Notes

Here is a sampling of some international programs on the four television channels in Shanghai in the week of November 1-7, 1993: World Heavyweight Boxing Championship live from Las Vegas; tours of Hong Kong, Japan, and Hollywood with various Shanghai TV hosts; a history of the world trade agreement; Japanese and English language classes; the American program Matlock (Bianhu lushi), dubbed into Mandarin; a Taiwan television serial The Capital City and Four Youths (Jingchen sishao); an American documentary about the KGB and CIA; a Japanese children’s cartoon, Hero of the Universe: Jack Automan, dubbed into Mandarin; and The News in English every night at 1 A.M. 11One exception to advertisers’ reluctance to buy commercial time on domestic programs are those shows made by Wang Shuo and crew at the Beijing Television Production Center, which produced the very popular Yearning (Ke wang, 1990) (Zha 1995; Rofel 1994), Stories from the Editing Department (Bianjibu de gushi, 1992), and A Beijing Native in New York (Beijingren zai niuyue, 1993). 12

Of course, the cultural impact is not just one-way; Mainland media and popular culture have also influenced Taiwan and Hong Kong (see Shih 1995 on the impact of the Mainland on Taiwanese TV and popular music). 13

See two other discussions of karaoke by Vincanne Adams (1994) Aihwa Ong (1996). 14

The assumption that the center (which is always figured as the West) always dominates the periphery means that “we get the history of the impact of the center on the periphery, rather than the history of the periphery itself” (Hannerz 1989, 207). The actual interactive process of cross-cultural negotiation, interpretation, and specific strategies of appropriation are not examined at all. 15

The books of this genre come with titles such as Chinese Educated Youth Abroad’, Manhattan’s ‘s China Lady; The Moon Back Home is Brighter; A Beijing Woman in Tokyo\The Bright Moon of Another Land; and A Shanghainese in Tokyo. There are also two successful plays, one called “The Wife Who Came Back from America” (Meiguo lai de qizi), by Zhang

Xian, and “The Woman Left Behind” (Liu shou nüshi), by Yue Meiqin, both of which I saw in a small theater in Shanghai. The latter was made into a film of the same title by Shanghai Film Studio in 1992. Another play titled “Tokyo’s Moon” (Dongjing de yueliang) was written by Sha Yexin, and a TV documentary shot by Wang Xiaoping on location in Tokyo called “Their Home is Shanghai” (Jia zai shanghai), depicting the everyday life of Shanghainese working in Japan, was aired to great acclaim on STV 16

For a critique of how this show promotes the consumerism of transnational corporate products and becomes implicated in the movements of transnational (Western) capital, see Liu 1995. 17

In an analysis highly critical of the show and of his compatriots who accept it, a Chinese expatriate living in the United States wrote that the picture the show paints of an immoral dog-eat-dog society in America merely serves as an excuse for Chinese to practice a ruthless kind of capitalism, which they conveniently imagine exists in the United States (Ye 1994). I think the fact that Wang Qiming’s moral character is the subject of debate shows that many people cannot accept him. 18

In the imaginary of travel and transnational crossings taking hold in the coastal Chinese cities, there is a gender differential whereby women are imagined to be more mobile and successful in adapting to foreign cultures and places, whereas men are seen as more rooted to the culture and national space. Space limits require a separate treatment of this theme in another publication (Yang 1995). 19

Mike Featherstone also has a similar notion of “third cultures,” or transnational cultures that are oriented beyond national boundaries; however, his application of this concept is narrower than what I am trying to conceive. By “third culture” he means the world of transnational professionals in architecture, advertising, film, global financial markets, international law, and other international agencies (Featherstone 1990, 6-8; 1992, 146). I would like to include the transnational mass cultures created by mass media.