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Yu Zhang, "Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
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- [00:01]
Jing Ni
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Dr. Yu Zhang
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Jing Ni
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Dr. Yu Zhang
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Dr. Yu Zhang
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Jing Ni
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network. I am jingmi, a recent PhD in cultural studies from Stony Brook University. Today I'm thrilled to be speaking with Dr. Yu Zhang, author of the new book Going to the the Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915-1965, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2023. Dr. Zhang received her Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University in 2014, and she is currently Associate professor in the Department of Chinese History and Culture at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. As someone whose own research explores representations of rural China in post 2000 independent cinema, I have often asked, what does the countryside mean not just geographically, but also symbolically, politically, and emotionally in the modern Chinese cultural production. Dr. Zhang's book offers a richly textured genealogy of the rural imaginary across literature, theater, and film. Spanning from the May 4th period to the socialist 1960s. It's a truly illuminating and timely contribution that deepens our understanding of of how the countryside has shaped and being shaped by China's modernity. Hello, Professor Zhang, thank you for joining me. To start off, could you briefly introduce yourself and your academic background and what inspired you to write this book?
- [03:10]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Thank you. Jing. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts on writing this book. Since I came to the US for graduate school and began my training in East Asian Studies, I've developed a strong interdisciplinary awareness alongside a disciplinary foundation. While my field is modern Chinese literature and culture, my approach has always been interdisciplinary by nature. The book draws primarily on literary and cinematic sources, but my analysis is shaped in meaningful ways by scholarship in history, anthropology, political science, and other disciplines. The idea for this book, thematic Focus actually goes all the way back to a graduate seminar on Shanghai Studies that I took in 2004 in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UC Santa Barbara, where I had my MA Studies. At that time, Shanghai Studies were really gaining momentum in the Anglophone world, especially in the U.S. u.S. In the early 2000s, we were seeing a surge of publications that helped establish Shanghai Studies as a major and influential field in modern Chinese. In modern China studies, there was the urban turn. The city itself became this central site and the focus for cultural studies. But there was a problem. Over time, rural studies and urban studies started to develop as two relatively separate fields, and they didn't seem to overlap much. That's where this book comes in. It introduces the perspective of going to the countryside, which is my way of trying to bring rural and village spaces back into the conversation in modern Chinese literary and cultural studies. But it's more than just that. It's about looking at the important connections between urban and rural spaces and how those connections play out over time and across different historical contexts. What I'm really after here is a way to bridge the gap between urban and rural studies globally. When we talk about modernity, we often equate it with or reduce it to urban modernity. In the Chinese context. That's especially true with Shanghai modernity. So when I talk about bidding farewell to Shanghai and returning to the countryside, what I mean is looking at the deeper ties between the rural world and Chinese modernity and how those connections actually shape what modernity means in China.
- [06:21]
Jing Ni
Thank you for that insightful introduction. So, looking back, how has your understanding of the rural changed over the course of this research, and what do you hope the readers, especially the students and the scholars of Chinese culture, take away from this book?
- [06:38]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Sure, historians, you know, often stick to strict definitions of what counts as rural, but for me, coming from a background in literary and cultural studies, rural mainly refers to underdeveloped areas. So it's about grappling with the shocks, challenges, and struggles that come with moving from more developed to less developed regions, and the ways people cope with and navigate those emotional experiences. What makes Chinese modernity so unique is its dual nature. So the rural urban divide is a constant source of tension and challenges, but it's also something that people continuously work to address. These efforts happen on all levels, individually, collectively, and institutionally. So making this divide both a persistent problem and a driving force for action and adaptation. And moreover, I'd also like to use this opportunity to emphasize another important dimension of this book. So, the concept of going to the countryside doesn't just involve the movement of the people, it also includes the movement of media. So this constitutes a unique media cultural practice that navigates the urban rural divides. In this sense, the village takes on a dual role. It becomes both a transmedial field and a multimedia environment. So the materials I draw on go far beyond the scope of literary studies. They include a wide variety of texts and media, such as fiction, film, social surveys, lantern slides, illustrated literacy primers, spoken drama, newspaper essays, woodblock prints, regional opera, local storytelling, and propaganda posters. And this interdisciplinary approach highlights how media and cultural practices intersect with the rural urban dynamic in a complex and meaningful ways.
