. No one seems to be interested in this topic. I am working entirely on my own. I thought Nancy Smith-Hefner had something fair to say about the cultural and ideological differences between the east and the west, but by now I have found out and I am very sure that she is not the person to talk to. Her theoretical perspective is too uninformed by the Chinese culture. She understands very little about the orientals. I can't penetrate her mind and tell her that she is biased and I don't like her.
On the other hand, I have to work on my own. I wrote about my goals and my dreams. This big project has to start right here right now because it has to start some day, very soon.
Isabella Tianzi Cai
FT554 K1: BU Cinematheque
November 20, 2008
The Treatment of China’s Cultural Politics in Gua Sha
Chinese film and television director Xiaolong Zheng’s film Gua Sha hit a home run at China’s box office in 2001; it earned 22 million dollars approximately, which were considered a huge success for a Chinese film. However, with hardly the same degree of popularity outside China (and likely not at all in America), this film arouses my curiosity as what makes it appeal to Chinese audience exclusively.
This paper proposes two reasons in relations to Chinese culture and China’s cultural politics for the film’s success. First, the film ingeniously parallels the story of its protagonist Datong Xu to the story of Wukong Sun (also known as the Monkey King) from one of the four great classical Chinese novels, Journey to the West. Sun is a beloved folkloric figure in China; his presence easily creates a nostalgic sentiment in the film’s western setting. Moreover, the similarities between Xu and Sun resonate with larger themes in China’s cultural politics. Chinese viewers learn from the film what it means to be Chinese as if going through a carefully designed lesson about their cultural identity. The western culture, which appears to subsume the eastern culture in the film, is subsumed by the eastern culture. A sense of pride, which is emotionally akin to Chinese in the context of China’s modern history, exudes from the film.
Throughout the film, the character of Wukong Sun shows up in several different manners; his appearance per se is dear to Chinese. The first two encounters with Sun are swift. In a large and bright western-style condominium, Xu’s son Denis plays with a stuffed monkey with a brightly painted face, which resembles Sun’s mask in Chinese opera. The camera reveals the stuffed monkey on a glass dinner table in a low-angle shot as Denis murmurs to him tenderly, “You are sick, but I will gua sha you.” Usually girls play with dolls but boys do not. The soft and caring manner that Denis displays toward his toy not only renders him adorable but also shows his childlike but genuine appreciation for Chinese culture. Chinese viewers are likely flattered by this American-born, English-speaking, and Chinese-looking child.
The second reference, which is made during Denis’s bedtime story, reinforces the same impression. Xu reads a popular anecdote from The Journey to the West, “Even though the Monkey King has super human power and can beat the demon, his master, Tang Seng, has come under the beautiful demon’s evil power. He accuses the Monkey King of all kinds of bad things that he didn’t do and forces him to go far away. But after the Monkey King leaves, the beautiful demon captures Tang Seng in order to eat him for dinner.” The camera zooms in on Denis as he falls asleep with the stuffed monkey. Xu’s voice trails off to the next scene, “Guess who came to save him?” Here, Denis’s physical attachment to the stuffed monkey suggests his emotional attachment to it. The stuffed monkey could also symbolize Chinese cultural heritage where the little boy is expected to find his cultural identity. Later in the film, Denis is taken to a children’s home. He stays alone in a room full of toys and appears totally uninterested in them. In order to cheer him up, Grandpa waves the toy monkey at him. Although Denis probably misses his parents most, Grandpa’s gesture comports with Chinese’s expectation for everyone’s fondness for Sun. The director must be confident in his choice of prop because unlike other more controversial characters from Chinese literature, Sun has a guaranteed appeal to Chinese people both young and old.
Another physical representation of Sun in the later part of the film takes the form of another stuffed monkey twice the size of Denis’s toy with exactly the same look. It first appears on Xu’s lap as Xu paints its face with a brush at five past eight on Christmas Eve in a small park. This monkey is Xu’s Christmas present for Denis. Xu focuses on his work until a stout man approaches him with a shining knife. Xu gives this man his wallet understandably then continues painting. Dissatisfied, the man yanks the toy monkey from Xu. Such a violent and unappreciative act infuriates Xu. He jumps on the man from behind and starts hitting him blow after blow, howling: “This is the Christmas present for my son. Don’t touch it! Don’t ever touch it!” Apparently, what Xu cares about is not his money but his son. Since the monkey may also allude to Xu’s career (because he is a video game designer famous for the design of an all-powerful monkey), it broadens the meaning of the film too. Later, Xu climbs up the sewage pipe of his apartment building to reunite with his family. He has the big stuffed monkey bound on his back as he climbs. Donned in a bright Santa Clause outfit, Xu stands out against the dark brick wall of the building. Distorting the space around him like a magnet, he makes us focus intensely on his motion. He hangs on all fours like a real monkey except for being much less nimbler. The fact that the monkey is merely a toy shows his tremendous determination to deliver this gift. His action may be rash, but he proves himself a good father who can keep his promises.
