Organizer: Zhong Xueping, Tufts University
Chair: Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz
Discussant: Sharon K. Hom, City University of New York
It goes without saying that the rapid economic reforms have produced corollary changes in Chinese media. This panel is interested in one particular result of that change, namely images of women in today's Chinese media.
There will be four papers on this panel discussing images of women in recent popular Chinese magazines and a TV series. They concern such issues as the use of women's images in a women's studies magazine Nuxing Yanjiu (Women's Studies), the dilemma of the "dual task" that Zhongguo Funu (Chinese Women) magazine faces, the debate on the value of feminine "youth" and the anxiety of time in today's Chinese urban sexual economy, and the images of women in one of the most popular TV series Beijing Ren Zai Niuyue (A Beijing Native in New York). The bottom line is the need to examine women's roles and positions in the rapid economic changes and to address various contending issues regarding the use of woman's body in today's Chinese media.
Yuanxi Ma, China Institute
This is a study of Nuxing Yanjiu (Women's Studies), a new bi monthly magazine published by Beijing Women's Association and Beijing Society for Women's (Studies) Theory (Beijing Funu Lilun Yanjiuhui).
Since its first appearance in 1992, this magazine has become extremely popular among (especially young) people of all walks of life. That this self designated "women's studies" magazine is a widely circulated popular magazine raises interesting questions concerning the notion of "women's studies."
Through examining the abundant images of women used in this magazine in conjunction with the columns and articles appearing in each issue, I want to discuss (1) the relationship between the images of women and the various columns that offer advice either on things about women, or about (romantic) relationships between sexes, and so on; (2) the extend to which "nuxing yanjiu" (women's studies) is understood by the populace and those who conduct women's studies; (3) the cultural specificity of the term "women's studies" and the tensions and contradictions within that context.
The purpose of this study is to raise questions concerning the relationship between images of women in Chinese media and the changing roles and positions of Chinese women in today's China.
Naihua Zhang, Michigan State University
To study women and media in China, one cannot ignore the role and function of the "official" publications in propagating the state and party policy, mobilizing women to participate in economic construction and pulicidal campaigns and making women the product of the state. After all, in the long period of PRC's history before the proliferation of publications beginning in the middle of the 1980s, Zhongguo funu (Women of China) and Funu Gonqzuo (woman-work), both run by the All China Women's Federation (ACWF), were the major national publications on/for women. In today's China, of the over 40 women's newspapers and magazines, the majority are still published by the central ACWF or its municipal and provincial branches. The ACWF is a government funded national women's organization. It is subordinated to party leadership and has the authority to help with the interpretation and implementation of state policy on women.
However, the ACWF, defined as a mass organization in China's political terms, is also supposed to represent the interests of its constituency and mediate between women and the state. Thus, its publications are also bestowed with this second function of speaking up the concerns of women and acting as a two way medium of communications. This study will provide a brief historical overview of Zhongguo funu, the official organ of the ACWF, to see how it has dealt with the dual tasks of working for both state and women, especially how well it presents women's issues and when it does, whether it focuses on the strategic gender interests or practical gender needs of women. In addition to examining the changing content of the magazine, the paper will also touch on other major changes the magazine went through, its relation to other printed media on women, and the political and social background against which these changes took place.
As is argued by a China scholar on the mass media in Communist China, "it is all too easy to say that these media are dull, repetitious, stifled by political controls, and not exceptionally informative on either top level policy or popular attitudes. All this is true, at least most of the time. The fact remains that their part in the political education of the people and the CCP's effort to mobilize the people for action makes them virtually indispensable" (Townsend, 1967). This paper is going to show the important and complicated role Zhongguo funu plays in China's politics and in the women's movement. The dilemma and difficulties the magazine has encountered in carrying out the dual tasks will not only deepen our understanding of Chinese media but also shed light on the conflict between the gender interests of the women's movement and those of the state as well as the larger revolutionary cause.
Zhen Zhang, University of Chicago
The ongoing public debate on the "Value of Women-the Issue of the 'Rice Bowl of Youth,'" carried out in the major Chinese mainstream women's magazine Chinese Women is devoted to the particular social and economical phenomenon of Qingchunfan, that is, a range of highly paid new urban professions open almost exclusively to young females, such as bilingual secretary, public relations girl, fashion model, and so on. Young age and beauty are the foremost, if not only, prerequisites for obtaining such lucrative positions, where they often serve as advertising fixtures with sexual appeal. The debate reflects a widespread concern, and confusion, about the rapidly changing image of contemporary Chinese women in the process of "economic reform."
In this paper I analyze the various, often contending, positions in the debate, focusing particularly on whether or not such economic opportunities for young women empower or victimize women. Linking this debate in a "serious" women's magazine to image production of women in popular magazines such as the widely consumed Popular Cinema, I pursue how the obsession with feminine "youth" in real socio economical life is embedded in an urban sexual economy which produces glamour as a future oriented femininity based on performance and display, and finally, how feminine beauty is fashioned and reinforced as a "timeless" object of male desire. I will argue that the anxiety of time is thus not simply a sociological problem of employment faced by women alone, but also indicates a more general psychological condition of a society that has recently "plunged into the ocean" (xiahai) of a market economy.
Xueping Zhong, Tufts University
My paper focuses on the relationship between the four women characters portrayed in the popular TV series Beijing Ren Zai Niuyue (A Beijing Native in New York), the "gaze" behind the camera, and the audience that the series was produced for.
Like many liuxuesheng wenxue (literature by/about [Chinese] students abroad), this TV series was produced for the consumption of people within China. Together, they have perpetuated a psychological market in China for consuming images of Chinese (women) through placing the familiar-natives of China-in such unfamiliar and exoticized places like New York.
Through examining the images of women in this series, I want to argue that, while the TV series purports to represent the lives of those from the PRC living abroad, it does so through a domesticated fantasization. To a larger extent, that is to say, the story is not really about the experience of those Chinese natives living in diaspora but rather about a (continuing) fascination with moments of clashes between what is Chinese and what is western. It feeds on, and therefore perpetuates: (1) a native based value projection onto those, especially women, who live in diaspora, and (2) a collective imagination of and desire for the moment when China comes to terms with (and transcends) things "western."
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