CULTURAL PERFORMANCE IN CHINA: BEYOND RESISTANCE IN THE 1990s DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Jonathan Scott Noble, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Professor Xiaomei Chen, Adviser Approved by Professor Kirk Denton Professor Pat Sieber Adviser East Asian Languages and Literatures Professor Mark Bender Graduate Program ABSTRACT CULTURAL PERFORMANCE IN CHINA: BEYOND RESISTANCE IN THE 1990s adopts a multi-disciplinary and critical approach in engaging issues of cultural performance, global/local cultural subjectivities, and transnationalism within and between different media, including film, television, drama, fiction, and folk dance in China during the late 1990s. Theories of globalization and transnationalism, key to the dissertation’s theoretical framework, are in part developed from the works of Arjun Appadurai, Homi Bhabha, Rob Wilson, and Wimal Dissanayake. Theories of performativity and performance, adapted from a range of scholars (including Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, and Judith Butler), show how performance is an apt metaphor for cultural production in the 1990s as cultural bipolarities (e.g., local/global; official/anti-official; socialism/capitalism) are obscured by cultural hybridity. The introduction, through a discussion of Li Yang’s feature film Blind Shaft, details my rationale and goals for applying performance theory to cultural production in China. Chapter 2 “Staged Ethnography in Guo Shixing’s Birdman and Bad Talk Street” discusses how Guo’s staging of ethnographic practices and cultural (re)presentation reveals the hybridity inscribed within a post-colonial discursive practice. Chapter 3 “The Re-cycling of Yang’ge by Senior Citizen Street Performers” illustrates how an urbanized folk dance ii performance provides the opportunity for individuals in a social sub-group to assert their subjectivities in a process involving imagined and real individual and social transformation. Chapter 4 “Titanic in China: Transnational Capitalism as Official Ideology?” examines the emerging synergies between commercial and official cultural practices and discourses and suggests that such complicity between official discourse, global commodification of culture, and the traffic of transnational capitalism plays a critical role in China’s contemporary cultural production. Chapter 5 “Liu Heng’s Garrulous Zhang: Television Performance” elucidates the hybridity of television drama production in the late 1990s. The analysis of different literary and cultural media reveals the continuities in practices of cultural production between media. Through the integration of contemporary cultural criticism and on-site fieldwork with literary criticism, the dissertation explores the intersection of multiple social and cultural discourses and practices and develops performance as the key theory for understanding the hybridity of cultural production in China during the 1990s. iii Dedicated to my grandparents— Emmanuel and Ethel Noble William and Johanna Mieras iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Xiaomei Chen, for her tenacious dedication and support offered during the course of my graduate studies, research, and dissertation writing. Her unflagging enthusiasm and encouragement propelled my work while her intellectual vigor greatly inspired the methodology, approaches, and critical notions adopted in my research. I thank Kirk Denton for the intellectual nurturing and the publishing opportunities he provided and permission to reprint “Titanic in China: Official ideology or Transnational Capitalism?” from MCLC. I thank Mark Bender for suggesting the topic of the “rice-sprout” dancing and for his guidance on the subject. I thank Patricia Sieber and Galal Walker for their support and encouragement. I would also like to thank Dai Jinhua for her assistance gathering materials in Beijing and for our numerous discussions over coffee at the Tianlun Hotel. I am very grateful to Xiaobin Jian, my first Chinese teacher, for his motivation and support since my first Chinese class with him in 1990. I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who assisted my research in China, including Wang Shuo, Song Dandan, Wu Ziniu, Chen Guoxing, Liu Liexiong, Gao Xiaosong, Shen Jianqin, and the team at Beijing This Month—Li Mingxia, Wu Runmei, v Michelle Guo. Special thanks goes to Zhang Nan who helped me considerably with translation work . Lastly, much of the work could not have been finished without the encouragement of my parents and the selfless dedication and indefatigable patience of Zhang Xin. vi VITA August 6, 1972 ...................................................... Born – Jackson, Mississippi USA 1994........................................................................ B.A. East Asian Studies, College of William and Mary 1995........................................................................ Graduate Fellow Graduate School, The Ohio State University 1996........................................................................ M.A. East Asian Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University 1996-1997 .............................................................. Research Assistant Foreign Language Center, The Ohio State University 1997-1998 .............................................................. Graduate Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant East Asian Languages and Literatures 1998-2000 .............................................................. Visiting Instructor, Chinese Resident Director, Study in China Program College of William and Mary vii 2002-....................................................................... Visiting Instructor, Chinese Notre Dame University PUBLICATIONS Articles 1. “Titanic in China: Transnational Capitalism as Official Ideology?” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 12, no. 1 (spring 2000): 164-198. Translations 1. “Foreword” by Dai Jinhua. In Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China by Xiaomei Chen. 2nd Edition. Lanham, Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002: ix-.xxiii. 2. “Gender and Narrative: Women in Contemporary Chinese Film” by Dai Jinhua. Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua, edited by Jing Wang and Tani Barlow. London: Verso, 2002: 99-150. 3. “Behind Global Spectacle and National Image Making” by Dai Jinhua. In Positions: Special Issue Chinese Popular Culture and the State 9, no. 1 (spring 2001): 161-186. Essays and Dictionary Entries 1. “Wang Shuo and the Commercialization of Literature.” In Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature, edited by Joshua Mostow. New York: Columbia University Press: 2003. 2. “Cao Yu and Thunderstorm.” In Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature, edited by Joshua Mostow. New York: Columbia University Press: 2003. viii 3. “Wang Ying.” In Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Twentieth Century, 1912- 2000, edited by Lily Xiao Hong Lee. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. 4. “Dai Houying.” In Who’s Who in Contemporary Women's Writing, edited by Jane Eldridge Miller. London: Routledge, 2001. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: East Asian Languages and Literatures Chinese Literature ix TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................................ v VITA .............................................................................................................................................. vii CHAPTER 1..................................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2................................................................................................................................... 44 STAGED ETHNOGRAPHY IN GUO SHIXING'S BIRDMAN AND BAD TALK STREET CHAPTER 3................................................................................................................................. 103 THE RECYCLING OF YANG'GE BY SENIOR CITIZEN STREET PERFORMERS CHAPTER 4................................................................................................................................. 135 TITANIC IN CHINA: TRANSNATIONAL CAPITALISM AS OFFICIAL IDEOLOGY? CHAPTER 5................................................................................................................................. 164 LIU HENG’S GARRULOUS ZHANG: TELEVISION PERFORMANCE POSTFACE .................................................................................................................................. 213 ENDNOTES................................................................................................................................. 216 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................ 235 x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Through the analysis of and critical engagements with selected genres of cultural performances in China during the period of 1998-2002, I suggest that a hybridity of discourses intersect Chinese cultural production in the late 1990s. Although all performances can be viewed as “cultural” in some way, this dissertation examines what I refer to as “cultural performances.” The adjective