Beijing Bastard

Beijing Bastard
Author: Val Wang
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1592409423

A humorous and moving coming-of-age story that brings a unique, not-quite-outsider’s perspective to China’s shift from ancient empire to modern superpower Raised in a strict Chinese American household in the suburbs, Val Wang dutifully got good grades, took piano lessons, and performed in a Chinese dance troupe—until she shaved her head and became a leftist, the stuff of many teenage rebellions. But Val’s true mutiny was when she moved to China, the land her parents had fled before the Communist takeover in 1949. Val arrives in Beijing in 1998 expecting to find freedom but instead lives in the old city with her traditional relatives, who wake her at dawn with the sound of a state-run television program playing next to her cot, make a running joke of how much she eats, and monitor her every move. But outside, she soon discovers a city rebelling against its roots just as she is, struggling too to find a new, modern identity. Rickshaws make way for taxicabs, skyscrapers replace hutong courtyard houses, and Beijing prepares to make its debut on the world stage with the 2008 Olympics. And in the gritty outskirts of the city where she moves, a thriving avant-garde subculture is making art out of the chaos. Val plunges into the city’s dizzying culture and nightlife and begins shooting a documentary about a Peking Opera family who is witnessing the death of their traditional art. Brilliantly observed and winningly told, Beijing Bastard is a compelling story of a young woman finding her place in the world, and of China, as its ancient past gives way to a dazzling but uncertain future.

Beijing Bastard

Beijing Bastard
Author: Val Wang
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2014-10-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0698156994

A humorous and moving coming-of-age story that brings a unique, not-quite-outsider’s perspective to China’s shift from ancient empire to modern superpower Raised in a strict Chinese-American household in the suburbs, Val Wang dutifully got good grades, took piano lessons, and performed in a Chinese dance troupe—until she shaved her head and became a leftist, the stuff of many teenage rebellions. But Val’s true mutiny was when she moved to China, the land her parents had fled before the Communist takeover in 1949. Val arrives in Beijing in 1998 expecting to find freedom but instead lives in the old city with her traditional relatives, who wake her at dawn with the sound of a state-run television program playing next to her cot, make a running joke of how much she eats, and monitor her every move. But outside, she soon discovers a city rebelling against its roots just as she is, struggling too to find a new, modern identity. Rickshaws make way for taxicabs, skyscrapers replace hutong courtyard houses, and Beijing prepares to make its debut on the world stage with the 2008 Olympics. And in the gritty outskirts of the city where she moves, a thriving avant-garde subculture is making art out of the chaos. Val plunges into the city’s dizzying culture and nightlife and begins shooting a documentary, about a Peking Opera family who is witnessing the death of their traditional art. Brilliantly observed and winningly told, Beijing Bastard is a compelling story of a young woman finding her place in the world and of China, as its ancient past gives way to a dazzling but uncertain future.

China Live

China Live
Author: Mike Chinoy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780847693184

A unique insider's view of the most important forces shaping our era--the rise of global satellite news and the rise of China.

Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema

Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema
Author: Dan Luo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2024-09-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1538157306

Motion pictures were introduced to China in 1896, and today China is a major player in the global film industry. However, the story of how Chinese cinema became what it is today is exceptionally turbulent, encompassing incursions by foreign powers, warfare among contending rulers, the collapse of the Chinese empire, and the massive setback of the Cultural Revolution. This book coversthe cinematic history of mainland China spanning across over one hundred and twenty years since its inception. Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries on the major filmmakers, actors, and historical figures, representative cinematic productions, genre evolution, significant events and institutions, and market changes. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Chinese Cinema.

Lost and Othered Children in Contemporary Cinema

Lost and Othered Children in Contemporary Cinema
Author: Debbie C. Olson
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2012
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0739170252

Children have been a part of the cinematic landscape since the silent film era, yet children are rarely a part of the theoretical landscape of film analysis. Lost and Othered Children in Contemporary Cinema, edited by Debbie C. Olson and Andrew Scahill, seeks to remedy that oversight. Throughout the over one-hundred year history of cinema, the image of the child has been inextricably bound to filmic storytelling and has been equally bound to notions of romantic innocence and purity. This collection reveals, however, that there is a body of work that provides a counter note of darkness to the traditional portraits of sweetness and light. Particularly since the mid-twentieth century, there are a growing number of cinematic works that depict childhood has as a site of knowingness, despair, sexuality, death, and madness. Lost and Othered Children in Contemporary Cinema challenges notions of the innocent child through an exploration of the dark side of childhood in contemporary cinema. The contributors to this multidisciplinary study offer a global perspective that explores the multiple conditions of marginalized childhood as cinematically imagined within political, geographical, sociological, and cultural contexts.

