Title : Gao Xingjian’s Bus Stop: Dystopia in Contemporary China

Author(s) : Nipon Sasipanudej

Pages : 49-70

Abstract in English : This article aims to discuss how Gao
Xingjian recontextualizes European
dystopianism into China under Mao
Zedong’s ideological manipulation of
“utopia,” which the latter adopted from
Karl Marx. The theme of absurd eternal
waiting for a bus in Bus Stop is technically
employed to criticize the Chinese dream of
utopia and the idea of utopia itself as a
whole. When the theme of waiting in
Waiting for Godot is relocated into a
Chinese context, it diverts from Western
drama by means of Gao Xingjian's
dramaturgical innovation as a blend of the
East and the West. The absurdity in Bus
Stop makes Chinese utopian desire
fetishized as an eternal but ubiquitous zero,
and becomes naked politics as utopia for
desire and desire for utopia.