When rebellion becomes fashionable

Author: Zhang Zhaohui / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: Now is an era where one hasn’t even grown up yet but already longs for nostalgia; one hasn’t grown up because China has yet to enter a modern civilized society. The reason for nostalgia is that we witness the pain of social transformation, see the future, yet cannot rely on it, forcing people to reminisce about the innocence of childhood. This seems to be an awkward social psychology, intertwined inseparably with the helplessness of the times. This is why mainstream discourse no longer discusses socialist and communist ideals, and various entertainment programs rarely touch upon the harsh social reality. Instead, people desperately long for the past. Big and small screens in Beijing are obsessed with overly sentimental Qing Dynasty dramas, while Shanghai’s public opinion is infatuated with the broken dreams of "Paris East." Against this backdrop, themes like "People Born in the 1950s," "1960s Vibe," and "Born in the 1970s" frequently appear in public discourse, all of which are manifestations of a helpless "nostalgia mentality." Faced with the future, everyone is lost; faced with the present, they feel exhausted, and everything seems to be beyond words. Only the solace of reminiscing about the past remains. When Cui Jian became fat and no longer had the strength to sing "Nothing to Live For," instead performing a duet with Western singers, we knew that a certain quality of the 1960s he represented had ended, and the nostalgia journey of some people had begun to take shape. Art is a mirror of an era, reflecting how people of that time view and understand their own era. When people born in the 1950s emigrated, those laid off lost their jobs, and the retired retired, the 1960s-born still had time and energy to look back and reflect on reality. But the 1960s is also a vast topic, encompassing a wide range of fields. I will focus on artists born in Beijing in the early 1960s and raised in the city. Their artistic practices bear the distinct imprint of Beijing’s urban culture, or perhaps Beijing’s various transformations since the 1960s and its ancient urban cultural atmosphere have shaped the characteristics of their art. These artists include the early 1960s-born Wang Zhantao, the mid-1960s-born Wang Yuhua and Yu Hong, and the later-born Zhang Jian. A common feature of these individuals is that they graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1980s. Some people have said, "‘1960s Vibe’—this seems like an inverted term. When people usually refer to those who lived in the 1930s and 1940s, they mean those who lived during that time, not those born in it. Over twenty years ago, composer Gu Jianfen had a famous song titled ‘Young Friends Gather Together,’ which sang, ‘Glory belongs to the new generation of the 1980s.’ But this ‘new generation of the 1980s’ does not refer to those born in the 1980s but rather those who lived during that time, especially the young people.” Such a statement is somewhat biased. "1960s Vibe" can be understood as the temperament of people born in the 1960s, or as the temperament of a generation that came onto the historical stage in the 1960s. In reality, just as we say there are "Grade 89" and "Class of 89" students, the former refers to those who entered in that year, while the latter refers to those who graduated. Although "1960s Vibe" does not have the clear distinction of "grade" and "class," in Chinese context, the group active in the "1960s" has already been fixed by history as the "Old Third Batch" and the "Red Guards," representing the temperament of the Cultural Revolution generation. Therefore, "1960s Vibe" is very clear—it refers to a new generation born in the 1960s who emerged in the 1990s. What are the characteristics of people born in Beijing in the 1960s? Wang Shuo’s novel and film "Days of Sunshine" provide vivid depictions, but that is only a localized Beijing characteristic, a kind of new Manchu-style arrogance and vanity—undoubtedly, a new version of Beijing’s urban culture. As the center where China’s traditional and modern political cultures repeatedly clash, Beijing in the 1960s exhibits a clear sense of ruins, historical vicissitudes, and a sense of nihilism in the present. During the Cultural Revolution, a large number of intellectuals were persecuted, and the harm brought to society by power struggles made Beijing’s intellectuals more deeply aware of the nation’s sense of crisis—such as the heartache of elite intellectuals reflected in the recently popular book "Past Events Are Like Smoke." Under the banner of modernization, traditional culture has been exhausted, while the systems and laws needed for a modern civilized society still struggle to take root and are difficult to establish. Meanwhile, the administrative market economy continues to produce one bubble after another. P4-5