This paper examines how ethnic minority cinema in the People’s Republic of China reflects the shifts in state ideology and cultural and national politics. Drawing on the works of scholars such as Paul Clark, Dru Gladney, and Vanessa Frangville, among others, I examine how two cinematic adaptations of a legend about a Zhuang folk singer, Third Sister Liu (1960) and A Singing Fairy (2010), reproduce and reinforce dominant ideological narratives. I argue that in the context of Mao’s China, Third Sister Liu functions as a politically charged allegory, where ethnicity is used to symbolize class struggle, women’s emancipation, and socialist ideals. By contrast, A Singing Fairy emerges in the post-socialist, market-dominated China, where ethnicity is commodified into a cultural resource. Under these circumstances, ethnic minorities represent authenticity and integrity, thus assisting the Han Chinese majority to rediscover (or re-invent) their identity lost due to the pressures of modernity. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that PRC minority cinema, as a genre, has transformed from socialist didacticism to a market-driven search for identity, while maintaining its primary characteristic: non-Han peoples serve as a mirror through which Han Chinese (and the Chinese state) address their political and cultural concerns.

Keywords: China, representation, minority film, internal orientalism, Liu Sanjie, PRC cinema, cultural politics

I. Introduction

The discourse on ethnic minorities has proven to be of great importance in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Even before the foundation of the PRC, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought to transform China into a modern multinational state, following the general political trend of other socialist countries in the early to mid-20th century. The key example in this respect was the Soviet Union with its treatment of the so-called “national question”, which led to the establishment of national territorial units. This model was promoted in accordance with Stalin’s interpretation of historical Marxism, namely, treating the nation as a necessary yet transitional step in the historical development between pre-national entities, such as tribes, and the communist unitarian society (Stalin, 1954). In China, national identities (民族) were supposed to be essential but temporary measures in the construction of a unified, supra-national socialist identity. To understand which ethnic groups [1] “have been formed” in China, the CCP, after coming to power, initiated the Ethnic Classification Project (民族識別), as a result of which the state eventually recognized 55 ethnic minority groups. Even though the resulting system apparently has a lot of discrepancies and internal contradictions, it still becomes more and more “accurate”, since “more and more [Chinese] citizens are born into the fifty-six-minzu model” (Mullaney, 2011, p. 135). This model is increasingly the language everyone uses when talking about ethnicity in China.

With the actualization of ethnic minority discourse, it began to influence the most important, according to Lenin, of all arts – cinema (1971). Before 1949, according to Clark, “minority peoples of China scarcely ever appear on screen” (1987, p. 17), but shortly after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, ethnic minority characters “swarmed” Chinese cinema. This led to the emergence of a separate genre – “minority films (少數民族片 or 少數民族題材電影)”. To understand the scale of the production of such films, it may be useful to turn to numbers: from 1949 to 1966, i.e., the eruption of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese state produced around fifty films of this genre (Lu, 2014, p. 373; Yau, 1989, p. 119). 

Although the genre itself is quite diverse, it is still possible to grasp its essence by looking at its evolution as presented in Frangville’s timeline. In the first period (from 1950 to 1965, i.e., since the foundation of the People’s Republic to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution), the genre functioned as a “civilizing project”, aiming to educate the Han Chinese about the “primitive” peoples of the peripheral regions (Gladney, 1995, p. 5) and promote the idea social equality and class struggle (Chen, 2016). In the second period (the 1980s, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, following the Democracy Wall and other movements), the genre is represented by films by independent authors, often attributed to the Fifth Generation (第五代導演). In these films, the filmmakers resorted to the minority areas to “effectively address critical issues gnawing at the heartland” (Gladney, 1995, p. 1), including the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Finally, the third period (from the late 1990s to the present day, during the rapid economic growth in the country and China’s more active participation in international relations) is the most diverse and least studied phase (Frangville, 2012, p. 62). Despite the differences between the periods, it is possible to identify one central tendency that is true for most Chinese “ethnic minority films”: the minorities (or minority regions) are subjects used by the authors, usually of Han Chinese descent, to investigate normally avoided topics (Gladney, 1995, p. 8), which occupy primarily the watching majority, i.e., the Chinese themselves (see also Gladney, 1994; Yau, 1989).

