The place where we live is like a garbage dump
We're all insects fighting and squabbling
We eat our conscience and it's ideology we're shitting
Is there anything we can do?
No! Tear it down!
- He Yong, Garbage Dump
(Rock Records, 1994)
In the China of the 1990's, when government policy directed its focus back to the economic reform, it seemed that the Chinese public underwent a shift in attitude. The hopeful idealism of the 1980s and the frustration that culminated in the events of June 6 gave way to a politically indifferent cynical opportunism. To get rich was glorious; democracy was too expensive, and most people would prefer a new television set anyway.
Although that characterization holds a great deal of accuracy, the lyrics of He Yong indicate that a different angle of disillusion in Chinese society. Particularly amongst the youth culture, although to a lesser extent through all stratums of society, the Chinese people have been left without a focus. The traditional values and expectations were, for the most part, eradicated by Communist modernization attempts. Although many traditions are reemerging, they hold little appeal for anyone outside of the older generations. Likewise, veneration of Chairman Mao and the drive for perpetual revolution that dominated the popular imagination for thirty years has run dry. Even the hope for a "new revolution" of accelerated economic and political reforms proved futile.
Thus it would seem that nothing remains in China to keep a hold on the hearts and minds of an alienated public, except for the appeal of crass materialism. Beginning in the 1980's, a factor has slowly invaded the popular psyche. It expresses and is fueled by the disillusionment and the superficial materialism, as well as the deeply held hope for something more, that is reflected in the fears and ambitions of Chinese of whatever age. These ambivalent emotions are voiced in the songs of He Yong and his contemporaries, in the television shows that have become a fixture in the daily Chinese life, or in the trashy tabloid magazines that have proliferated in most cities and towns. It is precisely because the newly emergent popular culture so accurately taps the nerve of the public that it has managed to become so pervasive and so powerful.
It is often observed that China is presently undergoing a great deal of change. Indeed, the politics, economy, society, and culture of the People's Republic have altered greatly over the past few years, and the pace of change is likely to accelerate in these next years following the handover of Hong Kong. Nevertheless, dramatic upheavals in the national fabric have been the norm in China every decade of this century. What differentiates the changes of the 1990s is their pace, which is gradual, their origins, which are societal rather than governmental, and their foci, on the social, economic and cultural arenas, rather than the political.
This paper will address some the cultural changes that have occurred in China over the past two decades. It also will consider the economic reforms which precipitated the emergence of new cultural trends, as well as the social shifts that have accompanied and, to some extent, resulted from the change in culture. Most of the studies of modern Chinese culture, emerging from China and the West alike, have focused upon the China's intellectuals, their role in using culture to shape society and their perspectives on present and future directions of culture and society.
The most significant developments in Chinese culture in this decade have, however, been distinct from, and often greatly removed from, culture as represented by the intellectual class. After all, the college-educated elite, although important to political and social leadership, comprise a mere one percent of the population. The newly emergent culture represents the tastes, the emotions, and the ambitions of the ordinary people, the so-called masses. Some intellectuals have a part in it, but they do not control it, and much of the academic community views it with distrust or distaste, as a vulgar compromise of artistic standards. Nevertheless, as the music from radios blaring in market stalls or the selection on any magazine stand will attest, popular culture has emerged as a dominant and unavoidable force in China.
For purposes of analysis, it is important to define what precisely is meant by the term, "popular culture". A great deal of literature and debate has been generated over the definitions and ramifications of "mass culture" and "popular culture". Most are detailed theoretical works, and the majority examine cultural questions as they exist in American or European societies. The theoretical works tend to focus on the different schools in the study of popular culture, such as the Marxist, feminist, or post-modern schools of analysis. The focus upon Western forms in both theory and application renders many approaches invalid for a study of China, but they will be adapted or critiqued as needed.
In defining popular culture, three issues arise: what it is, what are its origins, and what is its nature. Popular culture can be considered the expression of the cultural tastes of the "masses", or the common public as differentiated from the academic and political elite. A product of popular culture must be, as much as possible, universal in its appeal. That is to say, it is relatively homogenous, with one product or a series of similar product having broad popular appeal across a range of age, educational, income and status differentials. Unlike pre-industrial culture, popular culture can transcend the boundaries of region, and even of nation, society, or language. Of course, particular products can and often do target particular audiences, but nevertheless with the attempt and preference to reach beyond the primary target group.
