Browsing by Author "Hong, Guo-Juin"
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Item Open Access Chollywooding and Pandering: The Present and Future of Sino-Hollywood Negotiation(2022) Chen, MengyuThe relationship between China and Hollywood has been a contested subject as a result of complicated historical trajectories. Whether during the Republican era or during the post-1994 period when Hollywood films were reimported to the Chinese market, Hollywood’s “dominance” seems to be the prevailing narrative, a narrative that describes one party’s (Hollywood’s) position of dominance over the other (the Chinese market). From the perspective of marketization, Hollywood and the Chinese film industry are entangled in an intense competition. From the perspective of culturalization, though, such a black and white binary is not entirely applicable, because culture itself is always undergoing continuous negotiation and reformulation. This thesis takes two recent Chinese films—Wolf Warrior II (2017) and The Great Wall (2016)—as my case studies to discuss two of the major forms of representation in the current Sino-Hollywood relationship, namely: “chollywooding” and “pandering.” I seek to highlight the dynamics of cultural negotiation and accommodation occurring between the two parties. Inspired by Prasenjit Duara’s concept of “circulatory history,” I challenge the idea of the “exclusiveness” of Hollywood, or the stationariness of any cultural form. I argue that Wolf Warrior II represents a new cultural space—a “Chollywood cinema” (that is, “Hollywood cinema with Chinese characteristics”) that combines Hollywood filmmaking techniques with Chinese ideology. I show that, while Chollywood cinema is particularly appealing to Chinese audiences, it is viewed much less favorably by overseas viewers. By contrast, The Great Wall employs a strategy of pandering that is less successful in terms of both its domestic and international receptions because it deviates from both “Hollywood” and “Chollywood/Chinese” ideologies. The aim of this thesis is twofold. On the one hand, I demonstrate that, from a cultural standpoint, the Sino-Hollywood relationship must be characterized as one of “negotiation”: both parties are not simply in a competitive relationship but also a collaborative one, whether they wish to be or not. This reveals a dynamic global-local interplay between “chollywooding” and “pandering.” On the other hand, the growing popularity and success of “Chollywood cinema” indicates how “chollywooding” will take on an increasingly significant role in reformulating Sino-Hollywood negotiation in the foreseeable future.
Item Open Access Echoes of Logos and Dao: "Yellow Earth" and the Question Concerning Technology, Language, and Cross-Cultural Dialogue(2024) Wang, YuezhouThe study aims to elucidate and address the problem of cross-cultural encounters and artwork interpretation by exploring the philosophical concepts of “the Logos and Dao.” Through the examination of Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s thoughts on “Logos” and referencing Daoist thought, the essential meaning of “the logos and Dao” is gradually explained with the notion of “Enframing” (Ge-stell), which denotes a mechanism that gathers and sends over. The structure of “Gestell” not only supports the fundamental function of the “house of language,” but also plays an important role in the question of modernity and technology. Through a detailed analysis of the film work Yellow Earth, the study illustrates how technology, while presenting challenges to the essential relation between humans and beings, also holds the potential to unveil the “Enframing” force of “the Logos and Dao.” This revelation fosters a reimagined understanding of cross-cultural dialogue in the age of modern technology, and it also urges us to rethink the relation between humanity, language, and technology.
Item Open Access Fast Food, Street Food: Western Fast Food's Influence on Fast Service Food in China(2018-05-01) Steven, QuinnThe phenomenal success of Western fast food brands in China has fascinated researchers and business people alike since its dawn in the late 1980’s. The two largest Western fast food brands in China, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), have been heavily researched to understand origins of their success. However, a current gap in the research is the impact of these Western brand’s influences on Chinese quick service food culture. In this thesis, I will explore the conditions that allowed the brands to be so successful in China, the brands themselves and the perception that their Chinese clientele have of these brands, but then go on to use that information, in conjunction with existing research about native Chinese quick service dining venues, to propose how these brands may have influenced Chinese quick service dining culture. Before I can even begin to explore these brands’ presence in China, I must first establish their origins and brand identity in the United States. In the introduction of my thesis, I first contrast the developments of McDonald’s and KFC. McDonald’s was the first American fast-service restaurant and their menu centered on the hamburger, a dish that first gained national fame at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. McDonald’s pioneered the American model of quick-service by placing greater emphasis on take-away food, best eaten quickly, and ready to be eaten on the go, rather than fitting the existing dining model of a sit-down restaurant. While McDonald’s was more modern, KFC built its brand on home-style, Southern cooking, made available to weary drivers as a quick rest-stop meal. Fried chicken originated in Southern kitchens as a result of the Western African cooking traditions brought by African slaves in the antebellum period before the Civil War. While McDonald’s sold primarily the hamburger and KFC sold primarily fried chicken, both restaurants’ business models relied on quick, standard, reliable, and convenient service for success, and maintaining those standards consistently across all their restaurant branches. This stands in stark contrast to fast service dining in China. Although China has a long history of fast service food, the first street food market is estimated to have operated during the Song Dynasty in the early 13th century, these street food operations lacked the standardization and commercialization of Western fast food chains. However, while the definition of fast service that China associated with street food did not directly align with the Western fast food model, it may have primed