Fan Yang - Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalization

FAKED IN CHINA

GLOBAL RESEARCH STUDIES

The Global Research Studies series is part of the Framing
the Global project, an initiative of Indiana University Press
and the Indiana University Center for the Study of Global
Change, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Advisory Committee

Alfred C. Aman Jr.

Eduardo Brondizio

Maria Bucur

Bruce L. Jaffee

Patrick OMeara

Radhika Parameswaran

Heidi Ross

Richard R. Wilk

Nation Branding,
Counterfeit Culture,
and Globalization

Fan Yang

This book is a publication of

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

2016 by Fan Yang

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-253-01839-7 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-253-01846-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-253-01852-6 (ebook)

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For Marc, and my parents
Yu Pin and Yang Renshan

THIS WORK BEGAN AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, WHERE I received funding from a High Potential Fellowship. I am deeply indebted to Paul Smith, who opened my eyes to the dynamic field of cultural studies and pushed me to think about the national question in a more critical light. I am equally grateful to Michael Chang, who first oriented me to the historical and theoretical debates surrounding nations and nationalisms in the Chinese context and beyond. Their continuous encouragement and guidance over the years have undoubtedly helped shape how I think and write about contemporary China and/in globalization.

At GMU, I am most fortunate to have learned from Debra Bergoffen, Jean-Paul Dumont, Dina Copelman, Cindy Fuchs, Rosemary Jann, Mark Sample, Ted Kinnaman, Amal Amireh, and Peter Mandaville, among others. I have also enjoyed and benefited from conversations with Tim Gibson, Roger Lancaster, Denise Albanese, Alok Yadav, Alison Landsberg, John OConnor, Michelle Carr, Tim Kaposy, Lisa Breglia, J. P. Singh, and many more. I am thankful for the opportunity to have taught in the Honors College and the New Century College, which allowed me to co-design such interdisciplinary courses as Global Networks and Communities; I have learned a great deal from my fellow instructors and students, who have made this experience most enriching.

I owe special thanks to my wonderful colleagues in the Department of Media and Communication Studies (MCS) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Jason Loviglio, the chair of the department, is the most supportive mentor that a junior faculty member could wish for. I simply cannot thank him enough for his enthusiasm, his unending insights, and his constructive comments on numerous drafts of my work. Rebecca Adelman has been a role model of excellence. I thank her for generously sharing her (always beautifully written) work with me and giving me such illuminating feedback on my own writing. I have learned about (new) media and technology from Donald Snyder in more ways than I can keep track of, and I appreciated the opportunity to discuss my research with the students in his Senior Capstone Seminar in Fall 2011. Etoy Hamlin and Abigail Granger have set new standards for professionalism; their skillful administrative support has been indispensible.

The completion of the manuscript has benefited from a Summer Faculty Fellowship, an Undergraduate Research Assistantship Support award, and a Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellowship at UMBC. I have enjoyed talking about research and other fun stuff with an amazing group of scholars at various gatherings on and off campus, especially Constantine Vaporis, Anna Shields, Nicole King, Edward Larkey, Amy Bhatt, Viviana MacManus, Kate Drabinski, Ana Oskoz, Rebecca Boehling, Craig Saper, Christine Mallinson, Kimberly Moffitt, Christine Mair, Kara Hunt, Meredith Oyen, Jessica Berman, Beverly Bickel, Scott Casper, Tamara Bhalla, Theodore Gonzalves, and Bill Shewbridge. Many thanks to Rebecca Boehling and Jessica Berman for the opportunity to present my work in progress at the Dresher Center for the Humanities, where the exchanges are always thoughtful and engaging.

My students at UMBC have been a constant source of inspiration. Their willingness to ask hard questions and unwillingness to settle for easy answers have continuously challenged and energized me in the classroom and in my scholarly work. I thank them for sharing their ideas and stories with me. More than a few of them have offered fresh perspectives on the objects I examine, and I particularly appreciated the input of Gabriel Fishbein, Ela Locke, Gina Gribbin, and Robbin Lee.

At the many events and conferences where I presented my research, I have gained valuable insights from Cara Wallis, Wendy Chun, Lisa Nakamura, John Durham Peters, Michael Keane, Henry Siling Li, Xiaoming Wang, Catalina Cortes Severino, Nitin Govil, Radha Hegde, Sumita Chakravarty, Geetha Ganapathy-Dor, Jinying Li, Jiayan Mi, Philip Rosen, Lynne Joyrich, Yew Kong Leong, Richard White, Andrew Ross, Laikwan Pang, Nick Couldry, Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, Ken Wissoker, Marcella Szablewicz, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Silvia Lindtner, Gil Rodman, Wen Jin, Yu-Fang Cho, Martin Fredriksson, Stephen C. K. Chan, Jia Tan, and Xu Miaomiao, among many others. Thanks especially to Rob Gehl, who invited me to the 2011 Frontiers of New Media Symposium at the University of Utah. The time I spent with the participants of the symposium has been most memorable.

I cannot express enough gratitude for the long-time friendship, support, and intellectual stimulation provided by Katy Razzano, Lia Uy-Tioco, Xiang (Ellen) He, Rob Gehl, Pia Mller, Loubna Skalli, Leah Perry, Ludy Grandas, Olga Herrera, Sean Andrews, Jaafar Aksikas, Mikail Petin, Vicki Watts, Lisa Andion, Tara Sheoran, Win Malaiwong, Young A Jung, Daniel Anderson, Gavin Mueller, Rachel Martin, Michael Lecker, Dai Dun, Helen Margiotti, and Daniel Hanna, among others. Special thanks to Ellen for making it possible for me to interview Liu Wanyong and Jiang Xinjie, the two investigative journalists at China Youth Daily. I am grateful to Liu and Jiang for sharing their keen observations of the changing landscape of Chinese media in general and their experience covering the demolition of the Silk Street Market in particular.

As I finalize the manuscript, I have come to the realization that many URLs of once existing web pages are no longer available. While this fleeting status of the online archive certainly points to the challenges ahead for those of us who aspire to continuously historicize the present, it also seems to make the study of contemporary culture all the more important. After all, the rate of disappearance in media contents is arguably dwarfed by the speed at which Chinese reality is changing on the ground, as the Silk Street case quite powerfully illustrates. Because of this, I would very much like to thank those (oftentimes anonymous) individuals who have partaken in the meaning-making practices that have become the focus of this book. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to document and engage (some of) their voices in rethinking what culture means, and what it can be, in contemporary China.