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The Southwest as contested ground in the contemporary Chinese cinematic imagination: xiancheng aesthetics, genre hybrids, and local languages

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The Southwest as contested ground in the contemporary Chinese cinematic imagination: xiancheng aesthetics, genre hybrids, and local languages

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Content THE SOUTHWEST AS CONTESTED GROUND IN THE CONTEMPORARY CHINESE CINEMATIC IMAGINATION: XIANCHENG AESTHETICS, HYBRID GENRE, AND LOCAL LANGUAGE By Yixiao Zhang A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC DORNSIFE COLLEGE OF LETTERS, ARTS, AND SCIENCES UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES) August 2024 Copyright 2024 Yixiao Zhang ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.........................................................................................................................................iii Chapter 1: ........................................................................................................................................1 Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 What is Southwest......................................................................................................................5 What is Southwestern Mandarin................................................................................................9 Popularity of Sichuanese: Rap and Local Cultural Production...............................................10 The Representations of Local Languages in Chinese Media………………………………...16 Chapter 2: ......................................................................................................................................21 Xiancheng Aesthetics: An Urban Nostalgic Gaze……………………………………………….21 Chapter 3: ......................................................................................................................................29 Hybrid Genres ...............................................................................................................................29 Chapter 4: ......................................................................................................................................35 The Representation of Local Language.........................................................................................35 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................42 Bibliography..................................................................................................................................44 iii Abstract This MA thesis focuses on the recent trend of fetishizing Southwestern Mandarin and xiancheng (the county-level city) in the Southwest in contemporary Chinese cinema. The Southwest this thesis examines is not a geopolitical concept but a social construct and cultural imaginary. It signifies an imaginary standing at the intersection of the nostalgic gaze of urban elites, commodification of subculture and marginality, and appropriation of regional culture for contemporary Chinese nationalism characterized by multiculturalism. Through tracing the local cultural production in Chuanyu (Sichuan and Chongqing) region and the increasing popularity of Sichuanese rap music, this thesis first discusses how the representation of regional culture transformed from an embodiment of local subjectivity and cultural identity to an objectified and symbolic imaginary; and how the regional culture is mobilized for Chinese nationalism emphasizing multilingualism and multiculturalism. This thesis mainly explores the following three elements, xiancheng aesthetics, hybrid genre, and local language, that I consider the most significant in this cultural phenomenon by analyzing three Southwestern Mandarin films: The Old Town Girls (2020), Gaey Wa’r (2021), and Journey to the West (2021). The fetish of Southwestern xiancheng exemplifies how the dystopia characterized by patriarchal violence, post-industrial landscape, and social confinement from the past became a cinematic utopia for contemporary urban elites to project their current ambivalence and anxiety in contemporary China, where disillusioned sentiment is widely shared, and independent cinema encountered the pressing force of commercialization and incorporation into the mainstream. Using elements such as suspense, crime, and sci-fi, the recent Southwestern Mandarin films are mostly hybrid genre films. By comparing the function of suspense narrative structure in Northeastern suspense genre with recent Southwestern hybrid genres, I argue the former utilizes the suspense as a way of interrogating the historical trauma and collective memories of the Lay-off wave in Northeastern China during the economic reform, whereas the latter lacks an engagement with local history and regional perspectives. The detachment from the locale reveals how the Southwest remained an exotic backdrop rather than a subject. In the sci-fi genre, the Southwest is represented as a mythical and spiritual land outside of current temporality and modern bustle, serving as a site for urbanites to cure existential crises. Although the Southwest as an imaginary is appropriated by cultural elites and mobilized for nationalism, the Southwest could also be seen as a contested ground embodying the tension between regional culture and nationalism / alternative historiography and the mainstream discourse. By analyzing the independent filmmaker Qiu Jiong Jiong’s Sichuanese film A New Old Play (2021), the thesis also explores how local directors react and intervene in the mainstream discourse and the representation of the Southwest. iv Keywords: Chinese Cinema, Dialect, Regional Culture, Southwestern Mandarin, Southwest, Xiancheng, Modernity, Nostalgia, Multiculturalism, Nationalism. 1 Chapter 1: Introduction Since 1956 when Putonghua, the standard Mandarin based on the pronunciation of Beijing speech, has been officially adopted as the common language for the nation,1 other languages in China have been pushed to a secondary place. Followingly, the policy related to the promotion of Putonghua in education and media also started to be put into practice.2 Chen Ge’s Zhua Zhuangding 抓壮丁 (1963) shot in Sichuanese has been considered the first dialect film after the founding of the People’s Republic China. 3 However, since Zhua Zhuangding, dialect films in China have entered a silent period for a long time due to the official language policy that aims to heighten the proficiency and diffusion of Putonghua within the nation. Nevertheless, since the late 1990s the dialect seems to have been revived in media slightly. But dialects were considerably confined to be only used by marginal characters and creating comic effects in the cinema at the turn of the century. In recent years, there has been a huge rise in the number of Chinese films shot mainly in Southwestern Mandarin4 and set in China’s Southwestern region. In contrast to the films using dialects in the new millennium, dialect, namely Southwestern Mandarin became the main language in these films and is no longer limited to producing comic effects. Most of these films are genre films using elements of crime, gangster, melodrama, and suspense, including Rao 1 Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (Order of the President No. 37). <http://english.gov.cn/laws/2005-09/19/content_64906.htm> (accessed on June 17, 2024). 2 Longsheng Guo, “Between Putonghua and Chinese Dialects,” in Language Policy in the People’s Republic of China: Theory and Practice Since 1949, eds. Zhou M (Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004), 46-47. 3 Weihua Ge, 葛玮华. “Fangyan dianying de xingqi ji weilai fazhan 方言电影的兴起及未来发展” [Rise and Future Development of Dialect Films]. Zhongguo dianying shichang 中国电影市场 3 (2012), 37 4 Southwestern Mandarin 西南官话 is a sub-variety of the Sinitic language group Mandarin 官话, used widely by Han Chinese in Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, parts of Hubei, Hunan, and Guangxi. Southwestern Mandarin can be further divided into different subdivisions such as chengyu 成渝, guanchi 灌赤, guiliu 桂柳, ebei 鄂北 and so on. 2 Xioazhi’s A Cool Fish 无名之辈 (2018), Diao Yinan’s The Wild Goose Lake 南方车站的聚会 (2019), Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night 地球最后的夜晚 (2018), Shen Yu’s The Old Town Girls 兔子暴力 (2020), Kong Dashan’s Journey to the West 宇宙探索编辑部 (2021), Na Jiazuo’s Gaey Wa’r 街娃儿 (2021), and Li Yu’s The Fallen Bridge 断桥 (2022), among others. Suburban Chongqing and county-level small cities in Sichuan and Guizhou became places where these films are usually set and shot. On one hand, following the rise of Chengdu and Chongqing as the new Chinese first-tier cities, 5 it is not surprising that the film market favors the Southwestern region where local governments seek to promote local images and attract investments of all kinds. On the other hand, the contemporary surge of Southwestern Mandarin films may not have solely resulted from the one-sided interest of the film market and capital. Complex social-cultural factors should be taken into account. Under the circumstances that most of the filmmakers producing these films are not actually from this region, then why should it be the Southwestern region and Southwestern Mandarin? Before delving into these two questions, two key terms Southwest and Southwestern Mandarin should be explained first. The Southwest that this essay examines is not a geopolitical concept but a cultural concept that exists within contemporary cultural production and cinematic imagination. The Southwest mainly refers to a stage mise-en-scened by twisting alleyways, forlorn industrial ruins, densely packed residence buildings, flowing rivers and mountains, delinquent juveniles and local gangs speaking in local language, and an unevenly modernized urban landscape in humid mist --- a wasteland beyond the law. The Southwest here signifies a 5 The 15 new first-tier cities in the 2023 list are Chengdu, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Suzhou, Xi'an, Nanjing, Changsha, Tianjin, Zhengzhou, Dongguan, Qingdao, Kunming, Ningbo and Hefei (rank in order). https://govt.chinadaily.com.cn/s/202306/01/WS64780b4d498ea274927bc656/chengdu-tops-ranking-of-chinas-new-first-tiercity.html. 3 cultural concept and a social construct that is not geographically accurate and culturally coherent but designated by contemporary cultural consumption. The thesis will first provide an ample introduction to the context of my research. Firstly, it offers a clarification of two key terms, Southwest and Southwestern Mandarin. Then, it introduces the Sichuanese local cultural productions and the recent rise of Sichuanese rap music, which I deemed set the foundation for the increasing popularity of Sichuanese in Chinese media. Lastly, it discusses the brief history of the changing characteristics of dialects in Chinese cinema and stereotypes related to local languages. The rest of the thesis comprises three separate chapters on elements I considered the most important in understanding this recent cultural trend of Southwestern Mandarin films: xiancheng aesthetics, genre hybrids, and local language. In the section on xiancheng aesthetics, I will discuss how both films The Old Two Girls and Gaey Wa’r represent Southwestern xiancheng a dystopia but at the same time a cinematic utopia for urban cultural elites to project and release their anxiety and disillusion under the current censorship system. In The Old Town Girls, a postindustrial peripheral wasteland of Southwestern xiancheng was a patriarchal dystopia for its female characters, who were constantly abused by patriarchal violence and social environment. This dystopian hometown at first reflects neo-liberal motivation for promotion and integration into global capitalism through the character Qu Ting, but later reveals to be a manifestation of deprival of optimism and hopes. In Gaey Wa’r, similar patriarchal abuse is presented through a more masculine twist. The aggressive male characters and pathologized locals who are depicted as overtly violent and vulgar make the Southwestern xiancheng in Gaey Wa’r also a dystopia where drifts, escape, and stay are all denied and rendered undesirable. In the next section on genre hybrids, the thesis focuses on the appropriation and blending of genre elements such as 4 suspense, crime, and science fiction in Southwestern Mandarin films. I argue that, unlike the Northeastern suspense genre which uses suspense as a trope to interrogate the historical trauma and collective memories, the suspense and crime elements in Southwestern Mandarin films are devoid of regional subjectivity