7
The Freedom to Have Fun

Popular culture and censorship in China

China's Open Door and expanded economy have brought more than trade, tourists, technology, and expertise into the country. A contemporary popular culture that is shaped in part by foreign television, film, music, and other media material, has also developed during the modernization period. But China's contemporary cultural dynamics are not just the products of foreign influence. The artifacts and ideologies of Western popular culture were being imported into China at the same time that writers, TV producers, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists inside the country were winning unprecedented freedom and having great impact themselves. These foreign and domestic influences have been unleashed under the terms of an ambiguous and inconsistently applied cultural policy — a situation that has fueled many hopes, dashed many dreams, and generally contributed to the great confusion of contemporary China. Furthermore, the turmoil of 1989 has not led to a thoroughgoing cultural crackdown. The cultural influences that helped stimulate unrest in the first place are still fundamentally in place.

Western culture has seeped into China through many channels, leading in some cases to stunning developments. American cosmetics companies entered into joint agreements with local merchandisers to sell beauty products that were once anathema in Chinese society. California surfers were hired to introduce the sport to China in order to entice tourists to Hainan island. Colonel Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken became an alternative to kung pao chicken in Beijing and New York-style pizza came to the city shortly thereafter, though Chinese people had trouble adjusting to a central ingredient with which they are not familiar — cheese. The Harlem Globetrotters slam dunked the country. Billy Graham promised 5,000 faithful in Shanghai that religion can help speed the modernization along. Bodybuilding and bikinis became stylish. American Peace Corps volunteers were finally accepted by China. A United States' navy ship docked at a Chinese harbor for the first time since before the communist revolution. The spectacular motion picture, The Last Emperor, became the first American-produced movie ever shot in the People's Republic.

Famous foreign television serials from the United States, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong were big hits on the Chinese system. The popular Follow Me, a program produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation to teach English to Chinese people, began its long run on the national network in 1982. The hostess of the program, Kathy Flowers, became a pop culture heroine. A spinoff, Follow Me to Science, is still on the air. American movies, including Rambo, Love Story, Superman, First Blood, Taxi Driver, and Waterloo Bridge, were shown in theaters all over China. People copied and traded videos of every imaginable film smuggled in from the West and from Hong Kong.

Popular music may be the most striking example. Music was mentioned many times by our narrators as an important part of the developing youth-centered culture in China. Parents frequently told us how much their young children love music. One family described how even the musical soundtrack to an ice skating routine on television provoked their young daughter to dance wildly in front of the screen. Students and other young people became fascinated with disco music as public dance halls grew popular. For the first time, couples were permitted to dance without harsh, fluorescent lights shining on them.

The most common delivery system for pop music in China — the audio cassette recorder/playback unit — has become an extremely important piece of cultural equipment. In our home interviews, we found that nearly every urban home in China has an audio cassette recorder/player. Most of the machines are dubbing units that make it easy to copy music tapes. But even by the late 1980s few Western pop music tapes were available in the little music stores that dot the country. Singers and groups from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore (music that is itself influenced by the West, however) are far more abundant and desired. When I visited China in late 1989 a Taiwanese pop star was performing in a Beijing concert hall with the price fixed at 15 yuan, roughly one-eighth of a government worker's monthly wage. The demand for pop music in China encouraged the managers of the conservative national radio system, the People's Broadcasting Station, to air a twice-weekly Anglo-American show that features artists such as Madonna, Lionel Ritchie, and (oh no, not China too) John Denver.

Breakdancing also found its way into China in the late 1980s, thanks mainly to the release of the movie, Breakdance. An American teacher at the People's University in Beijing told me in 1989 that his students often practice breakdance moves and Michael Jackson's moonwalk in the hallways between classes. Because he is an American, the young teacher is often asked by the students to evaluate their proficiency. The positive reponse to the film prompted the English-language Beijing Review to explain that breakdancing is acceptable in China now because the reformation permits the 'freedom to have fun' too. Indeed, the wild contortions of breakdance deviate completely from normative life in China. But young Chinese women and men also love to do foreign social dances, especially the waltz and tango. Schools and work units often hold social dance contests in the cities. Dance is thought to be healthy. Even during China's most austere periods in history, the idea of body movement for physical and mental exercise has been considered a good thing. The Mao Zedong-endorsed tai chi exercises, for instance, are part of this tradition. Today, tai chi, which is performed mainly by older adults, has been supplemented by 'old people's disco' (lao nian disco).

