Writing Beijing: Urban Spaces and Cultural Imaginations in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Films

Abstract

This dissertation investigates some literary configurations of Beijing through contemporary Chinese literature and films. These configurations are built upon three specific urban spaces (military compound, siheyuan and some modern constructions) by three significant literary groups. The literary groups discussed in this work are Dayuan wenhua quan (Compound Cultural Group), Dierdai jingweier zuojia (Second-generation Beijing Flavor Writers), and Beipiao diliudai dianyingren (Beijing Floater Sixth-generation Filmmakers).This study adopts a particular methodology. Inspired by Henri Levebvre, it establishes a framework which connecting urban spaces (representations of space), writers and literary productions (representational space). It examines what these urban spaces mean to Chinese writers and filmmakers and how these people thus adopt them to configure particular urban images of Beijing. It argues that these different configurations are actually the projections of those writers and filmmakers' own cultural imaginations, emotional catharsis, and manifest their own cultural positions. "Compound Cultural Group" interprets Beijing as "compound Beijing," which represents revolutionary culture in communist China. Their nostalgia toward the compound in the Cultural Revolution indicates the decline of the once ruling social group. As for "Second-generation Beijing Flavor Writers", Beijing is a traditional and a masculine city. In their novels, siheyuan is considered as the embodiment of Chinese tradition and Beijing girl is portrayed as masculine women. This imagination fulfills their own cultural appeal to reconstruct traditional values in the "Cultural Fever" in the 1980s. In the eyes of "Beijing Floater Sixth-generation filmmakers," Beijing is a cosmopolitan metropolis. In their films, this globalized modern city is an urban dream for migrants.