《中国电影研究》Dorothee Xiaolong Hou: 银幕上的中国东北地区

Journal of Chinese Film Studies Volume 2, Issue 1

《中国电影研究》第二卷第一期

Reforging the Rust Belt: China’s Northeast on the Silver Screen

重塑老工业基地——银幕上的中国东北地区

1 About the Author

侯小龙 | Dorothee Xiaolong Hou

美国摩拉维亚学院研究员

Dorothee Xiaolong Hou, PhD, is a scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, film, and visual culture. Her current research interest is in the literary and cinematic representations of urban spaces in China's Rust Belt. Currently a ASIANetwork-Luce Foundation postdoctoral teaching fellow at Moravian University, she's working on her first monograph, tentatively titled Remaking China's Rust Belt: Literature, Film, and Urban Culture of China's Post-Reform Northeast.

侯小龙，中国现当代文学、电影和视觉文化研究学者，当前关注课题为中国老工业基地城市空间的文学和电影呈现；目前是美国摩拉维亚学院的ASIANetwork-Luce基金会博士后研究员，正在撰写首部专著《重塑中国老工业基地：后改革时代中国东北地区的文学、电影和城市文化》（书名暂定）火币(huobi)。

To Cite This Article

Dorothee Xiaolong Hou. "Reforging the Rust Belt: China's Northeast on the Silver Screen". Journal of Chinese Film Studies, vol 2, no.1, 2022.

2 Abstract and Keywords

Abstract: In the 1990s, China's northeast including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the bastion of state-owned heavy industry, underwent a massive state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform engineered by Deng Xiaoping as part of the "Reform and Opening-up Policy", which resulted in large-scale SOE bankruptcies and some 30 million blue-collar workers being laid off. 20 years after the reform, China's northeast, once among the most urbanized regions in the country, has effectively become China's "Rust Belt." This article examines the cinematic representations of China's Rust Belt, specifically in China's northeast, arguing that cinema plays a crucial role in both capturing and interrogating the emergence of new urban spaces and urban subjects amidst the spatial and ideological reorientations of the reform era. It also investigates the ways in which cinematic representations, through a shifting "system of symbols", mediate the contradictions in the production of urban spaces, cultural norms, and social identities.

展开全文

Keywords: China's Rust Belt; SOE reform; post-socialist nostalgia; urban spaces

摘要：上世纪九十年代，在改革开放政策的推动下，中国东北国有重工业基地黑吉辽三省开展了大规模国有企业改革，期间大批国有企业破产，3000万蓝领工人下岗火币(huobi)。二十年后，曾经城市化进程全国领先的东北地区最终成为中国的“老工业基地”。本文探索了中国东北地区老工业基地在电影作品中的呈现形式，认为在空间和意识形态需要重新定位的改革时代，电影在捕捉和审视出现的新城市空间和主体方面起到了至关重要的作用。此外，本文还探索了通过符号系统转换，调解城市空间、文化规范以及社会认同之间矛盾的电影呈现手法。

关键词：中国老工业基地；国有企业改革；后社会主义怀旧；城市空间

3 A Glimpse of This Article

The first section of this article chronicles the historical development of cinematic representations of China's northeast from the early 1980s to recent times. The second section analyzes three recent films set in China's post-reform northeast, namely Zhang Meng's drama film The Piano in a Factory (Gang de qin, 2010), Geng Jun's comedy short The Hammer and Sickle Are Sleeping (Chuizi liandao dou xiuxi, 2013) and Diao Yinan's mystery thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bairi yanhuo, 2014), in relation to recent urban developments and local identities in the region. These three stylistic and thematically diverse films mark a further diversification, at times subversion, of its predecessor, the leitmotif films (zhuxuanlü dianying). More importantly, through disparate ways of urban spaces, these films demonstrate different responses to the social and spatial disintegration and reorganization of the SOE reform.

