3
Knowing China

From inside and out

The rapid development of television in China during the last decade provokes a wide range of fascinating and important research questions. Unfortunately, however, empirical and critical research in the Chinese social sciences, especially in communication, remains underdeveloped. The political atmosphere, of course, also limits the range of questions that can be asked. Still, many Chinese scholars are fighting to find support for research projects and foreign scholars continue to be attracted to the intriguing country. In this chapter I will discuss China's social and cultural research traditions and practices, including investigations of the television audience, work that is undertaken mainly by personnel inside the television institutions. I will also describe how I researched China in order to write this book.

Social and Cultural Research in China

Two basic types of social and cultural research are done in China: that which is undertaken by Chinese about their own society, and work that is done by foreigners designed primarily to inform agencies and publics outside the People's Republic. China has never mounted research efforts on social, cultural, and communication issues the way Western nations have. But China has been, and surely always will be, an intoxicating subject for analysis by foreigners. The Chinese government, therefore, has had to deal with an unending flow of non-Chinese-speaking foreign researchers over the years (including me) who stand to advance their own causes while the payoff for the Chinese is not always clear. Imagine what this would be like in reverse: scores of Chinese researchers tramping through America's or England's cities and villages asking questions and taking pictures.

China's social and cultural research history

Foreign researchers headed East long before the birth of socialist China and it was mainly from this infusion of Western ideas that Chinese social and cultural research developed. The very concept of sociology was introduced to China shortly after the turn of the century, and beginning in the 1930s many European and American sociologists and anthropologists conducted research there. This contact promoted the adoption by Chinese scholars of new Western philosophies of (social) science, theories, and research methodologies that were brought to the country by their foreign mentors (Guldin, 1987: 761; see also Pasternak, 1983).

But Western-influenced social science did not have much time to develop after its introduction in China as the Japanese invasion and the communist revolution ensued shortly thereafter. After 1949, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist social theory and Soviet-style socialist intellectualism replaced the more scientific perspective that had been encouraged in China by American, British, and most European scholars. The 'bourgeois thought' that was said to permeate Western research had to be expunged. The social sciences, including the fields of sociology, anthropology, and linguistics, were declared 'useless' (Guldin, 1987: 763). The Chinese believed that there was no need to study social and cultural processes in a system where the political, economic, and ideological agenda is fully managed. This was the Chinese version of Marxist-Leninist determinism: ways of thinking and characteristic modes of everyday life should be thoroughly predictable since the state, acting through the unchallengeable authority of the Communist Party, and in the name of the people, decides what citizens should know and do. Social behavior, then, was thought to be produced by and reflective of state ideology. Beyond this, government leaders believed that the people would cooperate with the policy dictates anyway since it would be in their collective best interest to do so. After all, the communists had won the civil war with popular support and the people were anxious to shed the vestiges of feudalism that many of them believed had been preserved in the nationalist era.

Consistent with emerging ideological visions and national priorities after 1949, colleges and universities were reorganized to exclude departments of sociology, anthropology, and political science. Except for a brief moment during the Hundred Flowers campaign of the mid 1950s, social scientists were not heard from during the early years of socialist China's history. The Cultural Revolution (1965-75) threw intellectual life in China into total disarray. Many universities and research institutes were closed, professors were harassed and frequently sent to work in the countryside, policies for admitting students to higher education reflected political and personal favoritism over academic achievement, research stopped, subscriptions to foreign publications were cancelled, teachers and intellectual life in general were scorned. All academic disciplines suffered immeasurably during this time.¹

A gradual reconstruction of scholarship in China took place after the Cultural Revolution. An atmosphere developed in which scholarly work, including the eventual redevelopment of social science education and research, could take place. The first new department of sociology opened at Fudan University in Shanghai in 1979. Other departments within the social sciences began to operate throughout China in the following few years.

Social and cultural research in China today

In their edited volume The Social Sciences and Fieldwork in China, Anne F. Thurston and Burton Pasternak (1983) explain in careful detail the most important thing to know about research undertaken by the Chinese during the current period: it must promote the objectives of the four modernizations with a clear emphasis on the practical. Above all else scholarship must serve the requirements of the state. Researchers must adhere to the familiar four cardinal principles: Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong thought; a commitment to socialism; acceptance of the dictatorship of the prolet ariat; and acceptance of leadership of the Communist Party. Furthermore, research in China is part of the national planning process. Social research of all types must be relevant to policy matters.

