Red Nostalgia in China: (Re)Writing Socialist History in Zhiqing (Educated Youth) Literature and Cinema

Abstract

Nostalgia, the longing for the lost home and a yearning for a different time,1 is afrequently-visited motif of literature and cinema in China since the 1980s. Red nostalgia, specifically, refers to the commemoration of the socialist times or “Red China” (1950s-1970s) in the postsocialist era. My dissertation plans to examine the theme of red nostalgia in postsocialist China through the literature and films of educated youths (zhishi qingnian 知识青 年, or “zhiqing” for short). Precisely, I attempt to unravel the ways that red nostalgia is formed through the articulation of memory, and how such processes interplay with the sociocultural changes that took place in China during the last three decades. To this end, the dissertation will mainly address the following questions: how the memories of the past are (re)configured and how red nostalgia is informed in such context; how the representation of memories interacts with human agency and body; how (red) nostalgia questions the past and affects the ways that future is envisioned; how red nostalgia is gendered in the narratives of female educated youths, and how the gendered language of red nostalgia suggests a new reading of life and identity of women. Studying red nostalgia in zhiqing literature is not to argue that all zhiqing literature has nostalgic sentiments; rather, the formation of nostalgia is a less-unified but continuous and dynamic practice. The process and implication of red nostalgia represented in zhiqing literature and films is the focus of this dissertation.