- [09:08]
Jing Ni
Great. Yeah. After. So my first impression of the book is like, it has a very clear structure. So before we dive into the chapters in more detail, could you give us a brief overview of the book's structure and how did you decide to organize it this way?
- [09:27]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Certainly. You know, I knew I had to be highly selective in order to finalize the structure. And the idea of going to the countryside has been a persistent spatial and cultural practice throughout the 20th century, with the agrarian dimension consistently at its core. So this topic required a focused approach, so I decided to examine its evolving significance through the framework of Enlightenment revolution and the socialist industrialization. There are altogether six chapters, and chapter one looks at Homecoming as a deeply personal event, exploring it at the individual level. And chapter two shifts to the collective, analyzing the social reform experiments carried out in Ding County, Hebei Province. Chapter 3 focuses on how the journey to Yan'm became a generational aspiration through filled with revolutionary fervor. And chapter four investigates how revolutionary messages, particularly after the Yan' an forum, were disseminated through changing media landscapes during this rural term. And chapter five dives into cinematic depictions of youth returning to the countryside to drive rural industrialization. And finally, the conclusion examines how films portray the act of journeying to frontier regions. And this book focuses on two primary modes of action. So first is returning to a familiar hometown, and the other is venturing into the unfamiliar rural world. And these movements in the first half of the 20th century brought about the significant shifts in ways of knowing and redefined sentimental experiences. So the countryside became a testing ground for a range of modern concepts. And my aim is to unpack the layered meanings behind going to the countryside and connect them to broader historical, social, and ideological transformations.
- [11:55]
Jing Ni
Yeah, thanks for that overview. And now let's dive into the chapter one. So you start by discussing the emergence of social survey essays in New Youth, and which treated the rural hometown not just as nostalgic backdrops, but as living spaces worth investigating. Then you explore the homecoming fiction stories of educated youth returning to their villages. And often the characters feel alienated, torn between the loyalty and shame, nostalgia and rejection. So why was this turn to the local and particular soul sign significant at the time?
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Dr. Yu Zhang
Okay, you know, I like to work with just positions, for instance, pairing social theory essays with homecoming fiction, which is one of the examples. And I've noticed that social theory essays from this period can also be read as a kind of homecoming essay. So this approach sets my work apart from previous studies of rural literature by framing the native village as a dual space. So it's both a hometown and a site where urban educated youth conducted social surveys, often while grappling with a sense of nostalgia. And first, I argue that the social survey as an early form of sociological writing function much like homecoming fiction. Both genres claim to take an objective observational stance toward reality, but in practice, they blur the boundaries between rational analysis and emotional engagement. And second, I draw on McIntyre's book, titled After A Study in Moral Theory, to deepen this analysis. And McIntyre describes modernity as an era defined by pluralism, fragmentation, and moral disorder. And he argued that morality is always tied to the socially local and particular. And he critiques the modern aspiration for universal moral framework as an illusion. His insights that the socially local and the particular acts as a kind of anchor resisting the chaos and confusion of modernity, provides a useful lens for rethinking these two practices, sociological documentation and literary nostalgia. And by reading these works through this framework, I hope to show how they represent more than just observations of rural life. They also reflect a broader effort to resist modernity's disorientation by grounding meaning in the local and the specific.
- [15:00]
Jing Ni
And when reading this chapter, I couldn't help but think of how in recent decades A generation of Chinese independent filmmakers, and many of them were born in the countryside. They have gone back to their own hometowns to make the films about the rural life. And in my own research, I have been looking at how these films reflect both personal memory and broader social critique. So do you see a connection between these contemporary cinematic homecomings and the early 20th century Literary homecomings you explore in this chapter? And are they part of a longer tradition of using the rural as a space for reflection, tension, and even moral questioning?
- [15:45]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Yeah. I'd love to learn more about your work, Jing. It sounds absolutely fascinating. My book wraps up in 1965, but I'm really interested in how you've extended its framework to the present moment in contemporary China. You've pinpointed something so essential, homecoming as an embodied practice, one that's spans vastly different geographic spaces, creates lasting forms of feeling and reflection. So these resonate deeply whether we are talking about the early 20th century or today. And I also completely agree with you, agree with you that using the rural as a space for reflection, tension, and moral questioning. So the rural continues to serve as a critical vantage point, offering perspectives and practices that challenge us to confront modernity's paradoxes. It is a lived space where ethical, social, and historical contradictions come into sharp focus, making it an enduring site of inquiry and meaning making.