本文前两节按照时间顺序追溯了上世纪八十年代早期至今中国东北地区在电影中的呈现形式发展脉络，后三节分别以张猛的剧情片《钢的琴》、耿军的喜剧短片《锤子镰刀都休息》以及刁亦男的悬疑惊悚片《白日焰火》这三部以后改革时代中国东北地区为叙事背景的电影为案例进行分析，探索影片中包含的对国企改革带来的空间分化和重组的不同态度火币(huobi)。

1. China's Rust Belt on the Silver Screen (1980s-2010s)

Cinematic representations of China's post-reform urban transformations date back to mid-to-late 1980s. City-based members of the "Fifth-Generation" Chinese film directors such as Huang Jianxin, Zhou Xiaowen, Sun Zhou, and Xia Gang, departed from the collectivist portrayal of urban life in the early 1980s and presented an individualistic, rebellious, and iconoclastic take on life in the city. Adapted from the author Wang Shuo’s major works, many of the "Urban Fifth-Generation" directors' films focused on a newly emerged group of people, the city-dwelling, self-employed youth (getihu), delineating China's transformation from a society organized around collectivist and agrarian values, which had dominated its urban socialist work units since the Mao era, to a competitive, service-based postindustrial urban culture. However, such themes were scarcely explored in films that took place in China's state-owned heavy industrial regions, where state-owned enterprises still held a strong presence in urban life and state-subsidized leitmotif films remained dominant in the film market.

Departing from their predecessors, the Fifth-Generation's historic and political tropes, the emergence of the Sixth-Generation, independent filmmakers was based on a certain degree of political indifference, especially in their earlier works. They were fascinated by marginalized individuals, underground communities, and the unpredictable ways of urban living; but were somewhat reluctant to address the systemic reasons behind these urban problems. This made it particularly difficult for early Sixth-Generation cinema to find proper expressions for the Rust Belt cities.

In the meantime, China's northeast found new form of cultural expression on the small screen. In the 1990s, Zhao Benshan, an Errenzhuan performer, actor, and comedian became a household name. In Zhao's works, the collective plight of the laid-off workers disappears. Instead, the decaying industrial cities become the loci for personal adventures and upward mobility.However, by the end of the 2000s, as China's Rust Belt experienced a new cycle of economic regression, Zhao's anesthetic comedy gradually lost its momentum.

一 银幕上的中国老工业基地（1980s-2010s）

改革后中国城市转型在电影中的呈现可追溯至上世纪八十年代中后期，在城市生活的第五代导演黄建新、周晓文、孙周和夏钢不再对八十年代早期的城市生活进行集体主义描写，而是展现了城市生活个人的、反叛的以及反传统的一面火币(huobi)。许多“第五代城市导演”的电影改编自王朔的小说作品，聚焦于城市新兴群体个体户，描述了社会从集体主义向充满竞争的后工业城市文化的转型。然而，将叙事背景设定在中国国有重工业区的此类电影却少之又少，因为在国有重工业区，国有企业仍然是城市生活的主旋律，而由政府投资的主旋律电影也充斥着整个电影市场。

第六代独立电影人的早期作品，不同于第五代导演作品采用的历史政治修辞，在一定程度上展现了对政治的冷漠火币(huobi)。虽然第六代独立电影人热衷于展现边缘个体、地下群体以及难以预测的城市生活，但是他们没有深度挖掘这些城市问题背后的系统性原因，因此，对于第六代导演来说，在作品中为老工业基地城市找一个合适的表达方式十分困难。

与此同时，小荧屏作品为中国东北地区的文化表达提供了全新形式火币(huobi)。上世纪九十年代，喜剧演员、二人转表演者赵本山成为了家喻户晓的明星，在他的作品中不再有下岗工人的集体困境，衰退的工业城市反而成为个人冒险、追求进步的场所，直到二十一世纪，中国老工业基地再次经历了一轮经济衰退，赵本山的自我麻醉式的喜剧作品也逐步落下帷幕。