Just as China looks outside its borders for technological expertise to help fulfill the plan for national modernization, it now again relies on foreign models for development of research in the social sciences. This reliance has produced certain problems. For example, the use of Western sociological theory sometimes has led to the formation of culturally-inappropriate concepts and categories in family, marriage, and fertility research (Hareven, 1987) and in recent collaborative mass communication research as well. Some Chinese scholars now are trying to adapt foreign theories and research methodologies to better fit Chinese culture. In much the same way that the country promotes 'Chinese style socialism,' there is a desire to develop 'Chinese style social research.'

Within the demands of the prescribed pragmatism in the era of technological modernization, social research has become more 'objective' — scientific and empirical. This development contrasts sharply with traditional Chinese intellectualism and 'ways of knowing' that, before the birth of the socialist nation, were mainly intuitive, philosophical, literary, poetic, and metaphorical in nature, and after 1949 were in strict accord with the political mandates of state socialism.

In principle at least, the new attitude toward social research is still consistent with state policy. A famous contemporary slogan in China, 'seek the truth from facts,' puts to a test the blind following of Marxist—Leninist—Maoist approaches to research, though the Spirit of socialist dogma still guides the basic purposes research is to serve. For example, while public opinion polls and other social research influence policymaking now for the first time in China, some issues and findings cannot be considered or made public. As a Chinese professor told me: 'The authorities don't like to hear that there is more than one voice in China. We are supposed to be unified.' Public opinion polls, of course, presume a multiplicity of voices. So, some recent studies of mass media habits and opinions, which do not reflect favorably on the media system or on political leaders, cannot be published outside the internal channels. A proposal to study perceptions held by television viewers of the media images of China's top political leaders was nixed, according to the would-be investigator, because the government feared what the results might reveal. The 1989 turmoil will also dampen the Chinese research agenda for years, further limiting insights that could be produced by systematic social analysis. Still, the fact that any empirical research that problematizes social behavior is under-taken now in China is important.

The new enthusiasm by Chinese scholars for doing research on social and cultural issues is also tempered by lack of access to foreign-language books and journals for 'catching up' theoretically and methodologically.² Not enough researchers are being trained. China's severe economic situation affects the academic community greatly. There simply is not enough money available for educational purposes. Nonetheless, some new publications are emerging in the country for reporting scholarly research and graduate training in the social sciences continues to expand, albeit slowly.

A quantitative bias

Thoroughly consistent with the goals of modernization, which so ardently promote technology and science, academic research of all types undertaken now in China, including social and cultural investigations, is mainly quantitative. The work depends on collection of large amounts of data, managing the data via computer operations, and conducting statistical tests as the primary analytical strategy. The methodological range employed so far is narrow:

This bias toward quantitative science is also apparent in the training of young Chinese researchers. The emphasis within curricula of Chinese universities is on quantitative research techniques and graduate students who leave the country typically matriculate at schools that provide this kind of methodological training.³ Ironically, the emphasis on survey and experimental research in sociology, communication, and mass communication is far less in vogue in the West now than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. But for the modernizing Chinese, quantitative research remains very attractive and useful. There is a profound political consideration as well. Many Chinese scholars believe that quantitative research liberates them and their work from the qualitative data-gathering tradition of the Chinese Communist Party; specifically, party meetings and discussions.

Chinese Mass Communication Research

Very little theoretically-informed empirical or critical research has been conducted on audience motivations for contact with television, the interpretations and uses that are made of TV, the influence of viewing contexts, or the medium's social and cultural impact. Instead, analyses of mass communication discuss how effectively the media carry out party policy. Other scholarly writing on television in China focuses on the aesthetics and production values of the medium.

There is an image problem too. Social and cultural research in general does not have the same status in China's academic world as does research in the physical sciences. And, just as communication is often thought to be a 'softer' discipline than the more established fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology in the United States and other Western countries, there is less support for it in China too. In fact, communication is rarely recognized as a separate discipline in China. Most theoretical media audience research is subsumed within large quantitative research programs that are undertaken by academies and institutes of social science or by departments of related disciplines. Mass communication is considered to be more a practical than a theoretical discipline, and so the responsibility for conducting the vast majority of research on television falls primarily on the shoulders of professionals, not scholars.

