 So I'd like to now introduce our presenter, Dr. Jianning Liu. And she's a reader in modern Chinese literature and culture. And she's got a really interesting session. I'm actually really interested to see this today as well. Women and Chinese Revolution on screen. So I will now hand over to Dr. Liu. Thank you, Tanya, for your introduction. Hello everyone. Nice to see everyone here virtually. So I'm going to share my screen first. This is to give you a taste of our online teaching. This is what I have been doing this whole academic year. And so the topic today is women and a Chinese Revolution on screen. I'd like to use this opportunity, this topic to address three important questions. The first one, I, sorry, I gave you this code. You may be very familiar with Lenin's code of all the arts. For us, the most important is cinema. So this code just to highlight the importance of cinema, this relatively new media in the 20th century, especially in the mid of the 20th century to, to the shaping of ideology to the shaping of the, the public consciousness, the collective consciousness. Second, I offer this book title as some of you may also be very familiar. It is by Benedict Anderson. Imagine communities, reflections on their origin and spread of nationalism. Anderson has this famous saying nationalism is really, you know, it's, it's imagined, because we don't know each other, the nation is so big, and it's impossible to have, you know, the close relationship to each other. So what we can imagine is through print media, newspapers, and or maybe we can add more or different kinds of media, including cinema. So this session is really to, to showcase how cinema was employed by the Chinese Communist Party to create a certain collective memory and a collective, you know, identity. And the last one, I think it's, which is related to today's topic is the women's question and nationalism, and the women's question was always important to to the forging of Chinese nationalism. Women's suffering has been regarded as the symptom of the nation's suffering to rescue women is to find a solution to modernize the nation. Okay, so I'm going to use a very classic Chinese revolutionary film, the Reddit Detachment of Women, in order to address all these three questions. First, I'd like to give you an overview of the, the new Chinese cinema. It is called a new Chinese cinema because this was a new cinema created after the founding of the People's Republic of China. So we had this transition from the so called the old China before 1949 to the new China, which is Communist China after 1949. But under the governance of Chinese Communist Party, there was a massive restructuring of film industry. And so from, from 1949 to 1952, privately owned film studios were gradually nationalized and became part of the state studios. And the bureaucratic institutions, such as the Bureau of Film, the Film Bureau was established, and that bureau was established under the Ministry of Culture. It's oversold, you know, the, the pre production inspection, and it institutes certain and the film production related regulations, etc. And then we saw there was like a wide sweeping changes in film production, exhibition, distribution, right, or under a centrally planned economy. And so if I give you a few more specific examples, for instance, with regard to film production, the key issue would be what kind of a new films should we create for the masses. And now, according to the Communist Party at the time, the masses included the workers, soldiers, and peasants. So the idea is we do, we did not wish to make film for the bourgeoisie, right, for the like the leisure class, we should make films for the majority of the people at the time the majority of people were the so called a working class or the proletarians. So what kind of new films do we need. They created new screen characters, instead of showing the, the, the, the, the gentleman's, the miss the madness misses in middle class, they wanted to project new screen images, such as the poor peasants, and the soldiers, etc. The new subject matters. So this is quite interesting, because normally we're familiar with film genre, a film genre is a way to categorize different type of films will you should be very familiar with action films romance, etc. And but in the socialist China. The films were not categorized in accordance with genre. Instead, they were categorized according to the subject matters, for instance, and the film studio every year would receive a quota production quota. So these students like this year you need to produce eight films with rural subject matters about a countryside right about land reform, for example, collective agriculture, etc. So in this film studio you need to produce two industrial themed subject matters. And so you can demonstrate on how new socialist workers work in to build the socialism in this country. And of course there are more entertaining film films with new subject matters. For example, here I have a DVD cover. So the title is women basketball player number five. So it's a it deals with a contemporary subject matter sports sports film. And here's another example five golden flowers, simply by the images, you can tell it is a film about ethnic minorities on the north and showing nominate those films show happy on singing and dancing ethnic minorities, but then they were also a part of the bigger socialist collective. And those films also show them how they show how they participated in socialist construction. Okay. And so now if we understand there was strong need to create a new cinema in all sectors in all the process of film production exhibition distribution. And we also need to understand the new images, new narratives, new