangdai dianshi, (9): 16-18. Foucault, Michel. (1971) 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, Michel, and Colin Gordon. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books. Frangville, Vanessa. 2016. “Pema Tseden's The Search: The Making of a Minor Cinema.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 10 (2): 106-119. Gall, Adam, and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey. 2006. “Ivan Sen and the Art of the Road.” Screen, 47 (4): 425-439. Gallagher, Mary Elizabeth, Ching Kwan Lee, and Sarosh Kuruvilla. 2011. “Introduction and Argument.” In From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization: Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China, by Sarosh Kuruvilla, Ching Kwan Lee and Mary Elizabeth Gallagher, 1-14. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gasché, Rodolphe. 1987. “Infrastructures and Systematicity.” In Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida, by John Sallis, 3-20. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ge, Weijun. 2002. “'Xiyouji' Sun Wukong gushi de Yindu yuanyuan [The Indian Origin of Sun Wukong Stories in Journey to the West].” Mingqing xiaoshuo yanjiu, (4): 36-43. Geis, Karlyn J., and Catherine E. Ross. 1998. “A New Look at Urban Alienation: The Effect of Neighborhood Disorder on Perceived Powerlessness.” Social Psychology Quarterly, 61 (3): 232-246. Gibbons, Peter. 2002. “Cultural Colonization and National Identity.” New Zealand Journal of History, 36 (1): 5-17. Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity. Gilligan, Carol. 2003. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gladney, Dru C. 1994. “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities.” The Journal of Asian Studies, 53 (1): 92-123. Gladney, Dru C. 1995. “Tian Zhuangzhuang, the Fifth Generation, and Minorities Film in China.” Public Culture, (8): 161-175.
201
References
Goss, Jon. 1988. “The Built Environment and Social Theory: Towards an Architectual Geography.” The Professional Geographer, 40 (4): 392-403. Grewal, Anup. 2016. “Contested Tibetan Landscapes in the Films of Pema Tseden.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 10 (2): 135-149. Grout, Donald Jay. 1980. A History of Western Music. London: J. M. Dent and Sons. Gruen, Lori. 2011. Ethics and Animals: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press. Guang, Chunlan. 1992. “'Huoyanshan laide gushou' daoyan chuangzuo huigu [A Production Review of The Drummer of Huoyanshan].” Dianying tongxun, (2): 9-12. Guang, Chunlan. 1997. “Chuangzuo jiqing yu fengfu duocai de minzu shenghuo: Mantan paishe shisibu minzu dianying [Passion of Creation and Colourfulness of Ethnic Life: Talking about Making Fourteen Ethnic Films].” In Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival], by CFCA, 10-24. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Guang, Chunlan. 2012. “Hunxi Xinjiang: Wo yong wode xin paixi [Soul Linked to Xinjiang: I Devote My Heart to Filmmaking].” In Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film], by Song Niu and Shuguang Rao, 15-19. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Gugler, Josef. 2004. “Fiction, Fact, and the Critic’s Responsibility: Camp de Thiaroye, Yaaba, and The Gods Must be Crazy.” In Focus on African Films, by Francoise Pfaff, 69-84. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hall, Stuart. 1980. “Encoding/Decoding.” In Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79, by Stuart Hall, 128-138. London: Hutchinson, in association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. Hall, Stuart. 1997. “Introduction.” In Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices, by Stuart Hall, 1-11. London: Sage. Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books. Harper, Graeme, and Jonathan Rayner, eds. 2010a. Cinema and Landscape: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Harper, Graeme, and Jonathan Rayner. 2010b. “Introduction: Cinema and Landscape.” In Cinema and Landscape: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography, by Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner, 13-28. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Harrell, Stevan. 2001. Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hart, Roger. 1984. “The Geography of Children and Children's Geographies.” In Environmental Perception and Behavior: An Inventory and Prospect, by Thomas F. Saarinen, David Seamon and James L. Sell, 99-129. Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography. Harvey, David. 1973. Social Justice and the City. London: Arnold. Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
202
References
Hasimu, Tuerdi. 1997. “Tan Xinjiang shaoshu minzu dianying he Guang Chunlan daoyan de yingpian [Xinjiang Ethnic Minority Film and Films Directed by Guang Chunlan].” In Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival], by CFCA, 142-150. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. He, Ming. 1997. “Shixi shaoshu minzu ticai dianying de wenhua goucheng yaosu [An Analysis of Cultural Ingredients of Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film].” In Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival], by CFCA, 266-272. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. He, Siyu. 1982. “Yige bingbu qiancheng de fo jiaotu - Tan Sun Wukong de xingxiang bingyu Liu Yuanda tongzhi shangque [An Insincere Buddhist: On the Character of Sun Wukong in Conversation with Liu Yuanda].” Sixiang zhanxian, (3): 76-81. He, Yuanguo. 2006. “Kongzi yu Yalishiduode de pengyou guan zhi bijiao [A Comparison of Confucius and Aristotle on the Notion of Friendship].” Lunli xue yanjiu, (1): 47-52. Heath, Tim, and Yue Tang. 2010. “Beijing's Hutong and Siheyuan: Conservation of an Urban Identity.” Municipal Engineer, 163 (3): 155-161. Held, Virginia. 2006. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. New York: Oxford University Press. Higson, Andrew. 1989. “The Concept of National Cinema.” Screen, 30 (4): 36-47. Higson, Andrew. 1997. Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holloway, Sarah L., and Gill Valentine. 2000. “Children's Geographies and the New Social Studies.” In Children's Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning, by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, 1-26. London: Routledge. Holt, Nicholas L., Homan Lee, Carolyn A. Millar, and John C. Spence. 2015. “'Eyes on Where Children Play': A Retrospective Study of Active Free Play.” Children's Geographies, 13 (1): 73-88. hooks, Bell. 1990. Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Toronto: Between the Lines Press. hooks, Bell. 2001. Salvation: Black People and Love. New York: Harper Collins. Hopkins, Jeff. 1994. “A Mapping of Cinematic Places: Icons, Ideology, and the Power of (Mis)representation.” In Place, Power, Situation, and Spectacle: A Geography of Film, by Stuart C. Aitken and Leo E. Zonn, 47-65. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Horne, John, and Garry Whannel. 2010. “The 'Caged Torch Procession': Celebrities, Protesters and the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay in London, Paris and San Francisco.” Sport in Society, 13 (5): 760-770. Horton, John. 2010. “'The Best Thing Ever': How Children's Popular Culture Matters.” Social & Cultural Geography, 11 (4): 377-398. Horton, John. 2014. “For Geographies of Children, Young People and Popular Culture.” Geography Compass, 8 (10): 726-738.
