Journal of Chinese Cinemas

ISSN: 1750-8061 (Print) 1750-807X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjcc20

Listening to films: Politics of the auditory in 1970s

China
Nicole Huang
To cite this article: Nicole Huang (2013) Listening to films: Politics of the auditory in 1970s
China, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 7:3, 187-206
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jcc.7.3.187_1

Published online: 03 Jan 2014.

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Date: 14 September 2015, At: 20:07

JCC 7 (3) pp. 187206 Intellect Limited 2013

Journal of Chinese Cinemas

Volume 7 Number 3
2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jcc.7.3.187_1

Nicole Huang
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Listening to films: Politics of

the auditory in 1970s China
Abstract

Keywords

This article focuses on listening practices in 1970s China and examines the cinematic
soundtracks of a handful of films, domestic and foreign, that were edited specifically for the purpose of radio broadcasting. Coined as edited film recording, this
made-for-radio sonic compilation is a new product, one that takes crucial pieces from
the original soundtrack but has significant editorial input, specifically in the insertion
of an omniscient narrator. The narrator tells the story, expands narrative at times and
comes in at crucial moments to drive key messages home. Film production was also
designed for auditory consumption outside of the theatre, on gramophone and radio,
before television entered individual households in China. Film literacy thus could be
achieved without an actual access to the film products themselves. The hybridity of
the genre created an illusion of broader and equal access to the symbolic order of a
socialist visual culture. While communal life in 1970s China can be characterized by
an infatuation with film and film culture, a web of other media, particularly those of
sound, facilitated this fascination. The transitional period in China can be seen as a
decade of cross-platform saturation of media culture on a high level.

radio
total soundscape
close listening
ephemera
translated films
dubbing

The grey period of the 1970s in China, one that includes the second half
of the Cultural Revolution era (19641978) and the first few years of the
Reform era, was characterized by many undercurrents and gradual changes.
The widespread violence and destruction that defined the early years of the
Cultural Revolution (19661969) subsided in late Mao years of the 1970s.
Life seemed to have become normalized. Students returned to schools.

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Nicole Huang

Non-students returned to their work units. American president Richard Nixon

visited China in 1972, made a few highly visible stops in major Chinese cities,
and initiated the so-called ping-pong diplomacy that led to final formalization of Sino-American diplomacy in 1974. The return of the Americans
added much popular interest, marking the beginning of an era of broader and
deeper global engagement. The demonized West, the image that had been
prevalent in political posters throughout the Mao period, began to look more
human. Together with a pair of musk oxen and two large redwood trees, the
legacy of Nixon and his entourage also included bell bottoms and dark shades
sneaking up from some corners of urban China. More colours and variations
of shapes were added to street fashion by the middle of the decade. Most
notably, a number of feature films were made between 1972 and 1976, that
is, after much of the film industry had been shut down since the mid-1960s.
And foreign films from the capitalist world, in addition to those from Chinas
socialist brothers and sisters, began to creep into mass consumption and
became more prominent in the latter half of the decade. The leisure life in
1970s was characterized by an obsession with film and film culture, domestic
and foreign.
This generational obsession was aided by the cinematic sounds that filled
the auditory space in 1970s China. Screen songs and classic film dialogues
occupied an important position in a socialist visual culture. A close look at
how films were listened to then becomes a meaningful path towards a deeper
understanding of cinemas cross-platform hybrid design. This present study
focuses on one key genre that best illustrates the expansiveness of film culture
of the time: the cinematic soundtracks of a handful of films, domestic and
foreign, that were reproduced specifically for the purpose of radio broadcasting.
Coined as dianying luyin jianji, or edited film recording, this made-for-radio
sonic compilation retains much of the music and dialogue from the original
track, complemented by a voice-over narrator that supplies backgrounds,
settings and connections between different scenes and figures, and comes in
at optimum moments to drive critical messages home. The compilation is not
a segment of a film, but a new product, one that takes crucial pieces from the
original soundtrack but inserts significant editorial input, specifically in the
presence of an omniscient narrator.
With the prevalence of edited film recording in 1970s China, film literacy
could be achieved without an actual access to the film products themselves.
The hybridity of the form created an illusion of broader and equal access to the
symbolic order of a socialist visual culture. Together with serialized radio novels
and radio plays, edited film recordings were among the most popular forms of
mass entertainment throughout the decade. While communal life in late Mao
China can be characterized by an infatuation with film and film culture, a web
of other media, particularly those of sound, facilitated this fascination. In an era
of total political saturation of daily life, edited film recording as a versatile platform effectively delivered centrally ordained messages for daily consumption; it
also became a place where close listening took on divergent political contours,
and listening against was frequently practised along with listening in.

A total soundscape
How does a total political saturation of the auditory space work and what does
it sound like? The discussion will begin with the location of a total soundscape.
After a long hiatus of ten years, upon hearing a familiar voice on radio singing

