How Wee Ng 2026. The Tremulous Hand Lifting Spirits: Contending Tongsu and Vulgarisation in Yearnings. in: How Wee Ng (ed.) The Chinese Censorship Discourse on Television Dramas: Worrying about the Audience in Postsocialist China Routledge.
| Chapter title | The Tremulous Hand Lifting Spirits: Contending Tongsu and Vulgarisation in Yearnings |
|---|---|
| Authors | How Wee Ng |
| Editors | How Wee Ng |
| Abstract | the landmark television drama Yearnings (Kewang 渴望, 1990). As the first widely popular series of the postsocialist era, Yearnings became a flashpoint in debates over tongsuhua (popularisation), with state authorities promoting it as xiwenlejian—“pleasurable to hear and enjoyable to watch”—while cultural elites condemned it as disu (vulgar) and ideologically suspect. Drawing on the phrase “the tremulous hand lifting spirits,” this chapter explores how censorship operated not merely through prohibition but via affective orchestration and political rehabilitation. Elevated within the Anti-Pornography Campaign as a morally upright tongsu work, Yearnings was positioned as a remedy for “yellow” culture. Mapping the discourse on tongsuhua, this chapter shows how Yearnings and other commercially successful dramas became sites for negotiating new aesthetic and ideological norms. In the aftermath of Tiananmen, tongsu emerged as a criterion for exemplary television—emotionally resonant yet ideologically disciplined. If censorship is justified by fears over social instability, then the state’s enthusiastic endorsement of Yearnings despite its mass fervour calls into question the regime’s strategic willingness to permit, and even harness, forms of collective fanatic excess. |
| Book title | The Chinese Censorship Discourse on Television Dramas: Worrying about the Audience in Postsocialist China |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 22 Jan 2026 |
| ISBN | 9781003471684 |
| 9781032749549 | |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003471684-5 |
| Web address (URL) | https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003471684-5 |