- [16:58]
Jing Ni
Yeah, that's a great setup. Yeah. So in chapter two, you shift from the literary homecomings to the Dane county rural construction experiments. And you describe the Ding county as a kind of social laboratory where modern media, such as the sled shoes, the illustrated primers and spoken drama help to build what you call a rural vernacular. And could you talk about what makes this form of communication so different from the Mayforce vision of the vernacular culture?
- [17:31]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Okay. The Mayforce vernacular movements, the major language reform in early 20th century China, started out with such democratic ideals. It pushed the intellectuals to pay attention to folk stories and the lives of ordinary people for the first time in a meaningful way. But here is the irony. The actual vernacular language that emerged was heavily Westernized. They borrowed sentence structures from Europe and incorporated loads of translated foreign terms. And scholars like Shi Shu Mei have pointed out how this created a kind of linguistic capital. Suddenly, only people educated in the new schools or abroad could really use this modern Chinese fluently, which completely undercut the movement's original democratic goals. Instead of empowering people, this European and Japanese influence vernacular was worlds apart from what everyday folks actually spoke. So war was meant to break down old class barriers, ended up creating new ones, reflecting the intellectual elite's own will to power. This chapter focuses on an alternative, what I call the vernacular, the rural vernacular. And groups like James Yen's mass education movement approached the problem differently. And they got creative with modern media, things like slideshows, illustrated primers, and spoken drama. And Yan's goal was to make substantial connections between rural education and the everyday lives of peasants. And these practices offered a critical response to the May 4th vernacular movement, imagining new ways of communicating with and engaging rural communities. And by doing so, they created new forms of cultural production aimed at transforming rural life from the ground up.
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Jing Ni
Yeah, I was really struck by the description of those letter slides, the primaries and rural theater performances. And honestly, I found myself wishing there were more images of this in the book. And so what made these media forms so effective in transforming the public life in the Din County? And how did they help bridge the gap between the elite reformist ideals and the everyday present realities?
- [21:42]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Okay, you know, James Yan's writings make it clear that he and his colleagues were deeply aware of the gap between elite reformist ideals and the everyday realities of peasant life. So closing that gap became their central mission. To do this, they used tools like lantern slides, gestrated primers and spoken drama to create what I called a space of attraction and empathy, a space where modern rural life could be imagined and performed. So these multimedia practices turn participation in public and national life into something exciting and engaging and actively building communities of peasant citizens. Through these efforts, they develop what I call Aurora Vernacular, a dynamic collection of images, stories, and concepts that allowed peasants to collaboratively construct the modern understandings of their world. So this wasn't just about education. It was about creating a shared cultural language for reinterpreting rural life in the context of modernity.
- [23:01]
Jing Ni
Great. Moving to chapter three, you shift from the reformist experiments to the wartime period. And let's start with Edgar Snow. And you show how his book Red Star Over China actively constructed Yan' an as a revolutionary center. So what made his sentimental documentary expression so influential both within China and internationally at that time?
- [23:29]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Certainly, Yan' an wasn't just some remote town in northwestern China, but it operated on multiple levels as a local hub, a national symbol, and even an international note. And it epitomized a Chinese revolution that was deeply connected to global movements and ideas. Take August Snow, for example. Trained at Columbia Schools Journalism in 1927, he mastered the techniques of documentary expression, which defined radical journalism in the 1930s and 1940s. And his red Star Over China is a prime example of the documentary expression genre of that era. So writing that aimed to capture the experience of ordinary people, often in their own voices, while balancing factual accuracy with the texture of lived experience. This documentary approach was deeply democratic in nature. It prioritized the subjective authenticity over the illusion of objectivity, and brought attention to the invisible, like the poor, the damaged, and the ordinary, and operated through what Williams thought called the primacy of feeling, where emotion carried as much weight as the facts. And this helps explain Snow's enormous impact by blending credibility with powerful emotional resonance. And he didn't just document the revolution. He made his readers feel its heartbeat. And his work fundamentally shaped how the world saw modern China and its revolutionary transformation.
- [25:30]
Jing Ni
Yes, thank you for the answer. And looking at another aspect of this chapter, you highlight a fascinating paradox. While Yan' an was dedicated to the historical progress, life there run on agrarian rhythms. So how did this tension between the linear modern time and the local cyclical time shaped the revolutionary experience on the ground?