and detached from specific historical memory. Moreover, in Journey to the West, with the trope of the Sci-fi genre, the xiancheng in Sichuan is mystified and othered. It became an Oriental ‘utopia’ for urbanites to acquire empowerment and cure existential crises. The Southwest is again reduced to an object and a bearer of projections. This essay aims to examine how the Southwest is constructed as a cultural imaginary in contemporary Chinese mainstream cinema; how the consumption of Southwestern Mandarin, xiancheng aesthetics, and discourse of the underclass as a spectacle reflect a nostalgic urban gaze that seeks a temporary escape from the unsettling present characterized by consumerism and illusional global capitalism; how the marginality of xiancheng, underprivileged people, and subcultures are commercialized and incorporated into the mainstream discourse and film market through pastiche and genre hybrids after the crackdown of major Chinese independent film festivals and increasing tight control of censorship; and finally, how this phenomenon can be seen as a tendency of using multiculturalism and multilingualism to construct a new form of nationalism that is characterized by diversity and regionality in contemporary China, where local languages and regional culture are not subjects to suppress but to marketize. I argue that the use of local language and regional elements is not rooted in regional subjectivity but can be seen as appropriation and commodification of regionality and marginality for exotic consumption by urban cultural elites. The Southwest, as a popular cultural imaginary, stands at the intersection of multi-faceted projections from 1) urban cultural elites seeking exoticism and temporary escape 5 from the disillusioned present, and 2) the state that aims to marketize and commodify regional culture into symbols of multiculturalism and Chinese Nationalism. Through providing analysis of recent Southwestern Mandarin films shot in Southwest and Southwestern Mandarin, including Shen Yu’s The Old Town Girls (2020), Na Jiazuo’s Gaey Wa’r (2021), Kong Dashan’s Journey to the West（2021), this essay aims to demonstrate that the recent Southwestern Mandarin films are not about the Southwest perse but are appropriating regional elements to add the exotic flavor eliciting from marginality and subculture, at a time when subculture and marginality are being capitalized and a new form of state-led nationalist discourse engaging with regionality is taking place. However, to exemplify how this ground of representing Southwest is contested, this essay will also closely examine independent Sichuanese filmmaker Qiu Jiongjiong’s A New Old Play 椒麻堂会 (2021) to show how local directors intervene and react to mainstream discourse by avoiding representing regional culture in a simplified and symbolic way. Through mainly focusing on local language and considering the importance of authenticity to marginal culture, I will discuss how A New Old Play avoids the stereotypical and symbolic representation of regionality and embodies the subversive potential of the local language through providing local historiography alternative to the mainstream. What is Southwest In contemporary China, the “Southwest” generally refers to Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Chongqing.6 However, the Southwest as a geo-political term has been highly fluid and loose throughout history, changing with the territory, economic policies, and internal political order of China. For example, in Song Dynasty (960-1279), sometimes Guangxi and western Hunan (also 6 Chongqing was separated from Sichuan and made a municipal level city in 1997. But Sichuan and Chongqing were considered culturally and linguistically coherent. In the past, Sichuan and Chongqing are called Bashu 巴蜀, but after Chongqing’s separation from Sichuan, the Sichuan Basin has been called Chuanyu 川渝. 6 known as xiangxi 湘西) were incorporated into the Southwest.7 In the Republican Era (1911 - 1949), there was a term called xinan liu sheng (Southwestern six provinces) that refers to Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, and Hubei.8 If we define Southwest from a linguistic perspective, then a vast region in Southern China, including Han-populated Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, and parts of Hubei, Hunan, and Guangxi where people speak the dialect called Southwestern Mandarin could be considered the Southwest. Furthermore, even in its most general and widely acknowledged sense, the Southwest, namely Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Chongqing, is internally distinctive in culture and ethnicity. To be more specific, both Yunan and Guizhou are well-known for their high percentage of ethnic minority populations such as Dai, Bai, and Miao. Although Sichuan is dominantly Han-populated, its western part is composed of three ethnic minority autonomous prefectures established after the founding of People’s Republic China: Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture（also known as Aba 阿坝）, Ganze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture（also known as Ganzi 甘孜）, and Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture (also known as Muli), that were all historically Tibetan and Yi regions.9 For a long time, the Southwest has often been associated with primitivity, nature, and exotic culture by Han Chinese under internal Orientalism. However, it is actually hard to conclude solid common characteristics of the Southwest, a culturally, linguistically, and ethnically diverse region. 7 Chunlai Wen 温春来, “Zhuti hezai: Xinan jindai quyushi yanjiu de wenti yu lujing” 主体何在：西南近代区域史研究的问题与路径 [Where is the Subjectivity: The Difficulties and Methods in the Modern Area Studies on the Southwest ], Lishi Renleixue Yanjiu Zhongxin 历史人类学研究中心 https://ha.sysu.edu.cn/article/1501（Accessed on 17th June 2024） 8 Chunlai Wen 温春来, “Zhuti hezai: Xinan jindai quyushi yanjiu de wenti yu lujing”. 9 Ganzi was traditionally part of the historical region of the Tibetan cultural and historical region of Kham, and most of the prefecture of Aba was traditionally part of the Tibetan cultural and historical region of Amdo. The contemporary Sichuan province is a combination of Sichuan province and Xikang province in the Republican era. 7 Although traditionally Han-populated Sichuan is considerably different from Yunnan and Guizhou since it was incorporated into the Chinese empire by the Qin dynasty (221 BC-206 BC) when China was unified for the first time10, and it has played significant economic and political roles in Chinese history, its geographical feature of being a basin surrounded by mountains has historically made it easily ruled by independent regimes and regional forces from time to time.11 This is exemplified through periods such as Former Shu (907-925), Later Shu (934-965), Da Xia (1363-1371) when Sichuan was under the control of independent regimes.12 In the Republican Era, Sichuan was also once ruled by regional warlords for a long time.13 Therefore, although the image of Sichuan is often considered less exotic compared to Yunnan and Guizhou, it has been still at the periphery considering geography, historiography and political power. Therefore, no matter how provinces in the Southwest are different in terms of culture and ethnicity, all these regions seem always to be distant from the central state authority and one possessing a certain degree of independence and autonomy.14 At the periphery of mainstream Chinese historiography and political authority, the Southwest has been an Other to the center or China proper for a long time. In pre-modern times, the central regime usually showed distrust and suspicion to the Southwest since there had been several uprisings and rebellions. In modern times, this center-periphery relationship could be found in modern Han elites’ projections of “internal orientalism” onto the Southwestern ethnic minorities who were fetishized and sexualized in Han Chinese cultural productions.15 Later, at 10 Ulrich Theobald, “Southwest China: Local Conditions and Economic Trajectories” in Southwest China in a Regional and Global Perspective (c. 1600-1911): Metals, Transport, Trade and Society. (Leiden, Boston: BRILL, 2018). 10 11 Ulrich Theobald, “Southwest China: Local Conditions and Economic Trajectories” .10 12 Ulrich Theobald, “Southwest China: Local Conditions and Economic Trajectories” .10 13 Ulrich Theobald, “Southwest China: Local Conditions and Economic Trajectories” .11 14 Ulrich Theobald, “Southwest China: Local Conditions and Economic Trajectories”. 11 15 Louisa Schein. Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). 8 the turn of the century when China entered the era of economic reform under the open-door policy, Southwest China was not part of the eastern coastal regions where governmental policy brought burgeoning economic development and fast-speeding urbanization16, thus Southwest China has been considered economically backward and lacks development for a long time. The Southwest was also a region that has undergone a great campaign called Xibu Da Kaifa (Great Western Development) since 2000.17 This campaign was made to shorten the economic gaps between developed eastern regions and coastal cities and underdeveloped vast western China. According to Sines, the Great Western Development literature helped to generate a discourse around the inferiority of the peripheral, namely the minority in Western China is standardly characterized as backward, materialistically and culturally poor.18 It also amounts to a critique of the social decline in Eastern China where traditional Chinese values are deemed to decline and disappear. In such context, the Southwest was also seen as an Other to more modernized, urbanized, economically developed, and culturally advanced parts of China for a long time. As discussed above, the Southwest has long been an Other to the rest of China on both levels of culture and standards of Chinese modernity. Thus, although the term Southwest as a cultural designation referring to Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Chongqing is problematic and inaccurate in terms of its inherent heterogeneity, it is effective in the context of cultural imagination and long-term othering. The Southwest that this thesis focuses on is neither a fixed geographical concept nor an economic and political designation, but a cultural imaginary and a 16 Jianchu Xu, Ma Erzi T, Duojie Tashi, Yongshou Fu, Zhi Lu, and David Melick. “Integrating Sacred Knowledge for Conservation: Cultures and Landscapes in Southwest China.” Ecology and Society 10, no. 2 (2005) :4. 17 Abigail Sines, “Civilizing the Middle Kingdom’s Wild West.” Central Asian Survey 21, no.1 (2002): 7 https://doi.org/10.1080/02634930220127919 : 5. Great Western Development covers following provinces, autonomous regions and one municipality: Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Guangxi, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Chongqing. 18 Sines, “Civilizing the Middle Kingdom’s Wild West,” 7 9 social construct in which the past and the present discourse of modernity, periphery, marginality, regional culture, and nostalgia intersect and interact. What is Southwestern Mandarin According to The Language Atlas of China 中国语言地图集 (1987), there are ten main Sinitic language groups, which is also known as hanyu 汉语 (language used by ethnically Han people), including Mandarin, Jin, Wu, Hui, Gan, Xiang, Min, Hakka, Cantonese, and Ping.19 Southwestern Mandarin is one of the sub-varieties of the Mandarin system, it is used widely by Han Chinese in Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, parts of Hubei, Hunan, and Guangxi.20 Within the dialect system of Southwestern Mandarin, there are various subdivisions such as chengyu 成渝, guanchi 灌赤, guiliu 桂柳, ebei 鄂北, and so on. Compared to other Sinitic languages such as Wu and Cantonese which are almost mutually unintelligible, Southwestern Mandarin is easier to understand for Putonghua speakers since the former and the latter belong to the same linguistic group Mandarin. However, compared to other Mandarin varieties such as central-plain Mandarin and Northeastern Mandarin which were more commonly represented in media, Southwestern Mandarin is harder for standard Mandarin speakers to understand since there are a lot of differences in tones, pronunciations, and vocabularies. In this sense, Southwestern Mandarin can create a sense of unfamiliarity and alienation for the majority of Chinese audiences who are Putonghua users. But compared to Wu and Cantonese which are almost unintelligible to Putonghua speakers, Southwestern Mandarin is easier to comprehend and imitate for both audiences and actors. Therefore, Southwestern Mandarin could be considered an 19 Stephen Adolphe Wurm, Rong Li, Theo Baumann, and Mei W Lee, “Language Atlas of China,”Journal of Chinese Linguistics 17. no.1 (1989). 