Between Business and Bureaucrats: Pingtan Storytelling in Maoist and Post-Maoist China

Abstract

This article examines the complex relationship of the state, market, and artists in pingtan storytelling in post-1949 China. By focusing on Su Yuyin, a pingtan storyteller, and his performing career, this article explores the persistence of cultural markets after the Communist victory in 1949 and argues that the market continued to play a significant role in shaping China’s popular culture, which the government was keen on patronizing and politicizing. By comparing the regime’s management of pingtan storytelling before and after the Cultural Revolution (1966—1976), this article further argues that the regime’s censorship of popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s was handicapped by its lack of financial resources and the continued existence of cultural markets. The result was that censorship was not as strictly and efficiently enforced as has been assumed.