- [25:54]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Sure, I'm very glad you pointed out this paradox. Yet the core paradox of Yan' an's revolutionary project was its dual relationship with time. So, just as you mentioned, on the one hand, it pointed toward a utopian communist future, and on the other, it was grounded in the slow, natural rhythms of agricultural life. So this stands in contrast to Benedict Anderson's idea of imagined communities, where nations are unified through synchronized, empty, homogeneous time. And Yan' didn't rely on precise temporal coordination to build cohesion. Instead, it created unity through revolutionary identity and a shared discourse. So while the administrative unit technically followed the national calendar, this wasn't Anderson's version of a community of simultaneity. What Yan did instead was replace the time discipline of capitalist cities with revolutionary discipline as its central organizing force. In urban centers, clocks regulate social coordination through external synchronization. But in Yan', an, revolutionary discipline worked differently. It was about cultivating internal self restraint, shaping personal behavior from within, and enforcing external social compulsion, ensuring collective adherence to revolutionary goals. And this shift allowed Yan' an to embody a completely different relationship to time and social order.
- [27:51]
Jing Ni
Yeah, that's a brilliant analysis. So, moving to the everyday, you discussed how the writers like Chen Xiazhao and Dingling brought attention to the mundane details like the lectures, the wedding or gossip Yin, which challenged the grand narrative of. Of heroic revolution. So how do these perspectives, especially from women, complicate our understanding of Yan?
- [28:16]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Okay, here is what's so interesting. And you see, this is another juxtaposition I like to make. So while I guess null delivered these bold, sweeping narratives and full of masculine objectivity and grand statements about the unstoppable force of revolution. And Chen Xuezhao's writing feels completely different, and her work carries a distinctly feminine touch and operates on an entirely different wavelength. So her writing feels intimate, like it's meant for a small circle of friends. And she combined a humble personal tone with razor sharp observations of daily life and that chatty style she mentioned. So here's why it's so important. So the ordinary moments she captures aren't just the background filter. They act like little cracks in the window, giving us a way to re examine the grand narratives of revolution. So through her understated everyday lens, we get a fresh and deeply human perspective on what those sweeping historical changes actually look like and felt like.
- [29:42]
Jing Ni
Yeah, so on a related note. And patience emerges as a surprising form of revolutionary virtue in this chapter. So how does the patience operate as both an emotional discipline and a political technique in the Yan' an narratives you examined?
- [30:00]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Yeah, patience is a key word I like to emphasize in this chapter. So we've always thought of revolution as this incredibly emotional collective experience full of fiery passion and personal zeal. But in this chapter, I want to flip that perspective, and I argue that in places Like Yan', patience actually emerged as a revolutionary passion in its own right. So why patience? Because revolutionaries were constantly running up against the harsh realities of their daily lives, such as severe material shortages, endless interpersonal conflicts, and the sheer grant of staying politically committed. So in that context, patience became more than just a way to cope. It turned into both a survival strategy and a psychological tool. It helped revolutionaries bridge the huge gaps between their heroic ideals and the day to day drudgery, between their cosmopolitan dreams and the rural reality they were living in. And I focus on two key forms of revolutionary patience. So the first is patience as professional competence, staying calm, serious, focused, and fully immersed in the work. And second, patience as a social skill, navigating the complexities of relationships and dealing with life's inevitable messiness. And in both cases, patience wasn't just passive, it was active, deliberate, and essential for keeping the revolution alive.
- [31:51]
Jing Ni
Yes, and I think this chapter focus on everyday life sets stage for the chapter four and where love, law, and labor come together in the Yang' an culture. And in this chapter you show how stories like the Marriage of Little R He, written by Zhang shu Li in 1943, link romance to the new marriage law. So how did this love and law conjunction reimagine rural life? And what does it tell us about how the CCP envisioned modern citizenship at the time? And interestingly, you also relate this story to Alan Cheng's two novellas, Love in the Fallen City and the golden can, published in the same year. Can you talk more about this comparison?
