Playthings of History: Chinese Cinema and the Realism of Development

Andrew Jones analyzes Sun Yu's 1933 film Playthings (Xiao wanyi), situating it within the context of the Republican-era "National Products" movement as well as discourses on childhood and economic development prevalent in that era. In discussing the film's Darwininian portrayal of the extinction of the native toy industry, he also examines some of the formal and ideological limits of Chinese cinematic realism.

Andrew Jones received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997. His research interests include music, sonic culture, and media technology, modern and contemporary fiction, children's literature, and the cultural history of the Republican period. He is the author of Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Duke University Press, 2001), co-editor of a special issue of positions: east asia cultures critique titled The Afro-Asian Century, and translator of literary works by Yu Hua and Eileen Chang.