1 - Wang Bing’s Cinematic Journey: A Counter-Narrative of the China Dream

Summary

Abstract

This chapter helps locate the geographical trajectory of Wang’s cinematic activities. It also introduces the broad concept of ‘space’ and its centrality in the discussion. By looking at the shooting locations over a map of China, the investigation of Wang Bing’s cinematic travelogue is set against the ongoing state narrative of the China Dream. This is a slogan that frames China’s rise. The author argues that Wang’s films can be understood as a counter-narrative that shows the less shiny side of China’s growth. They can also be loosely grouped according to different definitions of space: spaces of labour, spaces of history and memory, collective spaces, exhibition spaces, and spaces of human practice. Moreover, without losing their Chinese distinctiveness, the issues at stake in Wang’s films speak to a much larger global experience of marginal spaces and uneven development.

Keywords: Documentary cinema, China, Spaces, China Dream, Subaltern, Inequalities, Wang Bing

I am convinced that the politics right now is heavily influenced by concerns about the quality of daily life and I think any program should be trying to theorize the problems of daily life against the background of dynamics of capital accumulation, the typical configurations of state power […] So I would always want to concentrate on how we deal with the politics which is coming out of the discontents with daily life in the contemporary city.

‒ David Harvey (2015)

Wang Bing’s filming of China’s uneven economic development can be read as a counter-narrative of the China Dream through the lens of the digital camera. The filmmaker has not conceived his cinema as an a priori long-term political project, yet his works can be approached as an incessant exploration of the interplay between politics, economics, and people’s everyday life, from the border areas to the economic centres of China. In the first part of this chapter, the centrality of space and Wang’s process of narrativizing reality are introduced as a way to de-construct, or nuance, the current normative state narrative of the China Dream. Wang’s cinema is described here as a counter-itinerary of the dream images of successful China.