aesthetics, and all those together helped to articulate the socialist ideology, or you can say the dominance ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. And they also helped to shape national identity. So this is a very interesting thing because normally we would think of film represents or reflect the reality, but to be very careful here for Chinese socialist film, they want to make something. So they actually project what needs to be what should be. Okay. And so you can see film has this active role in to play in building socialist imaginary in in reforming the people. So here, I'd like to introduce a little bit of overarching guidelines for Chinese socialist production from the year 1949 to 1976. So this is the this period is so called a high socialism. And so the most influential piece of writing is by Mao Zedong talks at the young forum of literature and the arts. He delivered actually this piece was originally a talk right he delivered to talks at the young forum on literature and the arts in in the year 1940. At the time China was engaged in the second sign of Japanese war. So bear this in mind, it was a during the war time he delivered this speech. And he he proposed there are two criteria for evaluating artwork, the political one and the artistic one, and he state he states clearly the political criteria has to come first. The artistic criteria comes second, and now you will see the art somehow is a subject is a subjugated to the politics. But Mao also pointed out, in order to serve the, the our, you know, communist, the cost and the revolutionary cause at the time was anti was fighting against Japanese. We need to make our arts more accessible. So here are two questions. One is how to popularize our art and a second is how to raise the standard of our artwork. And he proposed a few methods and the strategies. For instance, he mentioned the cultural workers, cultural workers means of refer to you know writers, artists, singer, dancers, etc. They're all called cultural workers at the time. And the cultural workers should go to the countryside and live with the peasants, and really to, to learn from the experiences and enjoy its inspirations from the, from the masses. You should use make use of the indigenous Chinese art, for example folk songs folk art, etc. Then you tell a revolutionary story. The peasants would understand. So, in summary, the key point of this talk, this piece talks at the forum on literature art. Yes, art and the literature must serve the masses. It is for the masses by the masses and about the masses. Right. And he also encouraged the peasants to make to make their own artwork. For example, you can rewrite folk songs into a revolutionary song, etc. And so this had this talk, those two talks had a great implications on the, the cultural production during the early years of a socialist China. It helped to create the so called a mass culture, because all cultural works are dedicated to the masses and focus on the representation of their lives and struggle. Okay, so now we understand the guiding principle of creating art and literature, including cinema. So if I may go to the next slide. So women in socialist China policies and discourses when it comes to women, as I mentioned earlier women's question is always related to the nation. And of course, even before the official founding of the PRC, People's Republic China, there was this common program. So this is a de facto first constitution of the PRC. This is a long program of the Chinese people's political consultative conference that is a de facto constitution article six states women show enjoy equal rights with men in in political economic culture, educational and social life, etc. Maybe more commonly, you know, a few slogans are widely have been widely circulated and disseminated, for instance, from the Maoist era from the Mao era, men and women are equal women hold up half, half sky. In terms of iconography of women you will see a drastic change. So this is a commercial poster in the 1930s, and you will see, we are very familiar with this type of image right you use women to advertise certain commodity merchandise. Here is this a beautifully dressed Chinese lady and holding a glass of a Coca Cola. But now if we switch to the 1950s, 60s, this image of women becomes became very prevalent. So the caption says, we are proud for participating in our nation's industrialization. So you have women workers, actually this woman worker is in a heavy industry. Now this is a general change in the in discourses and in policy. Now I give you this wonderful example of the red detachment of women. So this woman, this, this film was produced in 1961. I need to switch my next slide. The film has since become one of the red classics, the one of the classical revolutionary films. It won the 100 Flowers Awards for best film, best director, best actress and the best supporting actor in 1962. The 100 Flowers Awards is the most important film award in China during the socialist era. If we look at the subject matter right it is a revolutionary history film. And if I may give you a little bit of synopsis of the film, I would say. So this is a film about a revolutionary story of a company of a female soldiers set up by the Communist Party on the island of Hainan. So Hainan is really on the southern tip of China. If you look at the map, Hainan Island is a small island. It's very close to Canton province, but it's on the southern tip. And you may think about the implication of setting the story there. It could mean, you know, the Communist revolution was so powerful, it even reached the father's tip of the nation. So the story is set in 1930. That was before the founding of the PRC. So this film is really retracing