Because Chinese like Sun, they could like Xu for the same reasons if made clear. The tipping point of the climax of the film, which pivots on Sun, serves a good example. Denis hits his head by an accident and is taken to the hospital. At the hospital, the doctor and the nurse discover unusual red marks on his back and report to the case to the Child Welfare Agency. Xu and his wife Jan Ning are sued for child abuse by a social worker from the CWA out of the blue. At the first court hearing, Xu loses the case as well as his temper because the cause of the red marks or gua sha, a traditional Chinese medical treatment for stomachache, is not recognized in the U.S. Constitution as a standard medical practice. Xu has to prove his love for Denis instead to win Denis back. At the second court hearing, Xu delivers a powerful speech on how much he loves Denis. However, the prosecuting attorney, who has learnt Xu’s sensitive and irritable temperament from the previous court hearing, provokes Xu with a torrent of misleading accusations. Finally, he slanders Xu’s profession by calumniating Xu’s design of “a violent, all-powerful monkey.” He reads fragments from The Journey to the West to traduce Sun’s character until Xu explodes. “Sun Wukong is a good-hearted, compassionate, righteous hero,” Xu cries out at the top of his voice. “He represents our traditions and values and ethics!”
The summary above for roughly the first half of the film proves at least one point: like Sun, Xu is the new marginalized “dog-man” (a term coined by David Gordon White) in America. Xu must prove the safety and efficacy of gua sha in this foreign land despite the fact that in his home country people have practiced gua sha for ages. In comparison, Sun is also a “dog-man” because “[h]is regime was, by the standards of the Confucian Heaven, lawless. [He] ruled with proverbial Taoist wuwei—laissez-faire, non-action, or non-ado. His island’s celebration of natural anarchy was bound to clash with Confucian order and upset the hierarchy of Name and Rank in the court of the Jade Emperor” (Lai 43). The similarity between Sun and Xu is thus their common barbarianism in the eyes of others. In his article “From Protean Ape to Handsome Saint: The Monkey King” where Whalen Lai analyzes the four important phases in Sun’s life, Lai includes some discussions on David Golden White’s book Myths of the Dog-Man. Expanding on this topic about alien cultures, Lai writes:
Classical China too knew the distinction between city and village; Confucius, for example, lived and worked in the city—that is, among civilized men (the gentlemen)—and would have little to do with the inferior men who inhabited the villages. . . Beyond the villages lay the villages lay the barbaric horde, nomads on horseback. They were worse than the peasants and only slightly better than the wild animals. (Lai 42)
It is quite ironic that Chinese culture, which has exerted a great influence in Asia, is relegated to a peripheral status as symbolized and epitomized by gua sha in the film. It is possible that Zheng raises an opportunity for Chinese viewers to criticize traditional Chinese medicine because it does not have sound scientific proof of its values and potency. However, the film veers off from the subject of the court hearing and shows us instead one “dog-man’s” (Xu’s) defense of another “dog-man’s” (Sun’s) dignity. A spoon-fed self-evaluation replaces a possible self-criticism. Through the mouth of the angry Chinese man in court, Chinese hear what they are supposed to think about their culture. Maybe to challenge Chinese culture is better to revere it, but probably thinking about appealing to a large number of people in China, Zheng maintains the status quo.
