Feng Xiaogang’s Assembly is a war drama about the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). Produced by a state-run studio, the film is based on a real account of a veteran army captain upholding his company honor. After almost twenty years, the theme of “revolutionary struggle” is once again returning to China’s silver screen. This lecture uses the text of Assembly to discuss one of the most important cultural developments in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the re-configuration of both scholarly and popular consciousness about modern and contemporary Chinese history.