20 Ping Chen, Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3. 10 in-between language, namely being obviously an Other but not too different for the audiences, in terms of its similarities and differences to Putonghua. This is also one of the reasons why Southwestern Mandarin is favored by the recent film market. Unlike central-plain Mandarin in the films of fifth-generation directors in the 1990s21 and Northeastern Mandarin in xiaopin 小品 at the Spring Festival Gala in the early 2000s22, which already had a considerable representation in media, Southwest Mandarin appeared much later in national media within the last decade and became popular in recent years. The overrepresentation of the former two dialects caused various stereotypes and images that could be associated with their speakers. For example, people will think of the impoverished Loess Plateau when they hear central-plain Mandarin, and Northeastern Mandarin is reminiscent of clownery and images of peasants. 23 However, due to its underrepresentation, Southwestern Mandarin was not associated with specific images and personas. This is also one of the reasons why compared to other dialects within the Mandarin system, Southwestern Mandarin receives more attention in recent cinema. But with an increase in the popularity of Sichuanese rappers24, Southwestern Mandarin has started to be labeled as earthy, vulgar, authentic, unrestrained, and reminiscent of Jianghu25 by many people. Popularity of Sichuanese: Rap and Local Cultural Production 21 Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (1984), Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (1988) and The Story of Qiuju (1992). 22 Xiaopin refers to sketch comedy that originated in Northeastern China, it is a form of comedy that is especially favored on the Spring Festival Gala Stage. 23 Zhao Benshan’s xiaopin: zuotian, jintian he mingtian (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 1992)), Bu Cha Qian (2009) Selling a Wheelchair (2002), Selling Crutches (2004) 24 Jin Liu, “Alternative Voice and Local Youth Identity in Chinese Local-Language Rap Music.” Positions: East Asia cultures critique 22, no. 1 (2014): 263–292. 25 The Chinese word ---Jianghu, literally means rivers and lakes, metaphorically it refers to a social realm that exists outside of mainstream establishment. 11 This section introduces the social and cultural background of Sichuanese as it rises to become an important element in recent popular cultural production. Sichuanese, one variety of Southwestern Mandarin has recently seen a rise among fashionable young urbanites mainly due to Sichuanese Rap music. With their popular release such as Made in China (2017), Black Cab (2017), and Wechat (2017), the Chengdu-based Rap group Higher Brothers 海尔兄弟 became the “first China-born hip-hop group to gain global fame”. 26 They later signed with 88 Rising, a New York-based music company, and started various collaborations with foreign artists, including the release Lazy Susan (feat, Rich Brian, Savage 21) that was incorporated in the soundtrack of the Marvel hit Shang-chi (2021). In her study of the role of the local language in constructing local identity and geo-localizing hip-hop in Chinese rap music, Jin Liu traces the Hip-hop group Higher Brother’s origin in Chengdu. Liu argues that dialect rap delivers a strong sense of local identity, “which is hardly reducible to a unified and homogenous national identity transmitted in Putonghua (standard Mandarin).”27 For example, Higher Brothers makes extensive use of Sichuanese distinctive vocabularies, to intensify the aggressiveness and emphasize the brotherhood. 28 Also, according to Masiwei, he thinks using Sichuanese to rap can make their music flow smoother and more playful, which cannot be achieved through using standard Mandarin. This is due to the characteristics of Sichuanese with more repetitive tones and pronunciations due to the absence of retroflex consonants like [zh] [ch] [sh] sounds that exist 26 Jin Liu, “Language, Identity and Unintelligibility: A Case Study of the Rap Group Higher Brothers.” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 7, no. 1 (2021): 43 27 Liu, “Language, Identity and Unintelligibility: A Case Study of the Rap Group Higher Brothers,” 46. 28 A lot of Sichuanese slangs were actually transformed from jargon of the Sichuanese local secret society paoge 袍哥 formed during the Late Qing Dynasty. Words such as buluojiao 不落教（not following the rules），gelaoguan 哥老倌 (big bro)， caosehui 操社会(involving the gangster activities)，saopi 臊皮 (losing face)，zaqi 扎起 (support each other) and etc. 12 in standard mandarin and absence of words’ initial consonants like [n]. 29 With the popularity of Sichuanese rap music, a trend of using dialect as an element in Chinese rap music has emerged. Followed by the growing fame of Chengdu rap house (CDC) 成都说唱会馆 where Higher Brothers was originally founded, a variety of local rap houses in different cities such as Changsha (CSC) and Dongbei (DBC) have been established. The dialect and regional culture increasingly help to affirm a different “collective local identity” for urban youth by mobilizing the generic traditions of hip-hop to represent local neighborhoods. 30 However, this “collective local identity” that Liu deemed “hardly reducible to a unified and homogenous national identity” grew to be mobilized for creating Chineseness and sustaining a nationalist ideology recently. In TV shows such as The Rap of China (2017- 2024), 31 many participants have claimed that the Chineseness of Chinese rap largely comes from the use of dialects and local culture. Also, some rap groups collaborate with the state media, writing songs and making videos on the prosperity of the metropolis and the satisfying life of local citizens by making references to a lot of local cultural marks. For example, a rap group from Chengdu called CD Rev collaborated with the Communist Youth League and released a music video called Come to Chengdu, Tour Around Chengdu. 32 The major message conveyed through their music and video is to contribute to the modernity, prosperity, and leisure of local people to the efforts of the government and the state by constructing a “developmentalist discourse on China’s grand social transformation.”33 29 Fengtong Zhang, “The Initials of Chengdu Speech as Compared with Standard Chinese.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 15, no. 2 (1989): 62. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002510030000298X. 30 Jin Liu, “Language, Identity and Unintelligibility: A Case Study of the Rap Group Higher Brothers,” 46. 31 The show rapidly gained popularity, achieving 100 million views within four hours of its premiere. Over a month, it reached 1.3 billion views. It is recognized for bringing hip hop into the mainstream in China, with several contestants achieving fame and obtaining record deals. 32 Sheng Zou, "When Nationalism Meets Hip-hop: Aestheticized Politics of Ideotainment in China." Communication and critical/cultural studies 16, no. 3 (2019): 188. 33 Sheng Zou, "When Nationalism Meets Hip-hop: Aestheticized Politics of Ideotainment in China,"188. 13 Apart from Higher Brothers who are labeled as pioneers of the Chinese Trap genre, later popular rappers such as GAI, Wang Yitai, ICE, and VaVa who gained domestic fame through the hit show The Rap of China are all from Sichuan. A lot of Sichuanese Rap music depicts themes of local daily life, unrestrained life attitudes against the orthodox, criminal underworld, and utilizing a lot of local expletives that are aggressive but could add some furious flavor to the rap music. Especially GAI, a small-town-born Sichuanese rapper based in Chongqing, uses considerable regional expletives and regional cultural marks to narrate hardship, restraints, and frustration encountered by underprivileged people in small towns, which he was once part of.34 GAI’s style is described as Jianghu liu 江湖流（Jianghu style）, a localized version of American gangsta rap.35 Jianghu literally refers to rivers and lakes but metaphorically designates to a social realm that is outside of mainstream and authority. In Chinese martial arts literature, Jianghu is a place where swordsmen, outcasts, and knights-errants build fraternity and bonds against orthodox, authority, and suppression. GAI’s Jianghu liu, in many aspects, echoes with traditional concept of Jianghu, by emphasizing fraternity, masculinity, and the quest for individual independence.36 In contemporary China, these are especially attractive to urban youngsters who are seeking to build collective identities. On the other hand, GAI’s Jianghu liu originating from traditional Chinese culture substitutes the American concept of gansta that is deemed to be alien and overtly provocative to the mainstream values. With the rap music gone viral in China, the state started to regulate the release and the contents of rap music and rap music shows by using strict censorship and banning some rap releases. GAI, who was banned on television in 2018 for a few months, reappeared in media with changing his style from Jianghu 34 Zhaoxi Liu, “Rapper GAI, Style and Hegemony in China: Examining a Transformation from Jianghu Liu to Xinhua Liu”, International Communication Research Journal 54, no.2 (2019): 9. 35 Liu, “Rapper GAI, style and hegemony in China: Examining a transformation from Jianghu Liu to Xinhua Liu”, 2. 36 Liu, “Alternative Voice and Local Youth Identity in Chinese Local-Language Rap Music,” 275. 14 liu to Xinhua 新华 (new China) liu. 37 Being the former representative of the underworld, the grassroots, and the rebellious, GAI’s abrupt embrace of patriotism and state discourse with his new release “The Great Wall” collaborating with the Chinese national sportswear band Li-Ning reflects how the state regulation transformed Chinese rap.38 Although GAI occasionally still raps in Sichuanese, the original voice from the underworld was already muted and Sichuanese serves as an emotional intensifier and aesthetic décor rather than a carrier of local experiences. The transformation of GAI exemplifies how localization can be mobilized for nationalism and Patriotism. The recent increase in the use of Sichuanese, or other Southwestern Mandarin varieties, could be seen as a result of the spread of Sichuanese rap producing a consumption of dialects as a fashionable identity designator and symbol of anti-mainstream values among young urbanites. However, the popularity of Sichuanese rap cannot be understood without knowing the fact that Sichuanese and other Southwestern Mandarin varieties in the Southwest are relatively betterpreserved and more commonly used by locals in daily life compared to other dialects. The wellpreserved condition of Sichuanese and earlier rich reginal cultural productions provide a solid base for the rise of Sichuanese rap music since local artists grew up using this language in daily life and under local media exposure. In contemporary China, the state has been promoting standard Mandarin as the official language in education, formal occasions, and mass media, and the local languages “have been suppressed, marginalized and characterized as speech of the uneducated, vulgar slang, unofficial 37. Liu, “Rapper GAI, style and hegemony in China: Examining a transformation from Jianghu Liu to Xinhua Liu”, 8. 38 Liu, “Rapper GAI, style and hegemony in China: Examining a transformation from Jianghu Liu to Xinhua Liu”, 9. 15 subcultural lingo and so on.”39 However, Sichuan and Chongqing, in the Southwest, have been leading in dialect media productions since the 1990s in China. Between 2000 and 2005 alone, there were over 40 television series and dramas were produced in Sichuan. In Chongqing, dialect TV series such as Sha'r shizhang/Ha'r sizang (General Asinine, 1994) and Shancheng bangbang jun/Sangcen bangbang jun (Shoulder stick brigade of the mountain metropolis, 1995-1996) acquired major success in Chuanyu region. 40 Between 1982 and 2000, the Sichuanese dubbing of the American cartoon classic Tom and Jerry produced a nationwide trend of dubbing foreign TV dramas, Cartoons, and films into more than twenty dialects. 