In this article, I aim to continue the discussion of the relations between the genre and changes in the PRC’s national policy by examining two films, Third Sister Liu (劉三姐, 1960) and A Singing Fairy (尋找劉三姐, 2010), made during the first and third periods, respectively. Both films are cinematic adaptations of an old legend about a young Zhuang (壯族) girl from Southwest China who enjoyed singing “mountain songs (山歌)”. This legend appeared in many different interpretations, including imperial-period Confucianist representation in gazetteers and Republican-period “rediscoveries” of folk songs. It reached its peak of popularity after the release of the first film adaptation in 1960, attracting the attention of many scholars (Chen, 2016; Clark, 1987; L. H. Liu, 2003; Q. Liu, 2021; Loh, 1984; U, 2010; Zhang, 1997). Importantly, it inspired many remakes, including one of the same title that almost copies the original (1979), and a Taiwanese adaptation (The Shepherd Girl, 山歌戀, 1964), where the main heroine is not Zhuang but Han Chinese, an important change in the context of Chiang Kai-shek’s national policy. More relevant to the study is the 2010 adaptation, which departs significantly from the original film. This departure, I argue, reflects the economic and cultural changes that occurred in China at the end of the 20th and early 21st centuries, related to the loss of a sense of identity and the touristification of minority areas.

II. Third Sister Liu and its political dimensions

When discussing Third Sister Liu (1960), there are three major aspects that different scholars point out in their analyses: the notion of exoticization, a reflection on the class struggle, and the representation of the intellectuals. I believe that the first two are quite common for minority films of that era and can be seen as defining points of the genre in the 1960s, while the film’s intriguing depiction of intellectuals stands out from the general trend. Despite its uniqueness, this aspect of the film can be traced to echoes of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, thereby confirming the idea that minority films are a highly politicized genre in China.

a. In the Search for Exotic and National Style 

When approaching Third Sister Liu, one may ponder the question: What does this have to do with ethnicity? Is it not just a musical film about the adventures of a peasant girl? While the film almost avoids direct references to minority discourse [3], it is impossible to avoid the logic of representation. During Maoist China, in cinema, there were certain ways of addressing specific issues or picturing certain kinds of people; the exceptions were few and immediately attracted attention. For instance, the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were presented as modernly equipped, heroic people bringing progress to the far corners of the country, trying to help the local population in the fight against the insidious internal enemy – the Kuomintang (KMT). If a PLA soldier ever committed any unjust act, such as poisoning the main character’s son in Beacon Fire on a Frontier (邊寨烽火, 1957), it was because he was deceived by a cunning enemy spy. The same worked the other way around: if a film has most of the characteristics of a minority film, then the audience will recognize it. By 1960, when the film was released, these characteristics were already established. The key element is musical moments, in which the songs were either politically adjusted Zhuang folk songs or composed from scratch based on popular melodies (Chen, 2016; L. H. Liu, 2003; Loh, 1984). Another characteristic is a depiction of an “exotic” minority custom (in this film, it is the throwing of an embroidered ball by a woman to a man, as a sign of consent to marry), as well as the use of bright costumes and makeup of female characters, which in no way indicate that they are from a peasant family [4]. Finally, a standard element of minority films is picturesque landscapes of the border regions (the scenic area of Guilin, including the Lijiang River and karst mountains), many of which are associated with ethnic minorities.

According to Clark (1987), the Chinese always regarded cinema as an exotic medium, and when foreign films were banned, the state and filmmakers turned to ethnic minorities as an image of the Other. While the first part of this statement is somewhat questionable, I am inclined to agree with the rest. Indeed, minority films, their exoticism served in many ways as a necessary distraction for the Chinese population during the difficult times of the long socialist revolution [5]. Ironically, due to their great popularity among viewers, this and other films about the beautiful, remote corners of the country became the keystone in the construction of “national style” (Clark, 1987, pp. 24–25), as something unique and the most representative of the Chinese proper. It is hard to deny this seemingly contradictive statement, given the popularity of the film and its soundtrack among overseas Chinese around the world (Xu, 2019), the massive touristification of Yangshuo county (where the outdoor scenes were filmed) starting from the late 1980s, and the imagery of the Lijiang River landscape on the twenty yuan banknote as one of China’s most iconic sceneries.

b. Class Struggle, Emancipation, and the Literati

Apparently, class struggle was the dominant theme of the vast majority of Chinese cinema right before the early 1980s. Minority films, however, were embedded with additional meanings and purposes. Namely, mobilizing all strata of the country’s population, including minorities and women, and informing the majority population that minorities can and should be actively involved in the class conflict and might even play a decisive role in the “liberation” of the periphery. At the same time, the musical tone of “soft” minority films, like Third Sister Liu, was ideally suited to promoting the development of class consciousness and the moral principles fostered by the party. Later, I believe, it boosted the popularity of so-called “revolutionary operas” (樣板戲) during the Cultural Revolution: revolutionary fight as a beautiful symphony.