Generally speaking, although again with some exceptions, popular culture consists of "vulgar" rather than "high" culture. Both of these are highly subjective terms, and the assertion made by some that popular culture does not and cannot constitute "art" deserves to be challenged. (1) Nevertheless, popular culture more often appeals to the lowest common denominator of taste rather than refined aesthetic preferences.
The origins of popular culture are dual in nature, that is, divided between the "popular" and the "popularized." Much of the debate surrounding popular culture queries whether it is a "bottom-up" or a "top-down" phenomenon. Mass culture can be used by political, social and economic elites to exercise control over the larger population through distracting them with easily accessible cultural items which convey values that reinforce the existing social system and the dominance of the elites. In this model of "popularized" culture, pop is in fact created by the elites as a tool for controlling the masses. The alternative analysis of popular culture envisions it as created by and for the masses. Due to its spontaneity, this truly "popular" culture is more artistically vibrant than the established "high" art, and eventually it rises up, infiltrates, and alters or replaces the "high" culture consumed by the elites. An analysis of actual popular cultures suggests that both processes occur simultaneously. "Popular" culture emerges from the grass-roots, the elites attempt to control and co-opt it through repackaging it for mass distribution. In the course of adapting the product for "popularization," however, the content and value of the original product influences and, to a certain extent, co-opts the government trying to manipulate it.
Popular culture is a product of capitalist society. Cultural products become market commodities that are mass-produced and mass-consumed. The creators of the cultural products must respond not to their artistic sensibilities but to the economic law of supplying the demand. Like capitalism itself, popular culture is fundamentally modern. The capacity for mass transmission of cultural product, whether over airwaves, in theaters, or in music and bookstores, all result from factors of modern economic and technological development. Cultural theorist concur that the social changes of industrialization and urbanization preclude the emergence of a mass culture. Industrialization allows a cultural product to be reproduced infinitely according to demand, provided for its mass distribution. (2) According to theorists, both factors contribute towards the formation of a "mass society" of "atomised" alienated individuals.
According this theory of atomisation, the modern, urban and industrial or post-industrial individual, due to the decline of mediating institutions such as the village, the family, and the church which traditionally provided an identity and a social code, leads a life as without meaningful and coherent links to other individuals. Rather, interactions are sporadic, distant, and contractual. This approach presumes that popular culture is inherently evil. Due to the isolated emptiness of the individual life, individuals as absorbed into this anonymous mass can be easily manipulated through the emotional appeals of consumption based popular culture. Culture is used to encourage the masses to formulate an identity based on the consumption of goods, including cultural goods. As such it becomes the tool of domination for the ruling class to perpetuate the existing order upon the masses. (3)
The theory of atomisation, beyond the fallacies in its application to Western society, fit the conditions of Chinese society poorly. Although the requisite industrialization and urbanization exist in China, traditional institutions such as the family and neighborhood retain their strong influence. Moreover, due to the patterns of development in China, in urban and rural settings alike the work unit has filled the social and psychological roles traditionally filled by the village and the extended family. Popular culture in China has rarely served as an instrument to perpetuate the position of the ruling powers. On the contrary, the Chinese Government has sporadically fought to prevent the emergence of mass culture, and attempts to control the content and direction of popular cultural products have for the most part met with failure.
Chinese pop resulted from the fusion of three influences: Chinese traditional culture, Western popular culture, and the changing attitudes of the Chinese people. A foundation of the
traditional arts such as music, poetry, and drama remain evident, to varying degrees, in popular culture. For example, many of the popular Chinese sitcoms and soap operas have adapted dramatic devices and plots, as well as moral sensibilities, from the old Chinese operas. Individual musicians have similarly incorporated ancient musical instruments and styles into their rock compositions. The evolution of the different aspects of popular culture in China all evidence various forms of this synthesis.
The economic reforms initiated at following Deng Xiaoping's accession to power precipitated the emergence of Chinese popular culture in two ways. Firstly, the introduction of market oriented system altered both lifestyles and priorities. Slogans such as "To get rich is glorious" revived and expanded upon the traditional standards of seeking and flaunting wealth. For the first time ever, the majority of the public could afford to splurge on status symbols such as televisions, stereos, and satellite disks. The proliferation of electronics into the homes of average people created independent consumer taste, independent from party, politics, and high culture. Market reforms also spurred the emergence of materialism and opportunism, which has in turn contributed to the sarcastic tone characterizing urban youth culture as well as much of the mainstream.