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Waves after waves in Honghu lake, I was overtaken by sorrow, writes Wang
Meng (b. 1934), prolific writer, cultural statesman and one-time cultural minister of China, in the concluding paragraph of the first volume of his sprawling
autobiography. The narrator recounts drastic changes in theaftermath of the
regime shift in 1976 as embodied in a range of sounds and voices that seems to
have gushed into the air waves overnight. He continues:
Listening to the singing of mountain after mountain, river after
river, our Red Army finally arrived in Northern Shaanxi, I sobbed
uncontrollably. Watching the Peking Opera Dielian hua on the television screen and listening to Yang Kaihui Chairman Maos first wife,
played by LiWeikang singing the aria Aiwan ting, my tears streamed
down upon hearing the first words Juzi zhoutou. And listening to
Chang Xiangyu singing Guo Moruos ci poem set to the melody of
Henan Yuju opera, what a joyful event, smashing the Gang of Four,
smashing them, ah ah ah , I laughed out loud. I surprised myself,
how could I still care about politics? Wouldnt it be better if I just
focused on being a man of letters, a survivor of the bygone era, a lofty
old man who remained awake and uncontaminated while everyone else
was either muddled in dirty politics or sunken in a deep slumber? But
I am hopeless; I had already meddled in this world too deeply. I was still
filled with passion; I still had a sharp sense of right and wrong, love and
hate. [] My heart was still entangled with the fate of China, with the
world, with the society. I sincerely prayed for the beginning of a new era
in Chinese history. [] A new era was set to begin.
(Wang 2006: 378)
Here, the list of close listening includes several iconic singing voices that
were revered in the first seventeen years under Mao Zedongs rule, but later
deemed politically incorrect during the Cultural Revolution and banished from
the auditory space for ten years. Waves after waves in Honglu Lake was a
popular screen song in a film titled Honghu chiweidui/The Red Guerilla on Honghu
Lake (Xie, 1961) adapted from a 1956 production by the Hubei Opera Troupe.
The song about the Red Armys long march, arguably the most endearing
in the genre, was titled Shandanda kaihua hongyanyan/Alpine Flowers
Blooming in Brilliant Red and sung by celebrated soprano GuoLanying, who
was tortured during the Cultural Revolution and found new life and renewed
iconic status in post-Mao era.
These revived iconic sounds and voices from the past are then joined by
new tunes that also speak of a revived revolutionary heritage. The 1977 opera
portraying Maos first wife Yang Kaihui mixes romance with a tale of political
sacrifice, a chapter in the supreme leaders past widely believed to have been
suppressed by Maos last wife, Jiang Qing, the mastermind of the Gang of Four
who was accused of having instigated much of the suffering and devastation
in the preceding violent decade. Reinstating Maos first and original wife as a
celebrated romantic heroine onstage should then be seen as signalling a restoration of all orders, political, social and familial (Ding 1995: 811). And Chang
Xiangyu, the queen of Henan Yuju opera, or Henan bangzi, sings another
new tune, one that she was said to have composed overnight, together with
her husband, upon hearing the news of the fall of the Gang of Four. Changs
new tune is charged with heightened spirit and liberated laughter, rendered
in her signature vocal style, heard on radio and other broadcasting channels

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throughout the country following the dramatic shift in political landscape in

the fall of 1976 (Zhang 2012: 489).
This list of close listening is not arbitrary. Wang Meng, a decorated man
of letters, concludes a treacherous journey through the political minefield of
Maos China with a series of poignant auditory comments. His narrative about
social esteem achieved, lost and regained follows a familiar pattern, one that
underscores the year 1976 as a watershed moment in Chinas recent political
history. Personal vicissitudes are meticulously set in sync with the fate of
the nation. Published after much anticipation and fanfare, the reception of
Wangs autobiography has been lukewarm, despite rave reviews in official
channels. Critics who have long waited for Wangs historical insights from his
unique vintage point encounter a banal personal narrative where the personal
is often banished to the far corner of a life saturated with political aspirations
(Zhou 2006: 42).
The work is of course worth a second and closer look. Here Wangs
conclusion to the first volume reveals something quite meaningful. There is
no immediate discussion of how the literary scene is restored after the fall
of the Gang of Four and the end of the Cultural Revolution. A new era is
being ushered in by way of sounds and voices. The first volume reveals that
in the years in which the narrator has been shut out of public life, he has
never stopped listening in. The reader could imagine the narrator closing his
eyes, crouching in his exile, leaving only his ears open, and tuning in to all
sonic movements. Sound bytes are barometers, signalling at one moment the
impending fall from grace, and at another moment a new found opportunity
that will mend all previous failings. Sights can be shut out, but sounds are
relentless as soundscapes permeation is depicted as total and thorough and
its impact is presented as immediate.
Wangs text is then a testimony to the longevity and pervasiveness of a
total soundscape, which characterizes auditory culture of Maos China. After
all, messages of Maos continuing revolution were first propagated by radio
waves and wired loudspeakers placed everywhere school playgrounds,
factories, rice paddies, corner stores, alleyways and communal courtyards.
Wangs renaissance through sounds and voices also suggests that the thoroughness of this soundscapes reach carried well into the beginning years of
post-Mao China. Despite the regime shift in 1976, a total soundscape maintained its hold throughout the decade and well into the reform era. Wangs
narrator never steps out of this soundscape throughout his lifes journey.
Feeling the pulse of the time through its sound bytes, he sets his own pulse in
accordance with the changing political climate. Close listening is then a way
to gauge thecontext, that is, to earwitness, to remain in tune and thereby to
stay relevant.
Here, I add a modifier total to the concept of soundscape as a revision to
R. Murray Schafers original concept (1994: 112). An ecological term referring
to natural acoustic environments, soundscape also refers to sonic environments created by a host of human activities. Emily Thompson, for instance,
has expanded the concept of soundscape to include both a physical environment and a way of perceiving that environment; it is both a world and a
culture constructed to make sense of that world (2004: 1). Schafers other key
concepts such as sonography, earwitness and soundmarks have also lead
to theoretical rethinking beyond his immediate field of acoustic ecology. The
idea of a total soundscape further removes the concept from its pastoral origin
and resituates it in a highly politicized society where every corner of social