203
References
Hou, Keming, ed. 2006. Zhongguo ertong dianying de xianzhuang yu fazhan [Current Situation and Future Development of Chinese Children's Film]. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, Hou, Keming, ed. 2010. Zaichuang ertong dianying de xin huihuang: Di shijie Zhongguo guoji ertong dianyingjie luntan wenji [Recreating the New Glory of Children's Film: Forum Papers at the 10th China-International Children's Film Festival]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Hu, Puzhong. 2012a. “'Muyu dianying' de lailong qumai [The Provenance and Development of 'Mother-Tongue Film'].” Zhongguo minzu, (Z1): 80-86. Hu, Puzhong. 2012b. “Tian Zhuangzhuang de mengzang yingxiang [Tian Zhuangzhuang's Mongolian and Tibetan Images].” Zhongguo minzu, (Z1): 94-99. Hu, Puzhong. 2013a. “Mingming yu xiuci: Zhongguo shaoshu minzu ticai dianying de 'yuan wenti' [Naming and Rhetoric: The 'Prime Question' of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film].” Shoudu shifan daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban), (5): 102-112. Hu, Puzhong. 2013b. “Shaoshu minzu ticai dianying zhong de guojia xingxiang [The National Image in Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film].” Dianying yishu, (2): 63-67. Hu, Puzhong. 2013c. Zhongguo shaoshu minzu ticai dianying yanjiu [The Study of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film]. Beijing: Zhongguo guoji guangbo chubanshe. Huang, Jing, and Shuanghua Chen. 2011. “Huanjing wuran zhili yu jingji zengzhang: Moxing yu Zhongguo de jingyan yanjiu [Environmental Pollution Abatement and Economic Growth: Model and Empirical Evidence from China].” Nankai jingji yanjiu, (1): 142-152. Huang, Yanhong. 2002. “Beijing zhonggulou [The Bell and Drum Tower in Beijing].” Zijincheng, (4): 48-49. Ingold, Tim. 1993. “The Temporality of the Landscape.” World Archaeology, 25 (2): 152-174. James, Allison, Chris Jenks, and Alan Prout. 1998. Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge: Polity. James, Sarah. 1990. “Is There a 'Place' for Children in Geography?” Area, 22 (3): 278-283. Jankowiak, William R. 1993. Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account. New York: Columbia University Press. Jenks, Chris. 1996. Childhood. London: Routledge. Jiang, Juan. 2013. “Basha miaozu nanhai de chengnian li: Qianxi dianying Gun Lala de qiang [The Initiation Ceremony of Miao Boys in Basha: An Analysis of Lala's Gun].” Dianying pingjie, (17): 34-37. Jiang, Lisong. 1999. “Shandi shengjing yu Guizhou shaoshu minzu wuzhi wenhua de xingcheng jiqi tezheng [The Living Environment of Mountains, the Formation and Characteristics of Material Cultures of Ethnic Minorities in Guizhou].” Guizhou minzu yanjiu (jikan), (3): 91- 97. Jiang, Yun. 1986. “'Xiyouji': Yibu yi xiangzheng zhuyi wei zhuyao tese de zuopin [Journey to the West: A Works Characterised by Symbolism].” Wenxue yichan, (6): 85-91. Jin, Lei. 2001. “Beijing xin shida jianzhu jianping [A Brief Review of New Top Ten Buildings in Beijing].” Xin Jianzhu, (5): 60-62. Jing, Ai. 2002. “Beijing shachenbao yu 2008 nian aoyunhui [Beijing Sandstorms and the 2008 Olympics].” Senlin yu renlei, (1): 6-8.
204
References
Johnson, Matthew D. 2012. “Propaganda and Censorship in Chinese Cinema.” In A Companion to Chinese Cinema, by Yingjin Zhang, 153-178. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Jones, Martin. 2009. “Phase Space: Geography, Relational Thinking, and Beyond.” Progress in Human Geography, 33 (4): 487-506. Jones, Owain. 2000. “Melting Geography: Purity, Disorder, Childhood and Space.” In Children's Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning, by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, 29-47. London: Routledge. Katz, C. 1994. “Textures of Global Change: Eroding Ecologies of Childhood in New York and Sudan.” Childhood, (2): 103-110. Kennedy, David. 1991. “The Young Child's Experience of Space and Child Care Center Design: A Practical Meditation.” Children's Environments Quarterly, 8 (1): 38-48. Kiang, Heng Chye, and Gan Ser Min. 1996. “Utilizing the Past in Reality of the Present: A Case Study of Bell-and-Drum Tower District in Beijing.” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 8 (1): 73-73. Klieger, P. Christiaan. 1997. “Shangri-la and Hyperreality: A Collision in Tibetan Refugee Expression.” In Tibetan Culture in the Diaspora: Papers Presented at a Panel of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, by Frank J. Korom, 59-68. Vienna: Verlag der Ö sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Knapp, Ronald G. 2000. China's Walled Cities. New York: Oxford University Press. Kochan, Dror. 2009. “Visual Representation of Internal Migration and Social Change in China.” China Information, 23 (2): 285-316. Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1969. “Stage and Sequence: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach to Socialization.” In Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, by David A. Goslin, 347- 480. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company. Kong, Fanfei. 2011. “Jiedu ershi shiji jiushi niandai Zhongguo ertong gushipian de wenhua neihan [Reading the Cultural Connotations of Chinese Children's Film in the 1990s].” In Zhongguo ertong dianying sanchongzou: Wenhua, yishu, shangpin [The Triple Symphony of Chinese Children's Film: Culture, Art, Commodity], by Li Ma, 45-54. Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe. Kuoshu, Harry H. 2010. Metro Movies: Cinematic Urbanism in Post-Mao China. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Lacan, Jacques. 1968. The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis. Translated by A. Wilden. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politcs. London: Verso. Laing, Heather. 2000. “Emotion by Numbers: Music, Song and the Musical.” In Musicals: Hollywood and Beyond, by Bill Marshall and Robynn Stilwell, 5-13. Exeter, UK: Intellect. Lamb, Michael E. 2010. “How Do Fathers Influence Children's Development? Let Me Count the Ways.” In The Role of the Father in Child Development, by Michael E. Lamb, 1-26. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Lebeau, Vicky. 2008. Childhood and Cinema. London: Reaktion Books. Lefebvre, Martin. 2006. “Introduction.” In Landscape and Film, by Martin Lefebvre, xi-xxxi. New York: Routledge. 205