The practical limits and symbolic value of popular culture

Cultural change is one of the undeniable byproducts of China's modernization, but there are limits to the extent that people can practice the new media-inspired activity. Western media often sensationalize China's new popular culture. Simply put, everyday life in China does not lend itself well to any profound revolution in popular culture, even among the young. First of all, most of the new activity is confined to the cities and to certain groups. Furthermore, cultural traditions, family life, work routines, and basic economics all militate against cultivation of a far-reaching, youth oriented popular culture in any case. Except for the relatively few young people who have been able to enter private business, there is not enough disposable income to buy music tapes, video cassettes, or the clothes, cosmetics, and the other accoutrements that are normally associated with youth culture. Media policy also interferes. Chinese media do not set out to make pop culture heroes or, for that matter, to even distribute basic information about pop singers, film stars, or television personalities. Exposure to even the most attractive elements of popular culture, foreign and domestic, is fragmented and short-lived.

Still, the new influences have affected the entire society symbolically, offering refreshing, exciting cultural vistas whose attractiveness is enhanced by comparisons that the people readily make with the drab official culture. The unaffordability of pop culture materials also enhances their appeal. Despite the practical limitations, China's new and exotic worlds of popular culture, originating inside and outside national borders, have contributed greatly to the cultural crisis and political upheaval of recent years.

The Confused Censors

Cultural policy has been so inconsistent over the years that the main impression people have of the whirlwind cultural changes in China is one as much of confusion and frustration as it is of excitement. Just as the economic modernization and political reformation sprinted and stalled throughout the 1980s, state policy about cultural life has been likewise unsteady. Standards loosen when the economy is going well. But when it stumbles, crackdowns in culture and politics are again instigated, repeating a pattern that is all too familiar to the people under communist rule. The government typically justifies the negative sanctions by claiming that they are necessary to halt 'spiritual pollution,' 'bourgeois liberalization,' or something of the sort. The crackdowns often come on the heels of a political flareup. Management of cultural life and promotion of the elusive spiritual civilization is accomplished not only by promoting 'positive' ideas and images through the media, but by censoring cultural products too. Because of political uncertainties and bureaucratic inefficiency, however, censoring is inconsistent.

Especially since 1978, China has found it difficult to censor foreign materials effectively. Overall, the government has relaxed its standards during the modernization period. But foreign occupation and influence have hurt China before. The government, therefore, tries to regulate what comes into the country by applying some vague principle of cultural acceptability. This has not been easy to do during the era of the Open Door policy. Edward Gargan describes the problem well: 'The continuing dilemma confronting China is whether it can absorb technical accomplishments without embracing the ideas that gave rise to those achievements. The fear, simply put, is that somehow Chinese culture will be undermined and destroyed if Western culture intrudes' (Gargan, 1987: 26).

Scientific and technical information coming from the West and from Japan generally is not considered a problem. Social themes are more likely to stir controversy. Sexual permissiveness, for instance, is simply not allowed, though the specific limits are never clear. Even steamy romantic novels can be considered pornographic. So, in a famous case, the Chinese translation of Jackie Collins' novel, Lovers and Gamblers was banned, but because of confusion in the censors' offices it wasn't taken off the shelves until more than 300,000 copies had been sold. The classic novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, was also inconsistently banned. But censoring erotica does not put out the fire. A black market for pornographic magazines and videos has developed steadily during the past several years, despite the passing of a law in 1990 that can punish porn sellers with death or life in prison.

Another troubling source of information from outside China is foreign broadcasting, particularly signals from the Voice of America (VOA) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that are easily received in most parts of the country. Until the 1980s, exposure to foreign radio was considered unpatriotic. Listeners were subject to reprimand. But, in the 1980s, before the student-led demonstrations began to heat up again in 1989, China had gradually relaxed restrictions on listening to these stations. A more specific case is Hong Kong television. Located within telecast range of China's southern provinces, Hong Kong television has always posed a distinct threat to the mainland government. For many years Chinese residents were forbidden to construct tall antennae in order to receive Hong Kong TV signals, a policy that was also relaxed during the 1980s. The Hong Kong viewing is an important issue that I take up in depth later in this chapter.

Some types of domestic cultural products are also difficult for the government to manage. These 'unstable artistic possibilities' include literary journals, poetry, modern and abstract art, critical journalism, and critical, historical films (Gargan, 1987). But finding programs to put on national televison can create problems for China's censors too, as the standard of what is acceptable cultural and political information is never completely clear and changes with the direction and force of the political winds. Just when television gradually started to show programs that depict romantic entanglements, for example, the government insisted that love relations 'should conform with reality, national customs, communist morality, and the socialist legal system' (Hooper, 1985: 180). Toward the end of 1988 the first Chinese-made film to feature scenes of (unexplicit) sexual activity (Widow's Village) was released and drew big crowds. At the same time a large gathering attended an all nude art exhibit at the Beijing National Art Gallery. But an avant-garde art exhibit opening in Beijing in early 1989 was quickly closed. And while books written by George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nancy Reagan, Sylvester Stallone, and Lee Iacocca became best sellers in China, a host of other imported and domestic volumes were being destroyed.