Applied television research

Every programming or research executive with whom I have spoken in China indicates that there is a growing interdependence between administrative audience research and program decision-making. What this means, above all else, is that audience 'needs,' interests, and desires are slowly being taken into account. Decisions to add, cancel, expand, reduce, combine, reschedule, and change the content of shows have all resulted from recent audience research. And in the minds of the programmers, audience requirements often compete with policy requirements. The implications of this conflict should be abundantly clear.

A national meeting of television executives in 1987 led to the decision to employ a single research organization to determine audience likes and dislikes in China, data which are made available to CCTV and to the directors of all the regional stations. Research departments in the large broadcast organizations produce periodic written summaries of their findings for use by network and station executives, one variety of which I discuss below. In general, research information is being shared now between the national network and the province stations far more than ever before.

Television program producers in China won't lose their jobs if the ratings slip a point or two, but there is still much interest at the stations in knowing how well the programs are received by the audience — a kind of natural competition that broadcasters all over the world experience. The national network and the regional stations in the urban centers all have research departments that are charged with the responsibility to ascertain the size and composition of the audience for various programs. Researchers at the stations also solicit criticism of programming from the audience and analyze comments that are mailed spontaneously to the stations — a research approach I discuss below.

5 Personal letters sent to CCTV are the main form of audience research.

Types of audience data

Despite the desire to develop quantitative research capabilities, so far the techniques most often used by the television institutions to analyze their audiences are qualitative. Except for the quantitative asssessments of audience size and demographics, the most common research methods used by the broadcasters are the following techniques:

Letters

Audience members send letters by the thousands to the network and to the stations. At least 90 percent of the letters are sent spontaneously; the others are solicited. Letters are the main source of audience response and feedback. While the letters may not statistically represent audience opinion, researchers have found them to be good general indicators of the popularity and utility of television programming. From a standpoint of cost efficiency, a key issue, audience letters are extremely useful as a research method. CCTV receives about 10,000 letters each month. Regional stations in Shanghai and Guangzhou receive between 500 and 1,000 per month. More letters are sent in the winter than in other seasons, certain programs stir up more responses than others, on-air requests for audience input invariably produce an increase in letter writing, and holiday periods —especially the Chinese New Year — stimulate the most written feedback about programming.

Letters are scanned for critical themes (most are complaints of some sort) which are noted either for fresh ideas or recurring criticisms. Statistics on the frequencies of themes present in the letters are sometimes compiled. More commonly, however, tendencies in the letters, or selected letters in their entirety, are published in paperback books, circulated to various departments in the broadcast organizations, and later discussed in meetings. At CCTV a volume that contains audience letters is published every month. Partly because of difficulties posed by the written Chinese language, no attempt has yet been made to use computers directly to analyze the letters despite their importance as a source of information about the television audience.

Special samples

Research teams at broadcast stations in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou all told me that they have specially-recruited groups of audience members that are regularly consulted and relied upon heavily for information and insights. Viewers in these groups are considered to be especially well qualified to evaluate television programming. These special viewers either write letters to the stations when requested to do so or meet with research authorities in groups to discuss current and planned shows. In Shanghai they even have a name for these consultants — 'TV Friends.'

In Guangzhou a group of television enthusiasts are counted on by researchers at the province station to collect local information about the viewing preferences and habits of members of their neighborhood or work groups which they then pass along to the station authorities. Other self-appointed television experts in cities all over China methodically gather unsolicited data about their neighbors' viewing habits and opinions and regularly send these reports to CCTV and to the regional and city stations. This input is not ignored.