References
Lefebvre, Martin. 2011. “On Landscape in Narrative Cinema.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies, (20): 61-78. Lewis, Peirce F. 1979. “Axioms for Reading the Landscape.” In The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, by Donald W. Meinig, 11-32. New York: Oxford University Press. Li, Chun. 2011. “Gongneng suqiu zhuanxiang yu shaoshu minzu dianying de bianqian [Reorientation of Functional Expectations and Vicissitudes of Ethnic Minority Film].” Xiandai chuanbo, (10): 153-154. Li, Daoxin. 2012. “Xin minzu dianying: Neixiang de zuqun jiyi yu kaifang de wenhua zijue [New Ethnic Film: Introverted Ethnic Memory and Open Cultural Awareness].” In Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film], by Song Niu and Shuguang Rao, 326-333. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Li, Ershi. 1999. “Zuowei yishu tansuo de shiqi nian shaoshu minzu ticai dianying [Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film as Artistic Explorations in the 17-Year-Period].” Dangdai dianying, (5): 80-87. Li, Hongwu. 2003. “Lun 'Sun Wukong' mingzi de fojiao neihan [The Buddhist Connotations of the Name 'Sun Wukong'].” Yuncheng xueyuan xuebao, 21 (6): 25-29. Li, Lin. 2000. “Zhongguo daxue suzhi jiaoyu huigu yu zhanwang [The Retrospect and Prospect of Quality Education in Chinese Universities].” Qinghua daxue jiaoyu yanjiu, (3): 83-88. Li, Lingjun, and Qingsheng Gao. 2001. “2000 nian Beijing shachenbao yuandi jiexi [An Analysis of Origins of Beijing Sandstorms in 2000].” Huanjing kexue yanjiu, 14 (2): 1-3, 65. Li, Na. 2011. “Lüyou kaifa zhong de minzu chuantong wenhua baohu - Tulufan Tuyugou weiwuerzu xiangcun diaocha [The Ethnic Cultural Preservation during Tourism Development: An Investigation of a Uyghur Village in Tuyuq of Turpan.” Xinjiang shehui kexue, (4): 54-60. Li, Qiang. 2012. Nongmingong yu Zhongguo shehui fenceng [Rural Migrant Workers and Social Stratification in China]. Beijing: Shehui yu kexue wenxian chubanshe. Li, Ran, and Songbin Zhang. 2014. “Lun dangdai minzu xianshi ticai dianying de wenhua zhutixing yu minzuhua [Cultural Subjectivity and Ethnicity in Contemporary Realistic Ethnic Subject Matter Film].” Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao, (5): 21-28. Li, Xinhua, Zhaoping Yao, and Xuling Liu. 2006. “Lishi wenhua mingcun de lüyou baohu yu kaifa moshi yanjiu - Yi Tulufan Tuyugou Mazhacun weili [A Study of Tourism Protection and Developmental Model of Famous Historical and Cultural Villages: Taking the Mazar Village in Tuyuq of Turpan as an Example].” Ganhanqu dili (hanwen ban), 29 (2): 301-306. Li, Yiming. 1997. “‘Shiqi nian’ shaoshu minzu ticai dianying zhong de wenhua shidian yu zhuti [Cultural Perspective and Theme in Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film of the 17-Year- Period].” In Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival], by CFCA, 172-185. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Liehm, Mira, and Antonin J. Liehm. 1977. The Most Important Art: Soviet and Eastern European Film after 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.
206
References
Lin, Rongqing, and Pengnan Fan. 2012. “Lun 'Xiyouji' yingshi gaibian de helixing wenti [The Issue of Legitimacy in the Film and Television Adaptation of Journey to the West].” Chongqing keji xueyuan xuebao (shehui kexueban), (20): 146-148. Liu, Baohong. 1991. “Guomindang zhengfu yu Sulian zhengfu qitu heban Dushanzi youkuang jilüe [A Record of an Attempted Cooperation between the National Government and the Soviet Government in Building Dushanzi Oil Deposit Fields].” Xinjiang difangzhi, (4): 75-76. Liu, Junhua. 2006. “Cong Sun Wukong xingxiang de rensheng licheng kan 'Xiyouji' de shengming yiyi [The Meaning of Life in Journey to the West Seen from the Life Course of the Character Sun Wukong].” Xi'an jiaotong daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban), 26 (5): 89-92. Liu, Kunhou, Sha Kang, Yimeng Hong, and Zhengli Li. 2013. “Qianxi Guizhou yingshi fazhan yu wenhua jianshe: Yi Gun Lala de qiang weili [An Analysis of Film and Television Development and Cultural Construction in Guizhou: Taking Lala's Gun as an Example].” Dianying pingjie, (6): 38-40. Liu, Yang. 2008. “Cong jingmi dao xuanxiao: Ning Hao dianying de 'xianshi' zhidao [From Serenity to Boisterousness: A 'Realistic' Approach Taken in Ning Hao's Films].” Shandong yishu xueyuan xuebao, (5): 53-56. Liu, Yong, and Xian Li. 2013. “Chinese Urbanization: Achievements and Prospects to be Pursued.” China Economist, 8 (3): 64-83. Lo, Kwai-Cheung. 2009. “Two Moments of Ethnic Representation in Tian Zhuangzhuang's Minority Films.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 3 (3): 231-247. Lo, Kwai-Cheung. 2016. “Buddha Found and Lost in the Chinese Nation of 'Diversity in Unity': Pema Tseden's Films as a Buddhist Mode of Reflexivity.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 10 (2): 150-165. Louv, Richard. 2008. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. New York: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Lőwy, Michael. 2002. “The Revolutionary Romanticism of May 1968.” Thesis Eleven, (68): 95- 100. Lü, Guoguang. 2012. Behind the Chinese Miracle: Migrant Workers Tell Their Stories. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Lu, Sheldon H. 2009. “Introduction: Cinema, Ecology, Modernity.” In Chinese Ecocinema in the Age of Environmental Challenge, by Sheldon H. Lu and Jiayan Mi, 1-14. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lu, Sheldon H., and Jiayan Mi, eds. 2009. Chinese Ecocinema: In the Age of Environmental Challenge. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lu, Sheldon H., and Emilie Yueh-Yu Yeh, eds. 2005. Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Lu, Shuang, Yi-Ting Lin, Juliann H. Vikse, and Chien-Chung Huang. 2016. “Well-Being of Migrant and Left-Behind Children in China: Education, Health, Parenting, and Personal Values.” International Journal of Social Welfare, (25): 58-68. Lu, Zhouxiang. 2013. “From Hongkew Recreation Ground to Bird's Nest: The Past, Present and Future of Large Sports Venues in China.” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 30 (4): 422-442. Lukinbeal, Chris. 2005. “Cinematic Landscapes.” Journal of Cultural Geography, 23 (1): 3-22.
