Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-146
Author(s):  
Jing Meng
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This book has examined the representations of personal memories of the Cultural Revolution in films and television dramas in mainland China after 2001. It aimed to elucidate that personal memories are far from solid and spontaneous; rather, they are constantly constructed and articulated in relation to social, political, and economic contexts. Moreover, film-makers employ divergent personalized narrative modes and construct various versions of personal memories on screen, to address their particular concerns. These disparate micro-narratives across screens (or even on one screen) reveal the contesting memories of and discourses on socialism in contemporary China. In this sense, personal memories also articulate contending Chinese modernities in the postsocialist era.

The Aura of Confucius

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia K. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Modern Shanghai ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The Aura of Confucius is a ground-breaking study that reconstructs the remarkable history of Kongzhai, a shrine founded on the belief that Confucius' descendants buried the sage's robe and cap a millennium after his death and far from his home in Qufu, Shandong. Improbably located on the outskirts of modern Shanghai, Kongzhai featured architecture, visual images, and physical artifacts that created a 'Little Queli,' a surrogate for the temple, cemetery, and Kong descendants' mansion in Qufu. Centered on the Tomb of the Robe and Cap, with a Sage Hall noteworthy for displaying sculptural icons and not just inscribed tablets, Kongzhai attracted scholarly pilgrims who came to experience Confucius's beneficent aura. Although Kongzhai gained recognition from the Kangxi emperor, its fortunes  declined with modernization, and it was finally destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Unlike other sites, Kongzhai has not been rebuilt and its history is officially forgotten, despite the Confucian revival in contemporary China.

Newborn Socialist Things

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Coderre
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Contemporary China is seen as a place of widespread commodification and consumerism, while the preceeding Maoist Cultural Revolution is typically understood as a time when goods were scarce and the state criticized what little consumption was possible. Indeed, with the exception of the likeness and words of Mao Zedong, both the media and material culture of the Cultural Revolution are often characterized as a void out of which the postsocialist world of commodity consumption miraculously sprang fully formed. In Newborn Socialist Things, Laurence Coderre explores the material culture of the Cultural Revolution to show how it paved the way for commodification in contemporary China. Examining objects ranging from retail counters and porcelain statuettes to textbooks and vanity mirrors, she shows how the project of building socialism in China has always been intimately bound up with consumption. By focusing on these objects—or “newborn socialist things”—along with the Cultural Revolution’s media environment, discourses of materiality, and political economy, Coderre reconfigures understandings of the origins of present-day China.

Some Ideas on the Direction of Chinese Theological Development

1969 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Jonathan Tien-En Chao
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Theological Seminary ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

(An analysis of the features contributing to the lack of Chinese theological productivity and a presentation of some ideas on the biblical direction of Chinese theological development; together with a preliminary bibliography. (Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in August 1966, there has been no word of any theological activity in mainland China. The last remaining theological center, Nanking Theological Seminary, has been closed.)

Fragmented Memories and Screening Nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Meng
Keyword(s):  
Marketing Strategy ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
New Wave ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
Official History ◽  
Cultural Forces ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This book explores the way personal memories and micro-narratives of the Cultural Revolution are represented in post-2001 films and television dramas in mainland China, unravelling the complex political, social and cultural forces imbricated within the personalized narrative modes of remembering the past in postsocialist China. While representations of personal stories mushroomed after the Culture Revolution, the deepened marketization and privatization after 2001 have triggered a new wave of representations of personal memories on screen, which divert from those earlier allegorical narratives and are more sentimental, fragmented and nostalgic. The personalized reminiscences of the past suggest an alternative narrative to official history and grand narratives, and at the same time, by promoting the sentiment of nostalgia, they also become a marketing strategy. Rather than perceiving the rising micro-narratives as either homogeneous or autonomous, this book argues that they often embody disparate qualities and potentials. Moreover, the various micro-narratives and personal memories at play facilitate fresh understandings of China’s socialist past and postsocialist present: the legacies of socialism continue to influence China, constituting the postsocialist reality that accommodates different ideologies and temporalities.

Post-trauma Narrative

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-110
Author(s):  
Jing Meng
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Trauma Narratives ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Chapter 4 further explores fragmented memories in post-trauma narratives in Red Amnesia, Shanghai Story, and Blue Sky Bones. In these post-trauma films, the past penetrates the present, constituting a postsocialist reality that accommodates different ideologies and temporalities. There is a tension between amnesia and remembrance, between the past in demolition and the present in reconstruction in contemporary China. The repression of the past in turn causes the resurfacing of unwelcome memories of past trauma. To many of the Cultural Revolution Generation, the lingering pain of the past still haunts the present and becomes a form of belated, persisting tragedy for their sons and daughters. Different from previous traumatic narratives that conclude the trauma in the past tense, post-trauma narratives unveil the continuity between the past and the present. Just like the prefix ‘post-’ in postsocialism, post-trauma implies a reconfiguration of trauma rather than a complete break from it.

Wounds of the Past: the Chuanju Performance of Qingtan (Sighing)

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (03) ◽  
pp. 221-237
Author(s):  
Lin Chen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Past ◽  
Deep Wound ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Ideas ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

In this article Lin Chen seeks to locate the experimental chuanju production Qingtan (Sighing), directed by and starring Tian Mansha, in its special socio-political context. Based on a detailed performance analysis, she explores the aesthetics of the production and how it interweaves different performance cultures while referring continually to the deep wound of the Cultural Revolution, still felt by a significant number of ordinary people in mainland China. But while the production fully intends to present the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, it barely touches the wound of the past that it evokes. This is so because of the pervading presence of the xiqu idea of beauty, current dualistic political discourse, institutional difficulties, and, most of all, the fact that the collective cultural trauma at issue has not yet been properly articulated in Chinese culture and society. Lin Chen is an assistant professor of the Qingdao Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shandong University. She completed her doctorate at the Freie Universität, Berlin. Her research interests include the aesthetic ideas of Leibniz and their far-reaching influence, the aesthetics of performativity, interweaving performance cultures and cultural studies.1

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