Asian Miscellany (6)—Entertainment in Modern China

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Asian Miscellany.

[a] Entertaining RF

My last few posts in "Asian Miscellany" have been driven by deadline—and many of them will follow in the coming weeks and months, since I have signed contracts to deliver a whole passel of encyclopedic material to various publishers before a self-imposed deadline of December 20th. As I explained in the introduction, this series of posts allows me to try out a few ideas that I plan eventually to include in various encyclopedias or on-line sites that have asked for my input. They are not the same as the pieces that will eventually be published, but constitute more of a "long draft," meant to work through a few ideas as I work on brief essays that often mandate strict "word counts" of 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,000 words. 

For today's post, I have been asked to write about entertainment in modern China...in the space of only 1,000 words. I "spend" a little more verbiage than that here, but not much. The approach I have taken is that entertainment spans the ages, and that we must look at the way that traditional forms (such as story-cycles that eventually became "novels") have been turned into television programs and films. If you want to read more on the subject, I have an entire chapter on leisure, entertainment, and travel in China (2010), from the publisher's "Asia in Focus" series. It should be available at your local library. Please see the end of this post for more information.

Feel free to peruse the other Modern China posts in Asian Miscellany. 

1 One-Child              2 Education             3 Food/Drink          4 House           5 Work          

6 Entertainment       7 Sports/Games       8 Urban/Rural        9 Family Life    10 Children
Not even fifty years ago, “entertainment” in Chinese villages consisted of local traveling shows and itinerant “marketplace” performances, as well as movies shown to the entire community on public-gathering nights. A wide array of Chinese films since 1990 depict the powerful attraction of movie nights in an earlier China, and the drawing power of those sessions was not lost on ideologues, on the one hand, and aspiring artists, on the other. Today’s China—even in very rural areas—has a plethora of entertainment possibilities, many of them focused on either small establishments or individual homes. It is a very great contrast with the “social gathering” effect of many earlier forms of entertainment.

Entertainment in Chinese History

From earliest times, the center of entertainment was the marketplace. On "market days,"

[b] Storyworld RF

medium-sized towns would turn into bustling centers of commerce and entertainment. It would be a grave mistake to look at Chinese entertainment today only in terms of the last twenty years of growth and change. The ongoing appeal of social gathering around a tale, an acted drama, or a competition has not—and never will—go away.

Storytellers and singers of tales were among the first entertainers in China. Even in ancient times, gendered youth groups from various villages were said to chant and sing in a kind of “competitive verse” during spring festivals. By 500 of our era, it was common to have ghost stories and tales of the strange and unpredictable told during market hours. Another thousand years later, in about 1500 (printing had been in use by that time for many centuries), story tellers would work from written “prompt books” to tell and retell famous tales, such as the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” “The Journey to the West,” and many others.

This dynamic continued well into the twentieth century, when film began to displace storytelling as a communal activity. Indeed, in the transitional period (from about 1500-1800), several highly skilled writers reworked these often-told tales into 100 and 120 chapter “grand novels” that entertained a different kind of viewership—one focused on the individual reading of books or, at most, the “reading aloud” of books to small audiences. This is not unlike the relationship between television sets in the late-twentieth century and “public film” decades earlier.

[c] Stage RF

Film nights in Chinese villages were grand events, and this remained the case throughout the 1950s and 1960s—even well into the 1970s. Countless Chinese television shows and movies depict the “pull” of community films, and talking to anyone born in the generations between 1930 and 1960 will bring stories of the films they watched with their family, friends, neighbors, and even rivals, whenever they came to town. Some people even go so far as to describe “film nights” in poor, rural villages as times when youth went to a richer village’s film and returned to “retell” it to the village. This seems not to have been at all unusual in outposts that rarely received films. The continuous theme in traditional entertainment can be found in the social nature of the engagement on any number of aspects related to “retelling” tales already known. As we will see, this has remained consistent, if muted, in modern China.

Television Entertainment

[d] Stage to television RF

Television changed everything—and nothing. There is no doubt that the social dimension of entertainment was altered profoundly by the television set. This arrived in most family homes a good deal later than most Americans might realize (some of whom still recall listening to the radio together during the pre-television era). It was not until the 1980s that many families acquired televisions, and not until later in that decade that owning a television set came to be seen as a necessity in Chinese family life.

