When I was first asked to pick a film and create a globalizational analysis of a film, at first, I was scared of the assignment. After the majority of the class chose “Slumdog Millionaire” as their film, I wanted to pick a different path, so I chose “Beijing Bicycle”. Almost from the first frame of the movie, we are shown the obvious love affair between two very different young men over a simple mountain bike.
The story begins when two boys’ fates become tangled in each other’s due to the bicycle. The first boy, Jian, is a student from Beijing. His father has remarried and he has a new stepsister. The family does not have much money, but the extra money they do save, goes toward his stepsister’s education. The other boy, Guei, comes from rural poverty; recetnly has earned a coveted bicycle courier job. The courier company provides him with a top-notch bicycle, but he must pay for it in payment installments. These installments are deducted from his earnings, which are decided on a gradual basis per delivery. For each delivery, the company gets 80% and Guei keeps the rest. Jian, the other boy, has long been promised a bicycle by his father, but his newly blended family moves the father to give priority to his stepdaughter’s needs as an honor student. In turn, his father repeatedly goes back on his promise to his son. Jian desires a bicycle so he can fit in at school and with his friends, which are bike obsessed, and so he can woo a pretty classmate, Xiao. Just as Guei has earned the title to his bicycle, it is stolen and sold to an unsuspecting Jian.
Both boys feel a pressure to fit in amongst society. Jian amongst his classmates, and Guei so he could afford a proper home. Because of this pressure, they have desire and need for a bicycle. This need leaves them both wanting something neither can afford on their own. This relates to a term coined by the Chinese mass media and paparazzi, globalization. Globalization is often the spread of Western ideas and the need or desire for something. In “Slumdog Millionaire,” it was the choice for Jamal. Was it worth falling and landing in the feces filled water to get a signed picture by his favorite Bollywood actor? Moreover, if it was, was it still worth it after his brother turned around and sold it? In “Beijing Bicycle”, both boys are willing to go to the ends of the earth for “his” bicycle.
To keep his courier job, Guei is forced into creativity to find his bike. He attempts to steal a new bike but is caught by security. He loses his job, but is promised it back if he locates his bicycle. He eventually locates his bicycle but is beaten up when he tries to steal it back. In all honesty, he does not speak up much about how it is rightfully his, but his determination is encouraging. Jian, being unaware he bought a stolen bike, things Guei is the theif. Both boys feel a rightful ownership to the bike. Nevertheless, both boys also feel a loss when the other takes it. This bike represents the disorienting effect that economic modernization and consumerism have had in China. Both boys feel that without the bike, they would be incomplete in society’s eyes. Jian could not successfully woo the pretty classmate, Xiao, and Guei could not keep his courier job, which would force him back to the rural, poor countryside to live.
When Da Huan, another boy, successfully woos Xiao because he has a bike that is not stolen, Jian becomes jealous. When Jian is then teased by the same classmate, he snaps. He picks up a brick and strikes Da Huan in the head. Jian’s need to fit in with his classmates and his desire for Xiao, make him feel impotent and inadequate compared to his wealthier classmates. His own feelings of failure force him into violence and almost death of another classmate.
When Da Huan recovers, he finds and attacks not only Jian in retribution, but also Guei for believing they were in it together. After the boys finish pummeling Jian and Guei, another boy stays behind to destroy the bicycle. After pleading with him to stop, Guei, in a moment of pride and anger, picks up a brick, and hits this boy in the head. When the bicycle is dropped, as the boy does to the ground, Guei picks up the bent bicycle and limps home with his trophy. He risked his life to get his bicycle back and he would stop at nothing, including extreme violence, to get it back.
Within the movie, there is also a smaller subplot of Guei and Mantis, Guei’s friend and property owner. They often spend some of their time observing Qin, an attractive young woman who lives in the large house above them. Both men believe Qin is a rich city girl who owns a large number of clothes, but they notice she does not seem content or happy with her life. They find out later that she is a not a rich woman, but in fact, a maid, who simply likes to dress herself in her boss’s clothes when she is home alone. Qin felt the need to wear her employer’s clothes so the world would look at her differently. She too felt the desire for material possessions to elevate her status in life.
In “The Beijing Bicycle”, two stories paint an alarming cityscape, where nothing positive happens, where the wondeful façade of globalization appears to the underpriveleged boys. Both are teased with the process of something better. Something, which never happens.
Works Cited
Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality: The South Atlantic Quarterly - Volume 100, Number 3, Summer 2001, pp. 627-658
Letteri, Richard. "Realism, Hybridity, and the Construction of Identity in Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle." Asian Studies 1 Jan. 207. Web.
Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism: Speculations on Capitalism's Nature Public Culture - Volume 12, Number 2, Spring 2000, pp. 351-374
Zhang, Yingjin. "Remapping Beijing." Editorial. Other Cities, Other World 2007. Web. 08 May 2010.
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