ABSTRACT
Since adaptations of the Chinese folktale Journey to the West (JTTW) have been recurrently repeated on-screen for nearly a century, this chapter investigates how JTTW adaptations evolve within a transforming Chinese screen industry. To elaborate on how the significant changes in terms of genre innovation, production model, and film policy shape JTTW adaptations in the 21st century, this chapter includes a brief historical review that interrogates the geographical migration between mainland China and Hong Kong of JTTW screen adaptation phenomenon from the 1920s to the 1990s. This chapter addresses the impact of industrial practices, economics, and politics on screen adaptations of JTTW. Until the present, adaptations of JTTW have been continuously informed by socio-cultural and political-economic contexts, including shifting censorship policies, the decline of the mainland film industry during wartime, the development of the television industry in the economic reform era, implementation of state and film policies, circulation and restoration of cultural trends such as martial arts genre production, integration of opera traditions, Hong Kong popular and hybridized culture, and the tendency towards nostalgia. This chapter argues that JTTW adaptations embedded in Chinese screen industries in different historical moments reveal the progressive localization of screen industries themselves within the Chinese context. Since JTTW adaptations primarily were co-produced by Hong Kong and mainland Chinese film companies in the 21st century, localization—a consequence of Hong Kong–mainland film coproduction—emerged as a set of strategies. Strategic localization, as a production pragmatic imperative and a promotional technique, motivates Hong Kong film companies journeying to the mainland to expand the market in mainland China. This chapter offers a significant path for comprehending contemporary Hong Kong-mainland co-produced films and the symbiotic relationship between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese film industries.
