Abstract
According to Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, in the 1990s 'the mushrooming culture industry-TV serials, soap operas, pop music, and bestsellers-were easily accessible and had great appeal to the vast population of China ' (1996: 152). This continued into the new millennium, when China's capitalist economy matured and the popular culture industry gradually dominated the contemporary Chinese cultural landscape. In 2007, Li Ke's white-collar workplace novel Du Lala Shengzhiji (henceforth A Story of Lala's Promotion) became a bestseller among Chinese white-collar workers in foreign-owned (Western) companies. 1 The novel also struck a chord with the Chinese middle class. Although foreign-owned and -operated enterprises and associated company culture are not new economic or cultural phenomena in China, detailed examinations of the lives of Chinese workers in these organisations were not widely available in textual or visual creative works until relatively recently. Li Ke's novel thus represented a breakthrough cultural text. Since its release in 2007, A Story of Lala's Promotion has ranked at the top of the bestseller lists for 88 weeks on Dangdang Web-Dangdang Web being one of the most popular on-line shopping websites in China. In 2008 its sequel As Time Goes By (Nianhua Sishui) was published and in 2010, another sequel, In This Struggling Year (Wo Zai Zhe Zhandou de Yinian Li), was released. Also in 2010, the film adaptation of A Story of Lala's Promotion, Du Lala Shengzhiji (Dir. Xu Jinglei, henceforth Go Lala 1 The author Li Ke has worked in various roles including as a salesperson and HR officer for world top-500 companies for ten years. As she indicates in the prologue of the book, she wants to share her experiences and provide her readers with information that is easy to understand and remember, practical, interesting and widely applicable. In other words, she hopes that A Story of Lala's Promotion, despite being a novel, will also become a classic career textbook for those who work in foreign enterprises. Go!) by the well-known Beijing-based actor-writer-director, Xu Jinglei, was shown in cinemas. A television-drama adaptation based on the same novel also aired in that year. The total box-office revenue of the film reached 100 million RMB (some USD16 million) within days of its release, while the television show also enjoyed huge popularity. A Story of Lala's Promotion describes the business and cultural landscape of a foreignowned company operating in a Chinese social milieu, with particular attention paid to operational mechanisms, company culture, human resource (HR) management and interpersonal relations. Focusing on a group of core characters-Du Lala (HR and administration manager), David (major clients department sales director), Lester (HR director) and Howard (CEO of the Chinese company)-the novel revolves around office politics, Western company culture, the lifestyle of white-collar workers, middle-class aesthetics and the 'shengnu' (shelved ladies) phenomenon. 'Shelved ladies' is a new term in China that denotes single women in their late twenties or early thirties, whose employment and income are high enough to provide them with economic independence and social status (Cao 2010: 56). To decipher the embedded cultural codes of A Story of Lala's Promotion and Go Lala Go! in this paper I have conducted a comparative analysis of three interconnected themes of the novel and the film adaptation. First, I identify the influence of Western company culture and workplace rules on Chinese white-collar workers, under the rubric of an overwhelming economic globalisation, in order to explain how the acculturating process of Western culture is having an impact on its Chinese counterpart. Then I argue that given the opportunities provided by Western enterprises, intelligent and diligent Chinese women familiarise themselves with Western workplace strategies, management systems and corporate culture, which thus ensures their competitive capacities in relation to their male counterparts at work. Consequently, many women reach high management levels, whereas China's workplace culture discriminates against female workers within the context of a developing economy. Second, I examine the achievements of female Chinese white-collar staff in foreign enterprises in terms of their economic independence and self-confidence, and the social respect with which they are held. These achievements also shed some light on the intense social debate around the 'shelved ladies' phenomenon in contemporary China. From a feminist perspective, Du Lala's image and struggle is identifiable with the 'shelved ladies' phenomenon, and her experiences also serve as a metaphor of female individuality and liberation, echoing current trends identified in Chinese feminist studies. Third, I shift my focus to the film adaptation of the novel, which highlights the whitecollar female worker's lifestyle, including the pursuit of luxury goods and well-known Western brands, a phenomenon not dealt with in the original novel depiction. This particular feature of globalising processes at work in China occurs within the domain of consumption, and further consolidates the Westernising trend in and impact of global economic and cultural contacts, particularly in relation to the growing economic independence enjoyed by Chinese middle-class white-collar women. Finally, I argue that the film adaptation of the novel also highlights the Chinese pursuit of a middleclass identity and aesthetic as typified by the lifestyle of the white-collar social strata, itself a mirror to the overwhelming consumerism of post-socialist China.
Showing the abstract — retrieve the full paper via the Exa API.