2. From Dissent to Propaganda: West of Tracks (2003) and the SOE Reform

Tiexi (literally "West of the Tracks") is a district of Shenyang, Liaoning Province. For half a century, it has been the oldest and largest industrial base in China's era of socialist planned economy. In the 1980s, under Deng's economic reform, southern and central China, particularly the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta, shifted from a planned economy to a market economy. Meanwhile, China's northeast remained dependent on command planning. A large proportion of the region's output of natural resources, steel, and machinery were transferred out of the area at low prices to the state, while the enterprises paid heavy taxes to the state. Over a decade, Tiexi started to decline, and by the end of 1990s, most of its factories had closed.

It was into this bleak scene that Wang Bing has arrived. He arrived at Tiexi in 1999 and spent over two years living and recording the lives of factory workers using a rented DV. Wang's directorial debut West of the Tracks closely records the everyday life of the workers. The factory workers are effaced of their individuality, rendering their bodies ornamental to the mechanisms of the machine, whose chilling indifference somewhat resembles the state apparatus and its ruthless developmental logic.

West of the Tracks was never released in the theaters. However, a decade later, images of West reappeared in the newly built China Industry Museum, serving as a reminder of the old glory of Tiexi. This ambivalent re-inclusion of West of the Tracks into the official discourse, then, can be seen as an attempt of maintaining the intricate balance between two irreconcilable historical discourses, that is, between a naturalized "historical rationality" of the inevitable takeover of the market, which rewards individual valor and (economic) success, and the hauntological presence of socialist mentalities in postsocialist China, which champions personal sacrifice and nostalgic collectivism. This schizophrenic coexistence of the dual discourse also pervades the recent "Rust Belt films", like Zhang Meng's drama film The Piano in a Factory, Geng Jun's comedy short The Hammer and Sickle Are Sleeping and Diao Yinan's mystery thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice.

二 从异端作品到宣传工具：《铁西区》和国企改革

在计划经济时代，辽宁省沈阳市的铁西区是半个世纪以来建立最早、规模最大的工业基地火币(huobi)。二十世纪八十年代改革开放后，中国的南方和中原地区，尤其是长三角、珠三角地区实现了从计划经济到市场经济的转型，而中国东北地区却仍然依赖于计划经济体制，大量自然资源、钢铁机械廉价出售的同时，还要缴纳高额税款，长此以往，铁西区逐渐凋敝，到九十年代末，一大批工厂纷纷倒闭。

正是在这样的背景下，王兵来到了铁西区，花了两年时间用相机记录下了工人们的真实生活，其首部纪录片作品《铁西区》由此问世火币(huobi)。王兵镜头下的工人被抹去了个体性，他们的身躯仿佛只是机器的附属品，麻木冷漠，却又与残酷的发展逻辑相契合。

《铁西区》从未在院线上映，然而十年之后，铁西区的影像在中国工业博物馆重现于世，成为人们缅怀旧时铁西荣耀的一种方式火币(huobi)。将《铁西区》重新纳入官方话语是为了调和两种矛盾的历史话语，即市场经济是历史发展的必然趋势和鼓励个人奉献、坚守集体主义的社会主义意识形态。这种双重话语也常见于近期的一些“老工业基地”主题电影中，比如张猛的剧情片《钢的琴》、耿军的戏剧短片《锤子镰刀都休息》以及刁亦男的悬疑惊悚片《白日焰火》。

3. Place-Based Nostalgia in The Piano in a Factory (2010)

Zhang Meng's comedy drama The Piano in a Factory (2010) tells the story of laid-off divorcee Chen Guilin's (Wang Qianyuan) struggle to keep custody of his daughter from his ex-wife (Jang Shin-young), who has left him for a rich merchant. His daughter says that she will stay with whoever that can buy her a piano. Unable to afford a piano, Chen reassembles his former colleagues from his old factory – a team of skilled workers and engineers – and together, they build a steel piano in an abandoned factory for his daughter.