Sun and Xu are alike in other aspects too; both experience a rise to power followed by a fall from grace. The novel depicts Sun as a genius who masters transformation techniques. With the learned supernatural powers, Sun “equips [his monkeys] with stolen arms and visits the palace of the Dragon King to demand a weapon for himself: he is given the famous iron cudgel, bound by golden rings, adaptable in size. In a drunken sleep he dreams a visit to Hell, where he fights himself free of arrest and strikes the names of his tribe from the Register of Life and Death” (Dudbridge 111). He finally provokes the Heavenly Gods by calling himself “‘the Sage Equal to Heaven’” (Lai 32). Xu’s rise to fame is portrayed in the opening sequence of the film. He and his family, all formally-dressed, get off a car in front of a building. Xu’s boss John greets the family and congratulates Xu on his superb video game designs. As the family enters the building for an award-giving ceremony, a close-up shot of Margaret, the social worker who later sues Xu, is inserted. Standing among a crowd of people protecting again the violence in video games, she glares at Xu.
Like Sun, Xu also possess a mischievous nature that incites excitement. After Grandpa realizes the troubles that he has brought to the family, he chooses to return to China. At the airport, Xu cannot bear the thought of Grandpa never seeing Denis again. He drives off to the children’s home and steals Denis out. The three of them plus Denis’s stuffed monkey meet one last time. Grandpa takes off, but the police start hunting down Xu. At one point, a dozen police cars chase after Xu’s car where Denis also sits. Completely relaxed, Xu smiles and chats idly with Denis. Thinking that he is in a car race, Denis gesticulates enthusiastically at the policemen in other cars. The flashing lights and the blaring siren lose their symbolic meanings of law and enforcement against the playful father and son; the scene looks extremely humorous.
Last but not least, both Sun and Xu need to redeem the havoc they wreck through a journey. In the novel, Sun journeys with Tang Seng to the west as a “protector-guide” and he is “finally transfigured and canonized in the Buddhist Heaven” (Dudbridge 112, 113). In the film, Xu climbs up the sewage pipe of his apartment building. Both their journeys are dangerous; Sun has to fight all kinds of demons as well as his own animalistic nature while Xu has to bet his life on the successful completion of his journey. Both their motivations are also altruistic; Sun needs to be responsible for his master’s safety while Xu has to fulfill his promise to give Denis a gift. Most importantly, Sun’s acquirement of Buddhist virtues such as kindness, self-discipline, and spiritual tranquility corresponds with Xu’s devotion to Confucian virtues. The ending suggests that a good man needs to prioritize family over self. This message resonates with a number of other Confucian ideas in the film.
For example, the ways that Xu treats Grandpa constantly prove him a filial son. Xu stops his wife from telling the judge that Grandpa is responsible for Denis’s condition because he does not want any hassles with Grandpa’s application for a green card. His unspoken wish is actually to have the extended family live happily together under one roof. Xu also keeps Grandpa free of worries by lying about all the troubles in his life. The reason for him to do something morally incorrect or lie in this case is that he wants Grandpa to enjoy his golden age with only good news from his offspring. Other small accommodations, such as asking his wife to speak Chinese at home and allowing Grandpa to smoke in the house, show a profound respect for Grandpa too. This sense of respect may appear peculiar to non-Chinese, but it makes sense in the context of the Confucian hierarchy. In the classical Confucian frame of mind, people with authority are freer to act than those who are lower in status. By reconciling with the wills of those who have a higher status, a person demonstrates his or her willingness for submission, which means the same as respect.
Xu’s treatment of his son is also fraud with Confucian values. Preparing for the speech to be delivered at the court, Xu breaks out in a moment of frustration, “A father loves his son. That’s the way the world works. Why do I have to prove my love? Making up speeches? What the hell are we doing, Jan Ning? It’s turning upside down. Everything is turning upside down.” For Xu, his love for Denis is unquestionable because he is Denis’s natal father. What is “turning upside down” is the entire repertoire of Confucian ethics. As the most basic assumption in Confucianism goes, every person was born with a good nature. In order to cultivate this inborn virtue, one starts with his or her family through practices of filial piety (Hsieh 414). Later, a fade-in leads to the court scene. We see a close-up shot of Xu’s intense-looking face and hear him enunciating his wishes for Denis. Before Xu goes into the development of Denis as a person with his own dreams and aspirations, Xu says that he wants Denis to continue the blood line of the family. Perpetuating the patrilineal line is a staunchly Confucian idea; it appears in much literature devoted to the discussion on Confucianism. Yu-Wei Hsieh’s paper “Filial Piety and Chinese Society” presented at the Third East-West Philosophers’ Conference in Hawaii in 1959, for example, states that “as a necessary tribute to his forefathers, it is one’s duty to perpetuate the blood line by producing offspring through wedlock” (Hsieh 419). Though Xu’s speech may sound a little old-fashioned and platitudinous in Chinese, it imbues Xu with a Chinese identity. The slightly low-angle shot of Xu’s face and the sentimental soundtrack also reveal the director’s intention to engage his audience emotionally in this scene. Although the eastern culture has a hard time asserting itself in the western setting, the film means to empower the eastern culture.