- [32:38]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Sure. Zhao Shu Li's 1943 story demonstrates the powerful role of language in driving social change and shaping a new political and social order. The use of fat law by the rural lovers in the story foreshadow the introduction of the marriage law during the early years of the prc. In this sense, Zhao's story circulated in the border regions as a kind of guidebook, showing individuals how to use the law to assert their right to choose a marriage partner. The story also highlights the complex interplay between law and sentiment, illustrating how a new rural life world emerged as part of the revolutionary culture. And ailing. Zhang and Zhao Shuli represent two very different kinds of writers, one rooted in urban Brazil sensibilities, the other in grassroots revolutionary ideals. And comparing or just opposing them is bound to stir debate. What's interesting, though, is that both authors actually explore similar freedom in choosing a marriage partner, parental intervention, and the influence of law. This isn't just a straightforward contrast between city and the countryside. Instead, it highlights how revolutionary literature worked in practice. It aimed to reshape social norms and inspire social change, ultimately establishing its political legitimacy.
- [34:28]
Jing Ni
And additionally, in this chapter, you also show how the romantic love was tied to labor, especially through the characters like Liu Qiang and Zhao Zhu. So why was this love and labor pairing so important for the young cultural imaginary?
- [34:44]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Yeah, the pairing of love and labor here strongly recalls the traditional motif of mantu lin woman weaving, which symbolizes this idealized harmony between a domestic life and the state. But in a revolutionary context, this ancient ideal takes on radically new meanings socially, politically and aesthetically. And what's fascinating is how the killing man and the weaving woman archetype gets completely reimagined in the revolutionary context. First, it shifts from being a private, self contained productive units to a kind of political energy converter. And second, it channels the intimate affections of peasants into productivity that directly fills state power. And third, and it transforms self interest into this revolutionary idea of the public good, creating a collective consciousness. Doris Summers concept of national romance is really helpful here, and she talks about how these kinds of stories use what she calls an erotics of politics. Essentially, they naturalize romantic bonds to legitimize the idea of the nation as a family. In this case, love and labor are mobilized to serve the revolutionary project, blending the personal and the political in powerful ways.
- [36:31]
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- [37:31]
Jing Ni
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- [38:47]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Sure, these local cultural productions show how peasants new political voice burst onto the scene as public speech, with gossip becoming a powerful tool to mobilize local networks. Normally we think of gossip as something that happens in the background, right? Political scientist James Scott even described it as part of a hidden transcript, a kind of quiet resistance that avoids direct confrontation. But here's the tricky parts. Can gossip actually function as public discourse for marginalized groups? That's complicated because gossip usually works best in private circles among friends, not out in the open with strangers. And this is why revolutionary fiction's move to elevate gossip into public trials is so striking. It takes those private whispers and transforms them into tools of public political action. Suddenly, gossip becomes a weapon on the revolutionary stage. But here is the catch. Those so called democratic gatherings in fiction often gloss over the darker realities of land reform. They live out the mob violence and the brutal public spectacles that were often parts of the process. So while gossip gets reimagined as a tool for justice, the messy violent truth of how it played out on the ground is conveniently airbrushed away.
- [40:34]
Jing Ni
Yeah, you describe how a real legal case turned into folk storytelling, the village opera, and eventually a film. So what does this multimedia evolution from the courtroom to courtyard to cinema review about how the revolutionary memory was made to last?
- [40:56]
Dr. Yu Zhang
This chapter looks at how a single news story moved across different media. Short stories, official newspapers, woodblock prints, local opera, and even rural storytelling. And how this process reflects A kind of multimedia governance. It explores how these cultural productions turn everyday village life in the Baozhou region into culturally encoded narratives. What I'm really interested in is how revolutionary literature managed to take the recent, the fleeting, and even the outdated and transform them into seeming into something legendary, memorable and lasting. So this process actually parallels August Snow's approach in his reportage, where he tried to turn what he called perishable news into durable history. It's all about taking the ephemeral and making it endure, giving it a kind of timeless revolutionary significance.
- [42:05]
Jing Ni
Right, and now let's move into the native 50s and early 1960s. So when the big story became the rural industrialization. So you open chapter five with Mao returning to his hometown and a broader push for the young, urban, educated people to go back to their villages. So what made this idea of homecoming so emotionally and politically powerful at the time?
- [42:34]
Dr. Yu Zhang
During this time, the idea of homecoming wasn't just a personal or nostalgic act. It became a deliberate political strategy. So urban educated youth were urged to return to their rural roots. And this call to action set the stage for what would later become the up to the mountains, down to the villages movement. And this push was tied to several key factors. For example, urban overpopulation and unemployment, the need for intensified ideological education, and the state's efforts at redistributing labor. And what's fascinating is how the party took a lyrical tone, a trope that had existed for centuries traditionally associated with virtual's poetic nostalgia, and turned it into a political tool. So what used to be a personal reflection on returning home was reimagined as a kind of revolutionary duty. It became a state crafted ascetic summons, revolutionizing the idea of going back to the countryside as part of the collective revolutionary mission.
