4

Images of Knowledge and Intellectuals in Chinese Films of the 1980s

In his important discourse on literature and the arts, Speech at the Yan 'an Forum on Literature and Art, Mao Zedong talked openly about his ideas on literary and artistic work. He elaborated in detail the political expectations for writers, intellectuals, and all educated people. He called on intellectuals to join the groups of workers and peasants to receive reeducation, proposing that “the thoughts and feelings of our literary and artistic workers should be in harmony with those of the workers, peasants, and soldiers.” He continued to argue that:

I came to feel that compared with the workers and peasants the unreformed intellectuals were not clean and that, in the last analysis, the workers and peasants were the cleanest people and, even though their hands were soiled and their feet smeared with cow-dung, they were really cleaner than the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. That is what is meant by a change in feelings, a change from one class to another. If our writers and artists who come from the intelligentsia want their works to be well received by the masses, they must change and remold their thinking and their feelings. Without such a change, without such remolding, they can do nothing well and will be misfits.

When Mao Zedong talked about the issue of intellectuals in 1957, after the founding of the PRC, he repeatedly quoted the ancient Chinese saying that, “If the skin does not exist, how can the hair be attached.” This phrase emphasizes the dependence of intellectuals on the economic base of society. According to this idea, after the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production had been completed, the old “skin” of the economic base to which intellectuals had been attached would no longer exist. As a result, they would need to attach themselves to the new “skin” of public ownership—that is, to the proletariat.¹ However, the reliability of intellectuals was always questioned because their attachment to the new socialist economic base had been forced. As a result, it was believed that they still had to be reprimanded, educated, and duly reformed during development. A peculiar mindset had developed in Chinese politics. According to Wang Chunyuan,

for decades, people have thought that intellectuals are a more unstable factor in society than workers and peasants. . . . Among intellectuals, those in the cultural sector are viewed as the most unstable; and, of those, those who produce arts and culture are the most suspect.²

Under CPC policies that divided people according to ideology, intellectuals were marked by “original sin” and had to be reeducated. During the Anti-Rightist campaigns and the Cultural Revolution, some intellectuals committed suicide to preserve their integrity because they knew they would forever fail to be trusted by the Party like workers and peasants. Such intellectuals included Fu Lei and Lao She (Shu Qingchun). Some intellectuals, such as Zhang Zhixin, were also convicted for their ideas and executed according to the will of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ever since the founding of the PRC, mainstream ideology had viewed intellectuals as a group of people who should be reeducated and transformed. These ideas reached their climax during the decade of the Cultural Revolution, when intellectuals suffered through a dark period. The more knowledge one possessed. the more reactionary one was seen as being.

An old saying proposes that, when something reaches its extreme, it will then be pushed in the opposite direction. In a society with a more than 5,000-year history—such as China—the Cultural Revolution’s strange attitudes towards knowledge and culture of course represented an abnormal state. The public did not generally accept these ideas. After the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution and tire death of its unique ideology, respect for knowledge and culture immediately became the dominant discourse in the new era. Deng Xiaoping reinforced this shift with his own decisive decision-making. On March 18, 1978, at the opening ceremony of the National Conference on Science, Deng declared, “the time has passed when the Gang of Four—Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qing. and Yao Wenyuan—could wreak havoc on the cause of science and persecute intellectuals.”³ In the same speech, he optimistically speculated that,

today, with the Party Central Committee paying great attention to the cause of science and education as well as making efforts to select outstanding talents, we can predict that we will soon enter a new era that will be shaped by many talented people. The future of science lies in the youth, and the growth of the young generation represents the hopes for our future flourishing.⁴

Speaking specifically of teachers, who had been stigmatized as the “stinking old ninth” (meaning they were the ninth-worst of the bad groups in society after landlords, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, etc.) during the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping argued, “all walks of life must support education. Teachers are the gardeners for raising the future generations of the revolution. Their creative work should be respected by the Party and the people.”⁵ Deng Xiaoping’s conception of the place of intellectuals was made even clearer on October 13, 1979, when he told the literary and art workers at the Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists that,

looking back on the work of the past three years, I believe that the literary and art sector is one of the sectors that has made the greatest achievements. Literary and artistic workers deserve the trust, love and respect of the Party and the people. The severe test of class struggle proved that, on the whole, our literary and artistic community is good. Our Party and people are ultimately very proud of, and happy with, such a group.⁶

In response to the serious consequences of the Cultural Revolution’s anticulture and anti-intellectual stance, knowledge came to attain a high and legitimate status within the discourses of post-Cultural Revolution China. The highest echelons of the government reinforced this new stance with repeated policy declarations. Governmental discourse emphasized “the spring of science,” theoretical discourse highlighted that “knowledge is power,” literary discourse embraced “Goldbach’s Conjecture,” and folk discourses suggested that “with learning math, geography, and chemistry, you can go anywhere you want.” Intellectual heroes emerged such as Chen Jingrun, Hua Luogeng, and the “geniuses” of the Junior Class of the University of Science and Technology. Knowledge came to be seen as an important fuel for modernizing the country, as well as an effective way for individuals to change their fates. Accordingly, the social and cultural status of intellectuals rose dramatically after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, this period could be considered another golden age for intellectuals that is comparable to the “May Fourth” period. Just like during the May Fourth Movement, humanistic intellectuals became the representatives of the entire intellectual class. They acted as the vanguard for reflections on the Cultural Revolution, became the prime contributors to cultural enlightenment, and emerged as activists for the Reform and Opening Up policies. According to Zhu Dongli,

the decade after the late 1970s can be viewed as an intellectual era in China’s contemporary history. During this decade, the intellectual class played an unprecedentedly important role. From science and culture to the sociopolitical sector, they performed in tire era’s historical dramas.⁷

The social status of intellectuals reached its nadir during the Cultural Revolution, but surged during the 1980s. Intellectuals transformed from being the objects of reeducation into the subjects of social enlightenment. Politically, intellectuals began to participate in the domestic political landscape through venues such as think tanks, trying to add their own mark to the shaping of China’s future. This participation only increased after the mid-1980s, When Deng Xiaoping affirmed at the 1978 National Science Congress that “most intellectuals already work for the working class and the working people, and therefore, so to speak, they are part of the working class.”⁸ Such a designation made intellectuals, who had suffered so much during the Cultural Revolution, extremely grateful. It was a substantial leap from being reeducated by the workers and peasants to being told they were part of the alliance of workers and peasants. However, by the mid-1980s, such government pronouncements could no longer satisfy intellectuals’ self-conceptions. On August 23, 1986, Wenhuibao published an article titled “Can the Evaluation of Intellectuals Be Higher?” signed by one “Deng Weizhi.” “Deng” pointed out that intellectuals were not just an ordinary part of the working class, but were a uniquely creative part that could best represent the advanced productive forces. The author proposed that, “in a word, intellectuals are the backbone of the working class.” It was starting from this period that people began to use the term “elite” or “intellectual elite” to refer to intellectuals.⁹

As intellectuals' sense of enlightened consciousness emerged from their reflections on the Cultural Revolution, they reversed the awkward position they had beenforced into. They started a journey to elevate their social status and reposition their values. These notions of self-improvement reached a new and wider platform with the emergence of the "elite” theory of intellectuals. As they deepened and perfected their study of “subject” theory, intellectuals finally fulfilled their own expectations on a theoretical and abstract level. In a China that had suffered through catastrophe and was looking towards recovery, intellectuals began to see themselves as subjects of enlightenment who could exercise their right to speak in the face of “objects” (the state, society, and the people). Subsequent scholars commenting on intellectuals’ self-perception during the mid-to-late 1980s have explained that, according to the intellectuals, thousands of people were no longer acting as one. From within the original abstraction of the “people,” intellectuals had surpassed others and transformed themselves into “subjects” or “elites.” Anew “leadership class” had emerged.¹⁰

Bearing Responsibility and Blame: Intellectuals in the 1980s

Reviewing the films produced during the 1980s reveals that they did not entirely follow the social trends of this new era of ideological liberation that worshipped intellectuals. Instead, films emphasized themes of atonement, devotion, and redemption, in some ways repeating how films during the 17-year period had represented intellectuals.

Immediately after the founding of the PRC, people born before 1949, and especially the intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie, had examined and reflected on themselves, carrying out a revolution in their souls. This became a focus of films of the period. Representative films in this mode included The Married Couple (Women fufu zhijian, dir. Zheng Junli, 1961) and Ideological Problems (Sixiang wenti, dir. Huang Zuolin, Ding Li, Luo Yizhi, Ye Ming, and Lu Ren, 1950). The Married Couple depicts the sensitive social problems that prevailed during the early years of the PRC. It shows the harsh conflicts between Zhang Ying, a peasant wife, and Li Ke, an intellectual husband, who move to Shanghai. Their conflict is caused by their different feelings about the new social and political environment, which subsequently reveal the crises of identity and uneasy relations between workerpeasant cadres and intellectual cadres. The film speaks to the difficulties in bridging these rifts. In an atmosphere that overwhelmingly celebrated worker-peasant consciousness, the film ends with Li Ke’s self-criticism. Even so, the film was still characterized as a vilification of worker-peasant cadres, and its creators were severely criticized.