the Communist revolutionary history. It was set in Hainan Island and off the south coast of China in the 1930s. Especially the film's narrative centers on Chonghua, this woman. And she is initially a slave girl held captive by an evil feudal landlord, Nan Ba Tian, even just looking at his face you can guess it's a typical depiction of a villain. Later on, under the guidance of this Communist Party, at the time he is disguised as a rich merchant from Singapore, from Southeast Asia. And so with his help, Chonghua goes to the Communist revolutionary base and join the red detachment of women and join the Communist army. So this is a very common story. It is very typical of revolutionary historical stories at the time. That means you narrate the history, revolutionary history, through an individual's coming to consciousness, through an individual's growth. Let's see. So I'm going to show you, okay. And you may wonder why the story of history has to be narrated through the lens of a woman, right. And somehow we can detect the continuities between pre-1949 era and the post-1949 era, because turning the sufferings of victimized women into a visceral accusation of a corrupted society was very common. It was used in 1930s leftist film and this tradition continued into the socialist era, okay, so you have this plight of women, right. And then I also mentioned the film combines revolutionary history with the coming to the consciousness of a single representative, often female characters. So let's take a look. I want to show you a few clips of how this film represents women. So the first clip we will see Chonghua when she was still a slave girl held captive. I need to stop sharing. I'm going to show you my YouTube video. You can actually find this film on YouTube with English subtitle. So I'm going to play this clip. And obviously you see the whole thing is staged in a water prison in the landlord's house. And look at the lighting, right. It is not a sunny bright setting. It is very dark. So this kind of lighting really emphasized the imprisonment of women. And how about the representation of women. The woman here is not a sexualized woman here is not a fetishized, but women here we have the image of a suffering woman. She is beaten. Yeah, by the landlord's henchmen. And here we also see implicitly here we have this intersection because this is a slave girl right so she suffers at the hand of the landlord. She sends her personality she's very rebellious girl and she wanted to escape. She's going to try again again at this point actually she has already escaped once and she was captured, recaptured, but she said I'm going to run away again. Okay, and I'm going to show you the second clip. Interestingly, the film also portrays another woman. I'm going to show you. So at least more points of the story. And Chun Hua, so this protagonist under the guidance of the, the Communist Party member. She wants, she is on her way to the revolutionary base, right. We pause here, we pause here so you will see this is another suffering woman right she disguised herself as a man. And here the film accused the feudal the older feudal practice of the arranged marriage. Notice this woman right. So this, this segment address her frustrated marriage. She was arranged to marry this man but actually before the marriage the men died already so therefore you will see this wooden log. Right so ridiculously she had to marry this wooden, you know, wooden log. Okay, okay, so I'm going to show you the last clip you will see. And so these two women, they form a kind of a bondage, they form a very strong bond because it both suffered under the feudal society, and they both said, we're going to I'm on my way to the Soviet district, Soviet district here just refers to the Chinese Communist revolutionary base. So the last quickly the last clip you will see now they're going to the base. So maybe I can fast forward a tiny bit. And here you can notice this is the open space right and the lighting is bright and in contrast to the formal domestic space domestic space appear to be suffocating. And here the two women. They arrived at the Communist revolutionary base, they want to join the women's soldiers. And I need to quickly fast forward a tiny bit tiny bit. So here's moment you will see in contrast to the normal the ordinary folks, the soldiers are disciplined right. And so in the entire film later on we'll show you how the slave girl gradually grows into a resolute communist the soldier. So here it's kind of interesting because they are applying to join the army and then they need to check their class background right, and they don't know whether they're qualified so they are used they are only, they use a very common language to say, I don't have land. And the, the female soldiers, of course, they use a more politically led in the world or more sophisticated words proletarian to to welcome them. So, okay, I have to pause here and come back to my slides. This is just to give you a little taste of the film. And then if I can come back to my slide and give you a quick conclusion. So, in this film, we will see how the melodrama the normally we were talking about the family metadrama, but in this film is a revolutionary metadrama. So, revolutionary metadrama has been utilized as a very important form to to narrate revolutionary history. In metadrama, you know, the traditional metadrama, we see polarization of good and evil. It's very easy to for you to identify the good guy and a bad guy. It has clear moral message. You also have like a heightened emotion, emotional access, etc. And often metadrama feature the sufferings of the victims, and there's a strong demand for the redemption of their sufferings. Now domestic space