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12
In an interview with Zhang Yaxuan
(2003: 181), Wang Hongwei mentioned
his difficulty in communicating with the
actors playing Xiao Yong and Xiao Wu’s
parents because of language barriers.
13
A TV show that plays songs or music
videos by request is usually called dianshi
diange in China; it was an entertainment
form popular in the 1990s.
other hand, Wang’s difficulty in understanding other actors’ Fenyang
Mandarin makes an interesting parallel with Xiao Wu’s bewilderment over
his surroundings in the film. 12
Music plays as prominent a role as language in Jia’s films. Yueh-yu
Yeh (2002: 79) argues that music is central to Chinese dialect films of the
1930s: “Productions of low-budget dialect films often skipped the process
of recruiting good scripts” and “tended to recycle opera repertoires that
were already familiar to regional audiences.” Jia’s films extensively use the
cheap “wallpaper” of popular music to establish a period scene, although
local Jin opera (Jin ju) is also occasionally used to enhance the regional
flavor of the setting. The leitmotifs of “synchronized” popular songs are
well integrated within the film narrative. In Xiao Wu, the mid-1990s karaoke
hit “Xin yu” (Heart rain) is played several times; this song is a musical
dialogue between a man and his lover who “will become someone else’s
bride tomorrow.” Played on TV as a celebration of Xiao Yong’s wedding 13
and sung by a young duo in front of a funeral parlor, the song is heard
in public in an absurd and incongruous way. Only when Xiao Wu sings it
in private, while bathing, do the lyrics become relevant in conveying the
subjective melancholy of his doomed love affair with a bar escort, who
soon leaves him for more lucrative customers. Here the song functions
empathetically, which, according to Chion (1994: 8), “directly express[es] its
participation in the feeling of the scene.” In a similar vein, Tu Honggang’s
hit song “Bawang bieji” (Farewell to my concubine), which alludes to
the ancient hero Xiang Yu, recurs every time Xiao Wu feels betrayed. We
hear it first when Xiao Wu learns he has not been invited to Xiao Yong’s
wedding, and again in a police station after he is arrested. Xiao Wu not only
watches San Tu denounce him on TV and cheer his arrest, he also finds out
what made his pager suddenly ring while the crime was being carried out,
leading to his capture: it was a weather forecast, rather than a call from
Mei Mei, who had asked him to buy the pager so that she could contact
him. The nondiegetic music in a throbbing beat makes a sharp contrast
174 • The Rhetoric of Local Languages
MCLC 18.2.indd 174
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