Citizens Versus Countrymen

    When I was watching the film "Almost a love story," one of my most impressive scenes is when Qiao came Hong Kong, she wears a mask named "Hong Konger." In the same situation, for the film "Beijing Bicycle," the baby sitter, Xiao-hong, pretending herself as a local resident. In the whole movie, she did not talk any word, she may intend to be quiet to cover her dialect. In both of the films, the characters from countryside or mainland are all want to be the "real" urban residents. So they mimic the urban people's behaviors and dialect. The tragedy is that, it is not an unusual occasion in today's Chinese society.

    Here comes to the question that why do they pretend to act like that? Is that because the matter of save face? Is that because citizens will discriminate them when people admit they come from rural region? In this project, I will discuss the social behaviors and historical background of this phenomenon. However, as far as I am concerned, they do not need to pretend in this way. Everyone should has his or her own identity, not exactly same as others. In my opinion, there are three "roots" for this special phenomenon.

　 For the cultural background, after 1970s, China began to reform in economical fields. During the past years of early foundation of PRC, workers, peasants and soldiers represented the country. However, the situation of workers and peasants have changed a lot since economic reform. "The Chinese government has shown particular concern over attempts to form independent labor organizations in this period, seeking instead to contain an increasingly restive working class, now subject to a high level of employment insecurity, within the framework of state-controlled unionism." (Hassard, 2008, p.32) As the opening for the coast regions, the economical gap between coastal cities and in-land cities or countries is increasing. It is such a visible gap that the more and more in-land people are desiring to live a better life. So millions of peoples trying to find a work in big cities, like Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai or Beijing. But the fact is that, the civilizations, degree of educations, habitats are totally different. It is hard for them to live together peacefully. From then on, the situation of urban people and countrymen has changed a lot from Cultural Revolution.

    In addition, the concept of "hukou" became a method to distinguish rural from urban people. "Post-1978 economic reforms, however, have dramatic effects on mobility: in the past 20 years, over 200 million rural residents left their land and started new lives in cities as migrant labor while the hukou system stays largely untouched (Chan & Zhang, 1999; Fan, 2008; Liang & Ma, 2004). Even though migrants workers did a huge contribution to the city's industry and economic development, the urbanizes still did not recognize their work. "Hukou" became an identity to distinguish people. Basically, in Chinese people's normal sense, the citizen identity is regarded as the symbolic of richness even though things are totally different for now. It is a kind of stereotype.

     At last but not to least, what if "Chinese dream" realized or not? Living a better or higher quality of life is one of the dreams for most Chinese people. During the 1980s, a huge number of people realized their dreams. You can see village like Shenzhen ot city like Guangzhou was changing every moment during 1980s. People got much richer than before. "In the mid to late 1980s, travelers on the roads leading from Shenzhen toward Guangzhou could see frenetic construction throughout the area as village after village competed 'self-reliantly' to throw up factory buildings to rent out. While village residential areas remained in place, the agricultural land was becoming covered by a crazy quilt of small improvised industrial parks."(Chung & Unger, 2013, p. 33) It is true that there were numerous of chances to make it possible for people became rich during the reform period. Inspiring by those who realized their "Chinese dreams," more and more migrants came to the cities to chase dreams. However, the reality is that, at the same time of chances, there are numerous people who failed to get a better life. The issue became another cultural tradition, matter of saving face. It is hard to explain the so called "face" problem. But for my understanding, "face" relates to honor, social occupation, fame, or something else. In order to keep face, some of the people who failed, chose to pretend as nothing happened and act like most of others in the city.

    In conclusion, the phenomenon relates to culture, historical background and matter of saving face. The sad thing to me is that, for the most of social values, you must look the same as the majority. The special one can be considered as the strange one for people with such kind of cultural background. It is hard to change, honestly. But at least for me, the first step to eliminate this problem is to change the stereotype towards rural people. They made a large amount of contributions for the country's industry and economical development. Before migrants who are regarded as countrymen, they are citizens of the country firstly. So there should not be any difference between rural and local people. And there is no need to pretending like a urban resident.

References

Chen, J. (2013). Perceived Discrimination and Subjective Well-being among Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China. Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare, 40(1), 131-156.
CHUNG, H., & UNGER, J. (2013). The Guangdong Model of Urbanisation. China Perspectives, 2013(3), 33-41.
Hassard, J., Sheehan, J., & Xiao, Y. (2008). Chinese state-enterprise reform: Economic transition, labour unrest and worker representation. Capital & Class, 32(96), 31-52.
Chan, K. W., & Zhang, L. (1999). The hukou system and rural-urban migration: Processes and changes. The China Quarterly, 160, 818-855.
Peter Chan. (1996). Comrades: Almost a Love Story. Golden Harvest / United Filmmakers Organization
Wang Xiaoshuai. (2001). Beijing Bicycle. Sony Pictures Classics.

