Martijn de Waal

At the international symposium ByPass – Everyday Life and Contemporary Urbanism in India and China I held a short lecture on the representation of the Chinese city in contemporary visual culture titled: Green Tea, Black Coffee, Splendid Cities? Urban culture in contemporary Chinese visual culture

In the past decade or so, China, a country of farmers, has become a nation dominated by megacities. Where once farmers plowed the yellow earth, now mirror-glassed high rises have appeared to demarcate yet another emerging ‘CBD’ (Central Business District). Official ideology – and its visual culture – saw a similar turn. Up to the era of the cultural revolution, the countryside was eulogized, cities were vilified. Now modern cities are portrayed as places of joy, as sites where one can gloriously get rich. Postcards, tv series, billboards, city marketing videofilms eagerly portray this newly minted Chinese Dream of middle class life in a modern urban setting. But how do these representations relate to more direct experiences of city life? And where can we find the dissonants to this new official urban mythology?

In the work of some contemporary Chinese artists and filmmakers we find a more critical eye on the new urban society that is emerging in China.