The 'people's appreciation of beauty' which, rhetorically at least, has been rekindled since 1979, also led to conflicting and uncertain developments by the late 1980s. A fashion show was telecast nationwide from Beijing's Great Hall of the People, for instance, 'in order to give correct guidance to consumers of different levels.' But at the same time, beauty pageants held in Shanghai and Beijing, both of which also were scheduled to be telecast, were abruptly cancelled. The case of Chinese pop musician Cui Jian pointedly illustrates the ambivalence of government cultural policy. Cui developed a large youth following in Beijing and Shanghai for the concerts he gave on days off from his regular job with the Beijing Song and Dance Troupe. But after the student demonstrations in late 1986 and early 1987, his concerts were officially eliminated in a wave of cultural straightening and then suddenly permitted again in early 1989.

Even more curious in the socialist nation is the positioning of hard-sell advertising on television — messages that feverishly encourage audiences to promote their individuality by purchasing all kinds of products. Among the products promoted in TV commercials are beer, wine, motorcycle tires, icecream, sandwiches, medicines, champagne, soap, pimple cream, baby shampoo, crackers, men's cologne, mouth freshener, 'permanent' hair styling kits for men, all kinds of electronic equipment, cars and jeeps, and cameras. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China hypes a credit card that can be used to buy all these things. Many TV commercials now try to sell fashion-oriented and beauty items including jewelry, perfume, and personal-care products that are designed far more for show than for health. Sex is frequently the vehicle for persuasion. In one commercial, for instance, a group of young men notice an attractive woman who is walking alone. As the men turn to stare at her, she tosses her head sensually and her long, silky hair blows in the wind. It's a hair conditioner commercial. Other cases are more extreme. The female form — dancing, romancing, flirting, seducing — is used to sell refrigerators, electric fans, and huge industrial appliances. Images like these never stopped flowing from Chinese television during or after the trouble of 1989.

Imported commercials blatantly promote materialism. Messages sponsored by Coca-cola, Pepsi-cola, Gillette, Maxwell House, IBM, Procter & Gamble, MacDonnell-Douglas, and Boeing, as well as a whole host of famous Japanese labels, are common on Chinese television. Chinese people are being introduced to the hazards of Western life in the commercials. The Chinese commercial for Head and Shoulders shampoo, for instance, shows a young mother being publicly embarrassed by her young son who notices flakes of dandruff on her blouse, the very same persuasive appeal that this sponsor uses to heighten consumer anxiety in Western countries. A Hong Kong commercial shown in China displays a totally bourgeois setting — men dressed in tuxedos riding around in limousines to push the product. A Hitachi commercial shows an Asian family in a spacious, luxurious home watching TV — an environment that is completely at odds with the living conditions of Chinese people. Commercials such as these do more than sell products or even a way of life; they stand in fundamental, competitive contrast to the stark reality of China. Their messages surely are interpreted emotionally even in unconscious ways that have contributed to the people's confusion, frustration, and dissatisfaction.

It is also significant that some of China's most widely-acclaimed media accomplishments have provoked the most severe criticism from the govern ment. During the 1980s, producers and directors from China's film and television industries made some powerful statements with their media. The films of Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Wu Tianming became favorites of critics and audiences around the world, bringing unprecedented attention to China for cinematic achievement. New Star and River Elegy were milestones in Chinese television programming, drawing enormous, adoring audiences. Despite their artistic achievement and widespread appeal, these films and television programs were harshly criticized by government hardliners.

China's Controversial Filmmakers

One truly remarkable accomplishment of Chinese mass media since the mid 1980s is the production of a handful of spectacular films and the rise of the country's 'fifth generation' filmmakers, a small group of producer/director/actors who have brought unprecedented national and international acclaim to China's film industry. The success of the new filmmakers peaked in 1988 when Red Sorghum, the first feature film directed by Zhang Yimou, won the coveted award for best foreign film at the West Berlin Film Festival. Despite the favorable attention that Red Sorghum and the other contemporary films have received, there are serious objections in Beijing to their cultural and political implications.

Debates about the proper role of film in China reflect the longstanding desire by the government to control the ideological agenda via public communication and entertainment media. The film industry in China was quickly appropriated for promotion of China's propaganda efforts after 1949. Until television arrived in full force, film was the most popular entertainment medium. Even in the early 1980s Chinese citizens attended about 30 movies per year on average, far more than their counterparts in the United States and Europe (Bishop, 1989).

