(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
Dwelling Narrowness:
Chinese Media and its Disingenuous Neoliberal Logic
Haiqing Yu
University of New South Wales
In late 2009, a 33-episode television drama called Dwelling Narrowness (Wo Ju) hit
Chinese television and became an immediate runaway success among Chinese
television audience. This TV drama tells of the struggles, twists and turns in the lives
of two Guo sisters who take different paths to escape their plight as “mortgage slaves”
in a fictional metropolis modelled on Shanghai. Haiping, the elder sister, struggles to
stay in the metropolis after graduating from a top university and to buy a home so she
can live with her husband and daughter who has to be sent to their hometown to be
raised by grandparents. Skyrocketing real estate prices push the dream to buy a new
home further and further away from the couple who will have to spend two-thirds of
their combined monthly income to pay the mortgage on a tiny apartment. While
finance becomes a major source of conflict in the relationship of Haiping and her
husband, the younger sister Haizao, who followed her sister to stay in the city, steps
in to help by becoming the mistress of a high-ranking official in the city major’s
office, forsaking her boyfriend with whom she has a de facto relationship. The two
sisters meet different outcomes: Haizao suffers a miscarriage and has her uterus taken
out after being attacked by her lover’s wife, while her lover commits suicide after
being found guilty of corruption; Haiping eventually moves into her apartment,
reunites with her daughter and opens a Chinese language school for foreigners. The
elder sister’s wish to own a home triggers off a series of events in three relationships
(married, de facto, and extramarital) and opens up a microcosm of urban lives in
contemporary China.
The TV drama focuses on the lives of “white collars” (represented by the Guo sisters)
but also features people of different social statuses, including government officials,
business people, laid-off workers, and mistresses. It touches upon some of the most
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