- [43:56]
Jing Ni
And one of the. One of my favorite parts of this chapter is how you describe the irrigation scenes in the film the Young People in Our village, produced in 1959. And the project is hard work, but it feels like camp for the young people. There is singing, joking, dancing, and even flirting in the field. So why do you think the filmmakers choose to frame labor this way?
- [44:22]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Sure. You know what really intrigues me about Maoist cinema is its ability to transform something as ordinary as collective labor into a vibrant, almost electrifying experience. It's a kind of what I would like to call effective mobilization, where people's emotions and energies are channeled to power. Socialist construction. A key part of this is how socialism, during an era of scarcity put a spotlight on human creativity. So when material resources were Limited. These films celebrate human inventiveness as the real engine of progress. So this chapter takes a fresh approach by looking at how play operates in cinematic depictions of socialist rural industrialization. In these films, young people arrived at industrial sites that are imagined as playgrounds. And they are not just laborers. They are participant players in these transformed spaces. And what's striking is that these foams doesn't document the realities of industrial work. Instead, they curate an elevated and almost magical aesthetic experience. Industrial construction becomes this extraordinary realm of vendor, completely detached from the drudgery of everyday life. And its factory spaces are depicted as liminal zones, places where labor merges into liberating play. And the films create a vision of industrialization that not just about hard work, but about authentic freedom, boundless energy, creative tension, and pure joy. So the result is a portrayal of socialist industrialization as something miraculous, exhilarating, and deeply inspired, inspiring. Of course, such an effect mainly served the mobilizing goal of the Party.
- [46:49]
Jing Ni
Yeah, and also, I was really intrigued by the way you describe the things where the love and technology are set by side, like a couple exchange glances while the camera pans to a newly built turbine. So while we're saying important to link the romance to rural industrialization, this analysis.
- [47:12]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Expands beyond rural industrialization to examine the complex interplay between romantic love and collective labor. So while it's often assumed that romantic love was suppressed during the Maoist era, this is only partially true. So in fact, during the PRC's first 17 years, fiction and film revealed that private affections were not erased, but were instead carefully reoriented and channeled. So romantic expressions were largely confined to workspaces like factories and fields. Relationships had to be justified in terms of their contribution to socialist production, and intimacy was only considered legitimate when it directly supported labor productivity. So this dynamic created a unique socialist love labor dialectic. Romance didn't vanish. It was reimagined as a motivational force of turning personal relationships into a kind of collective energy. So love was no longer just a private emotion, it became a tool for revolutionary construction, seamlessly blending the personal with the political.
- [48:44]
Jing Ni
Yeah. So you end the chapter with a powerful comparison between the canal building optimism of the film, the Young People in youn Village, and the quiet exhaustion of Oldwell, the film made by wu Tianmin in 1986. So that shift from boundless youthful energy to the bodily fatigue, from conquering nature to being overwhelmed by it feels like a major ideological turning point. So what do you think this thematic contrast reveals about the changing attitudes toward labor, modernity, and human Agency in post Mao China.
- [49:23]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Yes, this ideological shift reflects fundamentally different views of human potential across historical periods. And during the Maoist era, people were seen as almost limitless beings, unstoppable forces destined to conquer nature. So the popular idiom ren ding sheng tian man must conquer nature perfectly encaptured his mindset, portraying humans as tireless machines capable of endless labor. But things changed in the early post Mao period. For the first time, there was official recognition that humans have limits, both physical and psychological. So fatigue, which had been brushed aside under the revolutionary utopian vision, was now socially acknowledged and legitimized. So it marked a shift from seeing people as boundless workers to understanding them as individuals with real needs and limitations.
- [50:33]
Jing Ni
Your final chapter takes us on board the trains and the trucks that carry the young people out of China's cities and into the frontier. And in films like the nurse's diary in 1956, we see powerful scenes of young people standing on the trains, full of joy and purpose. And when watching this film and reading this chapter, I couldn't help but think of the sharp contrast with many young people in China today. They life like Tao Ping and even call themselves red people. So often they express the feelings of emptiness and meaningless. And so why was the railway travel such a central image in the socialist the cinema? And what emotional work was it doing?