Very few films were produced during the Cultural Revolution. Those that were made fell under the strict ideological and artistic control of Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, whose authoritarian vendettas against disagreeable directors, actors, and artists of all types are well known. Jiang and her supporters considered film to be the most effective medium for distributing ideology and for unifying the people. Lock-step ballets presented in films such as The White-Haired Girl and The Red Detachment of Women, and the self-congratulating ideological haranguing of Mao Zedong —Greatest Revolutionary of our Time and Breaking with Old Ideas are striking examples of the extreme Cultural Revolution era propaganda.

Jiang's fall from power in the mid 1970s opened the door for China's new wave cinema to develop. The Beijing Film Academy admitted students to its first post-Cultural Revolution class in 1978. Four years later, the star directors of today's Chinese cinema scene graduated and began their careers. Three men — Wu Tianming, Chen Kaige, and Zhang Yimou —have been the major figures in the production of China's superb recent films. The story of these men is worth telling briefly here. Their struggles and successes are a significant part of the development of China's contemporary popular culture, a microcosm of the essential national ideological conflict.

Like everything in China, film is to serve purposes of the national modernization. But it is never obvious if any particular film meets this criterion. Judgments that are rendered by members of the film review board in Beijing are based on highly subjective perceptions about the political correctness of art, a process that has led to considerable quarreling,, censorship, and favoritism. The films of the fifth generation directors have forced the authorities to ask sensitive questions. Should China confront its problems head-on by raising troubling issues that will be seen by millions of people throughout the country? Is it appropriate to openly criticize periods and personalities in the history of China and problematize the inefficiency of the current system? Does a story that is set in pre-socialist China and reveals much of the backwardness of the rural areas bring shame to China today? How will Chinese audiences react to films that are more abstract and open-ended in their implications than the straightforward propagandist movies that cinema goers know so well? Generally what images should China project to itself and to the rest of the world?

The driving force behind the contemporary cinema scene is Wu Tianming, known to film buffs as the director of Old Well and Dislocation, two successful new wave films. But Wu's main contribution to the changing film industry derives more from his five-year tenure as director of the Xian Film Studio, located in northern China. Dedicated to overcoming what he calls the 'tired didacticism' of Chinese filmmaking, Wu took control of the studio in this out-of-the-way part of the country and created an atmosphere where great films could be made.¹

The story of Wu's success in Xian is legendary. He became director of the disreputable Xian studio in 1983, Fighting what he calls 'extreme inefficiency and laziness,' the ambitious Wu retrained the studio staff and worked to inspire innovative filmmaking. He took advantage of Xian's strategic geographic location. In order to give some of the young film-makers a sense of rural northern China, he arranged trips up and down the Yellow River to the remote areas — the desolate plains that later became the places where Yellow Earth and Red Sorghum were filmed.

The film Yellow Earth (1985), directed by Chen Kaige at age 32, is often cited as the breakthrough piece in China's new wave cinema. The story is set in the late 1930s. In the story, a soldier from the Chinese revolutionary army comes to a mountain village to collect peasant songs to be used by the Communist Party for propaganda. He becomes involved in the everyday life problems of a peasant family, where he finds himself powerless to help a 12-year-old girl avoid a forced marriage. Very subtle cultural, social, and political themes are explored by Chen in Yellow Earth, creating a sophistication and daring that go beyond the limits of previous films made in China. But the trademark of this film, and of Zhang's Red Sorghum too, is not just the sophisticated treatment of a story, but the rich cinematic textures of carefully selected scenes of northern China that lend a panorama of historical authenticity to the work.

Red Sorghum explores pre-liberation, rural China too - the late 1920s and early 1930s — focusing on the lives of peasants who operate a sorghum winery. The tone of the film is lighthearted and playful until a Japanese military unit invades the area, capturing the village and torturing its inhabitants — among them the workers from the distillery. The quiet, peaceful cinematic textures and the comical, endearing personal developments in the story are replaced at the end by a violent splashing of red blood and wine in a series of gripping experimental effects.

While foreign critics loved the film, Red Sorghum was harshly criticized in China, not only by wary censors but also by some older people who did not understand the movie or thought it cast China in a bad light. Nonetheless, the film drew a record 200 million viewers. The film's themes provoked controversy. Sexual relations are shown much more openly than usual. The backwardness and poverty of rural China at the time (and now) are frankly portrayed. And, contrary to the conventional heroic images of Chinese peasants that have appeared in previous films, literature, and art, Red Sorghum realistically portrays what was the inability of the people to defend themselves against the ruthless Japanese during their occupation of the mainland.

