From Seeing to Perceiving: The Audiovisual Construction and Embodied Experience of Rural Space in Documentaries

Qu Lei — 2025-11-04

This paper discusses some recent Chinese documentaries with rural themes. These documentaries use audiovisual codes to help audiences move from “seeing” spaces physically to “sensing” multidimensional spaces, triggering embodied experiences. Owing to a general tendency to focus on “what kind of space is depicted” in documentaries, scholars have systematically neglected the basic link of “how they trigger audiences’ sensory experiences”. Taking some recent documentaries including Remembering Nostalgia and Beautiful Countryside as examples, this paper intends to argue that there is a central argument in these documentaries: That is, documentaries “guide” viewers visually and “envelop” them aurally, making them an attractive textual body. That is, first, visually, mobile shots “guide” audiences to experience space as if they were “walking”, close-ups “stimulate” audiences to feel emotions, and changes in lighting effect create spatial atmosphere, which turn viewers from merely “seers” of spaces into active “explorers” of spaces. Second, aurally, a carefully designed soundscape and affective voice-over create a surrounding acoustic space that “envelops” audiences. In sum, the entire audiovisual strategy not only depicts images of countryside, but also effectively “mobilizes” viewers’ bodily memories and affective feelings to trigger embodied experiences, that is, “being there”. By exploring the sensory aesthetics and experiential construction in documentaries, this paper reveals how documentaries can help audiences leap from “seeing” spaces to “sensing”.

The Politics of the Female Body: Reproductive Control and Sexual Censorship in China

Ruining Shi — 2025-11-04

This article examines how the Chinese state’s governance of reproduction and sexual expression forms a gendered mode of biopolitical control, and why the recent shift from one-child restriction to two- and three-child encouragement has not led to greater bodily autonomy for women. Using feminist legal and human-rights critique alongside Foucauldian biopolitics, the study conducts discourse analysis across laws and policy documents, curricular and health materials, and platform governance rules.

The findings show that reproductive policy has changed techniques rather than logic. The state continues to determine which reproductive needs become recognised rights, aligning fertility with demographic and developmental priorities. At the same time, policy, media and administrative practice produce an “ideal woman” grounded in marriage, childbearing and care, while sexual expression is regulated through de-sexualised knowledge, platform soft control and selective punitive sanctions. The article contributes a mechanism-level account linking reproductive governance and sexual censorship and proposes a rights-centered framework for evaluating policy outcomes.

Studies in Social Science & Humanities

From Seeing to Perceiving: The Audiovisual Construction and Embodied Experience of Rural Space in Documentaries

The Politics of the Female Body: Reproductive Control and Sexual Censorship in China