a Chinese market to readily accept a new type of fast service cuisine. In addition to its existing fast-service food culture, a confluence of other major changes in China created the ideal milieu for these fast food companies to flourish. First, shortly following Mao’s death, his vice premier, Deng Xiaoping rose to power and enacted major economic reforms including opening China economically to the West. This meant that Western businesses were finally able to operate in China beginning in 1978, and by 1987 those businesses included KFC, which opened its first store in Tiananmen Square that year. The second effect of these economic policy changes was the rise of the Chinese middle class, which stemmed from the ability of young Chinese people to be entrepreneurial. This new middle class suddenly had an influx of money to spend and an uncertain place in society, and so used their new money to help establish their new, higher social status. Dining at Western fast food restaurants was one way that the new middle class could be “seen;” if their coworkers, friends, or family members saw them dining out at relatively expensive Western fast food venues, it made their wealth apparent. The Western fast food chains remained a universal status-symbol in China, however that status as a luxury was entirely contingent on their perception as a clean, high-quality, and service-oriented venue. Chinese customers had interest in the Western goods KFC and McDonald’s sold, but only because they represented Western culture, not necessarily because they enjoyed the taste of the food. To keep customers coming back, the restaurants adapted in ways reminiscent of their origins: McDonald’s created new foods by hybridizing Western and Eastern flavors, while KFC adopted some of China’s traditional street foods as sold them in their restaurants for a higher cost. The restaurants also adopted restaurant floor plans that better suited their Chinese customers’ dining preferences and service styles that met new needs such a social events or family-style meals. It was the restaurants’ decisions to adapt to the Chinese palette and dining needs that lead to their continued success. The influence that Chinese dining and food culture have had on the Western fast food chains entering China is well-documented, there is little formal research on the reciprocity of that exchange; have these Western fast food chains been able to influence Chinese food culture? In the second chapter, I will begin to examine this question by first trying to understand what the words “fast” and “service” mean in a traditionally Chinese context, and how those meanings may have shifted or fit a Western fast food model. Once the two words are defined and their relation to Western fast food are established, I will look at one case study of Lanzhou Lamian, a traditionally Chinese restaurant franchise. While there are other native Chinese fast food companies that have begun since the entrance of Western fast food companies, I chose to look at Lanzhou lamian because it had differed from Western fast food’s model in all aspects but one until 2010. Lanzhou lamian was a dish created in the 1800’s by a Hui Muslim chef that had become the identifying food of the city of Lanzhou and highly acclaimed across the country. In 2010, the city of Lanzhou created an official brand for “Lanzhou Beef Lamian” and licensed it to a company named Eastern Palace, which caused great uproar from the Hui community who continued to operate the stores that their ancestors first opened, but had their stores’ statuses suddenly delegitimized. While branding in food is not a foreign concept to Western businesses, restaurant brands had not really existed before the entrance of Western fast food brands. There has not been enough research in this area to prove that branding the dish and related store of “Lanzhou Lamian,” stems from a pressure to create an official brand caused by an earlier introduction of the concept branding restaurants that originated with the Western fast food brands, but the Western brands’ potential to have that kind of influence cannot be ignored either. This particular case helps create boundaries for how Western fast food made have inserted itself into the definition of quick service restaurants in China: it could have had as little influence as simply encouraging the creation of a brand, or gone so far as to reinvent service styles and architectural ideas. It exemplifies the impact that an outside influence can have on a tradition that is thousands-of-years old. Other influences may have similarly been introduced then integrated into Chinese food culture and created the complex existing Chinese food culture. By recognizing that the introduction of fast food to China is an opportunity to show how a definition, such as “quick service,” can expand, it provides an opportunity to better understand cultural development and acceptance of novel introductions. In the conclusion of my thesis, I will be looking forward to the next potential frontier for an expansion of our current understandings of food culture through the introduction of technology. In China, because of the continuing rise of the middle class and their increasing ability to spend money dining out, companies and restaurants are developing technologies to make it easier to serve an ever-growing customer-base. Those technologies include phone applications to order a seated meal at a restaurant even before arriving, online delivery services, and online customer review sites, all of which move most of a customer’s interaction with a restaurant, besides the actual dining, online.Item Open Access Heritage with a High Price Tag: The Rise of China's Luxury Automotive Industry(2018-03-28) Smith, SydneyThis thesis seeks to answer the question, “Which attributes in China’s market conditions during the past 40 years have led to the creation of the largest automotive industry in the world?” The first chapter provides a historical background and establishes the current context of the automotive industry in China through two strategy perspectives. Michael Porter’s “Five-Forces-Model” and “Clusters and the New Economics of Competition” provide a framework to evaluate the Chinese automotive industry’s development and global competitiveness. The second chapter argues how the industry’s highly competitive nature has transformed the role of luxury among Chinese automotive consumers. The chapter tackles three specific issues: what is luxury, who buys luxury and evolving trends in luxury. In conclusion, this thesis seeks to characterize the future of luxury in