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Feng Xiaogang is regarded as the most successful commercial film director since the middle of the 1990s. His films were so popular that they even surpassed imported Hollywood blockbusters at the box office. Critics applauded him for being able to make profitable films, but he was not generally respected as a film director. Some of the critics characterized Feng's film as lacking depth, sincerity, and passion. His films were seen as mechanisms that manipulate audiences to generate and maximize profits. Feng was criticized as not aiming for the best, but aiming for the most profitable. However, a closer look at his films reveals that they are far from mindless escapist productions of a dream factory. Feng's films instead were reflections of the changing socio-political context of Chinese cinema since the mid-1990s and the nation-wide growth of popular cinema wherein the once politically infused cinema that was intended as political propaganda or for international audiences became cinema that addressed the domestic needs of the audiences. This introduction provides an overview of Feng Xiaogang's career. It traces Feng's humble beginnings from being a director with little professional training in scriptwriting and film directing to his growth as one of China's most influential directors. In this section are narratives of how Feng dealt with independent production, censorship, financial difficulties, and competition. Following the chronicle of Feng's rise to being one of China's most influential film directors are reviews of his cinema culled from both English and Chinese publications. This introduction also provides the methodology and the general structure of this study.

This chapter examines how postsocialist China's uneven social and cultural conditions shape the field of commercial filmmaking by focusing on the work of Feng Xiaogang. Before expounding on the relationship between unevenness and commercial filmmaking in Feng's case, the chapter looks at the social space in postsocialist China as represented in his films. It then discusses the major focus of Feng's films—common people's everyday lives—and especially how these characters reflect and respond to the uneven sociocultural features that determine the field of commercial filmmaking. It also considers Feng's use of humor in his films, three of which are A Sigh (2000), Cell Phone (2003), and A World Without Thieves (2004). The chapter shows that the trajectory of Feng's filmography exhibits a possible and effective form of cultural intervention in the age of popular culture. Feng's films reveal a cultural paradox of postsocialist China: while they embed the director's critique of social problems amid uneven conditions, they take advantage of all-encompassing commercialization.

This chapter discusses the emergence of Feng Xiaogang's New Year films despite the film authority's indecision on the functions of cinema in the middle of the 1990s and the deepening industry reform that was aimed toward market demand. Under this circumstance, Feng's New Year films emerged as a compromise with the Party film policy and as a successful exploration of a genre that appealed to the mass audience. In the chapter, the focus is centered on Feng's three New Year films that were produced from 1997 to 2000. All three films share similarities of subject, narrative, and theme. Along with the narrative of these films are detailed analyses that determine their recurring themes, such as the victory of the “little character,” ridicule of the privileged social strata, representations and image of the West and America, and hidden social commentary. By critically looking at Feng's cinema, the “doubleness” in the ideology of his films and his negotiations with the predominant powers of the film industry are revealed.

This conclusion provides a summary of the cultural and historical significance of Feng Xiaogang's cinema. The dual trends of resistance and cooperation co-existing in Feng's cinema became the distinctive feature of Chinese cinema in the new era. Inspired by the success of Feng's New Year films, more than eight New Year films exhibiting the same style were produced by different directors. Aside from mobilizing other directors, the phenomenon of New Year films also extended into other forms of art such as Chinese theatre and TV drama. While Feng became a powerful force in the transformation of Chinese cinema, he also reflected the trajectory of Chinese cinema through the rise and fall of his filmmaking career. His career reflected the experiences of private film production in China since the 1980s—a period marked by China's film authorities' indecision on how to view the function of cinema, the demand for maximizing profit from production companies, and the challenges of a commercialized film industry.

The chapter provides an account of the economic and artistic history of China's comic movie genre, focusing on the 1997 emergence and popularity of Happy-New-Year movies, with an interview with a leading comic actor about successful comedy. Back in 1958 to 1961, when romanticism and hope about the Great Leap Forward movement pervaded, comic films that carried positive messages or satires on the Kuomintang government are widely produced. During the Cultural Revolution, filmmakers stopped making these movies, but in the 1980, when China opened its doors and reformed its economy, the film industry is revitalised. By looking at the Happy-New-Year movies, the authors look at the new humour that emerges.