1st Edition

Ethnic Minority Children in Post-Socialist Chinese Cinema Allegory, Identity, and Geography

By Zhenhui Yan Copyright 2020
160 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

160 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

160 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book examines the surprisingly large number of films about ethnic minority children in China, considering key questions such as Why are ethnic minority children becoming more intriguing to Chinese filmmakers? What are their roles in the films literally and allegorically? And how are they placed on screen geographically and why? It argues that ethnic minority children’s appeal lies in their... Read more

1 Introduction: Ethnic minority children’s allegorical functions, identity construction, and geographies in postsocialist Chinese cinema 2 Children, nature, and animals: Dai children’s adventure in a forest 3 Natural landscapes as musical spaces: Uyghur children’s yearnings in a national narrative 4 Beijing and rural Guizhou in focalisations: Miao children’s relationships with the nation-state and ethnic tradition 5 Cinematic space in a relational construction: Heroes and a reconstruction of ethnic relationships through children’s interethnic interactions 6 Grasslands as transitional spaces of play: Mongol children’s reimagination of the world 7 A young lama as Sun Wukong: Contradictions and flexibility in a contemporary Tibetan child’s identity construction 8 Conclusion: Some observations about the images of ethnic minority children in postsocialist Chinese cinema

Biography

Zhenhui Yan completed her thesis in the Department of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales, Australia.