The notion of struggle and the integration of minority populations into PLA efforts to achieve a “common goal” (i.e., the liberation from feudal oppression) was a common theme in “harder” minority films about Northwestern regions (Gladney, 1995, p. 5). An alternative, presented in Third Sister Liu, is to look back at the past, when the “feudal social system” seemed to acquire more specific features: the landlord Mo Huairen [6] and his retinue usurp the lives of ordinary peasants by fleecing them with taxes. They are rebuffed by a girl from afar, who begins to stir up the people with her mountain folk songs. There are three important notions in this story: first, the fact that Liu “leads” the social unrest explains why the film does not depict the clear ethnic categorizations that were becoming a reality in China in the late 1950s. If we imagine that the landlord was either a Chinese functionary or a highly Sinicized Zhuang chief, there will be a confrontation between Zhuang and Chinese cultures (even as presented by Confucianism) – a narrative clearly unfavorable to the CCP. On the contrary, this film was supposed to show the audience that ethnic minorities, from the beginning, were opposed to the feudal system and are still eager, if someone [7] spurs them, to take action “now” in the 20th century.

Secondly, if the main character’s ethnicity is intentionally omitted, the fact that the character is a woman is also very important. In the Mao Era, gender inequality was considered a major issue, and the Party sought to make Chinese women socially and economically equal to men, just as it fought economic inequality expressed in class divisions. Therefore, during that period, many leading characters were women, and Third Sister Liu is no exception. Besides the fact that there are plenty of female characters who take an active part in the resistance against the landlord, there is a scene where Liu refuses the proposal to become the wife of Mo Huairen, mirroring the New Marriage Law introduced in 1950, according to which both parties, a man and a woman, must provide consent to a marriage.  

Finally, the climax of the film occurs in a vivid scene of a singing competition between Liu Sanjie (supported by peasants) and the three Confucian literati, xiucai (秀才). As a result, despite the scholar’s appeal to numerous books containing the best “folksongs”, they lose the fight because they cannot improvise, holding exclusively to the dead knowledge of the scribes. This scene was a direct reference to the category of intellectuals, one of the major concerns of the Party during the early years of the People’s Republic. Not only representatives of the old cultural elite (whose achievements were neglected), but also ordinary teachers, as well as any bearers of professional knowledge, came under severe criticism. Moreover, Chairman Mao thought that the Soviet-style industrialization led to the emergence of “professional and technological elites who were separated from the masses of workers and peasants” (Meisner, 2007, p. 141, as cited in U, 2010, p. 61). This conflict is obvious in the film. Third Sister Liu was made right after the Anti-Rightist Movement during the Great Leap Forward; therefore, the film often emphasizes the importance of agriculture and physical labor. The intellectuals, on the contrary, are maltreated here as they rely mostly on knowledge, which in the Mao era gradually loses its significance [8]. Paradoxically, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, the film was condemned for using a peaceful way, i.e., a singing competition, to fight against the usurper. In a revolution, violence is inevitable.

Image: Local Chinese tourists, when visiting Yangshuo, often dress up in traditional dress, hanfu (漢服), or put on “minority costumes”, similar to what is shown in A Singing Fairy. Photo by the author.

III. A Singing Fairy and the Revival of the Genre in Post-Socialist China

In the late 1970s, after the death of Mao Zedong, the end of the Cultural Revolution, and Hua Guofeng’s defeat by Deng Xiaoping in the political struggle, a new era of large-scale change began in the PRC. Deng and his allies, through the “reforms and opening-up”, started introducing elements of the market economy in China and gradually opened borders for the inflow of foreign capital, products, and tourists. However, new prospects also brought new challenges: nouveau riche and corruption, uncontrolled influence of foreign popular culture and ideas, the population’s fatigue from the regime and social unrest, economic inequality, environmental problems, etc. Non-state actors gained more access to cultural production, and more people obtained the power to express their concerns. Many directors active in the 1980s exploited the dusty minority film genre for this exact purpose: to express social criticism (Gladney, 1995). 

