This article offers a new theoretical framework to understand nostalgia as a politicaleconomic and a cultural-political discourse in China. Introducing nostalgia as a “structure
of feeling” in postreform China, the article analyzes its elevation as a new trope to
address the economic and cultural contradictions of capitalistic global integration in the
wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. It then traces the trickling down of nostalgia,
from its initial invocation by Xi Jinping to its ideological propagation in major statemedia productions and, finally, down to its appropriation and mobilization at the county
and village levels. Finally, in grounding the research in Heyang Village, Zhejiang
Province, the study demonstrates how, within this discourse of development with
“nostalgia in mind,” a contentious enterprise of nostalgic tourism has figured as the
centerpiece for rural development plans; Heyang’s future is now entangled in a
contextually specific enterprise of the economy of nostalgia.