At the time, filmmakers were cautious after the nationwide criticism campaign against another film, The Life of Wuxum (Wu Xun Zhuan, dir. Sun Yu, 1951). Intellectuals had little presence in film representations owing to the literary and artistic policy that mandated “writing about workers, peasants, and soldiers.” The few films that did represent intellectuals did so only to expose their undesirable tendencies such as aspiring to a comfortable life, chasing after fame and fortune, and living in an unserious manner. For example, in Precipice (Xuanya, dir. Yuan Naichen, 1958), the heroine, Fang Qing, does not follow her boyfriend to support the development of the Chinese frontier, but instead chooses to pursue a postgraduate education, However, she is deceived by an unscrupulous professor and not only becomes an accomplice in the professor’s plagiarism of other people’s scientific research, but also is almost wooed by the professor. Learning from this situation, Fang Qing resolutely leaves the professor and the city to save herself, going to an island on the frontier to work for the people and improve herself. Working on a fishing boat, Fang Qing regains her confidence and happiness. Even though the film exposed the weaknesses of intellectuals and suggested that intellectuals should go to the workers and peasants to be reeducated, it was still criticized. A similar film, The Waves of Life (Shenghuo de langhua, dir. Xu Huai’ai, 1958), was also criticized for “exposing the dark side of socialism, attacking the socialist system, criticizing the incompetence of the Party . . . and promoting the dictatorship of experts and professors.”¹¹ One of the few films that portrayed the lives and work of intellectuals positively, Deep Love and Friendship (Qingchang yishen, dir. Xu Changlin, 1957), was also criticized for “cooperating with the rightists to carry out rampant attacks and inciting bourgeois intellectuals to oppose the Party leadership.”¹² Diary of a Nurse (Hushi riji, dir. Tao Jin, 1957), which depicted young intellectuals giving up their privileged lives in the city to devote themselves to industrial development in remote areas, was also criticized for “defaming socialist development and glorifying bourgeois intellectuals.”¹³ The film Shanghai Girl {Shanghai guniang, dir. Cheng Yin, 1958), which is highly regarded today for its artistic value, was similarly characterized as “exaggerating the role of intellectuals, promoting the bourgeois lifestyle, criticizing the Party leadership, and distorting and scandalizing the working class.”¹⁴

It was against this historical context that Chinese films of the new era began their explorations of how to depict intellectuals in new ways. Li Siguang (Li Siguang, dir. Ling Zifeng, 1979) and The Second Handshake (Dierci woshou, dir. Dong Kena, 1980) both embraced the concept of the “spring of science” in their representations of the lives and careers of intellectuals. Such films depicted the difficult paths of intellectuals before and after the founding of the PRC. Under the rule of the Kuomintang, the life of the peasantry was unbearable, and the society was in turmoil. This society could not provide scientists with the basic conditions needed for research. Subsequently, the 10-year turmoil of the Cultural Revolution also impeded scientific development, a failure that brought disasters to individuals and society. It was only Deng Xiaoping’s embrace of the “spring of science” that was able to create a new world for intellectuals. The creation of these films was premised on the changing relationship between intellectuals and their motherland. Specifically, these films comprehensively depicted the patriotism of intellectuals. In Li Siguang, Li’s family endures hardships in their quest to return to China and help get rid of the Kuomintang, but Li’s long-cherished wish to return remains undiminished. Similarly, The Second Handshake also provides a touching account of intellectuals’ patriotism. At the beginning of the film, a plane enters the air above China. The heroine, Ding Jieqiong, looks down at her motherland and the Great Wall of China while singing:

Feeling teary, I look at my hometown,My country, my motherland.Oh,I dream about you; I miss you.My country, my dear hometown,Now, I’m running into your arms,Like a child embracing her long-departed mother.Oh,Feeling teary, I look at my hometown,My country, my motherland.Oh,I dream about you; I miss you.Overseas Chinese love their troubled homeland,Ready to devote themselves to its prosperity.

The modernization of the PRC was based on the alliance between workers and peasants, but desperately needed science and technology. Intellectuals, who were educated people possessing professional knowledge, could contribute to the development of the PRC and answer the demands of the country. After the Cultural Revolution, the country called on intellectuals to join the implementation of the Reform and Opening Up policies. At the same time, intellectuals’ wounded hearts also needed the warmth from their motherland. Rebuilding the relationship between intellectuals and the state was an important task in the drive to rectify the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. It also lay at the foundation of Reform and Opening Up and the need to realize the Four Modernizations. It was expected that films would assume corresponding responsibilities at the time. According to Huang Zhen,

films reflecting our intellectuals’ love for their motherland as well as their dedication to science have made some progress. For example, Li Siguang portrayed an elderly, persevering scientist who loved his motherland and socialism. President Hua Guofeng praised this film at two meetings.¹⁵

As reflections on the Cultural Revolution deepened, the trend of “scar literature” also influenced film production. During extreme political movements such as the Anti-Rightist campaign and the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals were not only deprived of their right to patriotism, but also had their personal lives destroyed. Their dignity as humans was trampled. These unpleasant events reappeared on the screen to remind people of tire absurdity of the dark years that had just passed, and to use visual representations to support the wider social quest to set things right. Literary and artistic works had a role to play in reestablishing social values. For example, in Troubled Laughter (Kunao ren de xiao, dir. Yang Yanjin and Deng Yimin, 1979), a medical professor is assigned to clean toilets, and the Party-backed rebels go so far as to humiliate him with a veterinarian's anal thermometer. The him asks whether the sincere patriotism of the intellectuals has been duly respected and rewarded. A Loyal Overseas Chinese Family (1979) also asks this question. In the him, Huang Deshen, Lin Biyun, and Kafei Bo return from overseas and feel excited as they see the Great Wall for the first time. Images of magnificent mountains and the spectacular Great Wall are reflected in the song that plays during the scene, "I Love You, China,” Together, the images and music present a picture of great patriotism. At this moment, Huang Deshen boldly states, “we will not only build a socialist China, but more importantly, we will defend it.” Accordingly, the three overseas Chinese give up their comfortable lives in cities and go to the south to cultivate important crops such as rubber. However, the situation is not as desirable as they imagined. Huang Deshen’s family, which has returned from Nanyang, is determined to cultivate tropical crops for China. But it is still on the verge of being ostracized and suppressed. Not only is the elder generation treated unfairly, but the younger generation is also marginalized because of questions of political loyalty. When Huang Sihua, played by Chen Chong, learns that her dream of becoming a literary soldier will never be realized, she asks. “oh, my motherland, why don’t you understand the feelings your children have for you?” This questioning is taken to the extreme in Portrait of a Fanatic (Kulian, dir. Wang Chen, 1982), which pointedly asks, “you love your country so much, but does she love you?” This question was effectively answered by the support of Deng Xiaoping and others for the arts, which became a landmark event in the history of ideology and literature in the 1980s.

After the impact of Portrait of a Fanatic (1982), films changed how they represented intellectuals. Representative works from the early and mid-1980s include At Middle Age (1982) and The Black Cannon Incident (Heipao shijian, dir. Huang Jianxin, 1986). The protagonists of the two films, Lu Wenting and Zhao Shuxin, respectively, are both highly educated intellectuals. They are also both the backbone of their respective departments, one being an ophthalmologist and the other an engineer with a good command of foreign languages. At the same time, neither is fully busted in their unit, and they only have limited resources at their disposal. They are models of dedication to their jobs, but receive extremely limited benefits, leaving Lu Wenting exhausted and Zhao Shuxin in a difficult posibon. The most striking aspect of both films is that they highlight the patience of their protagonists. Both films depict the two intellectuals as having been beated unjustly. An old Marxist-Leninist woman pursues Lu Wenting, and the head of Zhao Shuxin’s unit secretly monitors him. However, unlike Huang Sihua in A Loyal Oerseas Chinese Family or Ling Chenguang in Portrait of a Fanatic, Lu and Zhao both choose to bear their burdens, with the former crying in silence and the latter laughing at himself. In At Middle Age, even when the situation becomes so unbearable that it seems the characters must complain, the director only allows for the audience to overhear a couple about to leave the country complaining to their heart’s content. Throughout, the him continues to depict Lu’s endurance.