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life was thoroughly saturated with centrally ordained and politically charged
sound bytes. Sounds stemmed from the Centre and radiated to all corners of
the society, including those where light failed to penetrate.
The soundscape from which Wang Mengs narrator is unable to escape
is shaped by the technology that transmits sounds and voices. Technological
devices of sound were omnipresent and immediately visible in decades of
Maos China. Wired loudspeaker was a crucial technological device in ensuring that centralized sonic waves canvassed every single corner of social life.
Statistics show that by the early 1970s, up to 70 million loudspeakers had
been installed nationwide. The omnipresence of loudspeakers sent sound
waves into rural villages, townships and urban communities (Huang and
Yu 1997:56374). Rare travelogues of westerners in China of the 1970s often
remarked on the omnipresence of the loudspeakers in practically every corner
of ones living space. They were seen hanging from roofs, from telephone poles
and on treetops. Michelanglo Antonionis 1972 sweeping documentary Chung
Kuo Cina is the pinnacle of such travelogues in the form of an enchanting
visual narrative. Filmed at the invitation of Premier Zhou Enlai and subsequently banned in China after its completion, the film crew were only allowed
to film in areas that were permitted by the government (Liang2010: 5557).
In the third and last part of the film that showcases the port city Shanghai
and its industrial setting, there is a scene that depicts the Shanghai Bund
commanded by a loudspeaker, blasting sound waves and echoes that envelope the entire waterway and the cityscape.
This particular scene and the sound effect it evokes find its manifestation in
other forms of visual art from the period. A 1974 political poster titled Hongse
dianbo chuan xixun/The Red Electromagnetic Wave Transmits Happy News
(original size: 53.577 cm) depicts construction work on roads and irrigation
system that continues into the night. The starry night is lit up as in broad
daylight. Workers listen to broadcasted radio programmes during a break.
All seem elated by the content of the news. The wired loudspeaker attached
to a pole prominently located in the picture frame commands central visual
interest, a stand-in for the voices from the political centre. This is a visual
testimony of how sound waves are designed to touch and impact individuals
(Liu 1974) (Figure 1).
Loudspeakers commanded large public spaces; they were also placed inside
neighbourhood alleyways and individual courtyards. The volumes were always
turned up high, with sound penetrating through walls, windows and doors.
A 1972 poster titled Hongse laba jiajia xiang/The Red Loudspeaker Sounding
in Every Household (original size: 7753 cm) drives home the message that
a total soundscape ensures that domestic space is not to be spared. The rural
family and their community, who seem to have taken their activities outside
to the front yard, are enveloped by the imaginary sound bytes transmitted
from the little red box hung high up on the door frame. A woman in a red
jacket pulls on the cord that must have switched on the speaker, from which
sound bytes immediately fill the space. Several people turn their heads to look
at the source of the sounds and voices. Others pictured in the poster have
their backs towards the Mao portrait and the speaker, but there is no doubt
that everyone is touched by the waves, including a flock of chicken, a pair
of lambs and a little boy playing peek-a-boo with animals. If visual images
fail to grab their attention for the moment, the penetrating sound waves
ensure that the saturation is complete and thorough. The man in the foreground seems to be fixing a wired red box. Could it be another speaker to be

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Nicole Huang

Figure 1: Liu Zhigui, The Red Electromagnetic Wave Transmits

Happy News (1974). Image courtesy of the Stephen Landsberger
Chinese Posters Collection, International Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam.

Figure 2: Huang Entao, The Red

Loudspeaker Sounding in Every
Household (1972). Image courtesy
of the Stephen Landsberger
Chinese Posters Collection,
International Institute of Social
History, Amsterdam.

placed in another compound? A total soundscape depends on fast multiplication of sound devices with this one appearing rather rudimentary but serving
its purpose nonetheless. The door frame where the loudspeaker hinges on
also frames the foyer area of the interior space, where a Mao shrine is clearly
defined, complete with a portrait, a pair of red slogans and a stack of red
books. Here the listening device might be rudimentary, but the two bicycles in
the foreground are apparently signs of affluence. A bicycle, particularly one of
a name brand, was considered a luxury item in 1970s China. For two of them
(very shiny ones) to appear in a rural setting is indeed rare. The image speaks
of affluence, abundance, happiness and total saturation of a political life
(Huang 1972) (Figure 2).
The wired loudspeakers were, of course, not the only sound-making
devices shaping a shared sonic environment. There was also a network of
individually owned talking machines (xiazi), in popular brand names such
as Red Star, Peony, Red Lamp, Red Plum and Panda, which were
installed inside many private homes and contributed to an all encompassing network of sounds and waves (Zhang 2007: 6869). A 1973 poster titled
Jiating/Family (original size: 77x106 cm) depicts the interior of a workers
family: father, mother, a son and a daughter. Bare, muted and grey, there is
little hint of warmth or personal touch in the setting. The prominent feature in
this poster is the crystal radio set in the background, possibly the only luxury
item in this family, neatly set in the background but quietly commanding the
space. The radio is the familys fifth member (Chen 1973) (Figure 3).
All five members of the family are engaged in busy and productive activities. The daughter is doing her schoolwork. Seated next to her is her brother,
who is reading an issue of Renmin huabao/Peoples Pictorial, the Chinese

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Figure 3: Chen Jizhong, Family (1973).

