New rise in Chinese film market vicissitudes (2)

URBANIZATION SWEEPS CINEMAS

Some critics attribute the recent success of domestic films to pulling in a wider audience from the nation's small and medium-sized cities, where going to the cinema has become a way of life quite recently.

Another reason behind the hit, they say, is that films nowadays are "beginning to show the real lives of ordinary people."

"The group of what is called the new urbanites have become regular moviegoers as the urbanization drive sweeps across China," said Liu Haibo, an associate professor from the Film School of Shanghai University.

"New urbanites" refers to young people born in the late 1980s who live in second- and third-tier cities and demand a richer cultural life as their formerly under-developed home cities become more modern, according to Liu.

Ye Xindai was one such new urbanite. Born in a small village in Yongchun Township of Fuzhou City, in east China's Fujian Province, he is now a film critic based in Beijing.

"Cinemas in my hometown are closely following the footsteps of big cities nowadays, and a growing number of young people spend weekends and holidays seeing movies," said Ye, 22.

In the early 1990s, when he was still a teenager, cinemas in his remote hometown were mostly on the verge of closing down, as young people back then would rather kill time in video rooms or at home watching pirated DVDs.

Ye himself only entered a cinema for the first time in 2002, when he was attending Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, capital of the rich eastern province of Zhejiang.

The ticket cost him 30 yuan, which could otherwise have bought about 30 bowls of noodles then, Ye remembered.

Today, however, many young urbanites do not hesitate to fork out 80 yuan for a seat in a multiplex.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's urban population increased by 20.96 million annually from 2002 to 2011, with about 51.3 percent of Chinese living in cities by the end of 2011.

As 10 new screens are being installed each day and cinemas are gaining popularity in small and medium-sized cities, the nation of 15,000 screens has become the world's second-largest film market after the United State.

Statistics from a survey by Entgroup Consulting in 2012 suggested that China's 284 third- and fourth-tier cities accounted for 34 percent of the country's total ticket sales, while the first-tier cites accounted for 37 percent.

The survey suggested the market share of smaller cities would rise to 42 percent by the end of 2015, as markets in bigger cities had mostly saturated.

Domestic movies were particularly welcomed in the third- and fourth-tier cities, the survey report said.

Young people in these emerging cities are mostly optimistic about -- and interested in -- domestic films, and this promises a rosy market outlook, according to Shi Chuan, vice president of the Shanghai Film Association and a professor at Shanghai University.

Peter Chan, the Hong Kong film director who shot drama "American Dreams in China," said he felt the majority of Chinese, who were more likely to choose cost-efficient blockbusters in the past decade, had changed and were more thirsty to see their lives and dreams represented on screen.

"The Chinese are nowadays more confident to see dramas based on their own lives," Chan said.