Lu Wenting is a medical student who dreams of exploring unanswered questions in ophthalmology in addition to benefiting the people. Why did she choose ophthalmology? Lu answers, “because our country is too backward in ophthalmology ... I think there are still some surgical technologies that we haven’t grasped.” Lu possesses a sense of mission, desiring to help develop the country and the nation. The film’s story takes place after the Cultural Revolution, in the new era of reorganization. It is notable that the film does not spend as much time complaining about the damage caused by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution as other “scar” films. Rather, it focuses on the present situation of Lu Wenting. She is a hospital ophthalmologist, with a husband and a couple of children. The film also portrays the difficulties in her life. Though she is a professional, she is in a low-ranking position and is not trusted by Qin Bo, an elderly woman who firmly believes in Marxist-Leninist ideology. She often is put under pressure when she treats old cadres. Additionally, her family lives in poor housing conditions, and she is neither a good wife to her husband nor a good mother to her children. Lu faces overwhelming pressure at work and does not receive just material or spiritual rewards for her efforts. It certainly caimot be said that she has no grievances, but she never complains. The film shows her sorrow only through the tears that flow when she eats sesame seed cake with plain boiled water. These can be interpreted as tears of grievance, revealing her sadness at not being treated equally. They can also be viewed as tears of guilt, showing her regret for failing to take care of her family. The film possesses a sense of ambiguity. Its narrative strategy is to use the supporting characters, and not its protagonist, Lu, to express the voices of intellectuals. For example, in an important scene, Lu’s good friend Jiang Yafen and her husband decide to leave the country because they can’t stand the living conditions at home.

At this couple’s farewell dinner, they drink some wine which loosens their tongues. Jiang’s husband Liu. a doctor, confesses the reasoning for his decision to go abroad, “You may condemn me. I’m an impious person of the Chinese nation.” He despairs, “for the policy of the central government to reach the grassroots, it first has to cross thousands of mountains and rivers. I don’t know how long it will take for the light to shine on me.” While the film presents such sentiments. Lu Wenting, the character most qualified to express discontent, does not speak out herself. Pan Hong, who played Lu Wenting, said of her character:

Underneath Wenting’s gentle and sickly appearance, her reserved speech, and the profound passion deep in her heart, there is a great capacity for restraint which surpasses that of normal people. I conceive of this tenacious mentality as patience. I use this word to describe the nucleus of the character. I would also use this tone to express the character’s mental state, as well as her virtues as an ordinary Chinese woman, in order to describe her noble spirit of self-sacrifice.¹⁶

It was this spirit of patience that came to define new portrayals of intellectuals onscreen in the 1980s. These characters no longer complain about the Cultural Revolution, but instead begin to use their professional knowledge and wisdom to contribute to the “new Long March.” They might not enjoy the spiritual and material treatment they deserve, and they might not be fully trusted by mainstream society owing to the persisting influence of the Cultural Revolution, but they still work silently, without complaint. Instead of complaining, these characters often sincerely hope that the public might see their value and notice their poor living standards, and that, accordingly, the government might take measures to change their situations as soon as possible. Keeping silent, they hope that society and the government would lift intellectuals out of their woes. Chen Rong, the author of the novel At Middle Age, spoke of this new mentality in representation and in reality:

The film At Middle Age is based on my novella, which was published three years ago. For three years, our Party has been calling on organizations at all levels to implement policies to improve the working and living conditions of middle-aged intellectuals. The spring thunder heralds the arrival of spring showers. After the film’s release, I hoped that audiences would enjoy it, and I believed that they would be able to understand the film’s shortcomings with their beautiful hearts and souls. At the same time, I still hope, though I didn’t say so in public, that the film will quickly become “obsolete” as time goes by, and that it will soon only have historical value rather than practical significance. Let Lu Wenting’s noble character, unselfish attitude and diligent service to the people be shown on the screen and remain in the hearts of the people.¹⁷

The cultural significance of Lu Wenting lies in how this character reflects the hopes of intellectuals in the early 1980s to change their situation through the mentality that, “peaches and plums do not say anything, but the seeds of peaches and plums grow into a grove.” In other words, the core point of this character is to represent dedication and patience. Intellectuals of the time hoped to show their value to the society through their selfless dedication and ability to bear humiliations in the face of unjust treatment. They hoped their patience and dedication would attract the attention of society and encourage mainstream society to solve the continuing issues surrounding intellectuals through reconciliation. Representations of this mentality were undoubtedly successful, and both mainstream values and intellectuals themselves celebrated the image of Lu Wenting. For example, at the 1983 Golden Rooster Awards, the judges highlighted Lu Wenting:

Since the founding of the PRC, our intellectuals have gone through many hardships. There are still many difficulties in, and resistance to, implementing policies directed towards intellectuals. But intellectuals’ nature has always remained the same. This nature is fully expressed in Lu Wenting’s life, and it is what makes this image so touching. These intellectuals endured humiliations and struggled tirelessly for the development of the Chinese nation. They have little regard for the hardships of their personal lives and are happy to just play their role. Lu Wenting once says simply, “as long as the scalpel is in our hands, we will be able to relieve the suffering of patients.” These words accurately depict the endurance of intellectuals. Therefore, when evaluating the artistic achievements of the film, we should highlight the representative meaning of Lu’s image as well as her high epistemie and aesthetic values.¹⁸

It is because the writer-director tapped into cultural psychology through the portrayal of Lu Wenting that the judges At Middle Age the 1983 Golden Rooster Award for Best Picture. The judges’ comments on the award pointed to tire mainstream values of the film:

At Middle Age successfully depicts an archetypical image inLu Wenting. She is a socialist of the new times, encapsulating the noble spirit of a generation of intellectuals growing up in China. The film also touches on social issues of contemporary significance and has a strong artistic impact. Therefore, we will award this film the Golden Rooster Award for Best Picture.

Commenting on the actress who portrays Lu Wenting, the judges said,

Pan Hong’s simple, profound and delicate performance in At Middle Age reveals the ordinary but noble inner world of the character. Her performance creates a Lu Wenting with artistic charms for the screen. Therefore, we award her the Golden Rooster Award for Best Actress.¹⁹

Not only was At Middle Age celebrated in mainstream society and promoted through awards and other means, but it was also recognized and appreciated by some intellectuals within the cultural atmosphere of the times. Xu Nanming argued in 1983:

Undoubtedly, Lu Wenting is a typical example of a contemporary Chinese intellectual, a shining socialist for the new times. . . . The image of Lu Wenting represents the deep love an entire generation of intellectuals feels for the motherland and the people. She represents intellectuals’ dedication to the cause of the Four Modernizations, as well as their difficult path and tire sorrow's and joys of their lives. In this “optimistic tragedy”, the tragic figure of Lu Wenting does not make people feel sadness or pity, but is instead solemn and stirring. This character inspires people to live, study, and work as she did.²⁰

Calling on intellectuals to learn from Lu Wenting presented them with a viable path to rationalize their position in society. It should be emphasized that the value of Lu’s character was contemporary. She was a vehicle for the values and mentalities of intellectuals of the early 1980s. Lu’s image comes under greater scrutiny when removed from its context. For example. Shanghai-based critic Wu Xuan focused on the core values of At Middle Age, which, according to Wu, is enduring necessary humiliation for a great cause. He proposes that one only need to bear tire burden of shame and humiliation that can be endured. He points out that, if one goes beyond all limits and is simply humiliated, this is not a matter of moral character, but possibly a sign of servility. Wu Xuan finds drat the merit of Lu Wenting’s enduring humiliation is mainly reflected in her encounter with the old Marxist-Leninist woman, Qin Bo. He thus proposes there is a dichotomous relationship between Qin Bo and Lu Wenting. Qin Bo’s pride is answered and shaped by Lu Wenting’s patience. Wu argued:

The old Marxist-Leninist woman and Lu Wenting are culturally complementary, and the images of the old Marxist-Leninist woman and Lu Wenting are mutually reinforced. If there is a group of people who tolerate humiliation, there is bound to also be a group of people who are arrogant and domineering. And the request of the old Marxist-Leninist women is precisely to ask the people to put up with humiliation. If a large number of Chinese intellectuals put up with humiliation, there will also be a few people who throw their weight around.²¹

Related to these themes is The Black Camion Incident (1985), another film about intellectuals. The protagonist of the film, Zhao Shuxin, is a mining engineer who also enjoys Chinese chess. On a business trip, he discovers that a black chess piece, the camion, is missing. He is afraid that it will be difficult to match the black piece, so he sends a telegram to his coworker Qian Ruquan, who is staying with him in the same hostel, with the message, “lost black cannon for Zhao in 301.” This ambiguous message and his unusual demeanor put the office worker at the telegraph office on alert and they report the situation to the Public Security Bureau (PSB). The bureau immediately intervenes to investigate and learns that Zhao Shuxin graduated from Tsinghua University in 1956. that he is still single, and that he has a clean political history, but that he also used to be a Catholic. The PSB passes the information to the organization Zhao works for, and the leader’s immediate reaction to Zhao’s ambiguous message is to suspect that Zhao is engaged in illegal activities. As a precaution, the organization transfers Zhao to a maintenance facility and hires a traveling interpreter so that the German engineer working with Zhao can continue working. Zhao does not understand the situation surrounding his job transfer, thinking that the organization is transferring him to an important position. When he understands what is going on, he regrets sending the telegram that caused so much misunderstanding. But he also thinks, “can’t I even decide to send a telegram?” He is saddened by the organization’s distrust of him. He is even more saddened that the incompetent interpreter the organization employed has caused damage to the imported construction machinery. As a result, the country lost millions of yuan that cannot be recovered. Examining these results, Zhao Shuxin can only smile bitterly.