The cinematic choices, the cultural references, as well as the narrative can all explain why Chinese enjoy watching the film, but they cannot convince us as to why the film was popular in the context of China’s history. China has not always hailed Confucianism. Early twentieth century Chinese intellectuals struggled openly against the feudalistic teachings of their ancestors. Yuanpei Cai, the founder of Peking University and “the Chinese Republic’s first minister of education . . . welcomed ideas from all over the world and collected a faculty of brilliant young men of diverse backgrounds” (Schwartz 97). Most of these scholars had studied overseas and were well aware of the differences between the East and the West. They initiated a series of reforms during what was called the May Fourth Movement. They also engaged in debates over which should be the right path to the country’s brighter future. A majority blamed the deeply entrenched Confucian orders for repressing progress-related changes (Schwartz 100-106).
The attack on Confucianism became fiercest during the Mao’s era. The Cultural Revolution placed Chinese culture and tradition in a destructively negative light. Books were born; temples were torn; anything not immediately productive to progress was looked down. The idea of the great proletariat contrasted drastically with the Confucian hierarchy. During the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1961, China did fairly well with the Marxist-Leninist model. However, the excessive and fervent worshipping of Mao drove China into chaos eventually. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, suppressed customs and traditions started to come back over time. Chinese were brought face-to-face with their distant cultural heritage once again. Although people’s thoughts and feelings were complicated by history, Chinese culture seemed to have gained a greater gravity that bound Chinese tighter together.
It was not until in the 1980s scholarly discussions evolved around Confucianism again. In his article “Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism,” Arif Dirlik argues that Confucianism becomes popular especially in some post-colonial Asian states because people have reinvented it to explain and catalyze global capitalism. With Japan and the “Four Mini-Dragons” (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea) surprising the world with their fast-growing economies, more people start to question the validity of modernization as a process of Westernization (Dirlik 237). A Confucian revival, which emerged in Singapore as Premier Lee Kuan Yew promoted the teaching of Confucian ideas in children, swept the rest of the continent (Dirlik 238). Conferences took place around the world. Out of these conferences, various voices on whether Confucianism had a positive or negative impact on modernization arose. In the case of China, what were once identified and repudiated as the causes of its backwardness in the early twentieth century were reevaluated for their contributions to China’s capitalization, political stability, and social welfare (Dirlik 251-254).
From a distant past of prosperity to the more recent history of tumult and uncertainty, China has not ceased making improvements and in the process of which redefining its identity. The year that the film was released coincides with the year that China joined the World Trade Organization and won the Olympic bid. An increasing number of interactions with other cultures and political models force China to find its position in relation to them. How should Chinese perceive themselves when faced with cultures different from their own? And how should they behave in other stronger and more powerful states in the world? I think that the film provides a rather patriotic answer. Some ideas stand out conspicuously: overseas Chinese who may have gained citizenships of other countries should continue seeing themselves as Chinese; preserving Chinese culture in a foreign country is a noble act; in addition, the world knows very little about China, so promoting the Chinese way of life must be nobler. Funded by the state, the film had better not violate the basic cultural and political principles of the state. Thus, the most important reason for the success of the film is its ingenious combination of what Chinese people like with what the states wants.
It is easy to speculate why the Chinese government is supportive of instilling Confucian ideas. China is built on a strict top-down political model. There is not much feedback in the system. If people recognize this structure and act according to it, the state will have an easier time to govern its subjects. Although the film only comments on the importance of the family, what happens in Xu’s family reflects the principles behind the operation of the state. The earlier example about Xu forbidding his wife to tell the truth in the court is not the only example that shows the silencing of a person as a sacrifice for something larger. Xu hides the truth about the lawsuit from Grandpa too. The film makes these occasions look normal and even desired because Chinese viewers know how to appreciate them. From the perspective of the Chinese government, this kind of reference helps reinforce people’s faith in the state even if the state is silent about something. Because in Confucianism a state is built according to the model of a family, people’s acceptance of Xu’s way of running his family is likely to influence their thoughts on the way that the Chinese government runs the state.
