National Project and Disappearing Space

This chapter displays how material and cognitive spaces are shaped and demolished due to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam by examining Zhang Ming’s 1996 Rainclouds over Wushan [Wushan yunyu] and Jia Zhangke’s 2006 Still Life [Sanxia haoren]. The enormous national project represents the macro spatial view of rationalising and modernising the urban space, yet Zhang Ming chooses a micro perspective to examine the inertia and subjective dimension of the city. He creates a Thirdspace by showing the street view of the urban space and everyday life related to emerging commercialism and oppressed desire in a claustrophobic space, which opposes the grand discourse of building the Three Gorges Dam to national resurrection and modernisation. Still Life adopts the style of magical realism to convey the dramatic changes underway in the physical space and the consequent traumatic experiences in the mental space of characters. It works as a space of resistance by focusing on those marginalised people who make ruins, live in ruins, are exiled and even buried by ruins. Ruins, therefore, bear clear and indivisible class marks. The cinematic representations of the city resonate with the immensity and complexity of the trend toward urbanisation and modernisation.