The character of Zhao Shuxin became a hot topic of discussion at the 1986 Golden Rooster Awards. Some members of the jury appreciated that, by showing him enduring humiliation, the film undoubtedly depicted Zhao Shuxin as a typical figure of socialist intellectuals in the image of Lu Wenting. According to the members of the jury:

Zhao Shuxin is a credible image of a Chinese intellectual, adding a new character to the gallery of Chinese cinema. He is a very good example of a Chinese intellectual, a man who works hard and does his best, who eats grass and produces milk like a cow. When he is criticized, he feels that the Party is saving him. When he receives a small little favor, he feels that he can never repay it. When the misunderstanding is cleared up, he is able to be understanding and restrain himself. Only Chinese intellectuals can achieve his kindness and tolerance, as well as his sense of responsibility to the country and the nation.²²

In hindsight, this analysis is too idealistic in its description of Zhao Shuxin and the intellectuals of the 1980s. It suggests that intellectuals had a great passion to serve the country, only wanting to give and never asking for rewards. According to this analysis, even when intellectuals were treated unfairly, they could still laugh at themselves. If this were true, they surely would have been the people most appreciated by society. Even if they were treated unfairly, they would still not challenge, threaten, or even complain about the system.

However, in reality, by the mid-1980s when The Black Cannon Incident was produced, the Chinese people’s thinking had become more diverse. By this time, circumstances had changed from when Lu Wenting’s enduring humiliation had been praised nationwide. Critics might have regarded Zhao Shuxin as representative of the times, but now some viewed the values modeled by this character negatively. Some critics saw Zhao Shuxin as epitomizing some people’s tendency towards avoidance that had existed since the founding of the PRC. Zhao is one who “does not seek merit, but only seeks not being at fault.” These critics argued that what Zhao does should not be considered enduring humiliation, but is instead being “submissive and insensitive.” In other words, they suggested that Zhao Shuxin represents “numbness” and “tragedy.” For one, Bao Guang explained that,

no matter where he works, he thinks it is due to the needs of the job. If the personalities of Luo Qun in Legend of Tianyun Mountain and those of Xu Lingjun in The Herdsman are the result of external forces, then Zhao Shuxin's character is shaped by self-rationalization. He rationalizes everything that is not as he wants it to be and tells himself that it is fine. If such Chinese intellectuals get used to the status quo, adopt an overly positive attitude towards life, and choose to do nothing, our cause will be inadvertently undermined.²³

In traditional Chinese society, intellectuals enjoyed a relatively high social status. As a traditional Chinese saying explains, “he who excels in studying can then become an official” (xue ervou ze shi). Those who did best on the imperial examination enjoyed many privileges in the society. However, after the founding of the PRC. political movements such as the Anti-Rightist campaign and the Cultural Revolution spread the idea that intellectuals could not be trusted. Intellectuals were knocked out of their esteemed position in society, and it was believed that the more knowledge intellectuals possessed, the more reactionary they became. The Black Cannon Incident confronts this problem through the loss of a small chess piece. The film suggests that the influence of the Cultural Revolution persisted in China, even after the beginning of Reform and Opening Up. What some people did to an intellectual such as Zhao Shuxin out of loyalty to the Party actually jeopardized the cause of national development. Indeed, the film can still be viewed as a microcosm of modem political life. For his part, the director Huang Jianxin was unwilling to acknowledge that his creation reveals the scars of the Party’s political development and instead argued that the film’s theme was the idea of searching for one’s roots:

We are in an era of change. The wave of reform is coming. And there is no doubt that the future of China is full of hope. Advanced technology and equipment do not determine everything; instead, talent is the most important thing. History will require people with modern features for the future of China. In this film, we wrote about the fate of an intellectual and the issue of people’s attitudes toward knowledge. But deep down we would like to show that we have a state of mind, a habitual way of thinking that binds us to ourselves. This mentality is not closely related to politics, but is instead created by the spirit of traditional culture.²⁴

By interpreting the film in this way, the director, on the one hand, decreased its political sensitivity and made it easier for it to be released, and, on the other hand, connected it to cultural trends. In reality, the him is indeed connected to ideas of roots, but in a way that makes it more closely linked to the political realities of China during the time it was made. The story of The Black Cannon Incident could not have happened in another political context of the 1980s.

Intellectual discourse was becoming increasingly strong in the mid-to-late 1980s. Intellectuals were working towards notions of elite culture and the construction of ideas of the subject. Onscreen, 1988 ushered in the “Year of Wang Shuo", because it was dominated by the so-called “Wang Shuo films” based on his novels. These novels discuss, and even mock, authorities and elites in a cold writing style. Wang Sluio's novels and the subsequent films dismantled the discourse of intellectual authority that was still straggling to take a hold on a narrative level. Zhao Yaoshun, in The Troubleshooters (Wanzhu, dir, Mi Jiashan, 1988), was a typical character in a Wang Shuo film. The moral education professor Zhao Yaoshun is a famous orator and spiritual mentor who uses his passion and philosophy to inspire young people who have lost their way to bitterly weep and seek repentance. Zhao Yaoshun also hopes to be an instructor to those who disobey mainstream values when facing a group of young people such as the characters Yu Guan and Ma Qing. There are several grand scenes in which Professor Zhao walks and talks with the troubleshooters, asking them what they do in their leisure time. Ma Qing responds that he “plays poker, watches martial arts videos, or sleeps.” In response, Zhao Yaoshun says, “you can read some books. Books are the panacea to get rid of unhappiness and relieve loneliness.” Yu Guan answers, “We are not unhappy. We never read books, and that is why we are happy.” Zhao Yaoshun says. “If you don’t read books, then at least you can make some friends. A knowledgeable friend can also be very beneficial.” Zhao Yaoshun presents the image that he cares about youth in front of Yu Guan and the young people like him. But, behind their back. Professor Zhao uses Yu Guan and the others as negative examples that the world needs to be warned about. When Professor Zhao gives a report, he satirizes how Yu Guan and his friends say there are only two kinds of friends, “those who you can have sex with and those who you caimot have sex with.” The film portrays Zhao Yaoshun as a self-contradictory person, dismantling his self-image in order to show that the characters in the film despise him and thus making him despicable to audiences.

When Zhao Yaoshun, Yu Guan, and Ma Qing are all trapped in the hospital, they have the following conversation:

Zhao Yaoshum: I would like to call on all of society to care about your lives. I am no longer young, but I still get excited. These days, when I think of you, I become so excited that I cannot fall asleep.

Ma Quing: You say we are in pain?

Zhao Yaoshun: Absolutely. Even if you do not say it, I can still feel it.

Ma Quing: But we are not in pain.

Zhao Yaoshum: That does not make sense. Why aren’t you in pain? You should feel pain, which explains why you can still be saved.

Yu Gran: But now I am telling you that we are not unhappy.

Zhao Yaoshun: If that is true, then you only make me feel pathetic. Because you are so numb that you feel nothing. This is not birth. This is degeneration. You should cry for yourselves.

As a result, the three young men pretend to cry in order to mock Professor Zhao and make him leave.

In the eyes of the public, Zhao Yaoshun is a spiritual mentor, but the three troubleshooters see through his act. When they encounter Zhao Yaoshun on the street, a fashionable woman passes by, and they talk about her. The three troubleshooters entice Zhao Yaoshun to express his real feelings,

you do not understand that people of my status might look prestigious, but we are actually repressed, even by ourselves. Unlike young people nowadays, who have nothing to worry about. . . . For our generation, all of our personal lives are tragedies.