41 According to Liu, regional cultural productions in Chuanyu region show a “subversion to the mandated dominance of the Putonghua in media” by emphasizing the role of the local as the center of their own cultural productions.42 It can be argued that the previous ample local media and cultural productions in Chuanyu region caused significant influences to local linguistic and cultural identity. As mentioned, the Southwest, especially Sichuan and Chongqing have already possessed a history of vibrant dialect cultural productions. Different from recent Southwestern Mandarin films which are mostly produced by non-locals, these earlier dialect works are produced by locals and rooted in regional stories. For example, both General Asinine and the Shoulder Stick Brigade represent “socializing unleashed forces that have been suppressed during the Maoist era”. 43 General Asinine features an officer serving a Sichuanese warlord during the Republican era. At the same time, Shoulder Stick Brigade narrates the stories of mass peasant laborers, who 39Jin Liu, “An Overview of Television Series Productions in the 2000s” in Signifying the Local: Media Productions Rendered in Local Languages in Mainland China in the New Millennium, (Leiden: Brill, 2013): 75. 40 Liu, “An Overview of Television Series Productions in the 2000s”, 75. 41 Liu, “An Overview of Television Series Productions in the 2000s,”76. 42 Liu, “An Overview of Television Series Productions in the 2000s”, 77. 43 Liu, “An Overview of Television Series Productions in the 2000s,” 77 16 were paid to carry stuff in the hilly city of Chongqing during the nineties using social realism.44 Dialect media productions in the earlier period were highly regional and localized in perspective, theme, and background. The Representations of Local Languages in Chinese Media The common association of the Northeastern accent and Middle plain accent with “rural flavor” reveals the hierarchy existing within people’s perceptions of Chinese language varieties. In linguistic terms, all language varieties are essentially equal, but certain stereotypes and images that are associated with certain dialects reveal how Mandarin is set as normative not only in the linguistic sense but also in class, wealth, education, and intelligence. Liu Yan’s study on the image of Northeastern China in Chinese media sharply captures how Zhao Benshan’s Xiaopin constructs a pre-modern Other, who is excluded from the present and fixed under the gaze of ‘modernization’.45 Zhao Benshan’s marginalized, rural, unsophisticated peasant character with exaggerated Northeastern accents became a symbol of those who are behind the force of modernization, serving for Chinese urbanites to assert their subjectivities in front of the television.46 Similarly, dialects in Chinese cinema in the new millennium tended to function in a similar way. In these films which are predominantly comedies such as Cell Phone (2003), A World 44 Edward M. Gunn, “Guilty Pleasures on the Mainland Stage and in Broadcast Media” in Rendering the regional: local language in contemporary Chinese media. (Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005): 148. Note: dubbed bangbang for the short shoulder poles they carried with them at all times, in readiness for any job they might be hired for on the streets 45 Liu Yan 刘岩, “Huaxia Bianyuan Xushu yu Xinshiqi Wenhua”华夏边缘叙述与新时期文化 [The narrative of the periphery and New culture in China]. Beijing: Zhishi chanquan chubanshe, 2011, 258 46 Liu, Huaxia Bianyuan Xushu yu Xinshiqi Wenhua, 258 17 Without Thieves (2004), and Crazy Stone (2006), dialects were used to produce comic effects and served as an antithesis to Mandarin, a language representing modernity and normativity after the economic reformation. In contrast, dialects represent the backwardness in cultural and economic development, being linked with the underdeveloped regions and the “uneducated” marginal underclass. A dichotomy was formed through the contrasting relationship between dialects and Mandarin established in Chinese cinema in the new millennium: modernity vs backwardness, urban vs rural, educated and civilized middle-class vs marginalized underclass. This image of dialects and the dichotomy has been continuously recreated and circulated in mass media and cultural productions. One of the most prominent examples of this discourse can be found in the New Year Celebration Comedy Lost on Journey (2010), in which this dichotomy is represented through a Mandarin-speaking snobbish company executive and a clumsy yet kind-hearted migrant worker with a strong Henan accent. However, these films in the new millennium did mount a social critique of the modernization, consumerism, and loss of ethics and traditional morality of an increasingly materialistic Chinese society through taking a strong moral stance.47 By contrast, Southwestern Mandarin in recent Chinese cinema is no longer limited to creating comic effects. Instead of comedy, most of these films are genre hybrids of film noir, suspense film, crime film, gangster film, and youth film. In addition, compared to millennium comedies in which dialect is only assigned to marginal characters, Southwestern Mandarin has become the dominant language used by protagonists in recent cinema. Nevertheless, even if 47 Sheldon Lu, “Dialect and Modernity in 21st Century Sinophone Cinema”. Jump Cut 49, 2007. 18 these films are predominantly in Southwestern Mandarin, I argue that these films cannot be considered dialect films, which center on local experiences, regionality, and locality. It would be helpful to make a comparison between recent Southwestern Mandarin films and Jia Zhangke’s early-year independent films that are common in the pervasive use of local languages, focus on marginal figures, and are set in peripheral county-level cities. Jia Zhangke is one of the most representative and influential figures of Chinese independent cinema. As opposed to the understanding of independent cinema in the West which refers to films produced outside of big studios and companies, independent cinema in China refers to films that are marked by production outside of ideological censorship and the state studio system.48 The 1990s Chinese independent film created an unprecedented cultural scene and generated new discourse around marginal figures and county-level cities deserted by unprecedented urbanization force and societal development during the era of economic reform. It has been commonly said that “Jia Zhangke discovered xiancheng (county-level city)” since the Fifth Generation was preoccupied with villages and earlier independent filmmakers tended to focus more on big cities.49 The county is an epitome of China under thriving economic development and urbanization as an intersection of the urban and the rural, caught in radical demolition and construction; loosening Maoist ideology and a new way of life and consumption. The landlocked small town Fenyang in 48 Jin Liu. “The Rhetoric of Local Languages as the Marginal: Chinese Underground and Independent Films by Jia Zhangke and Others.” Modern Chinese literature and culture 18, no. 2 (2006): 163 49 Shuqin Cui, "Working from the Margins: Urban Cinema and Independent Directors in Contemporary China." Post Script 20, no. 2/3 (2001): 79 19 Jia Zhangke’s films is not only a hometown of himself but also “an ontological hometown of China”.50 The dialect world in Jia Zhangke’s Hometown trilogy is a space that is marginal but at the same time unassimilated, being left behind by the optimistic economic vision and neglected by the mainstream discourse of the officialdom. Compared to Jia’s dialect films, it can be argued that recent Southwestern Mandarin films feature less on local experiences but more on their imagination of them. According to both young directors of The Old Town Girls and Gaey Wa’r, Shen Yu and Na Jiazuo, they originally mapped out their stories in their hometowns, Shanghai and Beijing, or adjacent areas.51 However, it is interesting that both directors decided to set the scene in Sichuan and Chongqing after the location scouts. They emphasized how the landscape of Panzhihua (an industrial city in southern Sichuan and adjacent to Yunnan) and Chongqing perfectly fit their imagination for their stories. According to Na Jiazuo, the film was originally titled Kuangtu (scoundrels) and was mainly inspired by his elder male family members. But after deciding to shoot in Chongqing, more regional elements were added to the story, including changing the film title to the more regionally distinguishable Gaey War 街娃儿, a Sichuanese slang referring to little punks wandering aimlessly on the streets. Similarly, Shen Yu’s The Old Town Girls was based on a true kidnapping incident in Nanjing in 2011, but Shen was enchanted by the industrial ruins and gloomy mountains of Panzhihua, a depleted city that once held big 50 Michael Berry, “Prelude: Trying to Get Back Home” in Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures: Jia Zhangke’s “Hometown Trilogy. (London: British Film Institute, 2009): 20. 51 Na Jiazuo, "Episode 057: I wrote the screenplay for escaping away from reality.”, Xiao Yu Zhou podcast, October 3, 2023. https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/episode/648ba64743921c58db1044fd 20 expectations of becoming China’s steel capital. From the two director’s rationale for their location choice, we could see how small towns in Chongqing and Sichuan were not only viewed as spatially distant but also imagined as temporally distant, being dislocated and incongruent with other Chinese contemporary cities. As the standardized Mandarin media functions to make Mandarin a necessity “to enter modernity” and “shifted the gap between languages to one that less spatial and more temporal”52, the Southwestern Mandarin signals a bygone era that is marked by a high crime rate and social unrest. 52 Edward, M. Gunn, “Inadequacies Explored: Fiction and Film in Mainland China” in Rendering the Regional: Local Language in Contemporary Chinese Media, (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press): 158 21 Chapter 2: Xiancheng Aesthetics: A Nostalgic Urban Gaze Just as standardized Mandarin in media represents the present, the footage and images of urban metropolises which often dominate the Chinese official media also tend to represent the present. In state media, geographical landmarks and scenery are frequently used to arouse imaginations of the current prosperity and modernity of Chinese cities.53 The urban scenery of big cities—marked by busy commercial areas, crowded streets, high-rise skyscrapers, and hightech zones—are turned into symbols of the success of Chinese economic development and also tropes of propaganda. By contrast, the xiancheng signifies the past. Unlike Jia Zhangke’s xiancheng, which embodies liminality and contradictions in the reform era, xiancheng in recent Southwestern Mandarin films refers to a finished stage of Chinese history, serving as a projection of contemporary anxiety and nostalgia and a temporary escape from the present that is marked by consumerism, global capitalism, increasingly indistinguishable urban landscape and space, dissolution of traditional community, and interpersonal bonds. Xiancheng, namely a county-level city, is “a specific type of China’s urban imaginaries” since it is marked with liminality and the deepest ambivalence in Chinese urban imageries in the context of globalization.54 Administratively, “it is above a township (zhen) and a village (xiang) 53 Sheng Zou, "When Nationalism Meets Hip-hop: Aestheticized Politics of Ideotainment in China." Communication and critical/cultural studies 16, no. 3 (2019): 189 54 Yingjin Zhang, "Jia Zhangke’s Cinematic Vision of Urban Dystopia in Contemporary China." In The Routledge companion to urban imaginaries ( London: Routledge, 2018): 334. 22 but below a district (diqu)-level city (shi) and a province (sheng).”55 Xudong Zhang amplifies the contradiction of xiancheng by providing such description: “With no clear-cut boundaries or sharp distinctions between rural and urban, between industrial and agricultural, between high and low cultures, xiancheng becomes a meeting place for all kinds of forces and currents, whether contemporary or anachronistic”. 56 To many extents, xiancheng can be seen as an epitome of China during the economic reform era in terms of values, ways of life, ideology, and urban landscapes that are mobile, fluid, and ever-changing. Xiancheng aesthetics as a hotly debated topic on Chinese social media emerged around 2020.57 It refers to an aesthetic that romanticizes the 1980s – 1990s county-level/third-tier cities in China, which are usually characterized as unsophisticated, conflicted, down-to-earth, nostalgic, and out of fashion. Xiancheng aesthetics, in many ways, can be seen as a continuation of earlier consumption of a grassroots subculture called Tuwei 土味. The world Tuwei literally means the flavor of the soil, metaphorically indicating an aesthetic that is characterized by unsophisticated, bizarre, excessive, low culture, and low class.58 The Tuewei culture originates from video and media platforms Kuaishou 快手, where small-town youth create and upload 55 Yingjin Zhang, "Jia Zhangke’s Cinematic Vision of Urban Dystopia in Contemporary China," 334. 