Haunted Chinese Gay Identity

This chapter examines the construction of Chinese gay identity in a popular queer online fiction titled Beijing Story. Drawing on the Derridian notion of “hauntology”, I propose to read the novel as a social critique of postsocialist China in the context of globalization and neoliberalism. I highlight the intersections between sexuality, masculinity, and class in the narrative, and the potential productivity of paying more attention to the issue of class in queer subject formation in contemporary China. I also emphasize the crucial role of the transnational, as well as historical forms of homoeroticism and recent historical memories of revolution and reconstruction, in constructing contemporary gay identity in China. In doing so, I critically assess the role of “queer Marxism” (Liu 2015) in a transnational Chinese context.

Introduction

This chapter outlines transnational masculinities as a field of Study, and scholarship on transnationally inflected representations of Chinese masculinity and transnationally mobile Chinese men. It identifies three key key characteristics in the scholarly literature on Chinese masculinities in the context of globalization. First, the concept of cosmopolitanism is being increasingly used to explore the localization of globally circulating ideas and images in Chinese masculinities. Second, China’s integration with global financial and trading systems, which has been particularly pronounced since the 1990s, has forced the historically dominant intellectual or scholar-official (shi士‎) class to reconcile itself with the business activities traditionally carried out by the merchant (shang商‎) class. Third, the transnational circulation of models of emotionally expressive and caring fatherhood is significantly influencing Chinese discourses and practices of fathering. Through a detailed analysis of the other chapters in the volume, this chapter argues that it is possible to identify five broad patterns in the transformations of Chinese transnational masculinities: the embrace of localized cosmopolitan masculinities that are part-founded on historical notions and practices of Chinese masculinity; the enmeshment of intellectuals in business markets; emotionally engaged styles of fathering and intimate partnership; romantic involvement with non-Chinese women; and widespread anxiety and sensitivity about perceptions of Chinese masculinity. This chapter concludes that Chinese men are not unique in having to face such issues in transnational contexts; but, as the other chapters in this volume demonstrate, they negotiate them in unique—yet explainable—ways.

“North American Despicable Man”

This chapter investigates the cultural politics involved in the emergence and prevalence of the online epithet of “North American despicable man” (or “beimei weisuo nan” in Chinese and “NAWSN” in short). Combining virtual ethnography and off-line fieldwork research and informed by critical theories of masculinity studies and new media studies, this chapter explores the ways in which race, class, and nationality intersect in constructing and negotiating the cultural meanings of “NAWSN” within overseas Chinese online community. It argues that the emergence and popularity of the notion of “NAWSN” should be understood as a social process of “double emasculation” that feminizes and emasculates well-educated recent Chinese immigrant men with non-elite backgrounds in the United States. A full understanding of the cultural construction of newly emerging forms of Chinese masculinity requires us to attend to not just the gender ideological field in both China and the United States, but also to the transnational dimensions of its construction. Through confronting the “NAWSN” image online, the Chinese immigrant men attempt to compensate for the lack or loss of power in real life, but ironically reinforce the social prejudice against Chinese men and help perpetuate male dominance in the United States.

Just Fathers

This chapter explores how perceptions of masculinity play into the ways in which Chinese migrant fathers in Africa perceive and perform parental care from afar. Migration not only redefines institutional structures of the family, it also changes or challenges existing notions of parenthood. Separated from their family members, migrant fathers are compelled to negotiate notions of fatherhood and effectively “re-do” gender from afar. Ideas of fatherhood are very salient in contexts of transnational migration, in which ideas about what makes a “just” father often reflect differences in perspective among migrants as well as between migrants and non-migrant kin. By negotiating Chinese fatherhood, men attempt to bridge gaps between the reality of family separation and the expectations of parental duty and care.

Distant Husbands, Masculine Helpers

Flexible citizenship is an increasingly popular transnational arrangement among middle to upper class Chinese families. The residential arrangements associated with this family strategy often involve some family members (usually the wives and children) going abroad and other members (usually the husbands) primarily living in the origin country. This article examines the production of masculinity in this context. Adopting participant observation and interviews, this study examines families participating in birth tourism in Los Angeles, United States, one of the most prominent forms of the Chinese family strategy of flexible citizenship. The findings illustrate the ways in which masculinities of Chinese men in this context are largely classed and constantly caught in tension. One the one hand, the husbands living in China express a constant need to reassure their dominant position over their wives and the male domestic helpers in the US. On the other hand, the Chinese male helpers in LA find themselves often having to renegotiate their own masculinity which is threatened by the male employers’ assertion of power and by the fact that domestic work involves care and emotional labour which is largely feminized.

Order Restored? Chinese Masculinities in the German Crime Television Series Tatort

This chapter studies the depiction of Chinese protagonists in the crime series Tatort, the most extensive and longest-running fictional television program in the German-speaking countries. The analysis takes four episodes between 1991 and 2013 as case studies, arguing that different images of Chinese characters, and in particular Chinese men, have created some of the most daring and destabilizing scenarios in the series. Carefully negotiating the rules of both the genre of the detective narrative and the serial form, these episodes stage a narrative cycle of crime and solution, crisis and recovery, which is significantly placed within the realm of masculinities. The episodes thus allow unique insights into the ways popular media have confronted and reflected European anxieties facing China’s growing and threatening power in the world since the 1990s.

Idealizing Masculinity through Representation of Fatherhood

This chapter examines the representations of masculinity in a recent Chinese reality TV show Dad, Where Are We Going?, which is based on the original South Korean show of the same title. By closely examining its portrayal of five father-son and father-daughter pairs, the essay observes a twofold construction of masculinity in the show’s transcultural format adaptation. On the one hand, the show’s representation of affectionate and expressive father figures reframes and hybridizes traditional scripts of Chinese masculinity by incorporating pan-East Asian soft masculinity. On the other hand, as I point out, its modes of representation betray an underlying logic that recapitulates the dominance of a bread-winning model of hegemonic masculinity and the gendered division of labor. As a result, whereas the show expands on notions of Chinese masculinity, its portrayal of fatherhood as a whole remains ideologically conservative and serves largely as a televisual compensation for the general absence of active and desirable father figures in contemporary mainland China.

Tasting Food, Tasting Nostalgia

In this chapter, I use Cai Lan (aka Chua Lam), a Hong Kong–based food critic, as a case study to examine the construction of masculine identity through gastronomic literature. Cai integrates a cosmopolitan outlook and traditional literati sensibilities into his work, and he draws upon both world-based culinary knowledge and locally based individual experience. His contrasting strategies of simultaneously elevating local cuisine and promoting cosmopolitan taste through literature and commerce ultimately reveal a form of identity politics at a particular historical moment in Hong Kong.

Persona, Politics, and Chinese Masculinity in Japan

Through an exploration of one Chinese man’s efforts to navigate masculinities in Japan, this chapter conceptualises how masculine persona change. Li Xiaomu first gained notoriety as a guide to, and commentator on, Japan’s red light district, Kabukicho. Often exacerbating negative perceptions of Chinese-ness in Japan, Li’s masculine performances coopted hegemonic associations between Chinese men and underworld crime in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More recently however, Li has moved to perform other hegemonic masculinities through his new persona as a respectful politician and advocate for diversity in Japan. Based on ethnographic and media-text analyses of Li’s complex public persona, this chapter interrogates what it means for Chinese men to strive towards a cosmopolitanism ethos in transnational contexts.

Global and Local Phallic Creativity

Feng Tang 馮唐‎ (born 1971) is a self-proclaimed ‘audacious’ author whose work has been described as highly ‘masculine’. This chapter considers Feng’s construction of masculinity in his writing and in his own behaviour as a public figure, focusing in particular on Feng’s repeated reference to other writers and texts, both Chinese and Western. It suggests that the significance of this transnational intertextuality lies in Feng’s attempt to construct and perform a cosmopolitan form of manhood that draws on local and non-local models, and which is literary, subversive, and virile. Despite his reputation for renegade innovation, however, Feng ultimately returns masculinity to the centre of a global literary space, placing women in a marginalized position.