The troubleshooters see through the hypocrisy of Zhao Yaoshun and do their best to tease him. Ma Qing makes fun of him by lying to him, “the girls admire him so much that they want to meet him. They made an appointment to meet him in front of the Great Wall Hotel tomorrow at 5 p.m.” This is in fact a test for Zhao Yaoshun. In fact, Mi Jiashan, the director, revealed some inside information about this scene. After the film was completed, various parties had proposed a number of changes, these included:

Reshaping the image of the professor of moral education, and not letting him wait outside of the Great Wall Hotel because that would be too damaging to the image of a real professor of moral education. (The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League watched the film and also proposed to completely rewrite the professor of moral education, saying that there was only one professor of moral education in the country, and people might confuse the film with reality. Later, my mother called our film studio to speak for me. She asked, “who said there is only one moral education professor? There are several just in our college!”) In the end, I insisted that I would not make these changes, so I left the studio. However, the studio talked with me several more times, and I had to make concessions and eventually changed a few things.²⁵

Wang Shuo’s view of Chinese intellectuals shaped the characterization of Zhao Yaoshun. He said;

I once vowed not to be a so-called intellectual. The reason for this was probably the bad impression my teachers left on me when I was in middle school. They were so impersonal and arrogant because they thought that their wealth of knowledge should become their capital for bullying the weak. As I grew up, I saw too much knowledge being abused, fetishized. and used to distort human nature, which led me to distrust, resent, and even hate anyone who called himself an intellectual.²⁶

In his 1993 essay Self-description of Wang Shuo, Wang Shuo started a separate section to discuss intellectuals. He wrote that, in a market economy:

I feel that intellectuals in China are probably the most prominent group of people who are unable to find their place. They are the ones who feel the strongest sense of crisis after the rise of the commodity economy, and they are more lost than any other social class. Their economic status has been lost. In the past, university professors had fairly high, or at least decent, living standards, much higher than the average person. But now they do not. There is a saying goes that the ones who research missiles earn less than tea egg sellers. Therefore, the only thing they can do to preserve their dignity is to cling to their cultural superiority. Now, after the impact of popular culture, popular novels and pop songs, their cultural superiority is also gone. They really feel that they have nothing left. If they do not adjust their mindset in time, I’m afraid they will not have a place in the future. In actuality, some people’s sense of inferiority is closely linked to their personal interests. They are used to being respected, but now they have nothing left, and once they lose their decent lives, they become obscene.²⁷

Wang Shuo himself held up the banner of “the lowly being the wisest, the noble being the stupidest.” It was like they were beating up the “drowning dog”:

Because I had not read enough important books. I had encountered enough of the intellectuals’ airs on the long road to revolution and I could not bear their tone. A mountain of intellectuals was always in front of a rough person like me. With their pervasive sense of superiority, they control the entire system of social values. It is very difficult for us uneducated people to live within the standards of their values. Only when we knock them out will we be able to turn over a new leaf. Besides, we dare not attack others. Lei Gong attacks the soft tofu [meaning picking the easiest target]. The target I choose to attack must be defeated at the first blow, and I must overcome them.²⁸

Wang Shuo is, of course, free to express his views on society or certain social classes, but whether his ideas are widely accepted by society is another question that is worthy of scholarly attention. Wang Shuo’s novels were very popular for a period, and four of them were adapted into films in less than a year. These included The Troubleshooters, Samsara (Lunhui, dir. Huang Jianxin, 1988), Gasping Out (Da chuanqi, dir. Ye Daying, 1988), and Half Flame, Half Brine (Yiban shi huoyan, yiban shi haishui, dir. Xia Gang, 1989). These adaptations became an important impetus for the promotion of Wang Shuo’s works. Wang Shuo himself became a legend in literary circles. Some other film directors strongly agreed with the ideas Wang Shuo offered. Wang Shuo himself said Yu Guan and his friends in The Troubleshooters were new socialists with Chinese characteristics. Similarly, die director Mi Jiashan said their characterizations “to some extent reflect tire author's (including my own) preference for these people, that we should not just recognize them, but support them.”²⁹ Huang Jianxin, the director of Samsara, explained that he chose Wang Shuo’s novel because it reflected the era. In response to questions, he answered,

I went to the library to borrow newspapers published during the Cultural Revolution and read them page by page. All my eyes saw were lies. Today’s art has to show this. Now, we tell the truth, but those who are used to telling lies think that the truths are lies.³⁰

The emergence of Wang Shuo films indicated a shift in attitudes in film creation. In the so-called intellectual era, the film industry did not follow mainstream discourse on intellectuals. And, in the period of Wang Shuo films, the industry began to further separate itself from the type of elite culture pursued by intellectuals. Instead, films situated themselves as part of popular culture and quietly deconstructed the intellectual discourse through their onscreen narratives. This development reflected a wider problem: less than 10 years after intellectuals had recovered from the defamation of being called the “stinking old ninth” and “cow demons and snake spirits,” they still had not come close to successfully constructing the type of elite culture or the notions of subjectivity they pursued. Still, there remains the question of why anti-intellectual trends developed so quickly in society and became accepted in popular culture. Intellectuals had their own answers. For one, Zhu Dongli argued:

In the first decade of the new era, intellectuals dominated the mainstream, while other classes were relatively silent. Mainstream ideology rejected and repressed Wang Shuo’s type of marginalized people, which became the basic background for the conception and creation of Wang Shuo’s novels. Therefore, Wang Shuo’s anger should be understood in light of the long-standing dominance of the intellectual class. If that anger were to be exhausted, then the source of his creativity would dry up. His works are results of the repression of the preceding era that celebrated intellectuals, and his popularity is only possible after the end of that intellectual era.³¹

Judging by the course of history, this anti-intellectual social sentiment could be seen as playing a role in the development of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The intellectuals’ unfinished goals, combined with their difficulty in reaching a consensus with the official ideology, as well as the anxieties of the intellectual community that were exacerbated by civil skepticism, were all triggers for political events. It should be noted that films also became a cultural force pushing intellectuals to take risks in the 1980s.

Keys to Life: Knowledge and Chinese Films of the 1980s

In the 1980s, Chinese films, as a whole, did not characterize intellectuals in ways that gave them prominence on the screen. Still, knowledge itself became celebrated and was no longer associated with reactionaries owing to the utilitarianism and pragmatism required by the Reform and Opening Up policies. Knowledge became widely enshrined in people’s beliefs about how to change one’s destiny. As a result, knowledge remained attractive, even if films usually portrayed intellectuals as tragic figures.

In the 1980s, some intellectuals, riding on the wave of policy adjustments and a new focus on employing youths and professionals, were transformed from obscure technicians and teachers to eminent cadres in management posts in the government and Party. They continued the time-honored miracle of transforming from intellectuals into politicians. Although the popular idea that intellectuals were good for nothing lingered, wider society accepted that a limited number of people were being promoted into leading positions by virtue of their diplomas and professions. Despite inadequate understanding of the value of intellectuals, the fact that a small group of people had changed their destinies, and were even entitled to control others’ by virtue of their knowledge and diplomas, contributed to the celebration of knowledge within popular society.

Films, being reflections of people’s mentality during a certain era, showcased this ideology. At the beginning of the 1980s, the “miracle of knowledge” became associated with zealous and non-utilitarian patriotism. Films showed young people straggling to improve themselves out of the shame they felt for having no skills to contribute to the country. Such characters included the youths in The Young Kids as well as Liao Xingming in Against the Light. However, by the middle of the 1980s, the miracle of knowledge had become tinged by utilitarianism, and people were realizing their individuality. In this context, knowledge came to be associated with fortune, destiny, and the future. According to Xu Yinliai, writing in 1984,

in an era of booming knowledge and up-to-date information, people’s craving for science has never been as strong as it is today. Thousands of graduates receive their diplomas from universities, television universities, correspondence colleges, and evening schools . . . These gilded red diplomas represent a bridge between ambitions, wisdom, and effort as well as between dreams and reality.³²

At least, people no longer considered themselves cogs in society under the leadership of the Party. Instead, they hoped to change their own destinies and promote their own social positions by virtue of their knowledge and diplomas.

One character reflecting these ideas was Sheng Xia, the heroine in the film Sheng Xia and Her Fiancé (Sheng Xia he tade weihunfu, dir. Qin Zhiyu, 1985). Sheng Xia works at the Chunfeng grocery as a salesclerk specializing in pork. Six years earlier, Sheng Xia experienced the miracle of knowledge when she returned to Beijing from the village she worked in. Sheng Xia sets a biweekly dating rule for herself and her fiancé Ke Ping to encourage him to work hard to prepare for the college entrance examination. Sheng Xia also decides to learn English by herself thanks to the encouragement of Wei Xuejin (played by Ge You), who has been successfully teaching himself for a long time. However, just before the college entrance examination, Sheng Xia finds herself pregnant. Faced with this interruption, Ke Ping proposes to Sheng Xia. At the time, the heroine is anxious about her future, thinking that she will lose the opportunity to enter university owing to age limitations if she does not take part in the examination this year. Before her wedding, Sheng Xia determines to take the examination, even at the cost of her child and marriage, and even though Ke Ping was prepared to take the exam for both of them. As a result, the two separate. Nonetheless, Sheng Xia, who has already paid a high price, fails the exam. However, Sheng Xia decides to take the self-taught examination owing to the inspiration of the autodidactic spirit of a teenage shoemaker. She ultimately receives high marks and is reported on as a role model in the Beijing Daily. Happy as she is, Sheng Xia cannot help but feel heartbroken at the sight of Ke Ping and his wife roaming around Xiangshan Park with their child. Still, the fulfillment knowledge brings to her heart quickly overtakes her depression and leads her to continue her selftaught journey.

Sheng Xia, who is a fanatic for knowledge, represents a specific feature of a particular era. Although she pays a high price for her diploma and knowledge, Sheng Xia achieves at least some of her goals, despite the ups and downs she faces. This is enough for her to achieve a spiritual balance and to stabilize her emotions during the encounter with Ke Ping and his family. This exemplifies the truth that knowledge represents power. Sheng Xia, who sold pork, is willing to go to great lengths for her diploma. Then, what is Xiao Biao, a mutton kebab vendor and a devotee to universities, willing to do for his diploma?

