Beijing Bicycle: countryside and city life

Courtney Chatters Professor Steven Wexler ENGL 495 12 May 2014 World Text Analysis Essay: Beijing Bicycle The film Beijing Bicycle explores the modern-day Chinese lives through a meaningful story about two Chinese young boys who are at a disadvantage in terms of what they want or need to be considered at a higher standing within their changing society. The film is based around a poor teen Guei from the rural side who has came to Beijing to find work and a student Jian who comes from a working class family in the city. Guei’s bicycle is stolen from him and was sold to Jian and this event in the film becomes connected by the bicycle’s metaphorical importance and meaning. This analysis of the film Beijing Bicycle discusses the different cultural contexts of the story and some of its graphic features in modern-day China as represented by the bicycle’s symbolism. Its purpose was for getting around, but the Beijing bicycle becomes symbolic of the identities of Guei and Jian as Chinese boys who seem to lack certain privileges in society. The boys project their perception onto the bicycle and the persistent battle between the two could also symbolize their struggle for their place in society. Beijing Bicycle incorporates issues pertaining to the development in modern-day China. For example, the film shows class contrast. More specifically the film shows the distinction between higher and lower class and the countryside and city life, "Perhaps the most momentous specification of this opposition between the country and the city—a shift into another register, which does not guarantee that the proponents of each term remain ideologically committed to the same position when they change floors, so to speak—is that between planning and organic growth. . . . . . .[Edmund] Burke’s thunderous denunciation of this hubris affirms the power of time, of slow growth, of culture in its etymological sense, and therefore seems to come down firmly on the side of the country." (Jameson, 48) Guei migrates from the countryside to the city of Beijing, where he stands out from the city people, who are placed above him in a higher social and economic class. Jian loses his sense of self worth in the perception he has put into the bicycle, as well as Guei. I think it is something they both incorrectly think will make them a part of a higher importance in their globally growing society. Even when Jian's bicycle is taken away from him, the more privileged and educated girl from his school simply suggests that he can always just get a new bicycle. David Harvey makes the point that "Education sustains hierarchies: the flood of middle management and managerialism into labor itself requires education, drives the expansion of the proprietary sector. Changes touted as major democratizations of education but the dynamics of education stick someone more firmly to a commitment to selfmanage what has been lost to a stability of a labor market." (Harvey, 12) We find out that Jian cannot afford such an expensive asset and he stole money from his family just to have the bicycle to maintain of level of important and respect amongst his peers. I really enjoyed the film Beijing Bicycle. It is a great film to portray how China has come to power but this power has affected the people of China. China's globalization had divided it's countryside and city people and had made class distinction more noticeable making power struggles more apparent. Works Cited Beijing Bicycle. Dir. Wang Xiaoshuai. Perf. Cui Li Bin, Zhou Xun, Gao Yuanyuan, ad Li Shuang. Sony Pictures Classics, 2001. Film. Harvey, David. "Cultural Space and Urban Place." POWERPOINT. Web. 7 May 2014. Jameson, Fredric. "THE POLITICS OF UTOPIA." New Left Review 25. (Jan-Feb 2004): 35-54