Communist Partys official pictorial magazine. The mother is engaged in her
needlework. The father is reading a newspaper but also engaged in a conversation with the mother, apparently sharing the news he has been reading.
The radio lurking in the background must be consistently sending out sound
waves, echoing the messages conveyed in the newspaper and the pictorial.
The imaginary sound bytes are only meaningful when juxtaposed with other
forms of daily activities including reading, writing, conversing, bonding and
homemaking.
What could the family be listening to? They could be listening to centralized
news, or repeated playing of quotation songs, which by the 1970s wereincluded
in a larger category called geming wenyi, or revolutionary performance art.
They could also be listening to an edited film recording. Cinematic culture of
the 1970s hinged on the culture of radio broadcasting. Broadcasting venues
played an essential role in a pre-television era when venues of film screenings were limited to more developed regions of China. More precisely, radio
waves provided a market for an even broader consumption of filmic images.
One would even argue that the centrality of cinematic culture in 1970s and
1980s China to a great extent relied on the omnipresence of radio waves.

Archive and ephemera

Many questions then follow: Does a total soundscape dictate listening in
and preclude other forms of listening? Could listening practice sideswipe
official history and point to the trends and sentiments that are often at odds
with leading political leitmotif of the time? Could listening in morph into
listening against? Within a total soundscape, are there ways to listen in order
to tune out, or to stay irrelevant?
This line of enquiry is informed by the work of anthropologists of sound.
Stefan Helmreich, for instance, asks the interesting question of how to listen

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against the soundscape as the soundscape has become haunted by the notion
of immersion the arrival of listeners at a sense of being at once emplaced in
space and, at times, porously continuous with it (2010: 10). Helmreich has
taken his cue from Tim Ingold, who argues against objectifying sound:
[] neither sound nor light, strictly speaking, can be an object of our
perception. Sound is not what we hear, any more than light is what we
see. [] When we look around on a fine day, we see a landscape bathed
in sunlight, not a lightscape. Likewise, listening to our surroundings, we
do not hear a soundscape. For sound is not the object but the medium
of our perception. It is what we hear in. Similarly, we do not see light
but see in it.
(Ingold 2007: 1011, original emphasis)
Taking the cue of sound as the medium, and not the object, I argue that
Chinas transitional period of the 1970s provided an opportunity for various
forms of listening to materialize, specifically, the opportunity to listen in and
listen against within a total soundscape. To many, revived sound bytes did
not gush into the air waves overnight in 1976, as Wang Meng unabashedly
relates. On the contrary, they sneaked into daily life little by little, beginning in
the early 1970s, that is, years before the Cultural Revolution ended. Changing
sounds of the decade shaped the auditory experiences of a generation and the
continuity of the entire decade of the 1970s in terms of auditory consumption
needs to be maintained.
Treating the 1970s as one continuous decade helps highlight the changes
that took a decade to materialize. China of the 1970s witnessed both the
heyday and the gradual decline of a socialist visual culture. There was an
unprecedented fascination with the visual, a kind of fascination that was,
I argue, often mediated through the auditory. Sounds and voices occupied
such a prominent position in daily experiences that various memoir writers
dubbed the decade as an shengyin de shidai/era of sounds (Sun 2010: 828).
These memoir writers often point to edited film recording, that is, cinematic
soundtracks of a handful of films, including model opera films, feature films
and translated films, that were edited specifically for the purpose of radio
broadcasting.
The prevalence of the genre edited film recording in Maos China underscores the necessity to locate an often elusive archive and to define the materiality of auditory expressions. Where do we locate a body of material that
will help reconstruct an archive of sounds and voices? While recent decades
witnessed a massive effort at constructing an archive of images bearing the
distinctive trademarks of the Mao era, what has fallen through the crack is a
form of ephemeral expression that is much harder to capture either on tape
or paper: sounds, voices, noises, that is, the auditory. The material is ephemera, defined as the minor transient documents of everyday life; but unlike
most objects characterized as ephemera that were printed matters, auditory
expressions were far more intangible and immaterial. Sound has this ephemeral quality to easily dissipate into the thin air (Rickards 1988: 7).
While the concept of ephemera is typically defined as printed matters,
historians of sounds have tried to fight off sounds ephemeral fate by
tying them to other, and more material, forms of expression (Thompson
2004: 112). In searching for an archive of sounds and voices from the Mao
era, I witnessed reels after reels of magnetic audiotape mostly recordings of

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radio programmes sitting in mould- and mildew-infested local storage cells.