Xiao Biao is the protagonist in Hey! Brothers (Hei! Gemener, dir. Wang Fengkui, 1987). He is a young man living in a Beijing hutong who has alreadyfailed the college entrance examination twice. This failure forces him to sell mutton kebabs for a living with his sister Dongjia. Xiao Biao is keen on his business, so much so that he dresses like a Uighur and hawks mutton kebabs amid fire and smoke. Akin to how a pork salesclerk holds ambitions for university in Sheng Xia and Her Fiancé, this film also presents a path towards a diploma for its kebab vendor protagonist. After yet another failed attempt at the examination, Xiao Biao decides to study college courses by himself and take the postgraduate entrance examination directly. On the street, he is a mutton kebab vendor, but, at home, he is a pursuer of knowledge immersed in a sea of books.

Xiao Biao’s pursuit of knowledge and his dreams raise him from the humble position of kebab vendor to a spiritual domain in which his soul is free. This suggests knowledge has a miraculous quality and is tied to power. In another part of the film’s narrative, Xiao Biao and Wu Xuejie, the daughter of Professor Wu, are attracted to each other. However, the disparity in family, position, and identity seems destined to block their romantic journey. Fortunately, Professor Wu finally recognizes Xiao Biao for a paper he has written, and the problems are erased. Additionally, Xiao Biao’s knowledge not only endows him personally with power and hope, but also inspires his friend Geng Hai, once a muddleheaded young man, to become more diligent.

Addressing similar themes, the film We Didn't Know Love During First Love (Chulian shi women budong aiqing, dir. Zhu Wenshun and Chen Xuejie, 1987) is a love story about a sanitation worker. Sanitation workers are rarely shot by Cupid’s arrow owing to their offensive working environment. However, Zhou Hang is not only a handsome young man, but also an intellectual who focuses on his inner world and is skilled at painting and calligraphy. He is unsatisfied with, and depressed by, his job. His ideal life is not like this. Zhou Hang has a crush on Chen Wanxia, a worker at a factory that makes instruments. Chen’s family is not satisfied with her identity as a worker and thinks that the only way she can change her life is by taking the college entrance examination. Knowing this and wanting to win the approval of Chen and her family, Zhou Hang does not dare to disclose his job and falsely claims that he is a college student. Unfortunately for Zhou, his cover is blown when Chen fails her exam. Chen subsequently reexamines their relationship and offers to break up with Zhou.

Zhou Hang is so heartbroken that he wants to die. Fortunately, he is dissuaded from suicide by Mou Ying, a clothing store owner. Mou Ying provides Zhou with financial assistance, and he attends the Central Arts and Crafts College, becoming a designer after graduation. The film ends with a scene of a fashion show featuring professional costumes designed by Zhou Hang. This symbolizes his successful transformation from a blue-collar worker to a professional, and a rosy romance also awaits him, naturally.

Another similar film is Father and Son (Fu vu zi, dir. Wang Binglin, 1986), the first of the Everyone Is Made Useful (Tian sheng wocai hi youvong) film series. In the film, the father does all he can do to enable Iris son to succeed, even though all the son does is to idle about and play the fool. Focusing on the college entrance examination, the film is about the relationship between this father and his son. The father hopes his son will enter college, but the son is only interested in participating in the booming market economy. To make his son become a college student, tire first thing the father does every morning is to urge his son to study. In hopes of him getting good grades, the father uses his own pension to buy study materials for his son, even buying him a radio to study English. However, the son’s will is at odds with his father’s expectations, and he secretly goes to the market to help his friend Shunzi’s vending business, and also to watch movies. This forces Iris father to try to make him return to studying. Time passes in the confrontation between father and son. When it is time for the entrance examination, the father, neatly dressed, sends his son to the exam room in the morning. Upon seeing his sleepy son. tire father gives him a cup of coffee to help wake him up. However, the son still falls asleep during the exam because he had frantically stayed up studying for the exam at the last minute. His thundering snoring disturbs the whole exam room, and the father takes his son back home on a cart. This symbolizes the end of both the son’s examination journey and the father’s dream for his son to enter college. The last scene, when the father pulls his sleeping son down the road on the cart, is designed to make audiences feel sorry and sad for him. The film focuses on narrating the son’s future and judges his parents’ value in terms of their support for their son taking the examination. Despite the son’s ultimate failure, the themes of the film still reflect the celebration of knowledge and diplomas common during the 1980s.

The second and third films in the series (starring Chen Peisi and his father Chen Qiang). Erzi Has a Little Hotel (Erzi kaidian, dir. Wang Binglin, 1987) and The Silly Manager (Shamao jingli, dir. Duan Jishua, 1988), were released shortly after Father and Son. In the films, Erzi (the son) has to turn to the emerging market economy after having failed his exams. Erzi opens a hotel with others of his friends who have also failed their examinations. In the course of business, they sometimes enjoy the pleasure of making money through their own efforts, while sometimes also suffering owing to being defrauded. In the 1990s, the character Erzi, played by Chen Peisi, continued to be featured in Films such as Father and Son Open a Bar (Yelia kai geting, dir. Chen Peisi and Ding Xuan, 1992), Father and Son's Car (Fuzi laoyeche, dir. Liu Guoquan, 1990), and An Interim Father (Linshi baba, dir. Chen Guoxing, 1992). These Films all tell stories of Erzi’s absurd experiences in the market economy. In these films, Erzi occasionally succeeds as a boss, but more often than not finds himself defrauded. The him series provides a microcosm for the life journeys of Chinese people who gave up the “miracles” of knowledge and diplomas. The first film in the series came out at a time when ideas of the miracle of knowledge and the miracle of diplomas had already started to fade away. The films serve as a record of the turning points of the era and are, thus, of great cultural significance.

Relating to these themes, it is useful to consider the slogan of the film On Their Own—“with no way to serve the country, the youth can only drink down their sorrows; the students can only find their place if someone appeals to society.” Addressing these ideas, the film tells a story about the disappearance of the “miracle of the diploma.” Because of their own experiences, intellectuals were inclined to speak about the miraculous virtues of knowledge, and the majority believed that a diploma could work miracles in ensuring a promising future. However, in the 1980s, the new problem of unemployed college students, whose existence had previously been shielded by the planned economy, began to emerge. As Reform and Opening Up proceeded, the government relaxed its grip on all kinds of resources, causing new issues. State-owned companies and collective enterprises were endowed with greater autonomy; joint ventures and emerging private companies were allowed to conduct their own operations and make their own decisions about employment; and government organs gradually implemented a new trial civil service system. This meant the positions held by the government for college graduates were decreasing while the number of graduates was increasing each year. As a result, the illusion that one would certainly be employed if one earned a diploma began to evaporate after the middle of the 1980s.

At the beginning of the 1980s, plenty of jobs were waiting for the college students, even when they were still on campus. They were assured of a promising future in terms of both family and career. However, this situation did not last long. After the middle of the 1980s, the future of college students became uncertain. In these circumstances, the government began to reform the higher education system. Namely, the government stopped providing funds for all training expenses, and colleges began charging students partial tuition fees starting in 1986. The systems for work allocation also left college students disillusioned, with some students finding themselves unemployed or being asked to report to work as sanitation workers. These developments threw ambitious youths into a dilemma. The cost of education was increasing, but the return on that education after graduation was decreasing. College students felt they had transformed from the extraordinary to the ordinary and began to feel uncertain about the future and dissatisfied with reality. This dissatisfaction has been blamed for contributing to the social instability at the end of the 1980s. What is a pity is that films focusing on the youth failed to grasp the social changes that were affecting the feelings of young elites. Over the course of the entire 1980s, films projected an image that college students were extraordinary, being blessed by the miracle of knowledge and the miracle of the diploma. Few films revealed the real conditions of life for students.

On Their Own tells the story of 300 graduates of Huaxia University who are still unemployed 1 year after graduation. They can only make a living by doing odd jobs such as selling popsicles and stuffed buns or ghostwriting. Although they live a poor life, they remain hopeful for themselves and enthusiastic about society. As the disabled student Chen says, “expend your own sweat, and eat your own meal—do your own work and do it yourself. But one who depends on heaven, depends on others, and depends on ancestors—that is not a real man!”