However, after the events in Tiananmen in 1989, the stabilization of the situation in the early 1990s, a new wave of openness to the outside world, and rapid growth of the economy, the “function” of such films changed again. The Chinese audience rediscovered imported films, so the need for minority subjects for the sake of exoticism only disappeared. At the same time, the crackdown on the protests showed that the critique of the state is a dangerous matter. A new challenge was the search for identity, an issue prompted by reactions to the “Americanization of Chinese culture”, as Frangville puts it (2012, p. 66), the establishment of relations with Taiwan, the “reunification” with Hong Kong and Macau. A Singing Fairy (2010) is an example of this development in Chinese cinema, as it reflects many of the above-mentioned transformations.

a. Economic Reforms, Nostalgia, and the Search for Identity

A Singing Fairy opens with a scene of an old, rich Chinese man living in America watching the beautiful scenery of Third Sister Liu. The screening ends with a cut-off of the film strip, and the grandfather plunges into dreams of his native Guangxi. He cannot return there because he is too old, but he intends to send his grandson, A-De. A-De (played by a Taiwanese actor, Alec Su 蘇有朋 [9]) is a student piano player who, according to his teacher, mastered every possible skill but still lacks the most important – soul, or the “Chinese element (中國元素)” – and therefore should return to the motherland of his grandfather, China, to find it.

The above-described motive of “soul” searching can be interpreted not only as the desire of overseas Chinese to return to their homeland but also as the concerns of the younger generation of mainland Chinese, who were born in the midst of Deng’s reforms, about the loss of identity, and as nostalgia for a seemingly carefree past. Before, throughout the 20th century, the mainland was preoccupied with a radical reorganization of society, and nostalgia was a luxury (Jing, 2006, p. 361). As a result of the shift in paradigms, the disappearance of the socialist system of values and the emergence of market-driven modernization brought new opportunities to some but a sense of economic and ideological uncertainty to others. Many people started feeling the disconnection with the constant changes of modernity, and that triggered their yearning for the idealized past, the time that gives people the feeling of home and place of origin. In the film, this search for identity and nostalgia, often about events that never happened, is shown as a cross-generational and even cross-border phenomenon that unites all ethnic Chinese people through family ties and personal acquaintances. This somewhat re-establishes the importance of Confucian family-oriented ethics, which was partially shattered during the first years of the PRC: loyalty to family was replaced by loyalty to the Party and the State [10]. Later, however, the situation changed. First, loyalty to the Party began to be seen as the ultimate expression of family loyalty (and related “filial piety, 孝”). Second, during the economic reforms of the 1980s, many family businesses were encouraged. At the turn of the century, the state began to explore the potential of family values (and the past, in the form of rich history) as an inherited aspect of Chinese culture that could counter the spirit of consumerism from the West. Indeed, almost every character in A Singing Fairy dreams about the past and searches for their true self. A-De’s grandfather dreams of his youth in native Guangxi, watching Third Sister Liu, a product of Mao’s era, which is superimposed on the real “revolutionary past” of an actor. A-De imagines the experience of his grandfather and ancestors related to “specific” place [11], Guangxi, which represented China in general, following the tendency set by Third Sister Liu. Even Liu Tiantian, about whom the audience learns that she is not Han through direct references, also discovers her “true self”, namely the spirit of Liu Sanjie, after meeting with a Han young boy and following him through the interactions with other minorities. Finally, A-Mei, who was looking only for economic benefits, is a counterexample, as she has achieved nothing throughout the film.

Dynastic China, which, together with Mao’s China, constitute the two major temporalities of nostalgia in contemporary China (Jing, 2006). Moreover, the film synchronizes these kinds of sentiment by referencing Third Sister Liu, a product of the Revolutionary Era that tells the story taking place in Imperial China. This shows how the attitude towards the past has changed dramatically over the years: it became an object of state obsession and was then commodified as tourism.

b. Tourism and Ethnicity

But why a minority film? Why should the quest for Chinese identity again require the presence of minority subjects? Why is the ethnic minority discourse revived with a new strength? And what does tourism have to do with it? 

At the beginning of the economic reforms, many border regions remained underdeveloped due to infrastructure problems and general economic futility. The emphasis was placed on developing the southeastern and eastern port cities (so-called “Special Economic Zones, 經濟特區”) that could attract foreign capital, while resources from other regions were used to fuel the national economy. In the late 1980s, the state realized that it could commodify a hitherto untapped resource – the culture of ethnic minorities – to attract foreign and local tourists (Oakes, 1993, p. 59). This “resource” emerged as a soft power, given the fact that it was initially “packed” in the system of 55 minority groups of China. Gradually, tourism initiatives in border regions such as Yunnan and Guangxi became profitable and began attracting investment from other provinces. When the economic opportunities of many Chinese citizens increased, domestic tourists began to travel to the minority areas. The tendency aligns with the desire of residents of fast-growing, modernized cities to escape the hustle and return to the bosom of rural tranquility and pristine nature (Jing, 2006, p. 363), places “inhabited” by minority peoples.

