Art, Culture, and Cultural Criticism in Post-New China

Abstract

A visitor in Beijing these days can easily pick up a popular weekly titled Guide to Shopping High-Quality Goods (Jingpin gouwu zhinan) from a street vendor. The newspaper offers all kinds of useful information to Beijing consumers: car sales, new skin lotion products, latest fashion, interior design for apartments, tour packages to summer resorts, new affordable models of washing machines, effective diet, office rentals, romantic connections, and so forth. Interestingly enough, a regular column of the newspaper is appropriately tided Cultural Consumption (wenhua xiaofei). It features news about cultural activities such as performances of Swan Lake by the Chinese Central Ballet Troupe and the Moscow Ballet Theatre, upcoming films in town, good books to read, and so on. In a June 1996 issue, within Cultural Consumption: Film and (wenhua xiaofei: ying shi), there is also a subheading Cultural Fast Food (wenhua kuaican)} This section introduces two new TV serials that viewers should look out for: a thirty-part program Beauty Zhao Feiyan (Meiren Zhao Feiyan, the story of a famous imperial consort in the Han Dynasty), and a twenty-part program Bright Moon in Another Country ( Taxiang mingyue, a tale of two mainland Chinese girls working in San Francisco's Chinatown). At the information centers of newly built, gigantic shopping malls such as Landao, Yansha, Guiyou, and Saite?symbols of Beijing's mod ernization and Westernization?Beijing residents can book and pur chase tickets for a series of art performances during 1996-1997. The China National Culture and Art Corporation (Zhongguo wenhua yishu zong gongsi) and Beijing professional performance marketing and promotion agency offer a variety of domestic and international venues, such as Nutcracker and The White-Haired Girl by the Shanghai Ballet, Don Quixote by the Grand Moscow Classical Ballet Theatre, Sleeping Beauty and Endangered Species by the Australian Ballet, Puccini's Turandot by the Central Opera Theatre of China, Anne-Sophie Mutter's China Tour, Yanni's China Tour, and performances by the Martha Graham Dance