One of these poor, yet persistent and ambitious, students, who was unemployed right after graduating from Huaxia University, eventually finds a job as a journalist. She decides to report on the issue of the unemployment these graduates are facing as a way to help them find their own place in society as soon as possible. However, the journalist’s report on the issue to the local government is ignored, with the excuse that there is an employment plan with quotas. The journalist herself is flown back to Beijing. Thus, the students remain unemployed. Fortunately, the journalist’s concerns about the issue do not go away after her return to Beijing. She submits related materials to superior officials, seeking out internal references. Upon finding out about this issue, the higher authorities urge the local government to address the problem. However, the local government takes a negative stance towards the issue, only offering 27 vacant positions that are mismatched to the majors of the more than 300 students. The employer goes so far as to deliberately embarrass the students during the competition for the posts. This angers the students and shatters all their expectations about the future. As a result, they decide to present a petition to the local committee and prepare for a demonstration. Before fire situation can get more serious, the former headmaster comes to put a stop to their actions, denouncing them by saying they are acting like people did during the Cultural Revolution. He successfully persuades them that they should put their energy and enthusiasm into rejuvenating the Chinese nation, rather than pressuring the government. Under the headmaster’s influence, the students recall the cheerful scene when they celebrated in the streets after the Chinese national women’s volleyball team’s first win. They ultimately decide to send two delegates to rationally report the issue to the central government in Beijing as opposed to demonstrating. In Beijing, the leading cadre of fire State Council meets with them, and Xinhua News Agency’s Economic Information Daily reports on the graduates’ special group appointment. After this, Huaxia University becomes a talent exchange market, and the long-unemployed graduates quickly find suitable jobs, enabling them to contribute to the country.

When it was initially released, On Their Own did not receive much attention and was purposefully marginalized by the relevant government departments owing to the mounting social contradictions developing in society at the time. Indeed, there were few films made during the 1980s that narrated the lives of the young and college students in a tragic tone. The film unveils the delusions of the idea that knowledge can perform miracles. This means that it challenged the idea that knowledge represents power, as well as notions about the future of intellectuals and their prospects. It did this in the context of a societal turning point that was making the future seem increasingly uncertain for college students. Owing to these contributions, the him should be reevaluated today.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the imaginings of intellectuals still took place at the spiritual level and against tire backdrop of the planned economy. Although Reform and Opening Up charted a new, more cheerful era, the social values they brought had to be reassessed. A small group of people were becoming rich first, and the influence of both the market economy and Western ideologies led to dissatisfaction among officials and intellectuals with their respective status in Chinese society. Rapid economic development made it seem like intellectuals were lagging behind in some ways. For their part, intellectuals were also deeply worried about the way money seemed to be eroding people’s spiritual world. At the same time, the influx of Western ideologies also made the government worried about the future of the country. The government thus emphasized the need to decontaminate minds and oppose the liberalization of the bourgeoisie. By the middle of the 1980s, intellectuals were increasingly voicing macro critiques of the cultural development and structural reform of China. But these appeals were largely only heard by other intellectuals and the government, which was vigilantly listening. By and large, their complaints fell on deaf ears among regular people. In material terms, when the overall development of the economy made a group of people rich first, the income of intellectuals lagged behind. After 1987, the economic status of intellectuals worsened as urban reforms advanced, and prices soared as the privatized economy and individual businesses developed quickly, It could be said that, at the same time intellectuals were reaching new spiritual summits, their living standards were declining, and consumption was burgeoning. Intellectuals were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their economic status while sentiments such as “a scientist earns less than an egg vendor” and “a doctor earns less than a barber” dominated society. Were these concerns justified? Over the course of the 1980s,

according to the data provided by the national statistics offices, in 1990 the average income of the staff in the educational system was 2, 139 yuan. This was about 10 percent less than employees in state-owned enterprises and ranked ninth out of 12 sectors of the national economy. Thus, intellectuals received “the old ninth” [a variation of “stinking old ninth” ] as a nickname.³³

During the Cultural Revolution, they ranked ninth politically and, during Reform and Opening Up, they were still ninth economically. The same intellectuals who had actively called for the economy to be stimulated were failing to enjoy the fruits yielded by reforms. What is worse, they also felt the spiritual and intellectual headway they had made since the Cultural Revolution would be lost. At this very moment, people such as the screenwriter and author Wang Shuo were creating popular literary works and films that overtly ridiculed intellectuals. These intellectuals were gradually realizing that the gap between social reality and their imaginations was becoming wider and wider as the Reform and Opening Up policies they had advocated were put into practice. They faced the risk of being marginalized in this new era. As material living standards across society improved, intellectuals ironically continued to live in poverty. It was exactly this mismatch between spiritual subjectivity and materially undesirable reality that led intellectuals to critique the social system.

Few films showcased that intellectuals had started to appear like caricatures of impoverished elites after the middle of the 1980s. In the late 1980s, films depicted ideological trends that were different from those shared by intellectuals of the time. To some extent, the novels of Wang Shuo were taken as reference points for deconstructing the image of intellectuals. Chinese films of the time sought to be entertaining and popular, while intellectuals were eloquently talking about the spiritual and social development of the Chinese people. This situation was partially due to the film industry’s efforts to survive a declining film market, as changes in cultural consumption patterns had led to sharply decreasing audience numbers.

The work of cultural development and structural reforms had started in 1983. According to Shan Ding and Ni Zhen,

In 1984, the entities in the film industry were defined as enterprises which should assume sole responsibility for their own accounting, profits, and losses. They were to raise funds by acquiring bank loans as a way to make profits and pay about ten different taxes.³⁴

This effectively meant that the film industry would lose the shield of the planned economy, which had always promised financial allocations. The industry now had to develop by itself. However, the economic context was quite grim in the mid1980s, as revealed by the fact that “from 1984 to 1985, the number of audiences decreased by 5.2 billion people in just one year.”³⁵ Emerging patterns in cultural consumption such as the turn to video halls and karaoke halls reduced the development space for films. To survive and make profits, film studios turned to producing more entertaining and commercial films, in addition to taking alternative measures such as promoting and supporting film production as a sideline industry. On May 31, 1985, Xia Yan, a famous filmmaker and play writer, gave his views on conceptualizing film themes in 1985:

After viewing the film bureau’s filmmaking catalogue for each studio in 1985, I could not fall asleep and hasted to write you right after getting up. To produce films according to this catalogue would do no good for the film bureau in the next year, and we would be blamed by our Party and people for this. There were too few films reflecting this roaring era, and this is not to mention that action, thriller, and romance took up a very large proportion.³⁶

Another film critic, Li Xingye, similarly argued that:

It has been said that there were more than 30 thriller and action films this year. This large number was just a sign of film studios following trends and cannot be considered as grounds for criticism . . . The key issue is the quality of those films. So, how is the quality of those films? I dare not to make a hasty judgment. However, a recent look at films such as The Last Clue of the Big Case (Shijie qi 'an de zuihou xiansuo, dir. Bai Hong, 1985) and Robbery on Emei Mountain (Emei feidao, dir. Zhang Xihe, 1985) reveals they are of a startling low quality. What was even more startling was that the distributors in different regions repeatedly screened these films in such large numbers. For instance, The Last Clue of the Big Case was screened concurrently in more than 20 cinemas in Beijing recently while some feature films of good or relatively good quality were marginalized. Such an unusual scenario should arouse our concerns. These films have diverted film creation towards a bad path on which the films are made only for the sake of profits and to cater to audiences with low tastes and outdated conceptions. This is occurring to such an extent that more spiritual productions are being vulgarized and devalued.³⁷

From a historical perspective, the presence of entertainment films cannot be said to have necessarily put Chinese films on a bad path. In the light of realities of the time, entertainment films represented an undesirable, but necessary, option for Chinese film studios to survive market pressures, even if some of them were of low quality.

Entertainment films might have showcased mass mindsets at that time, but films that directly depicted people’s lives and reflected cultural values of the era were few. While intellectuals were advocating for using films as a means to transmit their ideas, the film industry was busy making profits as a way to survive. Moreover, the industry was producing numerous films of the Wang Shuo type that satirized intellectuals and attacked their spiritual world. It can be said that these films served both to accelerate the adoption of Wang Shuo’s ideas as fashionable and to make Wang Shuo a phenomenon. These films represented the turning point of the public’s reexamination of knowledge and intellectuals. They accelerated the rapid descent of intellectual elites and intensified the marginalization of intellectuals by mocking ideas of knowledge in favor of mass culture.

An overview of the films of the 1980s reveals a scarcity of images of intellectuals. Especially after the middle of tire 1980s, discourse from and about intellectuals diverged, on and off the screen. In the real world, intellectuals depicted themselves as elites engaging with ideas of trauma, reflection, enlightenment, and humanism while loudly singing “La Marseillaise” to inspire morale. They still held high the banner of culture and the human spirit in the midst of poverty, and it was thought that occupying the spiritual high ground made poverty less unbearable for them. For a certain period, this made their discourse seem dominant in society. However, after the controversy incurred by the film Portrait of a Fanatic, the intellectuals, instead of engaging in self-pity, began to masochistically contribute to the country in hopes that doing so would draw attention to their situation. However, at the same time the spiritual image of intellectuals was increasing in society, the film industry stopped being their outlet as it was struggling to survive by producing purely entertainment films. Instead, a small group of creators focusing on representing reality began following Wang Shuo in deconstructing the value of intellectuals. The film The Troubleshooters was just one example.