The film opens with a medium shot of Chen Guilin and his wife standing side by side directly facing the camera. They talk impassively about their divorce as "doing each other a favor." In the background stands a factory, with smoke coming out of its two large chimneys. This opening image can be interpreted as a symbolic “divorce” between the workers and the factory, between the past of socialist planned economy and the current profit-driven market economy.

The piano, a symbol of an emerging urban middle class culture, both threatens Chen’s sense of belonging at home and facilitates his regaining the sense of belonging at "work". As the scattered workers rejoin the collective body of the factory production line, they achieve an imagined sense of unity and wholeness. Towards the end of the film, as the team work gleefully in the factory, Chen's girlfriend Shuxian volunteers to cook for the group, making her the caretaker not of the family, but for the entire "production team". This not only evokes the image of public canteens from China’s Mao era, but also the extraction of female labor from the family/private space to the public sphere.

A heart-warming, whimsical story of post socialist nostalgia, the film reinvented Wang Bing's bleak vision of the Northeast and presented a creative aestheticization of the working class.

三 《钢的琴》中基于地点的怀旧情结

张猛的剧情片《钢的琴》讲述了下岗工人陈桂林（王千源饰）为满足女儿想要一架钢琴的要求，与前妻争夺女儿的抚养权，重新召集起旧工厂的工友，一起为女儿打造钢的琴的故事火币(huobi)。

影片开头陈桂林和前妻并肩面对镜头而立，谈及离婚，他们认为这是对彼此都好的一个决定，镜头的背景是一座工厂，浓厚的烟从两个巨大的烟囱里冉冉升起火币(huobi)。该开场镜头的意象被解读为一场工人与工厂、计划经济和市场经济之间的“离婚”。

而钢琴作为新兴城市中产阶级文化的象征，既让陈桂林失去了家的归属感，却又让他重新拾起了作为工人的归属感，当四散的工友重新聚集在工厂的生产线上，在想象中他们似乎又找回了曾经的团结感和完整感火币(huobi)。影片最后，当工人们在工厂里干得热火朝天时，陈桂林的女友主动提出为大家做饭，但此时的她并不是一个家庭的掌勺人，而是一个生产队的厨师，这不禁让人们回忆起了毛主席时代的公社食堂，也将女性劳动者从家庭私人空间带到了公众环境下。

《钢的琴》是一个带有后社会主义时代怀旧情结的暖心且怪诞的故事，重塑了王兵镜头下荒凉衰颓的东北地区，对工人阶级进行了创造性美化火币(huobi)。

4. Creative Destruction and Corporeal Anxiety in Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014)

Another recent film, Diao Yinan's Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) takes place in Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang province, one of the most prominent cities of China's northeast. The film tells a story filled with mysteries, violence, and sexual repression. It follows Zhang Zili, a police captain who, when investigating a case involving scattered body parts turning up in coal plants, gets wounded in a lurid shoot-out, which claims the lives of two of his colleagues as well as his badge. Five years later, Zhang, drunk and dissolute, takes up the job as a factory security guard. In a chance encounter with his former colleague Wang, he learns that two former factory workers have newly turned up dead and dismembered in an earlier similar fashion to the earlier cases, and both seem to point to Wu Zhizhen, the widow of one of the victims five years ago. In the end, Zhang Zili uncovers the truth about the murders at a nightclub called bairi yanhuo.

China's Rust Belt in Black Coal, Thin Ice is portrayed in a deliberately anachronist narrative style, rather than with a coherent narrative (like in Piano), with fragmented images of the city. The dazzling cinematography and frequent uses of tracking shots in Black Coal makes Harbin look both real and dream-like, with its residents in a state of limbo, unable to connect with the ever-changing cityscape surrounding them. In Black Coal, under the surface of the gruesome murder lies a bleaker reality about the growing income gap and social immobility, and consequently, the impoverishment and displacement of the working class in China's northeast. Unlike the imaginary "wholeness" achieved in Piano, the laid-off workers’ subjectivity in Black Coal is fragmented, if not completely exterminated. As unprofitable "things", their bodies are rejected and abandoned by the market – in the same way a hollowed mine is abandoned – yet they demand the right to exist.

