This study sheds new light on Feng Xiaogang, one of China's most successful film directors, through an investigation of how Personal Tailor (2013) engages with the guiding rhetoric and ideals underpinning the "Chinese Dream". The authors demonstrate how the hybrid political-commercial-artistic critique of the Chinese Dream in Personal Tailor offers poignant commentary on China's quest for national rejuvenation during a period when China continues to struggle with increasing social and economic inequalities. By foregrounding these complex tensions between political and economic rationalism, and their intersections with an imagined nostalgia as a key story-telling trope, this study shows how Feng and Personal Tailor are expanding the boundaries of contemporary Chinese cinema in a new era of globalized commercial culture.
It seems like a contradiction at first, a glaring anomaly. But There is a Fish in the Desert has a style resembling ancient myth and allegory, providing a unique insight with vivid imagination, says Ka Bun, from Hong Kong company Alishan-Cloud E-commerce Co, publisher of the upcoming traditional Chinese version of the novel.