ABSTRACT
House Mania is set in contemporary Beijing where a young real estate agent, Xiao Ke, is struggling to lift her dismal sales figures that her manager reminds her of on a frequent basis. The housing reforms introduced by the Party-state throughout the 1980s and into the late 1990s have played a significant role in shaping China's class society. House Mania was the lowest earner commercially of the films surveyed in this book and represents an alternate perspective of the Chinese film market from the highly successful blockbusters and films that circulate at international film festivals. House Mania is an example of the numerous Chinese films that disappear with little fanfare into the pirate DVD market, file-sharing websites and public television broadcasts and are typically consumed in online streaming platforms. Rural migrant workers understood that the morality of House Mania was to "work hard to achieve one's goals" – in this case, homeownership.
