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Abstract:
This essay contextualizes the phenomenal success, in the late 1990s, of the Chinese primetime television drama Yongzheng Dynasty. It provides a formal analysis of the show from a comparative perspective and discusses its role in cultivating Chinese primetime drama as an economically viable and a culturally significant enterprise.
Since the mid-1990s, historical serials have dominated dramatic programming on primetime television in China. The trend climaxed in the late 1990s and the early 2000s with palace dramas, or what the Chinese critics termed "Qing dramas," set in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).1 Qing dramas are not a new phenomenon, however. In fact, popular and critically acclaimed TV programs set in the palace of Qing began appearing on Chinese television in the late 1980s, with shows such as The Last Emperor (1988) and Kang-Liang Reformation (1989). But while the Qing dramas of the 1980s focused on the corruption and cultural decline of the late Qing, those in the 1990s and the early 2000s, what I term the revisionist Qing dramas, paid tribute to the prosperity and national unity of the early Qing.
The revisionist Qing dramas, such as Yongzheng Dynasty (1999), Kangxi Dynasty (2001), and Qianlong Dynasty (2003), featured emperors and patriots who served the nation in the face of internal corruption and social injustice as well as external threats, feeding the public s fantasy for a time of heroic figures and landmark events. Fascinated by palace politics and stirred by a desire for an upright polity that never was, the Chinese public genuinely welcomed such dramas, delighting in recognizing their contemporary relevance. Indeed, revisionist Qing dramas have broached such sensitive subjects as government corruption, palace infighting and power struggles, moral cynicism, and public unrest, themes that would otherwise have invited censorship if tackled in dramas with contemporary settings.2 The forty-four-episode Yongzheng Dynasty, directed by Hu Mei (Army Nurse, 1985), a filmmaker turned independent television director and producer, exemplifies this trend.
Yongzheng Dynasty focuses on one of the most controversial Qing dynasty emperors, Yongzheng (Tang Guoqiang). The epitome of integrity and inner strength, Yongzheng forcefully fends off his political opponents, attacks corruption, and fights to protect ordinary people. By presenting him in this way, the show covertly criticizes the state of affairs and power relations in...