The "Reform Era" (1979-present) in China has been a time of massive social and economic change, and has witnessed China's transition from socialism to capitalism. This book focuses on how this period of change has been constructed in the films of Jia Zhangke through analyzing the five class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in his films. It examines how the figures' representation and the films' cinematography create what Raymond Williams terms "structures of feeling" feelings that concretize around a particular time and place which are captured and evoked in art and culture. The book argues that Jia's cinema should be understood not just as narratives that represent Chinese social transition and the director's changing attitudes to them through characters of different social classes, but also as an effort to engage the audience's emotional responses to those figures through representation, symbolism, and the affective experience of specific cinematic tropes. While making specific observations on Jia's films, the book adds to the scholarship about the Reform era by considering how this period's enormous transformations have been "felt," and also opens up many new areas, not only in the existing body of literature about Chinese film, which has mainly taken a political or sociological approach, but also in the larger fields of Chinese visual culture, cultural studies, and the affective qualities of film.

Louis Phillips, a widely published poet, playwright, and short story writer, has written some 50 books for children and adults. Among his published works are: five collections of short stories - A DREAM OF COUNTRIES WHERE NO ONE DARE LIVE (SMU Press), THE BUS TO THE MOON (Fort Schuyler Press), and THE WOMAN WHO WROTE KING LEAR AND OTHER STORIES (Pleasure Boat Studio), FIREWORKS IN SOME PARTICULARS (Fort Schuyler Press), and MUST I WEEP FOR THE DANCING BEAR (Pleasure Boat Studio). HOT CORNER, a collection of his baseball writings, and R.I. P. (a sequence of poems about Rip Van Winkle) from Livingston Press; THE ENVOI MESSAGES, and THE LAST OF THE MARX BROTHERS' WRITERS, full-length plays, (Broadway Play Publishers). His books for children include: THE MAN WHO STOLE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN (Prentice Hall & Camelot Books), THE MILLION DOLLAR POTATO (Simon and Schuster), and HOW TO WRESTLE AN ALLIGATOR (Avon). His sequence of poems - The Time, The Hour, The Solitariness of the Place -was the co-winner in the Swallow's Tale Press competition (1984). Among his published books of poems are: THE KRAZY KAT RAG (Light Reprint Press), BULKINGTON (Hollow Spring Press), THE TIME, THE HOUR, THE TIME, THE HOUR, THE SOLITARINESS OF THE PLACE (Swallow's Tale Press), CELEBRATIONS & BEWILDERMENTS (Fragments Press). He edited BEST LOVED POEMS (Random House) and THE RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF HUMOROUS VERSE. Other books include: GERTRUDE STEIN IN DAYTON & OTHER PLAYS; AMERICAN ELEGIES, and LATE NIGHT IN THE RAIN FOREST (World Audience Publishers) He teaches at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.