Most of these deteriorated completely or were tossed to make room for the
arrival of new media. Years ago, I located a few still useable open reels in a
local archive, but those were all that could be salvaged. The storage space and
the content within soon disappeared, making way for future development, an
inevitable process that makes sound preservation almost an impossible task.
How to define the auditory form of Maoist cultural expression as ephemera
then is more than a theoretical question. It is every bit a practical issue for
researchers.
Not all was lost. Edited film recordings emerged from this barely existent physical archive as one body of material that was clearly preserved, and
in recent years have been repackaged for new waves of consumption. The
preferential treatment of this body of auditory material has everything to do
with its entanglement with the cinematic culture of the time. Much of the
auditory material from the Mao era would fit the definition of political ephemera, that is, it was made for immediate use and instant dissemination and
became disposable once it had served its function of the particular moment.
Edited film recordings, as a contrast, were made to last. They were played over
and over through radio waves throughout the 1970s, became an important
component of the total soundscape and remained till the present as sound
souvenirs, that is, endangered sounds that were not only archived but also
remembered.
Here, the concept of sound souvenir is originally coined by Schafer
(1994:240). In an edited volume by Karin Bijsterveld and Jos van Dijck, the
concept is more clearly defined as endangered sounds, such as the sounds
of pre-industrial life, that could be captured by recording technologies or
stored in archives, and thus remembered after their extinction (2009: 13).
The concept highlights materiality of auditory expressions. While much of the
sound production fits in the category of ephemera, such as those quickly deteriorating reel-to-reel magnetic tapes, with careful collecting, archiving, resuscitating and restoring, past sounds can also become physical objects that take
a prominent position on ones bookshelves. Scholars of past sounds often
have to deal with their own memories and nostalgia while carefully examining
the close connection between music technologies and cultural memory.
Radio in 1970s China then was not blind, as Rudolf Arnheim might have
romanticized in his classic essay In praise of blindness: Emancipation from the
body (1936: 133203). On the contrary, transmitted sounds became vehicles
for light, for sights and for movements. Sounds invisibility is never absolute;
what is audible underscores what is also visible. Here visibility depends on
the seemingly invisible role of sounds and voices, and a pattern of visibility as
embedded in the genre of edited film recording incorporates radio and other
sound technologies into a larger web of socialist visual culture.
To take this argument one step further, the centrality of auditory practice
in this era went on to transform another new visual medium into a sound
transmitter, and by this I am specifically referring to the advent of television in Maos China. Typically, television is seen as a technological device
that only made a difference in China beginning from the early 1980s; this
presumption overlooks decades of what I call communal television in China.
A small television set (nine inch, black and white) was playing to a community of viewers. Television signals were often unstable and images were often
blurred, which would be missing to a roomful of viewers. But the volume
could be blasted high, thereby turning the machine into one that primarily

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transmitted sound bytes, not unlike a radio. While radio was not blind, television could be blinded. The enthusiasm surrounding communal television
in 1970s China was then an extension of radio culture. The sensory migration
or restructuring associated with the introduction of television in Maos China
is another powerful example of the close integration between the visual and
the auditory, where the boundary between invisibility and visibility is further
blurred (Huang 2003: 16182).
While much of the sound archive from the Mao era no longer exists, a
portion of it has been preserved, repackaged and re-entered into everyday
consumption in todays China, by virtue of its central position within cinematic culture of the period. A discussion of some of the key texts in this integrated cinematic culture is then in order.

Domestic heroes
What kind of films were people listening to through the radio waves in 1970s
China? A quick answer is: the same films that were shown in theatres. After
being shut down during the first half of the Cultural Revolution (except for the
cinematic productions of eight model works masterminded by Jiang Qing),
the film industry showed signs of revival around 1972. Veteran film-makers
were reappointed to make new feature films in response to popular demands
for a wider variety of visual entertainment. For instance, Xie Tieli, a veteran
film-maker from the Yanan generation, was acclaimed for his pre-Cultural
Revolution work of Zaochun eryue/Early Spring in February (1963), which
became a target of criticisms a few years later. During the Cultural Revolution,
he was temporarily liberated by Jiang Qing who commissioned him to work
on three titles of model cinema (yangban dianying): On the Harbor (Haigang,
1972, co-directed with Xie Jin), Longjiang song/Songs of the Dragon River, 1972
and Dujuan shan/Azalea Mountain, 1974. During this brief period of limited
freedom, Xie repeatedly tried his hand at feature film. The 1975 film Haixia,
produced by the Beijing Film Studio, featuring an original score by famed
popular songwriter Wang Ming, which was one reason why the film was popular, was Xies first feature film after his liberation (Huang2010:40225).
Feature films made during the last few years of the Cultural Revolution
era turned out to be a set of key texts whose distribution and dissemination
played a central role in organizing leisure within an urban culture that was
essentially communal. Cinema with its political messages were channelled
into leisure and served primarily to organize leisure. The revived film industry
in the mid-1970s became a crucial site in the negotiations over education and
re-education of the successors of revolutionary heritage.
Important feature films made between 1973 and 1976 include Yanyang
tian/A Brilliant Sunny Day (1973), Qingsong ling/Pine Ridge (1973), Xiangyangyuan
de gushi/Stories from a Sun-facing Courtyard (1974), Shanshan de hongxing/
Sparkling Red Stars (1974), Chuangye/The Pioneers (1974), Jinguang dadao/Golden
Boulevard (1975), Chunmiao/Spring Sprout (1975), Hongyu/Red Rain (1975) and
Juelie/Breaking (1975). Among these films, Sparkling Red Star stands out as a
key text not only for its narrative appeal to the youngest of Maos audience,
but also for its cross-platform hybrid design that lends it perfectly to a sonic
amplification, suitable for endless circulation on-screens (big and small), via
printed pages (various forms of pictorial art such as lianhuanhua or linked
picture books) and through the air waves (repeated broadcast of screen songs
and edited film recordings).