Focus groups

Another qualitative audience research technique used by broadcasters is the focus group. These ensembles are sometimes composed of members of the special samples mentioned above; at other times they are developed according to the requirements of the topic. At the Guangdong Province station, for instance, programmers contemplated changing the scheduling and format of the news programs. From focus group research they found that viewers liked the news very much, but they were 'bored when it went on too long.' As a result, the station inserted a five-minute news brief into the original news time slot, and moved the longer newscast back 90 minutes, to 9 p.m. Then, a series of group meetings was held to determine how the audience responded to the change. Network researchers also conduct informal discussions with viewers. These meetings are held in family homes, collectives, factories, and other work units. No attempt is made in the focus group research to select individual members randomly, although at the network level, at least, participants in focus groups are recruited in neighborhoods or work units that are thought to represent different segments of Chinese society.

According to Chinese television researchers, some people will not or cannot express themselves well during group interviews because they are nervous or concerned about their family background and reputation. So, in order to insure that the focus group sessions are productive, researchers often rely on some agency — typically the local/neighborhood government — to supply willing, opinionated discussants.

Meetings with experts

By far the most common way that Chinese broadcasters make program ming decisions is by discussions with experts. Depending on the current issues, researchers, scholars, or technical specialists are summoned. At CCTV, for instance, a psychologist lectured network officials on how to best exploit Chinese traditions in the production of programs for New Year's Eve — a time when nearly all of China watches television — in order to maximize audience satisfaction. Educational psychologists are asked to help determine the level at which instructional programs and children's shows should be pitched — who will watch the programs and how can viewers best be taught? Books or summary reports are published about the deliberations. And, at the time of this writing, CCTV was also organizing its first international conference on television' audience research, where foreign academics were to be invited to Beijing in order to discuss television theory and research methodology. If it happens, this will be the first time China has ever reached outside its borders to interact in such a formal way with the world academic community in the field of communication.

Foreigners Study China

The Open Door policy made it possible for foreigners to study China in the 1980s much more easily than before. Through invitations by the Chinese government, often facilitated by the Fulbright Council for the International Exchange of Scholars in the United States and by similar institutions in many other countries, Westerners have again entered China to conduct research, often in collaboration with Chinese scholars, though, like everything else, these relationships have become less secure in the wake of June 4th, 1989. Before 1980, Western scholars had to study Chinese society from a distance. The most logical location for doing so is Hong Kong. The work of two American sociologists who took this approach is particularly noteworthy.

Martin King Whyte and William Parish established a research center in Hong Kong in the 1970s where they interviewed Chinese immigrants to the British island colony. Transcripts produced by these lengthy interview sessions formed data sets that led to publication of two very important volumes about post-1949 China. Their principal population of interest, the rural dwellers, were subjects of the first book, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Parish and Whyte, 1978). China's city population was analyzed in the subsequent volume, Urban Life in Contemporary China (Whyte and Parish, 1984).

In the second book, which is of greatest relevance to us here, Whyte and Parish examined the urban political economy, family behavior, and quality of life issues as reported to them by their immigrant informants. Their analyses were developed from 'a series of intensive, semi-structured interviews over two years with 133 individuals who had formerly been residents of 50 different cities, large and small, scattered around China' (Whyte and Parish, 1984: 4-5). The authors didn't ask people directly about their own families, but about their neighbors and others they knew in their immediate environment. The authors also relied on secondary sources such as Chinese mass media, reports from visitors to the country, and literature about Chinese society. Comments taken from the interview transcripts were transformed into 'variables' so that statistical tests could be performed.

Whyte and Parish have been very reflective on the limitations of doing research on China without actually going there. Among the criticisms they have raised are sampling, which was not representative in any sense and depended on informal friendship networks to recruit interviewees.⁴ Most of the refugees were from Guangdong Province near Hong Kong. More males than females were interviewed and respondents were younger and better educated than the average for the Chinese population. Even more troubling is that all the respondents had chosen to leave China, and were, therefore, a very biased group. Their 'self-selecting' into Hong Kong was compounded by the way the sampling was done in Hong Kong.⁵

It is not easy to say how much these difficulties misinformed the general conclusions that Whyte and Parish draw, and as Martin Whyte has argued elsewhere (Whyte, 1983) every indirect source of information about life in China is biased in one way or another. Despite all the problems of the Hong Kong method, the work of Whyte and Parish is unquestionably useful. I t represents the most comprehensive social analysis ever done on Chinese society, though the work now has certainly become dated. Nonetheless, I was often impressed with the correspondence between the descriptions made in their book and the conditions of life that we observed first hand in China. But to research this book I wanted to enter more ethnographically into everyday life in China and to focus specifically on television's roles in culture and politics. And while most foreign researchers dwell on developments in rural China, I wanted to study the urban situation ation which is where the bulk of the changes are taking place in Chinese society today. Furthermore, I did not want the American government, the Chinese government, or any other agency to control the research agenda.