207
References
Lukinbeal, Chris, and Stefan Zimmermann. 2006. “Film Geography: A New Subfield.” Erdkundle, 60 (4): 315-325. Lury, Karen. 2010a. “Children in an Open World: Mobility as Ontology in New Iranian and Turkish Cinema.” Feminist Theory, 11 (3): 283-294. Lury, Karen. 2010b. The Child in Film: Tears, Fears and Fairy Tales. London: I.B. Tauris. Ma, Laurence J. C., and Biao Xiang. 1998. “Native Place, Migration and the Emergence of Peasant Enclaves in Beijing.” The China Quarterly, (155): 546-581. Ma, Li, ed. 2011. Zhongguo ertong dianying sanchongzou: Wenhua, yishu, shangpin [The Triple Symphony of Chinese Children's Film: Culture, Art, Commodity]. Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe. MacDonald, Scott. 2004. “Toward an Eco-Cinema.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 11 (2): 107-132. MacDonald, Scott. 2013. “The Ecocinema Experience.” In Ecocinema Theory and Practices, by Stephen Rust, Salma Monani and Sean Cubitt, 17-41. New York: Routledge. Mackerras, Colin. 1994. China's Minorities: Integration and Modernization in the Twentieth Century. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. MacKinnon, Kenneth. 2000. “'I Keep Wishing I Were Somewhere Else': Space and Fantasies of Freedom in the Hollywood Musical.” In Musicals: Hollywood and Beyond, by Bill Marshall and Robynn Stilwell, 40-46. Exeter, UK: Intellect. Marchetti, Gina. 1988. “Two from China's Fifth Generation: Interviews with Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang.” Continuum, 2 (1): 128-134. Marchetti, Gina. 1993. Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marsiglio, William. 1993. “Contemporary Scholarship on Fatherhood: Culture, Identity, and Conduct.” Journal of Family Issues, 14 (4): 484-509. Massey, Doreen B. 1994. Space, Place, and Gender. Cambridge: Polity. Massey, Doreen B. 1995. Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production. 2nd ed. Houndmills: Macmillan. Massey, Doreen B. 2005. For Space. London: Sage. Matthews, Hugh, Melanie Limb, and Mark Taylor. 2000. “The 'Street as Thirdspace'.” In Children's Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning, by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, 54-68. London: Routledge. McDougall, Bonnie S., and Kam Louise. 1997.The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century. London: Hurst. McGee, Terry, Chusheng Lin, and Mark Wang. 2007. China's Urban Space: Development under Market Socialism. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. McGrath, Jason. 2008. Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. McGrath, Jason. 2016. “Realism.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 10 (1): 20-23.
208
References
Mckendrick, John H., Michael G. Bradford, and Anna V. Fielder. 2000. “Time for a Party!: Making Sense of the Commercialisation of Leisure Space for Children.” In Children's Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning, by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, 86-100. London: Routledge. Meinig, Donald W. 1979. “The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene.” In The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, by Donald W. Meinig, 33-48. New York: Oxford University Press. Meng, Jing. 2015. “Prohibition and Production of the Past: Representation of the Cultural Revolution in TV dramas.” Media, Culture & Society, 37 (5): 671-685. Metz, Christian. (1977) 1982. Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Signifier. Translated by Ben Brewster, Alfred Guzzetti, Ceila Britton, and Annwyl Williams. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mills, Jane. 2012. Jedda. Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press. Minghelli, Giuliana. 2008. “Haunted Frames: History and Landscape in Luchino Visconti's Ossessione.” Italica, 85 (2/3): 173-196. Minh-ha, Trinh T. 1997. “Not You/Like You: Postcolonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of Identity and Difference.” In Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, by Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat, 415-419. London: University of Minnesota Press. Minh-Ha, Trinh T. (1991) 2013. When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics. London: Routledge. Mitchell, Don. 2000. Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Moore, Robin C. 1986. Children's Domain: Play and Place in Child Development. London: Croom Helm. Moses, Jonathon W. 2006. International Migration: Globalization’s Last Frontier. London: Zed Books. Mulvey, Laura. (1975) 1989. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Visual and Other Pleasures, 14-26. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nagib, Lúcia. 2011. World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism. New York: Continuum. Nagib, Lúcia, and Anne Jerslev, eds. 2014. Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film. London: I.B. Tauris. Nagib, Lúcia, Chris Perriam, and Rajinder Dudrah, eds. 2012. Theorizing World Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris. Nicholson, Heather Norris. 2001. “Seeing How It Was?: Chilldhood Geographies and Memories in Home Movies.” Area, 33 (2): 128-140. Nie, Wei. 2012. “'Yuanshengtai' zhuti zai minzu dianying zhong de tuxian [A Prominent Theme of 'Primitivism' in Ethnic Film].” In Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film], by Song Niu and Shuguang Rao, 202-210. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Ning, Jingwu. 1999. “Qianfang you wode huangtong chuiju: Chengzhang chuangzuo suigan [The Notes on the Production of Growing Up].” Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao, (2): 22-24.