In Black Coal, the visceral anxiety of corporeal integrity, the brutal repression of individual desires, and the uncanny co-existence of the past and the present seep through a collage of cacophonous images of frantic actions and static long shots, which in a sense, makes it as "realistic" as West of the Tracks.

四 《白日焰火》中的创造性破坏和物质焦虑

《白日焰火》的故事背景设定在黑龙江省哈尔滨市，讲述了一个充满悬疑、暴力和性压抑的故事火币(huobi)。该片以警察张自力为叙事视角，揭开了一系列离奇的煤场碎尸案。五年前，张自力因为一时大意，导致煤场碎尸案的凶手以及自己的两名同事纷纷殒命，五年后落魄的张自力到煤场做保安，却重新卷入到与五年前相似的碎尸案中，随着调查的深入，所有的一切似乎都指向了五年前受害人的遗孀吴志贞，最终张自力在一个叫做“白日焰火”的夜店找到了真凶。

与《钢的琴》不同，《白日焰火》对中国老工业基地的叙述有一种刻意为之的反时代主流风格，整个城市的呈现是一种碎片化的影像，在令人目眩的跟拍镜头下，哈尔滨显得似真似幻，而这个城市的居民也似乎处在躁动不安的境地，无法与周围变幻莫测的城市空间产生任何连接火币(huobi)。本片中阴郁的谋杀案下掩藏的是收入差距、社会停滞的荒凉现实以及东北工人阶级的贫困和流离。《白日焰火》中的下岗工人，并不像《钢的琴》中的下岗工人一样完成了一次想象中的完整性回归，而是被粉碎、甚至完全剥夺了主观性，他们的身体就像挖空的矿井一样被市场抛弃，然而他们仍然需要活下去的权利。

《白日焰火》通过一系列动静长镜头的拼合，表现了对物质完整性的内心焦虑，对个人欲望的残酷压抑，以及过去和现在的吊诡共存，在某种程度上达到了同《铁西区》一样的“真实性”火币(huobi)。

5. Ennui, Emasculation, and the Absurd in The Hammer and Sickle Are Sleeping (2013)

Geng Jun's 2013 comedy short The Hammer and Sickle Are Sleeping tells a story of three social outcasts in a declining industrial town trying to make ends meet through fraud and robbery. In the film, Gangge (Xu Gang), a laid-off worker turned-robber, encounters a fraud duo, the disabled Yongge and Auntie Baohe (Chen Baohe), a male cross-dresser, find sympathy and comradery in each other. Together, they attempt–and ultimately fail at–robbing a well-dressed older woman on the street. The three, beaten up by the woman, rest in the kang (bed-stove) and dream of leaving the Northeast for the warm, prosperous South.

The film begins with Xiao'er, a devout Christian, standing in the vast, snow-covered field singing hymns, stating that being exposed to the sun will make him feel warmer, and therefore less hungry. Xiao'er's relative Yongge (Zhang Zhiyong), a disabled laid-off worker, ridicules him and asks:"Doesn't standing outside in the open field only make you feel colder?" This opening scene sets the mood and presents the central trope of the film – what Geng Jun terms as the (cinematic) absurd (huangtang).

Hammer is kind of tension-removing, with hyper-realistic characters played by amateur actors and with a plot (or lack thereof) full of chance encounters, random non-events, loop-like routines, and in the end, a lack of resolution. The struggle for agency, mobility, and ontological meanings in Piano and Black Coal is replaced by a perpetual sense of ennui in Hammer.