The Research Project

These were voices of the people in 1986. Chinese citizens were more than willing to talk to us about television — its impact on them as individuals, as families, and as members of the world's most populous nation. The quotes presented above reflect the open, honest, and often critical positions taken (at least semi-publicly) by Chinese people then. Most of them were optimistic about China's economic development and the new cultural openness of the Deng-era government even though many were still fundamentally distrustful of the party and the political system.

Timing was central to the success of our ability to speak so easily and frankly with so many people, Large-scale student demonstrations in Shanghai began just a few months after we left China, Social unrest throughout urban China has continued sporadically since then, creating an atmosphere that makes cooperation between Chinese citizens and foreign researchers much more difficult now.

We tried in advance to arrange formal opportunities to speak with urban families by repeatedly meeting with officials at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco more than a year before we left. It became apparent, however, that we would have to freelance after we got to China. We went to China, therefore, with the idea that we would employ whatever methods we could manage in order to document the impact of television on Chinese society, especially how it affects the thinking and everyday life of urban residents. As it turns out, this informal procedure was a blessing in disguise as we were quite easily able to interview families. We also arranged our meetings with television network and station officials after we arrived.

Except for defrayal of minor costs, we did not seek to have our research funded.⁶ This way we did not have to meet any institutional requirements for the work and we were free to create a flexible research plan that could respond to actual conditions and possibilities. I cannot emphasize enough, however, that this research simply could not have been accomplished without the contribution of my primary research assistant, Se-Wen Sun, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a native Mandarin speaker and a person of great insight into Chinese culture, Sun's unending enthusiasm for the project, her disciplined work habits, and her personable interviewing style made the project possible. Certainly no non Chinese person alone could have gathered the kind of data that is presented in this book. But the Chinese research community itself also has never taken on such a project. Much sociological and anthropological research that is done by Chinese investigators is 'team fieldwork,' a data-collection strategy that is not particularly revealing of the insights I was seeking. Beyond this, we had the advantage of speaking Chinese with our subjects, but not being Chinese citizens (and therefore not representing the government), although technically Sun is considered to be an overseas Chinese.

We worked in China's big cities. These locations — with the exception of a few sensitive neighborhoods — are open to anyone. At the same time, however, the neighborhoods where we conducted our interviews are among those least affected by tourism. Foreigners rarely if ever go into the neigh borhoods where we did our work and few of our subjects had ever spoken to a foreigner. The cities and neighborhoods are discussed at length in the next chapter.

6 Se-Wen Sun (left) interviews a family in Beijing,

Sampling

We held several principles firmly in mind when we decided who to interview. First, we wanted to choose our own research subjects. We were unwilling to visit model homes or talk to people who had been prepared to meet us. Foreign visitors to China often are introduced to model workplaces, schools, and homes. On my first visit to China in 1982, for instance, professors and students in our group were driven to the famous Evergreen Commune located just outside Beijing, where we were given a tour of the facility and a briefing on the benefits of communism.

Second, we wanted to represent urban China generally, not to depend on data gathered in any one city. Interviewing, therefore, was to be carried out primarily in China's three major cities — Shanghai (31 families), Beijing (30), and Guangzhou (14). We added a fourth city, Xian (10 families), in order to get additional perspectives from audience members in an urban location that is less developed than the larger, more famous, and more important cities.

Third, we wanted to select families within each of the cities in a manner that we felt could reasonably be considered representative of China's urban population. While we never entertained any idea of collecting a random sample (never in the history of social science has a truly random sample been collected anyway!), we were 'striving for randomness' throughout the sampling process. This means that we interviewed people in all sections of the cities. We used the urban zones represented on bus maps for each city to determine sampling areas. Then, each day, we systematically moved from one part of the city to the next in order to contact families. Although urban Chinese neighborhoods are thought to be comparatively heterogeneous, we were nonetheless unwilling to limit our interviewing to any one section of the cities. We interviewed three families in each urban zone.