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In the sonic compilation of Sparkling Red Star made for radio, a female
narrator recounts the narrative and strings together the original dialogues,
musical scores and sound effect. The edited film recording is a thorough
rework of the original soundtrack. What emerges is a new product, one that
takes crucial pieces from the original soundtrack but has significant editorial
input, specifically in the insertion of an omniscient narrator. The narrator tells
the story, expands narrative at times and also comes in at crucial moments to
drive key messages home. The edited film recording was published in a set of
three vinyl records by Zhongguo changpian she in 1974, almost immediately
after the release of the film. Vinyl records of edited film recordings from the
1970s and 1980s have in recent years become collectibles, as is the case with
other sound souvenirs. They are a reminder that the film production, from
the very beginning, was also meant to be for the consumption at home, on
gramophone, on radio and later on television.
An episode in the film, one that might be called the journey of table salt,
is a case in point. The story is set in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a period
that the mainland Chinese historiography terms the era of white terror.
The Chinese Communist party was at the verge of extinction. The remaining Red Army troops were ready to launch the Long March to the Northwest
region. The remaining loyalists retreated into the deep mountains to regroup.
The returning Nationalist troops regained the control of the area, sealed these
pockets of red remnants, aiming at starving the soldiers to death. In the
film, Nationalist guards are seen stationed at all mountain passes to make
sure that no rice or salt would be sneaked into the mountains. The film
presents the situation as dire. The narrator in the edited film recording further
stresses the severity of the situation. And here comes our young protagonist Dongzi, a boy of ten or eleven, who takes this opportunity and moulds
himself into a hero.
This is an episode about how to smuggle table salt into the mountains.
It is also an episode that teaches some basic principles about sodium chloride.
Two clips in the film are narrated in a scientific tone in the edited film recording. In clip one, a Red Army soldier explains to Dongzi, our young protagonist, why salt is an essential part of everyday diet. Without salt, the soldiers
will not have energy and will not be able to fight the enemies. And the current
supply of salt is scarce, which amounts to a dire situation. In clip two, in order
to smuggle salt into the mountain region, Dongzi dissolves salt in water and
pours the solution to the inside of his thick padded jacket. Once he clears
the check point, the jacket is soaked in a water basin to unload the solution.
The solution is then set on a stove until all water is evaporated and sodium
chloride is re-solidified. With the narrators guidance, the listening audience
would repeatedly witness how ordinary table salt dissolves in water and how
crystallization happens when liquid solution of sodium chloride evaporates,
returning table salt to its solidified, and purer, form.
Two images from the lianhuanhua version of the film have captured this
process of magical transformation and can serve as fine examples to illustrate
cross-platform saturation of media culture. As with the edited film recording,
the lianhuanhua version was published soon after the film was released, as
another effective measure to enhance film literacy. In the first image, Dongzi
opens up his jacket that is completely soaked by the sodium chloride solution
after having safely cleared the enemy check point. And in the next, Grandpa
helps Dongzi drain the solution from his jacket, pouring the solution into a
wok that is already set on fire to let the water evaporate (Figures 4 and 5).

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Figure 4: Page 117 of the lianhuanhua version of

Sparkling Red Star (1975).

Figure 5: Page 119 of the lianhuanhua version of

Sparkling Red Star (1975).

This basic chemistry lesson is performed over and over on-screen and
printed pages, and through the radio waves where the omniscient narrator
explains the magical process of smuggling salt through the enemy lines and
witnessing it transformed into a purer, and better, form, a chemical process
that comes to symbolize the course of moulding and literally crystallizing a
revolutionary soldier. As the film is billed as a red classic in todays China,
chemistry classes in junior high schools in China today still introduce the two
clips from the classic film to illustrate the process, in what is called situational
approaches or context-oriented teaching. Chemistry teachers in todays
China then are assuming the role of the radio personality in the 1970s sonic
compilation, constantly blending a revolutionary lesson together with basic
science education (Zhang 2010: 117).
Children and youth who grew up in the 1970s would come to recite lines
and themes from films such as Pine Ridge, Stories from the Courtyard Facing the
Sun and Sparkling Red Star, evidence of the unparalleled popularity of these
films (Zhang 1998: 47). A high level of film literacy had much to do with
the fact that cinematic culture of the 1970s was intertwined with the culture
of radio broadcasting. The popularity of feature films in the mid-1970s to a
great extent relied on the omnipresence of the waves of the Central Peoples
Broadcast Radio Station in and around the individual households.

Foreign romantics
Concurrently with the revival of feature film production in the first half of the
1970s, Chinese audiences were also greeted by an array of films from their
socialist brothers and sisters (North Korea, Vietnam, Albania, Romania and
Yugoslavia). In the latter half of the decade, feature films from the United
States, England, Mexico and Japan were also introduced to the Chinese
audience. Thus began an era of infatuation with voice artists behind the process of transcribing foreign features onto Chinese screens. By the end of the
decade, the genre of edited film recording entered its last golden age when
radio and film audiences alike revered a group of voice artists, based in

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Changchun and Shanghai, respectively, who translated and dubbed a series