209
References
Ning, Jingwu. 2012. “Xinling shudi de huigui huo juebie: Niaochao, Gun Lala de qiang chuangzuo fansi [The Return or Farewell to the Soul Habitat: Reflections on the Productions of Bird's Nest and Lala's Gun].” In Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film], by Song Niu and Shuguang Rao, 70-72. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Ning, Jingwu, Hang Xu, Baofeng Tian, and Jing Wang. 2004. “Shixin de xianshi biaoda: Fang 'Jidi caihong', 'Duozi' daoyan Ning Jingwu [A Realistic Expression of a Poetic Heart: An Interview with Ning Jingwu, the Director of Polar Rainbow and Runing for Son].” Dianying xinzuo, (5): 9-11. Niu, Song, and Shuguang Rao, eds. 2012. Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film]. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Norton, William. 2000. Cultural Geography: Themes, Concepts, Analyses. Don Mills, Ont: Oxford University Press. Nye, Joseph S. 1990. “Soft Power.” Foreign Policy, (80): 153-171. O' Shea, Mary B. 2005. “Crazy from the Heat: Southern Boys and Coming of Age.” In Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth, by Murray Pomerance and Frances Gateward, 83-97. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Oakes, Timothy S. 1992. “Cultural Geography and Chinese Ethnic Tourism.” Journal of Cultural Geography, 12 (2): 3-17. Olson, Debbie, and Andrew Scahill, eds. 2012. Lost and Othered Children in Contemporary Cinema. Lanham: Lexington Books. Othman, Zulkeplee, Laurie Buys, and Rosemary Aird. 2014. “Observing Privacy, Modesty and Hospitality in the Home Domain: Three Case Studies of Muslim Homes in Brisbane, Australia.” Archnet-IJAR, International Journal of Architectural Research, 8 (3): 266-283. Philo, Chris. 2000. “'The Corner-Stones of My World': Editorial Introduction to Special Issue on Spaces of Childhood.” Childhood, 7 (3): 243-256. Piaget, Jean. (1965) 2006. “The Stages of the Intellectual Development of the Child.” In Educational Psychology in Context: Readings for Future Teachers, by Bruce A. Marlowe and Alan S. Canestrari, 98-106. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Plaks, Andrew H. 1987. The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu-ta ch'i-shu. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Powell, Mary Ann, Nicola Taylor, and Anne B. Smith. 2013. “Constructions of Rural Childhood: Challenging Dominant Perspectives.” Children's Geographies, 11 (1): 117-131. Prout, Alan, and Allison James. 1990. “A New Paradigm for the Sociology of Childhood?: Provenance, Promise and Problems.” In Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, by Allison James and Alan Prout, 6-28. London: Falmer Press. Punch, Samantha. 2000. “Children's Strategies for Creating Playspaces: Negotiating Independence in Rural Bolivia.” In Children's Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning, by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, 48-62. London: Routledge.
210
References
Punch, Samantha, and E. Kay M. Tisdall. 2012. “Exploring Children and Young People's Relationships across Majority and Minority World.” Children's Geographies, 10 (3): 241-248. Rao, Shuguang et al. 2011. Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying shi [Film History of Chinese Minorities (English translation on the book cover)]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Rayner, Jonathan. 2010. “Battlefields of Vision: New Zealand Filmscapes.” In Cinema and Landscape: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography, by Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner, 255-268. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Relph, Edward. 1981. Rational Landscapes and Humanistic Geography. London: Croom Helm. Reuber, Paul. 1998. “Beijing's Hutongs and Siheyuan.” The Canadian Architect, 43 (10): 40-43. Robertson, Pamela. 1997. “Home and Away: Friends of Dorothy on the Road in Oz.” In The Road Movie Book, by Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, 271-286. London: Routledge. Robin, Françoise. 2009. “Performing Compassion: A Counter-Hegemonic Strategy in Tibetan Cinema?” In Tibetan Arts in Transition: A Journey through Theatre, Cinema, and Painting, by Valeria Donati, 37-49. Rome: Asia Onlus. Rocha, Carolina, and Georgia Seminet. 2012. “Introduction.” In Representing History, Class, and Gender in Spain and Latin America: Children and Adolescents in Film, by Carolina Rocha and Georgia Seminet, 1-32. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rose, Gillian. 1990. “Imagining Poplar in the 1920s: Contested Concepts of Community.” Journal of Historical Geography, 16 (4): 425-437. Rosen, Stanley. 2010. “Chinese Cinema's International Market.” In Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema, by Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen, 35-54. Aberdeen: Hong Kong University Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. (1762) 2003. Emile: Or Treatise on Education. Translated by W. H. Payne. New York: Prometheus Books. Saeed-Vafa, Mehrnaz. 2002. “Location (Physical Space) and Cultural Identity in Iranian Films.” In New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, by Richard Tapper, 200-214. London: I.B. Tauris. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Schein, Louisa. 1997. “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China.” Modern China, 23 (1): 69-98. Schell, Orville. 2000. Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-la from the Himalayas to Hollywood. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt. Scourfield, Jonathan, Bella Dicks, Mark Drakeford, and Andrew Davies. 2006. Children, Place and Identity: Nation and Locality in Middle Childhood. London: Routledge. Setten, Gunhild. 2006. “Fusion or Exclusion? Reflections on Conceptual Practices of Landscape and Place in Human Geography.” Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography, 60 (1): 32-45. Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. London: Penguin. Smith, Neil. 1991. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. 2nd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Smith, Warren W. 2009. Tibet's Last Stand?: The Tibetan Uprising of 2008 and China's Response. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.
211
References
Snow, David A., and Leon Anderson. 1987. “Identity Work Among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities.” American Journal of Sociology, 92 (6): 1336-1371. Soja, Edward W. 1980. “The Socio-Spatial Dialect.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 70 (2): 207-225. Soja, Edward W. 1989. Post-Modern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Solinger, Dorothy. 1995. “The Floating Population in the Cities: Chances for Assimilation.” In Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post- Mao China, by Deborah S. Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton and Elizabeth J. Perry, 113- 139. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Solinger, Dorothy. 1999. Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State and the Logic of the Market. Berkeley: University of California Press. Song, Yingchang. 2002. “Beijing shachenbao chengyin jiqi fangzhi tujing [Causes of Beijing Sandstorms and Means of Prevention and Control].” Chengshi huanjing yu chengshi shengtai, 15 (6): 26-28. Strelitz, Larry Nathan. 2002. “Media Consumption and Identity Formation: The Case of the 'Homeland' Viewers.” Media, Culture & Society, 24 (4): 459-480. Stringer, Julian. 1997. “Exposing Intimacy in Russ Meyer's Motorpsycho! and Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” In The Road Movie Book, by Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, 165-178. London: Routledge. Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review, 51 (2): 273-286. Tang, Hao. 2009. “Beijing hutong de lishi yu weilai [The History and Future of Hutongs in Beijing].” Chengshi zhuzhai, (7): 87-88. Tang, Xiaofeng. 2012. Wenhua dili xue shiyi [Explanations on Cultural Geograhy]. Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe. Taylor, Affrica. 2011. “Reconceptualizing the 'Nature' of Childhood.” Childhood, 18 (4): 420-433. Taylor, Kate E. 2010. “Crises, Economy and Landscape: The Modern Film Face of New China.” In Cinema and Landscape: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography, by Graeme Harper and Rayner Jonathan, 219-230. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Teo, Stephen. 2009. Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Tomaselli, Keyan G. 2006. “Rereading the Gods Must be Crazy Films.” Visual Anthropology, 19 (2): 171-200. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1979. “Thought and Landscape.” In The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, by Donald W. Meinig, 89-102. New York: Oxford University Press. Tule, Qingke. 2012. “Menggu chuantong jiaotong gongju de bianqian diaocha yanjiu [An Investigation on the Evolution of Traditional Mongolian Transportation Means].” Master diss.: Inner Mongolian Normal University. Valentine, Gill. 1996. “Angels and Devils: Moral Landscapes of Childhood.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14 (5): 581-599.
