ABSTRACT This paper examines cinematic anti-heroines’ dislocation and dislocated journeys within areas that are displaced within the context of the power relations of the urban-normative discourse in recent Chinese cinema. It refines the concept of dislocation to the specifics of rural displacement and contributes to conversations about the imagination of remote areas as inhabiting “primitive,” left-behind spaces. Then, through examining Chinese suburban developments, this article stresses how a grey area between the urban and the rural has come to evoke a space where both desperation and hope can co-exist. Female protagonists in Chinese cinema who are set in displaced environments easily seem vulnerable and marginalised. In recent films, however, these women appear to be anti-heroines who lack the conventional heroic qualities and attributes that we find in previous virtuous, self-less female models. Ironically, their extreme dislocation and vulnerability can also serve to empower because it provides them with some freedom from the social constraints of normative behaviour. In that liminal space their freedom endows them with the ability to devise unusual solutions to problems and to set up a defensive zone with a sense of independence and autonomy.