56 Xudong Zhang. “Poetics of Vanishing: The Cinema of Jia Zhangke”, New Left Review 63, (2010): 77 57 See: “从抖音到小红书，“县城美学”的两种面孔。”Cong douyin dao xiaohongshu, xiancheng meixue de liangzhong miankong [From Tiktok to Little Red Book: the two faces of the Xiancheng Aesthetics] https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_27451126 澎湃新闻 /// “再谈五条人：县城没有美学，只有生活。” Zaitan wutiaoren: xiancheng meiyou meixue, zhiyou shenghuo, [Interview on Wutiaoren: there is no aesthetics in xiancheng but only life] ]https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_18353961 58 Qingzhu Sun, "Tuwei: a stigma caused by class habitus." (master’s thesis, Lund University, 2020), 7. Sun, Qingzhu, “"Tuwei: a stigma caused by class habitus." master’s thesis., Lund University, 2020. 23 small-budget videos that are mostly embarrassing dances and performances composed of nonsensical exaggerated movements. Netizens share and mock the ugliness, grotesqueness, and awkwardness of these videos featuring small-town people who try to express themselves or catch up with the trends. Tuwei culture, is a form of self-expression by grassroots and underprivileged people from third-tier cities and county-level small towns, reflecting their agency and consciousness of subjectivity that resists the hegemony of mainstream aesthetics that are defined and dominated by urban cultural elites.59 However, Tuwei soon started to be consumed by urban elites due to their grotesqueness, eccentricity, and bizarreness while being discriminated against by the same group of people. Through watching Tuwei short videos and constant mockery, the urban youth could use fragmented time to temporarily escape from social pressure and real-life hierarchy.60 This reflects how cultural capitals define the standard of aesthetics and ways of life. But, different from Tuwei, the current xiancheng aesthetics is no longer discriminated against and mocked but recognized and considered cool by urbanites and elites. In xiancheng aesthetics, the parts that are grotesque and excessive were mostly abandoned, but parts that are unrefined, unsophisticated, and authentic were accepted and coded into a new form of aesthetics approved by urban cultural elites: a romanticized Chinese county-level cities during the 1980s-1990s saturated with a nostalgic filter. The popularity of xiancheng aesthetics can be seen as a way of 59 Qingzhu Sun, "Tuwei: a stigma caused by class habitus." 29. 60 Linpeng Chen, "Disorder, identity, and fusion—a cultural interpretation of tuwei videos." In The 6th International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education (ICADCE 2020), Atlantis Press, 224 24 the commodification of grassroots subculture that is not explicitly subversive but of powerful subjectivity and agency of the marginal and the underprivileged. Barbara B. Stern coined the term “historical nostalgia” to describe young people’s nostalgic behavior that tends to romanticize an era that they have not experienced and that, namely, predated their birth.61 Normally, historical nostalgia involves a tendency to romanticize a certain historical period that is attractive to young people. But nostalgia does not always involve perceiving the past as an idealized utopia. The nostalgia contained in xiancheng aesthetic does not necessarily come from the desire to go back in time but comes from a desire for a short-term escape from the present, a highly fragmented, unstable modern world. As Xudong Zhang argues, “China’s post-modernism since 1992 is closely related to ‘the surplus of commodities and capital’ as well as a bubble economy of images, signs, and discourses, which reinforces, the impression that daily life in China today is an integral part of timeless now of global capitalism’.”62 As both “socialist utopianism” and capitalist forms of modernity are revealed as delusional, the attempts to reclaim and appropriate previous memories and culture shows how the post-socialist individual require a new identity and social ideal.63 Xiancheng aesthetics also involves considerable appropriation and imitation of past media productions, particularly Jia Zhangke and earlier independent Chinese cinema. The trademark visual markers such as 61 Babara. B. Stern, “Nostalgia in Advertising Text: Romancing the Past Abstract”, Advances in Consumer Research 19, (2002): 388. 62 Xudong Zhang, “Epilogue: Postmodernism and Post-socialist Society – Historicizing the Present” in Postmodernism & China. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000): 430 63 Zhang, “Epilogue: Postmodernism and Post-socialist Society – Historicizing the Present,” 430 25 karaoke, railways, industrial ruins, deserted buildings, police stations, local dance clubs, and wandering youngsters in the films of Jia Zhangke have almost become formalized in mainstream Chinese cinema within the last decade. Twenty years after Jia Zhangke’s Hometown trilogy, apart from economic progress and mass internal migration from rural areas to cities, one of the biggest changes in China is the fast-paced disappearance of xiancheng while metropolises and cities became increasingly similar in terms of the urban landscape.64 In this context, an increasing number of urban youths, who grew up in urban centers but whose family stories or childhood memories are still more or less linked with disappearing rural areas and counties started to become nostalgic for the visually distinguishable and culturally distant county-level small towns. 65 Yingjin Zhang recognizes that “urban dystopia in postmodern, post-socialist China has emerged in reaction to two kinds of utopianism that swept over China in quick succession – socialism of the 1950s–1970s and consumerism from the 1990s to the present. The consumerist utopia fails its believers with growing economic gap, regional inequality, environmental issues, and emotional distress as China integrates into globalization.”66 64 Carolyn Cartier, “Uneven Development and the Time/ Space Economy” in Unequal China: The Political Economy and Cultural Politics of Inequality, (London: Routledge, 2013): 77- 90 65Ai Qing 艾青. Lun jinnianlai guochan xuanyilei wangluoju de huaijiushengchan jiqi shenmeixiangdu 论近年来国产悬疑类网络剧的怀旧生成及其审美向度. [Study on the production of nostalgia and aesthetic in recent suspense TV drama] xiandai Chuanbo, Press of Communication University of China 10, (2023): 103. doi:10.19997/j.cnki.xdcb.2023.10.008. 66 Zhang, "Jia Zhangke’s cinematic vision of urban dystopia in contemporary China," 333. 26 The xiancheng aesthetic renders the county-level cities both a utopia and dystopia in The Old Town Girls and Gaey Wa’r, which deal with themes of drift, escape, and confinement. In The Old Town Girls67, the third-tier city Panzhihua is depicted as a dystopian homeland for its characters. The film tells the story of Shui Qing, a teenage girl in her final years of high school. Shui Qing lives with her father and stepmother in a small industrial town. Shui Qing’s biological mother left shortly after her birth, and her stepmother has not accepted her as part of the family. After seventeen years being apart, the unexpected return of Shui Qing’s biological mother (Qu Ting) from Shenzhen ignites Shui Qing’s desire to reconnect with her mother, who left her because of her wish for a better life in the big city. As the mother and the daughter grow closer, Shui Qing discovers that her mother is being threatened by a former acquaintance and creditor from past. In an attempt to pay off the money, Shui Qing decided to kidnap her friend in school for ransom money. For Shui Qing’s mother Qu Ting, who left the family and abandoned Shui Qing right after her birth, the homeland is rendered as an obstacle to her cosmopolitan dream: leaving the hometown to become an actress in Shenzhen. The xiancheng in the film was shown as an anachronistic place disconnected from the vibrant, dynamic, and ever-changing hotbed of Shenzhen. It is depicted as a place of stagnation and confinement. Later in the film, the state of mind of young people is revealed through a student’s diary: “Born by hormones and then 27 disappeared while growing, created for economic development and abandoned in the consumption of resources. This is a city like acne. Abundant daylight puts an overexposure filter on the city, everything looks bright, but they’re actually covered with ulcers.” The city is depicted as a hopeless place deprived of both material resources and individual optimism. The small town is also depicted as a dystopia, especially for women, where both girls and grown-up females are abused by patriarchal violence initiated by highly pathologized male characters. The three girls in the film all suffer from domestic crises and are trapped in different forms of violence. Ma Yueyue suffers from her father’s domestic abuse, threatened by daily verbal threats and self-harm. Jin Xi, depicted as a stereotypical rebellious and delinquent schoolgirl, is later revealed to have a tragic and unsettling family environment. The case of Shui Qing is more complicated since she was firstly not accepted as a family member by her stepmother and biological dad, and later faced discrimination and bullying in school because of the controversial image of her mother --- tempting, seductive, and unreliable. All of the families in the film are dysfunctional and problematic, leaving children to lose their hopes for life. The return of the protagonist’s mother Qu Ting is a manifestation of the recall of Shui Qing’s past, which helps the high school girl to suspend the present and escape from the boring, meaningless contemporary temporality. The final warm-hued sequence of the road tunnel through the mountain mounts to a melodramatic moment of Shui Qing and Qu Ting’s failure to run away together, evoking a sense of nostalgia and melancholy. It contrasts with the previous images of general coldness, including endless rain, fog, mist, river dam, claustrophobic 28 alleyways, and slopes of the mountainous city, which are all symbols of confinement and stagnation. Serving to contrast the stagnation and restraints faced by Qu Ting and Shui Qing in reality, fast-forward mobility is stressed through the symbol of the tunnel and the high-speed driving process. Similar to The Old Town Girls, Gaey Wa’r68 also provides an ambivalent conclusion to the plot. But different from The Old Town Girls symbolic ending sequence of driving through the tunnel, Gaey Wa’r adopts a more supernatural way of expression by showing Dongzi riding a floating boat in the mist. Jean Ma argues that fantasy “depicts people’s pessimistic dissociation with the world, their frozen time and uncured sadness.69 The boat symbolizes social mobility, especially at the turn of the century when there was a wave of migrant workers seeking working opportunities in coastal cities. However, the supernatural ending signifies that this drift and escape could only be a fantasy, a projection of Dongzi’s detachment from the dystopian land and irremediable frustration. 68 Na Jiazuo’s debut feature set in the early 2000s tells the story of a small-town young man whose name is Dongzi. In an attempt to pay off the hospital bill of his sick father, who was belligerent and volatile, Dongzi worked as a debt collector and henchman with Xi Jun for Mr. Four. 69 Jean Ma, Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010): 15-21. 29 Chapter 3: Hybrid Genres The recent Southwestern Mandarin films are mostly hybrid genres combining various genre elements of suspense, crime, melodrama, and sci-fi. Speaking of suspense and crime genre, it is impossible to neglect Dongbei (Northeast China) suspense genre, including Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice 白日焰火 (2014), Zhang Bingjian’s North by Northeast 东北偏北 (2015), and also the more recent phenomenal TV drama Shin Shuang’s The Long Season 漫长的季节 (2023). In Dongbei suspense/crime genre, the narrative device of suspense serves to interrogate the historical trauma of xiagang chao 下岗潮 (the wave of “lay-offs”) and reconcilewith collective memories about the time when the Northeastern region was hard hit by the nationwide economic reform during the 1990s.70 As the former heavy industrial center and the heart of manufacturing of Maoist China, the Northeastern region experiences the highest rate of unemployment rate and stagnation of the economy after the wave of lay-off and economic reform.71 Liu Yan notices that since 2014 contemporary crime and suspense genres about old industrial regions are mainly produced in two regions: one in Northeastern industrial cities, and second in inland sanxian 三线 (Third front) cities in the Southwest.72 The formation of China's 70 Jean Ma, Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema. 71 Xuying Yu, “Crime as Historical Testimony: Narrative Suspense in Neo-Dongbei Literature” in Identity, Space, and Everyday life in Contemporary Northeast China, (Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, 2024): 223- 245, 244. 