From the point of view of Chen and Zhang, the use of desolate scenery and the depictions of the simple life of the rural peasants in their films is done not to demean the people, but to show what a struggle life was for them. These directors say that, far from dismissing or ridiculing their own culture, they have embraced and romanticized it. In Red Sorghum, for instance, many scenes positively characterize the egalitarian spirit of socialist China. There is, for example, an insistent focus on the lead character, 'Nine,' who inherits the distillery. She is portrayed as an extremely strong and independent woman, resisting the authority of her father and her forced-marriage husband, assuming a non-stereotypical aggressiveness and confidence in consummating a physical relationship with her lover, and managing the brewery with great skill and concern for the well being of the workers. Furthermore, the symbolic imagery that permeates the film — the strong woman, a solar eclipse, the survival of her son, even the bean of the red sorghum, suggests hope for China's future.

Despite their great successes, Wu, Chen, and Zhang have been at odds with the censors all along. Wu resigned his administrative post at the Xian Film Studio in late 1988. On a trip to the United States that year, he told San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Judy Stone that he considers the Chinese film industry to be 'stagnant, archaic, and bureaucratic.' vVu has had to struggle to produce films efficiently and to treat controversial themes. He claims that officials in Beijing believe that the fifth generation directors have turned their backs on China in a quest for international recognition. Wu has been the subject of three investigations for 'lifestyle mistakes' and 'insubordination.' He insists that the Chinese system of employment militates against excellence: 'You can't fire anybody... talented artists who do great work often are not rewarded properly whereas those who do not work at all or are loafers still insist on their share of whatever profit has been made. This has seriously affected the motivation of artists to produce quality work.'

River Elegy — China's Death Poem to Itself

Wang and Hong's remarks about the television series River Elegy reflect an ideological position that has never wavered in some quarters in China. Media successes are perceived by the hardliners more as threats than achievements. Artists and intellectuals are considered necessary but troublesome and in need of constant evaluation and correction. This autocratic paternalistic management of culture is justified in the name of protecting the people against their own ideological lapses — whims that are blamed on the work of artists and political 'counterrevolutionaries.'

River Elegy is a six-part television series that appeared on CCTV twice during 1988. It created a major controversy at the time and has frequently been blamed for helping stir up the unrest the following year. The principal scriptwriters are Su Xiaokang, a 39-year-old former teacher at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute and Wang Luxiang, 32, an instructor at Beijing Teacher's College. The director was 26-year-old Xia Jun, a reporter at CCTV. The writers, producers, and directors intentionally set out to use television as a transmitter of subversive ideology. Su said that he hoped the series would 'stimulate conscious self-examination throughout the country in this time of social transformation' (Li, 1989: 47).²

That it did. Relying on visual imagery and metaphor rather than didactic narration, River Elegy attacked traditional Chinese culture by claiming that some of the country's most revered symbols — the Yellow River, the Great Wall, the dragon, mythic Confucianism — actually represent China's backwardness and passivity, not its greatness. Through beautiful visual representations and a lyrical, non-linear storyline, the series argues that China fell behind other nations in the development of a modern civilization because of a persistent inward orientation, a fixation on the land which led to isolation from the rest of the world. The Yellow River, with its sulfur-colored, silt-laden water, was used by the writers as a metaphor for China's steady, but unprogressive and agriculture-based society — a nation that still remains fundamentally trapped within the cultural and ideological confines of its feudalist past. Though the point is delicately made, the communist government of today is also implicated in the regrettable tale of China's continuing decline.

Audience members became intimately involved with River Elegy in part because of the inviting, open-ended structure and tone of the series, an approach to television production that contrasts sharply with the explicit propaganda messages to which viewers are so accustomed. So, while River Elegy's 'oratory narrative lacks a logical argument. . . the viewer [was able] to see [italics mine] the conclusion' (Lau and Lo, 1990: 17). That conclusion insists on sweeping and immediate economic, political, and cultural change. Celebrating the intelligence and ability of Chinese people, the series' last episode dreamily sentimentalizes the symbolic 'azure blue' of the ocean as the direction China must go to reach its vast potential.

For ideological hardliners like Wang and Hong, the program irreverently chastized mythic China and failed to show sufficient deference to its current leaders. The television audience, however, did not interpret the series that way and even the government's official publications recognized the program's widespread influence. The program was praised in the Chinese press for creating a dialogue between intellectuals and ordinary people. Just as New Star had stimulated viewers to discuss the complexities of reform two years before, the critique that drives River Elegy provoked the very 'collective self-reflection' that its originators hoped it would (Lau and Lo, 1990) and, again like New Star, served as a symbolic rallying point for the liberal faction within the Communist Party. The fact that the government has attempted to stop sale of video copies of River Elegy has only increased its appeal.

