| Abstract: | This paper reads Qiu Huadong's novel, The Troubled Lot and Wang Xiaoshuai's film, Beijing Bicycle in the light of contemporary theories on space/place. It addresses broader issues of the dynamic and dialectic relationship between text/representation and the city, and how the text/representation contributes both to understanding and constituting the city. Through textual readings, the paper addresses how the fiction/film represents new urban spaces in contemporary China, and how urban spaces are produced through socioeconomic forces, global influences, spatial practices, and cultural representation. The paper argues that in representing the new urban spaces, these texts critique the modern city but also contribute to the formation of its diverse urban spaces. The paper also detects an emergence of a ‘Beijing discourse’ that focuses on depiction and representation of the city's transformation from the historical/political city to the new global/commercial metropolis, of which the two works under discussion are part. |
