Introduction

This book examines the real life accounts of drug addiction written by Chinese people in rehabilitation or recovery, and filmic accounts of drug addiction presented in contemporary mainland Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong film and television productions. The book provides a working definition of drug addiction and lays out the analytical approach to be employed. It analyses contemporary life stories and filmic stories as complementary forms of narrative that proffer insider and outsider perspectives on drug addiction. Humanities and social science research on contemporary stories of drug addiction to date has centred on Western accounts. The book examines how salient cultural, political and institutional discourses shape temporality, subjectivity and language use in Chinese stories of drug addiction. It explores how life and filmic stories utilise the key narrative processes of temporality, subjectivity and language use, in order to discursively marginalise or palliate the Chinese drug addict.