Lastly, the Deng reforms opened the country to Western business eager to exploit the enormous potential of the Chinese market. In addition to more practical imports, American cultural products flooded the country. The CCP attempted to impede the flow of materials with content it deemed inappropriate. However, as time went on, the development of the "back door", illegal and quasi-illegal forms of pirating and distribution, the governmental capacity to control the spending habits of its subjects steadily declined. The government's threshold of tolerance also increased over time. Despite sporadic campaigns to eliminate "spiritual pollution" and "bourgeois liberalism," the government became increasingly willing to ignore or even embrace aspects of the mildly seditious popular culture that it had attempted to eradicate. After 1992, the government abandoned its doomed and unenthusiastic campaign to wipe out influences such as tabloid magazines, rock music and romance novels. Some forms of popular culture it chose to ignore; others, particularly the more subversive forms, it incorporated into the mainstream systems of production and distribution and thus neutralized.
But the damage had already been done. In most areas of Chinese pop, a diverse cacophony of styles, contents and products thrive in a competition as chaotic as the rest of the Chinese economy. The mildly subversive has become the norm, and threads of Western influence are ubiquitous. I spent the summer of 1997 studying in Beijing, and I was constantly amazed at the places and forms in which Western pop icons appeared. Beyond the twenty or so McDonalds scattered all over Beijing, the universal availability and consumption of Keke Kela (Coca-Cola), and the occasional Pizza Hut, Dunkin' Donuts, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, various aspects of Western pop culture could be observed in almost every aspect of life in the capital.
Often, it was in small and mildly ludicrous forms. One of my fellow foreign students purchased a washbucket for her laundry, and on the bottom of it was a festive decoration of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, waving a PRC flag, no less. Chinese feel that it is particularly stylish to wear English words and phrases on clothing and accessories. One amusing shirt declared, "Man Handsome", and there was a line of purses entitled, "Feet We Wear". Another purse I observed sported a trendy if misspelled, "NIKF" brand name.
The television selections were similarly fascinating. Apart from the mandatory nightly broadcasts of CCTV (Chinese Central Television) "Evening News" on every station, the variety was amazing. There were the usual offerings of the opera station, which alternately broadcast traditional Beijing Operas and Revolutionary Operas. Every afternoon provided half an hour each of "Popeye" and "Pound Puppies" dubbed into Mandarin. American women's basketball was also a regular program. Even more surprising were the more sordid broadcasts later at night, such as French horror movies and an American made-for-TV movie featuring Tori Spelling as a college call girl, likewise dubbed into Mandarin. In August, the A & E production of "Pride and Prejudice" was all the rage, and regular rebroadcasts dominated every evening for a few weeks.
Located a few blocks from Beijing Normal University , where I studied, was the Beijing Film Studio, and its affiliated movie theater. In addition to "Opium Wars", the Chinese government's propaganda tour de' force to commemorate the return of Hong Kong, the theater offered a mixture of a couple of domestic dramas, the standard kung-fu movie from Hong Kong, and an array of (usually somewhat old) American movies. At the time, "The Mask", Michael Jordan's "Space Jam", and "Jurassic Park: the Lost World" were showing. One of my instructors later informed me that China only receives eight foreign films per year, as the government has to pay to import them. American films have only been widely released in China since 1995. Little research is currently available on the public response to American cinema, although most sources indicate that it has generally been positive. (4)
However, black-market video distribution have for the past decade made foreign films accessible only to the few who could afford VCRs. I met one man in his late thirties, from South China originally but at the time working in a joint venture company in Beijing. His English was unusually good, but his accent was a little hard to place. Upon further inquiry, he explained to me that his sister had a VCR and a copy of the film, "Forrest Gump", which he had watched literally dozens of times to practice his English. His friends, overhearing our discussion, then joined him, and they spent the next half hour or so regaling me with an array of "Gumpisms", complete with accent. It was somewhat disturbing.
Much of my spare time was spent hanging out with a local band, "Yaoshi" or "The Key", which played covers of popular songs, mainly in English. Their repertoire focused on Eagles and Beatles songs, which they sang phonetically, as none of them spoke English. Every Thursday and Saturday nights they performed at the "Hong Kong Food City" near Wangfujing. Afterwards I would often accompany them to an all night restaurant where they would down bottle after bottle of Nanjing beer, gnaw on meat skewers, chain smoke (American cigarettes, of course), and grill us Americans for any and every shred of information about American music we could provide.
I was amazed at the pervasiveness of American pop culture in China, as well as the extent to which those influences had been adapted and assimilated into the indigenous popular culture. Aware that the Chinese government was, at best, uncomfortable with the potentially corrupting influence of pop, it seemed significant that popular culture had made such headway despite the resistance and, at times, strong opposition of the authorities. I thus wondered how precisely pop had evolved in China, and to what degree it had been impacted by foreign influences. Also of interest was how the government has reacted to popular culture, and whether popular culture has resulted in any substantial changes in the values and lifestyle of the ordinary Chinese people.