The Power of Music In The Film

Fei Wang

CHI 321

Paper 1

                        

In the film "the killer," the theme song appeared for several times when the plots became important, which left me a deep impression. The conflicts between the scene of Gang firing and the soft voice of theme song is quite shocking. So my topic is about the power of the background music.

In Oxford dictionary, the meaning of background music is that "music intended as an unobtrusive accompaniment to an activity or to provide atmosphere in a film."(Oxford Dictionary) In the films we saw, there are basically three kinds of background music in general, the Chinese opera, pure music, and theme music.

The Peking Opera in the film, as we heard in " Human Women Demon," is like another way to explain the character's feeling; the Shaoxing Opera in the film" Stage sisters" is the story line, which helps the movement of the destiny of the sisters; the Cantonese Opera in "Rouge" opened and finished the film. In the films, the different kinds of music represented the different using of music, but in general the operas, especially the lyrics, reflected the feeling of the characters, formed the story line of the film. Actually, the traditional Chinese Opera has a large number of forms in general. There are mainly 8 forms of the Chinese Opera, the Beijing Opera, known also as Peking Opera (Jingju); Cantonese Opera (Yueju); Sichuan Opera (Chuanju); Ping Opera (Pingju); Henan Opera (Yuju); Qinqiang Opera; Kunqu Opera; Huangmei Song, originally "Caicha Opera." Different forms of Opera has different methods to perform. For example, the Sichuan Opera, " It is delivered in Mandarin and takes face painting to an extreme that is highly colourful and entertaining. One of the greatest arts is what is known as 'Changing Faces', where the actor by some hidden means instantly changes his current face mask for something completely different. This is a top secret skill that very few people know." (Automatic, 2013, p.1) In the history of the Chinese Film, the Chinese Opera is frequently be used in the story. Except for the ones we saw, there are also several famous film which deeply touched me, like "Farewell My Concubine." The story happened in the period of the Republic of China and went through the Cultural Revolution. The actors of main characters, Xiangyu(Xiaolou) and Yuji (Cheng Dieyi), acted their own life as the recorded history in the ancient, is a good case in point of the combination of the Peking Opera and the story in the film. The saying about "life is like a stage" shows the importance of the Chinese Opera in the Chinese film history.

Another kind of background music is pure music. There is an interesting point that more and more contemporary film directors would like to use the foreigners to take in charge of the background music. For example, Jou Hisaishi, one of the most famous composer in Japanese films, especially for Miyazaki Hayao's cartons. He also write the theme songs for "The Sun Also Rises" by Jiangwen, "The Aunt's Postmodern Life" by Xu Anhua. Also, we do have some good Chinese composers. Like Li Xiaotian, who won the 8th Hong Kong Film Award for Best Composer by the film "Rouge," Jay Chou, a most famous pop singer in China, is a composer for his own self directed and acted movie, "Secret," which also won the best composer in 44th Taiwan Golden Horse Award. Unlike the theme songs, the pure music do need a high concentration on the rhythm, pitch, instrument to explain the atmosphere. And there is another kind of pure, it is silence. Like the opening in "Rouge," the silence may represented the empty mind of Ruhua, which is totally different from the ending. 

The last kind of background music is the theme songs. As I referred in the former paragraph, the theme music is different from the pure music because of the lyrics. In this case, the songwriters seem important for the film. For example, "Tall in the saddle" written in the film "Once Upon a Time in China," is the most representative song for the series of Wong Fei-Hung.  The lyrics,"Face waves million arrogance/ Blood as the red sun/Iron gall bone, such as stainless steel may/ Zhangting minded vision of thousands of miles long/I work hard to do a good job Han/ A day to be a good man to self improvement/Han blood man more light than the sun/ Let the sea and the sky for me Poly energy/ See blue high-Zhuang/ To see clear blue sky and bright young noble spirit/ I am the Strength of Men/ We do strong pillars of our step-by -step to do a good job chest Han/ I heat with 100 points out of 1000 by Edward/ To be a good man/ Intestinal blood hot hot/ More light than the sun" match the melody perfectly, which give people a sensitive inspiring. Sometimes, the theme songs last longer than the film, but when listening to the song, we can easily think of the famous scenes. 

In conclusion, as the time developed, the film went through the silent film, sound film, 2D film and 3D film, the technology made amazing steps to help express the story. But the music, which cannot be instead, no matter the silent, sound, 2-D or 3-D. It is because that the when people enjoying the movie, the background music can easily lead people into a certain situation of the feeling. For the case to touch the audience, the 3-D experience cannot do it, the high resolution ratio cannot do it, but music can do it. The moving melody never be lost in the history of the film.

References,

Oxford University Press. Oxford dictionary, Retrieved October 6, 2013, from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/background-music 

Automatic, Chinese Opera in General, Retrieved October 6, 2013, from http://www.china-expats.com/ChineseOpera.htm