is very important, etc. But here in this film, we will see how metadrama transforms into revolutionary metadrama. The suffocating domestic interior is often associated that that was often associated with family metadrama is displayed only to be discarded and the supplemented by a different form of kingship, right, because so now the kingship is based on your class solidarity, your common suffering, instead of your blood lineage. And so, overall the film helps to legitimize the cause of a communist revolution. And the last one, I'm I'd like to say, so there's many different version of this film because then the film also was adapted into a ballet in 1970s. When President Nixon visited China in 1972, they actually watched this ballet on stage, and then the ballet was re-stage in 2015 Lincoln Center Festival. So this explains why it has been a classic. So lastly, I've provided a few links for you. And then I hope you have get a little bit of ideas about the Chinese history and the film. By the way, we also have a social media presence, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram. We have a source China in Asia on Facebook page. We have a source is Asia on Instagram. Thank you very much. And now I welcome your questions. Thank you that was really, really interesting. I really hadn't heard a lot of that background so I enjoyed it just to find out what some of our academics across so as teams is a lot of rich content. Any question in the Q&A panel for you, Dr. Liu. I'll just read it out for you if you wouldn't mind answering. So how did this portrayal of China as a suffering woman who has been saved through communism interact with Mao's cult of personality, the motherland and the father. Okay, that's very interesting. So if you have any question, the cult of Mao, please also notice the historical period. So here, the most revolutionary films were actually produced before 1966, you know 1966 is the year when the culture revolution erupted. And so the mother Mao really came after that period. So normally we divide the social era, 1949 to 1976 into two sub periods. The first one is the first 17 years, and the second one is the 10 years, you know, the 10 years catastrophe is the culture revolution. And the mouse personality cult reached the climax during the cultural revolution. Okay, that's one way to address your question. Of course, during the cultural revolution we have, we had a different forms of cultural practices, instead of watching film. In fact, the film production was parted. What it was not, it was not possible to make a lot of films up to 1972. When people were watching films, people would, people recited Mao's works, the quotations, you know, the quotations of the little red books, right, the mouse quotation, people will dance the royalty dance and recite the poems, recite the quotations, and other different forms of mass culture. It's quite interesting because the female figure, right, even within this film, you will see the woman is always the one who needs to be educated, because the party member, the representative is the man. Within the film, the man actually dies first as a martyr. So the film centers on Chonghua's personal growth, but never did that she is always the one who needs to be rescued needs to be educated. It's really a story, you know, that tells the history of our nation through the suffering of women and the woman's girls. Okay, I've got a couple of other really interesting questions coming in. So George has asked, is there any evidence of these values progressing into the ever rising new Chinese cinema sector which is expected to rival Hollywood. So, okay, that's very good question. So we do talk a lot about Chinese soft power, how does cinema and other media play a role in building up Chinese soft power, and the news, new, we have the so called a new man-malady film, so like a mainstream film, but man-malady film, that those other films propagate the current ideology. And those films, interestingly, they do not center on women, they center on men, the masculinity of men. You may be familiar with the film Wolf Warrior II, right. And to show this soldier, the lone hero, he is a formal PLA soldier, like a People's Liberation Army soldier. He was discharged from the army, he was sent to somehow he went to Africa to rescue the Chinese diasporas in a war-torn zone, and of course, he was backed by Chinese navy, right. So the current film really showed the masculinity, so it's very, very different. Yeah, maybe I can take a few more. Yeah, we've got about six or seven minutes left, and a few more questions have come in. So, Eleanor has asked, were women considered equals in a time when so many women around the world were considered inferior, because Mao needed more supporters for his revolution. Yes, yeah. So this is another important issue about feminism, because the emancipation of Chinese women was part and parcel of Chinese Revolutionary, Chinese Communist Revolution. So the form of Chinese feminism is very different from the Western feminism. We often use the phrase state feminism to describe the Chinese feminist liberation, the women's liberation. There was no self-conscious feminist movement in the PRC. And please also note, in the Mao era, they emphasize the equality of men and women to such an extreme that the women's sexuality, femininity was erased. Okay, so the women were pushed to such an extreme to go to the field to do the hard work immediately after childbirth, because there are many other episodes, interesting stories. We have to be very careful about that kind of ideology, right? Yeah, because you are right, women were much needed as a men's state of the labouring force. We need to emancipate women also to have more power