Cinematic Western China: An Open Space for Spatial Imagination

Abstract

This chapter concludes that city films set in urban centres of western China engage with, respond to and reimagine China’s complex and heterogeneous urbanisation and modernisation in an increasingly globalised world. The four cinematic urban centres examined in this book configure a space of the subaltern, the marginalised and the dominated. This configuration defies the glamorised success stories of China’s economic boost, questions the dominance of political and capital power imposed on the designation and transformation of cityscape and urban life, and asserts the value of cultural and social pluralism and hybridity. However, limitations on the book’s length mean it cannot fully cover all urban centres in western China such as Kunming, Lasa, Ürümchi, Xining and Hohhot, etc, the capital city of Yunnan, Tibet, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia, etc. These cities are inhabited by many minorities and often represented in minority films with their cultural uniqueness and religion foregrounded. Given the complicated relationship between minority groups and the Han, and the role of minority films in cultural diversity in central government’s neoliberal policies, minority films set in western China are indicated as a new area for future studies.