Reclaiming the Periphery in the Age of Social Media: Power and Narrative of Rural China in My People, My Homeland (2020) and Coffee or Tea? (2020)

Abstract

China’s industrial development and accompanying urbanization since the 1970s established an urban-rural power dichotomy. However, in recent years, this “urban-rural” as “center-periphery” binary has been constantly re-examined and re-imagined. The emergence of rural short videos since 2016 has arguably led the “voices” of periphery to be heard. However, along with these seemingly heteroglossic and de-centralizing narratives of rural China, it is also observed that the state seeks to reclaim the ownership of rural storytelling. This paper looks into My People, My Homeland (2020) and Coffee or Tea? (2020) and examines how these two (quasi-) “main melody” films depict rural revitalization in the social media age. By unpacking the two films’ narrative strategies in portraying Chinese countryside as well as the intertextual relations they form with other macro cinematic texts and micro grassroot storytelling of the “periphery,” this article demonstrates how the state re-establishes the discursive power in representing and interpreting the countryside.