Abstract
In the 1990s, China’s northeast including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the bastion of state-owned heavy industry, underwent a massive state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform engineered by Deng Xiaoping as part of the “Reform and Opening-up Policy,” which resulted in large-scale SOE bankruptcies and some 30 million blue-collar workers being laid off. 20 years after the reform, China’s northeast, once among the most urbanized regions in the country, has effectively become China’s “Rust Belt.” This article examines the cinematic representations of China’s Rust Belt, specifically in China’s northeast, arguing that cinema plays a crucial role in both capturing and interrogating the emergence of new urban spaces and urban subjects amidst the spatial and ideological reorientations of the reform era. It also investigates the ways in which cinematic representations, through a shifting “system of symbols,” mediate the contradictions in the production of urban spaces, cultural norms, and social identities.
About the author
Dorothee Xiaolong Hou, PhD, is a scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, film, and visual culture. Her current research interest is in the literary and cinematic representations of urban spaces in China’s Rust Belt. Currently a ASIANetwork-Luce Foundation postdoctoral teaching fellow at Moravian University, she’s working on her first monograph, tentatively titled Remaking China’s Rust Belt: Literature, Film, and Urban Culture of China’s Post-Reform Northeast.
References
Benjamin, W. 1969. Illuminations, edited by H. Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Search in Google Scholar
Bradsher, K. 2001. At Least 87 Died in Chinese Mine Explosion. November 22, 2009. New York Times. Also available at www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/world/asia/22china.html?_r=1.Search in Google Scholar
Cai, F., A. Park, and Y. Zhao. 2008. “The Chinese Labor Market in the Reform Era.” In China’s Great Economic Transformation, edited by L. Brandt, and T. G. Rawski, 167–214. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511754234.007Search in Google Scholar
Chen, Xiaoyun 陈晓云 2008. “Dian ying cheng shi dang dai Zhongguo de cheng shi xiang xiang” 电影城市: 当代中国电影的城市想象 [The Cinematic City: Urban Imaginations in Contemporary Chinese Cinema]. Dang dai dian ying 当代电影 12: 45–50.Search in Google Scholar
Dai, Jinhua 戴锦华 2012. “Gang de qin jie ji huo yi fu zhi ming” 钢的琴:阶级,或以父之名 [Piano in a Factory: Class, or in the Name of the Father].” Chaoxing ming shi jiang tan, episode 364 超星名师讲坛第 364 期. June 2, 2012. open.163.com/newview/movie/free?pid=IEV9B67D8&mid=CEV9B67E6 (accessed August 1, 2020).Search in Google Scholar
De Certeau, M. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Oakland: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Donald, J. 1995. “The City, the Cinema: Modern Spaces.” In Visual Culture, edited by Chris Jenks, 77–95. Milton Park: Routledge.10.4324/9781315084244-5Search in Google Scholar
Dorrian, M. 2007. “The Aerial View: Notes for a Cultural History.” Strates: Matériaux pour la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 13 (1): 1–17, https://doi.org/10.4000/strates.5573.Search in Google Scholar
Farquhar, J. 2002. Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China. Durham: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv11sn3f5Search in Google Scholar
Foundas, S. 2014. Film Review: ‘Black Coal, Thin Ice’. Variety. February 13, 2014. Also available at https://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/berlin-film-review-black-coal-thin-ice-1201099676/.Search in Google Scholar
Gaudiano, A. 2014. Enter a World of Chinese Film Noir. GB Times. July 14, 2014. Also available at https://findchina.info/enter-world-chinese-film-noir.Search in Google Scholar
Harvey, D. 2001. Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. Oxfordshire: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Honeycutt, K. 2010. The Piano in a Factory—Film Review. The Hollywood Reporter. October 24, 2010. Also available at https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/piano-factory-film-review-32286/.Search in Google Scholar
Huang, X. 黄小河 2014. An Interview with Geng Jun. Pengpai xinwen 澎湃新闻. April 17, 2014. Also available at thepaper.cn/renmin_prom.jsp?contid=1286496&from=renmin.Search in Google Scholar
Kuoshu, H. H. 2011. Metro Movies: Cinematic Urbanism in Post-Mao China. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lee, H.-J., and H. Lee. 2016. “Study of Non-Dailiness in Japanese Plays After the 3·11 Great Earthquake.” Journal of Korean Dance 35: 139–58, https://doi.org/10.22257/kjp.2016.03.35.1.217.Search in Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H. 1992. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Liu, S. 刘士林 2015. Du shi mei xue 都市美学 [Urban Aesthetics]. Shanghai: Shanghai jiao tong chu ban she.Search in Google Scholar
Liu, Y. 刘岩 2016. Li shi ji yi sheng chan Dongbei lao gong ye ji di wen hua yan jiu 历史·记忆·生产:东北老工业基地文化研究 [History, Memory, Production: A Cultural Study of the Old Northeastern Industrial Base]. Beijing: Yanshi chu ban she. Kindle.Search in Google Scholar
Lü, X. 2010. “West of the Tracks: History and Class-Consciousness.” translated by J. X. Zhang. In The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record, edited by C. Berry, and X. Lü, 57–76. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.10.5790/hongkong/9789888028528.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Powell, B. 1975. “Japan’s First Modern Theater: The Tsukiji Shogekijo and Its Company, 1924–26.” Monumenta Nipponica 30 (1): 69–85, https://doi.org/10.2307/2383696.Search in Google Scholar
Ramos-Martínez, M. 2015. “The Oxidation of the Documentary: The Politics of Rust in Wang Bing’s Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks.” Third Text 29 (1–2): 1–13.10.1080/09528822.2015.1036579Search in Google Scholar
Xu, H. 2021. Documentary Filmmaker Wang Bing (1): Behind the Scenes of the Nine-Hour Long West of the Tracks. Pengpai xinwen 澎湃新闻. November 14, 2021. Also available at https://www.163.com/dy/article/GNUOMUE90514R9P4.html.Search in Google Scholar
Xue, T. 1995. A Political Economy Analysis of Chinese Films (1979–1994). Chinese University of Hong Kong PhD dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Young, D. 2014. Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai Ri Yan Huo): Berlin Review. The Hollywood Reporter. February 12, 2014. Also available at https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/black-coal-thin-ice-bai-679757/.Search in Google Scholar
Zhang, E. Y. 2007a. “The Birth of Nanke (Men’s Medicine) in China: The Making of the Subject of Desire.” American Ethnologist 34 (3): 491–508, https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.2007.34.3.491.Search in Google Scholar
Zhang, Z. 2007b. “Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema of the Era of ‘Transformation’ (Zhuanxing).” In The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, edited by Z. Zhang, 1–45. Durham: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv11smskf.4Search in Google Scholar
Zhang, L. 2011. How The Piano in a Factory was Tempered. Nanfang dushibao 南方都市报. June 18. Also available at http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2011-06-18/06063337525.shtml.Search in Google Scholar
Zhang, X. 2014. Black Coal Thin Ice took the Golden Bear and Received Unanimous Acclaim from Critics. Yangcheng wanbao 羊城晚报. February 17, 2014. Also available at https://www.chinanews.com.cn/yl/2014/02-17/5846496.shtml.Search in Google Scholar
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston