During the 1980s and 1990s, postsocialist China saw a rise in issues of urbanization, migration, and urban-rural disparities to accompany the reforms to the socialist economic system. In this article, I place the film Xinjiang Boy Comes to Guangzhou (Guangzhou laile xinjiangwa, 1995) by Wang Jin in the frameworks of postsocialism and urban cinema to analyze how the representations of ethnic minorities engage with the dynamics of the above social issues. Based on a true incident, the film tells the harrowing story of a Uyghur boy from Xinjiang wandering in Guangzhou, and his eventual return home with the help of local news. I argue that by depicting the protagonist as constantly drifting in different urban spaces, this film not only exposes the structural inequality between Guangzhou and Xinjiang, but demonstrates the language gap, the living conditions, and the identity crisis Uyghur migrants face when entering the city. In addition, Uyghur migrants’ views of the city change as they interact with the local community. This individual-level interaction echoes the discourses of national solidarity (minzu tuanjie) promoted in official media, mediating the tension between ethnic minority migrants and locals.
Wenxin Li (2025) studied this question.