72 Liu Yan 刘岩, “双雪涛的小说与当代中国老工业区的悬疑叙事——以《平原上的摩西》为中心” Shuang Xuetao de xiaoshuo yu dangdai zhongguo laogongyequ de xuanyi xushi--- yi pingyuan shang de moxi wei zhongxin [The novel of Shuang 30 industrial structure was largely shaped by two major campaigns: the "First Five-Year Plan (1953- 1957)" and the "Third Front Construction (1964-1969)". During the "First Five-Year Plan," with assistance from the Soviet Union, China rapidly established numerous heavy industrial enterprises. These enterprises were primarily concentrated in the Northeastern region due to their proximity to the Soviet Union and the endowment of natural resources such as coal. During the "Third Front Construction," considering the potential military threats from both the United States and the Soviet Union, heavy industrial enterprises in the Northeastern region and coastal provinces, especially those related to national defense, were gradually relocated to inland and mountainous Southwestern regions that are hard to reach.73 Therefore, the wave of lay-offs does not only hit hard in the Northeastern region but also in the Southwestern third-front cities. According to Liang, the wave of lay-offs of state-owned enterprises significantly influenced the crime rate of the region. Northeastern provinces such as Liaoning and Heilongjiang and Southwestern provinces such as Sichuan ranked at the top in the rate of the increase of crimes. In the Southwestern region, there were over 120 million workers laid off at the end of the 1990s.74 The crime elements in Northeastern and Southwestern suspense genres to some extents are grounded representations due to the historical records of the crime rates. xuetao and contemporary old industrial districts’ suspense narrative – a case study of Why Try to Change Me Now], wenyi yanjiu 文艺研究 12 (2018): 15 73 Barry Naughton, “The Third Front: Defense Industrialization in the Chinese Interior,” The China Quarterly 115 (September 1988): 360 74 Zhenqiao Liang, Zhi Li, and Congming Ding. “Guoyou qiye xiagangchao yu fanzuilv de shizheng yanjiu” 国有企业下岗潮与犯罪率的实证研究 [An empirical study on wave of SOE laid-offs and crime rate.] Shijie jingji 世界经济 1(2018): 35. 31 Zhao Kun argues that the Northeastern literary movement is not regional but could be understood as a universal working-class melancholia that is disguised under regional expression, in post-socialist China where Maoist historical trauma and collective memories have not been properly addressed and resolved.75 Yet, compared to the Northeastern Renaissance76 which is mainly produced by local writers who seek self-expression and invite spectators to revisit the historical moment and crime as a surrogate detective through writing, recent Southwestern Mandarin films do not contain such subjectivity and agency. Considering the fact that they are nearly all produced by non-locals who chose to shoot in this region largely due to commercial considerations, the Southwestern region in recent mainstream films was still highly objectified. Although crime and suspense genres have been popular recently, under the increasingly tight control and censorship of the cultural industry by the CCP since 2018, 77 many filmmakers nowadays sidestep sensitive social issues and historical topics to ensure the approval of censorship and distribution of their films. Even the films involving crime elements and revealing social injustice were distributed in China successfully, this seeming tolerance can be put into question considering a necessary ending shot of a statement on just adjudication of fictional criminals. For example, in the ending sequence of Gaey Wa’r, a statement shows that all main 75 Kun Zhao 赵坤，”Pubianxing huaijiu yu xindongbei wenyi de fasheng” 普遍性怀旧与新东北文艺的发生[ Universal nostalgia and the emergence of new northeastern literature] dangdai zuojia pinglun 当代作家评论 1 (2023): 81 76 A Literary movement led by Shuang Xuetao, Zheng Zhi, and Ban Yu. 77 Jun Fang, “The Culture of Censorship: State Intervention and Complicit Creativity in Global Film Production,” American Sociological Review 89, no.3 (2024): 488 32 characters were sentenced to imprisonment. In The Old Town Girls, both the daughter and the mother were sentenced to jail. In addition, nearly all films that adopt social realist subjects tend to set their stories ten or twenty years ago rather than in the present. This reflects how stories of contemporary minorities and marginal figures in China are relatively shunned. The narratives of the underclass usually evaporate from any specific historical moments and also away from the present, functioning as a necessary element and marker of genre. This indicates how the narratives of the underclass are commercialized and incorporated into the mainstream. Lydia Wu’s findings on change within the contemporary Chinese film industry shed light on the recent rise of semi-independent films produced by small-to-medium-sized film production companies. According to her, after 2017’s crackdown on three major Chinese independent film festivals, Chinese independent cinema that had long been “marginalized in China’s cultural production through censorship, film law, and capital marginalization has been selectively incorporated by the state as an important resource for fostering an officially approved art cinema in China.”78 Although films that share similar traits and themes with former independent cinema were officially distributed in China, this does not mean that these films could be understood as a form of subversion to the mainstream but as tools to boost the industry. This could explain why these art films seem to be so hybrid and both possess characteristics of commercial popular films and more critical independent films. This change also pushed directly or indirectly young filmmakers to be assimilated by the mainstream through selfcensoring, thus independent films became easier to keep in line with a state-led discourse that is politically acceptable and market-profitable. For example, in Gaey Wa’r, the characters who are 78 Lydia Wu, "From Chinese independent cinema to art cinema: Convergence and divergence." Asian Cinema 33, no. 1 (2022): 5 33 all marginal and underprivileged figures can be found prototypes in earlier films but with a more dramatic and excessive twist: pathologized, extremely violent and vulgar. Dashan Kong’s 2021 sci-fi film Journey to the West became a huge success with low-budget production. The film features a group of misfits, composed of an editor of Space Exploration magazine from Beijing, his wife, a local poet with an eccentric character, and two tourists, seeking aliens and investigating a report of a bizarre supernatural incident that happened in Sichuan. The film’s original title is 宇宙探索编辑部 (The Editorial Office of Exploring the Universe), 79 which is more explicit and self-explained compared to its English title Journey to the West. Its English title originated from the Chinese classic shared the same name from the 16th-century Ming Dynasty, which tells the story of a Buddhist monk Xuan Zang and his disciples traveling to India for sacred Buddhist scripts. Although the film draws inspiration from this classic Chinese fiction, Kong changes the story by replacing India with the southwestern province of Sichuan. The film mainly features a group of people investigating a supernatural incident that happened in Sichuan. The group includes an editor of a science magazine from Beijing whose name is Tang Zhijun, his deputy Qin Cairong, an alcoholic weatherman Narisu, and a local poet Sui Yitong from Sichuan. The character of Sun Yitong, a local freelancer poet living in the periphery of xiancheng. He writes and reads his poems in Sichuanese. Although his poems are mesmerizing, most of the imaginary and symbols in his poems carry a sense of primitivity and spirituality, including animals, climate features, and supernatural cases. As the story unfolds, we 79 Synopsis: Tang earns a living by giving lectures at a psychiatric hospital while facing personal and professional challenges. Despite his family troubles and the magazine's financial struggle, Tang stays obsessed with civil science and has a firm belief in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. When he heard reports of a glowing alien sighting on a Sichuan village surface, Tang persuaded his doubtful deputy, Qin Cairong, and alcoholic weatherman, Narisu, to accompany him on a trip to Sichuan village to investigate. Later, two locals in the village join their journey: one is a poet eccentric in personality who claims to have received an extraterrestrial signal from aliens, and the other is a fan girl of Tang. 34 later find, that Tang’s indulgence is a result of his failed marriage and the most heart-breaking suicidal of his daughter, who left questions for Tang: why we should live. The journey of Tang to find aliens is a journey for him to resolve the same despair he once could not understand with his daughter and the meaning of existence. The poem, the mysterious natural landscape, and unintelligible local residents help to form the Southwestern xiancheng an exotic place for urbanites to explore, investigate, understand, and finally reach one’s own healing and empowerment. 35 Chapter 4: The Representation of Local Language McLeod emphasized that authenticity is a “socially agreed-upon construct” at the center of many subcultures and cultures that are threatened by assimilation and commodification.80 In Hook’s study on separatism inside African American communities, she emphasized that this was not necessarily a “knee-jerk essentialism”, the search for authentic yet essentialized culture was a “concrete response to the fear of erasure”.81 Both scholars stressed that authenticity cannot be viewed as pure conservatism and essentialism but should be considered by taking the minority’s fear and insecurity of commodification and assimilation into account. In regional culture, the sentiment of fear could also be identified. In his interview, the director of A New Old Play Qiu Jiongjiong stated that “my main concern lay with the desire to incorporate local elements without making a conceptualized spectacle that reduced these elements to stereotypes. For example, the mask-changing and firebreathing techniques in Sichuan opera have already mutated into symbolic tourist attractions. I wanted to tell the story in a way that reconstructs the traditional grammar of the Sichuan operatic language which would simulate and retain its flavor and melodies without sacrificing the ability to communicate through a common language, just like the works of Chaucer, Rabelais, 80 Kembrew Mcleod. “Authenticity within hip-hop and other cultures threatened with assimilation,” Journal of Communication, 49, no.4 (1999): 135. 81 Bell Hooks, “Discussion” in Black popular culture: A project by Michele Wallace. (Seattle: Bay Press, 1992): 270. 