the Chinese automotive industry as “Cars with Chinese characteristics.” One way to understand “Cars with Chinese Characteristics” is through the lens of the Chinese philosophy, yin-yang, where yin and yang are complementary forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Through the creation of paradoxes, we learn that heritage is the bridge between the past and the future. The future of luxury in the Chinese automotive industry lies within the resilient and innovative brands that are able to manifest this heritage with a high price tag.Item Embargo Narrating the Covid-19 Cyber-Memoryscape in China: from the Social Media Infodemic to the Politicisation of Pandemic(2023) Hu, HuanqiuWhen it comes to issues concerning the media and communication system in contemporary China , a monolithic view of a top-down, hierarchical order between the repressing party-state censorship vs. the repressed media dominates the discussion in general. It is true that all media are under surveillance and control of the party-state, and this is usually the central focus of existing scholarship in this area. However, the simple presence of media and information control does not predetermine the uses to which media are put. Today, under the digital transformation of contemporary media systems, alternative organizations and individuals can voice out and communicate with the public in the interconnected cyber space. Therefore, the previous absolute discursive power of the party-state has been divided, shifted, and distributed.The COVID-19 pandemic and infodemic crisis have already shown us that apart from the tightening online censorship and digital surveillance, there are more complex and even unpredictable processes of negotiation, contestation, competition and even conspiracy between different power dynamics. Those cyber activities and discourses that shape collective memories of this pandemic era can tell us much about the changing dynamics among the party-state, economy, media, and society, as well as the ways in which these forces interact and clash in China today. This thesis adopts a cultural studies approach that examines a series of online pandemic-narratives and some significant public events and social movements that had been caused and directed by these narratives. Chapter 1, from spatial dimension, illustrates the complexity of the dynamics between different powers that are moving between various knots in the meshy discursive (inter)net space. Chapter 2, from temporal dimension, demonstrates the complexity of the process, both the occurrence and development, of cyber public events and social movements in the arena of digital communication sphere. By drawing a series of cases from a wide range of media texts and communication practices, I try to move beyond the conventional dichotomy and to explore the vast array of variations concerning nationalism, class, and other social conflicts in contemporary China. It is my hope that by directing attention toward the complexities and interdependencies of these cyber activities and discourses, I could offer an alternative way of looking at Chinese media and communication system, as well as the drastic social changes under the crisis of pandemic.
Item Open Access Realism in Ancient History Documentaries(2022-11-23) Yu, JieThis project focuses on the representation of realism in ancient history documentaries. While documentaries are often distinguished from fictional films for the general public by their intimate connection to reality and their strong persuasiveness, the fictional component of documentaries is higher than spectators’ expectations. Compared to other types of documentaries, the time and space distance between the producers of ancient history documentaries and the original material leads to the problem that ancient history documentaries face a greater challenge in authenticity. In order to seek the documentary mission of recording reality and to bring it closer to spectators’ expected authenticity, exploring the issue from the perspective of realistic expressions in ancient history documentaries is meaningful. Therefore, by combining theory and practice, based on realism-related theories, this project explores the expressive techniques in ancient history documentaries and provides examples and reflections on theoretical practice in filming experience. This project proposes the impossibility of restoring reality in films and emphasizes that the realism in ancient history documentaries should be pursued with a belief in the way of conducting a ritual. The results are evaluations of the realistic tendency of the commonly used expression techniques in ancient history documentaries and confirm the importance of research investments and filmmakers’ commitment during practice.Item Embargo Residing in Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Domestic Spaces in Domestic Spaces in 21st Century Chinese-Language Documentary Films(2024) Fan, YueThis project explores the concept of domestic space as depicted in the films Small Talk (2016) and The Moon Palace (2007), alongside philosophical and cultural insights. Through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates cinema studies, philosophy, and cultural analysis, we examine how these filmmakers navigate the complexities of familial relationships, societal norms, and individual identities within the context of domesticity.
Small Talk by Huang Hui-chen provides a deeply personal exploration of domesticity, shedding light on taboo topics such as sexual identity and domestic violence. Meanwhile, Qiu Jiongjiong's The Moon Palace offers a fragmented yet profound portrayal of domestic space, challenging conventional boundaries and inviting viewers to contemplate the interplay between physical architecture and emotional resonance. Drawing from philosophical, this project expands understanding of domestic space as a liminal entity shaped by both tangible structures and intangible narratives. Through the lens of these filmmakers, the analysis interrogates the narratives embedded within the walls of our homes, gaining insight into the complexities of the human condition and the enduring power of familial bonds.
Ultimately, this thesis project argues that the study of domestic space transcends mere architectural analysis to encompass a deeper interrogation of human existence itself. By engaging with cinematic representations of home, we gain a deeper appreciation for the multiplicity of meanings that reside within the spaces we call home, offering valuable insights into the complexities of modern life and the human experience.