of foreign films. These artists were the true celebrities of the era though audiences rarely had a chance to see their true faces. A host of publications in
recent years paid tribute to these iconic voices from the 1970s. Memoir writing
by veteran voice artists Su Xiu and Cao Lei, for instance, supplies important
information on the production of key auditory texts (Su 2005; Cao 2006).
The history of foreign films in the Peoples Republic is a history of cultural
memories. A different generation would associate their experiences of coming
of age with watching certain transcribed films. Those who grew up in the 1950s
would fondly remember their education in early Soviet cinema, a subject that
Tina Mai Chen has dealt with in several of her publications (2007: 5380).
And the huge popularity of Awara Hoon (screen song in the 1951 Hindi
film Awara, starring Raj Kapoor) in China in the 1950s testifies to the endearing power of Bollywood features in contemporary China (Sarkar 2010: 5051).
Those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s would remember childrens
films from Vietnam and war films from Romania, Albania and Yugoslavia
(Yan 2001: 6576). And those who grew up in the 1980s would have a wider
array of choices with the return of Hollywood to Chinese screens. In 2005,
Chinas Central TV Station produced a special series called Yizhipian huimou/
Looking Back at Translated Films, in five installments. Other numerous TV
programmes and personal memoirs also came out in recent years. The writing
of a history of translated films in China began to take shape.
Dubbing foreign films as a serious cinematic endeavour in China began
with Changchun Film Studio (Changying), formerly Manei (the Manchurian
Film Studio). Following the founding of the Peoples Public, Changying
began to dub films from early Soviet cinema and thus initiated a three-decade
history of transcribing foreign-language films for daily consumption in a
Chinese socialist visual culture. In 1950, the Shanghai Film Studio also established a facility that attempted to dub foreign films. The facility was later
expanded into an independent film studio, the Shanghai Translated and
Dubbed Film Studio (Shanghai yizhipian chang or Shangyi). From the 1950s
to 1980s, Changying and Shangyi were the two main entities in processing
foreign films. By mid-1980s, many other film studios joined the production
(Su 2005: 5458).
The North Korean feature Kotpanum chonio/Flower Girl (1972) was arguably the most popular foreign film introduced in the first half of the 1970s.
Directed by Pak Hak and Choe Ik-kyu, the film was said to be originated
from a play written by Kim Il Sung in the 1940s when he was fighting a
guerilla war in Japanese-occupied Manchuria alongside his Chinese counterparts. The introduction of the film to its Chinese audiences was a complete
media fanfare. It was the first widescreen production the Chinese audiences
had ever seen. Posters featuring the beautiful female lead were posted everywhere. The theme song, Flower Selling Song, could be heard on radio and
on streets. Edited film recording was broadcasted repeatedly. And people
trampled each other while standing in long lines trying to get into one after
another of the sold-out shows. Some reports even claimed human casualties
in these fights. New technological advancement in cinema was represented
by North Korea for a long time. The 130-minute feature did not seem to be
long enough. The sensational introduction of Flower Girl in China in 1974
was a cultural phenomenon in and of itself (Yan 2012: 5460) (Figure 6).
Valter Brani Sarajevo/Walter Defends Sarajevo, a former Yugoslav feature
made in 1972 by acclaimed director Hajrudin Krvavac, was dubbed by the

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Figure 6: A scene from Flower Girl.

Beijing Film Studio in 1973, and began to be screened in Chinese theatres

in 1977. Revolutionary legends, enhanced by an exciting action/spy thriller
about the Sarajevo underground resistance towards the end of the World
War II, intrigued the Chinese audience, particularly Chinese youth. While the
film itself might be seen as an interesting document as to how cinema works
to validate social norms and political legends, its reception in China speaks
a different story. By the late 1970s, many Chinese youth could memorize
much of the translated film dialogue from repeatedly listening to the edited
film recording on radio. Segments of the translated film thus became coded
language of the time. Urban gangs would mimic underground resistance
forces portrayed in the film in exchanging secret codes in meetings and gatherings. Destroy fascism and Freedom belongs to the people are two most
frequently cited quotes from this and other films that portray the underground
anti-fascist movement in previously German-occupied East European nations.
Knowledge of these secret codes became entry tickets into urban gang culture
of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Shen 2007: 5154). Translated and dubbed
filmic dialogues constructed a wealth of vocabulary nowhere to be found in
standard dictionaries of the time. They provide a crucial site in illuminating
the intersection between visual and verbal media (Figure 7).
The transcribed Walter Defends Sarajevo can be seen as a transitional text,
taking us into a changed cultural terrain of the late 1970s and early 1980s,
when the films popularity lasted for another decade. Similarly, the transcribed
Jane Eyre was another key text, one that signals the Chinese audiences gradual shift from films made in other socialist nations to those from the capitalist world of the West. Statistics of audience participation indicate that, while
in 1977 films from Yugoslavia such as Walter Defends Sarajevo were voted as
audiences favourites, by 1979 films from England, such as Jane Eyre, Death on

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Figure 7: A battleground scene from Walter Defends Sarajevo.

the Nile, and the 1948 version of Hamlet starring Laurence Olivier, quickly rose
to be the favourites (Xu 1998: 2531).
Charlotte Brontes gothic novel has been adapted for screen presentation at least seven times, the earliest in 1934, and the latest in 1997. For the
Chinese audiences, it was Delbert Manns 1970 British production, originally made for television, that captured their imagination. George Scott
and Susannah York were the only possible Mr Rochester and Miss Eyre for
the Chinese audience. As for the 1944 production by Twentieth-Century
Fox starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, an overwhelmingly favourite
version in the English-speaking world, Chinese audiences would dismiss it
as inauthentic. In the imagination of a generation of Chinese viewers and
listeners, the transcribed film represents the highest form of the art of voice,
one that brings out the musical, lyrical and romantic capacities of the modern
Chinese language. And it was Qiu Yuefeng and Li Zi, two of the most beloved
voice artists of the 1970s, who materialized these qualities and gave the two
characters a renewed life in Chinese mass entertainment of the late 1970s.
Chinese audiences adored the films original sound track, with its romantically
haunting Thornfield theme created by harp, piano, harpsichord and orchestra,
a musical score by John Williams. The sound effect is further enhanced by
the jazzy and magnetic voice of Qiu Yuefeng, who makes George Scotts
Mr Rochester more dark, gloomy and romantically irresistible than all other
Mr Rochesters, and by the silky and elastic tones of Li Zi, who turns intricate
and strong-willed Miss Eyre into a new symbol of Chinas new woman. This
Chinese Mr Rochester, together with Japans legendary stoic and chivalrous
yakuza man, Takakura Ken, became a symbol of a zhenzheng de nanzihan/truly
masculine man. Jane Eyres declaration of love and independence and love
because of independence entered into young Chinese women and girls daily
dictionary, together with Shu Tings lyrical manifesto in her seminal poem
Zhi xiangshu/To the Oak Tree (Liu 2001: 7073) (Figure 8).
The transcribed Jane Eyre was also representative of how the craze for
foreign faces, themes and voices began in contemporary China. The translated and dubbed version of the film was already produced during the last
years of the Cultural Revolution. It was one of a series of foreign films that
were transcribed for internal viewing. Together with Changchun Film
Studio, theShanghai Translated and Dubbed Film Studio was often assigned
to provide the highest leaders and their immediate circles such entertainment. One theory was that Jiang Qing was the one who needed immediate