212
References
Valentine, Gill. 1997. “A Safe Place to Grow Up? Parenting, Perceptions of Children's Safety and the Rural Idyll.” Journal of Rural Studies, 13 (2): 137-148. Valentine, Gill. 2004. Public Space and the Culture of Childhood. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Varsava, Jerry. 2011. “Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem: Toward a Narrative Ecology of the Grassland of Contemporary Inner Mongolia.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 18 (2): 283-301. Visser, Robin. 2010. Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wang, Can. 2004. Ethnic Groups in China. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press. Wang, Gansheng. 2012. “Dui sanban dianshiju 'Xiyouji' de sikao [Thoughts on Three Versions of Television Drama Journey to the West].” Shidai jinrong, (10): 62-64. Wang, Guangfei. 2012. Shiqi nian Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying yanjiu [The Study of Chinese Ethnic Minority Film in the 17-Year-Period]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Wang, Jing. 2009. “Caoyuan: Wenhua de fan'guan he zishu - Zhongguo, E'luosi, Menggu sanbu caoyuan dianying de bijiao [The Grasslands: Cultural Reflection and Self-Presentation: A Comparison of Three Grassland Movies in China, Russia, and Mongolia].” Zhongyang minzu daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban), 36 (3): 118-124. Wang, Min, and Ying Huang. 2015. “Zhongguo de huanjing wuran yu jingji zengzhang [China's Environmental Pollution and Economic Growth].” Jingji xue (jikan), 14 (2): 557-578. Wang, Mingzhen. 2012. “Beijing zhonglou he gulou [The Bell Tower and Drum Tower in Beijing].” Beijing dang'an, (12): 34-35. Wang, Qiming. 1991. “Chongman shengji de lao qiye - Xinjiang Dushanzi lianyou chang [An Old Factory Filled with Vitality: Xinjiang Dushanzi Oil Refinery].” Zhongguo jihua guanli, (2): 35. Wang, Xiaodong. 2015. “Dianying 'Huoyanshan laide gushou' zhong weiwuerzu chuantong cunluo renju wenhua jiedu [A Residential Cultural Interpretation of the Traditional Uyghur Village in the Movie 'The Drummer of Huoyanshan'].” Dianying pingjie, (10): 93-95. Wang, Xin, and Jingjing Fan. 2005. “Shanshan Tuyugou Mazhacun de minsu wenhua [The Folk Culture of the Mazar Village in Tuyuq of Shanshan County].” Xiyu yanjiu, (3): 112-116. Wang, Yichuan. 2001. “Feichangren dui zhengchangren de wenhua fanzhu [Non-Normal People's Reverse Cultural Help to Normal People].” Dangdai dianying, (3): 17-19. Wang, Zheng. 1992. “Fojiao yu Sun Wukong [Buddhism and Sun Wukong].” Fojiao wenhua, (4): 15-16. Wang, Zhimin. 1997. “Shaoshu minzu dianying de gainian jieding wenti [Definitions of Concepts of Ethnic Minority Film].” In Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival], by CFCA, 161-171. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Ward, Colin. 1978. The Child in the City. London: Architectural Press. Weber, Renée. 1986. Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
213
References
Wei, Dong, and Yongfu Shen, eds. 2015. Bijiao yu zhengfeng: Jiti zhuyi yu geren zhuyi de lilun, wenti yu shijian [Comparative Studies and Theoretical Debates: Theories, Problems and Practices of Collectivism and Individualism]. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe. Wei, Guobin. 2009. “Shaoshu minzu dianying gainian de zai tantao [Another Discussion on the Concept of Ethnic Minority Film].” Yishu tansuo, 23 (3): 124-128. Wei, Tingting. 2012. “Spiritual Suicide in Pema Tseden's Contemporary Tibet.” Asian American Writers' Workshop. November 14. Accessed 16 February 2018. http://aaww.org/spiritual- suicide-in-pema-tsedens-contemporary-tibet/. Willemen, Paul. 2006. “The National Revisited.” In Theorising National Cinema, by Valentina Vitali and Paul Willemen, 29-43. London: British Film Institute. Williams, Dee Mack. 2002. Beyond Great Walls: Environment, Identity, and Development on the Chinese Grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Winchester, Hilary P. M., Lily Kong, and Kevin Dunn. 2003. Landscapes: Ways of Imagining the World. London: Routledge. Winnicott, Donald W. 1971. Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock. Wirth, Louis. 1938. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology, 44 (1): 1-24. Wojcik, Pamela Robertson. 2016. Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Wojcik-Andrews, Ian. 2000. Children’s Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory. New York: Garland. Wong, Chuen-Fung. 2012. “Reinventing the Central Asian Rawap in Modern China: Musical Stereotypes, Minority Modernity, and Uyghur Instrumental Music.” Asian Music, 43 (1): 34- 63. Wood, Houston. 2008. Native Features: Indigenous Films from around the World. New York: Continuum. Wu, Guangzheng. 2007. “'Xiyouji' de zongjiao xushi yu Sun Wukong de sanzhong shenfen [The Religious Narrative of Journey to the West and Three Identities of Sun Wukong].” Xueshu jiaoliu, (11): 140-145. Wu, Yuxia. 2015. “Guang Chunlan de Xinjiang bentu 'gewu pian' [Guang Chunlan's Xinjiang Native 'Musicals'].” Dianying pingjie, (23): 21-23. Xiang, Feng. 2006. “Zui gulao de weiwuerzu cunluo - Tuyugou Mazhacun [The Oldest Uyghur Village - The Mazar Village of Tuyuq].” Xiaochengzhen jianshe, (9): 62-63. Xiao, Huang. 2003. “Ning Jingwu, Wang Junxia tan Duozi [Ning Jingwu and Wang Junxia Talking about Running for Son].” Dianying huakan, (4): 19-19. Xie, Fei. 2012. “Tan shaoshu minzu dianying de chuangzuo [On the Production of Ethnic Minority Film].” In Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film], by Song Niu and Shuguang Rao, 8-14. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Xin, Xian, Xuefeng Mao, and Wanchun Luo. 2005. “Zhongguo nongmin suzhi pingjia ji quyu chayi [An Assessment of Chinese Peasants' Quality and Its Regional Differences].” Zhongguo nongcun jingji, (9): 4-9.