- [51:24]
Dr. Yu Zhang
In the 1950s and early 1960s, a wave of films showcased modern transportation, like trains and trucks carrying idealistic young people from cities, especially Shanghai, to remote areas to take part in socialist industrialization. And this was all part of the state's broader efforts at mobilization and social engineering. And for these urban use, heading to underdeveloped regions was framed as an adventurous journey. They saw themselves as pioneers, transforming both the natural environment and and the nation's landscape by driving industrial progress and speeding up historical change. What stands out in these films is the focus on two key railway travel and the construction site. So these two spaces are deeply connected in the larger narrative of industrialization. The railway represents the journey, while the construction site is the destination, the ultimate goal of this mobilization effort. Together they symbolize the spirits of progress and the state's vision for reshaping the.
- [52:43]
Jing Ni
Future and moving from trains to the construction sites. You describe this not just as workspaces, but as emotional, even intimate landscapes. And in Nurses Diary, for example, the heroine gives an ejection to a worker from the top of a crane. So how do such spaces stage the blending of technical labor and emotional investment?
- [53:09]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Sure, in Maoist era fiction and film, construction sites took on A dual role. They were both real workplaces and powerful symbols. So the era's core ethos of building a new world found its most tangible expression in these spaces. In many films, construction sites were portrayed as vast, remote and almost otherworldly landscapes. They were grand, yet empathy, with no acknowledgment of specific locations or the people who originally lived there. Instead, these sites became abstract stages for the revolutionary project, stripped of local context to emphasize their symbolic importance in reshaping the future.
- [53:57]
Jing Ni
Yeah, and also in this chapter, you ended with a really striking contrast in how the twins go from symbols of motion and optimism in the Mao era to the objects of nostalgia or alienation in the post Mao works, like Lu Xinhua's short story the scar, written in 1978, and Hobin Liu's film the Voice of the village, produced in 1983, or the documentary along the Railway in 2000. So what do you think this shift tells us about the changing national sentiment and memory?
- [54:36]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Sure, the post Mao era witnessed the transition from taking the train to taking a look at the train. So what this shape represents is a transformation in how modernity is perceived from something participatory and embodied to something more distanced and observed. So the films of 1950s and 1960s celebrated the nation's populace identity and emphasizing the joy of physical engagement with revolution, mobilization, industrialization and historical progress, and symbolized by taking the train. So in contrast, the films of the 1980s began to focus on the act of gazing and the train itself as an object of desire, framing modernity as something external and material to be admired rather than collectively experienced. And the difference between 1978 and 2000 is also massive. So this shift is even more pronounced in the 2000 documentary along the Railway. And here the camera abandons the grandeur of industrial landmarks and monumental achievements often celebrated in Maoist films. Instead, it zooms in on the lives of the homeless, those living on the margins of society. So the viewers focus is drawn away from industrial triumphs towards small overlooked objects along the railway. Ruins, dust and the fragile existence of the disadvantaged. And this shift from monumentalism to marginality marks a profound change in how stories, modernity and progress are told.
- [56:30]
Jing Ni
Thank you so much, Dr. Zhang, for this rich and thought provoking conversation. And your book gives us not only history, but also a new way to think about the rural as a modern cultural and political vision. I know many listeners, myself included, will find it very useful for both research and teaching. And actually I used one of your chapters in my courses last year. So before we wrap up. Could you briefly share what you are working on now?
- [57:03]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Oh, sure. I'm now working on a new book project tentatively titled Wearing the A Sentimental Media History of the Telephone in China explores the cultural and emotional dimensions of telephone use in Chinese history. So this book adopts an interdisciplinary approach that draws on cultural studies, effects of history and media technology studies. And it seeks to build a media history of the telephone in China with a focus on what I call telephonic sentiments. You know, I think I'm just trying to write a prehistory to today's mobile phone. And thank you very much, Jing, for giving me this opportunity to reflect on my my first book. And yeah, and I look forward to another opportunity so we can talk about your project.
- [58:14]
Jing Ni
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Your new project sounds great and I will be looking forward to your next book and hopefully we can have your back when it's out. And once again, today's book is going to the countryside. From University of Michigan Press, I'm Jing Ni and you have been listening to the New Books Network. Thanks for joining us and until next time, thank you.
- [58:37]
Dr. Yu Zhang
Jing.
- [58:50]
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Dr. Yu Zhang
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