Cinematic Western China: The Under-represented Cinematic Cities

This chapter provides an overview of the affinity between cinema and cities, and shows that cinematic cities located in western China have reflected, responded to and reimagined China’s multi-layered realities in the grand progress of urbanisation and modernisation since the 1980s. It presents a comparison between China’s Westerns and Hollywood Westerns in terms of theme, genre, geographical setting and cultural significance, demonstrating that China’s Westerns configured a rural and ethnographical image of the area from the 1980s to the 1990s, which therefore become stereotypes of the region, casting a stark contrast to the dynamic modern images of cinematic Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Delineating China’s eastern coastal-region dominated “urban cinema” that resonates with the uneven urbanisation and modernisation in mainland China in the reform era, this chapter helps situate the discussion on Chinese western urban film within a larger historical and social context. Drawing on space theories of scholars such as Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja and Michel de Certeau, it shows how national projects and economic policies carried out in western China at different periods shape and reshape the “real and imagined” spaces of four capital cities in the area.