214
References
Xing, Li. 2013. “Mengguzu aobao jisi de shengtai gongneng ji wenhua jiazhi [Ecological Functions and Cultural Values in Mongolian Aobao Worship].” Yunnan shifan daxue xuebao, 45 (2): 122-129. Xu, Bin. 2001. “Wusheng de he sheying shouji [The Cinematography Notes of The Silent River].” Dianying yishu, (3): 60-61, 56. Yang, Jie. 2008. “Jiumeng chongwen - Paishe 'Xiyouji' de fengfeng yuyu [Old Dream Revisited: The Shooting Process of Journey to the West].” Baogao wenxue, (2): 4-89. Yang, Liu. 2013. “Mengzu gequ de xingcheng ji fengge tezheng [The Formation and Styles of Mongolian Songs].” Da wutai, (11): 235-236. Yang, Peidong, Lijun Tang, and Xuan Wang. 2015. “Diaosi as Infrapolitics: Scatological Tropes, Identity-Making and Cultural Intimacy on China's Internet.” Media, Culture & Society, 37 (2): 197-214. Yang, Zhiyong. 1997. “Cong shaoshu minzu wenhua shenceng jiegou zhong fajue dianying ticai [Unearthing Subject Matters for the Film Medium from the Deep Structure of Ethnic Minority Culture].” In Lun Zhongguo shaoshu minzu dianying: Diwujie Zhongguo jinji baihua dianyingjie xueshu yantaohui wenji [Chinese Ethnic Minority Film: A Collection of Papers at the Symposium of the Fifth Chinese Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower Film Festival], by CFCA, 273-285. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Yau, Wai-Ping. 2016. “Reading Pema Tseden's Films as Palimpsests.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 10 (2): 120-134. Ye, Jingzhong. 2011. “Left-Behind Children: The Social Price of China's Economic Boom.” The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38 (3): 613-650. Ye, Jingzhong, and James R. Murray, eds. 2005. Guanzhu liushou ertong: Zhongguo zhongxibu nongcun diqu laodongli waichu wugong dui liushou ertong de yingxiang [Care for Left- Behind Children: Impacts of Labour Migration in China's Central and Western Rural Areas on Left-Behind Children]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe. Ye, Jingzhong, and Lu Pan. 2008. Bieyang tongnian: Zhongguo nongcun liushou ertong [Differentiated Childhoods: Children Left Behind in Rural China]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe. Ye, Jingzhong, and Lu Pan. 2011. “Differentiated Childhoods: Impacts of Rural Labor Migration on Left-Behind Children in China.” The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38 (2): 355-377. Ye, Jingzhong, Congzhi He, Huifang Wu, and Lu Pan, eds. 2010. Liushou Zhongguo: Zhongguo nongcun liushou renkou yanjiu [Left-Behind Population in Rural China]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe. Yi, Jun. 1958. “Dianying yu geming de langman zhuyi: Guanyu geming xianshi zhuyi yu geming langman zhuyi xiang jiehe de xuexi biji [Film and Revolutionary Romanticism: Study Notes on the Combination of Revolutionary Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism].” Zhongguo dianying, (10): 24-28. Yi, Tongpei, and Xueli Jiang. 2010. “Daxiongmao zhushi zhuzhong jiqi shengwu duoyangxing [Bamboo Types in the Staple Diet of Pandas and Their Biological Diversity].” Sichuan linye keji, 31 (4): 1-20. Yin, Hong. 2010. “2009: Zhongguo dianying chanye beiwang [Memorandum on Chinese Cinema in 2009].” Dianying yishu, (2): 5-14.
215
References
Yu, Anthony C. 1977. “Introduction.” In The Journey to the West (Volume One), 1-62. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yu, Anthony C. 1983. “Two Literary Examples of Religious Pilgrimage: The 'Commedia' and 'The Journey to the West'.” History of Religions, 22 (3): 202-230. Yü, Dan Smyer. 2012. The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China: Charisma, Money, Enlightenment. London: Routledge. Yü, Dan Smyer. 2014. “Pema Tseden's Transnational Cinema: Screening a Buddhist Landscape of Tibet.” Contemporary Buddhism, 15 (1): 125-144. Yu, Min, and Wenyu Dou. 2011. “Ke'erqin caoyuan mengguzu minjian gequ yanjiu gaishu [A Brief Review of Research on Mongolian Folk Songs on the Khorchin Grasslands].” Changchun jiaoyu xueyuan xuebao, 27 (2): 59-60. Yuan, Guiren. 2001. “Suzhi jiaoyu: Ershiyi shiji jiaoyu jiaoxue gaige de qizhi [Quality Education: A Banner of Education Reform in the Twenty-First Century].” Zhongguo jiaoyu xuekan, (5): 1- 3. Yue, Han, Xiaozhen Xu, and Wenjuan Yan. 2014. “Xin Zhongguo chengli yilai shaoshu minzu ertong dianying chuangzuo silu de yanbian [Evolution in Production Ideas in Ethnic Minority Children's Film since the Founding of New China].” Mei yu shidai (xia), (3): 85-89. Zhang, Fa. 2008. “Cong sanda wenhua xianxiang kan Zhongguo zai meijie shidai dazhonghua yu bentuhua de jiaolü [Seen through Three Cultural Phenomena to Examine China's Anxiety between Popularisation and Localisation in the Media Age].” Tianjin shehui kexue, (1): 94- 97. Zhang, Guiyu. 2012. “City Texture - Hutong and Siheyuan in Beijing (I).” China & the World Cultural Exchange, (9): 28-31. Zhang, Haoyue. 2005. “Xin shiqi nongcun ticai ertong dianying fenxi [Rural Children's Film in the New Era].” Dianying yishu, (3): 103-108. Zhang, Haoyue. 2006. “Ningzhi de xiangtu: Xin shiqi nongcun ticai ertong dianying de yizhong miaoshu [Stagnant Rural Land: A Description of Rural Children's Film in the New Era].” In Zhongguo ertong dianying de xianzhuang yu fazhan [Current Situation and Future Development of Chinese Children's Film], by Keming Hou, 127-135. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Zhang, Hua. 2010. “Guang Chunlan Xinjiang dianying jiema [Decoding Guang Chunlan's Xinjiang Films].” Dangdai dianying, (6): 79-84. Zhang, Hua. 2012. “‘Zhi’ zi daolu: Tianshan dianying zhipian chang de 30 chunqiu [The Road of Detour: The Thirty Years of Tianshan Film Studio].” Beifang minzu daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban), (4): 98-103. Zhang, Hua. 2014. “Tianshan dianying zhipian chang chuchuang shiqi gushi pian shengchan shilüe [A Historical Account of Feature Film Production in Tianshan Film Studio of the Early Period].” Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao, (5): 43-48. Zhang, Li. 2001. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China's Floating Population. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Zhang, Rui. 2005. The Cinema of Feng Xiaogang: Commercialization and Censorship in Chinese Cinema after 1989. Columbus: Ohio State University.
