Reconsidering Post-Revolutionary Cultural Change: Rural Film Projection Teams in Shaanxi Province, 1949–1956

Abstract

This chapter examines the ‘transmission belt’ of propaganda in the People’s Republic of China from the establishment of the party-state to the First Five Year Plan (1953–1957), focusing on rural film teams in Shaanxi province. It argues that the rural film projection network emerged gradually and, once constructed, showed strong signs of local variation even below the provincial level. National and provincial administrators aimed to create a uniform cultural experience within the countryside: at the same time, rural audiences were treated as a national subgroup distinct from urban audiences, and resource, organizational, and geographic limitations further challenged the spread of mass culture from the urban core to rural periphery. Examining audience experience further highlights how rural filmgoing, as a cultural practice, concealed within it variegated layers of meaning and effect which propagandists sought to understand and overcome.