36 Boccaccio, and medieval tramp novels.”82 Qiu Jiongjiong’s words show his critique of the existing representation of Sichuan as being cliché, symbolic, and stereotypical. This critique can find its ground in recent Southwestern Mandarin films. In A Cool Fish, the mask-changing and fire-breathing techniques in Sichuan opera were awkwardly juxtaposed with the final scene of confrontation between the crime group and police. The fast editing that juxtaposing the footages of Sichuanese opera actor in traditional opera costume with the cathartic fighting shots use the Sichuanese opera to add flavor of tension and spectacle. The Sichuanese opera in the film is no different than the “symbolic tourist attractions” described by Qiu JiongJiong. Considering the fact that A Cool Fish was actually set and shot in Guizhou, the incorporation of the Sichuan opera element shows how cultural tradition is reduced to a spectacle and symbol. Beyond Sichuanese opera, other notable Sichuanese traditions or customs were largely represented in a similar way such as playing Mahjong and having spicy food. In Gaey Wa’r, the Sichuanese regional elements are mainly used to strengthen the masculinity of male characters and the wildness of the local social environment. For example, in one scene when Mr. Four is educating Dongzi about his own unrestrained life philosophy, he drinks a cup of Baijiu mixed with chili oil. The ability to tolerate alcohol is considered a symbol of manliness in the Chinese context and the habit of having spicy food is also stereotypically considered bold and rugged, Mr. Four’s masculinity and unrestrained personality are spotlighted through the use of regional 82 A New Old Play: Director Qiu Jiongjiong Interviewed by Producer Ding Ningyuan.https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/post/anew-old-play-director-qiu-jiongjiong-interviewed-by-producer-ding-ningyuan 37 elements. In addition, the Mahjong house is represented as a space for the gathering of outlaws, social outcasts, and ill-tempered jobless elders. Furthermore, Gaey Wa’r’s director Na Jiazuo shared a fun fact while shooting this film in an interview. When he arrived in Chongqing, he was surprised by the phenomenon of massive snails appearing after rain, which is typical and frequent in Chongqing due to its humid weather and mountainous geographical features. Amazed by this natural phenomenon, Na Jiazuo decided to add a shot of the snail to add more regional flavor to the film. However, he was not satisfied with the size of the snail which he thought is supposed to be much bigger. So, he later decided to transport a giant snail from France to shoot the scene of Dongzi touching the shell of the snail in the rainy mist. This interesting anecdote shows how the director attempts to spotlight the wild texture of the region and exaggerates the regional features to fulfill his own artistic pursuits and imagination. These examples prove how Sichuanese customs are alienated to symbolic use and props for the characterization of roles. Different from The Old Town Girls, Gaey Wa’r, and Journey to the West, which are recent art films produced by small-to-medium-sized film domestic production companies after China entered the art film economy era in the mid-2010s, A New Old Play is one of the few real independent films that are still outside of the studio system and state censorship with full overseas investment and production funding. The overseas funding from Hong Kong grants Qiu Jiongjiong certain freedom in addressing topics such as the Cultural Revolution, famine, and anti-mainstream historiography that are sensitive and provocative to censorship in China. 38 Qiu Jiongjiong’s A New Old Play imaginatively and boldly delineates a local history of Sichuan by focusing on the changing lives of a small Sichuan opera troop called “New-New” in Leshan with a highly experimental approach. The story is inspired by the director’s family history and mainly his own grandfather Qiu Fuxin, a famous Sichuan opera clown actor who lived through the turbulent history of the warlord era, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, and the Cultural Revolution. Shot in a completely handcrafted model setting of Leshan town made of paintings and stage props, the low-budget film only cast relatives and local friends of the director. The film de-centers the mainstream historiography and the representation of modern Chinese history that usually understates and marginalizes the local history and regional perspective. In many works, the pre-PRC modern Chinese history is mainly represented by the dichotomy of KMT and CCP, two major political forces in China. However, under the regional perspective of A New Old Play, both KMT and CCP are shown as the “outsiders” who enter and exit the historical stage in front of the local ordinary people who stand with neither political forces. Interestingly, the only positive image of the political force is given to the local warlord Pocky, who is a Sichuan opera lover and the benevolent patron of the “New-New” opera troop. The fate of Pocky and the New-New opera troop is represented through a symbiotic and intertwined relationship. In the film, the clown Qiu Fu’s wife directly shows her disdain for the soldiers by sharing her story about how she was chased and attacked by them during wartime. When she tells her story, she uses the derogatory term qiuba 丘八 to refer to those pertinent soldiers. This 39 term is used again later in the scene where she encounters the newcome communist cadre and soldiers at the inauguration ceremony of the People’s Sichuan opera troop after the Communist liberation of Sichuan. This use of the same derogatory term to refer to both the nationalist and the communist army, regardless of which side is in power, highlights the local’s allegiance to their land and their people rather than the political forces that take control. The film also tends to detour the conventional representation of the general public as conscious and positive agents involved in the patriotic, nationalist, and anti-Japan movements. This kind of representation exemplifies how the film narrative internalizes the mainstream historiography and discourse around how the Chinese collectively resist external threats by embracing a shared universal national identity. In contrast to this mainstream historiography and discourse, A New Old Play hints at the uneven response to the social and national mobilization of the masses and the more constructive side of a one and universal Chinese identity during wartime by showing how several local Sichuanese were initially nonchalant to the war. For example, in the scene where a group of youngsters are caught by some local officers, they are forced to repeat the words of the officer with a reluctant tone: “Down with the Japanese bandits. Recover the lost territories. Unite to fight. 打到倭寇，收复失地，众志成城。” Unconventionally, A New Old Play uses only the backlight and silhouettes of figures to delineate the frontline of the Second Sino-Japanese War with a highly stylized and theatrical setting and composition, the minimalist visual representation puts the background sound to the foreground. We can hear the voiceover go with collective yells “Long live the Sichuan army! 川 40 军壮哉!”. The regionality again is stressed here since it solely mentions the Sichuan army instead of making reference to the national army. Also, the film points to the ambiguous boundary between the secret society paoge 袍哥(also known as gelaohui) and the Sichuanese warlords.83 In one scene where a paoge member was scolded by the officer: “You fat slob, not fighting the Japanese, sniffing around our Commander’s tent? Whose mob are you with? Call your boss over here! 你嫩个大一坨，不去打日本人。跑到刘师长堂口来臊皮…我问你是哪个堂口的。把你老大喊过来。”Tangkou is an argot used by the paoge to refer to different halls that they belong to.84 But here the officer also uses tangkou to refer to the place where the warlord Liu (Pocky) lives. The use of the argot to refer to both the warlord and the paoge member blurs the boundary between the civil and the authoritative, hinting at their interrelation and interconnectedness especially within the context of the Sino-Japanese War when the Sichuan army was recruited by the Nationalist government to join the frontline. As a matter of fact, many Sichuanese warlords used to be members of gelaohui, such as Liu Wencai, one of the most well-known Sichuanese warlords.85 Even the Sichuan army, to a large extent, was formed by former members of paoge. 86 83 Di Wang, Violence and Order on the Chengdu Plain: The Story of a Secret Brotherhood in Rural China, 1939-1949. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2018): 1 84 Ming Xia. “Organizational Formations of Organized Crime in China: Perspectives from the State, Markets, and Networks.” The Journal of contemporary China 17, no. 54 (2008): 8 85 Xingqi Chen 陈兴齐, “Liu Xiang ji suoshuai chuanjun zai kangzhan zhongde zhuanbian yu gongxina” 刘湘及所率川军在抗战中的转变与贡献[The Transformation and Contribution of Liu Xiang and the Sichuan Army in Anti-Japanese War], hubeisheng shehui kexueyuan 湖北省社会科学院, 22 86 Chen, [The Transformation and Contribution], 22 41 In addition, in the film, the center-periphery structure conventionally shown through the mandarin-dialect binary is reversed. On one level, this is achieved by using the Sichuan dialect as the main language of the film whereas Mandarin only appears twice in the film: one in the scene where the northern refugees come to the local restaurant asking for dumplings and noodles, the other one is shown in the scene where the new communist cadre from the north is lecturing the benefits of the Great Leap Forward campaign. They are all represented as either passersby or outsiders who are detached from the land and from the local people. On the other level, Sichuan is no longer the periphery but the center, the locale of the story taking place. The way narrating history is no longer from an overarching and national perspective but rooted in the periphery where its own history has been marginalized. Unlike the use of dialects in The Old Town Girls and Gaey Wa’r which consider dialect an aesthetic element to add exotic texture to their films, the use of dialects in A New Old Play differs from the formalist utilization of dialects as décor in contemporary commercial Chinese films, but as a preserver of the past and untold historical experiences of local people; a bridge linking the past and the new generation; an heirloom passing on regional culture and historical memories. 42 Conclusion Through examining the Southwest, a cultural imaginary existing with current Chinese cinema, the thesis identifies one of the most recent cultural phenomena in contemporary China and bring attention to the intersection and interaction of urban elites’ projections of xiancheng, hybrid genres of suspense, crime and sci-fi, and representation of local language. Through comparison with earlier local cultural productions, representation of dialects, Chinese independent cinema, and Dongbei suspense crime genre, the thesis captures the rising popularity of regional elements as a result of promotion of new Chinese nationalism and commodification of subculture and marginality. Considering the current tendency of mobilizing regional culture for constructing Chinese nationalism with multilingual and multicultural characteristics through marketizing and capitalizing regional elements, the regional culture might be no escape from the pressing force of objectification and symbolization while losing its authenticity and subjectivity. It could be observed that there is an increasing number of popular cultural works featuring regional elements of different regions in China in recent years, including rapper Vinida Weng’s Mojiadai in Hokkien, the TV drama To the Wonder (2024) in Kazakh, the film Across the Furious Sea (2023) in Shandong dialect among others. In this context, I claim that Southwest can be seen as a mark of the start of this trend: using multiculturalism and multilingualism to reconfirm and consolidate Chinese nationalism. 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Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Lu, Sheldon “Dialect and Modernity in 21st Century Sinophone Cinema”. Jump Cut 49, 2007. Liu, Jin. “Language, Identity and Unintelligibility: A Case Study of the Rap Group Higher Brothers.” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 7, no. 1 (April 1, 2021): 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00038_1. Liu, Jin. “Alternative Voice and Local Youth Identity in Chinese Local-Language Rap Music.” Positions: East Asia cultures critique 22, no. 1 (2014): 263–292. Liu, Jin (2013), “An Overview of Television Series Productions in the 2000s” in Signifying the Local: Media Productions Rendered in Local Languages in Mainland China in the New Millennium,59-81, Leiden: Brill, 2013. Liu, Jin. “The Rhetoric of Local Languages as the Marginal: Chinese Underground and Independent Films by Jia Zhangke and Others.” Modern Chinese literature and culture 18, no. 2 (2006): 163–205. 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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This MA thesis focuses on the recent trend of fetishizing Southwestern Mandarin and xiancheng (the county-level city) in the Southwest in contemporary Chinese cinema. The Southwest this thesis examines is not a geopolitical concept but a social construct and cultural imaginary. It signifies an imaginary standing at the intersection of the nostalgic gaze of urban elites, commodification of subculture and marginality, and appropriation of regional culture for contemporary Chinese nationalism characterized by multiculturalism. Through tracing the local cultural production in Chuanyu (Sichuan and Chongqing) region and the increasing popularity of Sichuanese rap music, this thesis first discusses how the representation of regional culture transformed from an embodiment of local subjectivity and cultural identity to an objectified and symbolic imaginary; and how the regional culture is mobilized for Chinese nationalism emphasizing multilingualism and multiculturalism.