In the next pages, I describe three other key areas that have created problems for the Chinese government in its attempt to manage the cultural and political agenda. I will return to the subject of Hong Kong television now, then discuss the phenomena of American television programming and foreign advertising in China. The consequences of this cultural invasion are immense. I discuss them in detail in the next chapter.

Watching Hong Kong Television

The comments of our narrators in Guangzhou reveal the basic issues related to viewing Hong Kong television in southern China — government policy, signal quality, program quality, language, and cultural appropriate ness and appeal. The remarks also reflect the lack of a dominant opinion about Hong Kong television. The Hong Kong channels, which broadcast a lively spectrum of Chinese, British, and American entertainment pro grams, have irritated Chinese authorities for years. Before the modernization, viewing Hong Kong TV shows was not approved. Southern Chinese people were told that the content of Hong Kong television is not of high moral character, in particular that it is 'too sexual.' But during the opti mism of the 1980s, the government stopped trying to discourage viewing. In fact, several families told us that the government helped residents of their apartment buildings install antennae that facilitate viewing distant TV signals. Now, following the political upheaval of 1989, viewing the Hong Kong stations is again controversial, though the government has not prohibited viewing.

Exact statistics on the issue are not available, but it is safe to say that the vast majority of Guangzhou residents cannot reliably receive Hong Kong television stations in their homes. Three factors limit reception. The distance between the two cities (about 150 miles) makes reception inconsistent at best. Weather also interferes. And, especially in recent years, the signal of one of Guangzhou's television stations (Channel 14) occupies spectrum space so close to one of the Hong Kong stations that it distorts the distant signal.

Hong Kong television programs

Despite the technical and cultural difficulties, some Hong Kong TV shows are very popular in Guangzhou. A weekly schedule of Hong Kong tele vision programs can be purchased in China. Generally, Chinese audiences believe that Hong Kong television is more professional looking and has a wider variety of programs and more interesting content. Some viewers complained, however, that the Hong Kong shows begin too late at night and last too long for the more conservative lifestyle of mainland viewers. The biggest complaint is about commercials. Although Chinese viewers think that Hong Kong commercials, like the programs, are more professionally done than the Chinese advertisements, viewers don't like the fact that many commericals appear on Hong Kong television and that they are scheduled during the shows.

Our narrators were clear about the kinds of programs they prefer from the Hong Kong stations. It is not news from the 'outside world,' although that was also praised. What Chinese viewers really like are Hong Kong's drama serials. Viewers said they don't care if the TV serials come from their own stations or from Hong Kong, they simply love to watch dramatic programs. One family told us that a Hong Kong show was the only television program that could make them 'give up everything else just to watch.'

Hong Kong-produced commercials and drama serials portray upper class and middle-class lifestyles of Chinese in the colony that contrast sharply with life in Guangzhou. For instance, there are frequent images of Chinese businessmen in modern Western-style suits with fashionable wives and girlfriends living in spacious, beautifully-decorated homes, driving around in cars, drinking in bars, and so on. Mainland Chinese people do not have or do most of these things. Cultural values also clash. In one Hong Kong serial that we viewed in Guangzhou, for instance, the mother in the story secretly marries a family friend before she divorces her husband. When her daughter finds out about this, the girl runs crying out of the house to find her boyfriend. When they meet, he excitedly tells her that he has just been promoted at work by his boss who is, of all people, the new husband of the girl's mother. The boyfriend supports the new marriage asking 'why not?' This sequence of events in unthinkable in China. Not only does it conflict with values promoted by the government, it is utterly impractical. Perhaps it is just this impossibility that appeals to some Chinese viewers, who can only fantasize about such a social reality, even if many of them would not care for such a lifestyle. Our narrators also said that the spicy stories of the Hong Kong dramas are frequently discussed at home and at work, especially by young people.

Hong Kong television programs are broadcast in Cantonese, the native spoken language of people who live in southern China. Programming sent throughout the country on CCTV, on the other hand, is in China's official language, Mandarin. Consequently, many southern Chinese viewers prefer to watch the Hong Kong shows simply because they are telecast in the more familiar language. This is especially true of older people who have been less able and willing to follow the government's campaign to nationalize Mandarin. Furthermore, some viewers believe that the Hong Kong Cantonese accent has become more prevalent in Guangzhou in recent years, attributable, according to them, to the influence of Hong Kong TV.