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Figure 8: A 1979 poster of dubbed version of Jane Eyre.

access to classic films from the West in order to seek inspirations in her direction of Chinas own film industry (Cao and Su 2010: 1821). Whatever the
reason might be behind such a concerted venture, translated films produced
for internal use in the early and mid-1970s ventured into the public space
for broad consumption a few years later. When these voice artists were
summoned by the order from above to make these films, they could not have
imagined that soon enough their sonic ensembles would be entering into the
spiritual lives of millions of men and women and occupying a bright spot in
cultural memories of a whole generation (Zhang 2010: 251). The early years
of reform and opening unleashed some of the internal material into public
consumption and also set free a desire to know the other in the shapes and
voices of us.

Conclusion
In this generational desire to know the other, Qiu Yuefeng (19221980) was
singled out as one voice artist who was most successful in transmitting the
alien sounds. By the late 1970s, Qius half Chinese, half White Russian lineage was an open secret to the Chinese audience, but few had seen his face. So
how could Qius listening audience be so certain that what they were hearing
was indeed the sounds and voices of the other, that is, the West? Few had
any contact with the West under Maos China. Why was Qius vocal contour
immediately recognized as foreign? In answering these questions, the artist
and cultural critic Chen Danqing resorts to decadence as an all-encompassing aesthetic category, one that lumps together all treacherous categories that
become relevant in the case of Qiu Yuefeng: race, gender, culture, class, age
and voice. Chen writes:
Decadence, the essence of Qiu Yuefengs vocal signature. Thats
right, there were things we really wanted to do and just were not given
access to. All sorts of pleasures and needs were suppressed for such a

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long time. And Qiu Yuefengs voice pointed to decadence as a source of

pleasure. It was he who gave us an outlet to express anger, to engage in
verbal dispute, to utter profanity, to be sneaky, to tease and to seduce.
What a genius in amplification. In his tonal explosion so out of the
ordinary, he lead us into a virtual world where we tortured ourselves and
expanded our ego. Even that hypocrisy in our everyday speech acquired
a state of beauty because of him. In Qiu Yuefengs vocal anomaly, in
his state of auditory madness, and through an aestheticized ugliness
he conveyed, we cured ourselves, mutated into foreigners, and were
completely let loose. Locked in intense listening, our subjectivity was
displaced and we roamed in a world of pure fantasy.
(Chen 2003: 11314)
What Chen Danqing calls the vocal anomaly then comes naturally out of
the political stricture of the time. Foreignness is constructed out of a complete
unknown, that is, a void. In this celebratory article dedicated to a beloved
voice artist, it is indeed the we, the listening audience of Qiu, who acquires
a true sense of agency, able to mend wounds, to see beauty in ugliness and
to turn a familiar home into a strange land. Qiu Yuefeng and his voice have
indeed become a signifier, one created by many like Chen Danqing, who
are driven by an intense desire to see and hear the other and there in the
shapes and voices of us and here. Here close listening to dubbed foreign
films has become a clandestine act, and listening in morphs into listening
against. A total soundscape begins to erode.
Chen Danqings emotional tribute to voice artists of a bygone era forms
an interesting contrast to Wang Mengs dignified journey in seeking a
political restitution, cited early on in this article. Here, close listening takes
on divergent political contours. While Wang Mengs narrator anxiously
listens in and persistently attempts to stay relevant, Chen seeks immersion in
a different order, aesthetic or political. The politics of the auditory in contemporary China was equally divided as other cultural terrains. Edited film
recording as a key genre effectively delivered key political messages for daily
consumption; it also conveyed many sounds and voices from an imagined
darkness, of a romanticized decadent era and place, which became some of
the most visible aspects of 1970s China. There might not be anything glamorous in the life that gave rise to such auditory forms, but the voices that came
out of it made it possible for the listeners of the time to envision a brand of
glamour that could only be pieced together through sounds and voices, whose
visibility depends on their being invisible, deeply personal, non-physical and
never realistic.

Acknowledgements
Research for the paper was funded by an Andrew W. Mellon New Directions
Fellowship. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at various institutions
and forums, including University of Washington, University of Hong Kong,
University of California at Berkeley and University of Wisconsin at Madison.
I thank organizers and audience members for their feedback. Reports by the
two anonymous readers provided many valuable suggestions. Guest editors
Jean Ma and Matthew Johnson offered much needed support and critical
insights. Weihong Bao read an earlier version of the paper and provided a
long list of detailed suggestions. I thank her and others for their support.

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Suggested citation
Huang, N. (2013), Listening to films: Politics of the auditory in 1970s China,
Journal of Chinese Cinemas 7:3, pp. 187206, doi: 10.1386/jcc.7.3.187_1

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Contributor details
Nicole Huang is Professor of Chinese Literature and Visual Culture at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently completing a book manuscript on auditory culture and daily practice in 1970s China.
Contact: Department of East Asian Languages and Literature, University
of Wisconsin-Madison, 1116 Van Hise, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison,
WI53706, USA.
E-mail: nhuang@wisc.edu
Nicole Huang has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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