Our daily interviewing began in the mid afternoons as people started coming home from work and ended about 10 p.m., depending on the ease with which we found subjects and the length of the family discussions. After we arrived in the day's designated zone, we simply walked along the crowded streets where we engaged families in conversation. Our work was done during the summer. Chinese people love to sit outside then as the weather is often hot and humid. The people gather outside to eat watermelon and Iychee, talk with their neighbors and friends, and play with the children. When we noticed a group that looked like an intact family (our 'unit of analysis' was the family; we tried to talk to complete groups whenever possible), Sun would use a 'Chinese way' to initiate conversation. In her characteristic friendly, non-threatening style she would begin talking about a 'small point' (the baby being held by a parent, clothing, the neighborhood, something special to the area) in order to develop 'a relationship' — sufficient rapport to inspire interest and trust. Within five to ten minutes she would slowly and carefully explain our research objectives and ask if the family owns a television set. Next, she would ask if the family would talk to us about television. Nearly everyone (87 percent acceptance rate of those contacted) agreed. Chinese people are not faced with the onslaught of business, political, and religious solicitations and exploits that regularly confront Western, especially American, families. In general they were not suspicious or cynical about the purpose of our work. In fact, most families enthusiastically agreed to discuss television, and in several cases they approached us in a friendly way to see what we wanted and if they could help.

The interviews

Family discussions took place inside the homes of the people we met. Non-Chinese visitors to China know that it is impossible to travel outside the tourist paths without attracting considerable attention. Had we attempted to interview people anywhere but in the privacy of their homes, we would have attracted galleries of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of curious onlookers. Even the family home is a semi-public space in China. In a few cases, neighbors and passersby had to be asked not to peer through open doors and windows. In two or three extreme cases, people unknown to the families were asked to leave the room. They had entered unannounced and simply wanted to join the discussion.

The private setting, the innocence of a discussion about television, the openness of China in 1986, and Sun's interviewing style helped families feel free to say what they pleased. A more formal approach, where family discussions would have been arranged by officials, would certainly have been more intimidating. But even under those circumstances, an American researcher reports that in her interviews with Chinese people, the 'accompanying (Chinese) sociologists were surprised that local people would respond so frankly and tell their life stories in such detail' (Hareven, 1987: 688).

Inside the homes, families typically invited us to sit around a small table in the middle of the living space. This table is used for eating and doing various types of paperwork. It is a convenient gathering place that helped establish a democratic tone for contributing to the discussions. An audio-cassette tape recorder with a small but high-quality multi-directional microphone was switched on and placed in the middle of the table. We assured everyone that while we would be using direct quotes in our analysis, we would not identify individuals or families in a way that betrayed confidentiality.

The conversations were spontaneous and free-flowing. According to Sun, my presence also encouraged cooperation as Chinese citizens generally admire Westerners (at least their technological achievements), and the combination of a friendly overseas Chinese researcher and a nearly mute but polite American professor promoted a positive atmosphere for conversation. During the interviews I made notes about the physical details of the homes and families, managed the technical details of the audio record ing, and ate endless slices of watermelon that were generously given to me. Eventually I learned to eat the first slice that was provided by each family very slowly. If you eat it quickly, the family will think you must be very hungry and will immediately cut you another even bigger piece, a perplexing development if you really don't care much for watermelon and are in the third home of the day. One does not refuse the offer of watermelon. Watermelon notwithstanding, the most formidable obstacle to successful completion of the interviews was the presence of an activated television set, though nearly every family readily agreed to turn it off during the discussions, even when their favorite shows were on. After each interview was completed, I took photographs of the interior of the home.