Xu kills two birds with one stone—the film appeals to both Chinese viewers and the Chinese government. However, it is debatable whether some messages suggested by the film are constructive for China’s development despite the relevance of these messages to China’s cultural politics. For example, should a state enjoy temporary stability by concealing its problems from the public? In general America does not tolerate this kind of secrecy while China has an immense capacity for it. The best evidence for this claim may be that China still does not have a free press. However, since there is not yet enough evidence for we to determine which model works better ultimately (because they could be equally successful), we can leave this question for the future. Raising this question is helpful for something else: it alerts us of two different political models, and from there, we may understand why this film would not have made as much sense to American viewers as to Chinese viewers.
Another big assumption in the film is about the use of informal politics; it is based in the political model of China. The judge requires Xu to prove gua sha as a safe and standard medical treatment. Up until the end of the film, scientific proof has been the only qualified way to defend gua sha. This mutually understood rule changes abruptly in the end of the film with one party abandoning its political model. After the secret meeting between Xu’s boss John and Grandpa—without any English language ability, Grandpa pays John a visit and draws pictures to illustrate that he is the culprit of the red marks on Denis—John receive a gua sha treatment in Chinatown. On Christmas Eve, John finds the social worker Margaret, shows her the red marks on his back, and goes with her to the judge’s residence. A short dialogue among the three culminates the conflict between formal and informal politics. “I am sorry, Margaret, but it is going too far,” the judge says. “You know that, we can’t just drop the case because you say so.” “But he was telling the truth,” Margaret pleads. “We have the proof, you honor,” John adds. “But I have to follow proceeding,” the judge insists. “But don’t you believe that there are exceptions to the rules?” John questions. The scene then ends with the judge keeping silent on his rocking chair. A moment later, Margaret and John arrive at Xu’s apartment with a document on hand. Margaret announces to Jan Ning that the judge has resent the restraining order.
A prosecutor and a witness showing up at a judge’s place instead of settling everything in court is a strikingly Chinese way of handling politics. In his article “Guanxi and the PRC Legal System: From Contradiction to Complementarity,” Pitman B. Potter describes Chinese legal culture, attitudes, and behaviors. He argues that people’s use of guanxi—a term “loosely translated as ‘connections’”—is “a coping mechanism that substitutes for the norms and processes associated with formal institutions” (Gold 3, Potter 180). Potter writes,
On one hand, the operation of formal law and legal institutions in China requires adaptation to local conditions. As well, the formalism that underpins official legal norms requires a mediating mechanism to prevent rigid application of rules to the detriment of substantive fairness. Yet, mechanisms for adaptation and mediation are not themselves incorporated effectively into the formal system, hence the continued role of guanxi relations. On the other hand, the guanxi dynamic has traditionally been used as a mechanism for protecting individuals and groups against the depredations of powerful but unresponsive officialdom. On the basis of this tradition, guanxi will continue to be necessary as a strategy by which individuals and groups seek the adjustments in the application of formalistic law and process. (Potter 191)
The reasons outlined for the necessity of guanxi in China is relevant to the reasons that John and Margaret go to see the judge in the film. Since the formal law is too imposing, other informal methods are sought to resolve the unfairness in the case. Already back to China, Grandpa tries to help Xu by buying books on gua sha, he also mentions that there is a television program on gua sha. Unfortunately Chinese books and television programs will not force the U.S. Constitution to revise immediately. Xu is lucky to have his right back and live with Denis again because Xu’s boss and friend John influences the people around him by thinking, speaking, and acting like a Chinese. John mentions that “there are exceptions to the rules.” Thanks to Margaret and the judge who are willing to change their previous American ways of approaching the case, a miraculous exception takes place for Xu.
