Abstract
This chapter is a brief review of romantic love and its cultural referents in both Chinese and Western contexts, stressing the values of examining the national and collective beliefs surrounding romantic relationships in contemporary Chinese media and cultural discourse.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Coined by Joseph Nye in the 1980s, the term “soft power” refers to “the ability to get what you want through attraction than coercion” (Nye 2004, x). Unlike hard powers, such as direct military and economic coercion, soft power aims at shaping long-term preferences and attitudes. Nye’s argument about soft power, according to Cao Qing (2011), provides a new ideological guideline for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to develop its own foreign and domestic policy. Cao argues, with much detail and evidence from Chinese media, that soft power “constructs fresh political identities underpinned partially by traditional values and envisages the revival of a cultural China that the nation has long aspired to, since European colonial encroachments centuries ago.” Popular media undoubtedly is part of and contributes to the rhetoric of soft power in the CCP’s domestic policy.
- 2.
Ding Ling (1904–1986) changed her focus of writing in Mao’s China. Although her early writing, such as Miss Sophia’s Diary (1927), expressed her views on gender and love, The Sun Shines over Sanggan River, written in 1948, focuses on land reform in a rural village. This novel is considered one of the best socialist-realist fictions and won the Stalin Prize for Literature in 1951. Ding Ling’s writing in Mao’s China followed Mao’s opinion, “literature should serve politics.”
- 3.
Dr. Jin Feng (2013) has insightfully examined the impact of Qiong Yao and her writings on readers’ definition and interpretation of romantic love. Qiong Yao emphasizes the superiority of heterosexual romantic relationship over other “traditional relationships” such as brothers and parents while recognizing these relationships’ influences and interactions with the romance.
Bibliography
Ackerman, Diane. 1994. A Natural History of Love. New York: Random House.
Branden, Nathaniel. 1988. Vision of Romantic Love. In The Psychology of Love, ed. Robert J. Sternberg and Michael L. Barnes, 218–231. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
Cao, Qing. 2011. The Language of Soft Power: Mediating Socio-Political Meanings in the Chinese Media. Critical Arts 25 (1): 7–24.
Cawelti, John G. 1976. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Coontz, Stephanie. 2005. Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking Penguin.
Cruise, Jennifer. 1997. Romancing Reality: The Power of Romance Fiction to Reinforce and Re-Vision the Real. Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 1 (2): 81–93.
Dion, Kenneth, and Karen K. Dion. 1988. Romantic Love: Individual and Cultural Perspectives. In The Psychology of Love, ed. Robert J. Sternberg and Michael L. Barnes, 264–289. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Dooling, Amy D. 2005. Woman’s Literary Feminism in Twentieth-Century China. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Feng, Jin. 2013. Romancing the Internet: Producing and Consuming Chinese Web Romance. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Hou, Jing. 2012. Poisonous Weeds in the Movie Love Narrative Research (Ducao dianying zhong de aiqing xushi yanjiu—毒草电影中的爱情叙事研究) Master Thesis, Henan University, April 7–8.
Illouz, Eva. 1997. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kaufmann, Jean-Claude. 2011. The Curious History of Love. Trans. David Macey. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lee, Haiyan. 2007. Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900–1950, 298. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Lewis, Tania, Fran Martin, and Wanning Sun. 2016. Telemodernities: Television and Transforming Lives in Asia. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press.
Moore, Thomas. 1994. Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Nielsen, Inge. 2000. Caught in the Web of Love: Intercepting the Young Adult Reception of Qiong Yao’s Romances. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungricae, 53, nos. 3–4: 242–251.
Nye, Joseph. 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. 1st ed. New York: Public Affairs.
Pan, Lynn. 2015. When True Love Came to China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Piorkowski, Geraldine K. 2008. Adult Children of Divorce: Confused Love Seekers. Westport, CT and London: Praeger.
Radford, Jean. 1986. The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc.
Radway, Janice. 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Reddy, William. 2012. The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900–1200 CE. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Regis, Pamela. 2003. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rezink, Shiri, and Dafna Lemish. 2011. Falling in Love with High School Musical: Girls’ Talk About Romantic Perceptions. In Mediated Girlhoods: New Exploration of Girls’ Media Culture, ed. Mary Celeste Kearney. New York: Peter Lang.
Roach, Catherine. 2016. Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Seiter, Ellen. 2010. Semiotics, Structuralism, and Television. In Channels of Discourse, Reassembled, ed. Robert C. Allen, 31–66. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press.
Sun, Wanning. 2017. Bridal Photos and Diamond Rings: The Inequality of Romantic Consumption in China. The Journal of Chinese Sociology 4 (1): 1–17.
———. 2020. Consumption Plus Love: Inequality, Domestic Utopia, and China’s New Politics of the Future. Modern China 46 (1): 49–79.
Sun, Wanning, and Jenny Chio. 2012. Mapping Media in China Region, Province, Locality (Routledge Contemporary China series). Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.
Zelizer, Viviana. 2005. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Zhang, Zhen. 2000. Mediating Time: The ‘Rice Bowl of Youth’ in Fin de Siècle Urban China. Public Culture 12: 93–113.
Zheng, Tiantian. 2008. Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Zhong, Xueping. 2010. Mainstream Culture Refocused: Television Drama, Society, and the Production of Meaning in Reform-Era China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wen, H. (2020). Introduction: Sampling Love—Romance and Television in Post-socialist China. In: Romance in Post-Socialist Chinese Television. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47729-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47729-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-47728-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-47729-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)