216
References
Zhang, Wenyan. 2012. “Xiandaihua yu fan xiandaihua: 'Shiqi nian' yu xinshiji shaoshu minzu dianying yuanshengtai qingjie bijiao yanjiu [Modernisation and Anti-Modernisation: A Comparison of Ethnic Minority Film in the 17-Year-Period and the New Century with Primitive Complex].” In Quanqiuhua yu minzu dianying: Zhongguo minzu ticai dianying de lishi, xianzhuang he weilai [Globalisation and Ethnic Film: The History, Present and Future of Chinese Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film], by Song Niu and Shuguang Rao, 143-148. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe. Zhang, Xiaofang. 2013. “‘Beijing de jinshan shang’: Xizang renmin changgei Mao zhuxi de zhujiu ge [‘Upon the Golden Mountain of Beijing’: A Toasting Song to Chairman Mao Sung by Tibetans].” Xiangchao, (12): 35-36. Zhang, Yingjin. 1996. The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time, and Gender. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Zhang, Yingjin. 1997. “From 'Minority Film' to 'Minority Discourse': Questions of Nationhood and Ethnicity in Chinese Cinema.” Cinema Journal, 36 (3): 73-90. Zhang, Yingjin. 2002. Screening China: Critical Interventions, Cinematic Reconfigurations, and the Transnational Imaginary in Contemporary Chinese Cinema. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, the University of Michigan. Zhang, Yingjin. 2003. “Industry and Ideology: A Centennial Review of Chinese Cinema.” World Literature Today, 77 (3/4): 8-13. Zhang, Yingjin. 2010. “Transnationalism and Translocality in Chinese Cinema.” Cinema Journal, 49 (3): 135-139. Zhang, Yingjin. 2012. “Directors, Aesthetics, Genres: Chinese Postsocialist Cinema, 1979-2010.” In A Companion to Chinese Cinema, by Yingjin Zhang, 57-74. West Sussex, UK: Wiley- Blackwell. Zhang, Zao. 2012. “Ning Jingwu de miaozu yuanshengtai dianying fengge yanjiu [A Study of Ning Jingwu's Miao Primitive Films and His Styles].” Dianying pingjie, (1): 8-10. Zhang, Zhen. 2007. The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zhang, Zhilu. 2005. Zhongguo shaonian ertong dianying shilun [A History of Chinese Children and Youth's Film]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Zhao, Qianhe. 2010. “Black Humour in 'Crazy Stone' and Contemporary Chinese Cinema.” Master diss.: Hofstra University. Zhao, Sheng, and Zhiliang Su. 2011. “Xin Zhongguo de 'chu sihai' yundong [The Campaign of 'Eradicating Four Pests' in New China].” Dangdai Zhongguoshi yanjiu, 18 (5): 28-35. Zhao, Xikang. 2003. Huanjing baohu yu chanye guoji jingzhengli - Lilun yu shizheng fenxi [Environmental Protection and Global Industrial Competitiveness: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. Zhao, Yuexia. 2014. “'Zizai' yu 'ronghe' zhijian de gan'ga jingyu - Lun dianying 'Lü caodi' zhong mengguzu wenhua jingyu de shuxie [An Embarrassing Encounter between 'Being Itself' and 'Integration': Inscriptions of Mongolian Culture and Its Encounters in Mongolian Ping- Pong].” Neimenggu minzu daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban), 40 (4): 52-55. Zheng, Huanhuan. 2009. Ertong dianying: Ertong shijie de yingxiang biaoda [Children's Film: The Visual Expression of Children's World]. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe.
217
References
Zheng, Qian. 2008. “Niaochao yu 'niaochao', juli duoyuan: Dianying Niaochao [What is the Distance between the Bird's Nest and a 'bird's nest': The Movie Bird's Nest].” Zhongguo minzu, (10): 68-69. Zhou, Genhong. 2009. “Quanqiuhua shidai shaoshu minzu dianying de minzu wenhua jingyu [Ethnic Cultural Circumstances and Encounters in Ethnic Minority Film of the Globalisation Era].” Minzu yishu, (1): 88-91. Zhou, Yanbin. 1990. “Lun Sun Wukong de zongjiao yishi [The Religious Awareness of Sun Wukong].” Hunan shifan daxue shehui kexue xuebao, 19 (6): 92-96. Zhou, Zhongming. 1982. “Yinggai zenyang kandai Sun Wukong [How to View Sun Wukong].” Wenshizhe, (6): 51-55. Zhu, Jingjiang. 2015. “Dangdai Zhongguo shaoshu minzu 'zhuwei' dianying chuangzuo yanjiu [A Study of Contemporary 'Emic' Filmmaking of Chinese Ethnic Minorities].” Minzu yishu yanjiu, (6): 133-139. Zhu, Pengjie, and Wanma Caidan (Pema Tseden). 2016. “Duanlie de minzu xing - Zangzu daoyan Wanma Caidan fangtan [Disrupted Ethnicity: An Interview with Tibetan Filmmaker Pema Tseden].” Dianying xinzuo, (3): 80-83. Zhuoma, Cairang. 2013. “Shensheng yu shisu - Zangzu dianying 'Jingjing de mani shi' zhuti fenxi [Holiness and Secularity: An Analysis of the Theme of the Tibetan Film The Silent Holy Stones].” Xiandai shiting, (3): 57-60. Zipes, Jack. 1987. “The Enchanted Forest of the Brothers Grimm: New Modes of Approaching the Grimm's Fairy Tales.” Germanic Review, 62 (2): 66-74. Zonn, Leo E. 1984. “Landscape Depiction and Perception: A Transactional Approach.” Landscape Journal, 3 (2): 144-150. Zonn, Leo E. 1985. “Images of Place: A Geography of Media.” Proceedings of Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, South Australian Branch, (84): 34-45. Zou, Huafen, and Bo Liu. 2010. “Yi yuanshengtai de mingyi: Xin shiji yilai shaoshu minzu ticai dianying de duoyuan chengxian (2000-2008) [In the Name of Primitivism: The Plural Presentations of Ethnic Minority Subject Matter Film since the New Century (2000-2008)].” Dianying wenxue, (7): 9-11.
218