Search

China's transformation in the reform era has been most immediately experienced by many ordinary citizens in spatial terms, as existing urban communities have been dispersed and their environments levelled, to be replaced by 'spaces of flows' that prioritise speed, mobility and circulation. A wide range of Chinese films have represented this experience from the perspective of existing urban communities. This article argues that in certain 'unofficial' documentaries produced outside China's state-sanctioned channels of production and distribution, using small, highly mobile digital video cameras, an engagement with grassroots communities has opened up a new space on screen, in which a critical questioning of the developmental ethos driving contemporary China becomes evident. A close analysis of Ou Ning's Meishi Street (2006), Shu Haolun's Nostalgia (2006) and Du Haibin's A Young Patriot (2015) will illustrate how the unofficial spaces of localised, grassroots cultures (minjian) are represented in these works as sites of resistance to the coercive imposition of a globalised modernity on Chinese cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This collection for Cultural Studies Review aims to address gaps in existing mobilities scholarship from two perspectives. First, while several articles here discuss the physical movement of various groups, the overarching focus is the complex interplay of mobile technologies and information on the one hand, and rapidly evolving formations of culture and identity on the other. Geographically, our focus is outside the 'global north', on a region that has perhaps been more dramatically transformed by physical, cultural and informational mobility than any other: East and Southeast Asia. Rather than taking 'Asia' as a category of cultural identity, this collection conceptualises the geographic region as a zone of cultural and political plurality, in which a vast array of migrations, imaginings, representations and discourses are constantly bumping up against political and cultural borders, as well as various state-sponsored and state-sanctioned ideas and images, in fascinating and often highly volatile ways. Topic covered in this collection include Hong Kong working holidaymakers in Australia (Louis Ho), literary narratives of overseas adoptees who have returned to South Korea (Ethan Waddell), online debates and conflicts between Chinese migrants and local Chinese-Singaporeans (Sylvia Ang), the politics of representing urban demolition and relocation in independent Chinese documentaries (Dan Edwards), the 'glocalisation' of Japanese anime culture in the online space in China (Asako Saito) and the representation of migrant worker experience in South Korean cinema (Sina Kim). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]