in the working force, yeah. Great. So we've got two more questions. I think we have time to answer. And the first one's a bit of a kind of a personal feeling for you. This is an interesting one. So Yusario is asking, do you only teach film and literature? And if not, what's your favourite part of the course to teach? I mainly teach Chinese film and literature, and this year we actually started a new module, I taught contemporary Chinese society. This is a survey course to many key questions, issues in contemporary Chinese society. For instance, migration, especially women's migration. We also talked about the environmental issues using the film and other sources to address. I've also talked about the internet censorship in this module. So this is a really new module. And my colleagues in China section teaches China in 10 words and is the Asian imperialism, etc. Yeah, because my specialisation is Chinese cinema, so I do quite enjoy to teach film modules. Please also notice, at SOAS, we not only teach films from China, we also have this entire module called New Taiwan Cinema and beyond. And I think this is a very unique module. Across Europe, you wouldn't probably not have found any other institution that developed a whole term teaching Taiwan cinema. So Benjamin's asking, was the shift in portrayal of women in posters from traditional dress advertising Coca-Cola to heavy industry? Was that reflected in the population? In other words, did women do more heavy industry jobs after 1949 than they did before? Yes, definitely. It was encouraged. You know, in the Chinese currency, the cash, right? You see the icon, female tractor driver. That's a real, because women were really encouraged to be pilots flying the airplane and be engineer. Yeah, that's, yeah. And then there were many female filmmakers as well. So that's very different from the Western, maybe British situation, because the women, they received this institutional support. They were sent to film schools, and then after graduation, state assigned them work. There was no free market. You couldn't look for job by yourself. The state assigned you. You go to that film studio, you become director. Yeah. So this is like, ironically, that also creates a group of female filmmakers. Hey, Iris has a question that I wanted to ask. Are these films that you showed here today, are these films still popular in China today? I don't think they were popular among young people, because you know, people become very wary, like they're tired of those old propagandist discourses. And often the ballet are still staged for national events, and they become part of the classical repertoire of the ballet. But the young people, I think they are very similar to here for anybody here. They are into the YouTube, not YouTube, but the Chinese version of TikTok, or other things. They consume a lot of media contents. Right. So this is our last question before we have to wrap up. Charles is asking, did Mao get inspiration from the political philosophy of Chinese legalism to create this animosity between communism and the feudal practices? This is a very big question. I'm afraid I couldn't answer this very well, because I am not a trend in Chinese philosophy. And what I can say, Mao, he is deeply immersed in Chinese classics. You know, like on his bed, like on his bed, there's a bookshop, like he's just a wooden plank on top. He put many, many books. He loved to read Chinese classic novels. And yeah, so maybe it plays a role, definitely. That's great. Well, I see we're joined by Nenna, our student ambassador. So Nenna, and I should have introduced Dr. Alan Cummings, our associate head of department as well. So I might just allow you both to wrap up with any final comments or thoughts or Nenna, if you'd like to talk a little bit about your experience as a student, so as. Hi, everyone. I'm Nenna and I'm fourth year BA Chinese student. So this is my final year. So I've had, you know, the full experience. I would say, for me, learning Chinese at SOAS has been great. I've learned so much. There's so many interesting modules to do here at SOAS that maybe are quite specific to SOAS and maybe you wouldn't find elsewhere, which was definitely a reason for me picking to study at SOAS. And yeah, it's really nice to meet you all. And if any of you have any questions, I'm just going to put in the student ambassador's email where you can send any questions you have, any comments or anything. And yeah, nice to meet you all. Hi, my name's Alan Cummings. I'm the, as well as being associate head of the department, I'm also the admissions tutor. So I'm a person who gets to look at lots of your applications. So if you do have any questions which are more about the structure of the degree or the kind of modules we're offering, we have lots of information on the website, but you can also write directly to me as well and I'm happy to answer any of those questions you have about qualifications you have and what the courses are like or any of that sort of stuff. My email is, it's also in the chat as well, but it's ac50atsoas.ac.uk. And I'd be delighted to hear from you. But thank you all for coming and thank you to Shaolin for giving us such a fantastic talk. Thank you all for being here. This is the second day of Lunar Chinese New Year. So, still I can say Xin Nian Khuaile. Wonderful way to end. Thank you, Dr. Liu. So happy New Year to everyone, Year of the Ox. And we will be circulating the recordings of this with some of the questions and the contact details. So, thank you for the really thoughtful questions and really engaging with this really appreciate that. And we look forward to hearing more from all of you in the coming months. So thank you and have a wonderful afternoon.