Another prevalent image in Hammer (as well as in Piano and Black Coal) is that of male impotency and their absence, or retreat from what I term the“spaces of desire.” In the film, the gang's choice of weapon for robbery is a hammer wrapped in a towel. The hammer, which signifies the empowerment of the proletariat during the socialist era, becomes a symbol of personal failure, inadequacy, and emasculation. In Black Coal and Hammer, these spaces of desires are seen in hotel rooms, night clubs, pubs, dancing rooms, and barber shops. The male characters often find themselves either uneasy or rejected at these places. As a result, they retreat to private or semi-private spaces, whether it’s the inside the Ferris wheel for Zhang Zili in Black Coal, or the cramped room for Yongge and Baohe in Hammer.

五 《锤子镰刀都休息》中的无力、阉割和荒唐

耿军的喜剧短片《锤子镰刀都休息》讲述了三个坏人在东北荒村里一起做坏事的故事火币(huobi)。抢劫犯刚哥、诈骗犯勇哥和男异装者宝鹤大婶三人惺惺相惜，成为“志同道合”的好兄弟，他们决定一起抢劫一名衣着体面的妇女，最终却被妇女打趴在地上，抢劫失败后三人躺在炕上，一起做起了离开东北南下求财的美梦。

电影开场，一个虔诚的基督徒小二正站在白雪覆盖的田野里对天祷告，说晒晒太阳可以让他暖和点，暖和点又可以让他不那么饿，这时小二的亲戚勇哥（一个残疾的下岗工人）嘲讽他说：“大冷天在外面唱歌不更灌一肚子冷风？”该片开头场景为全片奠定了“荒唐”的基调火币(huobi)。

《锤子镰刀都休息》的叙事在某种程度上被拔除了张力，该片让业余演员饰演超现实主义的角色，并且故事情节充满了大量偶遇、偶发事件，最终所有的矛盾也并未得到解决，因此在这部影片中，所有能动性、流动性以及本体论意义层面的斗争全部被永恒的无力感所替代火币(huobi)。

此外，本片还充斥着对男性阉割的意象，片中的男性通常是无能软弱的，在必要时还会退守回自己的“欲望空间”，比如片中的三人团连选择的武器都是“包着毛巾的锤子”火币(huobi)。在社会主义语境下，锤子代表着无产阶级的权利，如今却变成了个人失败、匮乏和被阉割的象征。《锤子镰刀都休息》中的欲望空间包括旅馆房间、夜店、酒吧、舞厅和理发店，但是男性角色在这些空间中往往四处碰壁，最终他们只能退守到更私人的空间，例如《白日焰火》中的摩天轮以及《锤子镰刀都休息》中的小屋。

Both Zhang Meng's The Piano in a Factory (2010) and Diao Yinan's Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) explore the inner contradictions of the production of post socialist spaces in the Rust Belt cities but provide disparate "solutions". The Hammer and Sickle Are Sleeping uses "tension removing" to portray the disillusionment and ennui of the "leftover" residents in abandoned industrial towns.

虽然张猛的《钢的琴》和刁亦男的《白日焰火》都探寻了老工业城市中后社会主义空间的内部生产矛盾火币(huobi)，但是他们却提出了完全不同的解决方式，而《锤子镰刀都休息》则通过卸去张力的方式展现了废弃老工业区居民的幻灭和无力……

想要跟随侯小龙继续探索中国东北老工业城市在电影作品中的形象变迁与呈现形式火币(huobi)，请点击下方链接：

Journal of Chinese Film Studies

《中国电影研究》

Journal of Chinese Film Studies立足中国，面向国际，旨在搭建一流国际学术平台，发表国内外高水平的中国电影研究成果，加强不同文化背景的研究者之间的对话和沟通，促进国内外电影研究界开展交流与合作，推动中国电影研究的全球发展火币(huobi)。想与国内外知名学者一起探讨中国电影吗？赶快行动投稿吧

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jcfs@degruyter.com

来源：中国电影研究

编辑：张若婷