Abstract
The transition from socialism to postsocialism was accompanied by a change in the valuation of labor; and rural manual labor was considered low-value labor in the age of market economy. In this essay, I explore how mental labor and manual labor are represented as new forms of human perception and affective expressions in an age of high technology and mass production by examining the celebrated filmmaker Zhang Yimou's fin-de-siècle feature film Wode fuqin muqin/The Road Home (1999). In the film, manual labor is not toil that indicates backwardness; rather, it gains an artisanal and sentimental quality, and simultaneously is freed of hardship. This essay argues that the quotidian details manifested in manual work are the very locus of the sincerity and depth of human sentiment that can revalorize manual labor. The qualities embodied in craftsmanship defined by devotion, concentration, earnestness, and immersive attention, as well as artisanal virtuosity, demonstrate the intimate connection between hand and head. Set in the socialist period, the film is not so much a nostalgic memory of socialist intimacy and innocence as a narrative deploying rural manual labor as a useful resource to envision the coming of the postindustrial society in China.
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