Each interview lasted between one and two hours. The sessions were structured according to a common set of questions, beginning with simple queries about demographic characteristics, a listing of favorite types of television programs for each family member, and a brief accounting of the history of television in the family. Family members willingly and interestedly talked about domestic and foreign programs, television's role in family interaction, and the impact that it has on Chinese society generally. The following questions were asked of all families:

1. For each family member: age, education, occupation, favorite type of television show, family history with television.
2. In what ways has your life changed since television arrived?
3. How do you select programs for viewing?
4. How do you resolve conflicts when viewing preferences differ?
5. In what ways is television a communicative 'bridge' between the government and the people?
6. What educational uses do you make of television?
7. What influence does the region in which you live have on your life in general?
8. What other leisure time activities do you engage in other than watching television?
9. How much television do you watch each day?
10. Please evaluate the programming you receive from the CCTV network and from the local and regional stations.
11. (To students) What does your teacher say about television? Are you encouraged or discouraged to watch it?
12. Do you talk about television shows at home, school, work? Which shows? When?
13. Will you please evaluate the role and quality of commercials on Chinese television?
14. What do you think the effects of television are, in general, on Chinese society?

We were pleased to learn quickly that these questions provided a kind of springboard from which family members frequently launched into discussions not only of television, but of individual consciousness, family and neighborhood interaction, workplace relations, as well as the ideological interpretations, uses, and consequences of television programs. So, while we never asked questions about the government, for instance, commentaries about the system of governance were freely given because, for one thing, television and the government are all part of the same bureaucratic structure. And despite tendencies for Chinese to hold back emotionally in the giving of opinion (only fools shoot off their mouths), the fact that some comments could only be correctly understood by carefully examining the discursive context in which they were made, and the fact that certain issues had to be approached indirectly, we gathered a massive amount of data about life in urban China.

Data analysis

We translated the taped interviews into English the following day, thereby preserving as much non-verbal and contextual information as possible about each family. I consider the interviews to be discourses that were constructed between ourselves and Chinese family members. Our research subjects, therefore, were 'narrators' more than 'respondents' (Mishler, 1986). The analysis presented here takes into consideration not only factual information provided by our narrators, but also the reasoning processes that underlie these articulations. Furthermore, the analytical formulations represented in this book emerged at different rates of speed and in different directions from the taped conversations and from our initial interpretations of and discussions about them. Rather than test hypotheses or pose highly purposive research questions, we attempted to create a context in which Chinese city dwellers, nearly 300 of them, could enter into reflective conver sations about technology, communication, politics, family, education, and all other aspects of everyday life. Their verbatim comments are central to the analyses which are made in this volume.

Return visit: the post-Tiananmen Square perspective

I returned alone to China in October and November 1989, during the last stages of writing this book. After watching televised pictures of hundreds of thousands of Chinese students and workers pouring into Tiananmen Square in May (remembering all the while the faces of family members we interviewed in that very neighborhood), following the amazing political developments, seeing the People's Liberation Army evacuate the human congregation, reading every press clipping I could find about China, and speculating endlessly with my friends about what was really happening over there during the months that followed June 4th, I knew I had to go back to China to find these things out for myself before I could put this book to bed. Fortunately, I had been invited by the People's University of China in Beijing to do just that.

Residing and lecturing at the People's University, where we had also stayed in 1986, I had the opportunity to speak in confidence, and through arrangements that were made entirely by me, with roughly 50 more people — students, intellectuals, and workers. My overall impression following these sensitive discussions was, indeed, a sad one. So many bright young people have become so hostile to the communist-led government while others have simply disengaged from political thought. On the other hand, there was a sincere expression by some intellectuals that all hope for China should not be abandoned. In general, however, a pervasive, underlying, depressed feeling covers the college campuses and the city of Beijing. One student, for instance, haltingly asked me if I believe in God. When I asked him why he wanted to know, he said: 'We must have something to believe in now.' Another student quietly told of a recent suicide by a classmate who said he could no longer face the future.

I also had another lengthy interview session with executives from CCTV who not only supplied me with verbal information, but (by my request) with videotape copies of the propaganda documentaries that were produced by the network and aired in the summer and fall of 1989. These programs were designed to explain the government's position on the unrest and the military clearing of Tiananmen Square. I will analyze them in Chapter 9. Finally, in order to see the trends in Chinese television programming, I viewed and videotaped for further analysis many domestic and foreign programs that were aired on CCTV and the Beijing Television station. But before analyzing propaganda material, program genres, and specific shows that have appeared on television in China, I would like next to describe how the medium has become part of life at home in the cities, and what that has meant for the quintessential feature of Chinese culture — the family.