Realism, Hybridity, And the Construction of Identity in Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle (Critical Essay‪)‬

Chinese filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle (2001) uses the struggle over a bicycle between Guei, a rural migrant, and Jian, an urbanite schoolboy, to represent the disorienting effect that economic modernization and consumerism have had in China. In this article, I show how Wang adopts a hybrid filmic style that integrates urban realism with traditional Hollywood genre forms. I argue that by first employing and then undermining certain narrative and visual cliches from these genres, Wang complicates both the commercial character of these genres and the rosy picture of urban modernization sanctioned by the political and economic forces of capitalist globalization. Finally, I correlate the film's hybrid style to Wang's construction of Guei's hybrid identity and read both as Wang's negotiated response to China's emerging capitalist economy and consequent social upheaval. Wang Xiaoshuai & Chinese Cinema