Therefore, the revival of the minority film genre was inevitable: the genre serves the demands of both domestic and foreign audiences, representing China as a multinational and multicultural state and re-establishing the legitimacy of the state that protects its citizens and cultures. These “new films on the Non-Han”, especially from the Northwest with a more “ethnographic” approach, such as Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (可可西里, 2004), began participating in international film festivals. Others, including A Singing Fairy, Huayao Bride in Shangrila (花腰新娘, 2005), or When Ruoma was Seventeen (婼瑪的十七歲, 2002), instead targeted the domestic market. Same as before, these projects were encouraged and supported by both central and local governments (e.g., A Singing Fairy was produced by Guangxi Film Studios and distributed by China Film Group Corporation, owned by the Central Propaganda Department), but in new realities, their authors gained more artistic freedom.

In the context of the search for Chinese identity, “minority peoples” are seemingly represented here as a diverse (but in fact relatively homogenized) group living in a “golden age” by preserving their traditions and living close to nature. This representation functions as a “lost paradise” and a moral call for the Chinese to look to their younger brothers and sisters, i.e., ethnic minorities, and to rediscover their origins (Frangville, 2012, p. 66). This idea is multiplied in A Singing Fairy by showcasing life in several minority villages: of Yao, Miao, Dong, Jing, and, finally, Zhuang. All minority characters, apart from Liu Tiantian, are “traditionalized” and infantilized in the film. They live their lives according to ancient customs, which are carefully preserved for presentation to guests. The film constantly evokes the discussion about ethnicity (for example, “we, Zhuang people, respect elders the most, 我們壯族最尊敬的就是長輩了” or “smashing the fragrant bag is a game of the young people of Yao minority, 砸香包是瑤族年輕男女之間的遊戲”), using the language developed during the Socialist period of China, which became universal and pervasive throughout the country.

Another important motif in the film is the performativity of ethnicity and its artificiality; it is shown both diegetically and non-diegetically. In the scene on the beach, when the real tour guide, A-Mei, comes to meet A-De after finding out that he is rich, she decides to introduce herself as a Jing minority girl by wearing “traditional” clothes and singing “folksongs”. Closer to the end of the film, there is another dressing-up scene, where the main character, A-De, wearing colorful clothes reminiscent of those worn by the literati in Third Sister Liu, sings a Zhuang (?) love folksong to the chorus of young women in Zhuang “traditional” outfits. The apogee of cross-ethnic transformations in the film is the figure of Liu Tiantian, who constantly changes her identity by dressing up in local costumes and singing local songs with others in each of the minority villages. She continually objectifies and generalizes them (e.g., “how can [he] fall in love with someone from one of our ethnic minority groups, 怎麼可能看得上我們這少數民族的妹仔呢?” [12]), despite being an ethnic minority herself. Eventually, she “embraces” her by returning to her native village, dressed in her Zhuang minority clothes, and singing the Zhuang love song. The proper harmony is achieved when she finally unites with, albeit westernized, a young Han man, thus realizing a new dream of the Chinese state, which reminds us of the propaganda of Maoist China (and the USSR) about the friendship of peoples.

Non-diegetically, the cross-ethnic transformation is presented through cross-ethnic casting, a tradition inherited from the first fictional minority films (Lu, 2014). In A Singing Fairy, not only are most of the characters played by Han Chinese actors, but these actors are natives of completely different regions – mainly Shanghai – which can be easily heard from their accents, creating the impression of China as a linguistically homogeneous place. The only “minority” actress of the main cast is of Manchu origin (Ariel Aisin-Gioro, 愛新覺羅·啟星), playing a Yao girl. This phenomenon partly questions the stability of ethnic classification, only to re-emphasize the close and unique relationships between ethnic minorities and the non-ethnic majority in China, granting the majority symbolic power to represent the Other for the purpose of self-reflection.

Conclusion

The analysis of the two films that engage with the Third Sister Liu legend to varying degrees, namely Third Sister Liu (1960) and A Singing Fairy (2010), reveals how the genre of minority films evolved in response to shifting political, economic, and cultural conditions in China. More specifically, in Mao’s China, Third Sister Liu mirrored and supplemented broader political movements, such as the Anti-Rightist Movement, emphasizing the primacy of class struggle. A Singing Fairy, on the other side, is a product of China’s ongoing economic reform, the rise of foreign involvement, tourism, and even emerging nationalism. The film reinterprets the legend of Liu Sanjie to address contemporary concerns, such as the search for identity amid rapid modernization and the nostalgic yearning for a romanticized past. However, despite these and other narrative and contextual differences, both films utilize minority discourse and minority subjects to reinforce state (or state-instigated popular) narratives, functioning as “official popular culture” (L. H. Liu, 2003, p. 554).