从“北京人在纽约”看王起明社会价值观的转变(2)

菜单

1. Introduction“If you love him, bring him to New York, for it’s heaven. If you hate him, bring him to New York, for it’s hell.” This is the most famous line in the whole play -- A Native of Beijing in New York, which is the first TV series taken overseas in China. Since China’s reform and opening up, A Native of Beijing in New York, which describes the emigration fever in the early 90 century, can be called a personal struggling history rather than a television work throughout the history of popular culture and TV communication. It reflects cultural differences between the east and the west, and the pain, helplessness and loss caused by culture collision. A Native of Beijing in New York displays the living situation of natives of Beijing in New York State. As early as ten years ago, it caused a sensation in the whole China and even in America, becoming a classic work in describing the career and emotional journey of the first group of Chinese who went to the United States for gold.

1.1 The Background and Brief Introduction of A Native of Beijing in New York

In the early 1990s, China was in the transition period of the reform and opening up, without a stable social value, which meant people at that time had no clear spiritual pillar, with the appearance of the excessive pursuit of material benefits. Moreover, there was a lack of science and people were superstitious and blind without any social responsibility.

Before and after 1990, the immigrations to the USA became a dream of many Chinese, especially artists. A Native of Beijing in New York is one of the TV series that describe Chinese immigrated to foreign countries to start business. A musician of Beijing called Wang Qiming and his wife Guo Yan came to the longing America finally. However, the life in New York was not as what they thought. After some struggling, Wang Qiming turned into a businessman, and accumulated considerable wealth in just a few years. Nevertheless, looking back, he found it was difficult to calculate gain and loss. Although the smart and pretty woman A Chun became his confidante, his wife Guo Yan companied with his biggest business rival David. Talking about his daughter Ning Ning, who came to the USA after Wang Qiming succeeded, she was completely unable to understand his and Guo Yan’s choice, and made A Chun as a total enemy. Gradually, she began to indulge in taking revenge for what Wang Qiming and Guo Yan did.

1.2 Literature Review

As a special social and cultural work, A Native of Beijing in New York has already attracted people’s attention for a long time, especially in 1993 and 1994. Therefore, studies on A Native of Beijing in New York have been carried out by a large number of scholars. In this literature review, the author will pide the major studies on this topic into three parts, namely the perspective from culture, society and characters.

1.2.1 The Perspective of Culture

Among the early researches on A Native of Beijing in New York, half of them mainly connected with culture, including cultural persity, cultural integration, cultural shock, American Dream and etc.

Early researches on A Native of Beijing in New York had something to do with cultural persity like anthropology and ethnography, among which, He Xiaobin gave his understanding – “Due to different economic production, different group of people had developed various cultures of different types. Cultures of different sectors have different lifestyles, idiomatic language and value systems.” in “Cultural Property of Different Classes in Beijingers in New York” (1993). Nevertheless, when people were in a situation with different culture, they became “the ones with cultural contradictions” (Wang, 1994). Both Liao Quanjin (1994) and Long Chaoling (1994) believed that people would either stick to the original values, or integrate the new culture with the already one.

Then, it came to the next stage of cultural integration and cultural shock. As for cultural integration, Xia Xieshi wrote in “Obstinate Chinese People: Reflection on ‘Natives of Beijing In New York’” (1994): “when original ethical and cultural ideas lose their authoritative binding force in foreign lands, man who is very unfamiliar with foreign cultural significances usually receives some bad habits of low-level society and cultural snack…but someone can’t be regarded as a hybrid of Chinese and American cultures…only in higher cultural level and casting off the yoke of making a living can cultural exchange and fusion occur.” And he took two protagonists Wang Qiming and A Chun as examples. As for cultural shock, both Qi Yinghai (1994) and Yang Zhiming (1994) thought it was unscientific to just copy, and Qi gave the conclusion of not completely westernizing, and Yang negated Wang Qimming as a poor example of cultural shock.