American Television Programs in China

In order to develop the TV system and fill airtime, China has looked to other countries as sources of programming since the system began. The abundance of television programming that originates in the United States has become a logical resource. The first American show to be aired in China was Man from Atlantis in 1979. Shortly thereafter the government arranged to pick up American-originated international news from communications satellites. The CCTV evening news invariably features clips from foreign sources accompanied by Mandarin-language voiceovers from the network anchorpersons in Beijing. Some of this material comes from America's Cable News Network (CNN). Dozens of American drama serials have appeared in the past ten years. Speciality programs are also imported. The Chinese preoccupation with learning effective business techniques, for

instance, encouraged them to import Global View, an American-produced program that features executives from several huge corporations — including Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Polaroid, and United Airlines — discussing capitalist economic philosophies and business practices.

Although a few cash deals are struck, nearly all American programs that appear on Chinese television result from barter agreements. Because of China's relatively low economic status, its government is unwilling to spend hard currency on imported television programming. Instead of buying programs outright, they sell airtime on the system to foreign advertisers. Under these agreements, the American producer/syndicator provides programs to China at no cost in order to receive airtime on the Chinese stations, which they then sell to American advertisers. In effect, these barter agreements allow American syndicators to become sales agents for the Chinese television stations.

In 1982, for example, CBS Productions gave China 60 hours of American programs in exchange for 320 minutes of advertising time. Among the shows were Count Basie in Concert, NBA Basketball, 60 Minutes, and the Tournament of Roses Parade. Advertisers who bought airtime include IBM, Boeing, Weyerhauser, Procter & Gamble, Kodak, and Stauffer Chemical. Twentieth Century Fox later agreed to let CCTV choose 52 feature films from more than 3,000 titles. MCA/Paramount/MGM has provided 100 hours of programming, including Star Trek, to CCTV in exchange for commercial time.

Some contracts are for a single show or series while others are for a package of programs. In some cases, syndicators send samples of programs to China for consideration. China also dispatches delegations of representatives overseas to consider programs, and at times the cultural departments of Chinese embassies make recommendations. The manner for selecting programs is not consistent. Managers at CCTV told me in 1989, for instance, that even some non-CCTV delegations who travel overseas have the authority to choose programs, bring them home, and place them on the air directly.

China's big regional and city stations also have authority individually to import shows on barter terms. Lorimar Productions signed a five-year agreement with Shanghai Television (STV) in 1986 where more than 7,500 hours of famous American TV shows were made available. The Shanghai station was able to choose from a list that included Falcon Crest, Knot's Landing, Hunter, Alf, Perfect Strangers, Valerie, and animated programs such as Thundercats and Silverhawks. Lorimar was particularly interested in signing with STY because it was able to sell more advertising time there than would have been permitted at CCTV.

China imports much sports programming. Viewers like to watch sports in which Chinese teams participate — soccer and volleyball, mainly — but they enjoy watching all sports, including American football and basketball. I spent time one afternoon in Shanghai with a group of Chinese men watching an American National Basketball Association game. The men reacted excitedly to the game, not realizing that the contest was being transmitted from videotape, not live, and that one of the teams — the Kansas City Kings — had moved to Sacramento several years before. Barter agreements have put the Super Bowl on Chinese television since 1986 and the Entertainment and Sports Network (ESPN) has placed its international program, Global Sports, on regional networks in China during prime time.

The most famous and controversial barter agreement between American program producers and Chinese television is the Walt Disney production, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, a compilation of Disney cartoons dubbed into Mandarin. Resonating perfectly with China's cultural orientation toward children and family, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck quickly became the country's most popular television program after its initial airing in late 1986. The program is presented on Sunday evenings at six-thirty on CCTV. Two minutes of commercial airtime is retained within each halfhour program by the American distributor, Buena Vista.

A financial problem developed, however, when several companies in China began to use images of Disney characters as promotional vehicles to sell various products, a turn of events that prompted the Disney company to temporarily withhold episodes of the show. Disney's lawyers insisted that China pass comprehensive laws to protect trademarks and patents. To settle the problem, a joint venture was proposed that would allow Disney to capitalize on the enthusiastic response in China with the marketing of Disney memorabilia and the formation of a Chinese Mickey Mouse club.

Advertising in China

Advertising — including foreign advertising — has been part of China's economy and media operation since the post-Cultural Revolution reform movement began. Virtually all mass media, even Communist Party publications carry advertising. Television stations have become more and more dependent on advertising revenues to maintain their operations. According to the official view, advertising serves socialism by letting the people know what is available to buy and where. Television advertising in particular is thought to motivate consumer activity and invigorate the economy.