This trend coincided with a remarkable event in Chinese television history. Just as the television was taking root in Chinese family life—and at least at a time when people who did not own them would go to other locations to watch the evening’s television entertainment—the central Chinese television company (CCTV) released a 25-part series called Journey to the West. This was the very same tale that had been told in marketplaces all over China for many centuries, and which was written into novel form by a magnificent author in the sixteenth century. Here, in the mid-1980s, a constant of traditional culture was being brought to what in China was an entirely new medium.

It was spectacularly successful. The combination of a cultural classic and the new medium (not to mention the special effects of 1980s film) captivated audiences. It was hardly inconsequential that the monkey character (played by a superb actor) was beyond what even readers and listeners of earlier versions of the famous tales could have imagined. As it aired through 1987 and 1988, it achieved the highest viewer rating in Chinese television history, and is known to almost everyone in China today—from the memorable theme music to the cast of characters. Journey to the West is a powerful tale of travel and adventure in pursuit of Buddhist scriptures in the West (India). The television show, which is still shown daily throughout China in reruns, is a powerful example of an early-modern literary schema claiming a major role in a much later era.

Television continues to exert the greatest hold on Chinese viewers—far more than books

[e] Analysis RF

(although management books from the West are especially popular), films, or other media, including even computer games, which are taking off by storm with younger people. Although comedies and game shows are always popular, the heart of the television industry remains the television drama (電視劇; 电视剧). The Western reader interested in China would do well to spend time watching them, even if she doesn’t understand Chinese (the drama can carry the story, at least part of the way). For Chinese viewers, television dramas are, to echo the words of the late American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, “the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.” These stories are not told to an outside audience, as some of the most famous movies in China are. Sometimes the most fascinating views of a culture can be what one sees when no one cares who is paying attention (or no one thinks anyone else could be paying attention).

Film, Stage, and International Entertainment
Television has remained, by far, the fixture of Chinese leisure life in the last thirty years. Nonetheless, it is clear that Chinese filmmakers have taken extraordinary steps to reach both national and international audiences with films that have taken root in even an international consciousness. Among these films are Raise the Red Lantern, a dystopian tale of early twentieth-century “marriage” gone awry, Farewell My Concubine, a resonating two-tiered tale of intrigue in the third century BCE and China’s tumultuous mid-twentieth century, and Hero, a tale (not lacking “modern controversy”) about an assassination attempt on China’s First Emperor.

These constitute just a small set of the film making strides of Chinese directors, who are

[f] Set RF

often counted by “generations” of success and influence (we are on the fifth, sixth, or seventh, depending on how the counting is done). The best Chinese film brings together something that not even superb television drama can. It combines a captivating story meaningful to a Chinese audience with a tale that can be understood (not without challenge or controversy) by international viewers. This is far from simple, and there is always give-and-take in the interpretive equation (films are always “criticized” as erring too far toward “interior” Chinese culture and history, on the one hand, or toward a Western audience, on the other. There is no perfect compromise, and that is entirely the point. Directors (and audiences) must make choices. The best directors in China today have focused on a message that is both “global” and resolutely local. The coming decades will show which direction this will take, but it is likely that Chinese film will continue to work at the margins of each audience—a kind of interpretive "middle ground."

***  ***

The “middle ground” mentioned above can best be seen in the now iconic Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Westerners were enthralled, if a little bit taken in by the outward “exoticism” of the depiction. Chinese viewers have tended to say that the director “nailed” the ancient material, but did not have an adequate sense of a changing China. This may be the very problem the West will continue to have with China. If we cannot understand the tradition, we don’t have a chance; if we only understand the tradition, we don’t understand anything. This challenge will never go away for the Western interpreter of China. The only solution, such as it is, is to keep reading and thinking. One can get closer, but no one should ever think “that’s it; now I’ve got it…now I understand.” The study of China requires humility, and it is necessary in understanding everything from “work,” to “entertainment” to “family life.”

[g] Ceremony RF

Again, for a full chapter on this topic, please see my book China (ABC-Clio, 2010). Parts of it can be accessed (click on the link, above) on Google Books. It should also be available in your local library (or have them order it).  RL for RSQ.

Feel free to peruse the other Modern China posts in Asian Miscellany. 

1 One-Child              2 Education             3 Food/Drink          4 House           5 Work          

6 Entertainment       7 Sports/Games       8 Urban/Rural        9 Family Life    10 Children