Children of Marx and Coca-Cola

Children of Marx and Coca-Cola
Author: Xiaoping Lin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2009-11-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0824833368

Children of Marx and Coca-Cola affords a deep study of Chinese avant-garde art and independent cinema from the mid-1990s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Informed by the author’s experience in Beijing and New York—global cities with extensive access to an emergent transnational Chinese visual culture—this work situates selected artworks and films in the context of Chinese nationalism and post-socialism and against the background of the capitalist globalization that has so radically affected contemporary China. It juxtaposes and compares artists and independent filmmakers from a number of intertwined perspectives, particularly in their shared avant-garde postures and perceptions. Xiaoping Lin provides illuminating close readings of a variety of visual texts and artistic practices, including installation, performance, painting, photography, video, and film. Throughout he sustains a theoretical discussion of representative artworks and films and succeeds in delineating a variegated postsocialist cultural landscape saturated by market forces, confused values, and lost faith. This refreshing approach is due to Lin’s ability to tackle both Chinese art and cinema rigorously within a shared discursive space. He, for example, aptly conceptualizes a central thematic concern in both genres as "postsocialist trauma" aggravated by capitalist globalization. By thus focusing exclusively on the two parallel and often intersecting movements or phenomena in the visual arts, his work brings about a fruitful dialogue between the narrow field of traditional art history and visual studies more generally. Children of Marx and Coca-Cola will be a major contribution to China studies, art history, film studies, and cultural studies. Multiple audiences—specialists, teachers, and students in these disciplines, as well as general readers with an interest in contemporary Chinese society and culture—will find that this work fulfills an urgent need for sophisticated analysis of China’s cultural production as it assumes a key role in capitalist globalization.

Celluloid China

Celluloid China
Author: Harry H. Kuoshu
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780809324569

This work is an introduction to the cinema of mainland China from the early 1930s to the early 1990s. Emphasizing both film contexts and film texts, this study covers a broad cinematic analysis that includes investigations of cultural, cross-cultural, social, ethnic and political issues.

The Cinema of Feng Xiaogang

The Cinema of Feng Xiaogang
Author: Rui Zhang
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2008-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9622098851

Beginning first as a case study of Feng Xiaogang, this book explores Chinese film history since the early 1990s in terms of changes of the Communist Party's film policy, industry reforms, the official promotion of Main Melody films and the emergence and growth of popular cinema. The image of Feng that will emerge in this book is of a filmmaker working under political and economic pressures in a post-socialist state while still striving to create works with a personal socio-political agenda. In keeping with this reality, this book approaches Feng as a special kind of film auteur whose works must be interpreted with attention to the specific social and political context of contemporary China. The book will be a useful reference tool for students and scholars in the fields of Chinese studies, Chinese film history and film studies. It could also be used as textbook for classes about Asian cinema, international cinema and Chinese culture/film studies. The extensive use of data about the Chinese film market, and elaborate analysis of the situation of Chinese film industry make this book a valuable volume for classroom and personal use.

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies
Author: Jeremy Tambling
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 1977
Release: 2022-10-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319624199

This encyclopaedia will be an indispensable resource and recourse for all who are thinking about cities and the urban, and the relation of cities to literature, and to ways of writing about cities. Covering a vast terrain, this work will include entries on theorists, individual writers, individual cities, countries, cities in relation to the arts, film and music, urban space, pre/early and modern cities, concepts and movements and definitions amongst others. Written by an international team of contributors, this will be the first resource of its kind to pull together such a comprehensive overview of the field.

Inscrutable Belongings

Inscrutable Belongings
Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1503605930

Inscrutable Belongings brings together formalist and contextual modes of critique to consider narrative strategies that emerge in queer Asian North American literature. Stephen Hong Sohn provides extended readings of fictions involving queer Asian North American storytellers, looking to texts including Russell Leong's "Camouflage," Lydia Kwa's Pulse, Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters, and Noël Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift. Despite many antagonistic forces, these works' protagonists achieve a revolutionary form of narrative centrality through the defiant act of speaking out, recounting their "survival plots," and enduring to the very last page. These feats are made possible through their construction of alternative social structures Sohn calls "inscrutable belongings." Collectively, the texts that Sohn examines bring to mind foundational struggles for queer Asian North Americans (and other socially marginalized groups) and confront a broad range of issues, including interracial desire, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, transnational mobility, and postcolonial trauma. In these texts, Asian North American queer people are often excluded from normative family structures and must contend with multiple histories of oppression, erasure, and physical violence, involving homophobia, racism, and social death. Sohn's work makes clear that for such writers and their imagined communities, questions of survival, kinship, and narrative development are more than representational—they are directly tied to lived experience.