The few film representations of intellectuals and knowledge varied in their orientations towards ideas of value. Many of these films did not identify with mainstream intellectuals in terms of values. Thus, the images of Lu Wenting in At Middle Age and Zhao Shuxin in The Black Cannon Incident were both created as typical intellectual characters who bowed to reality. Even those characters who survived the conditions of reality, such as Zhao Yaoshun in The Troubleshooters, ultimately descended into objects of ridicule. From the perspective of pragmatism, however, knowledge was recognized as important in these films. This is best revealed by representations of the relationship between young people and knowledge. These films highlighted the importance of knowledge to youths because knowledge determined opportunities for good jobs, desirable partners, and promising fortunes. In other words, there was a strong sense of pragmatism in how these films depicted the pursuit of knowledge.

In the Chinese society of the 1980s, intellectuals in the real world were responsible for enlightening society, but on screen they were not equal to such responsibilities. For instance, Lu Wenting and Zhao Shuxin could not even establish their own values and thus were unqualified to enlighten others. Similarly, although Zhao Yaoshun was keen on enlightening young people, he was a giant in words but a dwarf in deeds. Since Zhao’s image was so caricatured, his enlightening discourses were considered only a word game that was not sufficiently appealing or inspiring. In the realist him Yellow Earth (Huangtudi, dir. Chen Kaige, 1985), even the character Gu Qing, whom the film depicts as a powerful arbiter of discourses of revolutionary knowledge, fails to enlighten others after going to the countiyside. He fails to enlighten his father who deals with him by the old conventions. Although he succeeds in inspiring Cui Qiao to pursue the spirit of the women of Yan’an, he cannot ultimately help her achieve this goal. This forces Cui Qiao to find a way out of the countiyside by herself, which results in her drowning in the Yellow River. Gu Qing’s efforts at enlightenment undoubtedly ended poorly.

After the mid-1980s, Chinese films began to develop in ways that diverged from the ideological trends of intellectuals. If the significant year of 1989 is examined from a cultural perspective, it is clear that intellectuals were increasingly conscious of being elites. They also possessed ambitions to both examine and enlighten the wider public and, holding themselves aloft from the earth, desired to intervene in society and create a blueprint for China. At the same time, the film industry was embracing folk and popular trends following the brief experimentations of the emerging fifth generation with films about elites. An ideology that asserted the dominance of entertainment films subsequently appeared. It was bowing to these trends that led TianZhuangzhuang, who formerly had made elitethemed films, to make Rock Kids and Zhang Yimou to make Code Name: Cougar (Daihai meizhouhao, 1989). These films were mainly the results of market pressure. Overall, the 1980s witnessed declining audience numbers. This in turn forced the film industry to choose cultural trends that differed from those embraced by intellectuals of the time, a choice which represented a survival strategy for the film industry.

However, both leftists and liberals questioned this orientation of the film industry towards entertainment in the late 1980s. Officially, these films were criticized and rejected as an ideological trend that tended towards liberalization. In a strange historical conclusion, both elite intellectuals and the trend towards entertainment were regarded as forces that were damaging the core values of China.

Notes

· 1 Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 2 (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1994), 426.

· 2 Wang Chunyuan, "Literary Criticism and the Structure of the Cultural Mind,” Red Flag, no. 14, 1986; Zhu Dongli, The Spiritual Journey (Beijing: China Radio & Television Publishing House, 1998), 118.

· 3 Deng Xiaoping, "Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the National Conference on Science,” in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 2 (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1994), 85.

· 4 Deng Xiaoping, "Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the National Conference on Science,” in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 2 (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1994), 95.

· 5 Deng Xiaoping, "Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the National Conference on Science,” in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 2 (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1994), 95.

· 6 Deng Xiaoping, "Speech Greeting the Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists,” in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 2 (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1994), 208.

· 7 Zhu Dongli, The Spiritual Journey (Beijing: China Radio & Television Publishing House, 1998), 1.

· 8 Deng Xiaoping, "Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the National Conference on Science,” in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 2 (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1994), 89.

· 9 Zhu Dongli, The Spiritual Journey (Beijing: China Radio & Television Publishing House, 1998), 119.

· 10 Zhu Dongli, The Spiritual Journey (Beijing: China Radio & Television Publishing House, 1998), 120.

· 11 Qi Xiaoping, ed., Fragrant Flowers and Poisonous Grass: Destiny of Films in the Red Times (Beijing: Contemporary China Publishing House, 2006), 205.

· 12 Qi Xiaoping, ed., Fragrant Flowers and Poisonous Grass: Destiny of Films in the Red Times (Beijing: Contemporary China Publishing House, 2006), 203.

· 13 Qi Xiaoping, ed., Fragrant Flowers and Poisonous Grass: Destiny of Films in the Red Times (Beijing: Contemporary China Publishing House, 2006), 203.

· 14 Qi Xiaoping, ed., Fragrant Flowers and Poisonous Grass: Destiny of Films in the Red Times (Beijing: Contemporary China Publishing House, 2006), 209.

· 15 Huang Zhen, "To Strive to Create Films with Greatness of the Times: A Speech at the Awards Ceremony for the Quality Movies and the Advanced Filmic Creations of the Youth” Film Art, no. 6, 1980: 2.

· 16 Pan Hong, "The Demonstration of the Screen Image of Lu Wenting,” in Articles of the Golden Rooster Awards, vol. 3, ed. China Film Association (China Film Press, 1984), 32-33.

· 17 Chen Rong, "To Hope that Films Onlv Have Historical Values,” Film Story, no. 3, 1983.

· 18 Chen Jianyu and Zhang Mingtang, “Three Stories: Records of the Selection Process of the Third Golden Rooster Awards,” Film Art, no. 5, 1983: 3.

· 19 Film Art, no. 5, 1983: 21.

· 20 Xu Namuing, “To Shape Various Images of Contemporary People,” Film Art, no. 7, 1983: 32.

· 21 Wu Xuan, Collections of Speeches on Heated Literary Works of the New Times (Guangxi: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2004), 52-53.

· 22 Bao Gnang, "Various Opinions and Being Open-minded: Records of the Selection Process of the Sixth Golden Rooster Awards,” Film Art, no. 9, 1986: 9.

· 23 Bao Guang, "Various Opinions and Being Open-minded: Records of the Selection Process of the Sixth Golden Rooster Awards,” Film Art, no. 9, 1986: 9.

· 24 Huang Jianxin, "Thinking of the Creation of The Black Cannon Incident," in The Explorations of Film Directors, vol. 6, eds. Editorial Departments of Movie and of China Film Press (Beijing: China Film Press, 1990), 55.

· 25 Wang Yunzhen, "Interviewing Mi Jiashan about The Trouble shooters,” Film Art, no. 5, 1989: 8.

· 26 Wang Shuo, "I Am Not the Only Jumping Flea: Preface of Selected Works of Wang Shuo,” in Collections of Journals on the Works of Wang Shuo, eds. Ge Hongbing and Zhu Lidong (Tianjin: Tianjin People's Publishing House, 2005), 52.

· 27 Wang Shuo, "Self-description of Wang Shuo,” in Collections of Journals on the Works of Wang Shuo, eds. Ge Hongbing and Zhu Lidong (Tianjin: Tianjin People’s Publishing House, 2005), 16.

· 28 Wang Shuo, "Self-descriptionofWang Shuo,” in Collections of Journals on the Works of Wang Shuo, eds. Ge Hongbing and Zhu Lidong (Tianjin: Tianjin People’s Publishing House, 2005), 16-17.

· 29 Wang Yunzhen, "Interviewing Mi Jiaslian about The Troubleshooters,” Film Art, no. 5, 1989: 4.

· 30 Huang Jianxin, "To Focus on Contemporary People,” Film Story, no. 6, 1989.

· 31 Zhu Dongli, The Spiritual Journey (Beijing: China Radio & Television Publishing House, 1998), 164.

· 32 Xu Yinhai, "The Gilded Red Diplomas.” Liaoning Youth, no. 11, 1984: 1.

· 33 Xie Sizhong, “An Alert in Heydays: Finding Faults in The Folk Custom,” in The Contemporary Aesthetic Culture in the Transition Era, ed. Xia Zhifang (Beijing: The Writers Publishing House, 1996), 152.

· 34 Shan Ding and Ni Zhen, "Establishing a Complete Chinese Film Market,” in The Reform and Chinese Films, ed. Ni Zhen (Beijing: China Film Press, 1994), 47.

· 35 Shan Ding and Ni Zhen, "Establishing a Complete Chinese Film Market,” in The Reform and Chinese Films, ed. Ni Zhen (Beijing: Cliina Film Press, 1994), 47.

· 36 Xia Yan, "A Letter on the Issue of Film Genre," Movie, no. 7, 1985: 33.

· 37 Li Xingye, "A Worrying Creation Phenomenon,” Film Art, no. 9, 1985: 2.