China's first television commercials appeared on the innovative Shanghai Television station in February 1979. Before the year ended, CCTV and regional stations throughout the country were airing commercials and virtually all other media began to permit advertising. In terms of money spent, television is still second to newspapers as the top advertising medium. The steadily growing size of the television audience, however, and the comparatively inexpensive cost of advertising on Chinese television, make it an attractive advertising medium. How much money clients pay to advertise on television in China depends on who they are. Domestic 'businesses' (government or private; government firms have budgets that are to be used specifically for 'promotion') pay only about one-third of what foreign sponsors must pay. But the cost of foreign advertising, in terms of ·cost per thousand (CPM: the ratio of money spent to persons contacted), is also very cost efficient. A one-minute television commercial on Chinese television, for instance, might cost $5-10,000 and could reach 300 million viewers. In the United States, by comparison, a 30-second spot might cost about $400,000 and reach, at most, 65 million viewers. By 1987, American advertisers were placing about $16 million of advertising on Chinese television yearly. And Americans are not the biggest spenders on advertising in China — the Japanese are.

Despite the recent economic setback, Chinese families have realized greater spending power and have been able to choose from an unprecedented number of desirable consumer items. Until the confrontation at Tiananmen Square, American and other foreign advertisers were optimistic about the future of advertising, and business in general, in China. Enthusi asm peaked when the Third W orId Advertising Conference, a gathering of more than 1,000 high-level advertising executives from all over the world, met in Beijing in June 1987. By that time, many major United States agencies, including J. Walter Thompson, McCann-Erickson, and Ogilvy & Mather, had established offices in the capital city. The general consensus by the end of the conference was that advertising, and the capitalist tendencies it embraces, would continue to grow in China. In fact, by 1987 advertising had become one of China's top growth industries. Statistics released during the conference revealed at least a 50 percent increase in demand for advertising in China every year since 1979. In 1983, China's first public relations firm also opened in Beijing, and soon after advertising and public relations companies began to spring up throughout the country. They now number more than 6,000 with a heavy concentration of the firms located in the SEZs of the south.

The 'China market'

For many years in the United States and in other Western capitalist countries we have heard talk about the 'huge China market.' The international business community has been licking its collective lips in anticipation of enormous profits that presumably could soon be made from the newly-enfranchised Chinese consumers. The troublesome realities of doing business in China, however, became apparent long before the 1989 crackdown sent everyone's plans into disarray. There are many drawbacks to placing ads and doing business in China. Most fundamentally, trade agreements and market realities have limited the number of American products that are available in China. Chinese consumers generally are unfamiliar with imported products. The stores are not full of these goods and when they do appear on the shelves they are often priced out of reach. Most of the imported items that the Chinese people want are not American or European, but Japanese — especially TVs, cameras, cassette recorders, refrigerators, washers, and other domestic equipment. So, until exports to China increase, the strategy taken by most foreign companies is to advertise general features of product lines, company names, logos, and slogans rather than trying to sell specific products.

Furthermore, while consumer spending generally has been on the upswing for the past decade, the amount of disposable income that Chinese families have remains very low. While many people may see a television commercial in China, each of those viewers is 'worth' very little as a consumer. And, of course, the volatile political and economic environment deterred many foreign companies from investing and advertising in China even before the summer of 1989.

The Chinese way of doing business

As Jane Ferguson, director of advertising sales for CBS, has said: 'the Chinese are interested in forming their own policies and evaluating worldwide advertising practices on programming rather than just copying the way it is done in America' (Sobel, 1987: 73). Foreign companies who have entered into joint ventures with China have done better than outsiders who have tried to go it alone there. The investments seem to work out fairly well when Chinese firms share marketing and advertising objectives with foreign companies. However, many foreign companies, including numerous large American firms, are unwilling to enter into joint ventures that do not allow them to dictate the terms of how business will be done.

Problems that affect foreign advertising on Chinese television also crop up in the way broadcast stations are managed. Scheduling of commercials is frequently imprecise and commercials are sometimes not aired at all or not 'made good' when problems occur. Commercials are clustered together at the end of program segments, not during the programs, a policy that does not please American advertisers. Booster stations around the country also sometimes cut off or cover up network commercials by inserting their local ads over the national or regional spots, thereby reducing frequency of contact between message and potential consumer.

The Gaze and the Fall

Chinese emperors throughout the centuries had the habit of destroying all vestiges of cultural life that preceded their dynasties' rise to power. This cultural defrocking, including burning the books of Confucius, was done in the name of cultural and political unity. The emperors, claiming that divine intervention was prompting them, each tried to establish or maintain a single cultural system (ru), and declared that the ru of previous eras were simply false. In more modern times, the ancient stories of the beloved Chinese opera were rewritten to put into place the political values of Chinese communism, a new variety of ru. The challenge for China's managers of culture today is television. In this chapter, I have introduced several considerations about the production of popular culture, particularly television, in China. We now consider how it is received by the audience.