The first section examines the background of Chinese cultural history. Chapter two considers the cultural climate prior to the emergence of modern popular culture. This includes the content and context of early folk art and high culture. The earliest forms of mass media, print journalism, radio, and film, were powerful forces in the early decades of the century. The early growth of both of these, particularly of news media, are examined, although the issue of the current news media is addressed only briefly. Finally, Chapter two considers the development of mass media and a mass consciousness in the early decades of the People's Republic. Chapter three presents the economic reforms of the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly how these facilitated the growth of a consumer culture with an emphasis on lifestyle. The reforms also opened China up to the slow but steady encroachment of Western influences, and chapter three will examine how the Chinese audience responded to Western popular cultural products.
The second section presents two genres of popular culture as they developed in China over the past decades. With each aspect, history, influences, and impact are presented. Chapter four considers the emergence and popularization of television in China. Although the content of television broadcast remains primarily under Party control through Chinese Central Television (CCTV), the diversity of programs is expanding. In chapter four, the roles of advertising and foreign programming are presented along with three significant domestically produced shows, River Elegy (1988), Xinxing (1986), and Kewang (1991). Chapter five presents the evolution of Chinese popular music, which originally divided into two competing types: the state-controlled and Hong Kong/Taiwan-influenced soft pop known as tongsu and the underground, oppositional and American rock-inspired yaogun music. Since 1992, however, economic pressures and political change has begun to blur the distinctions.
A few other notable forms of popular culture are omitted from this paper. Film was once among the leading forms of popular entertainment in China, and Chinese "fifth generation" cinema has in recent years garnered international acclaim. Since the popularization of television, however, movie audiences have steadily declined. Most of the artistically noteworthy films of the "fifth generation" have not been widely released in China due to censorship, and the few that have been shown have for the most part met with a lukewarm reaction. (5)
As cinema has declined in its significance as a form of popular culture, print media has risen. Popular fiction, mainly in the form of trashy romance novels, began to be smuggled from Taiwan and Hong Kong as a result of the "open door" policy. Despite official denouncements of such materials as "pornographic" and official campaigns to promote more edifying reading materials, mainland authors began producing similar works. The emergence of the "back door" and "second channel" in printing and distribution allowed popular fiction, as well as ideologically seditious works, to be made almost as easily available to the public as legal publications. Meanwhile, under pressure to show profit, many state-owned periodical offices began producing tabloid "weekend editions." Tabloid journals featured articles on fashion, merchandise, and entertainment. Many also ran glossy color photographs of sports cars, pop stars, or gratuitously nude women. Although forced to tone down their content during the campaigns of 1983, 1987 and 1989, these publications quickly resumed their tabloid issues following the end of each campaign. (6)
Finally, the third section examines the ramifications of popular cultural in China. Chapter six presents the governmental attitudes towards and reaction against popular culture. From the early days of the reforms, through the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalism, to final capitulation and acknowledgment of pop as a permanent force in the society, the relationship between the government and the agents of popular culture have been at times hostile and at best uneasy. Nevertheless, the government's sporadic attempts to quell the growth of popular culture proved unsuccessful, which indicates that the governmental sway over the minds and hearts of the people has weakened. Much of the government's trepidation stemmed from the fear that Western popular culture, or a Western-influenced Chinese popular culture, would have a "corrupting" influence on the society. Chapter seven weighs the question of whether and to what extent the emergence of pop has effected the society, its values, and day to day life.
Endnotes, Chapter 1
1. Strinati, Dominic, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, (New York: Routledge) 1995.
2. Ibid., p. 4.
3. This argument, as presented in Strinati, originates from the writings of D. MacDonald, "A theory of mass culture", in B. Rosenberg and D. White (eds.), Mass Culture, (Glencoe: Free Press) 1957.
4. Wu, Ming, "Movies: An Aspect of Culture," Beijing Review, v39 n6 (5-11 February 1996) p. 4.
5. Wang, Shaoguang, "The politics of private time: changing leisure patterns in urban China," in Davis, Deborah S., Kraus, Richard, Naughton, Barry and Perry, Elizabeth J. (eds.), Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The potential for autonomy and community in post-Mao China, (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press) 1995.
6. Zha, Jianying, China Pop, (New York Press: New York) 1995.