Besides the ending, the relationship between John and Xu reflects the characteristics of Chinese informal politics too. Lowell Dittmer and Yu-shan Wu coauthor the article “The Modernization of Factionalism in Chinese Politics.” They argue that Chinese informal politics is characterized by factionalism, and in post-Mao China, factionalism centers on broad political issues. Like many other scholars who expound on Chinese politics, they too have to base their thesis on the fact that “guanxi-based, vertically organized, reciprocity factions are the building blocks of Chinese informal politics” (Dittmer and Wu 493). In the film, Denis and John’s son Paul get into a fight at the award-giving ceremony. Because Denis refuses to apologize to Paul, Xu hits Denis on his head. The reason for Xu to do so is not revealed explicitly at this point, but Chinese viewers are able to understand the reason. With the unfortunate advent of the lawsuit, Xu invites John to be his lawyer at the first court hearing. Even though John warns Xu that he is not familiar with the laws regarding child abuse, Xu says that he trusts John. Basically Xu tries to develop his quasi-“value-rational relationship” into a quasi-“purpose-rational relationship” with John. As Xu finally states later in the film, he hits Denis to show respect for John. What John does not understand is that Xu’s earlier action means for him to feel indebted so that they are bound by an unspoken reciprocity.
As an afterthought about the film, it is strange why nobody has asked Denis if the red marks hurt. John succeeds in persuading the judge to amend the sentence because gua sha does not hurt him. However, virtually anyone should have been able to convince the judge the same thing if human proof alone were sufficient. Zheng chooses John as the spokesman for gua sha probably to emphasize that a westerner can be easternized (as opposed to the popular idea of westernization). Traditionally, Chinese natural sciences have depended heavily on “simple procedures of observation and experiment” to derive the truth (Schwartz 131). In contrast, western sciences are built a deductive process with both mathematical and empirical data. By favoring the former, the film celebrates it.
The eventual triumph of Chinese informal politics over American formal politics replaces the initial triumph of American formal politics over Chinese informal politics in the film. Even though the Americans portrayed in it cannot appreciate or understand the eastern culture for the most part, they experience a transformation in the end. The transformation starts with John’s tryout of gua sha in Chinatown. To both Chinese viewers inside and outside China, this film means for them to be proud of Chinese culture. It elevates their spirituality and boosts their confidence in the face of the more developed West. None of these effects is adverse to the Chinese government, which probably likes it even more because of the Confucian references in it. With the reinforcement of some Confucian ideas such as filial piety and the importance of family, the state could enjoy social stability that is paramount to a sustained economic development. However, what Chinese viewers miss in the film is that they are not emancipated from their past because of this great sense of pride of their past. The film shows the use of informal politics as being adequate and blameless. Whether Chinese viewers agree or disagree with the idea, the film reinforces this idea. The direct references of Sun as well as the characterization of Xu to resemble Sun are both engaging because Chinese like Sun and distracting because beneath a dramatic story lies debatable values and attitudes. The success of the film opens a small window for us to look into China’s cultural politics; however, this window shuts most Chinese in the world of China’s cultural politics because the film is too comfortable for them to watch. There are other Chinese films that resemble windows with no glass. They are not very comfortable to watch, and they pose a threat to China’s cultural politics. (The most famous example is Zhuangzhuang Tian’s The Blue Kite. It was banned in 1994, and the state stripped Tian of his right to make films in China.) Both these kinds are great in my opinion because windows are essentially openings whose function is to connect two spaces.
Works Cited
Dirlik, Arif. “Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism.” boundary 2 22.3 (1995): 229-273.
Dittmer, Lowell and Yu-shan Wu. “The Modernization of Factionalism in Chinese Politics.”World Politics 47.4 (1995): 467-494.
Dudbridge, Glen. The Hsi-yu Chi: a Study of the antecedents to the Sixteenth Chinese Novel. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Gold, Thomas, et al. “An Introduction to the Study of Guanxi.” Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Changing Nature of Guanxi. Cambridge, New York, Port Melbourne, Madrid, and Cape Town: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 3-20.
Hsieh, Yu-wei. “Filial Piety and Chinese Society.” Philosophy and culture—East and West. Ed. Charles A. Moore. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1962.
Lai, Whalen. “From Protean Ape to Handsome Saint: The Monkey King.” Asian Folklore Studies 53.1 (1994): 29-65.
Potter, Pitman B. “Guanxi and the PRC Legal System: From Contradiction to Complementarity.” Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Changing Nature of Guanxi. Ed. Thomas Gold, et al. Cambridge, New York, Port Melbourne, Madrid, and Cape Town: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 179-196.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. “Themes in Intellectual History: May Fourth and After.” An Intellectual History of Modern China. Ed. Merle Goldman, et al. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Zhou, Quan. “Finding the Breakthrough for Chinese Film.” China Today Apr. 2002. 18 Nov. 2008.
