Going to the Video Hall: A Sensory Encounter with a New Urban Space in Post-Mao China

abstract: Against the rising tide of marketization sweeping across China in the 1980s and 1990s, many people sought profitability by opening up private video exhibition sites to showcase bootleg videotapes. By drawing on a wide range of written sources and material artifacts—including interviews, fictional works, and photographs—this article pays special attention to how the experience of going to the video hall was remembered by the video-goers. Through an investigation into Chinese people's multisensory encounters with the video hall, this article calls for a contextualized reevaluation of such a prominent urban space against post-Mao China's turn to market reform.