This thesis mainly explores the following three elements, xiancheng aesthetics, hybrid genre, and local language, that I consider the most significant in this cultural phenomenon by analyzing three Southwestern Mandarin films: The Old Town Girls (2020), Gaey Wa’r (2021), and Journey to the West (2021). The fetish of Southwestern xiancheng exemplifies how the dystopia characterized by patriarchal violence, post-industrial landscape, and social confinement from the past became a cinematic utopia for contemporary urban elites to project their current ambivalence and anxiety in contemporary China, where disillusioned sentiment is widely shared, and independent cinema encountered the pressing force of commercialization and incorporation into the mainstream. Using elements such as suspense, crime, and sci-fi, the recent Southwestern Mandarin films are mostly hybrid genre films. By comparing the function of suspense narrative structure in Northeastern suspense genre with recent Southwestern hybrid genres, I argue the former utilizes the suspense as a way of interrogating the historical trauma and collective memories of the Lay-off wave in Northeastern China during the economic reform, whereas the latter lacks an engagement with local history and regional perspectives. The detachment from the locale reveals how the Southwest remained an exotic backdrop rather than a subject. In the sci-fi genre, the Southwest is represented as a mythical and spiritual land outside of current temporality and modern bustle, serving as a site for urbanites to cure existential crises. Although the Southwest as an imaginary is appropriated by cultural elites and mobilized for nationalism, the Southwest could also be seen as a contested ground embodying the tension between regional culture and nationalism / alternative historiography and the mainstream discourse. By analyzing the independent filmmaker Qiu Jiong Jiong’s Sichuanese film A New Old Play (2021), the thesis also explores how local directors react and intervene in the mainstream discourse and the representation of the Southwest.

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Creator Zhang, Yixiao (author)

Core Title The Southwest as contested ground in the contemporary Chinese cinematic imagination: xiancheng aesthetics, genre hybrids, and local languages

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Degree Conferral Date 2024-08

Publication Date 07/12/2024

Defense Date 07/11/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Chinese cinema,dialect,modernity,Multiculturalism,nationalism,nostalgia,OAI-PMH Harvest,regional culture,Southwest,Southwestern Mandarin,xiancheng

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bernards, Brian (committee chair), Chio, Jenny (committee member), Tsang, Kin Tak Raymond (committee member)

Creator Email 13880815333@163.com,yixiaoz9@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113997N7L

Unique identifier UC113997N7L

Identifier etd-ZhangYixia-13209.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-ZhangYixia-13209

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

Rights Zhang, Yixiao

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20240712-usctheses-batch-1180 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu