The cosmopolitan dream : transnational Chinese masculinities in a global age 9789888455478, 9888455478

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“A pioneering contribution toward understanding transnational Chinese masculinities. Covering both imagined representations and the actual experience of migrating Chinese men, this volume is definitely greater than the sum of its parts in conveying the contents and significance of cosmopolitanism to Chinese masculinities.” —Harriet Zurndorfer, Leiden University

The Cosmopolitan Dream presents the broad patterns in the transformations of mainland Chinese masculinity over recent years, covering both representations (in film, fiction, and on television) and the lived experiences of Chinese men on four continents. Exposure to transnational influences has made Chinese notions of masculinity more cosmopolitan than ever before, yet the configurations of these hybrid masculinities retain the imprint of Chinese historical models.

counterparts. Therefore it is important to examine various types of masculinity with the recent, reform-era mainland Chinese migration. The migrant man—whether he is a worker, student, pop idol, or writer (all cases studied in this volume)—could face challenges to his masculinity based on his race, class, intimate partners, or fatherhood. The strategies adopted by the Chinese men to reinvent their masculine identities in these stories offer much insight into the complex connections between masculinity and the rapid socioeconomic developments of postsocialist China.

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“The Cosmopolitan Dream provides a rich and multidisciplinary window into how Chinese masculinities are both shaping and being shaped by a new era of globalization, one in which circulations of Chinese capital, images, and people play an ever more important role. This is an insightful and engaging work that makes important contributions to the study of media, gender, migration, and globalization more broadly.” —John Osburg, University of Rochester

With the increasing interconnectivity of markets around the world, the hegemonic mode of manhood is now a highly mobile transnational business form of masculinity. However, the fusion of this kind of cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics has not diminished the conventional class and gender privileges for educated men. On the other hand, the traditionally prized intellectual masculinity in Chinese culture, which did not hold commerce in high regard, has reconciled with today’s business values. Together these factors shape the outlook of the contemporary generation of Chinese elites. At the same time globalization has increased the cross-country mobility of blue-collar Chinese men, who may possess a masculine ideal that is different from their white-collar

Derek Hird is a senior lecturer in Chinese studies at Lancaster University, UK. Geng Song is an associate professor in the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. They edit the “Transnational Asian Masculinities” book series for Hong Kong University Press.

Gender Studies / Cultural Studies / China

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Transnational Asian Masculinities Series Editors: Derek Hird (Lancaster University) and Geng Song (University of Hong Kong) The first book series in the world on this topic, Transnational Asian Masculinities explores the representations and lived realities of Asian masculinities in their transnational dimensions. Books in this series use interdisciplinary perspectives and interrogate diverse textual, visual, and ethnographic materials. They illuminate the specificities of Asian masculinities in global contexts and question some of the assumptions of Euro-American theorizing on masculinities. By approaching Asianness through ethnicity, nationality, and location—encompassing men’s, women’s, queer, and trans masculinities—this series unpacks the tangled assemblages of local and transnational circulations of people, ideas, and objects that have shaped Asian masculinities in all eras.

Books in the series: Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men Edited by Kam Louie The Cosmopolitan Dream: Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age Edited by Derek Hird and Geng Song

The Cosmopolitan Dream

Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age

Edited by Derek Hird and Geng Song

Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong www.hkupress.hku.hk © 2018 Hong Kong University Press ISBN 978-988-8455-85-0 (Hardback) All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound by China Translation & Printing Services Ltd., Hong Kong, China

Contents

Introduction: Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age Derek Hird and Geng Song Part I.  Representing Chinese Men Transnationally 1. Cosmopolitanism with Chinese Characteristics: Transnational Male Images in Chinese TV Dramas Geng Song

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2. Order Restored? Chinese Masculinities in the German Crime Television Series Tatort 40 Arnhilt Johanna Hoefle 3. Transnational Chinese Masculinity in Film Representation Sheldon Lu

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4. Haunted Chinese Gay Identity: Sexuality, Masculinity, and Class in Beijing Story 73 Hongwei Bao 5. A Free Life: Transnational Reconstruction of Chinese Wen Masculinity Lezhou Su 6. Global and Local Phallic Creativity: Intertextuality in Feng Tang’s Construction of Masculinity Pamela Hunt Part II.  Enacting Transnational Chinese Masculinities 7. Persona, Politics, and Chinese Masculinity in Japan: The Case of Li Xiaomu Jamie Coates 8. Tasting Food, Tasting Nostalgia: Cai Lan’s “Culinary Masculinity” Jin Feng

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9. Idealizing Masculinity through Representation of Fatherhood: Negotiating Transcultural Masculinities in Dad, Where Are We Going? 161 Lin Song 10. Just Fathers: Negotiating Chinese Fatherhood from Afar Miriam Driessen

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11. Distant Husbands, Masculine Helpers: Men, Masculinity, and Sexuality in the Family Strategy of Flexible Citizenship Tingyu Kang

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12. “North American Despicable Man”: Race, Class, and the (Re)making of Chinese Diasporic Masculinities in the United States Xia Zhang

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List of Contributors 237 Index 240

Introduction Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age Derek Hird and Geng Song

Why is it important to study contemporary Chinese men and masculinities from a transnational perspective? One good reason is that in today’s globalizing world concepts of Chinese masculinity and Chinese men themselves are increasingly part of transnational circulations of people, ideas, images, and objects. Another is that the ongoing integration of post-Mao China into global capitalist markets has led in turn to the increasing influence of Chinese men and masculinities across the world. The impetus of globalization inflects the configurations of masculinities in China’s postsocialist era with transnational dimensions: the resulting hybrid masculinities of Chinese men in China and elsewhere cannot be ignored. This volume addresses these issues with the following aims: to highlight some of the most significant transnational aspects of contemporary Chinese men and masculinities; to show how these aspects are imbricated with other more locally embedded notions and practices of masculinity; and to explore the significance of these shifts for the Chinese gender order.1 The essays in this book are united through three key principles: a truly global perspective on Chinese masculinities, an openness to multiple disciplinary approaches across the humanities and social sciences, and a keen awareness of the imprint of historical models of Chinese masculinities on current formulations. These principles provide a solid foundation for the study of representations and lived realities of transnational Chinese masculinities, and the interplay between these two realms. Geographically, the essays in this book cover four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. They garner their source materials variously from interviews, everyday life interactions, films, internet sites, books (fiction and nonfiction), and television (drama series and reality shows). With an eye on history, they show how Confucian masculinities and elite practices, reworked and hybridized, echo across the discourses and everyday lives of contemporary Chinese men and masculinities. 1. We are very grateful for the financial support of the British Academy’s International Partnership and Mobility Scheme (2014/15).

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We have tried to cover as wide a range of contemporary transnational Chinese masculinities as possible, but there are inevitably some limitations and lacunae. One self-imposed editorial restriction was to concentrate on men born and bred in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), so as to provide a coherent national background for the masculinities under analysis in diverse contexts. This focus precludes attention to transnational Chinese men from Sinophone nations and populations beyond the PRC, including earlier established overseas Chinese communities (e.g., immediate postwar migrants and overseas-born Chinese), but we made a partial exception in the case of the Singapore-born gourmet Cai Lan 蔡瀾 (born 1941) who has become a naturalized Chinese citizen. Businessmen, white-collar men, blue-collar men, as well as male authors, entertainment stars, and students feature across the chapters, representing a wide range of urban socioeconomic backgrounds. Ethnically, the men and masculinities in the essays are all Han Chinese, which partly reflects Han dominance of China’s population (92 percent) and the prevailing focus on Han masculinities in Chinese masculinities studies. As for sexuality, the focus of one chapter is gay identities and practices; the other essays cover heterosexual discourses and the experiences of heterosexual-identified men. But we do regret the resulting lacunae: men from rural areas and smaller towns, men from non-Han ethnicities, men with nonnormative sexualities other than gay, and masculinities enacted by women. We hope that future research will build on existing relevant scholarly work (e.g., Boretz 2010; Dautcher 2009; Hillman and Henfry 2006; Uretsky 2016) to explore further the transnational dimensions of these topics. Nonetheless, this volume addresses several weaknesses and blind spots in Chinese studies, masculinities studies, and migration studies. It joins a growing number of recent works (e.g., Louie 2015; 2016; Song and Hird 2014) that seek to develop masculinities scholarship in contemporary Chinese gender studies, which in keeping with the wider field of gender studies has had a historical bias towards research on women. It also seeks to redress the humanities bias in existing Chinese masculinities scholarship: its attention to social science approaches adds to recent anthropological investigations of Chinese men (e.g., Osburg 2013; Uretsky 2016). Through the range and depth of the essays within, it makes a case for the importance of Chinese masculinities in the wider global field of masculinity studies. By virtue of China’s population (20 percent of the world total) and its GDP (second only to the United States), Chinese masculinities deserve significant scholarly attention, yet research on Chinese and many other “minority” masculinities continues to be marginalized in an academy still heavily oriented towards Euro-American issues. Last but not least, the volume seeks to remedy migration studies’ relative lack of focus on recent mainland Chinese migration. Studies of Sinophone migrant populations have tended either to bundle recent mainland migrants together with non-PRC Sinophone migrants (e.g., those from Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and pre-1997 Hong Kong), or to

Introduction 3

focus on Sinophone populations established by earlier waves of migration from mainland China. Our PRC focus therefore helps redress the lack of analysis on the specific conditions of PRC reform-era migration.

Transnational Masculinities as a Field of Study The backdrop for the chapters in this volume and other recent research on transnational masculinities is the acceleration of transborder flows and interactions of people, objects, ideas, practices, technologies, and money that has accompanied the spread of consumer capitalism across much of the globe, particularly since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is perhaps unsurprising that much of the research on transnational masculinities has come from social science scholars concerned with the effects of transnational migration on everyday lives (e.g., Ahmad 2013; Batnitzky, McDowell and Dyer 2009; Boehm 2008; Charsley 2005; Datta et al. 2009; Donaldson et al. 2009; Hearn, Blagojević and Harrison 2013; Kilkey, Plomien, and Perrons 2014; Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport 2003; McKay 2007; Montes 2013; Osella and Osella 2000; Vasquez del Aguila 2014). These researchers show that migrant men negotiate the complex challenges they face in their host countries in multiple ways; and that notions of culture, nationality, ethnicity, and class are highly influential in how migrant men relate and adjust their previous understandings of masculinity to the gendered norms of their new home. As Datta et al. (2009, 854) advise, the study of migrant men requires a careful consideration of how transnational masculinities “travel” and are “remade” in different regimes of gender. Movements across borders often notably alter the contours of interrelationships between masculinities and nation. Jeff Hearn and Marina Blagojević (2013) argue that contemporary transnational masculinities are produced through processes of transnationalization that simultaneously deconstruct, blur, reaffirm, and reconfigure national boundaries. For instance, transnational migration causes national boundaries to be reaffirmed amid debates about migrant numbers, yet at the same time breaks down national boundaries through the creation of transnational communities, and leads to new linkages such as those between different migrant populations (Hearn and Blagojević 2013, 9–10). From this perspective, transnationalization reinforces national and even nationalistic models of masculinity, while concurrently making possible more pluralistic, bricolage-type masculinities that are less rigidly defined in national terms, and which incorporate influences from diverse cultural and national backgrounds. Furthermore, in an era of transnationalized media discourses, everyday enactments of hybrid transnational masculinities need not even require crossing a national border, as masculinities studies are increasingly showing (e.g., Aboim 2010; Inhorn 2012; Song and Hird 2014).

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The new border-crossing transnational business masculine identities and practices that have emerged from the increasing global interconnectivity of trade and finance markets at first glance appear less deeply rooted in local gender regimes; yet, it is argued, they remain largely masculinist and power-oriented (Connell 1998; 2000; 2014; Elias and Beasley 2009). Raewyn Connell describes a globally mobile “transnational business masculinity” that professes equal opportunities for women through a “gender-neutral language of ‘markets,’ ‘individuals,’ and ‘choice,’” but which in practice commodifies and hierarchizes relations with women and is characterized by self-centered careerist and sexually permissive traits (Connell 1998, 15–16). Adding a Foucauldian perspective, Elias and Beasley (2009) recommend understanding transnational business masculinities as constituted through discursive formations, so as better to understand the different ways that individuals enact them. The influence of cultural histories is producing regional variants, such as Confucian-inflected transnational business masculinities in East Asia and secularized Christian versions in North America (Connell 2000, 54). Hence older, explicitly chauvinist forms of “national” masculinities continue to inform the emerging transnational forms (Connell 2010; Connell and Wood 2005). For Connell, transnational business masculinities are the hegemonic form of masculinity in the world gender order, in that they are the most “honored or desired” form of masculinity in today’s globalizing context (1998, 5, 16). In this light, it is therefore appropriate that a theoretical focus is brought to them. However, masculinities studies theorists have paid less attention to conceptualizing the transnational blue-collar/working-class/rural masculinities that globalizing processes have enabled, besides some excellent studies that have examined the lives of low-skilled and/or marginalized transnational male migrants (e.g., Boehm 2008; Datta et al. 2009; Guest 2003; McKay 2007). For example, no theorist has yet extended Connell’s notion of “marginalized masculinities” (2005, 80–81) to produce a more general theory of “transnational marginalized masculinities.” Nonetheless, with a global context in mind, Christine Beasley (2008) has developed a more nuanced reading of the category of hegemonic masculinity that recognizes the presence and role of working-class masculinities in the enactment of transnational hegemonic masculinities. She does this by “demassifying” hegemonic masculinities into “supra-” and “sub-” categories, in which “sub-hegemonic” masculinities are typically working-class masculine models that work to invoke a kind of masculinist ideal that may be different from business masculinity, but still legitimate gendered hierarchies. Beasley thus problematizes Connell’s formulation of transnational business masculinity as the singular hegemonic masculinity operating transnationally in today’s world. In this volume, Jamie Coates utilizes Beasley’s sub/supra distinction to show

Introduction 5

how transnational male subjects can move between hegemonic masculine identities, which we discuss further below. The increasing number of transnationally mobile Chinese citizens from diverse backgrounds has inspired scholarly investigations into their lived experiences beyond China’s borders (e.g., Chang and Rucker-Chang 2013; Guest 2003; Nyíri 1999; Pieke 2004; Wu and Liu 2014). Studies focusing on contemporary Chinese masculinity and migration, however, remain relatively rare and small-scale. Notable research on contemporary Sinophone male migration includes studies of highly educated Chinese male migrants from China and other East Asian countries living and working in Australia (Hibbins 2005; 2009), Chinese Singaporean businessmen’s experiences of living in China (Yeoh and Willis 2004), and gay male Hong Kong Chinese migrants in London (Kong 2011, 121–42). Hibbins’s works usefully show the presence of Confucian ideals in the men’s notions of Chineseness, and shifting attitudes to work and family among younger migrant entrepreneurs, but do not address in detail the particularities of the masculinities of mainland Chinese men. Recent PRC migrants to Western countries have to negotiate their differences not just with established host-culture identities, but also with identities enacted in Chinese communities, both first-generation and already established secondor-more-generation Chinese diasporic communities (Chua and Fujino 1999). The more advanced assimilation of the latter into the host culture may produce conflicts with the recent arrivals about cultural identity (Parker and Song 2007). First-generation male migrants may even turn to Chinese culturalist renderings of privileged masculinity as a means to distinguish themselves from both these more assimilated Chinese diasporic masculinities and dominant white masculinities (Hibbins 2005, 177–78). For middle-class migrants, transnational migration clearly carries a risk of downward class mobility (see, e.g., Batnitzky, McDowell, and Dyer 2009). To distinguish themselves from their less well-educated migrant compatriots, first-generation middle-class migrants also may actively seek to reproduce forms of class privilege from China, as has been noted with historical Chinese male migrants to Britain (Louie 2000, 1072–73) and with contemporary white-collar Chinese migrants working in manual jobs in California’s birth tourism industry (Tingyu Kang, this volume). Vasquez del Aguila (2014) has similarly described how Peruvian middle-class male migrants to New York constantly try to reproduce class patterns prevalent in Peru. While transnational mobility and migration is undoubtedly a key factor in the enactment of transnational masculinities, the transnational masculinities produced and circulated in contemporary images and texts are equally important as objects of study, since masculinities take shape through protean and often conflicted to-ings and fro-ings between discourse and action. Transnational dimensions to Arab masculinities appear in emerging transnational Muslim masculinities screened on Middle Eastern Islamic satellite television (Echchaibi

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2011) and in post-9/11 depictions of Arab men by Arab-American woman writers (Bosch-Vilarrubia 2016). Transnational configurations of masculinities from across the Americas are embodied by actor and director Gael García Bernal, “symbol of a transnational, post-national, and diasporic new Mexican cinema” (Mora 2006, 20); in recent South American fiction in the form of neoliberal transnational business masculinities and other local and regional masculinities, whose engagement with globalizing forces disenfranchises and shapes them in different ways (Venkatesh 2015, 109–56); and in the troubled transnational masculinities of young Dominican immigrants to the United States that form the thematic crux of Junot Diaz’s award-winning 2008 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Jay 2010, 176–94). The most prominent Asian transnational masculinities in popular culture in recent years have been those of South Korean male singers and actors: key to the transnational popularity of the “Korean Wave,” their “soft” hybrid masculinities incorporate global and postmodern dimensions (Jung 2011). The mediated transnationalization of postsocialist Chinese masculinities has been depicted in transnational romances in Chinese film and TV, in which Chinese men regain masculinity though their “domestication” of white women (Lu 2000), and is notably embodied in the figure of Beijing-born Jet Li, who has succeeded Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan as the most successful transborder kung fu superstar (Yu 2012). The fictional writings of Chinese men living abroad are rich in diverse delineations of transnational Chinese masculinities, as is shown in the Chinese-Australian masculinities in Brian Castro’s novels, the “angry” sentiments expressed by Chinese-Australian poet Ouyang Lu, and the online writing of an elite US-educated Chinese financier; Chinese films such as Hero (2002) reconfigure Chinese masculinities with local and global audiences in mind (Louie 2015). At the same time, Chinese masculinity is increasingly defined and constructed through its Other, non-Chinese men, in a global setting in media and entertainment. For instance, foreign men are commonly seen on the small screen in China, in both TV dramas and reality shows such as popular dating shows. These foreign images include Western businessmen, Japanese “devils” (officers and soldiers during World War II), and Korean male lovers. The foreign masculinities reflect popular imagination of the Self and Other/s and reveal the ambition and anxiety produced when China faces the world.

Transnational Chinese Masculinities The field of Chinese masculinities studies has developed greatly since the seminal work of Louie (2002) established the theoretical dyad of wen 文 (literary) and wu 武 (martial), which simultaneously emphasized the distinctive historical pattern of Chinese masculinities and provided a lens on their multiplicity in

Introduction 7

terms of such identity markers as class, educational status, and bodily habitus. Yet this paradigm has continued to inform research on Chinese masculinities, in monographs that explore contemporary queer masculinities (Kong 2011), historical masculinities (Hinsch 2013), Weiqi-playing masculinities (Moskowitz 2013), and mediated and everyday masculinities (Song and Hird 2014); and in multidisciplinary edited collections such as Louie (2016) and this one. Louie points out that the meaning and relative influence of wen and wu have fluctuated throughout the centuries, and argues that they have not disappeared in the contemporary era but are taking new forms as they become globalized through current transnational processes (Louie 2015, 4–6). The wen-wu dyad thus remains relevant both as an analytical tool and as a discursive paradigm that contributes to fashioning Chinese masculinities in everyday life. The expanding field of Chinese masculinities research mobilizes multiple methodologies and topics, including critique of homosexualities in historical fiction (Vitiello 2011), audience reception of film stardom (Yu 2012), qualitative interviews of migrant workers (Lin 2013), and ethnographies of working-class brotherhoods (Boretz 2011), wealthy nouveau riche (Osburg 2013), and impotence sufferers (Zhang 2015). Building on earlier key texts that examine Chinese masculinities in modern literature and film (Zhong 2000) and late imperial literature (Song 2004; Huang 2006), the recent blossoming of scholarship has enriched and added to the vibrancy of this nascent field. In Song and Hird (2014, 3–13) we provided a comprehensive review of the field of Chinese masculinities scholarship (and so do not do so here) and set out the following five key characteristics of Chinese masculinities in the context of globalization: anxiety about the quality of Chinese men vis-à-vis Western men; the interactions of discourses of masculinity and nationalism; the role of consumerism in the construction of masculinities; the increasing association of masculine success with money; and the turn to men’s needs in society spurred by the influence of men’s movements in the West. All of these characteristics are relevant to transnational Chinese masculinities; here, we draw attention to a further three related points, which we also revisit below in our discussion of the essays in this volume. First, the concept of cosmopolitanism is being increasingly used to explore the localization of globally circulating ideas and images in Chinese masculinities. Geng Song and Tracy K. Lee explore the cosmopolitan desires of a consumerist elite by building on Lisa Rofel’s notion of “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics” as “a self-conscious transcendence of locality, posited as a universal transcendence, accomplished through the formation of a consumer identity; and a domestication of cosmopolitanism by way of renegotiating China’s place in the world” (Rofel 2007, 111). Song and Lee show that while the lifeworlds of privileged Chinese men are suffused with the “cultural competition and cultural hybridity associated with the imagination of globality and the flow of global

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capital in today’s China” (Song and Lee 2012, 346), cosmopolitan consumerist masculinities are localized through engagement with nationalist and historically embedded discourses (2012, 353–54, 357–64). Cosmopolitanism’s interplay between the local and the global also manifests in Chinese men’s switching back and forth between Western and Chinese medical treatments for impotence, according to Everett Zhang, who utilizes Paul Rabinow’s (1996, 56) notion of cosmopolitanism as a “twin valorization” of local situatedness and worldwide interconnectedness. Zhang sums up the dual nature of aspirations towards cosmopolitanism as “[t]he willingness to try new ways of life while still remaining in touch with one’s habitual way of life” (Zhang 2015, 196). 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. In imperial times, the scholar-officials were considered socially superior to merchants, and held the latter’s profit-seeking behavior in disdain. However, as a result of the postsocialist transformation of China’s market-oriented socioeconomic policies, the highly educated stratum in today’s China has embraced the pursuit of materialism. Yet the simultaneous “cultural turn” in the post-Mao era has created conditions in which highly educated men gain prestige through imbuing their business practices with an aura of Confucian morality. The infusion of morally elevated elements into the business sphere legitimizes profitmaking in the eyes of the intellectual class, and has become a salient feature of pro-business discourse in the post-Mao era (Louie 2002, 53–57). In an investigation of the transnational masculinities of middle-class Chinese men living and working in London, Hird (2016) found that his participants were keen to embrace global business practices but also to identify with Confucian notions of the proper conduct of Chinese gentlemen. Transnational Chinese men’s invocation of a localized ethical business identity fits the “domestication of cosmopolitan” framework discussed above; and, in a wider context, serves to illustrate the desire of emerging middle classes from developing economies to morally justify their newfound material wealth (Liechty 2012, 280). Third, the transnational circulation of models of emotionally expressive and caring fatherhood is significantly influencing Chinese discourses and practices of fathering. Chinese parenting magazines celebrate fathers who encourage their children to explore their own identities, and Chinese fathers from across the socioeconomic spectrum spend significant time at weekends accompanying their children to private classes in music, dance, and other activities (Song and Hird 2014, 224–33). While acknowledging that the emotional reorientation of fathering in China dates back to before the 1980s, Xuan Li and William Jankowiak argue that there has been a clear acceleration in this trend in recent years due in part to state-sanctioned media campaigns (Li and Jankowiak 2016, 192–93). They

Introduction 9

argue that the stigma attached to men’s performance of “feminine” roles in the family is fading, with the result that providing care and emotional involvement to their children is no longer seen as “unmanly”; and in interviews found that many Chinese fathers now desire to be the trusted “friends” of their children (ibid., 193–94). From these studies, it is evident that the figure of the emotionally expressive, heterosexual family man is linked with discourses of consumerdriven “soft” masculinity, “high-quality” (gao suzhi 高素質) habits and behavior, individual realization, and, in wider developmental perspective, China’s “joining tracks with the world” (yu shijie jiegui 與世界接軌).

The Chapters We have arranged this book in two parts, which speak with different emphases to the multiple dimensions of emerging transnational Chinese masculinities, as well as to the broader political and socioeconomic trends into which these masculinities are interwoven. The essays in Part I, Representing Chinese Men Transnationally, analyze various imagined representations of transnational Chinese masculinities: in television dramas made in China (Song Geng) and central Europe (Hoefle); in films by Hong Kong directors (Lu); and in fiction by Chinese authors that are queer and online (Bao) and that are heteronormative and in print (Hunt, Su). The chapters in Part II, Enacting Transnational Chinese Masculinities, examine the transnational masculinities of living Chinese men: one of Japan’s most well-known immigrants (Coates); a Hong Kong–based food critic and restaurateur (Feng); celebrity fathers and their children in a Chinese adaptation of a Korean reality show (Song Lin); fathers and domestic male helpers involved with US “birth tourism” (Kang); offshore Chinese fathers in Ethiopia (Driessen); and US-based highly educated Chinese overseas male students from non-elite backgrounds (Zhang). Dividing the chapters in this way allows readers to get a sense, in Part I, of how transnational Chinese masculinities are creatively constructed in the influential twenty-first century media formats of TV drama series, film, and online and print fiction; and, in Part II, of how individual men with varied backgrounds negotiate discourses and everyday life circumstances to produce their own enactments of transnational Chinese masculinity. Admittedly, this is a rather artificial division, which does not conceal (and does not seek to conceal) the movements back and forth between representations and realities that produce discursive and everyday masculinities. Some of the chapters illustrate this point particularly well: for example, Pamela Hunt’s analysis shows how the masculinities of Feng Tang’s 馮唐 (born 1971) fictional figures are bound together with the transnational masculine persona that Feng Tang the author constructs for himself. Similarly, Xia Zhang demonstrates that the ways in which thrifty male Chinese postgraduates in North America live their everyday lives shape and are shaped

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by the satirical representations of them circulated by wealthy Chinese female undergraduates. Lin Song’s chapter shows how reality shows blur the differences between representations and lived realities: the fathering masculinities of the celebrity dads in the show are inevitably formed to an extent by the desire of the documentary makers to cater to the tastes of their audience. Thus although the book’s nominal partition between representations and lived behavior may be useful in terms of academic categorization, the chapters themselves prove the incompleteness of exploring masculinities from only one of these perspectives. The first chapter in Part I, on transnational male images in Chinese television dramas, introduces one of the major recurring themes of this volume: the interweaving of cosmopolitan and locally embedded aspects in transnational Chinese masculinities. Geng Song points out that the young elite men portrayed in the dramas evince cosmopolitan masculinities that nevertheless contain “Chinese characteristics,” which highlights the role of states in disturbing the putative dominance of a monolithic, top-down “transnational business masculinity” (Elias and Beasley 2009). Song’s comparative study of the film and TV drama versions (both 2010) of the hit novel Go Lala Go! (Du Lala shengzhi ji 杜拉拉升職 記) reveals the relative conservatism of the TV drama version. The film’s more internationalized production team and target audience result in its emphasizing China’s global success and individual materialism, whereas the TV drama’s more didactic bent promotes the “positive energy” of more socially and socialist oriented subjectivities. In the 2015 drama series Love Me, If You Dare (Ta lai le, qing bi yan 他來了，請閉眼), Song argues that the hero exemplifies a transnational Chinese masculinity that radiates cosmopolitan confidence yet at the same time reinforces a commonly depicted gendered hierarchy in which the female protagonist is subservient. Cosmopolitan yet conspicuously Chinese, the sharp intelligence and capabilities of the globe-trotting Chinese male hero outshine the men from all other ethnic, cultural, and national backgrounds, thus reimagining and redeeming the status of Chinese men in the world, and by extension that of the Chinese nation. Since 1991, this very figure of a globally mobile, virile, and highly skilled Chinese man has appeared from time to time in Tatort, the hugely popular, longrunning German/Austrian/Swiss TV police detective drama series; only in these manifestations, the focus is on how this dominant transnational Chinese masculinity threatens to break the social European order and the bodies of the police detectives who seek to safeguard it. Arnhilt Johanna Hoefle shows that in the four episodes of Tatort in which Chinese figures have featured most prominently, representations of Chinese men often take the form of globe-trotting Chinese businessmen who exhibit a highly intelligent and athletic (wen and wu combined, so to speak), internationalized, hybrid supra-hegemonic masculinity, leaving the overweight and sluggish German detectives floundering in their wake. This abrupt shift from the more familiar Orientalist depictions of Chinese

Introduction 11

men in Western culture as feminine does not, however, prevent these episodes from reinforcing Orientalist portrayals of Chinese women as exotic, and giving voice to dehumanizing stereotypes and racist discourse. Hoefle argues that in the first episode (1991) she examines, the German detectives are unable to pin anything on the Chinese protagonist, who escapes scot-free; whereas, in the fourth episode (2013) she analyses, the virility and competence of the German detectives are redeemed, and European sovereignty is thereby restored. Hoefle suggests that it is the very regularity and conventionality of the serial form that opens up a safe space for the exposing and then resolving of the destabilizing threats to the social order that powerful transnational Chinese masculinities are deemed to present. The evolving trajectory of Chinese masculinities on film that Sheldon Lu traces ends again with the figure of the confident, successful, globally mobile Chinese businessman, and the association of triumphant Chinese manhood with the resurrection of China’s national status in the global arena. Lu charts the depictions of Chinese masculinities in three seminal films by Hong Kong directors that tell the stories of men from China and their journeys to America, from the perspective of the thoroughly transnational, yet increasingly mainland China-oriented Hong Kong film industry. The films have as their backdrops three distinct key historical contexts of reform-era China: the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, and the emergence of China as an economic superpower in the 2010s. This temporal framework highlights the speed and magnitude of transformations in images of Chinese masculinity, reflecting the dominant concerns and tropes of the periods in which the films were made: the tragic fate of the suffering exile in Clara Law’s 羅卓瑶 (born 1957) bleak post-Tiananmen film, Farewell China (Ai zai bie xiang de jijie 愛在別鄉的季 節) (1990); the open-ended hopes and expectations of the entrepreneurial protagonist in Peter Chan’s 陳可辛 (born 1962) Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Tian mimi 甜蜜蜜) (1996); and the eventual global success of the hardworking rural boy turned multimillionaire transnational businessman in Peter Chan’s American Dreams in China (Zhongguo hehuoren 中國合夥人) (2013). Lu argues that these and other recent film narratives display a recuperation of Chinese masculinity and nationhood through the figures of confident, cosmopolitan, and yet fundamentally Chinese, entrepreneurial and white-collar men. The nonnormative sexual practices and identities of transnational Chinese men is the focus of Beijing Story, the 1996 online novel that Stanley Kwan, another Hong Kong director deeply interested in China’s reform-era transformations, adapted for his 2001 film, Lan Yu. Anonymously written, Beijing Story describes a tragic love story between two men in Beijing in the 1980s and early 1990s. In his study of the novel, Hongwei Bao shows how sexuality, masculinity, class and culture intersect in the characters of the two male lovers, which produces a historically informed Chinese gay identity in response to China’s post-Mao

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engagement with global capitalism. Handong, a Western-brand obsessed son of a high-ranking official, becomes a rich businessman in the 1980s through international trade; at the same time, he starts to “play” with young men in addition to his affairs with women. Lan Yu, a young architecture student from an intellectual family, is planning to study in the US; he enters the world of same-sex sexual relations as a means of supplementing his meagre income. The shock of the brutal crackdown on protestors at Tiananmen Square in June 1989 forces a rearticulation of Handong’s deep attachment to Lan Yu, and in this way, Bao argues, they come to a realization of themselves as “gay.” And yet theirs is no simple adoption of a Western/global gay identity: Bao shows that specters from China’s premodern past haunt the identities of Handong and Lan Yu. Handong reassures his mother that sex with men is simply a hobby that upper-class males in China have indulged in over many centuries, while Lan Yu is portrayed as the embodiment of Confucian virtue in his loyalty and honesty to Handong. Thus, Bao demonstrates that a novel that could easily be superficially misread as an unproblematic celebration of the “opening up” of China to Western gay identities has a deeper context of homosocial bonding and sexual practices imbued with premodern Chinese social values. In apparent contrast to the hybrid Western and Chinese identities of the protagonists in Beijing Story, Nan Wu, the hero of US-based Ha Jin’s 哈金 (born 1956) unambiguously titled English-language novel, A Free Life (2007), eventually develops a “free-spirited” American masculinity after much suffering as a post-Tiananmen migrant in exile. Lezhou Su maps the crisis in wen masculinity felt by scholars and writers in the immediate post-Mao years, disillusioned with their marginalization in a society increasingly fixated on market reforms and economic growth. Studying for a PhD in the United States at the time of the Tiananmen Incident, Nan Wu decides to stay despite also feeling disempowered and feminized there. He takes on menial jobs to support his family, a shameful step for a Chinese literatus, yet it is through such work and a restaurant business that he develops self-reliance and a sense of pioneering individuality. Eventually, Nan returns to literary pursuits, becoming a poet, but with a fearless, independent-minded subjectivity like his white American poet friends. Su argues that Nan’s transformation is symbolic of a remasculinization process that results in a self-sufficient, “neo-wen” masculinity. America is the site of spiritual redemption in which Nan Wu reclaims his manhood; by contrast, his fellow Chinese classmates at the time of the Tiananmen Incident who subsequently choose to return to China sink into lives of moral degradation and emasculation in the highly corrupt, permissive, and depoliticized society of post-Tiananmen China. In some ways, Nan Wu’s journey from the nadir of failed exile masculinity to entrepreneurial self-actualization parallels Sheldon Lu’s description of the shifting imageries of masculinities from Farewell China to Comrades: Almost a Love Story.

Introduction 13

Nan Wu’s mid-1990s exiled masculinity that turns its back on China is nowhere to be seen in Pamela Hunt’s chapter on the controversial China-based author Feng Tang and his fiction. Feng Tang’s works and his own self-fashioning speak more to the confident, cosmopolitan, transnational masculinity with distinct Chinese characteristics described by Geng Song, Hoefle, and Lu’s analysis of American Dreams in China. With a twin focus on Feng Tang’s intertextual references in his semi-autobiographical Beijing trilogy and his marketing of himself as a cultural translator, Hunt describes how Feng Tang enacts a testosterone-infused “marginal, virile, and writerly” heterosexual masculinity which embodies what she describes as “phallic creativity.” Medically trained, possessing an American MBA, and ex-consultant for an American management consulting firm, Feng Tang takes up a stance of cosmopolitan appreciation of the sexual openness of Western writers such as D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller; and yet, just as with the gay identities of the protagonists in Beijing Story, Hunt makes clear that this does not entail a simple binary of the “free” West against a repressed China. Indeed, Hunt argues that Feng Tang’s “phallic creativity” lies in his amalgamation of global and local literary personae and themes. Hunt shows that while Feng Tang’s characters are formed through enthusiastic exposure to Western brands and popular culture in the 1980s and 1990s, and, like their author, often take up subversive, libidinal positions on the margins of respectability, the historical figure of the talented and sexually appealing young male caizi (才子) haunts (to use Bao’s term) Feng Tang and his fiction. This age-old Chinese evocation of male literary production and sexual attractiveness problematically marginalizes women and locates the cosmopolitan Feng Tang within a pattern of male privilege and elite masculinity. The ongoing production of male privilege through interactions of class, gender, and ethnicity amid changing social and economic conditions is also a central concern of the chapters in Part II, which focus on how Chinese men negotiate their masculinities in various transnational contexts. This process inevitably involves engaging with prevailing discursive depictions of Chinese masculinities, which are by no means static or uniform, as all the essays in the volume make clear. In the first essay in Part II, Jamie Coates examines the intriguing life of Li Xiaomu 李小牧 (born 1960), one of Japan’s most prominent Chinese immigrants. Li moved to Japan as a student in 1998, and soon became involved in the sex industry economy in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district. A prolific writer and an increasingly well-known public figure, over the years Li has tried to transform his image from mafia-connected sex industry entrepreneur to respectable politician and democracy advocate, while maintaining his business interests. Coates argues that Li’s complex masculine persona “poaches” from widespread Japanese perceptions about Chinese men, including the association of Chinese immigrants with the criminal underworld, vitality, business savvy, and a masculine confidence that Japanese men are feared to have lost. Yet in seeking to shift

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his image, Li has also drawn on tropes such as the “consumerist cosmopolitan,” the salaryman, the transnational entrepreneur, and even scholarly wen masculinity. As Coates points out, in moving from sub- to supra-hegemonic masculine status, Li has used hegemonies of class and gender to his advantage, and in doing so, has reproduced them. The mobilization of wen masculinity, class distinction and cosmopolitanism is also key to the masculine persona of another prominent transnational Chinese man: Cai Lan, the Hong Kong–based restaurateur, food critic, TV host, and author, whose early-career globe-trotting took him to multiple cities in Europe, North America, and Asia. In her essay, Jin Feng argues that Cai’s “culinary masculinity” is a strategic response to identity formation in the face of economic and cultural globalization. Feng shows how Cai retrieves culinary writing from its marginal position in historical literati texts and places it in the mainstream of today’s consumer culture. Through his writing, broadcasting and food tours, Cai promotes “authentic” home-style cooking in a commodified way to middleclass consumers nostalgic for the reassuring foodstuffs of their childhood. Yet he also infuses his down-to-earth gastronomy with traditional Chinese literati sentiments and values that suggest happiness lies in a spiritually and morally inflected approach to seeking better quality food and drink. Feng suggests that Cai’s masculinity is thereby premised on both his display of cultural capital as a latter-day Confucian gastronome, and his contribution to the notions of individual taste and middle-class distinction as a cosmopolitan entrepreneur. The centrality of class in this construction of masculinity, Feng argues, sidelines the biological binary at the heart of most modern renderings of gender. The chapters described so far have not touched on one hotly debated aspect of contemporary masculinities: fatherhood. The next three chapters in the volume investigate different modes of fatherhood, starting with Lin Song’s analysis of the top-rated Chinese adaptation, launched in 2013, of the Korean reality show Dad! Where Are We Going (Baba qu na’r 爸爸去哪兒). Song’s account of five celebrity fathers and their children on the show describes multiple styles of fathering, yet also highlights some underlying commonalities that emerge among the fathers. Three sets of father-son relationships presented three different models of fathering, in Song’s analysis, and engendered distinctive audience responses. The conventionally strict and distant “pure man” fathering style of one contestant was challenged by his young son as well as by audience feedback, to the extent that the contestant reconfigured his approach to include more emotionally articulate and affectionate behavior. Towards the other end of the spectrum of masculinity, the somewhat androgynous “metrosexual masculinity” of another contestant was blamed for his son’s overdependency and shyness. In response to pressure this father regained his own masculinity through homosocial bonding with the other fathers and becoming sterner towards his son. The expressive and affectionate “sunshine boy” model of “brotherly love” between the third pairing

Introduction 15

of father and son was the clear audience favorite: Song shows that this relationship presented an idealized rendering of a transcultural pan–East Asian “soft” masculinity with great appeal to the young female viewers who made up the bulk of the show’s audience. However, despite the softer, more considerate styles of fathering on display, Song argues that the show reproduces conventional gendered hierarchies in its association of the masculine with competition, achievement, and public space, and the feminine with domestic space and care. Two pairs of father-daughter relationships on the show compounded this masculine/feminine binary through an emphasis on paternal authority. The significance of fathering in the construction of contemporary masculinities is shown in a very different light in Miriam Driessen’s chapter on blue-collar migrant Chinese fathers based in Ethiopia. Her ethnographic observations and interviews reveal the complex mix of personal, familial, and social motivations for their decisions to work abroad and leave their families behind in China. Most prominent among her research participants’ reasons to migrate, however, was the opportunity to fulfill what they saw as their obligation to provide for their families. They were paid a relatively high salary for overseas work on infrastructure projects at a time when construction positions in China were becoming increasingly insecure and scarce due to the saturation of the sector. Thus, according to the prescriptions of the normative gender order, which Driessen argues includes the Confucian concept of fatherly responsibility, their high overseas earnings redeemed their sense of masculine honor. On their trips home, these offshore fathers strove to perform a modern-style intimate fathering masculinity that working abroad usually precluded, yet this was not enough to prevent their children from viewing them as part-strangers. To compensate, Driessen’s participants redoubled their efforts to entrench their masculine identity as the family breadwinner, which, as Driessen argues, only served to exacerbate the tension and unhappiness they felt as fathers unable to realize their longing to “be with” their children in person. Just as the Ethiopia-based fathers’ inability to be with their children destabilizes their sense of masculinity, so does the inability of China-based husbands to be “physically there” for their wives as they prepare to give birth and then recuperate in Chinese-run maternity hotels in California, as Tingyu Kang shows in her ethnographic study of the growing phenomenon of birth tourism. The husbands adopt two strategies to compensate for their absence: providing their wives with ample money, and hiring Chinese male employees of the maternity hotels to undertake the “emotional labor” of acting as surrogate companions for their wives. The former strategy reaffirms the husbands’ masculinity, but the contracting out of emotional labor renders them anxious about their homebuilding status in the family. Thus Kang argues that the masculinities of the two groups of men are relationally constructed. As for the masculinity of the

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hotel employees, it too is challenged because they are working in a “feminized industry,” and in smaller institutions they take on female-coded cleaning and cooking tasks in addition to their usual driving and handyman roles. To recover their masculinity, the employees attempt to redefine their work in ways that downplay their involvement with feminized labor processes. Kang concludes that the interplay of gender relations between the husbands, wives, and male employees thus reiteratively defines, challenges yet also reaffirms the masculinities of both sets of men. The “double emasculation” of a particular group of Chinese men in North America is the topic of the final essay in Part II, in which Xia Zhang describes how male Chinese postgraduate students at US universities are feminized and marginalized not only in the dominant gender and racial discourses of US society, but also through their reputation as “North American despicable men” (Bei Mei weisuonan 北美猥瑣男). Zhang’s research on internet forums and through conventional ethnography shows how affluent female Chinese undergraduates in the United States use this derogatory term to ridicule Chinese male postgraduates from less well-off backgrounds as cheapskate, skinny, socially awkward, unhygienic, and thoroughly unmasculine. Zhang locates the roots of this phenomenon in the rapid economic rise of postmillennial China. Increasingly large numbers of female fu’erdai 富二代 (rich second generation) students are studying for undergraduate degrees in US, many of whom espouse a conception of ideal masculinity as a combination of conspicuous wealth, muscularity and whiteness. At the same time, an overseas degree is losing its value in the Chinese job market, which hurts the less well-connected non-elite students hardest. Some of the male postgraduates have fought back against their diminished status, labeling the young women as gold diggers and traitors. However, as Zhang points out, these men still often view a Chinese man marrying a white woman as a positive symbol of Chinese masculinity’s international desirability. Zhang therefore espouses the notion of diasporic masculinity as an assemblage of interacting local and transnational discursive practices, through which ideas about successful masculinity are negotiated and contested. We have identified five prominent themes that emerge in multiple chapters. Perhaps the most salient recurring theme is the combination of the aspirations of many—but not all—transnational Chinese men to a form of cosmopolitanism that does not preclude identification with Chineseness: this is one of the trends we identified earlier in this introduction. While some of the essays describe a kind of cosmopolitanism without explicitly mentioning the term (e.g., Hoefle, Bao), others tackle it explicitly, making a strong contribution to debates about emerging forms of cosmopolitanism. Geng Song highlights the associations of Chinese men’s cosmopolitanism with wealth, personal “quality” (suzhi 素質) and consumerist, class-making practices that seek to transcend parochialism, yet are also often accompanied

Introduction 17

by nationalist and culturalist sentiment. Song points out that while both men’s and women’s status is often linked to national ambition, this is done in different ways: masculinity is considered as the fundamental bedrock of the nation and Chinese culture. For Lu, Chinese cosmopolitan masculinity likewise brings together global mobility with a simultaneous rootedness in Chinese culture in the characters of well-educated urban men. Hunt’s evaluation of Feng Tang as a reinvigorated modern-day caizi encompasses his openness to and appreciation of other cultures while placing him within a long-standing gendered tradition. Feng emphasizes that Cai Lan’s cosmopolitanism paradoxically integrates the modern, the traditional, the global, the local, and the personal. This cosmopolitan assemblage is a mix of identity politics and business strategy, Feng argues, which enables Cai to enact both open-mindedness and authenticity. Coates discusses the notion of “consumerist cosmopolitanism” as a form of hegemonic masculinity that exhibits class distinction and is particularly prevalent in China. Yet he emphasizes that the Japan-based Li Xiaomu’s cosmopolitanism has increasingly moved beyond the consumerist towards a more abstract rendering, motivated by Li’s political ambitions in Japan, that seeks to demonstrate Li’s capacity to transcend his “Chineseness.” Thus it is only Li who approaches what could be considered a truly transnational cosmopolitan ideal that professes to have left behind cultural nationalism. The infusion of transnational Chinese men’s cosmopolitanism with “Chinese characteristics” may not seem particularly problematic at first glance, but there are significant gendered and classed consequences to be considered. As Geng Song points out, Love Me, If You Dare reproduces “a stereotypical pattern of sexual relationship in post-Mao Chinese films” through the hierarchal relationship between the male protagonist and his girlfriend: the former possesses far more cultural and economic capital, and dominates their relationship, all of which the latter acquiesces with uncomplainingly. In her analysis of Feng Tang’s elite malecentric, women-objectifying world, Hunt similarly concludes that the “cultural cosmopolitanism” of highly educated Chinese men is concomitant with, and even serves to exacerbate, socioeconomic inequalities. In Coates’ study, tellingly, Li’s renouncing of his Chinese citizenship to become a Japanese national is part of a process that includes his espousal of democratic principles, campaigning for the rights of sex workers, hosting meetings of Chinese democracy activists, and openly criticizing China’s nondemocratic political system. It seems that “Chinese characteristics,” in their current formulations in transnational Chinese masculinities, often come hand-in-hand with a hierarchical espousal of educated men’s class and gender privileges. A second theme to emerge is the mixed blessings brought by what could be called transnational blue-collar masculinities. Unlike the highly educated and elite males discussed above, the accumulation and display of cosmopolitan Euro-American cultural capital is not a major concern of less well-educated male

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migrants; rather, it is a lack of access to upward socioeconomic mobility in China and its accompanying effects on the migrants own sense of gendered self-worth that drive their decision to migrate. Driessen’s blue-collar participants took up work in Ethiopia because migration offered them a better opportunity to enact the male breadwinner ideal. Their families remained in China, however, in contrast to the “astronaut” families of wealthy Chinese in which the children migrate to North America for education, often together with their mother, while the father stays mostly in China to carry out his breadwinning role. In a prevailing Chinese social context where a high-earning wife undermines a man’s masculinity, Driessen’s participants’ improved overseas income brought them increased “masculine respect.” These favorable outcomes kept them working overseas, despite the painful distancing from their families. Menial work undertaken by Chinese migrant men in the United States, not necessarily from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, is depicted in the essays variously as a route to liberation from stifling aspects of Chinese culture and identity in the 1990s, and, conversely, as a downwardly mobile, statusthreatening pathway for contemporary middle-class migrants. Migrant mainlander Xiaojun in Comrades: Almost a Love Story acts as a delivery boy in Hong Kong, a role that he reprises later in New York. As Lu’s analysis makes clear, Xiaojun’s characterization is concerned with economic aspiration and a gradual loosening of national identity: issues of cultural capital and gender hierarchy are eclipsed by a relentless focus on the possibilities that migration opens up for those determined enough to take them. Similarly, as Su describes, the intellectual Nan Wu’s taking on menial jobs when he remains in the United States in 1989 is an early and necessary stage of a trajectory in which he seeks to free himself from the inhibiting strictures and limitations of Chinese society. Yet, Kang’s investigation of the realities of working as a driver and handyman in Californian maternity hotels shows how well-educated, previously white-collar, first-generation Chinese, male, recent immigrants undertaking these jobs try anxiously to recuperate their social status in class and gender terms. This point serves to underline educated transnational Chinese men’s drive to retain a form of “Chinese characteristics” that delivers privilege to them. The third theme that we wish to highlight is the reconciliation of Chinese intellectual masculinity with global business masculinity in the reform era. In Love Me, If You Dare, the main protagonist, Bo Jinyan, is simultaneously an academic genius and a wealthy materialist. Bo represents a new hybrid role model for highly educated Chinese men: globally mobile, financially very well off, with an intellectual prowess that far outshines the mental abilities of Western men. His winning combination of shi and shang attributes forges a neo-wen masculinity that can triumph over Western men in the global economy, just as Bruce Lee’s film characters in the 1970s brokered a neo-wu masculinity that could defeat challengers from all over the world in physical terms. Chris Berry (2006) argues that

Introduction 19

Bruce Lee’s bare-chested display of muscular neo-wu masculinity was a response to the American hegemonic masculine ideal of the strong white hero, and to the feminization of Asian men as a racial other (which precipitates self-loathing, in Berry’s view) upon which the American discursive ideal is partly founded. The crucial change in context between the world of Bruce Lee’s characters and that of Bo Jinyan forty years later is China’s economic rise. This development has enabled elite Chinese men to accumulate and put to use financial and cultural capital, rather than their fists, in their competition with men from other countries in the global field of masculinities. In Beijing Story, Handong’s nonnormative sexuality does not preclude him from the trend to combine shi and shang characteristics. As Bao points out, the “pure love” of the gay protagonists delivers a rebuke to the all-consuming neoliberal market; yet, Handong, the son of a high-ranking official who identifies with China’s historical intellectual elite, still continues to take full advantage of the new economic opportunities to enrich himself. In the very different context of the United States, Nan Wu in A Free Life nevertheless offers a very clear example of a Chinese intellectual’s embrace of the business world. Not only does Nan discover a liberating business acumen, as Su highlights, he also eventually reinvigorates his intellectual abilities by writing poetry. Even depictions of villains manifest a neo-wen combination of high intelligence and wealth (often on top of a lean muscularity) that leaves European and American white men trailing in its wake, as Hoefle and Geng Song show, from the triad boss Hap-man and human trafficker Tony Wang in Tatort, to the psychopathic killer Xie Han in Love Me, If You Dare. And in real life the same shi-shang combination is found: writer and corporate executive Feng Tang, entrepreneur and budding politician Li Xiaomu, and the enterprising gastronome Cai Lan, in the differing ways discussed by Hunt, Coates, and Feng, all reconcile scholarly wen masculinities from China’s Confucian tradition with modern-day profit-seeking business masculinities. The fourth cross-chapter topic we wish to discuss is transnational intimate partner identities and practices. Much research has documented how interactions between Chinese men and their female partners outside marriage—especially hostesses, extramarital girlfriends (xiaosan 小三), and second wives (ernai 二奶)—contribute significantly to the construction of heteronormative Chinese masculinities (Osburg 2013; Uretsky 2016; Xiao 2011; Zheng 2006; Zurndorfer 2016). Many of the essays in this volume, however, deal to varying degrees with Chinese men’s wives or regular girlfriends, both Chinese and foreign; and we wish to highlight the instances that concern Chinese men’s relationships with foreign women. In the 2008 Tatort episode featuring transnational Chinese businessman Tony Wang, the fact that his wife is a white German, a successful designer, the granddaughter of a famous architect, and happy to be with him despite his numerous affairs, in Hoefle’s view, underlines the appeal of Wang’s

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(hyper)masculinity at a global level. The male postgraduate Chinese students studying in the United States also seem to believe that a Chinese man who marries a white American woman is “supermasculine,” as Zhang puts it, because he has “domesticated” the much-desired modern and beautiful foreign other (see also Lu 2001, 213–38). However, American Dreams in China puts forward a conflicting view of American women, as Lu’s essay picks up. In a clear reference to his American exchange-student girlfriend from his college days who dumped him and caused him much heartache, Wang Yang, one of the three cofounders of the highly successful education business, warns his friends to avoid independent-minded women with too many of their own ideas. Similarly, Li Xiaomu, the long-time Tokyo resident and businessman, in remarks reported in the Global Times, has warned Chinese men against marrying Japanese women because of the “cultural differences” that emerged during his marriage with his Japanese ex-wife. Li says he prefers to marry Chinese women because they are “more understanding” (Yan 2012). These examples show Chinese men’s ambivalence about marrying the desirable foreign female other: while it may bring cosmopolitan and masculine status, it also carries the risk of conflict and emotional trauma. The fifth and final theme we have noted in some of the essays is the anxiety that men often feel about how their masculinity is perceived, and what they do to try to shore it up. The male employees in the Californian maternity hotel constantly perform “boundary work,” in Kang’s phrase, in which they attempt to draw a distinction between their roles and tasks and the more feminized activities of the female employees. Back in China, the absent husbands fret about the closeness of their wives to the male employees; the only way they know to reaffirm their status is to provide as much financial support as possible to their wives. Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, a group of blue-collar fathers are also uncomfortably absent from their families, who remain in China. As Driessen’s interviews show, these fathers take the difficult decision to work abroad because they feel their lack of access to well-paying jobs in China undermines their masculinity. Anxiety about their prospects in the Chinese job market is also fundamental to the concerns of non-elite Chinese male postgraduates in the US. Doubly emasculated, as Zhang demonstrates, by materialistic Chinese female undergraduates and American cultural stereotyping, these men desperately seek to recover their masculinity by crudely attacking the female undergraduates as unpatriotic leeches. In the reality TV series Dad! Where Are We Going, as Lin Song elucidates, Zhiying Lin’s soft and caring “metrosexual” masculinity is deemed to have made his young son overdependent and shy. Lin then makes the decision to reinvigorate the masculinity of both himself and his son. At a key juncture, he walks away to join the other dads, leaving his son to fend for himself. This example, as with the others above, reproduces a pattern of masculinity under challenge followed by action to recuperate it.

Introduction 21

In sum, through diverse methodologies and sources, the essays in this book show that Chinese men are forging new transnationally inflected identities that draw simultaneously from historical Chinese masculinities and contemporary globally circulating masculinities. The essays also present innovative perspectives for understanding the relationship between masculinity and the rapid socioeconomic transformations of postsocialist China, demonstrate the significant influence of contemporary Chinese men in discourse and everyday life in a variety of global contexts, and provide insights and approaches of use to scholars of masculinities across the world. China’s post-Mao reengagement with the global economy is, to put it in human terms, the combined stories of how Chinese men and women from all kinds of backgrounds are negotiating their ways through the many transnational challenges and opportunities this historical juncture offers. At the heart of their stories lies a complex sense of identity, in which gender interacts with culture, nation, class, ethnicity, and other identity markers in often unpredictable and seemingly contradictory ways. Nevertheless, as the chapters in this book demonstrate, it is possible to identify broad patterns in the transformations of masculinity over recent years. These include the following key characteristics: 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. Chinese men are not unique in having to face these issues in transnational contexts; but, as the chapters in this volume demonstrate, they negotiate them in unique—yet explainable—ways.

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Boretz, Avron. 2011. Gods, Ghosts and Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Bosch-Vilarrubias, Marta. 2016. Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers: Affirmation and Resistance. New York: Peter Lang. Chang, Felix B., and Sunnie T. Rucker-Chang, eds. 2013. Chinese Migrants in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, New York: Routledge. Charsley, Katharine. 2005. “Unhappy Husbands: Masculinity and Migration in Transnational Pakistani Marriages.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(1): 85–105. Chua, Peter, and Diane C. Fujino. 1999. “Negotiating New Asian-American Masculinities: Attitudes and Gender Expectations.” Journal of Men’s Studies 7(3): 391–413. Connell, Raeywn. 1998. “Masculinities and Globalization.” Men and Masculinities 1(1): 3–23. Connell, Raeywn. 2000. The Men and the Boys. Cambridge: Polity. Connell, Raeywn. 2014. “Margin Becoming Centre: For a World-Centred Rethinking of Masculinities.” NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 9(4): 217–31. Connell, Raewyn, and Julian Wood. 2005. “Globalization and Business Masculinities.” Men and Masculinities 7(4): 347–64. Datta, Kavita, Cathy Mcilwaine, Joanna Herbert, Yara Evans, Jon May, and Jane Wills. 2009. “Men on the Move: Narratives of Migration and Work among Low-Paid Migrant Men in London.” Social & Cultural Geography 10(8): 853–73. Dautcher, Jay. 2009. Down a Narrow Road: Identity and Masculinity in a Uyghur Community in Xinjiang China. New Haven: Harvard University Asia Center. Donaldson, Mike, Ray Hibbins, Richard Howson, and Bob Pease, eds. 2009. Migrant Men: Critical Studies of Masculinities and the Migration Experience. New York: Routledge. Echchaibi, Nabil. 2011. “Gendered Blueprints: Transnational Masculinities in Muslim Televangelist Cultures.” In Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures, edited by Radha Hegde, 89–102. New York: New York University Press. Elias, Juanita, and Christine Beasley. 2009. “Hegemonic Masculinity and Globalization: ‘Transnational Business Masculinities’ and Beyond.” Globalizations 6(2): 281–96. Guest, Kenneth J. 2003. God in Chinatown: Religion and Survival in New York’s Evolving Immigrant Community. New York and London: New York University Press. Hearn, Jeff, and Marina Blagojević. 2013. “Introducing and Rethinking Transnational Men.” In Rethinking Transnational Men: Beyond, Between, and Within Nations, edited by Jeff Hearn, Marina Blagojević, and Katherine Harrison, 1–26. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, New York: Routledge. Hearn, Jeff, Marina Blagojević, and Katherine Harrison, eds. 2013. Rethinking Transnational Men: Beyond, between and within Nations. New York; Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Hibbins, Ray. 2005. “Migration and Gender Identity among Chinese Skilled Male Migrants to Australia.” Geoforum 36(2): 167–80. Hibbins, Ray. 2009. “The ‘New’ Chinese Entrepreneur in Australia: Continuities in or Challenges to Traditional Hegemonic Masculinities?” In Migrant Men: Critical Studies of Masculinities and the Migration Experience, edited by Mike Donaldson, Ray Hibbins, Richard Howson, and Bob Pease, 154–71. New York: Routledge. Hillman, Ben, and Lee-Anne Henfry. 2006. “Macho Minority: Masculinity and Ethnicity on the Edge of Tibet.” Modern China 32(2): 251–72. Hinsch, Bret. 2013. Masculinities in Chinese History. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Hird, Derek. 2016. “Moral Masculinities: Ethical Self-Fashionings of Professional Chinese Men in London.” Nan Nü 18: 115–47. Huang, Martin W. 2006. Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Introduction 23

Inhorn, Marcia C. 2012. The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jay, Paul. 2010. Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Jung, Sun. 2011. Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-Pop Idols. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kilkey, Majella, Ania Plomien, and Diane Perrons. 2014. “Migrant Men’s Fathering Narratives, Practices and Projects in National and Transnational Spaces: Recent Polish Male Migrants to London.” International Migration 52: 178–91. Kong, Travis. 2011. Chinese Male Homosexualities: Memba, Tongzhi and Golden Boy. London: Routledge. Li, Xuan, and William Jankowiak. 2016. “The Chinese Father: Masculinity, Conjugal Love, and Parental Involvement.” In Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men, edited by Kam Louie, 186–203. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Liechty, Mark. 2012. “Middle-Class Déjà Vu: Conditions of Possibility, From Victorian England to Contemporary Kathmandu.” In The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing through Ethnography, edited by Rachel Heiman, Carla Freeman, and Mark Liechty, 271–99. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press. Lin, Xiaodong. 2013. Gender, Modernity and Male Migrant Workers in China: Becoming a “Modern” Man. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Lomsky‐Feder, Edna, and Tamar Rapoport. 2003. “Juggling Models of Masculinity: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants in the Israeli Army.” Sociological Inquiry 73(1): 114–37. Louie, Kam. 2000. “Constructing Chinese Masculinity for the Modern World: With Particular Reference to Lao She’s The Two Mas.” The China Quarterly, no. 164: 1062–78. Louie, Kam. 2002. Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Louie, Kam. 2015. Chinese Masculinities in a Globalizing World. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. Louie, Kam, ed. 2016. Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lu, Sheldon H. 2000. “Soap Opera in China: The Transnational Politics of Visuality, Sexuality, and Masculinity.” Cinema Journal 40(1): 25–47. Lu, Sheldon H. 2001. China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. McKay, Steven C. 2007. “Filipino Sea Men: Constructing Masculinities in an Ethnic Labour Niche.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33(4): 617–33. Montes, Veronica. 2013. “The Role of Emotions in the Construction of Masculinity Guatemalan Migrant Men, Transnational Migration, and Family Relations.” Gender & Society 27(4): 469–90. Mora, Sergio de la. 2006. Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film. Austin: University of Texas Press. Moskowitz, Marc L. 2013. Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities and the Game of Weiqi in China. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press. Nyíri, Pál. 1999. New Chinese Migrants in Europe: The Case of the Chinese Community in Hungary. Aldershot: Ashgate. Osburg, John. 2013. Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality among China’s New Rich. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Osella, Filippo, and Caroline Osella. 2000. “Migration, Money and Masculinity in Kerala.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6(1): 117–33.

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Parker, David, and Miri Song. 2007. “Inclusion, Participation and the Emergence of British Chinese Websites.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33(7): 1043–61. Pieke, Frank. 2004. “Chinese Globalization and Migration to Europe.” Working Paper No. 94, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California at San Diego. Rabinow, Paul. 1996. Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rofel, Lisa. 2007. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Song, Geng. 2004. The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Song, Geng, and Derek Hird. 2014. Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China. Leiden: Brill. Song, Geng, and Tracy K. Lee. 2012. “‘New Man’ and ‘New Lad’ with Chinese Characteristics? Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Hybridity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines in China.” Asian Studies Review 36(3): 345–67. Uretsky, Elanah. 2016. Occupational Hazards: Sex, Business, and HIV in Post-Mao China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Vasquez del Aguila, Ernesto. 2014. Being a Man in a Transnational World: The Masculinity and Sexuality of Migration. New York: Routledge. Venkatesh, Vinodh. 2015. The Body as Capital: Masculinities in Contemporary Latin American Fiction. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Vitiello, Giovanni. 2011. The Libertine’s Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. Wu, Bin, and Hong Liu. 2014. “Bringing Class Back In: Class Consciousness and Solidarity among Chinese Migrant Workers in Italy and the UK.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(8): 1391–408. Xiao, Suowei. 2011. “The ‘Second-Wife’ Phenomenon and the Relational Construction of Class-Coded Masculinities in Contemporary China.” Men and Masculinities 14(5): 607–27. Yan, Shuang. 2012. “Pimp My Guide.” Global Times, May 18. http://www.globaltimes.cn/ content/710227.shtml. Yeh, Kuang-Hui, Chin-Chun Yi, Wei-Chun Tsao, and Po-San Wan. 2013. “Filial Piety in Contemporary Chinese Societies: A Comparative Study of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China.” International Sociology 28(3): 277–96. Yeoh, Brenda, and Katie Willis. 2004. “Constructing Masculinities in Transnational Space: Singapore Men on the Regional Beat.” In Transnational Spaces, edited by Peter Jackson, Philip Crang, and Claire Dwyer, 147–63. London: Routledge. Yu, Sabrina Qiong. 2012. Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Zhang, Everett Yuehong. 2015. The Impotence Epidemic: Men’s Medicine and Sexual Desire in Contemporary China. Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press. Zheng, Tiantian. 2006. “Cool Masculinity: Male Clients’ Sex Consumption and Business Alliance in Urban China’s Sex Industry.” Journal of Contemporary China 15(46): 161–82. Zhong, Xueping. 2000. Masculinity Besieged? Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zurndorfer, Harriet. “Polygamy and Masculinity in China: Past and Present.” In Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men, edited by Kam Louie, 13–33. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Part I Representing Chinese Men Transnationally

1

Cosmopolitanism with Chinese Characteristics Transnational Male Images in Chinese TV Dramas Geng Song

The study of Chinese masculinities in a transnational setting has now emerged as both an imperative and promising area of exploration. On the one hand, “Chinese masculinity” is increasingly represented in relation to foreigners and foreignness in the Chinese media and involves a paradoxical interplay between nationalist sentiments and cosmopolitan desires in the popular imagination. On the other hand, new discourses and practices of masculinities exhibit a deterritorialized Chinese subjectivity, either through physical migration or imagination through the media. In both respects, television plays an important role that invites fruitful analysis. This chapter analyzes a group of male images in Chinese television dramas of recent years and examines how national identity is constructed through negotiation of the meaning of gender.1 These images, such as white-collar elite in transnational corporations, returnees from overseas, and Chinese businessmen in foreign countries, show a conspicuous desire to represent Chinese men in a cosmopolitan fashion and to link masculinity with modernity. In representations of this “transnational business masculinity,” English is widely spoken and has become a symbol of the cosmopolitan identity. A Western lifestyle (e.g., drinking wine and coffee) is represented as a middle-class status symbol and an indicator of knowledge of the world and modernity. Other venues for the performance of cosmopolitan masculinity are some foreign locales. Dramas depicting the lives of overseas Chinese, including students, tourists, new immigrants, and merchants, have become increasingly popular in recent years. The chapter examines how these transnational male images exhibit hybridity and negotiation between global and local discourses of masculinity and how this cosmopolitan masculinity squares with the state’s agenda of building a modern and cosmopolitan image of the country and, in particular, its educated younger elite. 1. The work described in this chapter was supported by a GRF grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. 17609516).

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TV Drama and State-Sanctioned Masculinity Television, framed by Michael Keane as “a rapidly evolving medium that is cross platform and transcultural in its operation” (Keane 2015, 3–4), has replaced film and literature as the principal definer and circulator of the “cultural mainstream” in today’s China (Zhong 2010). Whilst television in China is traditionally associated with older and less educated audiences (Schneider 2012; Xu 2015), it is nowadays exerting increasing influence on the younger generation due to digitalization and convergence of media. TV dramas adapted from online fiction and reality shows copycatted from Korea, Japan, and the West, such as the Chinese version of the global Britain’s Got Talent franchise, appeal to a diverse population of younger audiences. Viewing these programs in downloaded forms on the laptop or cell phone has become a lifestyle for many urban youth in China. In addition, Chinese television is nowadays ambitiously aiming at the market beyond China in an attempt to enhance the soft power of the country. Yet commercialization and internationalization have not changed the status of television as an important tool of education and propaganda of state-sanctioned ideology. TV programs thus exemplify state intervention, if not sheer engineering, of popular culture and imagination in postsocialist China. In terms of masculinity, television in recent years has produced a wealth of popular male images ranging from wartime heroic man to metrosexual urbanites (see Song 2010; Song and Hird 2014, 29–54; Song 2016). The mechanism of TV production and censorship in China makes this form of culture an important site to examine the tension and complicity between state agenda and global capitalism in the construction of gender identities. A critical study of these male images reveals how competing forms of masculinity in Chinese media respond to global hegemonic masculinity, legitimatize male dominance in postsocialist China in various ways, and reflect both the engagement with the global and discourses that are deeply rooted and embedded in the local sociopolitical context. Among the variety of programs airing in China, TV drama serials, a genre of narrative entertainment, is the most watched, most influential, and most revenue-generating category for television stations. The huge population of TV viewers in China has rendered the production of TV drama one of the most profitable undertakings in the country. Increasing reliance on private investment has shifted producers’ primary concern to one of wooing the audience by creating programming that appeals to popular tastes, thus attracting profit-generating advertising revenue. As a result, TV drama as a form of entertainment demonstrates the combined influence of government, everyday culture, and artistic practice, or, as Donald, Keane, and Yin (2002) put it, the dynamic interplay among “state, market, and intellectuals.” Many scholars are interested in this “happy marriage” between neoliberal marketization and authoritarian control. Among them, Florian Schneider

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draws on a Foucauldian approach and investigates the production of “normal” knowledge by television as part of “cultural governance” by the postsocialist Chinese state. Among the various factors that constitute the media ecology of Chinese TV, he particularly singles out historicized audiences’ viewing habits and ideological assumptions of media practitioners (Schneider 2012). As noted above, various audience research analyses indicate that TV drama in China is mostly watched by lower-income, lower educational-level audiences. Dramas are consumed by more female audiences, and more viewers in the less economically developed central and western regions than the comparatively prosperous eastern coastline. All TV dramas shown in China undergo heavy-handed censorship before and after shooting, and, therefore, compared with film, tend to be more didactic and more static in their reflection of the mode of lifestyle prescribed by the government. These differences have a direct impact on the discourses of cosmopolitanism and imagination of otherness in film and TV drama. This is obvious when we compare the film version and TV drama version of Go Lala Go! (Du Lala shengzhi ji 杜拉拉升職記, literally “Du Lala’s promotion”), both of which are adaptations of a popular series of novels written by the writer Li Ke, a former employee of IBM. The narrative of financial mobility and romantic love tells how an ordinary office girl, Du Lala, ascends from secretary to HR manager in a fictional Fortune 500 company called DB. In the process, she also falls in love with the sales director, Wang Wei, who is a returnee from the United States, but breaks up with him partially out of jealousy (Wang had a previous relationship with Rose, Lala’s boss) and partially to focus on her career. At the end of the story, Lala reunites with Wang Wei when they are in Thailand on holiday. As Amanda Weiss points out, the film/TV drama shares the same narrative formula as the American film Working Girl in that there is a lower-class Cinderella/plucky “working girl” (Du Lala/Tess McGill), a Prince Charming/male love interest/male boss (Wang Wei/ Jack Turner), and an evil stepsister/sinister female boss/romantic rival (Rose/ Katherine Parker). The evil female character is rejected by Prince Charming, who helps raise the “working girl” from obscure poverty to a life of unimaginable riches (Weiss 2011). Comparing the TV drama adaptation with the film, one easily notices that the film is more internationalized in terms of its production team and targeted audience. Its all-star cast includes Taiwan-born American singer Stanley Huang and Hong Kong pop star Karen Mok. In the film Wang Wei speaks fluent American-accented English and Rose speaks British English and peppers her Chinese with English phrases. A significant part of the film is shot in Thailand, a country constructed as a place to cure emotional wounds. In this relatively genuine international setting, as Weiss observes, “Du Lala’s tale is not just a story of individual success, but also that of China’s global success” (Weiss 2011). In the TV drama, Wang Wei is played by Li Guangjie, a mainland actor without

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an international background. The drama is full of stereotypical imaginaries of the other, which are mostly in line with the knowledge and expectations of audiences with lower educational backgrounds and limited experiences. For instance, when Wang Wei’s ex-wife complains that her white husband is unfaithful to her, Wang says, “You have to get prepared for cultural difference. Western men are like animals. They cannot control their urge to run around with other women occasionally. That’s not a big deal” (episode 1). Most importantly, the values expressed in the TV drama are more “conservative” and attuned to state ideology. In the film, success is egregiously measured by material possessions. Lala’s upward progress is marked by her salary increases and title changes. In fact, the film is organized into chapters by Lala’s stages of promotion, from a lower-ranking secretary to HR manager. Each time she receives a promotion, the film depicts Lala removing her shoes at the entrance of the company. Her heels grow higher and higher, like her position in DB. In the TV drama, however, Lala succeeds because she is a warmhearted girl. Her success is attributed to her moral qualities such as honesty (she picks up Daisy’s wallet in a shopping mall, but does not pocket it), filial piety (her dream is to buy an apartment in Shanghai for her mother), and generosity in helping others (she kindheartedly helps the neighboring old lady, etc.), on top of the neoliberal spirit of individualistic striving. Thus, the TV version of this rags-to-riches Cinderella story is ideologically more in line with the so-called socialist core values and promotion of “positive energy” (zheng nengliang 正能量) in society. Ideal masculinity in Chinese TV dramas primarily reflects state-sanctioned discourses, the most conspicuous example of which is the images of wartime heroes, especially anti-Japanese heroes ubiquitously seen on the Chinese TV screen. In these dramas, which echo the official narrative of the Anti-Japanese War (1931–1945), the male heroes are always represented as the embodiment of virility of the Chinese nation and genuine “Chinese spirit.” By contrast, Japanese male characters are depicted as less masculine, in terms of both moral and physical qualities, and function as a foil to the true masculinity of the Chinese heroic men (see Song 2010; 2016). The link between manhood and nationhood and the centrality of nationalism has become a distinguished feature of the discourse of masculinity in popular culture in the Chinese context and exemplifies the intervention of the state in the construction of hegemonic masculinity (Song 2010; 2016). The male images in Chinese TV dramas therefore provide an important but understudied perspective from which to examine gendered subjectivity in television, as a technology of the Self, in the context of the tensions and negotiation between nationalism and neoliberal globalization.

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Haigui (Returnees) and “Transnational Business Masculinity” It is noteworthy that new directions and changes have emerged in recent years in ideological attributes and audience demographics of TV drama in China, as a result of the industry and government’s efforts to reach out to younger and more elite audiences. In terms of articulations of ideal manhood, a host of transnational male images, including foreigners, returnees from overseas, Chinese students and immigrants in foreign countries, and white-collar employees of transnational corporations in China, increasingly appear on the TV screen. They represent a strong desire to see Chinese men depicted in a cosmopolitan fashion (Song and Hird 2014, 12). A recent hit drama, Love Me, If You Dare (Ta lai le, qing bi yan 他來了，請閉眼, literally, “He’s coming, please close your eyes”), put this type of masculinity on full display. The 24-episode drama series, a coproduction of the Shandong Film and TV Group and SMG Pictures, was adapted from a popular online novel by Ding Mo and is the first TV drama to successfully expand from online platforms to traditional TV channels.2 Series episodes have been simultaneously broadcast at Sohu.com and on Dragon TV, a popular Shanghai-based satellite TV station, at 10 p.m. every Thursday since October 15, 2015. The program has achieved consistently high ratings and gained exceptional popularity among young audiences with its engaging story lines, creative cinematography, and international ambience (Xu 2015). It centers on the struggle between a young crime psychologist named Bo Jinyan 薄靳言 (whose English name is Simon), played by Taiwanese actor Wallace Huo 霍建華, and a dangerous psychopath killer named Xie Han 謝晗 (Zhang Luyi 張魯一). Both characters are Chinese men educated in the West. Bo, who is in his late twenties or early thirties, is a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland who had moved to the United States with his mother after losing his father at a young age. He is depicted as a man with a “high IQ but low EQ.” At the outset of the drama, he is in China helping the Chinese police to solve a serial murder case. In the process, Bo falls in love with his assistant Jian Yao 簡瑤 (whose English name is Jenny and is played by Ma Sichun 馬思純), a senior university student majoring in English. Together, they gradually come to the realization that all clues point to the killer being Xie, who happens to be an old rival of Bo’s. The son of a wealthy family, Xie studied at Princeton University before being expelled because of his “distorted personality.” In the second half of the series, which takes place in the United States, Bo, 2. Normally, TV drama series are first aired by a satellite TV channel, and then are available for streaming several hours later on such online platforms as Sohu, LeTV, Youku, Tudou, and iQiyi, with their secondary copyright purchased by these streaming video sites. Love Me, If You Dare, however, marks a new broadcast mode at a time of rapid cross-platform development. Its copyright was successfully sold back to the traditional TV sector.

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with the help of his close friend Fu Ziyu 傅子遇 (Yin Zheng 尹正), gains Xie’s confidence by making him believe that Bo has a “secondary personality” that desires to be a cold-blooded killer, and successfully brings him to justice. Bo and Fu, who resemble the Holmes and Watson duo, both embody the ideal of “tall, rich, and handsome” (gao fu shuai 高富帥), a widely circulated discourse referring to middle- and upper-class males with considerable financial resources and consumer power (see Gong 2015). The two men, together with the evil Xie Han, are returnees from overseas, or haigui 海歸. The term haigui, whose homophonic meaning is “sea turtle,” is often half-jokingly used to describe Chinese who have received an education in the West and are thus highly sought after in the job market (see also Louie 2005, 73–88). They are a privileged group in terms of their knowledge of the world, and they are considered to be the most cosmopolitan sector of the Chinese population in terms of lifestyle, language, and ways of thinking. In both Chinese TV dramas and dating shows, the haigui identity always signifies a high level of (heterosexual) desirability. In Love Me, If You Dare, Bo and his friend Fu are both graduates of top US universities and can communicate easily with foreigners, such as FBI agent Susan.3 The term haigui is also associated with “cosmopolitan” taste, which is regarded as superior to and more refined than the parochial taste of local people. The elegant Europeanstyle villa in which Bo lives and his connoisseurship of coffee and wine serve to illustrate his ample cultural capital, and, following Bourdieu (1984), are signs of class distinction and social exclusion. The class hierarchy is further reflected in the relationship between Bo and his girlfriend and assistant, Jian Yao. The two first meet when Jian, with a recommendation from her teacher, comes to Bo’s villa for a part-time translation job that Bo has advertised. He is looking for someone to translate his English journal articles into Chinese because, as a haigui who received a Western education, his Chinese is not good enough. The relationship is patronizing from the outset, with Bo, who is hiding upstairs, casting an examining gaze at the young girl being interviewed and tested by his friend Fu. Belying his stony face and icy manners, Bo actually appreciates Jian’s reasoning powers, which he discovers in the process of working with her, and he falls in love with her. He proposes to the local police that Jian be appointed his personal assistant and even takes the liberty of high-handedly informing the company with which Jian has already signed an employment contract of the decision. Jian, however, appears more flattered than offended. She is always in the position of follower rather than decision-maker, with the somewhat arrogant Bo exhibiting boundless self-esteem throughout. The romance between the two is reminiscent of the stereotypical sexual relationships depicted in post-Mao Chinese films and other forms of 3. In the drama, Bo and the other Chinese characters speak Chinese when talking with the foreign characters, who answer in English. The audience is made to believe that they are communicating in English.

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cultural representation, as discussed by Xiaoying Wang: “the male protagonist . . . is almost invariably in a higher social and economic position than the female protagonist, who in turn behaves as if she is the man’s subordinate or servant” (Wang 2003, 147). In addition to knowledge and wisdom, which typically legitimatize male dominance in terms of the Cartesian mind/body dichotomy (Hesse-Biber 2006), Bo’s masculinity is also validated by the aspirational spaces he inhabits, such as his luxury villa and flashy car. The Cinderella fantasy of hypergamy reaches its climax when Bo takes his assistant to an opulent suite on the top floor of a five-star hotel for their first night together. The evening has been orchestrated by Fu to get Bo to formally profess his love for Jian. And Fu’s scheme turns out to be effective, as evidenced by the gratified expression on Jian’s face as she watches fireworks from the suite with a bird’s view of the entire city. This approbative representation of premarital sex is rather unusual in Chinese TV dramas, as the genre is prone to reflecting lifestyle modes prescribed by the state, as noted above. Strikingly different from the clichéd image of the self-sacrificing policeman, Bo is a workaholic who finds pleasure in fighting perverted killers. Conspicuously absent is also any hint of patriotism in the drama’s depiction of the police. As a matter of fact, Bo’s work is transnational and demonstrates a cosmopolitan spirit in subduing criminals through the combined efforts of cross-national police forces. He and his assistant and friend are in China one moment and in Hong Kong the next assisting the Hong Kong police in solving a serial killer case. Then, they jet off to the States to collaborate with their American counterparts. Bo’s knowledge and professionalism as genius and scholar cannot be confined by national borders. Here, the obvious influence of My Love from the Star, a South Korean TV series that is highly popular among Chinese youths, can be seen. In that series, the male lead is an alien who landed on Earth some four hundred years before and has become a professor in modern times. It is clear that the producer of Love Me, If You Dare is carefully constructing an image of a cosmopolitan young professional to cater to the taste and fantasy of young Chinese viewers. The image of “transnational business masculinity” conveyed by Bo and his friend Fu are new to the Chinese TV screen. In contemporary gender studies, it is widely acknowledged that, rather than a fixed quality, masculinity is inherently historical, and its making and remaking constitute a political process affecting the balance of interests in society and the direction of social change (Connell 2005, 44). As a relational concept, masculinity is always defined in opposition to its others (i.e., women, racial and sexual minorities, etc.), and dominant forms of masculinity are bound up with major forms of social power. Recent studies of masculinities in the West, in particular the work of R. W. Connell, have brought to the fore a form of “hegemonic masculinity” that is associated with global capitalism, namely, the aforementioned “transnational business masculinity”

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represented by globally mobile managers and entrepreneurs (Connell 2005; Connell and Wood 2005). Such men embody the power of transnational capital and “self-consciously manage their bodies and emotions as well as money, and are increasingly detached from older loyalties to nation, business organization, family, and marital partners” (Elias and Beasly 2009, 286). Although this form of masculinity undoubtedly speaks to the role of multinational corporations in contemporary accounts of globalization, cogent critiques find the notion of monolithic top-down “transnational business masculinity” to be at odds with critical studies of globalization emphasizing the “hybrid” nature of globalization, and, in particular, the role that states plays in mediating and transforming the relationship between the global and the local (Elias and Beasley 2009, 284). In what follows, I focus on how Chinese TV images respond to this globally hegemonic form of masculinity through the construction of a cosmopolitan subjectivity with Chinese characteristics.

Cosmopolitanism with Chinese Characteristics? The recent two decades have witnessed the powerful emergence of cosmopolitanism as a buzzword across the humanities and social sciences. Whilst different interpretations and applications of the term coexist, cosmopolitanism can be broadly defined as a “condition of openness to the world and entailing self and societal transformation in light of the encounter with the Other” (Delanty 2012, 41). Delanty also maintains a four-level spectrum of cosmopolitan relationship in late modernity, ranging from a “cultural omnivorousness” to an orientation toward world consciousness, which put the non-national interest before the national interest (ibid., 44). For him, “cosmopolitanism is not a zero-sum condition, present or absent, but is always a matter of degree” (ibid.). As a notion central to the constitution of “desiring China” in the postsocialist era, Lisa Rofel argues that cosmopolitanism in the Chinese space “consists of two aspects in tension with one another: a self-conscious transcendence of locality, posited as a universal transcendence accomplished thought the formation of a consumer identity; and a domestication of cosmopolitanism by way of renegotiating China’s place in the world” (Rofel 2007, 111). Through consumption and wealth, a new type of neoliberal cosmopolitan subject is being constructed. The cosmopolitan subject also displays the paradoxical interplay between confidence and anxiety when facing the West, a complex that is linked to a long-standing obsession with Western culture as an icon of modernity that can be traced back to at least the late nineteenth century. It is obvious that this discourse of cosmopolitanism is at a lower level in Delanty’s structure of cosmopolitan relations and is not necessarily in tension with nationalism in the context of contemporary China. As a matter of fact, this cosmopolitanism that emphasizes the formation of new subjects in a more open and stronger China in the world stage is as much

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nationalism’s supplement as its negation. As revealed by recent investigations of younger and more recent Chinese immigrants in the West, “nationalism has become part of a cosmopolitan Chinese youth identity in overseas locations” (Nyíri and Zhang 2010, 62). At the same time, challenging the idea that cosmopolitans are necessarily members of the elite and cosmopolitanism presupposes mobility, Haiyan Lee identifies a form of “vernacular cosmopolitanism” or “cosmopolitanism from below” by discussing the images nannies and peasants in Chinese film and TV (Lee 2015). She defines cosmopolitan subjectivity as one that “honors the humanity of the stranger” (ibid., 243). However, compared with the consumerist cosmopolitanism, this version of cosmopolitanism does not find wide currency in the popular imagination. Especially when talking about the construction of idealized masculinity, cosmopolitanism as a desirable quality is always coupled with a distinctive class background and hierarchy. Cosmopolitan subjects have been constructed in relation to the suzhi discourse, which, in the words of Sigley, “through a commoditization and dehumanization of the body, constructs a hierarchy of worthiness and utility” (2009, 539). It is widely believed that “wealth, and by association, consumption makes a better cosmopolitan person” (Rofel 2007, 116). Therefore, instead of self-problematization and reflexivity in which critique is integral, “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics” is more a confirmation of the self through claims of cosmopolitan subjectivity that transcend parochial identity. In this sense, it is in line with an important task of postsocialist subject-making in the Chinese media, and TV in particular, namely, the construction of a “Chinese” identity through the dichotomous imagination of the national self/otherness. At the center of this construction is placing China in “a reimagined world” (Rofel 2007, 112). In both TV dramas and reality shows, for instance, male images displaying obvious foreign influences, such as the metrosexual man or the Korean male lover, are gaining in popularity. Paradoxically, however, admiration for and appropriation of these non-Chinese masculinities occurs side by side with a keen desire to construct a pure, homogeneous “Chineseness,” of which Chinese masculinity is both a conspicuous example and a salient constituent. The habitual obsession with a “Chineseness,” which reinforces the cultural essentialism that “draws an imaginary boundary between China and the rest of the world” (Chow 2000, 5) echoes a state-sanctioned nationalism that has attracted increasing concerns in the West in recent years. In the mass media, a form of cultural nationalism, as Yingjie Guo (2004) terms it, has emerged in line with the state’s nation-building agenda. This discourse encompasses not only a desire for the restoration of China’s past pride and prestige, but also a redemptive search for national identity in the era of globalization (ibid.). At the center of this cultural engineering project, which has both the domestic and diasporic

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Chinese communities in mind, is a Sino-centric view of Chineseness and the world. As the status of the male (and also the female, albeit in a very different way) is often linked to national confidence and ambition, media representation indicates the fault lines of the confidence and anxiety that the aforementioned paradox suggests. Reeser (2010, 189) delineates the symbolic link between masculinity and nationalism: “masculinity might be linked to the nation precisely because the nation needs to be buttressed by another incarnation of power or because masculinity needs to be helped by the representational power of the nation.” This is particularly true when taking into account the long-standing and complex link between nationhood and manhood not only in the Chinese media but also in Chinese culture at large. Davies and Wu (2008, 11) also point out the deeply rooted discourse of promoting “a robust Chinese masculinity as the remedy that will save the nation from further cultural erosion” in Chinese nationalism. The cosmopolitanism of new male images is embodied by the spectacular male body, packaged in a fashionable hairstyle, attire, and appearance closely resembling the style popularized by Korean pop culture. In Love Me, If You Dare, Bo is always outfitted in a tight-fitting suit and white shirt, signaling his professionalism and success. He and Fu epitomize the handsome glamor of young professionals with a cosmopolitan vision and tasteful lifestyle. Two aspects of the duo’s depiction merit particular attention. The first is the objectification of the male body. Scenes of Bo being tortured by a psycho killer appear repeatedly in the series, with the handsome young psychologist the object of the camera’s gaze as it lingers over his semi-nude body and closes in on various parts of his body. The second is the homoerotic overtones in the ambiguous relationship between Bo and Fu. Like that between Holmes and Watson, the duo’s relationship is somewhat akin to master and maid, which to a certain extent is reminiscent of the yin/yang hierarchy in same-sex relationships in the Chinese space (see Song 2004). Fu is so loyal and devoted to Bo that he is concerned with all aspects of Bo’s daily life, and he even allows himself to be wounded to protect Bo’s girlfriend, Jian Yao. Although their friendship is confined within the framework of brotherhood and homosocial bonds within the drama, with no overt suggestion of homosexual love, the pair has become the target of male-male CP (coupling) fandom re-creation through online and simultaneous comments. “Male-male CP” is a term originating in Japanese Anime, Comics, and Games (ACG) culture that is also widely used by fans of Korean pop culture. It originally referred to the practice of imagining nonexistent male-male love in manga or TV dramas by a group of female fans, known as fujoshi 腐女, who are eager to see homosexual love between male characters, especially between young and handsome male characters. In recent years, the practice has become increasingly popular among TV drama fans in China, with many male drama characters being “coupled” as gay lovers, sometimes jokingly, by audiences. Both of the aspects singled out

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above represent trends and imaginaries that are new to the depiction of masculinities on the Chinese TV screen, perhaps validating the point raised by Lisa Rofel in her discussion of the articulation of desires for the purpose of cultural belonging. For her, the meaning of sex and sexuality in a transnational setting “lies at the heart of cultural citizenship” (Rofel 2007, 95). Both the quasi-fujoshi fad for male-male intimacy and the imagination of gayness as something “Western” and transnational reflect a passion for “cosmopolitan” desires in the process of subjectification. Despite the preoccupation with a cosmopolitan subject and lifestyle in Love Me, If You Dare, a noteworthy tendency in the drama is the representation of Chinese men as “super brains” to whom men of other races/nationalities cannot hold a candle. The drama’s cosmopolitan men represent an image of China and Chineseness worthy of being presented to the world. In this sense, the renegotiation of China’s place in the world is being effected not only through consumption but also through an imagined essentialist superiority. The entire series centers on the intellectual combat between two Chinese men (Bo and his nemesis, the psychopath killer Xie), or, to be more precise, two overseas Chinese men. White men, be they criminals or policemen, appear in the series only as assistants or accomplices. The American policemen appear particularly foolish and stubborn in juxtaposition to the two Chinese men’s superior wisdom. This fantasy of superiority is also seen in the episodes in which the trio of Bo, Fu, and Jian assists the local police in Hong Kong, a place that, according to Haiyan Lee, signifies an ambiguous and awkward position in the Self/Other dichotomy and whose people are represented as Chinese who need “to be renationalised” (Lee 2014, 272). When investigating serial killer cases, the Hong Kong police do nothing but follow the instructions of Bo, who appears haughty but is infallibly correct. He thus represents an idealized version of cosmopolitan masculinity, which is characterized and validated by professionalism, wisdom, knowledge, and, above all, confidence.

Conclusion The rise of China as a global power has witnessed the paradoxical coexistence of both cosmopolitan and nationalistic sensibilities among its population. If China is cosmopolitan, why is it also anxious and xenophobic? How might we understand this tension between two poles that are also coterminous in cultural and social expressions of the cosmopolitan? One way of investigating this paradox is through a focus on media representation and popular imaginaries of masculinities in China as a response to global hegemonic masculinity. As I have shown in this chapter, male images in China’s recent television programs display increasing transnationality and a paradoxical coterminosity between cosmopolitan fantasy and nationalist pride, which indicates the fault lines of the

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confidence and anxiety when China faces the world. The politics of masculinity in the Chinese context challenges the overly economistic and uniform notion of hegemonic masculinity and invites a rethinking of gendered globalization in the network of state ideology, transnational capital and popular imagination.

References Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. London: Routledge. Chow, Rey. 2000. “Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem.” In Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory: Re-imagining a Field, edited by Rey Chow, 1–25. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Connell, R. W. 2005. Masculinities. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Connell, R. W., and Julian Wood. 2005. “Globalization and Business Masculinities.” Men and Masculinities 7(4): 347–64. Davies, Gloria, and Guanjun Wu. 2008. “Affirming Chinese Identity in a Language of Violence: Reflections on Writings by China’s New Nationalists.” Accessed October 3, 2015. http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mai/files/2012/07/davieswu.pdf. Delanty, Gerard. 2012. “The Idea of Critical Cosmopolitanism.” In Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, edited by Gerard Delanty, 38–46. London and New York: Routledge. Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk, Michael Keane, and Hong Yin, eds. 2002. Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis. London; New York: Routledge Curzon. Elias, Juanita, and Christine Beasley. 2009. “Hegemonic Masculinity and Globalization: ‘Transnational Business Masculinities’ and Beyond.” Globalizations 6(2): 281–96. Gong, Yuan. 2015. “Online Discourse of Masculinities in Transnational Football Fandom: Chinese Arsenal Fans’ Talk around ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi.’” Discourse & Society: 1–18. Guo, Yingjie. 2004. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China. London: Routledge. Hesse-Biber, Sharlene. 2006. The Cult of Thinness. New York: Oxford University Press. Keane, Michael. 2015. The Chinese Television Industry. London; New York: Palgrave. Lee, Haiyan. 2014. The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Louie, Kam. 2015. Chinese Masculinities in a Globalizing World. London and New York: Routledge. Nyíri, Pál, and Juan Zhang. 2010. “China’s Cosmopolitan Nationalists: ‘Heroes’ and ‘Traitors’ of the 2008 Olympics.” The China Journal 63: 25–55. Reeser, Todd W. 2010. Masculinities in Theory: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Rofel, Lisa. 2007. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Schneider, Florian. 2012. Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series. Leiden: Brill. Sigley, Gary. 2009. “Suzhi, the Body, and the Fortunes of Technoscientific Reasoning in Contemporary China.” positions 17(3): 537–66. Song, Geng. 2004. The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Song, Geng. 2010. “Chinese Masculinities Revisited: Male Images in Contemporary Television Drama Serials.” Modern China 36: 404–34.

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Song, Geng. 2015. “Imagining the Other: Foreigners on the Chinese TV Screen.” In Chinese Television in the Twenty-First Century: Entertaining the Nation, edited by Ruoyun Bai and Geng Song, 107–40. London and New York: Routledge. Song, Geng. 2016. “All Dogs Deserve to Be Beaten: Negotiating Manhood and Nationhood in Chinese TV Dramas.” In Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men, edited by Kam Louie, 204–19. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Song, Geng, and Derek Hird. 2014. Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China. Leiden: Brill. Wang, Xiaoying. 2003. “A Time to Remember: The Reinvention of the Communist Hero in Postcommunist China.” New Literary History 34: 133–53. Weiss, Amanda. 2011. “Go Lala Go and Working Girl: The Chinese/American Dream.” Popmatters. Accessed January 25, 2016. http://www.popmatters.com/feature/ 140408-go-lala-go-and-working-girl-the-chineseamerican-dream/. Xu, Wei. 2015. “TV Thrillers Take Cue from Online Novels.” Shanghai Daily, November 7. Zhong, Xueping. 2010. Mainstream Culture Refocused: Television Drama, Society, and the Production of Meaning in Reform-Era China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

2

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

At least since Sax Rohmer’s creation of the criminal mastermind Fu Manchu in the 1910s, Chinese characters have regularly featured in the European crime genre throughout the twentieth century.1 Since the 1990s, figures of Chinese criminals have also guest-starred in Tatort (Crime Scene), the most extensive and longest-running fictional television program in the German-speaking countries. With more than a thousand episodes, Tatort has been on air without interruption since November 1970. It is jointly produced by nine different regional German television channels in cooperation with one Swiss and one Austrian station. They alternately contribute individual ninety-minute episodes featuring more than twenty different police teams solving cases of homicide in cities across the three nations. In an average frequency of thirty-one episodes per year, all episodes of Tatort are first aired during the series’ traditional prime time slot on Sunday evening at 8:15 p.m. They each attract between seven and ten million television viewers on average (individual episodes attract up to fifteen million), reaching all age groups and social milieus (Hißnauer, Scherer, and Stockinger 2014a, 7). In addition, hundreds of restaurants and bars host popular public viewing events and each episode is usually reviewed, analyzed, and discussed at length in various online, print, and social media. In 2013, Tatort was the most successful evening television program in Germany with a market share of 25.4 percent (Hißnauer, Scherer, and Stockinger 2014a, 7). In short, Tatort not only represents a unique collaborative media format, it is one of the most influential programs of contemporary European popular media. Tatort has achieved cult status. 1. On Fu Manchu and other major “Chinese” characters in Western popular media, such as Honolulu police detective Charlie Chan, James Bond’s antagonist Dr. No, Ming the Merciless of the Flash Gordon series, or Batman’s opponent Ra’s al Ghul, see Mayer (2013) and Greene (2014). All translations from languages other than English are mine if not otherwise stated. The transcription of Chinese names follows the films’ credits. Research for this chapter has been funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): J3546-G23.

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Tatort has frequently starred foreign characters since the 1970s and in increasing numbers since the 1990s. The issue of migration is a recurring theme and has been raised by 16.3 percent of all episodes between 1970 and 2003 (Ortner 2007, 11). However, the large majority of foreigners represented in the series so far have been of Turkish, Southern, and Eastern European descent (Paasch-Colberg and Küfner 2012, 403–4). Tatort has in this way responded to major migrant movements in Europe, in particular, the “guest workers” in the 1970s, the refugees during the Yugoslav War in the 1990s, and the increasing importance of secondgeneration Turkish migrants in German, Austrian, and Swiss societies. More recently, a growing number of episodes have addressed the “European refugee crisis” as more than a million refugees have arrived from Africa and the Middle East since 2015. The first major Chinese roles appeared in the series only after more than twenty years and 250 episodes in the year 1991 as a result of the fall of the Iron Curtain, on the one hand, and the simultaneous “rise” of China following the policy of reform and opening up, on the other. When taking demographic statistics into account, migrants from the European Union (4 million) and Turkey (1.5 million) formed more than half of the 9.1 million foreigners who officially resided in Germany in 2015 (Statistisches Bundesamt 2016). In comparison, the 120,000 Chinese nationals in the country formed a relatively small group of immigrants. Until the late 2000s, Chinese figures have therefore not surprisingly been a rare but, as this chapter argues, all the more spectacular occurrence in Tatort. Furthermore, due to its specific generic and formal configurations, the series promises to be a particularly intriguing case to study the medial negotiations of masculinities in a transnational framework. This chapter takes four episodes between 1991 and 2013 as case studies, which most prominently featured Chinese characters in the history of the series: “The Chinese Method” (“Die chinesische Methode,” 1991), “The Dead Chinese” (“Der tote Chinese,” 2008), “Wrongly Packed” (“Falsch verpackt,” 2012), and “The Chinese Princess” (“Die chinesische Prinzessin,” 2013). It is the first study of Chinese figures in Tatort and still one of the first that is concerned with representations of masculinity, which, despite tremendous interest in the series in recent years, has not yet received much scholarly attention.2 It argues 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 2. The research conducted by the German Popular Seriality Research Unit (PSRU), specifically their sub-project “Forms and Practices of Seriality in the ARD Police Procedural Tatort” led by Claudia Stockinger at the University of Göttingen (2010–2013), is particularly worth pointing out (Hißnauer, Scherer, and Stockinger 2014a, Hißnauer, Scherer, and Stockinger 2014b). Studies on migration have so far overlooked Chinese protagonists (Ortner 2007; Paasch-Colberg and Küfner 2012) and research on gender has focused almost exclusively on women (Dietze 2004).

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the rules of both the genre of the detective narrative and the serial form, they allow insights into Europe coming to terms with China’s growing and threatening power in the world by staging a narrative cycle of crime and solution, crisis and recovery, significantly placed within the realm of masculinities.

Breaking the Rules: The Chinese Businessman In one of their very first cases, “The Chinese Method” (“Die chinesische Methode,” episode 251, November 10, 1991), chief inspectors Ivo Batic and Franz Leitmayr in Munich, one of the longest running and still active teams, solve the murder of a Chinese student. The detectives gradually unveil an intricate scheme of a protection racket led by the criminal businessman Chow. Representing his brother Hap-man, head of the Chinese Trust Company in London, Chow runs a fish shop, which forces all Chinese restaurant owners in Munich to “rent” his goldfish in return for protection. The detectives find out that the murdered student was Chow’s henchman. He was killed by one of the restaurant owners who tried to cast off Chow’s control. After the police fail to protect him from Chow’s revenge, the restaurant owner is killed too. When Chow is trying to escape, the police catch Chow at the airport where he takes a flight attendant hostage. The detectives call for Hap-man to talk to his brother, but when Hap-man leaves the room Chow is found dead in what appears as a suicide. Featuring the first major Chinese protagonists in Tatort, “The Chinese Method” carved out a blueprint for the depiction of Chinese criminals in the television series. Chow and Hap-man represent the globe-trotting Chinese businessman, a figure that has played an increasingly important role in popular media in China and abroad since the 1990s, signaling a “transnational turn” in Chinese masculinities.3 In the episode, they run Chow Happy Fish Company and the London Trust Company, which officially deal with goldfish and soybeans, respectively, but turn out to be part of a larger network of Chinese organized crime. Citing real cases of protection rackets that occurred in Chinese restaurants in Munich at the time, the episode reflects major transformations of Europe following the opening of the borders to the East after the fall of the Iron Curtain which catapulted Germany right into the center of the main transit route of drugs and human trafficking between China and Scandinavia, Canada, and the United States, resulting in a rise of crimes involving Chinese. Dealing with acute European concerns, Hap-man, in particular, symbolizes the Chinese menace that cannot be controlled. Dissatisfied with Chow and the trouble caused by the uprising of the restaurant owners, Hap-man travels to 3. See in particular Chapter 1 on transnational business masculinities in Chinese television dramas by Geng Song and Chapter 3 on Chinese-language and American films by Sheldon Lu in this volume. On the impact of globalization on traditional concepts of Chinese masculinities, see Louie 2015 and Louie 2016.

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Munich from London to solve the problem himself. He first scolds his brother and then takes him off the management of the fish company. Apart from his elegant clothes, Hap-man’s body language and gestures emphasize his superiority. This becomes particularly visible in his interaction with the police. When Leitmayr tries to threaten him, Hap-man demonstratively takes the officer’s hands off his shoulder (Tatort 1991, 01:30:00). The detectives are blinded by Hapman’s appearance and rely on his help. After the “suicide” of his brother, they are left standing open-mouthed and puzzled, and the episode ends abruptly. They will never be able to prove his involvement in Chow’s death nor business practices. The transnational Chinese businessman is therefore introduced into Tatort as a slick villain whose skills surpass those of the detectives. He simply walks away from the crimes with a clean slate. That order is not restored in this episode is a severe violation of the rules of the genre. As a police procedural Tatort positions itself within the longstanding history of the detective genre, which in literature had become established by the late 1920s, and was soon adapted in radio shows in the 1930s and the new audiovisual medium of television in the 1950s. Like no other, the detective novel had already been described, prescribed, and codified since its beginnings in numerous collections of rules and practical guides by and for readers and writers (Molander Danielsson 2002, 21–24). The detective film has become not only one of the most successful television formats worldwide but also one of the most standardized and formulaic genres. It is also one of the most constant forms of popular culture, which despite medial, aesthetic, and thematic updates, specifications and diversifications, has sustained its “basic formula” in which society is protected and the status quo maintained by the forces of law and order (Cooke 2002, 19). A crime is by definition the violation of a community code of conduct, which demands a response in terms of the code imposing adequate sanctions. In contrast to the crime genre, where the protagonists can assume any position along the spectrum between innocence and guilt, the detective genre requires, as its main rule, leading roles who stand on the side of justice (Molander Danielsson 2002, 22). Its fundamental structure always requires the discovery and arrest of the criminal. It thus projects the image of a given social order and its implied value system. It defines socially acceptable behavior. Violations are usually only short-lived. Since its first conceptualization, Tatort has undoubtedly been an exemplary model of the detective genre. It has adapted the role of a powerful “moral compass” and became a manual of how to behave and how to spot violators of the system. The series has been declared to be the “real German social novel” (Vogt 2005) and the “seismograph of German sensitivities and mentalities” (Gräf 2010, 8). Its self-proclaimed socio-political responsibility has also been institutionally recognized in 2014 when Tatort was awarded the prestigious Special Honor of the Grimme Prize. Usually awarded to individuals, it was the first and

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only television program in its history to win the prize for its “exemplary” and “entertaining enlightenment” over more than four decades (Grimme Institut 2015). Constantly “taking the pulse” of the nation’s legal order, Tatort has become Germany’s “agency for standardization” (Dietze 2004, 120). In addition to generic conventions, as a television series Tatort also needs to comply with the rules of seriality. In Umberto Eco’s definition, successful seriality relies on a delicate balance of simultaneous repetition and innovation, redundancy and tension. In its modern conception of aesthetic value, it must achieve “a dialectic between order and novelty” (Eco 1985, 173). As one of the oldest narrative forms in the history of mankind, series are currently one of the most influential and defining features of contemporary popular aesthetics (Kelleter 2012). Although each of Tatort’s episodes is a self-contained feature-length film of ninety minutes dedicated to one murder case, they are closely knit into a complex serial structure. The returning police teams, which feature in irregular intervals of up to five episodes per year, form sub-series within the larger serial framework of Tatort. Due to its federal structure, Tatort’s seriality is not linear but rather cumulative and proliferating (Hißnauer, Scherer, and Stockinger 2012, 150). The dynamics of its serial narration lie in the very oscillation between the single components and the overarching structure. Elements of intra- and interserial referentiality manifest themselves on various levels of production, reception, aesthetics, dramaturgy, and narrative. Despite historically variable topics and episode-specific aesthetics due to changing directors, constant locations and figures guarantee intra-serial continuation. The most important invariant interserial elements include the series’ regular slot on Sunday evening, the episode length of ninety minutes, and the legendary theme tune, which has remained unchanged for over four decades since Tatort’s first episode on November 19, 1970. While the sub-series all retain their own specificities and distinctive features, they are conceptually cross-referenced by similar plot structures and dramaturgy, in addition to the occasional joint-episode or guest appearance. The main constitutional quality of seriality is therefore the combination of a familiar set of characters, constellations, fields of action, and moral concepts, and an equally necessary degree of variation which is however limited to a clearly defined and controlled scope. The lack of evidence to convict Hap-man in “The Chinese Method” is therefore a striking feature that decidedly breaks the established rules of Tatort within both the frameworks of the detective genre and seriality. Apart from featuring the first major appearance of Chinese protagonists the episode’s irritating and abrupt ending is another marked exception within the series. It reflects the deep unease of a continent facing a new world order for which no solution was apparent at the time. Interestingly, this anxiety is articulated most conspicuously in the constellation of power between the episodes’ male characters. Moreover, I argue that it even shifts the focus on the male characters. The detective series

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has always been one of the most “masculine” of all television genres due to the fact that it focuses on the public sphere and professional roles (MacKinnon 2003; Feasey 2008).4 The figure of the tough, aggressive, individualistic, cynical, and controlled man has dominated the format, inheriting characteristics of the archetypal “hardboiled” hero of the film noir and the gangster thrillers of the 1930s and 1940s. The detective series is a traditionally white, male, and heterosexual domain, promoting hyper-masculine toughness and professionalism. In this episode, the detectives Batic and Leitmayr, on the contrary, struggle; they fail to protect their witnesses, and they ultimately fail to solve their case. Their authority is permanently challenged by their hostile colleagues in the homicide department. Their new assistant, Carlo Menzinger, does not miss any opportunity to sarcastically comment on the “importance” of his superiors. Two other colleagues play a prank on them, calling every hour during a night shift to give fake reports about the suspect they are surveying (Tatort 1991, 00:36:00). Apart from difficulties in the professional realm, “The Chinese Method” also allows first insights into the detectives’ private lives. Inspector Ivo Batic is single and spends his nights in bars, drinking and playing table games with friends. Inspector Franz Leitmayr has a girlfriend but their relationship is complicated and tense. She gets suspicious when Leitmayr invites her for lunch in a nice restaurant, which he only arranged to get her help for his investigations (Tatort 1991, 00:34:00). She agrees and contacts her ex-boyfriend, who works at a bank, to retrieve information relevant in the murder case. However, she clearly exploits the situation to make Leitmayr jealous, and he in return arranges a scheme to cause her jealousy. In this respect, this episode also reflects a recent tendency to include private issues in the genre, in general, and in Tatort, in particular. According to statistical analyses, the private life of the detective has played an increasingly important role in the series: 15 percent of the episodes in the 1970s, 30.1 percent in the 1990s, and 41.2 percent of all episodes between 2000 and 2010 explicitly addressed the topic (Hißnauer, Scherer, and Stockinger 2014b, 337). The growing emphasis on the character of the detective rather than the case is undoubtedly a consequence of seriality on the detective genre. The tendency to serialize had been common practice from its beginnings but has increased more recently, in particular since the 1990s (Molander Danielsson 2002, 50). It allowed a transformation of the static recognizable type of the early days toward a developing dynamic and increasingly private figure. The intersection of private and public spheres also turns out to be one of the most crucial battlegrounds of masculinity in later episodes produced after 4. There are of course also many female police officers in television series but they are often significantly sexualized or masculinized or intentionally placed as narrative tools that draw attention to gendered crimes such as domestic violence, rape, or prostitution; their gender usually becomes a central and explicit issue (Creeber 2001; Dietze 2004).

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2008 when the Olympic Games in Beijing again focused the world’s attention on China. Several episodes of Tatort starred Chinese protagonists and revisited the antagonizing roles of German or Austrian detectives struggling with their private and public lives and the successful Chinese businessman, as first developed by “The Chinese Method.” However, this time order needs to be restored.

Rectifying the Violation: The Detective’s Rehabilitation In “The Dead Chinese” (“Der tote Chinese,” episode 716, December 28, 2008), successful Chinese-American businessman Tony Wang is murdered during a major convention held at the airport hotel in Frankfurt am Main. The inspectors in charge, Fritz Dellwo and Charlotte Sänger, first suspect Wen, one of the hotel’s Chinese cleaners. Wen, who had first found the body, stole the murder victim’s passport and tried to leave the country. As the detectives discover that Tony Wang had been involved in human trafficking, they focus on Mr. Hübner, the German organizer of the conference, who appears to have business connections with Wang. They are eventually able to arrest Hübner’s Chinese interpreter, Ms. Sun, who confesses to the murder of Wang in revenge for her parents’ death. They had died in one of Wang’s containers that transported illegal immigrants from China to Europe. Already the first appearance of the detective duo in Frankfurt is overshadowed by a private conflict. Dellwo used to live as a lodger in Sänger’s house but had spent the last nights somewhere else. Replying to Sänger’s agitated questions about his disappearance, Dellwo explains that he has decided to move out and look for his own apartment. He asks her to calm down because after all they are “not a married couple,” reminding the viewers that neither has a family (Tatort 2008, 00:08:00). Dellwo’s new, completely empty apartment is a recurring motif throughout the episode and functions as a strong visual reference to the emptiness of his life outside of work. During lunch at the police station’s canteen, he proudly announces that he has to leave work early in order to be home for the delivery of his new kitchen; this statement is met with disbelief from his irritated colleagues. When their female assistant jokingly asks him whether he really plans on cooking there, he elaborates sarcastically that “a stove is also needed for boiling potatoes and a garbage bin for putting the garbage” (Tatort 2008, 00:27:00). Of course he misses the delivery of the kitchen due to professional obligations. In contrast, the female assistant does leave early to pick up her children. Later when Dellwo starts assembling his new furniture, he receives a summons from work, which he follows immediately, leaving the kitchen and his private life “in pieces.” His frustration is reflected in aggressive behavior during interrogations of witnesses to the extent that Sänger dismisses him from the interrogation room. During the episode, he frequently follows leads that turn out to be red herrings, and the real murderer is only caught because of Sänger’s female intuition, which

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is a stereotypical motif in the genre when it features female detectives. The motif of tension between the private and professional realm is mirrored in the episode in several other characters, such as one of Tony Wang’s henchman at the container port. The interference of the henchman’s troubled family life with his work is emphasized, for example, when he kidnaps the cleaner Wen at the airport. Wen hardly fits into the car and has to squeeze between two children’s seats. The henchman has to pick up his children after school, interrupting his criminal business, and he is constantly fighting with his ex-wife on the phone. He releases his frustration with verbal abuse and physical violence, in particular against women. In Frankfurt the male Other is represented by Tony Wang, a successful Chinese-American businessman who is happily married to a German woman. They have a two-year-old son and live in an expensive mansion outside of Frankfurt. The episode pays particular attention to the fact that Wang’s wife is German. After finding Wang’s wedding ring as one of the few clues of his identity at the beginning of the episode, the detectives complain incessantly that the engraving of “Stefanie” would not be of any help as it is one of the most common German names. Furthermore, Stefanie Wang is herself a successful designer and the granddaughter of a famous German architect. Tony Wang is therefore initially constructed as the ideal man; he is even hyper-masculine. His sexual potency is underlined by the fact that he had many affairs, which his wife was willing to accept because he was also the perfect husband and father. Despite being a successful businessman working part-time in New York, he had always dedicated all his attention to his family when he was at home. In marked contrast to all German men, he is presented as a man who is not struggling with the compatibility of private and public life. He embodies a man who is both successful in his job and with a fulfilled family life. Tony Wang’s transnational Chinese identity is explicitly raised in the film. In one of the first scenes, he lifts weights in the fitness room of the hotel and exclaims: “Motherfucking global player Tony Wang, Mister Universe!” (Tatort 2008, 00:04:00). Similar to Hap-man in “The Chinese Method,” he represents an internationalized and hybrid Chinese super-masculinity, undoubtedly a motif applied by the television series to allude to China’s world-spanning influence and permeation. The figure of Wang is contrasted and intensified by his doppelgänger, the cleaner Wen, played by the same actor Chike Chan. Constructed as Wang’s exact opposite, Wen is a victim of Wang’s human trafficking ring and is forced to pay back the costs of his illegal transport to Germany in order to receive his passport. His wife and child are in the United States, a direct reference to Wang who works in New York while his wife and child live in Germany. In contrast to Wang who is fluent in Chinese, English, and German, Wen speaks neither English nor German and hardly says a word during the whole film. He listens to an English self-study tape during work but is reproved by his superior. After finding Wang’s dead

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body during his shift cleaning the hotel’s fitness room, he seizes the opportunity to pass as Wang in order to finally reunite with his family in the United States. However, Wang’s henchmen kidnap him before he reaches the airplane, and, after escaping from them, he is caught by the police and eventually deported to China. In contrast to “The Chinese Method” episode of 1991, “The Dead Chinese” of 2008 recuperates and stabilizes the troubled and fissured image of Western masculinity. The final scene of the episode shows Dellwo finally assembling the furniture in his new apartment. More important than this reconciliation however is the fact that the ideal transnational Chinese Other is compromised when it turns out that Wang has been involved in human trafficking. He does not get away like Hap-man. Moreover, as anticipated by the title of the episode, instead of being caught or convicted, he actually has to die. His death is symbolic. He is killed naked and drunk after a failed business deal, by the very weights in the fitness room that he had previously been lifting as “Mister Universe.” The situation is thus rectified in the most extreme way. He receives punishment for his crimes by one of his victims, who is also, not coincidentally, a woman. The last two episodes featuring Chinese protagonists repeat, but also intensify and to some extent modify, the same pattern. More than curtailing the Chinese businessman’s threatening superiority, these episodes give even more weight to the rehabilitation of the detectives. Continuing the theme of human trafficking, in “Wrongly Packed” (“Falsch verpackt,” episode 832, March 25, 2012), the police discover the bodies of three Chinese men in a container of chicken feet being shipped from Vienna to China. They are relatives of Tsao Kang, who worked in an illegal sweatshop and who is also found dead soon afterwards, chopped into pieces and distributed in garbage bins around his house. All clues lead to Klaus Müller, the German owner of the poultry factory. After Müller too is murdered, inspectors Moritz Eisner and Bibi Fellner suspect Oskar Welt, the head of the Austrian immigration authority and ex-husband of Gu Bao, a famous chef and owner of a high-end Chinese restaurant. Welt himself dies after a stabbing in the restaurant, and Gu soon confesses to all of the murders. The detectives believe she is part of a larger scheme of organized crime but Gu commits suicide immediately after her confession. In the first scenes of “Wrongly Packed,” Moritz Eisner is bicycling through Vienna’s parks. His strict fitness regime and diet are constantly presented and ridiculed throughout the episode. For instance, while his daughter enjoys her breakfast, he not only scolds her for her meal choices but also proudly informs her that he has already lost two kilos. She snaps back whether the two kilos are “really worth being grumpy all the time,” and he explains that losing weight is not easy anymore at his age. She agrees and tells him that this is connected to the change of hormones when men reach their forties and, to be precise, have “a lack of testosterone” (Tatort 2012, 00:04:00). Eisner’s masculinity is already at

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stake only four minutes into the episode. In the following eighty-six minutes, the detective repeatedly rejects food and his mood continues to worsen. At lunch he tries to order a light meal by explaining to the waiter at length how to substitute every single item of the dish with a healthier option, which the latter completely ignores. In the same scene, Eisner’s female colleague Fellner, seemingly out of the blue, recalls a case she had worked on in which a masochistic customer paid a prostitute to bite off his penis (Tatort 2012, 00:16:00). At work, Eisner’s authority is severely challenged by Oskar Welt, who not only points out his higher rank as head of the immigration police but also threatens Eisner with suspension from duty. In the office, Eisner’s female assistant aggressively flirts with him; he becomes a passive object of desire, object of a one-sided sexual gaze and touch. His ultimate breakdown is preceded by an unsuccessful chase after the main suspect, Inkasso-Heinzi, a regular secondary character and petty criminal, who outruns Eisner, despite his new fitness lifestyle, and almost breaks his nose. From this moment on Eisner’s “castrated” masculinity is visually signaled by a huge white patch in the middle of his face. In the hospital he sobs on the shoulder of his female colleague: “I am such a loser . . . old, fat, and stupid. That such an asshole breaks my nose . . . this would have never happened to me in the past” (Tatort 2012, 00:43:00). Moritz Eisner’s struggle with his aging body therefore becomes particularly acute in its interference with his professional life. Interestingly, Eisner’s Chinese antagonist is a “loser” too. The first and only shots we see of Tsao Kang alive show him in the middle of the night, weeping, injured, and drunk, when he tries to attack restaurant owner Gu Bao after finding out that three of his relatives were killed while trying to reach Europe in a container (Tatort 2012, 00:01:00). His quest to revenge them however results in his arrest and murder the same night, presumably by the Chinese mafia. Many different pieces of his body are recovered by police in various garbage bins. It turns out that Tsao Kang was not even his real identity: he was fifteen years too young and ten centimeters too small to match his stolen passport. Furthermore, when the police recover one of his severed hands they debate whether it is a man’s hand at all or rather the hand of a “very strong woman” (Tatort 2012, 00:00:15). Thus, in a parallel construction, the figure of Tsao Kang suffers from problems with his body, age, and gender too, which, in an exaggerated way, echo and reinforce the detective’s anxieties. Eisner’s masculinity is only rehabilitated after he catches Inkasso-Heinzi, the escaped suspect, and breaks his nose in return. He is finally allowed to remove his “patch of shame,” which is passed on to Heinzi. Heinzi even begs for police protection as he is facing threats from the Chinese mafia, whom he tried to cheat over fake caviar from their illegal sweatshop. After the murder of Oskar Welt, Eisner takes a picture of the stabbed body with his cell phone, like taking a trophy in revenge for all the humiliations he has been made to suffer (Tatort 2012,

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01:20:00). After his rehabilitation, Eisner also confronts his flirty assistant. When she leans over his desk with a particularly low-cut blouse, he, for the first time, confronts her inappropriate behavior: “You have beautiful breasts but you don’t have to hold them in my face all the time!” (Tatort 2012, 01:02:00). Moreover, in the next scene, he even compliments her “sexy” high-cut blazer, restoring traditional gender roles and regaining his masculine sexual desire and agency. In this episode, the Chinese businessman is not constructed as a threat but as a parallel character emphasizing the scope of masculine crisis and the triumph of its mastery. His image does not need to be painstakingly disassembled by the detectives to finally dethrone him from his superior position as the hypermasculine perfect man, or even killed to be controlled, such as Tony Wang, the “dead Chinese.” Tsao Kang is dead already. To be precise, he is chopped into pieces, and, moreover, disposed of, exactly like his three male relatives who are killed, packed, and ready to be shipped back to China. The final and most recent example, “The Chinese Princess” (“Die chinesische Prinzessin,” episode 883, October 20, 2013), provides an even more extreme dramaturgy of masculinity in crisis. Forensic pathologist Karl-Friedrich Boerne, one of the two protagonists of Tatort Münster, visits the opening of an exhibition by Songma, a famous dissident Chinese artist. Bored by the party, Songma persuades Boerne to show her his laboratory. The next morning Boerne’s assistant finds him, nearly overdosed on cocaine, beside the murdered artist. Boerne suffers from amnesia after the incident, and Inspector Frank Thiel sets out to prove his colleague’s innocence. He discovers that Songma was working with the Chinese triads. In return for smuggling antiques, she received materials to expose the Chinese government’s oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Thiel is eventually able to arrest her assistant Zhao Yutang who killed Songma in order to protect his fiancée and their unborn baby from the artist’s dangerous sensationalism. The episode again operates around a rhetoric of masculine angst and vulnerability evidenced in both detectives, Boerne and Thiel. Forensic pathologist Boerne’s romantic adventure with the Chinese artist ends in total disaster. He is in critical condition and amnesic, and has become the main suspect in her murder. Boerne is a snobby and arrogant character who attaches great importance to the way he dresses (usually in a suit). For the rest of this episode he is wearing a cotton undershirt and, after being remanded in custody, blue prisoner’s garb. His hair is tousled and dirty. Also his behavior in this episode significantly differs from his usual emotionally controlled and cynical appearance. He calls his assistant, a small woman, by the politically incorrect nickname of “Alberich” after the Nibelungen’s mythological dwarf. After she proves that he did not take the cocaine himself but had in fact been poisoned, he hugs her, with tears in his eyes, in a sudden outburst of emotion (Tatort 2013, 00:49:00). The violation of Boerne’s character is indicated by the reaction of Thiel and their female

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assistant Nadeshda. Pretending to be moved by the scene, Thiel asks her for a handkerchief and they laugh out loud, ridiculing his sentiment. “The Chinese Princess” is also the first episode in which, at the very end, Boerne calls his assistant by her real name, Ms. Haller (Tatort 2013, 01:24:00).5 The figure of Inspector Thiel duplicates the melodrama of beleaguered Western masculinity in this episode, causing a rhetorical over-determination of male anxieties and longings. Entirely unrelated to the murder case, and therefore particularly exposed in the detective genre, the episode unfolds a subplot involving the assistant Nadeshda. Thiel wakes up naked and hangover after his birthday party. He finds Nadeshda in his apartment preparing coffee. His birthday triggers frequent biting comments about his age from his colleagues, including Nadeshda, and again draws attention to a detective confronted with aging. Unable to remember what happened after he had invited Nadeshda to his apartment for a last drink, Thiel assumes that they had sex. When he raises the topic later in the episode, Nadeshda starts laughing hysterically, stating that of course nothing had happened. Instead of being relieved, Thiel experiences her reaction as a severe assault on his masculinity. Disappointed, he mutters to himself: “What is so extremely funny about this?” (Tatort 2013, 00:43:00). Again resurfacing at the interface of private and public spheres, male paranoia here pertains in particular to sexuality and potency. Similar to Boerne, who is rescued by his assistant, Thiel depends on the help of Nadeshda. He runs into serious trouble after detaining a Chinese diplomat and is only able to appease his superiors after Nadeshda provides him with the legal text that justifies his actions at the last minute. “The Chinese Princess” reintroduces an idealized Chinese Other similar to Tony Wang but, interestingly, his role has been shifted even more toward the image of a good husband and father, which in this case has become more important than his success in the international world of business. Zhao Yutang, Songma’s assistant, embodies the opposite of the detectives in several ways. He is portrayed as a young and athletic man. In a chasing scene, his fitness and almost acrobatic skills are remarkable. He jumps from buildings and easily outruns the clumsy, overweight police officer Thiel (Tatort 2013, 00:52:00). Furthermore, Zhao is engaged and his fiancée is expecting a child. His virility is therefore clearly marked. In interactions with others, and, in particular, Western male figures, Zhao often assumes the position of power. For example, in his negotiations with the corrupt German museum curator who tries to blackmail him, the much younger Zhao puts him back into his place and it is he who decides how to deal with the triads (Tatort 2013, 01:03:00). Even when he is convicted as the murderer of Songma, his motive is, through the lens of masculinity, justified, and even 5. This violation of the pattern, in particular Boerne’s untidy appearance and emotionality, has been extensively discussed by viewers in social media such as twitter; for a summary of reactions, see Pauer 2013.

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sublime: Songma’s dealing with the triads had put the lives of his girlfriend and his baby in danger. He killed Songma to protect them, a theme that is repeatedly and explicitly raised in the episode. In contrast to Boerne, Thiel’s shattered masculinity is mended in the course of the episode. Deeply frustrated by Nadeshda’s reaction, he confronts the issue of the birthday party again. He asks her why she had laughed at him before and why she thought it was ridiculous of him to think they had an affair. She replies: “You think I laughed at you? It was not ridiculous, it was absurd! Because you would never do anything like this . . . not even if you were not my boss. You are a real gentleman. Boerne with his fancy suits and his big talk can really learn a thing or two from you” (Tatort 2013, 01:07:00). From this scene onward, Thiel is restored as a man. In a dangerous shooting, he frees the key witness from the Chinese mafia. The scene is clearly staged as a one-man show and is intensified by the marked contrast set up between him and Boerne. Only Thiel is strong enough to lift the metal door of the triad’s secret hideout in a warehouse (Tatort 2013, 01:12:00). To rectify his masculine shortcoming, Thiel is also in charge of freeing Nadeshda from her Chinese kidnapper. The final showdown is framed by an arts installation of a bamboo forest where Thiel defeats his adversary in close combat, showcasing an unexpected skill set in Chinese martial arts. His triumph is further glorified in the closing scene when he wears a printed t-shirt saying “Retter” (rescuer), a fan t-shirt of his favorite football club St. Pauli, which further evokes one of the most masculine encoded realms of German culture. He is joined by Boerne, who, in contrast, wears his pajamas. The necessity to recover only Thiel and not Boerne could be connected to the particular constellation of detectives in Münster. Boerne is the only forensic pathologist in Tatort who is part of the core team, which usually consists of two police inspectors. Boerne is an almost one-dimensional, stereotypical figure and is maybe even a “caricature” of the extravagant Bildungsbürger, the well-educated class (Klein 2014). Thiel, on the other hand, represents the common man in the street. It is therefore mandatory to reinstate Thiel’s beleaguered masculinity as viewers relate more to him rather than Boerne.

An Ironic Triumph? The “Crisis of Masculinity” in Tatort Marking Chinese male figures as the super-potent ideal masculine Other in several of the discussed episodes strikes a sharp contrast to the impotence, asexuality, or feminization of Chinese figures pervading historical Orientalist discourse as well as contemporary hierarchizations of male bodies in Western mass culture (Kong 2006). The virility, physical prowess, competitiveness, and success of these Chinese male antagonists emphasize, I argue, the severity of the “crisis” of Western masculinity in these films. They are particularly exposed by the episodes that otherwise pertain to several motifs of classical Orientalist

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discourse, which have dominated the construction of the Chinese Other in European culture for centuries. The episodes excessively implement traditional Chinese culture. Spaces are distinctly marked as Chinese by traditional Chinese music and decoration, such as the omnipresent red lanterns. The detectives are all confronted with murder cases that they are able to link, sooner or later, to a powerful and unstoppable “Chinese mafia” that smuggles antiques, infected chicken meat, and, in particular, people from China into Europe, thus reintroducing the Yellow Peril motif. There is an abundance of overgeneralizations and stereotypes and more upfront politically incorrect and racist discourse. Police officers frequently refer to Chinese people as “rice eaters” (Reisfresser) or “chinky eyes” (Schlitzaugen). According to them, the Chinese all speak in “tsching, tschang, tschung,” eat dog meat, and look the same, which is not only causing continuing difficulties in police investigations, but is also actively exploited by Chinese criminals. This is carried to an extreme in Tatort Frankfurt where the same Chinese actor even plays two different roles. Female Chinese figures are constantly exoticized and sexualized by Western male characters. The “almost uniform association between the Orient and sex” and the motif of the Orient as the sexualized, penetrable, female Other has already been declared a remarkably persistent motif in Western attitudes to the Orient by Edward Said (2003, 188). These films clearly perpetuate this notion, in particular, “The Chinese Princess,” signaling its regression already in the title. At the opening of her exhibition in Münster, Songma is introduced by the curator as “the internationally best known face of Chinese art, its most beautiful face in any case” (Tatort 2013, 00:01:00). As a dangerous femme fatale she paradigmatically embodies the excessive sexuality of the Asian female and quickly becomes Boerne’s object of desire. Gu Bao, the owner of the noble Chinese restaurant in Vienna, turns out to be the ex-wife of the head of the Austrian immigration authorities, who lustfully sizes her up while explaining to Eisner that she is the “best Chinese chef in Vienna” (Tatort 2012, 00:21:00). Hübner, the conference organizer in Frankfurt, makes sure that he and his Chinese interpreter, Ms. Sun, will have a more “private spot” in the plane to Shanghai when booking their tickets (Tatort 2008, 01:12:00). Even as some of these female characters are the murderers, their potential agency and power is undermined by their positioning within larger criminal organizations, in which they play, in the end, only a minor part. Furthermore, in Vienna, Gu Bao claims responsibility for the murders but kills herself to protect the organization. In Frankfurt, Ms. Sun has not even planned to murder Tony Wang, but cannot control her emotions after finding out that he is responsible for the death of her parents. Self-sacrifice and uncontrollable sentiment are stereotypically female features. Furthermore, the episodes evoke motifs that have pervaded Orientalist and imperialistic discourses, in particular the image of the animal-like primitive “savage,” on the one hand, and a discourse of objectification as commercial

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commodities, on the other hand. In these ways, Chinese characters are frequently dehumanized. The crimes in Munich take place during carnival and the Chinese murderer wears a gorilla costume. After a member of the mafia gang is killed in a slaughterhouse, he is hung on a hook together with the dead pigs. Shortly after, to threaten their Chinese key witness in order to make him testify against the gang, German police officers dress up in pig masks to pass as Chinese. The three “wrongly packed” Chinese victims in Vienna die from insecticide “like cockroaches” in the container that should have brought them to Austria, just to be frozen, packed up again and sent back to China with a container full of chicken feet. When Eisner’s daughter in Vienna complains about the separated head of the Chinese murder victim in their fridge at home, Eisner claims that she should not worry as it is “well packed.” Tony Wang in Frankfurt refers to the people in the container as “goods” that could “rot.” All of these images are certainly highly exaggerated. They are sometimes countered and explicitly challenged by moments of self-reference. In some scenes they serve the purpose of comic relief using techniques of slapstick comedy at the expense of Western characters. For example, in Tatort Munich, Inspector Batic is invited for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. When he fails to use chopsticks the Chinese restaurant owner compares him to a monkey, an ironic reference to the gorilla costume (Tatort 1991, 00:43:00). However, these instances do represent century-old power relations in EastWest encounters, with the effect, I argue, of drawing even more attention to the unusual performance of successful and threatening Chinese masculinities in these films. The constellation of Chinese and other foreign characters in the episodes further emphasize the extraordinariness of these Chinese male figures. In Vienna, the vulnerable masculinities of Tsao Kang as well as Moritz Eisner are in direct contrast to the Turkish butcher Mustafa, who sells the best meat buns in Vienna. He is an attractive, muscular man and according to Fellner “all the girls” go to eat at his snack joint. Mustafa identifies himself strongly as Austrian and explicitly distances himself from other foreigners. First, he emphasizes that Klaus Müller is German and later, when he witnesses a delivery of containers, he points out that he could not tell whether the characters on the containers were Chinese because after all he is “not Chinese” (Tatort 2012, 01:12:00). His perfect integration into Austrian society is further underlined when he explains that, as a Muslim, he is not allowed to eat pork but happily makes an exception for his favorite traditional Viennese buns. In contrast to its Turkish characters, as noted in the case above, Tatort treats the theme of China very differently. The preferred rhetoric of China is the superlative. China is singled out as the greatest possible threat to Europe and to European masculinity. It overwhelms the detectives, who respond with irritation and resentment. In Frankfurt, the hotel manager urges the detectives not to mistake the conference with the meeting of some provincial regional club: “It’s about

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China! The future! Something really big!” (Tatort 2008, 00:12:00). Dellwo replies angrily that they are not responsible for “the whole world, just for Frankfurt.” After they find out that the murder of Songma in Münster could be connected to the Chinese mafia, inspector Thiel starts laughing hysterically, assuming that they have become victims of a spoof or candid camera (Tatort 2013, 00:54:00). Anxious about losing the case, Thiel is told by his superior that a case involving Chinese criminals would simply be too much for them; after all they run into enough “cultural problems” when a Catholic priest is involved in a case (Tatort 2013, 01:07:00). Further references to the overwhelming scale of China include, in Vienna, the name of Oskar “Welt,” literally “world,” and the presence of world maps in the police office, which now replace the standard maps of the respective city. Therefore, despite being marginalized among foreigners in Tatort, only Chinese protagonists have the ability to shake the fundaments of the social order that the series so eagerly aims to present and safeguard. They destabilize the concepts of Western masculinities it promotes in the most profound way. To conclude, the analyzed episodes of Tatort, one of the most important television formats in contemporary German society, allow insights into a particular aesthetic practice within popular seriality, in which the construction of Chinese male Others function as a projection space of analogy or contrast, where a circle of crisis and resurrection of (Western) masculinity is played through, shedding light on the trajectories and dynamics of Tatort as a self-proclaimed moral television format. Adhering to the rules of the detective genre and its serial form, the performed masculine angst, the transgressions, and deficiencies, can only be a short-lived variation, which needs to be restored. Symbolizing Europe’s paradoxical relationship to China, drawn and torn apart by fascination and fear, these images of wounded masculinities showcase the continent’s unavoidable confrontation with a rising China since the 1990s. The crisis of masculinity has of course been a dominant trope, especially in the last two decades (Baker 2006; Baker 2015; Brenton 2013; Fradley 2004).6 However, just as gender is in permanent negotiation, normative or hegemonic masculinity, in particular, seems to be in a constant crisis. The rhetoric of masculinity under siege turns out to be one of its constitutive features. But it is also a potent strategy of re-privileging and re-producing the dominance of a particular ideology of masculinity. The incessant repetition and permutation of the narrative cycle identified in these films merely enable a ritualistic dramaturgy of “re-sovereignization” (Forster 1998) and the aggressive reclaiming of traditional notions of masculinity. Figures of Chinese men have played a key role in Tatort as symbols of a particularly acute “crisis of masculinity” but also as symptoms of

6. Toni Tholen argues that it has in fact been inscribed in Western cultural modernity as topos and discourse since the eighteenth century (Tholen 2015, 46).

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television’s attempts to “restore the order” of gender and European power. But order is not only restored, its fundaments are corroborated. With regard to the two most recent episodes, however, it is difficult not to acknowledge the potential of these overtly melodramatic spectacles of male suffering to parody traditional manhood and European superiority. The hyperbole, banality, and irony displayed highlight the staged circle of rejection and rejuvenation and thus confront the viewers with the social construction and performativity of gender and cultural identities. They become hyper-visible. Only the conventions of the detective genre and the need of serial continuity as well as the continuity of its strictly regulated variations, I argue, create a sense of security and stability that opens up spaces where the problematic, the contested, the fragile, and the fluid characteristics of hierarchies in gender and culture, their modifications, flexibilizations, and entanglements, can come to light, literally, on the screen.

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Hißnauer, Christian, Stefan Scherer, and Claudia Stockinger. 2012. “Formen und Verfahren der Serialität in der ARD-Reihe Tatort. Ein Untersuchungsdesign zur Integration von Empirie und Hermeneutik.” In Populäre Serialität: Narration – Evolution – Distinktion. Zum seriellen Erzählen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Frank Kelleter, 143–67. Bielefeld: Transcript. Hißnauer, Christian, Stefan Scherer, and Claudia Stockinger. 2014a. “Zwischen Serie und Werk: Fernseh- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte im Tatort.” In Zwischen Serie und Werk. Fernseh- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte im Tatort, edited by Christian Hißnauer, Stefan Scherer, and Claudia Stockinger, 7–25. Bielefeld: Transcript. Hißnauer, Christian, Stefan Scherer, and Claudia Stockinger. 2014b. Föderalismus in Serie. Die Einheit der ARD-Reihe Tatort im historischen Verlauf. München: Fink. Kelleter, Frank. 2012. “Populäre Serialität. Eine Einführung.” In Populäre Serialität: Narration – Evolution – Distinktion. Zum seriellen Erzählen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Frank Kelleter, 11–46. Bielefeld: Transcript. Klein, Thomas. 2014. “Zwischen Wortwitz und Klamauk. Der Tatort Münster als Dramedy.” In Zwischen Serie und Werk. Fernseh- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte im Tatort, edited by Christian Hißnauer, Stefan Scherer, and Claudia Stockinger, 283–98. Bielefeld: Transcript. Kong, Travis. 2006. “Sexualizing Asian Male Bodies.” In The Handbook of the New Sexuality Studies, edited by Steven Seidman, Nancy Fischer, and Chet Meeks, 97–102. New York: Routledge. Louie, Kam. 2015. Chinese Masculinities in a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge. Louie, Kam, ed. 2016. Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. MacKinnon, Kenneth. 2003. Representing Men: Maleness and Masculinity in the Media. London: Arnold. Mayer, Ruth. 2013. Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of the Yellow Peril Ideology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Molander Danielsson, Karin. 2002. The Dynamic Detective. Special Interest and Seriality in Contemporary Detective Series. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Ortner, Christina. 2007. “Tatort: Migration. Das Thema Einwanderung in der Krimireihe Tatort.” M&K Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft 55(1): 5–23. Paasch-Colberg, Sünje, and Anna Küfner. 2012. “Zur Repräsentationsleistung von Fernseh-Fiktion. Die Darstellung von Migranten im Tatort der Jahre 1970 bis 2009.” M&K Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft 60(3): 392–413. Pauer, Nina. 2013. “Tatort Twittritik: Ai Wei Wei, Herr Thiel!” Die Zeit, October 21. Accessed September 1, 2015. http://www.zeit.de/kultur/film/201310/. Said, Edward W. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin Classics. Statistisches Bundesamt. 2016. Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit: Ausländische Bevölkerung (Ergebnisse des Ausländerzentralregisters, 2015). Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt. Tholen, Toni. 2015. Männlichkeiten in der Literatur. Konzepte und Praktiken zwischen Wandel und Beharrung. Bielefeld: Transcript. Vogt, Jochen. 2005. “Tatort – der wahre deutsche Gesellschaftsroman: Eine Projektskizze.” In MedienMorde: Krimis international, edited by Jochen Vogt, 111–29. München: Fink.

Filmography Tatort. “Die chinesische Methode” [The Chinese method]. Episode 251. Directed by Maria Knilli. Bayerischer Rundfunk, November 10, 1991.

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Tatort. “Der tote Chinese” [The dead Chinese]. Episode 716. Directed by Hendrik Handloegten. Hessischer Rundfunk, December 28, 2008. Tatort. “Falsch verpackt” [Wrongly packed]. Episode 832. Directed by Sabine Derflinger. Österreichischer Rundfunk, March 25, 2012. Tatort. “Die chinesische Prinzessin” [The Chinese princess]. Episode 883. Directed by Lars Jessen. Westdeutscher Rundfunk, October 20, 2013.

3

Transnational Chinese Masculinity in Film Representation Sheldon Lu

Images of Chinese masculinity in the contemporary period do not remain the same. They change over time. Different constructions of masculinity in visual and literary culture emerge at specific historical junctures. They are reflexes and responses to particular social events and historical moments. Hence, I find it important to historicize images of Chinese masculinity in contemporary filmic discourse over the span of a quarter century. In this chapter, I trace the evolution of the depiction of transnational Chinese masculinity in selected films directed by Hong Kong directors from the early 1990s to the present time. I discuss a number of relevant films, and focus particularly on three films: Farewell China (Ai zai bie xiang de jijie 愛在別鄉的季 節, 1990), directed by Clara Law 羅卓瑤 (born 1957); Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Tian mimi 甜蜜蜜, 1996), directed by Peter Chan 陳可辛 (born 1962); and American Dreams in China (Zhongguo hehuoren 中國合夥人, 2013), also directed by Peter Chan. Although all of these directors are Hong Kong directors and some of these films are classified as Hong Kong films, the films themselves portray male figures originating from mainland China. All three of these films tell the stories of Chinese nationals and their attempted journeys overseas. They are tales of mostly heterosexual love between ethnic Chinese men and women, with one exception in American Dreams in China. Needless to say, male characters play important roles in the films, and indeed central roles in American Dreams in China. The three films involve Chinese male characters’ travels to America, and more specifically, New York City. At one time or another, there is an “American dream” in the back of their minds. That dream can turn nightmarish, as in the case of Farewell China; or it can become transformed into a Chinese dream, as in the case of American Dreams in China; or it may seem more like a perpetual process of questing and becoming, as in Comrades: Almost a Love Story. In fact, the Chinese Dream (Zhongguo meng 中國夢) is also the slogan advocated by Chinese President Xi Jinping in the twenty-first century.

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The three films correspond to three historical time frames in the last twentyfive years or so: 1989, the Tiananmen Incident; 1997, Hong Kong’s return to mainland China; and the 2010s, the ascendancy of China as an economic superpower. The social, historical, economic, and political developments in these moments in China and the world impact the formation of subjectivity and masculinity on the part of Chinese males, whether they stay earthbound in China or move airborne around the globe. Altogether, these films reveal the transformations of Chinese masculinity over a quarter century from the late 1980s to the mid-2010s. This is a trajectory from an incapacitated, suffering male figure, to a questing, inquisitive male around 1997, and finally to a figure of empowered, confident male in the twenty first century. In other words, there is a movement from the pathos of self-exile, to the spirit of expectancy, uncertainty, and searching, and finally to triumphant manhood/nationhood. My present study is a continuation of my earlier research and writing about masculinity, transnationalism, diaspora, and nationality in Chinese and Hong Kong cinema. Previously, I examined films and TV dramas from the 1980s through the 1990s. I noticed a pattern of change “from homecoming to exile to flexible citizenship.” I wrote the following: It is common knowledge that three important historical moments have greatly influenced the construction of place, self, and nationality in Hong Kong’s filmic discourse: the Joint Sino-British Declaration in 1984, the Tiananmen incident in 1989, and Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997. I want to suggest that there seems to be a significant paradigm change in the representation of issues related to nationality, identity, and citizenship in Hong Kong films depicting the Chinese diaspora. In a nutshell, the change may be characterized as a shift from a “China syndrome” in the mid-1980s to an “exile complex” or “persecution complex” shortly after 1989 and finally to a discourse of flexible citizenship and transnationalism around 1997. (Lu 2005, 298)

In retrospect, I believe the above observations are still accurate and valid. But I stopped short at the 1990s and did not get to analyze the situation in the twentyfirst century. There have been major changes in the representation of masculinity and subjectivity as well as new developments in the Greater China film industry since 1997. Peter Chan’s film American Dreams in China offers a good case for us to write a new chapter about national and transnational Chinese masculinity in the new century. Given the fact Hong Kong has been an economic, commercial, and cultural crossroads, and the fact that Hong Kong cinema cannot be easily assimilated into the paradigm of a national cinema, I find the transnational approach particularly appropriate for the purpose of this chapter. Moreover, the specific case of Hong Kong cinema can also be fruitfully situated in a broad transnational framework of Chinese-language cinema, as I first explained many years ago (Lu 1997). In their joint Introduction to a new anthology on Hong Kong cinema, Esther

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Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther Yau further highlight this important feature of Hong Kong cinema. They state the following: Hong Kong cinema poses some particularly thorny questions for a field dominated by studies of Hollywood and European cinema. Given the prominence of “national” cinema research in which language, ethnicity, geographic borders, and cultural identity become paramount in understanding specific films, identifying Hong Kong cinema in relation to a specific “nation” poses some serious problems. Moreover, Hong Kong boasts a global standing and transnational production and distribution network that places it in competition with Hollywood in some regional markets. Hong Kong, like Hollywood, is a cinema that has been shaped by exiles, immigrants, and diasporic migrants throughout its history, and the continuing exchange of technology and talent within Asia as well as with the West needs to be understood theoretically in relation to postcolonial flows, hybrid cultures as well as global capitalism. (Cheung, Marchetti, and Yau 2015, 5–6)

The border-crossing flow of people, images, and technology between Hong Kong and the world continues to remain a central characteristic of this island city, considered a Special Administrative Region (SAR) since 1997. Travelers, exiles, immigrants, and migrants constitute the very stuff of transnational masculinity in Hong Kong cinema. In the following sections, I offer brief analyses of several films that I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. At the same time, I also bring in and juxtapose some other related materials, such as films and popular songs, in order to better compare, contrast, and contextualize these films.

The Suffering Male Bids Farewell to China Farewell China (1990) directed by Clara Law seems to be an allegory of national suffering. It echoes a general mood among overseas Chinese after what happened in Tiananmen Square and broadly in China in 1989. The nation is accused of a persecution complex. Characters suffer because of the fault of the Chinese nation-state. The fate of Chinese nationals as well as that of overseas Chinese is directly related to a traumatic event of the motherland. Farewell China was made in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. Students occupied Tiananmen Square for months, and then were forcefully driven away by the Chinese government. The male and female characters in the film have had enough suffering and sorrows. The film begins with the life of a family in southern China. A young couple desperately wishes to leave China. Li Hong’s 李紅 (Maggie Cheung) visa application for traveling to America has been rejected several times by American visa officers. She tries one more time and finally receives an American visa. She leaves her husband, Nansheng, and their young child behind and goes to America. But life in the dreamland is not as easy as it was imagined to be from the distance. Hong experiences a series of hardships in America. She is mentally ill. At the end of the film, she works to swindle

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money from retirees in a Chinese neighborhood in New York City. She does not communicate with her husband in China. Having lost contact with his wife Hong, the male protagonist Zhou Nansheng 周南生 (Tony Leung Kafai) sets out to travel to America to find her. He illegally enters the United States. His American trip is equally harrowing and disappointing, full of heartache and setbacks. At one point, he becomes friends with a rebellious teenage Chinese-American girl, an underage prostitute who has run away from home. Eventually Nansheng finds Hong. They are tearfully reunited. They sleep together and recount the difficulties they each have gone through since separation. In the scene of their emotional reunion in the bedroom, the soundtrack plays the powerful patriotic song “My Motherland” (“Wo de zuguo” 我的祖國). The irony cannot be more apparent here because their beloved motherland has turned into such a hated place that they both felt compelled to go abroad. The next morning, Hong, who has become schizophrenic, does not recognize her husband, and goes out to conduct business. Nansheng runs after her. They meet and struggle with each other in a Chinese neighborhood. Hong stabs Nansheng to death in front of a replica of the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, which was designed by Beijing’s art students and displayed in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. High up, an American flag flutters at the top of the building. Below, Nanshang’s notebook falls on the ground. The red cover of his Chinese notebook is graced with Chairman Mao’s saying and calligraphy: “Serve the people” (wei renmin fuwu 為人民服務). In this heavy-handed tragic film, the characters prefer to live their lives outside of China. But living abroad is not a good choice either. The Chinese as a group are masochistic, and are condemned to suffering no matter where they are. Men cannot protect their wives and families, and cannot survive themselves either. Their spouses leave them for greener pastures. Farewell China describes perhaps the lowest point in the self-esteem of Chinese people, whether they are in China or in the diaspora. The traveling Chinese male is not truly transnational. He gets nowhere and meets a tragic end. A triumphant return of the prodigal sons and daughters of China is out of the question. How times have changed. A quarter century later, American Dreams in China (2013) reverses that tragic view of life and celebrates the newfound success of Chinese masculinity on the native soil.

Mobile Masculinity in Love Comrades: Almost a Love Story appears more like a heartwarming tale of transnational journeys. It is the story of individual entrepreneurship, namely, the story of transnational capitalism on an individual scale.1 The characters’ sense of 1. I compare Hong Kong films Farewell China, Comrades: Almost a Love Story, Full Moon in New York (Ren zai Niuyue 人在紐約), by Stanley Kwan 關錦鵬 (born 1957), a Hong

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themselves changes. They develop a flexible, evolving subjectivity. What Aihwa Ong’s calls “flexible citizenship” seems to be an apt description of the formation of subjectivity in this film.2 The change of mood between then and now can be measured by comparing the two films directed by Peter Chan: Comrades: Almost a Love Story and American Dreams in China. Comrades: Almost a Love Story was released on the eve of Hong Kong’s return to the mainland. The film is now hailed as a classic from the so called “handover period.” The male protagonist, Xiaojun 小軍 (literally “little soldier”), leaves China, works in Hong Kong, and then moves to New York City. His personal journey is the tale of Chinese diaspora. At the end of the film, it is not clear what his national affiliation is. He seems to be forging a pan-Chinese diasporic identity, an identity in perpetual motion. Xiaojun’s affiliation with the Chinese nation-state weakens as the film progresses. Recall an earlier episode of the film, where Xiaojun is a delivery boy for a Chinese restaurant and is happily singing nationalistic mainland Chinese songs “The East Is Red” (“Dongfang hong” 東方紅) and “I Am a Soldier” (“Wo shi yige bing” 我是一個兵). The Chinese national anthem is also played on the soundtrack in this episode. This cocksure Chinese identity begins to dissolve in the next episode when Xiaojun arrives at a McDonald restaurant in Hong Kong, where he meets a Cantoneseturned-Hong Konger, Li Qiao. He falls in love with her, and severs his relationship with his fiancée from mainland China. The film largely depicts an outward journey undertaken by Chinese nationals. It might be said that he identifies with “Cultural China” because of his liking for the songs of Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun 鄧麗君, born 1953). Teng was born in Taiwan. Her parents came from China. She was arguably the most popular singer in the Chinese-speaking world during her lifetime. In fact, the film’s original title, “Tian Mimi” (Sweet honey), is the title of a song of Teresa Teng’s. The film is also a tribute to the memory of Teresa Teng, who passed away untimely while on vacation in Thailand. She was remembered by Chinese communities throughout the world. The transnational, pan-Chinese love songs of Teresa Teng, rather than the Chinese national anthem and revolutionary songs of mainland China, create an emotional cohesiveness among diasporic Chinese. The ending of Comrades: Almost a Love Story is inconclusive as if the main characters would start a new journey. A sense of expectancy, open-endedness, and Kong Second Wave film director, and Happy Together (Chunguang zhaxie 春光乍洩), by Wong Kar-wai 王家衛 (born 1958) in Lu (2001), Chapter 5, “Diaspora, Citizenship, Nationality: Hong Kong and 1997” (104–21). 2. See Aihwa Ong (1999). Ong builds her theory in part on the notion of “flexible accumulation” in David Harvey’s book (1991) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry in the Origins of Cultural Change. Flexible accumulation is the mode of operation in the global capitalist economy in the postmodern age. This kind of economic life has an impact on the formation of subjectivity and results in the appearance of flexible and multiple identities.

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searching characterize the films released at the time. This can be also said about Wong Kar-wai’s film Happy Together (1997), a film about the relationship between two gay men from Hong Kong. The film focuses on their physical journeys in South America as well as their emotional and intellectual search for meaning and stability. Will they be “happy together”? Or allegorically, will Hong Kong and China be happy together after 1997? In fact, nobody knows exactly what will happen to Hong Kong after its return to China. People have yet to live lives in the future. By the time of American Dreams in China, what is future in 1997 is already future past. This is the second decade of the twenty-first century when Hong Kong’s return to China is a fait accompli. One of the most telling indicators of the attitude of China’s young men and women toward Hong Kong on the eve of Hong Kong’s return to China is Ai Jing’s 艾敬 (born 1969) MTV “My 1997” (“Wo de 1997,” 我的 1997). The MTV video and the song were extremely popular at the time, and they have now become classics today. Ai Jing’s song expresses the longing of China’s young generation for Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the epitome of mobility, prosperity, and fun. Ai Jing tells the story of a young woman from mainland China. She is from Shenyang, Northeast China (Dongbei 東北), the industrial heartland of socialist China. Her father worked in a state-owned enterprise, and her mother missed out the good days of life. She left her hometown, drifted to Beijing, Shanghai, and finally Guangzhou. She loved the South, and stayed in Guangzhou because her lover was in Hong Kong. “He can come to Shenyang, but I cannot go to Hong Kong.” She eagerly awaits the return of Hong Kong to China so that she can be together with her boyfriend, to “see a midnight show” together. My music teacher was my father. He spent twenty years in a state factory. My mother was a Peking Opera singer, She always complained that she missed out good times. . . . When I was 17, I left my hometown Shenyang. Because I felt my dream could not be fulfilled there. I came to Beijing by myself, a city that I don’t know well. . . . I sang my way from Beijing to Shanghai Bund, From Shanghai all the way to the South, singing my song. I stayed in Guangzhou for a long time, Because my man was living in Hong Kong. When did Hong Kong come about? What’s so cool about Hong Kongers? He can come to Shenyang, but I can’t go to Hong Kong. Little Hou said that I should venture out to try my luck. Why should Hong Kong be so fragrant?

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I heard it is an important market for Old Cui. Take me to that dazzling world. Give me a red stamp. Come quickly 1997! What’s so cool about Yaohan? Come quickly 1997! So I can make it to Hong Kong. Come quickly 1997! So I can stand at the Hon Hom Coliseum. Come quickly 1997! So I can go with him to see the midnight show. Come quickly 1997! So I can see how the clothes in Yaohan are actually like. 我的音樂老師是我的爸爸 二十年來他一直呆在國家工廠 媽媽以前是唱評劇的 她總抱怨沒趕上好的時光 …… 我十七歲那年離開了家鄉沈陽 因為感覺那裏沒有我的夢想 我一個人來到陌生的北京城 …… 我從北京唱到了上海灘 也從上海唱到曾經嚮往的南方 我留在廣州的日子比較長 因為我的那個他在香港 什麽時候有了香港，香港人又是怎麼樣 他可以來沈陽，我不能去香港 香港香港，那個香港 小侯說應該出去闖一闖 香港香港，怎樣那麽香 聽說那是老崔的重要市場 讓我去花花世界吧，給我蓋上大紅章 1997快些到吧，八佰伴究竟是什麽樣 1997快些到吧，我就可以去Hong Kong 1997快些到吧，讓我站在紅磡體育館 1997快些到吧，和他去看午夜場 1997快點兒到吧，八佰伴衣服究竟怎麽樣 1997快些到吧，我就可以去香港 1997快些到吧，讓我站在紅磡體育館 1997快些到吧，和他去看午夜場

Hong Kong is described as the place where young men and women can fulfill their dreams and lovers can be united. In contrast, the socialist heartland of

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China is the place to go away from. Hong Kongers can freely travel to China, but Chinese citizens cannot go to Hong Kong. The fate of immobile state workers from the interior of socialist China has been described in a number of compelling mainland films. Jia Zhangke’s 賈樟柯 (born 1970) film 24 City (24 cheng ji, 24 城記, 2009) chronicles the trials and tribulations of a state-owned enterprise in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The film contains interviews with real and fictional factory workers. The camera’s static frontal shots of factory workers portray the lives of ordinary men who seem to be frozen in an era of socialist nation-building. These men live and work in a landlocked area. The origin of this military airplane factory in Chengdu is Northeast China. The factory moved to China’s interior from the northeast, and the workers settled in Chengdu. The once proud state factory must face new challenges in the Era of Reform and Opening. The model of the male factory worker has forfeited its coveted central position in Chinese society, and has lost its appeal to a young woman looking for a potential husband! Equally gripping and elegiac is the description of men in Wang Bing’s 王兵 (born 1967) nine-hour long documentary West of the Track (Tiexi qu 鐵西 區, 2002). The three parts of the film tell the stories of “Rust,” “Remnants,” and “Rails.” Again, a once proud state factory in Northeast China is going bankrupt. Male workers lose their jobs and have to retool their skills. Their wives and daughters must also struggle to find new work to do. Where do these women go to then? Hong Kong seems like a promised land of mobility for young men and women. Fruit Chan’s 陳果 (born 1959) incomplete Prostitution Trilogy points the way. Unemployed young women from struggling Northeast come to Hong Kong for work. A network of legal movement and illegal trafficking of people between China and Hong Kong provides an avenue of new lives beyond the dreary, drab landscape of wintry, snowy Northeast. The lively, busy scene of Hong Kong seems like a favorite destination for many mainlanders. These women range from an aspiring real singer Ai Jing to fictional sex workers in Fruit Chan’s films Durian Durian (Liulian piaopiao 榴蓮飄飄, 2000) and Hong Kong Hollywood (Xianggang youge Helihuo 香港有個荷里活, 2001). The heroine in Durian Durian, Yan 燕, is indeed another beautiful young woman from Northeast China. In filmic representation, mainland women seem to be able to make a transition more easily than mainland men. In Comrades: Almost a Love Story, Li Qiao comfortably adapts to the pace of capitalist lifestyle of Hong Kong whereas it takes a longer time for hard-boiled masculinity to change, as in the case of Xiaojun. Socialist masculinity seems to be more stubborn than flexible femininity.

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The Fulfillment of Men’s Dreams on Chinese Soil American Dreams in China is produced in the time of what might be called “renationalization” or “mainlandization.”3 Many Hong Kong filmmakers brace for a realignment with the Chinese film industry. China has become the second largest economy and the second largest film market in the world in the second decade of the twenty-first century. This is a time of growing integration between Hong Kong and China economically and culturally. The Close Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) between Hong Kong and China has brought Hong Kong and Chinese film industries closer to each other. It is more lucrative for the Hong Kong film industry to cooperate and coproduce with the mainland. The Chinese national market is such a large market for the distribution of Hong Kong films. It is unwise not to take advantage of the huge size of the mainland audience. However, this trend of close partnership between the mainland and Hong Kong film industries is worrisome for some critics. In the words of Mirana May Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, this is a case of the neoliberalization and mainlandization of a once thriving cinema that is now anxiety-ridden about its survival. They write the following: A spectrum of preferential market liberalization measures are extended to the Hong Kong SAR but not to foreign countries under the mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2004. These privileges coupled with declining local and Asian markets accelerate the restructuring of the Hong Kong film industry towards mainlandization. The seeming rebound of the Hong Kong film industry is often attributed to CEPA policies. But at what cost? (Szeto and Chen 2015, 94)

Mainland China’s favoritism toward Hong Kong might have a negative consequence—a cinema in disappearance, the fading away of the local flavor of Hong Kong cinema. As Esther Yau has written, “The naming of Hong Kong cinema became detached from the city of Hong Kong in the mid-2000s when its major local film companies, producers, and directors relocated their offices and personnel to the Chinese mainland to redirect their energies into co-producing films” (Yau 2015, 17). This mismatch between the city of Hong Kong and its cinema is a consequence of mainlandization in pan-Chinese film industries. However, all this does not bother Peter Chan. He has become a beneficiary as well as a major player in this new trend of mainlandization. His career is a good example of this shift in contemporary Hong Kong film industry. Chan had been working in the Hong Kong film industry and making Hong Kong films for a long time. But in recent years, he has been collaborating with the mainland film industry and making Mandarin-language films about the lives of mainland Chinese people. American Dreams in China and Dearest (Qin’ai de 親愛 3. For a discussion of the strategies and reorientations of the Hong Kong film industry since 1997, see Lu (2015).

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的, 2014, starring Zhao Wei 趙薇) are two examples. The stars of these films are mainland actors and actresses. The production companies of American Dreams in China include the China Film Group, Media Asia Films, Edko Films, Stellar Mega Films, and the Yunnan Film Group. It is a China–Hong Kong coproduction, a pan-Chinese transnational film. It is also a good example of a Chinese-language film (huayu dianying 華語電影). The language of the film is Mandarin as it caters to the vast mainland Chinese audience for distribution. The film has won major awards at the Golden Rooster Awards Film Festival of China, the Golden Horse Awards Film Festival of Taiwan, and the Hong Kong Film Festival. American Dreams in China is the story of three male characters: Cheng Dongqing 成東青, Meng Xiaojun 孟曉駿, and Wang Yang 王陽. They were best friends at college and are now “Chinese business partners” (Zhongguo hehuoren 中國合夥人), as the original film title says. Their lives, careers, choices, failures, and successes point to a righteous path of career development guided by a Chinese dream in the age of globalization. The central character is Cheng Dongqing. He comes from a humble peasant family. He fails the national college entrance examination a couple times. His family borrows money from relatives to continue to support his dream of entering a college. He is finally admitted to Yanjing University. As a young man, Cheng Dongqing harbors a dream of coming to America. However, he was repeatedly denied an American visa by the American Consulate in Beijing. His girlfriend Su Mei 蘇梅 (Du Juan 杜鵑) also leaves him for the United States. Without other choice, he has to try to fulfill his American dream on Chinese soil by becoming an English teacher to Chinese students. Through sheer perseverance and hard work, he eventually founds an English language school. Toward the end of the film, their school is so successful that it trades on the New York Stock Exchange. However, the school is sued for copyright violation. Having become successful businessmen, Cheng and his associates come to America to settle the lawsuit. In their meeting with American lawyers, Cheng lectures them about the Chinese way in a drawn-out speech. Paradoxically, it is the Chinese who teach Americans about how to do business in the world, how to be good capitalists! In American Dreams in China, Chinese men and women, such as the character Meng Xiaojun, come to America in pursuit of their dreams. However, their American dreams turn sour, and they end up returning to China. China is ultimately described as the land of opportunities. What appears to be a film with a transnational ethos turns into a film that affirms a cultural and economic affiliation with the Chinese nation. In such a way, American Dreams in China is rather different from Peter Chan’s earlier film Comrades: Almost a Love Story. That film is about the perpetual journey of Chinese men and women in search of economic opportunities and cultural identity. The main characters move from China to Hong Kong to New York City and continually forge their senses of self.

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Meng Xiaojun arrives in America. But in this bountiful land, he could only find work as a bus boy in a restaurant. He chooses to return to China. The three former classmates: Cheng Dongqing, Wang Yang, and Meng Xiaojun, open a lucrative language school. Toward the end of the film, Cheng Dongqing donates a laboratory in the name of Meng Xiaojun to the research center where Meng Xiaojun worked when he first came to the United States. Ironically, Meng and his friends’ success in China redeemed his early failure in America. In American Dreams in China, in regard to gender formation, the courtship and marriage of the main male characters with Chinese women also help them develop their identity as Chinese nationals. One main character, Wang Yang, dates Lucy (Claire Quirk), an American exchange student while in college, but Lucy eventually dumps him. That is a traumatic experience for him. Heartbroken by his erstwhile American girlfriend, Wang Yang cancels his plan to come to America. He marries a Chinese woman later in the film. The former “angry youth” (fenqing 憤青), the romantic poet with a wild hairstyle, is eventually domesticated, and becomes a loyal partner, a peacemaker among the three good friends from college who are now business partners. Wang Yang warns his buddies at his wedding: “Do not marry a woman who has too many ideas.” This is a lesson he has learned from dating an inquisitive, independent-minded American girlfriend. In this inward-looking film, dating the other seems to be a route not to be taken in the establishment of Chinese masculinity.4 Cheng Dongqing embodies the spirit of the successful “local turtle” (tubie 土鱉). Meng Xiaojun’s story is a representative case of the so-called “overseas returned people” (haigui 海歸, nicknamed “sea turtle” 海龜). They give up their careers abroad and return to the motherland. This is the story of both patriotism and the ascendancy of China as the promised land in the new century. China, not America, nor any other foreign country, is the place for personal and professional development. American Dreams in China is about Chinese nationals’ rootedness in China and their willful return from overseas. The ending credits of the film pay tribute to successful Chinese entrepreneurs, including the real-life founders of the Chinese language school New Orient (Xin Dongfang 新東方). Also included in this list of extraordinary entrepreneurs is Ma Yun 馬雲 (born 1964). Ma Yun, a physically small-statured male, has become the biggest Chinese businessman in mainland China. His company Ali Baba trades on the New York Stock Exchange. In his early years, Ma Yun failed China’s national college examination several times. He was eventually admitted to college and became a major in English. He did not have an opportunity to study abroad. His personal story is also a story of rags-to-riches. He stayed in China rather than 4. Interracial romance has been a strategy of establishing a confident, outward-looking masculinity in some Chinese TV dramas and films. See Lu (2001), Chapter 10, “Soap Opera in China: The Transnational Politics of Visuality, Sexuality, and Masculinity” (213–38).

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going abroad, and he has enacted the real-life drama of a Chinese success story. His career mirrors the fate of the main characters in American Dreams in China. The fictional characters in the film as well as their real-life prototypes represent a new generation of Chinese males. They are white-collar workers and business leaders. They are well educated, urban, and cosmopolitan. They are globe-trotting jet-setters and are yet at the same time firmly rooted in Chinese reality. It might be also fruitful to briefly mention and compare the depictions of Chinese men in Chinese-language films and in American films in the early twenty-first century. Two examples of English-language American films are Shanghai Calling (directed by Daniel Xia, 2012) and Shanghai Kiss (directed by Kern Konwiser and David Ren, 2007). These are dramas about the transnational journeys and diasporic condition of ethnic Chinese living in America. They are American films directed or codirected by Chinese-American directors. In these Asian-American films, ethnic Chinese, who might not be able to speak Chinese, travel to Shanghai to do business as well as search for their cultural roots. While the characters undergo cross-cultural experiences in transnational settings, they enhance their self-understanding as Asian-American males. Interracial romances between these Chinese-American males and Caucasian American women also help define their sense of cultural identity: “American citizens with Chinese characteristics,” so to speak. In Shanghai Calling, the male protagonist is Sam Chao, a young, dashing, welldressed New York lawyer, performed by Daniel Henney, a Korean-American actor and model. The female protagonist is Amanda Wilson, a relocation specialist, a single mother, and a Caucasian American woman, performed by Eliza Coupe. Unlike the failed interracial romance of the character Wang Yang in American Dreams in China, Sam Chao and Amanda find each other, fall in love, and forge a life together in Shanghai Calling. The film points to the possibility of cross-cultural understanding and interracial heterosexual bliss. It is different from the nationalistic, patriotic, standoffish ethos of American Dreams in China. Shanghai Calling makes China into a land where expatriates and foreigners can realize their dreams. Men can assert their ability and masculinity in Shanghai, and will be able to fulfill their libidinal drives and professional goals. Sam Chao, as an American expatriate, discovers the wonders of China. Unlike the flow of people from China to New York in those Chinese-language films, this time the direction of traffic is the other way around, from New York to China. The ethnic Chinese male, Sam, establishes his identity in China, the land of his ancestors. All in all, the resurrection of Chinese masculinity in films goes hand in hand with the so-called “rise of China” in the new century. Chinese nationals as well as ethnic Chinese abroad both seem to have regained confidence in their entrepreneurship in the national arena as well as the international stage. Some of them may even have the good luck of falling in love, and being loved by women from China or elsewhere.

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Hong Kong Cinema and the Pursuit of the Chinese Dream I would like to summarize by further looking at the pursuit of the Chinese Dream at the level of the translocal, transnational Hong Kong film industry and within the films of Hong Kong or ex–Hong Kong directors. As mentioned earlier, after Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, and especially after the signing of the Close Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) between Hong Kong and China, Hong Kong filmmakers have increasingly crossed the border to mainland China to take advantage of the huge mainland market. This phenomenon has been described as “mainlandization” or “re-nationalization.” Established Hong Kong directors have made many films with astonishing box office success in mainland China. Stephen Chow’s 周星馳 (born 1962) 2016 blockbuster The Mermaid (Meirenyu 美人魚) has broken the box office record in China. What happens to local identity and indigenous cinema in the pursuit of a grand Chinese Dream then? At the level of the filmic text, previous Hong Kong films often embody themes of quest, journey, and diaspora, and their characters harbor a “Hong Kong Dream” (Peter Chan’s Comrades: Almost a Love Story, 1996), a “New York Dream” (Stanley Kwan’s Full Moon in New York [Ren zai Niuyue, 1989]), or a “California Dream” (the soundtrack music of “California Dreamin’” in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express [Chongqing senlin 重慶森林, 1994]). With the rise of China in the twenty-first century, many Hong Kong films hasten to embrace the “Chinese Dream.” A noticeable example is Peter Chan’s film American Dreams in China (2013). Mainland China has become the place where Hong Kong filmmakers as well as fictional characters within Hong Kong films themselves can realize their dreams. As Peter Chan confesses, there is no need for his films to aim at the global film market. The mainland Chinese market is big enough and good enough. How does all this impact the Hong Kong film industry as well as identity formation in Hong Kong films? The mainland-originated grand Chinese Dream sometimes meets vigorous contestation at the local level. The Hong Kong film Ten Years (Shi nian 十年, 2015) is a good example. It offers a dystopian, ominous vision of what will happen in Hong Kong in year 2025, when Hong Kong society is increasingly ruled by mainland China. In one episode, taxi drivers are forbidden to speak the Cantonese dialect in certain zones of the city. Putonghua (standard Mandarin) is the speech of the town. The Chinese Dream turns into a nightmare in this futuristic film. This small budget film surprisingly won the Best Film Award at the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards. Against the usual practice, mainland media did not broadcast that year’s Hong Kong Film Awards. Another telling example of “localization,” not so boisterous and combative, is veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui’s 許鞍華 (born 1947) work A Simple Life (Tao jie 桃姐, also known as Sister Peach, 2011), which is a slow-paced, quiet,

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touching, elegiac tale of an old maid in a traditional Hong Kong family. The film casts a last glimpse at a disappearing lifestyle in Hong Kong. It is love at last sight, the déjà disparu, or what Ackbar Abbas describes with prescience as the “culture and the politics of disappearance,” the title of his book on Hong Kong published in the fateful year of 1997 (Abbas 1997). The film won four awards at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, including Best Actress (Deanie Ip 葉 德嫻 in the lead role of Sister Peach). In general, there seem to be two strategies in the development of the contemporary Hong Kong film industry. One is to capitalize on the huge market of mainland China. Commercially successful examples include the films and practices of such directors as Peter Chan and Stephen Chow. They participate in and contribute to the building of the Chinese Dream which promises national unity and prosperity to all Chinese regardless of where they reside. Another tendency is to stubbornly hold onto the local and resist the national, as exhibited by such films as Ten Years. In that instance, the local tradition and autonomy of Hong Kong will not be subsumed under a grand national ideology.

References Abbas, Ackbar. 1997. Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cheung, Esther M. K., Gina Marchetti, and Esther C. M. Yau. 2015. “Introduction.” In A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, edited by Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C. M. Yau, 1–13. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Harvey, David. 1991. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry in the Origins of Cultural Change. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Lu, Sheldon, ed. 1997. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Lu, Sheldon. 2001. China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lu, Sheldon. 2005. “Hong Kong Diaspora Film and Transnational TV Drama: From Homecoming to Exile to Flexible Citizenship.” In Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, edited by Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, 298–311. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Lu, Sheldon. 2015. “Commentary: Dimensions of Hong Kong Cinema.” In A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, edited by Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti and Esther C. M. Yau, 116–20. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press. Szeto, Mirana May, and Yun-chung Chen. 2015. “Hong Kong Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalization and Mainlandization: Hong Kong SAR New Wave as a Cinema of Anxiety.” In A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, edited by Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C. M. Yau, 89–115. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Yau, Esther C. M. 2015. “Watchful Partners, Hidden Currents: Hong Kong Cinema Moving into the Mainland of China.” In A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, edited by Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C. M. Yau, 17–50. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Haunted Chinese Gay Identity Sexuality, Masculinity, and Class in Beijing Story Hongwei Bao

In Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida (1994) observes that both Karl Marx and William Shakespeare shared an obsession with specters. He coined a neologism “hauntology,” as opposed to “ontology,” to refer to something that is not present, not real, not there, but that nonetheless enters into and disrupts the closure of whatever is present, real, and there. “Everything begins by the apparition of a specter,” Derrida states, “a specter is always a revenant. One cannot control its comings and goings because it begins by coming back” (4–11, original emphasis). Despite the accusation of mysticism and nihilism usually targeted at Derrida, “hauntology” opens up possibilities to think about time, space, beings, identities, histories and memories as well as many other social, political and cultural issues including globalization (Benedicto, 2008) and nationalism (Anderson 1983). In this chapter, I draw on “hauntology” to discuss the construction of Chinese gay identity in a popular queer online fiction Beijing Story. In doing so, I propose to consider the intersectionality of sexuality, masculinity, and class in contemporary China in the context of globalization and neoliberalism, and assess the role of “queer Marxism” (Liu 2015) in a transnational Chinese context.

Beijing Story Published online by “Beijing Comrade” (Beijing Tongzhi 北京同志, pseudonym) in 1996 and adapted as a film titled Lan Yu 藍宇 by Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan 關錦鵬 (born 1957) in 2001, Beijing Story (Beijing gushi 北京故事) is one of the most popular gay novels in mainland China. The story narrates a decadelong romantic and tragic love story between two men in Beijing in the 1980s and early 1990s. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist Lan Yu travels from a small country town to Beijing to attend university. He prostitutes himself to pay for his university tuition and in the process meets his first patron Chen Handong (hereafter Handong). As the son of a retired communist cadre, Handong makes a successful business in international trade through his connections with

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government officials. Handong showers money and gifts on Lan Yu, who refuses most of them. They begin to fall in love with each other, yet Handong still maintains sexual relationships with other men and women. It is only after experiencing the Tiananmen Incident in 1989 that Handong realizes how important Lan Yu is to him. Despite this, he still marries a woman and breaks his relationship with Lan Yu. Years go by before they meet each other by chance and Handong, divorced now, tries to resume their relationship. When he is put into jail because of illegal financing, Lan Yu buys him out of prison. As they are prepared to live a happy life together, Lan Yu is killed in a car accident, leaving Handong heartbroken. Years later, Handong remarries and emigrates to Canada, cherishing the memory of Lan Yu. This story has gained great popularity in mainland China’s gay community after its online publication. It was recently translated into English and published in the USA in 2016 under the title of Beijing Comrades (Bei Tong 2016). Both Remy Cristini (2005; 2006) and Loretta Ho (2007) regard this work as representing a “new” literary genre, namely “comrade literature” (tongzhi wenxue 同志文學), and as social commentary, with its tragic ending reflecting “the harsh realities of the gay world in China” (Ho 2007, 63). I am, however, suspicious of whether “comrade literature” as such can be categorized as an independent literary genre, for the narrative structures and techniques of “comrade literature” are not uncommon in classical or modern literary romance. The melodramatic ending of the story is perhaps not so much about “the harsh realities” of China for gay people; rather, it is about how the anonymous author (Beitong, literally “Beijing Comrade”) utilizes conventional narrative strategies of literary romance to develop the story. Many Chinese readers and writers believe that tragedy, closely intertwined with the aesthetics of the sublime, has more literary value (wenxue jiazhi 文學價值) than comedy. In the widespread “high culture fever” in post-Mao China, people usually find a story more convincing and more worthwhile reading when it has a tragic ending. Besides, as Lisa Rofel (1999) suggests, “telling bitterness” (suku 訴苦), or narrating tragic experiences, was one of the most important ways for people in post-Mao China to construct their new subjectivities. Tragic endings in gay fiction, as such, help both the author and reader to imagine a shared identity and community based on their shared experiences and affects in the reading of fiction. Admittedly, both Cristini and Ho fail to address how fiction, along with other popular cultural texts about gays and lesbians in China, has participated in the construction of certain Chinese gay identities and, furthermore, how readers construct their identities by actively engaging with such popular cultural texts. I concur with David Eng (2010) who reads the film Lan Yu as a narrative of desires and queer space in post-Mao China, and I would like to highlight the intersections between sexuality, masculinity, and class in this story, which I consider significant but often overlooked in reading the story and understanding

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the formation of gay identity in China. The historical background of the story is important: the story was set in post-Mao China. In modern Chinese historiography, the year 1978 marked the end of the Maoist era and the beginning of a new era. China found itself faced with a world of global capitalism in which it had to participate in order to survive and prosper. Both the nation-state and its people seemed eager to cast China’s socialist past behind and enter the “brave new world” of global capitalism. Creating new desires and identities thus became central to China’s grand project of imagining a postsocialist modernity. Wendy Larson defines a “postrevolutionary sensibility” as one that appropriates the discourse of desire and sexuality that the Maoist politicism suppressed (1997, 204). Larson’s view concurs with Rofel (1999) in the latter’s theorization of the postsocialist allegory which celebrates a liberated desire that was supposedly suppressed in the Maoist past. Desires appear to be “the most explosive and powerful realm for constructing novel citizen-subjects not merely in China but in China’s reconfiguration of its relationship to a postsocialist world,” contends Rofel, “sexuality is one of the several sites in which desire is imagined and discussed in these encounters” (Rofel 2007, 2). The emergence of gay identity in post-Mao China, therefore, becomes an important marker for the nation’s grand social engineering to construct new bodies, identities, desires, dreams, and aspirations that would bring the country into a new historical era and a “brave new world” of global capitalism. The homoerotic desire, together with other desires depicted in the fiction such as desires for wealth, fame, belonging, recognition, respect and happiness, presents a panorama of a “desiring China” in its imagination of and pursuit for modernity in a postsocialist world. In this sense, the fiction is not so much about a realistic depiction of “the harsh realities of the gay world in China,” as Ho (2007, 63) claims, as about the “national allegories” of a “desiring China” in the post-Mao era.

“Becoming Gay” in Post-Mao China Beijing Story is a story about “becoming gay.” In the story, neither Lan Yu nor Handong was born gay. They start from engaging in commercial sex and both regard homosexuality as a temporary period of “play” (wan 玩) in their lives. Note that “play” is a classed category: in late imperial and Republican China, men from a higher social class often “played” with male favorites and male opera singers, as an “obsession” (pi 癖) and a form of social distinction (Kang 2010). This practice has its resonance among post-Mao China’s social elites, especially those who have more political and economic capital. With the exposure to information and images about gay identity from “abroad” (guowai 國外), including the “West” and transnational Asia, Handong and Lan Yu begin to attribute certain meanings to their sexual practices and desires. In this way, homosexuality

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becomes “a past, a case history and a childhood, a form of life” (Foucault 1990, 43) and an identity. In many ways, the queer subject formation portrayed in Beijing Story seems to support Dennis Altman’s (1997) argument of a “global gay” identity, in which a Western type of gay identity has been spread to all parts of the world. The story is set in the 1980s and 1990s when post-Mao China opened up to the West. Both Lan Yu and Handong are extensively exposed to Western and transnational Asian cultural flows. For instance, Handong does business with some Russians, consumes foreign wines and cigarettes, drives an imported car, and watches American porn videos. His house, located in the northern suburbs of Beijing, is deliberately named “Northern Europe” (Bei Ou 北歐). Lan Yu wears clothes from Hong Kong, works for a Japanese company, and studies for the TOFEL examination in preparation for studying in the USA. They visit Thailand and watch commercial sex shows, enjoying the “sexual freedom” that China does not have at that time. It would seem that their gay identity is, after all, an import from the West as well as from transnational Asia. It would also seem that the empire of global capitalism has successfully constructed neoliberal subjectivities in China. Even the depiction of the Tiananmen scene seems to resonate with Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” (1992) thesis. In 1989, Lan Yu joins his schoolmates to protest against the government on the Tiananmen Square. He survives the night of the military intervention. Prior to the event, Handong has refused to acknowledge his gay identity and to recognize his feelings for Lan Yu as love. After the experience at Tiananmen, he finally comes to terms with his gay identity: Having just escaped death, we began to feel for each other. We tried to tell from our bodies that we were still alive. I caressed his skin with my face: it was warm; it was living; I was still having him . . . I grabbed his hair and looked at him in the face. There was only one thought in my mind: “I can’t lose him! I can’t!” I almost cried out. I pushed him to the floor, his face in my hands, and looked at him in the eye: “I love you.” . . . The sentence came out naturally. These were the only words that I could think of . . . It was not simply sex; it was true love indeed. I don’t care what other people think of it. I feel it that way, deeply, truly and sincerely. Every time when I recall the moment, I can feel the love. (Beijing Tongzhi 1989)

As the history of postsocialist China shows, the 1989 student demonstration in Tiananmen can be seen as the last of a series of large-scale disruptive mass mobilizations aimed at the radical change of society in twentieth-century China. This long tradition has an often-misunderstood name and it is called “revolution” (Wang 2009). Revolutionary passion derives from an observation of the social inequalities and justices in a society, a strong sense of social responsibility, a determination to change the unjust status quo, an activism that is both

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pragmatic and utopian, and an imagination for a better future. The failure of the 1989 social movement marks the end of a century of revolution in China. After this, China accelerated its process of marketization and privatization and formally entered the global capitalist world. The emergence of gay identity, along with other gendered, sexed, and desiring subjectivities, marks China’s entry into the “brave new world” of neoliberal capitalism. Such neoliberal subjectivities are only possible with the overcoming of revolution and the erasure of alternative social imaginaries. The public silence about class despite increasing social stratification, the forgetting of China’s socialist legacy, and the replacement of Marxism by “new criticism” in postsocialist China all speak to the “brave new world.” One of Handong and Lan Yu’s conversations in the novel, however, disrupts the myth of the “West” and globalization. When Handong tries to persuade Lan Yu to go to a psychologist to have his homosexuality “treated,” Lan Yu tells him, “I have read some materials from abroad. Now they do not consider it [homosexuality] a disease, but a . . . I forget the word. That is to say, some people like men; some people like women. It’s only a matter of choice.” Handong refutes him, “some materials from abroad? There is also porn from abroad. There is also sexual openness from abroad” (Beijing Tongzhi 1989). How the notion of “abroad” (guowai) is constructed and imagined in this conversation deserves attention. “Abroad” (guowai) is often equivalent to “foreign countries” (waiguo 外國) or the “West” (xifang 西方) in vernacular Chinese. In the Chinese language and popular cultural texts in mainland China, guowai is often depicted as a symbol of modernity, characterized by abundant wealth and freedom. Meanwhile, it is also paradoxically portrayed as a place of danger, corruption, and decadence. “Porn” (maopian 毛片) and “sexual openness” (xing kaifang 性開放), mentioned in Handong and Lan Yu’s conversation, are considered equivalent to sexual promiscuity and moral corruption, and are thus generally frowned upon by many Chinese including Lan Yu and Handong. However, the public discourse about the “West” is not unified and coherent. There are multiple and contradictory discourses about the West. Similarly, gay identity is represented in different ways in the story: it is at once considered a free expression of the self, a fashionable style of life, and a disease (youbing 有病). Judging from the example cited above, gay people in China seem critical of the “West” and the “global gay” identity. Whether they happily greet “global queering” or “opening-up” (kaifang 開放) and readily pick up neoliberal subjectivities without appropriation, subversion and resistance calls for careful deliberation. The “global gay” perspective is insufficient to account for the construction of identity, as the narrative assumes that people in other cultural contexts have equal access to transnational gay images and ideologies. In the story, this may be the case for Handong as a rich businessman but for Lan Yu it is not. It is

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important to take into consideration class and social inequalities in Chinese society to understand the complex process of queer subject formation.

Sexuality with Class Distinction Handong grows up in a retired Chinese government official’s family. From the story, we know that his father had been a high-ranking Communist Party cadre (gaogan 高幹) before he retired. It is likely that he participated in the Maoist revolution, as he referred to his friends as zhanyou 戰友 (“friends from the army”). Many high-ranking government officials and military officials in Beijing attend his funeral. Handong’s mother is keenly aware of the class position of the family and insists that Handong should marry someone that matches the family social status (mendang hudui 門當戶對). Handong starts a small company when he is a second-year university student; he later also starts a big trading company after graduation. He makes a fortune in conducting international trade with businessmen from Eastern European countries, mainly Russia, importing and exporting state-monopolized industrial products such as steel and cars. He is the boss of a company worth hundreds of millions of capital at the age of 27 and enters China’s “new rich” class. He is among the first capitalists in postsocialist China. Handong’s personal history is illustrative of the rise of the “new rich” class in postsocialist China. In the Maoist era, especially during the Cultural Revolution, “capitalists,” or people making money through business transaction or holding means of production, were considered “class enemies.” In a society that upheld egalitarianism, to be rich was considered shameful. The economic reforms in the post-Mao era required the formation of a new capitalist class, now under the new name of “entrepreneurs” (qiyejia 企業家), legitimized by the state slogan “to get rich is glorious.” The “primary stage of socialism” (shehui zhuyi de chuji jieduan 社會主義的初級階段) theory provides theoretical justifications for the rising new rich: at this stage, the state allows a group of people to get rich first; when they get rich, they can help other people get rich (xianfu daidong gongfu 先富帶動共 富). The first group of people to “get rich first” in the postsocialist era happened to be government officials and Communist Party cadres, the two overlapping categories often encompassing the same group of people (Chen 2010). In other words, despite the changes in economic models, China’s political structure has changed very little, and social elites have remained in power despite the dramatic economic transformation. What is specific to the post-Mao era is that the Party not only holds the political and military power of the state, but economic power as well (Goodman 2008). Privatization of public properties that used to belong to the state required redistribution of wealth. As people were generally not rich in the Maoist era and no one could afford to purchase these public properties, the state gave away many public properties to individuals. The CCP cadres and their families thus benefitted from the redistribution of wealth, as most of them

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were decision-makers at the time. In other words, in the postsocialist era, a few powerful individuals “appropriated” the state properties that used to belong to all the people under China’s socialism. With their connections, they formed a powerful social network that facilitated their accumulation of wealth. This further accelerated their appropriation of public properties. The group of people who “got rich first” did not seem eager to help other people to get rich. Instead, there was growing official corruption, inflation and unemployment, as well as increasing social inequalities and injustices in Chinese society. The accumulating public grudge against the Party State culminated in the student demonstration in 1989. The making of the new rich class does not simply involve the accumulation of wealth; it also entails the cultivation of new class “tastes” (Donald and Zheng 2009). Things, in particular material goods, from the West are imagined as benchmarks for the newly emerged class taste. Handong uses “foreign-brand” goods and drives imported cars. His wife, Lin Jingping, is obsessed with “big brands” from abroad: After marriage, I began to know Lin better. She was fussy about everything. She only used big brands, even for toilet paper. She told me that all the domestic brands were rubbish, that the products from Hong Kong were rubbish, too; only some stores in Japan and on the Fifth Avenue in New York sell truly classy goods. She went to the beauty parlor in expensive hotels every day to have skin care, or to do her hair. She employed a live-in housemaid, as she could not do any housework with her beautifully trimmed finger nails . . . I did not care how much money she spent. I was simply surprised at how a daughter from an ordinary family spent other people’s money with such ease. (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

The above account shows how quickly Jingping, daughter of an ordinary Chinese family in Shanghai, transforms herself from a company employee to an upperclass housewife. She turns to consumerism to foster her new class identity. For Jingping, gender, represented by her female physical beauty in this context, is at the core of her class mobility. As for Handong, sexuality is a way to demonstrate his class distinction: I kept changing sex partners. To find a woman was not difficult for me, but it was difficult to get rid of them. I more or less detested these women. They always wanted to talk me into marriage .  .  . Someone in the circle [quanzi 圈子] introduced me to a boy. He was a singer in a club. From there I have found a new way of having fun [wan’er fa 玩兒法]. (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

Handong soon finds gay sex more satisfying than straight sex: The biggest difference between men and women is this: women have sex with you because of your talent, or for your money, on which they can rely for the rest of their lives. Sex is their gift bestowed to men. Men have sex because of love and the most primordial desire. (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

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It is easy to dismiss Handong’s statements as misogynistic. He also seems to consider gay love in a romantic and even utopian way. As Ernst Bloch (1988) and Frederic Jameson (2004) remind us, utopia is deeply rooted in social realities and can be read as a social critique. In this context, the commercialization of heterosexual love, sex, and even marriage foregrounds the construction of queer love as utopia. If Handong’s marriage with Jingping is built on economic terms, his gay love seems not to be. In the story, Handong showers money and presents on Lan Yu, and Lan Yu declines them most of the time. Handong ruminates: I have given him a “nobleman’s life”; I have offered him great wealth and material comforts: I have even given him an expensive house. He has asked for nothing and accepted nothing from me. He does not care about money. (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

The “noncommercial” and “pure” gay love is juxtaposed with the commercialized heterosexual love and marriage in the story. The construction of queer love as utopia thus serves as a critique to the commercialization of social relations and affective terrains in the postsocialist era. As Petrus Liu glosses the situation succinctly: The novel romanticizes the conceptual dichotomy between love and money, presenting Lan Yu as the embodiment of values and emotions found in our “natural” state of being prior to, or at least untainted by, the complications of economics . . . Beijing Comrades articulates the cultural fantasy about the separability of love and money in human relations. (Liu, 2016, 374–75)

Premodern Memories, Nationalist Sentiments It is well worth noting that there is a revival of China’s premodern past in the story. Lan Yu is presented as a person who embodies neo-Confucian values and virtues such as ren 仁 (humanity), yi 義 (righteousness), li 禮 (politeness, knowing rituals), zhi 智 (knowledge), xin 信 (integrity), zhong 忠 (loyalty), cheng 誠 (honesty), shu 恕 (kindness and forgiveness), lian 廉 (honesty and cleanness, especially economically), and chi 恥 (shame, being able to judge right from wrong). The fact that he refuses to take Handong’s money despite his poverty is indicative of his embodied virtues of lian and chi. He is so loyal (zhong) to his partner Handong that he refuses to have sex with other men even when he is threatened with a knife. From a third person’s perspective, The boy [Lan Yu] is so loyal to you [Handong] that he manages to keep his body for you at all costs (yiwang shenqing, shoushen ruyu 一往深情，守身如 玉) . . . he grabbed Yonghong’s knife and said: “spare me or kill me!” (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

This story has some resonances with some classical Chinese and Western stories including Lady Dushi (Dushiniang 杜十娘) and The Lady of the Camellias,

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both of which depict the love and sacrifice of virtuous prostitutes. The representation of Lan Yu’s gender seems interesting: he is a man but he plays a passive role in sex. He carries traits such as integrity and courage usually considered to be “masculine.” Meanwhile, he also embodies traits such as being faithful to his partner and keeping chastity usually regarded as more “feminine.” The gay subject represented by Lan Yu thus expresses the utopian wish of making a perfect human being that crosses the gender binary. The attempt to revive universalism in the post–Cold War era, as Jameson (2002) suggests, speaks to the provisional condition of disappearance of alternatives to capitalism. In the story, the revival of Neo-Confucian values and the obsession with “universal” love take place in a society under dramatic transformation from state socialism to transnational capitalism. In the story, every other human relationship, including the family relationship, has been represented as pragmatic and profit-driven. While Handong describes his mother as hypocritical and Jingping as a greedy femme fatale, the relationship between men, in terms of both homosexuality and homosociality, has been associated with universal values. The true friendship between him and his childhood friend Liu Zheng is manifested by the latter’s generous help when Handong is in prison. The true love between Handong and Lan Yu is tested by many disruptive events during the course of ten years, especially the Tiananmen Incident in 1989 and Handong’s arrest and imprisonment. While there are many reasons to blame the author of the story for privileging and romanticizing masculinity and male homosociality, it is more productive to consider the particular historical background of the textual production. The story was written in the late 1990s when several schools of thoughts had gained popularity in China’s intellectual field: liberalism, neoliberalism, and “national learning” (guo xue 國學). Liberalism and neoliberalism contributed to the dissemination of Western universalism and economic rationality in Chinese society. The “national learning” school advocated the revival and reinterpretation of “Chinese values,” especially Confucianism. It is unreservedly supported by the Chinese government as it effectively fits the nationalist and anti-Western project. Some of the ideas, including Confucian capitalism, provides ideological legitimacy for neoliberal economic reforms in China (Wang 2003, 162). Apart from its ideological complicity with the Chinese state and transnational capitalism, “national learning” supports universal values by constructing a version of Chinese universalism and placing China as an “exception” to Western universality. As Zhang Xudong points out, “a seemingly ‘inward’ turn in Chinese knowledge and intellectual production is, rather, an anxious search outward for a new entry into global hierarchy and division of labor governing the field of knowledge production, and into the system of representation and power in global space” (2008, 49–50). This in effect serves to reinforce Western universalism. The impact of the “national learning” school is manifested by a growing

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interest in the Chinese classics and neo-Confucian values in society. The utopian longing for universal love and true friendship, together with an obsession with “Chineseness,” manifested in the story, should be understood this historical context. Thus far I have explained why queer love is represented as utopia in this fiction. It is apparent that the turn to universalism and the longing for utopia have some social issues to address, and they serve as social critiques to the rapid transformation of a society by global capitalism. Yet the obsession with universalism and “Chinese learning” is not always totalizing and hegemonic. While it is necessary to examine how these discourses have been constructed, it is also necessary to see how they have been received, appropriated, and resisted in people’s everyday lives. In the story, the protagonists often turn to premodern China for cultural resources or even solutions when they encounter problems. When Handong’s mother discovers that Handong has sex with men, she reprimands Handong: Now you have done such despicable/low-class (xialiu 下流) things. If people knew about it, how would you walk in society? . . . How could a mother bear to see her son despised by others? (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

Handong quickly turns to classical Chinese references to homoeroticism to console his mother: You have misunderstood it. This is a game that all the rich people play nowadays. People come up with different ideas for fun and they compete with each other. No one takes these things seriously. I used to hang out with boys. I am bored with them now. I am now into horse racing. I like horses, in the same way that I like boys . . . In fact, this is nothing new in China. It was called “southern/male style” (nanfeng 南風) in ancient China. Rich people regarded it as “fun” (le’er 樂兒). Do you know Cai Ming [a pop star]? He occasionally does this too. This is simply about having dinner with boys and chatting with them, and nothing else. (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

“Southern style” (nanfeng) is at the same time pun and euphemism in classical Chinese language. The Chinese character “southern” is homophonic to the character “male.” Therefore, “southern style” also suggests “male style,” that is, eroticism between men, as homoerotic practice was widely practiced in southern Chinese provinces like Fujian in premodern times. Handong’s mother, apparently aware of such cultural references, seems reasonably convinced after Handong’s explanation. For the mother, “southern style” is simply a hobby and a widely accepted practice among the socially privileged and it does not jeopardize social institutions including family, marriage, or “face” (mianzi 面子), that is, honor and prestige, valued in traditional Chinese societies. But when it comes to “gay” as a socially stigmatized identity, the mother can never tolerate it. Class plays an important part in distinguish elitist homoerotic practices from stigmatized gay identities. Handong’s mother does not approve of her son

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engaging in gay sex because it is despicable (xialiu). Xialiu carries a strong class connotation. Homosexuality is despicable because it is associated with the lower class. For the mother, this jeopardizes the family’s class privilege and makes the family lose face in front of others. Aware of the importance of class, Handong reassures his mother that same-sex eroticism is not associated with lower class; instead, it is a token of upper-class privilege: “This is a game that all the rich people play nowadays.” He compares his interest in men to his interest in horses, and further justifies his statement with both historical and popular cultural references, pointing out that same-sex eroticism was widely practiced by rich people in ancient China and it is still practiced by rich people today. This explanation apparently reassures the mother, who accepts that her son engages in gay sex as one of his upper-class hobbies.

The Specter of Class The specter that haunts queer love is class in this context. Handong engages in gay sex as a means to demonstrate his “new rich” class distinction; Lan Yu “becomes” gay because he has to earn university tuition for himself, and later for upward social mobility. The utopian discourse of universal love brings the two people from divergent class backgrounds together. Drawing on classical Chinese references of brotherhood and the socialist reference of camaraderie, the relationship between men, both friendship and gay love, has been constructed as inherent and transcendental. In this sense, Western universalism and “Chineseness” have joined hands. They effectively suture the postsocialist social space and conceal the issue of class. I will now turn to Lan Yu’s life story to illustrate the centrality of class in the story. Lan Yu grows up in an intellectual (zhishi fenzi 知識份子) family. He had a happy childhood with his family during the socialist era. In the postsocialist era, with China’s market reform, everything has changed: After the state’s Reform and Opening-up, my father was among the first intellectuals to “jump into the business sea” . . . my family became the richest on university campus. We had a refrigerator and a color TV at home. We were envied by people around us. (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

His father had an extramarital affair, like many rich people did at the time. The mother could not take it and committed suicide: My mother died. She left a long letter to me and my father before her suicide. She said that she hated money. She said that money made people cruel, selfish, and merciless. Love was what she valued most. She would rather die than live without love. (Beijing Tongzhi, 1996)

In this account, “true” love is juxtaposed with “evil” money. Money should be read as a metonymy for capitalism, which includes both the capitalist mode of

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production and the commercialization of social relations. The suicide note of Lan Yu’s mother can be seen as a protest to the expanding capitalism in China, which transforms and commodifies human relations. Two aspects are evident in this context: first, the construction of true love as antithetic to the capitalist market; second, the construction of “good old days” of socialism. Socialist nostalgia is a popular theme in postsocialist China’s public discourse: the Maoist period, especially the early years of Maoism, is constructed as a “golden time” when people devoted their enthusiasm and confidence to the newly founded socialist state, and when social relationships were characterized by simplicity and sincerity. Through her interviews with three generations of women factory workers in Hangzhou, Lisa Rofel (1999) demonstrates the importance of nostalgia in constructing postsocialist subjectivities: nostalgia may not be able to tell us what a historical era was truly like; it speaks to the social issues of the present and serves as “a strike of countermemory to the post-Mao transformations of categories of gender and class” (148). It is fair to say that the socialist nostalgia in the story also serves as a critique to the postsocialist present when capitalism transforms people’s social relations and their traditional ways of life. Both queer love and socialism are therefore constructed as utopia in the narrative to serve as counter memories of the postsocialist modernity.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have offered an analysis of the online queer fiction Beijing Story, reading it as a social critique of postsocialist China. I have highlighted 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 have also emphasized the crucial role of the transnational in constructing contemporary gay identity in China: gay identity has been made possible with the transnational imagination of modernity in the post-Mao China. But we should not assume the seamless suturing between the “global” and the “local”; historical traditions and cultural memories play a powerful role in shaping contemporary gay identity as well. Without paying sufficient attention to historical forms of homoeroticism, as well as recent historical memories of revolution and reconstruction, our understanding of the contemporary gay identity is bound to be incomplete. A “queer Marxist” perspective, in Petrus Liu’s (2015) words, with an emphasis on class and ideological critique, is therefore very much needed in understanding queer subject formation in contemporary China. At a time when socialism became a rather forgotten historical past, and Marxism, with its emphasis on “class” and social egalitarianism, becomes a cliché, the specter of class keeps haunting the Chinese queer subject in the latter’s imagination of a new identity

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completely different from its precedents in the historical past and in China’s imagination of a postsocialist and neoliberal present and future.

References Altman, Dennis. 1997. “Global Gaze/Global Gays.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3: 417–36. Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Beijing Tongzhi 北京同志. 1989. Beijing Gushi 北京故事 [Beijing story]. Accessed March 1, 2017. http://www.shuku.net/novels/beijing/beijing.html. Bei Tong 北同. 2016. Beijing Comrades. Translated by Scott E. Meyers. New York: Feminist Press. Benedicto, Bobby. 2008. “The Haunting of Gay Manila: Global Space-Time and the Spectre of Kabaklaan.” GLQ 14, no. 2–3: 317–38. Bloch, Ernst. 1988. The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chen, Minglu. 2010. Tiger Girls: Women and Enterprises in the People’s Republic of China. London: Routledge. Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York: Routledge. Cristini, Remy. 2005. “The Rise of Comrade Literature: Development and Significance of a New Chinese Genre.” MA thesis, Leiden University. Cristini, Remy. 2006. “Whose Comrades? Gay Festivals in China.” IIAS Newsletter 41. Donald, Stephanie H., and Yi Zheng. 2009. “A Taste of Class: Manuals for Becoming Woman.” positions: east asia cultures critique 17(3): 489–521. Eng, David L. 2010. “The Queer Space of China: Expressive Desire in Stanley Kwan’s Lan Yu.” Positions 18(2): 459–87. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. London: Penguin. Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Penguin. Goodman, David S. G., ed. 2008. The New Rich in China: Future Rulers, Present Lives. London and New York: Routledge. Ho, Loretta W. W. 2007. “China’s Opening Up: Nationalist and Globalist Conceptions of Same-Sex Identity.” PhD thesis, University of Western Australia, Perth. Ho, Loretta W. W. 2010. Gay and Lesbian Subculture in Urban China. London: Routledge. Jameson, Fredric. 2002. A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present. New York: Verso. Jameson, Fredric. 2004. “The Politics of Utopia.” New Left Review 25: 35–54. Kang, Wenqing. 2010. Obsession: Male Same-Sex Relations in China, 1990–1950. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Larson, Wendy. 1997. “Women and the Discourse of Desire in Postrevolutionary China: The Awkward Postmodernism of Chen Ran.” Boundary 2, 24(3): 201–23. Liu, Petrus. 2016. “From Identity to Social Protest: The Cultural Politics of Beijing Comrades.” Beijing Comrades, 372–81. Liu, Petrus. 2015. Queer Marxism in Two Chinas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rofel, Lisa. 1999. Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rofel, Lisa. 2007. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Wang, Hui. 2003. “Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity’. In China’s New Order, edited by Theodore Huters, 139–88. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wang, Hui. 2009. The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity. London: Verso. Zhang, Xudong. 2008. Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

5

A Free Life Transnational Reconstruction of Chinese Wen Masculinity Lezhou Su

Overview This chapter studies the (re)construction of overseas Chinese wen 文 masculinity against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident and the 1990s when China started moving towards a market-oriented economy.1 In the mainland, the 1989 Incident which ended up with a military crackdown against Chinese pro-democracy intellectuals traumatized Chinese wen masculinity; the socioeconomic changes brought about a consumerist culture, which in turn problematized Chinese traditional wen masculinity. The sociopolitical changes had apparent impacts on Chinese masculinity in transnational dimensions. The 1990s witnessed a new wave of Chinese migration to other countries especially to the United States as a result of the incident and socioeconomic changes afterwards. The migration apparently had strong effect on Chinese wen masculinity given that the adaption to new life was quite a challenge for the male migrants, which at the same time brought opportunities for Chinese wen masculinity to interact with foreign peoples and ideas. The political trauma, socioeconomic changes, and the wave of migration all joined together to set the stage for the reconstruction of Chinese wen masculinity in the 1990s. As a study in the tradition of humanities, this chapter approaches this issue by examining as literary evidence Ha Jin’s 哈金 (born 1956) A Free Life (2007) in juxtaposition with his other works. As Ha Jin’s first immigration-themed novel drawing on some autobiographical elements, A Free Life might be read as the successor of The Crazed (2002), because the former starts with the occurrence of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident with which the latter ends. A Free Life unfolds the process of a Chinese male immigrant reconstructing his masculinity in the post-Tiananmen era in a transnational context.

1. This project is sponsored by the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, People’s Republic of China.

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The protagonist Na Wu was studying for a PhD in political science in the United States when the Tiananmen Incident happened. The military crackdown of the Chinese government against pro-democracy students and intellectuals in China prompted him to decide not to return but embark on a meandering journey to be a poet while struggling to settle down in the US with his wife and son. Parallel to this immigrant plot is a homeward-looking subplot. As antitheses to the protagonist Nan, Baoyuan (an artist), Danning (a writer), and Manping Liu (a political economy scholar) did not choose to remain in the US after the Tiananmen Incident. Although they had been democratic activists and anti-government dissidents staying in the US when the incident happened, they later returned to China, making compromises with the government, remaining silent on the sensitive issues, and leaving behind the political ideals they had pursued to focus on mundane concerns. By analyzing their experience and the changes incurred in these characters, this chapter addresses these two questions: (1) What cultural resources are utilized by the protagonist to reconfigure Chinese wen masculinity in this transnational context? (2) In what ways is Chinese wen masculinity transformed in 1990s’ China?

Traditional Wen Masculinity in Crisis The protagonist Nan, like some of the protagonists in Ha Jin’s other novels, seems to be willing to keep politics at arm’s length. Professor Yang in The Crazed expresses his detached and hostile attitude to contemporary politics, believing that detachment is “the only proper way of pursuing scholarship” (Jin 2002, 104). Similarly, Nan is not interested in politics, “which he had never liked but which he had been assigned to study when he was admitted to college back in China” (Jin 2007, 17). Also in common with Professor Yang, Nan cherishes the ideal of purity, which is represented by his passion for poetry. In their eyes poetry stands in opposition to politics, which is ugly and polluted. Professor Yang shows his contempt for those pseudo-intellectuals who study to enter officialdom by saying “I’d talk of poetics only with those who have an unpolluted mind” (Jin 2002, 104). Similarly, Nan expresses his disapproval of his compatriots who decided to change their fields from literature to business or law in order to find a job. Nan is certain he will not choose to study for survival. In Nan’s eyes, it amounts to selling his brain to study for materialistic rather than for spiritual concerns (i.e., interest and passion). “For years Nan had adhered to the principle that he would sell his brawn but not his brain. He wanted to save his mind for his study” (Jin 2002, 24). Traditionally, to enter officialdom is the common goal for junzi (the identity that Confucianism promotes “as an attainable ideal”) and the mark of ideal wen masculinity (Yao 2000, 25). That having been said, retreat from politics represents a typical response of Chinese intellectuals to an adverse situation where

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they find themselves frustrated, discontented with contemporary politics and society and having difficulties entering officialdom as a result of being out of the ruler’s favor. As Louie says, “since 1949, it has often been difficult for scholars to directly compete for supremacy in the bureaucracy or government. Accordingly, many have taken the ‘flight’ option” (Louie 2002, 74). Nan, among other protagonists in Ha Jin’s works, is a literary representative of the marginalized Chinese scholars who are disillusioned with Chinese politics in the post-Mao era. Such disillusionment culminates in 1989 when the Tiananmen Incident occurred. Baogang He said, “As men of ideas, Chinese intellectuals have usually been associated with politics” (He 2004). The occurrence of the incident as a historical trauma had a strong transnational impact on Chinese intellectuals in the United States, physical as well as psychological. A Free Life is replete with allusions to the knock-on negative impact on intellectuals’ masculinity brought by the historical trauma. Political disheartenedness, desperateness, worries, and uncertainty overwhelmed Nan. “[H]is mind was restless, teeming with worrisome thoughts. So many things had happened recently that he was still in a daze” (Jin 2007, 16). Nan was also shocked to learn that his fellow student Hansong had become deranged and committed to a mental hospital, partly because of the protest back in China and the disappearance of his girlfriend who might have been killed in the protest. As a matter of fact, the psychological impact of the incident is what Ha Jin himself experienced as an overseas student during the time, although the writer was not involved in any sort of kidnap plot. In an interview, when asked what impact the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 (or 6.4 Incident) had on him, Jin said: It is a painful experience. Though we didn’t undergo it personally in Beijing, it changed so many lives in the United States. It still hurts me because it has shaped my destiny. . . . In the wake of the Tiananmen massacre, I often had bad dreams, most of which took place in China. Gradually, I realized that it was impossible for me to return, and I began to accept my situation as an immigrant. (Shan 2008, 143)

Immigrant life itself poses a challenge to Nan’s wen masculinity. Quitting the PhD candidacy meant the cessation of the scholarship as his only income. As a result, he had to do menial jobs to survive and sustain his family in the new land. Nan’s masculinity crisis is also contributed to by his marginalized status in American society, and his marginalization is signified by the eroticization and feminization of his body. In the novel, Nan was twice harassed sexually. Once Nan was asked by the doctor to take his pants off when he received a physical examination as required by his potential employer. When serving as a night watchman for a factory, Nan stole out to buy food one night and encountered two sex maniacs who harassed him. Nan was mistaken for a gay man multiple times by some of his white friends, although Nan never doubted his own sex orientation. This mistake suggests the connection of gender to ethnicity and the

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stereotypes held about Asians in American society. Nan’s plunge in social status and self-esteem contributes to his distress, melancholy, and self-belittlement. It is no wonder that one day Nan lost control of his emotions. When facing brutal treatment from traffic police for an alleged traffic violation, he shouted “Come on, awfficer, pull out your gahn and finish me off here. I’m sick of zis miserable life. Please shoot me!” (Jin 2007, 136).

From Americanization to Remasculinization When speaking of his name, the protagonist Nan says in the novel, “My name means ‘martial man’” (Jin 2007, 458). As the protagonist’s name suggests, this is a story about a man. It is a “coming-of-age story,” as the writer remarks, depicting how life in the United States transforms the protagonist into “a complete individual” (M. Zhang 2008, 30). It is a bildungsroman that narrates how Nan finally becomes strong-willed, tenacious, idealistic, and independent, and this section unfolds this process of becoming. San-ling Cynthia Wong discusses the relationship between masculinity and Americanization in Chinese American literature. In analyzing this genre, Wong argues that one’s masculinity may often be signified by one’s Americanization. As Wong argues, “Thus to be less Americanized is to be less masculine” (Wong 1992, 117). So it follows that, in literature, to be more Americanized is to be more masculine. The characterization of Nan seems to provide a good example. The whole novel can be seen as Nan’s acculturation, which is symbolized in many ways. As he knows he cannot return, Nan began to be willing to accept the immigrant life as the condition of his existence so as to become a self-sufficient man. In order to survive, Nan begins to do menial jobs, which marks his departure from Chinese traditional wen masculinity. Back in China, it would be a shame for a PhD student to be reduced to working menial jobs to support himself and his family. As Sheng Mei Ma observes, menial jobs are viewed as a cause of suffering in Chinese culture, and “such part-time, temporary occupations symbolize a fall from their Confucian ‘Shih’ (literati) background where all things requiring strenuous or repetitious physical labor are relegated to the working class and to women” (Ma 1998). However, menial jobs in the US context are laudable, because they represent toughness and help to make the worker independent. As the narrative goes, Such an independent condition was new to him. Back in China he had always been a member of a work unit that provided a salary, shelter (usually a bed or at most a room), coupons for cloth and grain and cooking oil, medical care, and sometimes even free condoms. As long as he didn’t cause trouble for the authorities, his livelihood was secure. Now he would have to earn a living by himself and also support his family. He was free, free to choose his own way and to make something of himself. (Jin 2007, 17)

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Zhong Xueping (2000, 31) observes that the lack of independence (either from state authority or parental authority) is a problem for Chinese men as a whole. Historically, Chinese scholars have never been independent from authority, as they have been known for their pragmatism and interest in seeking patronage of various forms from political authorities. It is not hard to imagine that it is indeed a great leap for Nan to begin to engage in menial work, while the roughness and toughness involved in these menial jobs suggest the reconstruction of Nan’s masculinity. As Nan brings his family down to Georgia where they start to run a Chinese restaurant, he sets off on the road to freedom and independence in a real sense. The geographical location bespeaks the American values of independence, pioneering, and individualism. The remoteness and aloneness bring to mind the rugged Western hero of American myth. Located on the outskirts of Atlanta, the setting is “almost like virgin land just open for settlement” (Jin 2007, 166). In contrast, running an adventure-spirited, risk-involved business is not part of Confucian culture. As Louie argues, “In the traditional Confucian masculinity framework, merchants were the least desirable in terms of wen-wu 文武. Doing business was certainly not one of the arts and skills Confucius promoted” (Louie 2002, 129). The menial jobs and restaurant business bring positive changes to Nan’s personality, and he becomes a better man. “Yet he could see that he was no longer the same man. He had been toughened by the struggle, by the mistakes he had made, by the necessary process of acclimatization . . . he was a better man now, wiser and more capable, and determined to follow his own heart” (Jin 2007, 618). Nan’s Americanization is parallel to a subplot, which narrates how Nan’s love for Pingping is nurtured finally into a base stabilizing the marriage during their struggle to settle down in the United States. In the beginning, back in China, their union was little based on love. Nan marries Pingping in a rush, in an attempt to walk away from his first love, Beina. However, for years Nan is haunted by his first romance; this constitutes the main source of tension in the marriage. For Nan, marriage is more about responsibilities than love. In Chinese marriages, a couple’s responsibilities for their children usually takes precedence and most couples, even in loveless and sexless marriages, may choose to keep their family intact on account of their children. However, the migration to Georgia has a significant bearing on the couple’s relationship. After they move there, Nan and Pingping live more like husband and wife as their restaurant business begins to thrive. Starting his restaurant also marks Nan’s embarking on the real journey to maturity and independence. After this, the marriage is more peaceful, albeit still lacking in passion. The increasingly stable marriage is signified by their increasingly harmonious copulation. As Pingping felt, “the longer they lived together, the more comfortable she felt with Nan in bed” (Jin 2007, 400). The steadiness symbolizes Nan’s maturity—an image of a man standing firmly with

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his feet planted squarely on the ground. The novel ends with Nan, for the first time in his life on a Christmas Eve, writing a poem entitled “Belated Love” for Pingping. His wife finally became the source of passion and inspiration for his poem writing. Using his wife as an inspiration, Nan successfully reclaimed his lost wen masculinity. It is interesting to note that throughout the novel what his wife Pingping means to Nan takes a U-turn, she is transformed from the wife that he had to stay with and depend on in order to survive to someone that gives him passion and inspiration for his writing. Similarly, what the United States means to Nan takes a similar U-turn, from a place he is forced to remain to a source of his writing inspiration. In this sense, Nan’s wife Pingping symbolizes the United States. If Pingping symbolizes the United States, Nan’s first love, Beina, represents China. In contrast to Nan’s Americanization process, the process of Nan’s severing his ties with China is symbolized by the severing of his emotional attachment to Beina back in China. For several years after Nan marries Pingping, Beina appears in his dreams and fantasies. Then, as Nan and Pingping’s immigrant life begins to develop along a track, Nan does not think of Beina as often. “The numb pain still lingered in his chest, but it was no long as acute as before” (Jin 2007, 340). Towards the end of the story, Nan finally sees Beina again, but he suddenly became disillusioned with his love for her. “Indeed, he didn’t feel the old numbing pain anymore despite sitting so close to Beina” (Jin 2007, 590). In parallel, Nan in the beginning of the novel is a patriot who is concerned about what is happening back in China. Towards the end, Ha Jin allows Nan to come back to China and the trip makes Nan totally disappointed with China. As a result, Nan realizes that he is not willing to return anymore.

Poetry, Independence, and Remasculinization In “Angry Chinamen: Finding masculinity in Australia and China,” Louie (2008) argues the Chinese literary traditions continue to influence Chinese diasporas writers, who still hold the ideal of wen masculinity. This claim seems to be fit with Ha Jin. Ha Jin is one of a few successful Chinese diasporas writers in the United States who make their living by writing. As Ha Jin himself is passionate for poetry (he studied poetry for his PhD), Nan under his pen has all along been dreaming of becoming a poet. This ambition reminds us of the literary ideal of traditional Chinese literati, and it is this ambition that prompts Nan to sell his successful restaurant business and find a secluded place to claim his wen masculinity. For Nan, to follow his heart is to reclaim his wen masculinity. However, this wen masculinity does not fully hold its traditional meaning any longer. It is a neo-wen incorporating American values of independence and self-sufficiency. In multiple places in the novel, Ha Jin, through the voices of the narrator and Nan,

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repeatedly stresses the significance of independence, and self-sufficiency, as a critique of Chinese traditional wen masculinities, which serve and are patronized by the government. The lack of independence and freedom is in contrast to Nan’s two white friends—Sam Fisher and Dick—both of whom are poets, whom Nan admires for their free spirit and self-reliance. As the text notes: “Nan was quite moved by their meeting with Sam Fisher, in whom he had seen the free spirit of a poet who wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, a complete individual” (Jin 2007, 153). Nan’s choice of becoming a lonely but independent writer suggests he does not care about assimilating himself into American society. He makes a nonassimilation gesture. In that secluded place he creates his own cultural space in which he feels comfortable. As Kam Louie’s asserts, “since 1949, it has often been difficult for scholars to directly compete for supremacy in the bureaucracy or government. Accordingly, many have taken the ‘flight’ option” (Louie 2002, 74). By “flight” option, Louie means to escape from politics. This assertion reminds us of Gao Xing Jian’s Taowang 逃亡 (Escape), which as Belinda Kong says is all about the “philosophy of existential flight” (Kong 2012, 13). Nan’s reclusive idea has its root in the Chinese traditional literati mentality, as Li Chi asserts that the reclusive ideal “never ceased to haunt the mind of the Chinese literati [and] monopolize much of the spirit of Chinese poetry” (Li 1962–1963, 235). Writing poetry in a secluded place, as Nan does, is an escape from politics to affirm artistic independence. This spiritual independence of Nan’s is a further step from Nan’s financial independence gained from running his restaurant business. In this sense, Nan became an independent thinker in a full sense. Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, asserts: “Solitude implies independence, selfreliance; it means not following the crowd. . . . For Chinese intellectuals, solitude must start with a complete negation of the self” (Liu 1992, 207). In this sense, Nan reclaims his wen masculinity.

Nationalism, Consumerism, and Wen Masculinity in China China in the 1990s may be characterized by two key words: nationalism and commercialization, as Geremie R. Barmé (1995) suggests in his article “To Screw Foreigners Is Patriotic: China’s Avant-Garde Nationalists,” which offers a comprehensive introduction of the historical context across the decade. After the 1989 Incident, the Party made a strong effort to consolidate its eroded authority. In doing so, the Party beefed up its efforts to promote its “state-of-the-nation” education, which warned against Westernization in China by emphasizing that China has its own unique history and circumstances and that Western beliefs are not applicable to China. Disenchantment with the West and its allies grew across the nation. In the “state-of-the-nation” education, emphasis was also put on past humiliation of China by Western allies over China’s modern history. The hostile

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sentiment produced by past humiliation was reproduced in the eventual failure of China’s bid for the 2000 Olympic Games, which was deemed the result of a conspiracy by the Western allies for political purposes (Chanda and Kaye 1993, 12–13). Hostility joined disenchantment in national sentiment towards the West. In a separate effort to create political stability, Chinese authorities continued to carry the economic reforms forward along the road of marketization. It was a success and the decade saw a huge economic “miracle” in China. Statistics show China’s gross domestic product (GDP) nearly doubled in the decade, reaching 1.16 trillion US dollars in 2001.2 Accompanying the huge growth, China’s transformation into an all-around commercialized society also played a vital role in the globalization process. The rise in economic power fueled nationalism. As Song (2010, 414) claims, this new wave of patriotic sentiments “should be interpreted more as a reaction to oppressive global capitalism than a deeply felt identification with the nation-state.” The broader sociopolitical change exerted heavy influence on the construction of Chinese masculinity. Specifically speaking, depoliticization, commercialism, and consumerism characterized Chinese manhood. A Free Life recounts the transformations of the artist-intellectuals as representatives of Chinese wen masculinity. They all had been pro-democratic activists with metaphysical ideals in the United States. However, all but Nan invariably bowed to the government after the incident so as to be allowed to return the country. In the years that followed, they transformed into money-grabbing artists or writers, winning on the financial, economic, and libidinal battleground while losing their political ideals. In the novel, the three characters Baoyang, Manping Liu, and Danning became politically disengaged to varying degrees. They compromise with authority in order to be allowed to return. Baoyuan says to Nan, “I’m no longer a democracy activist, they know. I can return as a working artist anytime. Things have changed” (Jin 2007, 452). Bao is allowed to return to China because he promises not to be involved in political activities for good as required by the Chinese government. Danning seeks patronage by working as a writer for the Beijing Writer’s Association. In China, this organization is an association of writers only in a nominal sense. As a matter of fact, it is affiliated with and operated by Party authorities.3 Liu Manping, who had once headed China’s Central Institute of Social Reforms, finally chooses to write to the authorities to beg for permission return to China, stooping to promise to keep silent over sensitive issues. 2. For more information, see http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2002-09/16/content_ 562239.htm. 3. There is more information on the Beijing Writer’s association at Baidu, which is the most popular search engine within mainland China, at: http://baike.baidu.com/link? url=PkEbNP0XvYUF1l4cllgzxSbh4u7zTeIk_CA5nf5faqbngevW08Gmai9of832 GIVDWX6Bji8_mxPYdCQraohQr4d3C0gW6QR9_bF_zHvoFgio0FKi0UfRhWXvGkoByJtIUv5AhptdpurNL10cS3wfga.

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Liu’s stooping is symbolized by his feminine physical traits: “Somehow Nan kept observing the old man’s hand, which was small and delicate like a young woman’s and which was gesturing as he spoke. That hand, a true scholar’s, was born to wield a pen” (Jin 2007, 94). This description conjures up the fragile image of a traditional scholar in premodern China, who has been subjected to political indoctrination. This description also harks back to Baranovitch’s interpretation of the implication of Chinese government’s repression of the 1989 democracy movement from a gendered perspective. Baranovitch observes that the suppression was a symbolic “act of castration,” through which “the government restored traditional order and power relations, reasserting its own power and masculinity, and denying it to those [i.e., Chinese intellectuals] who challenged it . . . plac[ing] China’s intellectuals back in their traditional position of woman-like state subjects” (Baranovitch 2003, 141). In traditional China, the shi 士 (scholarofficial) played a submissive yin role in his relationship with the sovereign, which is analogical to a son and a wife in father/son and husband/wife relations (Song 2004, 45–50). Ha Jin allows Nan to pay a short visit back to China and reveals the corruption and degradation of Chinese intellectuals by rapid commercialization in the decade. The critical tone is evident in Nan’s remarks about Danning. In Nan’s eyes, Danning is degenerating. Danning never again writes anything of quality after his fame over his first novel, as he became too busy indulging himself in libidinal pleasure. When Nan returns to China for a short visit, Danning takes him to a brothel-like restaurant where Danning is a regular customer. Nan is certain that “his friend had seen other women, at least some of the girls in the bars, hair salons, and nightclubs. Indeed, his own philandering might have driven his wife to have the affair, and nobody but himself should be to blame” (Jin 2007, 594). Danning’s sexual indulgence may be construed as a negative and derogatory symbolism of the current status of Chinese society. Danning’s talk is dominated by mundane concerns. For house estate investment, Danning urges Nan to buy a pied-a-terre in Beijing, for which there’d be no realty tax. Danning also takes Nan to a gathering of a bunch of government-patronized writers. At the table, the readers find the topics frivolous and there is no serious talk about literature and politics. The representation provides a concrete example of Barmé’s (1995, 226–27) claim that: The commercialization and de-politicalization of culture had marginalized serious artistic issues . . . [I]ntellectuals had suffered a new displacement in terms of social position and prestige from 1989 and that in the 1990s those who did not become involved in “abstract debates” (qingtan or “idle talk”) about theory were busy themselves either hawking their talents in the market place or attempting to exercise a more overt political influence as “strategists” for present or future power-holders.

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Clearly Barmé indicates that Chinese artists and intellectuals tried to take personal advantage of China’s economic development. Their works were now increasingly seen as commodities, as they were busy pandering to market demand. “Free-market commodification has ‘demoted’ writers from their previously privileged position as ‘the architects of the soul’ of society to being just ‘common’ members, who are left to float or sink in the market economy. Critics perceived a crisis in quality and morality in literary production in the early 1990s” (Wang 2006, 93). This opinion finds its echo in Cai Xiang’s remarks that “[w]hereas prosaic if not vulgar taste and value orientation are quietly being established, the spiritual (jing-shen) is subjected to repudiation and ridicule. An age of vulgarization has descended” (quoted in X. Zhang 2008, 115). In A Free Life, Bao had an artistic success later in the US. However, he left behind his artistic aspiration and came back to China because of financial temptation. As the text reads, “Nan could see that this had been bound to happen, since Bao rushed too much and fell prey to moneygrubbing instead of aspiring to a higher order of artistic achievement . . . Indeed, China was probably more suitable for a man like Bao” (Jin 2007, 575). Similarly, Danning grabbed money and fame by taking advantage of the rise of nationalism in China. As Nan notes: “Danning .  .  . pandered too much to Chinese readers’ taste and depended too heavily on exotic details and on nationalistic sentiment to make his stories work. That in effect made his fiction simplistic, glib, and even clunky in places” (Jin 2007, 473). And later, because writing fiction is not as well-paid as writing TV scripts, Danning begins writing for a TV show, though “[h]e disliked the show because the story was set in the Ming dynasty, six hundred years ago” (Jin 2007, 532). Besides making money, Danning is also well aware that TV script writing serves the interests of authority, as Danning tells Nan, If you lived here, Nan, you’d have to forget about literature. The higher-ups want us to write about dead people and ancient events because this is a way to make us less subversive and more inconsequential. It’s their means of containing China’s creative energy and talents. The saddest part is that in this way we can produce only transient work. (Ibid.)

Danning’s remarks illustrate the dynamic interaction between state, market, and intellectuals. As Yin Hong puts it, “While emerging market forces and the state were the two primary elements that governed television drama, intellectuals involved in production acted as representatives of political power and the market” (Hong 2002, 33). By writing TV scripts, Danning meets the demands not only of authority, but also of the market. The rise of nationalism in the 1990s is quite evident in the novel. In one of Danning’s letters to Nan, Danning writes, “Stories about American life are hot nowadays. Have you seen the book Manhattan’s China Lady? It’s a runaway best seller here” (Jin 2007, 258). Indeed, Manhattan’s China Lady represents overseas

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Chinese literature produced in China in the 1990s. Manhattan is a literary counterpart that involves “titillating, sensational transnational and/or transcultural love between Chinese and foreigners in China or between ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese in diasporic conditions” (Lu 2000, 31). Its popularity can be explained by its meeting the market demand for transnational romantic fantasies involving Chinese men and foreign women or vice versa. This was a desirable fantasy because it was a libidinal expression that paralleled the economic competition between China and foreign countries. It is in these transnational romantic stories set against the background of competition between China and the West that transnational Chinese male images are constructed. Sheldon H. Lu, in his article “Soap Opera in China: The Transnational Politics of Visuality, Sexuality, and Masculinity,” examines in the TV dramas of the 1990s how Chinese masculinity constructed “through the foreign woman has become a new way of imagining national identity in the age of globalization” (2000, 25). Lu adds, “The reassertion of Chinese masculinity takes the form of a transnational fantasy, the wish-fulfillment of competing successfully with foreigners for the possession of capital and women” (ibid.). The reassertion is in turn an expression of a wave of neo-nationalism in China. In a broader context, the 1990s was a decade that saw a cluster of narrative and visual texts—stories, novels, films, and nighttime soap operas, all motivated by nationalism and patriarchy. One representative book is China Can Say No (Zhong et al. 1996), which argues that China must firmly resist the US-led Western hegemony. This book challenges the pro-Western attitude prevalent among Chinese in the 1980s, criticizing a couple of well-known pro-Western dissidents who played a key role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident. The book attempts to unveil America’s vile intention to keep China from thriving by rejecting China’s bid for the World Trade Organization, and maneuvering against China’s bid for the Olympics. An interesting thing about the four writers who coauthored the book is that they used to be dissidents with pro-Western attitudes before and during the 1989 incident. In the novel A Free Life, Manping Liu speaks about the unification of Taiwan with mainland China in a speech. With regard to one of the most sensitive issues among Chinese, Liu emphasizes that Taiwan must be reunited with China for such practical reasons as national security and territory integrity. If he were the president of China, he would take military action to achieve the goal. Liu’s tough position on Taiwan represents the rising nationalism in China as a result of the rise of economic power and its increasing integration into global capitalism in the 1990s. Along with commercialism, the rising nationalism informs constructions of Chinese masculinity. Echoing Suisheng Zhao’s concept of nativist nationalism, Song (2010, 409) suggests: There is a strong interaction between the construction of masculinity in popular culture and the conspicuous rise of nationalism in mainland China

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since the early 1990s. . . . In “mainstream” representations, patriotic politics has been a major venue for accomplishing masculinity. A “good” man is therefore a man who brings honor to the motherland and safeguards national dignity on the international stage.

In Ha Jin’s novel A Free Life, Mr. Liu’s patriotism-motivated point of view about Taiwan issues was challenged by Nan, who articulated a different perspective on these issues. Arguing against Liu’s view, Nan says, “all the regions in China are like members of the Chinese family—if one of the brothers wants to live separately, isn’t it barbaric to go smash his home and beat him up?” (Jin 2007, 320). Nan’s remarks clearly indicate that he prioritizes humanism over nationalism. This view was in fact the writer’s own, which the writer articulated on multiple occasions. For example, in an interview, Ha Jin says, “[t]here are values beyond a nation and a people. I do believe in universals because I am a human being who has the same basic human feelings and desires as anyone else does. The kind of national pride shared by some overseas Chinese is often the result of indoctrination based on the absence of other beliefs, such as religions” (M. Zhang 2008, 31). There is a tension between humanism and nationalism in the relationship between Nan and his fellow Chinese intellectuals such as Baoyua, Danning, and Liu. The whole novel sees the transition of Nan from nationalism to humanism, which is in the opposite direction to which his fellow intellectuals move. As the book opens, Nan is involved in the aborted kidnap plan during the 1989 Tiananmen Incident,4 which demonstrates Nan cares about Chinese politics as other overseas students do. Behind it is Nan’s patriotism at play. The Chinese government atrocity that ended the incident appalls and disappoints Nan so much that he “made a vow not to be involved in politics again” (Jin 2007, 122). Since then, Nan increasingly distances himself from Chinese murky politics. This transition is suggested in his identity. The novel begins with Nan studying as a PhD candidate in Political Science and ends with Nan becoming a freelance poet. Nan’s sickness of politics is reminiscent of Professor Yang in The Crazed. Like Professor Yang, Nan also hates those playing political trickeries. Nan does not respect his father, who he calls the old man, and as the novel describes, “who lived in a network of officials and was nothing but an empleomaniac, foolishly perusing the histories of various dynasties, particularly the Ming and the Qing, to learn statecraft (or political trickery)” (Jin 2007, 54). All these suggest Nan goes beyond nationalism and Chinese politics to humanism and universalism.

4. In the story, Nan and his fellow Chinese students were talking of what they could do to stop the massacre taking place back in Beijing, when Nan threw out the crazy idea that they might kidnap some of Chinese top officials’ children studying in the Boston area. With the hostages in hand, they might demand their fathers to withdraw the army troops.

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Chinese nationalism may be deeply rooted in the Confucian moral code of loyalty (zhong 忠), which is at the core of Chinese ideal masculinity. Any act of leaving one’s home country and by implication the emperor, no matter what reasons are behind the act, is supposed to call one’s loyalty, and furthermore one’s masculinity, into question. As a discursive manifestation in literature, Chinese immigrant or exile texts are perennially characterized with the tradition in which diasporic writers’ attempt to demonstrate spiritual loyalty and nostalgia to the home country. According to Sheng-mei Ma (1998, 110), the exile tradition in Chinese literary history might date back to Qu Yuan’s poem “Li Sao” as the originating point. The poem is a political elegy that mourns the writer’s banishment in an effort to prove his loyalty. Using student overseas literature as an example, Ma argues that Chinese immigrant literature continues “the age-old exile tradition” (ibid.), falls “in line with the long genealogy of ethnocentric texts in Chinese history,” and that the literature has been characterized with “the textual construct of idealized ‘Chineseness’” and the expatriate writers’ effort “to preserve Chinese integrity” as they migrate to alien cultures (Ma 1998, 111). Given this, Ha Jin’s A Free Life is a piece of work breaking away from the tradition of exile literature, constructing a sublime hero deserting his native country. The novel provides a careful critique of Chineseness while the protagonist is trying to sever his ties with China. The novel seems to be in the effort to subvert the “root” myth in Chinese culture. In this sense, the novel and the protagonist reject the notion of loyalty to the nation. As Nan said in bitterness, China isn’t my country anymore. I spit at China, because it treats its citizens like gullible children and always prevents them from growing up into real individuals. It demands nothing but obedience. To me, loyalty is a two-way street. China has betrayed me, so I refuse to remain its subject anymore. (Jin 2007, 96)

Ha Jin is well aware of this psychological pressure inflicted on diaspora writers by the Chinese cultural tradition emphasizing one’s loyalty to the nation, as he writes, “the migrant writer feels guilty because of his physical absence from his native country, which is conventionally viewed by some of his countrymen as ‘desertion’” (Jin 2008, 31). Nationalism vs. humanism is just one of many binary oppositions along which the text is organized.

Conclusion To summarize the above analysis, I would like to enumerate some tensions in the narrative between Nan and his fellow Chinese intellectuals. Nan remains and settles down in the US while they come back to China. Correspondingly, throughout the novel Nan attempts to sever his ties with China or Chineseness while his friends are in the yoke of nostalgia and Chineseness. Nan is independent in the US, surviving by selling his brawn (i.e., working menial jobs

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and running his own restaurant) and fulfilling his literary pursuit in the end. In contrast, his compatriots finally stoop to work for power and money back in China, leaving behind their artistic aspiration and political ideals. Overall, Nan transcends beyond patriotism and Chineseness symbolized by politics to humanism and universalism symbolized by poetry. As the previous analysis suggests, his decision to become a poet in one sense can be seen as a reclamation of Chinese wen masculinity, although his “Chineseness” has already been transformed/transcended by this point. He is in a spiritually ascending movement while his fellow intellectuals are corrupted and become depraved spiritually through an obsession with wealth and materialism. The intellectuals’ life is the miniature of the whole community and an allegory of the nation in the 1990s. It is very evident that China is depicted as a place of spiritual decadency as opposed to the US as a possible place of spiritual redemption. As we read towards the end of the story, Danning has a chance to visit the US again for a conference and in Nan’s company goes to a church. There they join the Sunday service, after which Danning says he is not a Christian but “he [the priest] made me feel better, much better. I’m cleaner now” (Jin 2007, 602). It is in America that Danning finds himself cleaner. In A Free Life, readers might find the tones of liberalism and radicalism are much more noticeable than those in Waiting and The Crazed. In multiple places, Nan explicitly debunks and criticizes what he considers the dark side of Chinese culture and the political system, which in Nan’s eyes are the source of Chinese emasculation and loss of humanity.

References Baranovitch, Nimrod. 2003. China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978–1997. Berkeley: University of California Press. Barmé, Geremie R. 1995. “To Screw Foreigners Is Patriotic: China’s Avant-Garde Nationalist.” The China Journal 34: 209–34. Chanda, Nayan, and Lincoln Kaye. 1993. “Circling Hawks.” Far Eastern Economic Review, October 7: 12–13. He, Baogang. 2004. “Chinese Intellectuals Facing the Challenges of the New Century.” In Chinese Intellectuals between State and Market, edited by Merle Goldman and Edward Gu, 263–79. London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Hong, Yin. 2002. “Meaning, Production, Consumption: The History and Reality of Television Drama in China.” In Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis, edited by Stephanie H. Donald, Michael Keane, and Ying Hong, 28–40. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Jin, Ha. 2002. The Crazed, 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books. Jin, Ha. 2007. A Free Life, 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books. Jin, Ha. 2008. The Writer as Migrant. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kong, Belinda. 2012. Tiananmen Fictions outside the Square. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Li, Chi 李祁. 1962–63. “The Changing Concept of the Recluse in Chinese Literature.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 24: 234–47.

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Liu, Xiaobo. 1992. “On Solitude.” In New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices, edited by Geremie Barmé and Linda Jaivin, 207. New York: Random House. Louie, Kam. 2002. Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. Cambridge; Oakleigh, Vic.: Cambridge University Press. Louie, Kam. 2008. “Angry Chinamen: Finding Masculinity in Australia and China.” Comparative Literature: East & West 1: 34–49. Lu, Sheldon H. 2000. “Soap Opera in China: The Transnational Politics of Visuality, Sexuality, and Masculinity.” Cinema Journal 40(1): 25–47. Ma, Sheng-mei. 1998. Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures. Albany: State University of New York Press. Shan, Te-hsing. 2008. “In the Ocean of Words: An Interview with Ha Jin.” Tamkang Review 38(2): 135–57. Song, Geng. 2004. The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Song, Geng. 2010. “Chinese Masculinities Revisited: Male Images in Contemporary Television Drama Serials.” Modern China 36(4): 404–34. Wang, Yiyan. 2006. Narrating China: Jia Pingwa and His Fictional World. London; New York: Routledge. Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. 1992. “Ethnicizing Gender: An Exploration of Sexuality as Sign in Chinese Immigrant Literature.” In Reading the Literatures of Asian America, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling, 111–30. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Yao, Xinzhong. 2000. An Introduction to Confucianism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zhang, Mindy. 2008. “A Conversation with Ha Jin.” Valley Voices 8(1): 29–34. Zhang Xiaobo 張小波, Song Qiang 宋强, Qiao Bian 喬邊, and Gu Qingsheng 古清生. 1996. Zhongguo keyi shuo bu: lengzhanhou shidai de zhengzhi yu qinggan jueze 中國可以說不： 冷戰後時代的政治與情感抉擇 [The China that can say no: Political and emotional choices in the post–Cold War era]. Beijing: Zhonghua gongshang lianhe chubanshe. Zhang, Xudong. 2008. Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zhong, Xueping. 2000. Masculinity Besieged? Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

6

Global and Local Phallic Creativity Intertextuality in Feng Tang’s Construction of Masculinity Pamela Hunt

The first time I read Henry Miller . . . was more important than the first time I fell in love, even more important than the first time I grabbed hold of my little guy and interrogated him until he spurted, even more important than the first time I entered a woman and looked into her eyes, and my body lost all reason and control .  .  . I was hungry for his superpowers; I wanted my soul, though my writing, to reach out a thousand years after my death, and to intertwine with that of another young, skinny nobody, like a knife twisting into his heart to make his chest swell. —Feng Tang, “It’s Hard to be a Hooligan Your Whole Life” (Feng 2012g, 39)

Feng Tang 馮唐 (born 1971) is a self-proclaimed “audacious” author from Beijing, who first came to the attention of the Chinese literary world in 2001 with his novel Everything Grows (Wanwu shengzhang 萬物生長), a riotous tale of a teenage boy coming of age (Sinovision English 2014). Feng’s reputation as a transgressive writer continued with the publication of more works that are, as one journalist put it, “oozing with vitality, rampaging violently with no end in sight . . . the jabberings of a strange creature” (Chai 2011).1 His writings since then have included essays, poetry collections and translations, a series of columns for GQ China, and a number of novels, one of which, Oneness (Bu er 不二), was deemed so sexually explicit that it could not be published in mainland China; meanwhile, it has smashed bestseller records in Hong Kong. Feng’s writing is often concerned with the masculine experience. This interest, combined with an almost joyous use of explicit language, and a willingness to explore taboo subjects, is most likely behind another observation repeatedly made of Feng’s work, which is that it is infused with the scent of testosterone (Chai 2011; Hu 2014; Jin 2013; Xue 2014). 1. Chai’s interview with Feng Tang was originally published in the men’s magazine GQ China in December 2010 before being republished in the collection cited here. It is perhaps of note that in August 2015 it was also selected as one of the pieces considered by editors of the magazine as most representative of “the fundamental style and qualities of GQ” (Chai 2015).

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Even as Feng becomes an increasingly well-known name within the Chinese cultural scene, he continues to hold the reputation of renegade author. More than this, he is keen to construct and align himself within a tradition of marginal, subversive writers. As the opening quotation demonstrates, these inspirational authors are not restricted to the Chinese literary field but instead reflect Feng’s own transcultural frame of reference. Feng’s essays and novels are littered with references to a highly eclectic range of authors and literary works. A quick glance through one of his essay collections reveals an almost bewildering number and range of authors and texts, including, but by no means limited to: D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Philip Roth, Charles Dickens, Li Yu, Sima Qian, Qian Zhongshu, Wang Shuo, Wang Xiaobo, Yu Hua, Weihui, Sheng Keyi, The Golden Vase, Water Margins, The I Ching, J. D. Salinger, The Decameron, Camus, Du Mu, Su Xiaoxiao, and Somerset Maugham (Feng 2012f). As is apparent, this list is not just eclectic but also transnational; it is also worth noting that the list is maledominated. Of these names, Lawrence, Miller, and Sima Qian appear with the greatest frequency. This chapter will consider what Feng’s direct references to these writers signify; in particular, it will consider the ways in which this increasingly wellknown author makes repeated references to foreign and Chinese literature, exploring how they connect to his reputation as an audacious and testosteronefueled writer. What is the significance of his oft-stated admiration for these authors? How does it connect to the way in which literary masculinity is developed within Feng Tang’s fiction? In other words, what does Feng Tang’s intertextuality reveal about his own texts, about his approach to writing and literature, and to his construction of masculinity? Feng’s references to certain Western writers and literature might lead us back to some longstanding, and intertwined, areas of scholarly interest: namely, the various ways in which Chinese intellectuals have responded to interaction with the West since the late imperial times, and how this has influenced and encroached upon Chinese gender ideals (Liu 1995; Shih 2001; Lovell 2006; Zhong 2000). While these contexts and their relevant scholarly arguments form an important background both to Feng’s writing and to the approach that this chapter will take, I will not be focusing on the dynamics of domination and resistance that might appear between Feng’s literary world and those of Western authors, nor will I be suggesting that this mode of intertextuality is simply a form of admiration or emulation of “Western” values or gender ideals. Rather, Feng’s references to authors such as Miller and Lawrence are arguably most interesting for the way in which Feng draws on and adapts their literary personas whilst connecting them to tendencies that he perceives within the Chinese tradition. I will argue that in doing so Feng carves out his own performance of masculinity, which is marginal, virile, and writerly. I refer to this as “phallic creativity,” a term intended to indicate Feng’s tendency to place male sexuality at the very core of

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his writing and the close connection he draws between virility and an exuberant kind of creativity, as well as the phallic imagery that runs insistently through his work.2 This chapter will first give an introduction to Feng Tang, his work, and its reception within China, and will then turn briefly to the context of Western and Chinese literary relationships, considering the different ways in which one might interpret Feng’s oft-professed admiration for Western literature. I argue that the significance of Feng Tang’s intertextuality lies in the way in which he focuses his attention on authors who are known for their transgressive lifestyle and writing, drawing not simply on Western examples but also on the Chinese tradition. I consider some examples of how reading and writing literature is depicted in Feng’s own fiction, and in doing so I will point to how writing is tightly bound up with a rebellious, virile masculinity in Feng’s world. Feng’s intertextual references are thus a means of imagining his work as part of a global mode of “subversive” masculinity. The term “intertextuality” might refer to a number of different forms of influence and cross-connections. In general, I use it in recognition of the argument that all texts exist in relation to other texts, and are not self-sufficient, while also highlighting the fact that as a writer, Feng Tang is also a reader (Clayton and Rothstein 1991; Worton and Still 1991; Masuga 2011). In particular, the concept of intertextuality as used in this chapter refers to Feng’s many overt allusions to other texts and authors, which might be considered an explicit, or direct, intertextuality (Thornber 2009). A study which analyses the more intricate or indirect forms of intertextuality in Feng’s work would doubtless be illuminating, as his writing is richly layered with quotation, allusion, and parody. It is, however, beyond the scope of this chapter, the bulk of which will restrict itself to the ways in which the names of other authors and works are explicitly employed by Feng, and to what effect. While I am only focusing on one, relatively narrow, idea of intertextuality, I choose this term rather than any other, such as “allusion” or “influence,” in an effort to retain an awareness of the open, multi-directional nature of the relationship between texts, even in those cases which appear at first to only consist of a later work responding to an ancestral author. That is to say, even as Feng draws upon, and expresses admiration for, a number of predecessors in the literary world, it is never the case that Feng is a passive receptor of an earlier, unchanging text. Rather, to paraphrase Worton and Still, at the same time as “making public a loving gratitude to ancestors,” Feng is also demonstrating 2. This term was inspired following Schwenger’s analyses of phallic imagery and his discussion of the phallus as a symbol for machismo and creativity in the works of authors such as Norman Mailer and Robert Kroetsch (Schwenger 1984, 71–97). Zichy also uses the term “phallic creativity” (citing Peter Cumming), but aside from referring to the “spiritual” quality it embodies in classical Greek and modern Western literature, he does not define his use of the phrase (Zichy 2010, 205).

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“an antagonistic impulse to demarcate and proclaim [his] own creative space” (Worton and Still 1991, 13). Equally, as readers our understanding of the “ancestral” texts are compelled to alter, shown in new—perhaps rather startling—light, as we are confronted with how Feng considers his own writing in the context of these authors.

An Introduction to Feng Tang Feng Tang is the penname of Zhang Haipeng 張海鵬, who was born in Beijing in 1971. Feng studied to become a doctor (specializing in gynecology) before taking an MBA in America and then working as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. After writing and publishing in his spare time for many years, he finally quit his job and become a full-time author in 2014.3 He writes novels, essays, and poems, and has also authored a magazine column for the men’s magazine GQ China. Feng Tang also has a fairly significant media presence: to date, his Weibo 微博 page lists as many as 8.9 million followers, while he regularly appears on television and chat shows (“Feng Tang de Weibo” 2017). In recent years he has also found infamy with a translation into Chinese of the revered poet Tagore; Feng’s rather freer attitude towards the Chinese language and the process of translation led to accusations of “vulgarity” and all copies were quickly pulled from Chinese shelves.4 While, as I have noted, Feng Tang is an increasingly familiar name in China— indeed, it would not be a stretch to refer to him as a celebrity—his works received little attention at first (Li 2012).5 This has begun to change in recent years, and although I am aware of no other anglophone study that exists of Feng Tang and his writing, literary critics and scholars within China have begun to consider his work more closely. Commentaries tend to focus on the same features of his writing, including, first of all, the rebellious intent that pervades it (Jin 2013; Qin 2011). His writing has been referred to as “non-mainstream” (feizhuliu 非 主流), with Chen Xiaoming observing that despite Feng’s growing fame he is very much an “alien” when compared to members of the traditional literary field (Chen 2015). One aspect of this rebellion that is invariably brought up is its sexually explicit content. Another feature of Feng’s writing that frequently 3. Feng wrote his first novel at the age of 18. It was published under the name of Happiness (Huanxi 歡喜) in 2010. 4. Coverage of the incident, and a translation of Feng Tang’s open letter response, is available on The Guardian website. See Associated Press in Beijing 2016; Feng 2016. 5. Therefore, as a member of the post-1970 (qilinghou 七零後) generation, Feng appeared at first to fit with the stereotype of these authors as the “overlooked” generation, lacking the literary acclaim and the gravitas of writers born in the 1950s and 1960s, but also the commercial success of the post-1980 generation (Zhang 2014; Liu 2014; Shu 2014).

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attracts attention is his particular linguistic style, which has been described as a mixture of old and new, colloquial and literary (Jin 2013). Zhang Yiwu has described Feng’s language as echoing “old baihua,” while blogger Hu Jiujiu describes it as “garrulous” (pinzui 貧嘴) (Zhang 2005; Hu 2014). As I have already observed, more than one critic has argued that his language and his works in general are infused with testosterone. Thus Feng Tang presents himself and his writing as set apart from the mainstream, and critics have supported this with their own response to his work. He is also known for his specific interest in the male experience, and even a “male” language. The first collection of novels that Feng Tang published, Give Me a Girl at Eighteen (Shibasui gei wo yi ge guniang 十八歲給我一個姑娘), Everything Grows (Wanwu shengzhang 萬物生長) and Beijing, Beijing (北京北京), are commonly referred to as the Beijing Trilogy (Beijing sanbu qu 北京三部曲).6 With a strong autobiographical element, the trilogy charts fifteen years in the life of Qiu Shui from about 1985 to 2000. Feng Tang had ambitious aims when he wrote these novels, attempting to capture the full tumult of the emotional and physical processes of growing up. Set in Beijing during economic reform, it is filled with nostalgic depictions of the city during this particular period of time. However, Feng states that he also aimed to create a sense of “universality” in his work (Hunt 2013). While it is difficult to give a concise summary of these rather sprawling three novels, the general plot follows Qiu Shui as he grows up, studies to become a doctor, and eventually becomes a novelist. Through a series of interspersed flash-forwards, we learn that Qiu goes to America after this period to study business, despite his love of literature; the trilogy concludes with Qiu, now in his thirties, returning to Beijing after achieving his first publishing deal. The full matrix of ideas that Feng Tang explores is far too vast to discuss in one chapter, covering as they do such vast topics as the nature of time, memory, love and sexual awakenings, China’s cultural heritage, its globalizing present, and its uncertain future. However, the main thrust of the novel is a boisterous exploration of the process of growing up in a period of economic, political and social change, which brought to China renewed appetites and new, confused, moral boundaries (Farquhar 2002). Two vital elements to Qiu’s life include his time with the local liumang 流氓 (hooligans) and experiences with the opposite sex; and Qiu’s exposure to literature, as he is a voracious reader, and dreams from a young age of becoming a poet. Alongside the aforementioned nostalgic account of life in Beijing, the global also pours into the narrative, a final crucial facet of Qiu’s life. The remainder of this chapter will focus in large part on the novels of the Beijing Trilogy which, as they are set in contemporary China (compared with, 6. The novels were first published in the following order: Everything Grows (2001); Give Me a Girl at Eighteen (2005); and Beijing, Beijing (2007). I present them here in the order of the plot’s chronology, and in citations I have referred to later editions: see Feng 2012a, Feng 2012b, and Feng 2012c.

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for example, his later novel set in the Tang dynasty), lend themselves well to repeated direct references to other authors, ancient and contemporary. Aside from this main focus, it will also draw on the wealth of essays Feng has written on a range of issues relating to life in postsocialist China, collected into such volumes as You Live and Live and then You’re Old (Huozhe huozhe jiu lao le 活著活 著就老了), and The 36 Big Ones (Sanshiliu da 三十六大), which is based on the column Feng wrote for GQ China (Feng 2012f; Feng 2012d).

Globalization and Cosmopolitanism in Feng Tang’s Work It might first be observed that Feng’s repeated reference to non-Chinese culture in the Beijing Trilogy is a natural reflection of the period within which the novels are set, and a continuation of a longstanding trend within modern Chinese literature. Indeed, as has been documented extensively, encounters between Chinese and Western cultures began in earnest in late imperial times and Chinese intellectuals have thus been preoccupied with “the question of how to situate the native self vis-à-vis the West,” intermittently, for centuries (Cai 2004, 154). This relationship resurfaced in the reform era, as an influx of Western literary, political, and philosophical thought brought inspiration but also appeared alongside “anxiety about China’s international status, [and] ambivalence towards Western influences and values, and the relationship between Chinese intellectuals (especially writers) and national politics” (Lovell 2006, 4). To this ambivalence towards Western influences and values, we might also add the issue of gender, as renewed interaction with the West contributed to the phenomenon of what Sheldon Lu (2007) has called a “transnational libidinal economy,” which drove the emergence of particular ideals of masculinity in literature, film and television, often producing masculinist, macho and sexually aggressive male characters (Zhong 2000; Lu 2000). That is to say, Feng’s writing emerges in a period of ever growing cultural contact with Western countries, which has in various ways been marked by a “contradictory mix of admiration, resistance and anxiety” (Lovell 2006, 8), and which, as numerous studies have shown, spilled also into masculine representations and performances. Might we, then, find the same sentiments in Feng’s work, and is this the impulse behind his intertextual references? It is certainly clear that globalization—and especially interaction with the West—is a major topic in Feng’s writing. As I have already noted, the Beijing Trilogy is scattered with references to globalization and its impact on the city. They appear, for example, in the brand names that are littered across the text, whether it is McDonalds or Cartier. The theme of globalization appears also in the foreigners that the protagonist Qiu Shui meets in Beijing, whether they appear in the form of blonde-haired and blue-eyed men and women, or Americans of Chinese descent. The “contradictory mix of admiration, resentment and anxiety” Lovell

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has highlighted elsewhere is evident from time to time in the narrative. It is seen, for example, in the bemusement with which Qiu approaches certain new forms of consumption that appear: Western restaurants, bars, or the multitude of credit cards that his American friend has. From the point of view of transnational gender relations, as Xue Hongjun (2014) has pointed out, it is interesting that all of Qiu’s lovers leave him either for Western men or “Westernized men.”7 For a large part of the narrative, however, the opening up of China presents new opportunities to Qiu and his friends. The sheer extent of the mobility of young characters in the Beijing Trilogy points to the benefits that an opening-up China has brought to those with the right class and education; every other character has come from America or dreams of going there, and the narrative is punctuated by moments of studying for the TOEFL or the GRE. Meanwhile, the protagonist’s memories of Beijing in the 1980s and 1990s are interrupted with flash-forwards to his own time in America, first as an MBA student and then as a consultant, driving big cars, staying in luxury hotels, and sleeping with beautiful women. Feng’s direct reference to foreign authors throughout the Beijing Trilogy might thus be read as simply a part of this new China, which is witness to, and participant in, global cultural flows. Feng has observed elsewhere that his generation of writers stand apart from its forebears precisely because of this exposure to the West (Feng 2012j). He laments that this has produced in large part a generation of businessmen, focused on monetary gain, but he also argues that it also put qilinghou (post-1970) thinkers in a unique position: “We are able to straddle China and the West” (226). Rather than a fraught soul-searching when confronted with the West, Feng presents himself more as an intermediary, a cultural translator between his nation and Western countries. As the opening quotation to this chapter suggests, Feng aspires not only to standing as intermediary between two regions, but across time as well; as he explains that just as Henry Miller once reached “across time and space” to him, Feng longs to reach “across a thousand years” into the heart of another young reader (Feng 2012g, 39). Rather than focus solely on cultural domination and resistance between China and the West, it appears that Feng’s ideal as writer and reader is one of transcultural communication and translation. I suggest, then, that we might consider Feng’s experience of Western culture and his direct intertextuality not just within the framework of the historically ambivalent intellectual/cultural relationship between China and West, but also as part of a cosmopolitan outlook.8

7. However, as I will discuss below, this does not lead to the implication that Qiu Shui, or other Chinese males, are sexually unattractive or inferior in any way. 8. This, too, places Feng within a growing tradition of Chinese writers. For commentaries on cosmopolitanism in the Chinese literary tradition see Lu 2007; Knight 2010; Qian 2011; Rea 2015; Volland 2017.

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Cosmopolitanism is a notoriously slippery term, long evolving and subject to longstanding debate (Breckenridge et al. 2002). I use it here in the sense of the encouragement and appreciation of cultural diversity (Hollinger 2006; Patell 2015). This mode of cosmopolitanism can be seen as a “conversation,” as a form of association and dialogue (Appiah 2007, xix). Patell (2015) has described this form of cultural cosmopolitanism as “a structure of thought, a perspective that embraces difference and promotes the bridging of cultural gaps” (8). While the field of cosmopolitan theory has moved on from much of Hannerz’s 1990 essay on “Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture” (Schoene 2009, 2), one can also see in Feng’s notion of the cosmopolitan reader and intermediary an echo of Hannerz’s original image of the “aficionado” who aims to “become acquainted with more cultures” (Hannerz 1996, 103). A cosmopolitan outlook, moreover, might lead beyond appreciation and conversation with another culture, to an ability to “accommodate, appropriate or resist not only foreign economic or cultural imperialism but also a powerful state apparatus” (Yang 2003; Knight 2010, 642). As I will argue in the following pages, Feng’s cosmopolitan readings can appear as part of a move to subvert (what are presented as) repressive moral codes within the contemporary Chinese state. Yet even as a cosmopolitan stance might imply a high degree of “openness” (Skrbiš and Woodward 2007; 2013) to other cultures and to dialogue in general, it can still lead to certain restrictive outcomes. Drawing on Weihui’s 衛慧 (born 1973) Shanghai Baby (Shanghai baobei), Sabina Knight (2010) has shown how cultural cosmopolitanism in post-reform China is still implicated in “persistent roles of class and gender” and, as will emerge as we consider Feng Tang’s own work, the pursuit, or expression, of cultural cosmopolitanism can operate alongside, and even exacerbate, a range of social inequalities (639). As Hannerz (2006) put it, cosmopolitanism can at times emerge as “more or less an elite characteristic,” relying on preconditions of wealth, education, and mobility (16). Cosmopolitan tastes and knowledge also serve “as symbolic capital in elite competitive games of distinction” (16). I will discuss later in this chapter how the way in which Feng employs intertextual references also has ramifications on representations of gender. It is worth noting first that recent studies of contemporary Chinese masculinity have repeatedly pointed to the importance of a cosmopolitan outlook or pose in the construction of new ideals of masculinity. As Song and Hird (2014) have pointed out, an evident trend is the need for men to demonstrate a participation in the wider world through the consumption of—or understanding of—other cultures (55–78). Kam Louie has also referred to this new ideal of masculinity, pointing to travelers in China who work on the “strategic acquisition of foreign labels” as a means of establishing their gender and class superiority (Louie 2014, 131), and Song and Lee (2012) have also argued that cosmopolitanism in postsocialist China often emerges as “a desire by the new elite” (346). Feng’s self-conscious

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references to works of literature from British and American cultures certainly fits into this pattern of the idealized postsocialist male: well read, and, by implication, well traveled and (as it were) well monied. Thus we might approach intertextuality in Feng’s writing as an expression of cultural cosmopolitanism, against the backdrop of a globalizing nation, increasingly open to other cultures but still—in a narrative that has played out for centuries—obliged to engage with, and respond to, the powerful influence that Western cultural production has on China. This approach, for all of its pretensions towards openness or liberalism, can still potentially exclude or impinge upon certain genders, races and classes.

Marginality and Transgression: Phallic Creativity in Feng’s Writing However, neither of these approaches—an acknowledgement of the historical context of Chinese-Western cultural relations or the rise of the cosmopolitan male ideal—are sufficient to fully capture the particular way in which Feng employs these writers and works. A facet of Feng’s intertextuality that bears a closer look is the way in which his frames of reference repeatedly lead back to the celebration of a form of literary masculinity that is marginal, subversive, and virile, engaging in what I refer to as phallic creativity. It is surely significant that the authors and books that Feng refers to most often are largely associated with subversion and controversy. I will turn to other, more “local” allusions below, but first let us consider again two authors that Feng refers to often in his writings: Miller and Lawrence. Feng refers to both in numerous essays, columns, interviews and fiction. His admiration for both springs in large part from their use of language, and the frankness with which they wrote about inner emotions and previously taboo subjects, reaching a degree of “sincerity” which Feng prizes highly (Feng 2012l, 35; Feng 2012g). Besides this, they evidently share a number of other qualities which are to be found in many of the other authors that Feng refers to and which, as I shall explore below, reappear in Feng’s own formulation of literary production and masculine performance.9 Both wrote highly transgressive works and were both banned in many countries (including, of course, China) and were labelled at one time or another as authors of nothing more than pure pornography.10 While there is, to the best of my knowledge, no investigation into how Miller’s work first reached a mainland Chinese audience, Yi Chen (1992) has shown the complexities of bringing such a text as Lady Chatterley’s Lover into an only recently opened market, still under 9. Miller himself famously saw Lawrence as a kindred spirit. For an illuminating study of Lawrence’s profound influence on Miller, see Masuga (2011, 156–78). 10. The same accusation of obscenity has befallen a number of other authors and texts that Feng has name-checked in essays and his fiction, whether it is Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, or Boccaccio’s The Decameron.

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strict controls: the process was accompanied by false starts, controversies, and “underground” publications.11 The circuitous ways in which such works entered China in the first place has arguably multiplied the transgressive cachet that these authors have enjoyed. Throughout his fiction and essays, Feng returns to the same theme of the banned book and the marginalized, subversive author: in the Beijing Trilogy, the protagonist Qiu Shui declares as a teenager that all of his idols “have done their best to swim against the tide, and they have told stories which have enriched everyone’s spiritual lives” (Feng 2012b, 9). This appears to be a value that Feng Tang the author shares: Miller, for example, is admired for his life spent on the margins as a liumang 流氓 (hooligan), “writing, thinking, and visiting prostitutes” (Feng 2012g, 40), while Feng repeats his admiration for the figure of the marginal author in another essay: “writing needs loneliness . . . only if you live on the margins can you maintain a safe distance from the world” (Feng 2012i, 31).12 It might also be noted that Feng’s own writerly performance is influenced by the continuing aspiration towards marginality and transgression: Feng has pointed out that his latest novel Oneness could not be published in the PRC, which now puts him in the same camp as Lawrence (Hunt 2013). Censored work appears almost as a badge of honor, verifying his truly “audacious” practice. Even his penname springs from this desire; Feng revealed in another interview that he had been inspired by the Han dynasty poet of the same name, who “was always on the margins” and “would speak without any concept of taboos” (Lei 2016). Reading and referring to works such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer therefore implies not only a cosmopolitan interest in non-Chinese culture, but also a bold transgressiveness, a willingness to engage with the subversive. As will be markedly clear by now, Feng especially celebrates marginal authors and their banned books when they are also deemed to be sexually explicit huangshu (pornographic works). This is, again, an accusation that both Miller and Lawrence have faced, as they published works filled with frank explorations of sex and sexuality, seeking in part to tear away society’s hypocrisies; both authors were largely preoccupied with the sexual experiences of heterosexual men.13 11. Feng Tang also details the journey that the Chinese translation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover underwent in his essay “Reading Banned Books” (Feng 2012k). 12. He gives the example of Wang Xiaobo 王小波 (1952–1997), before going on to cite the case of J. D. Salinger, who, Feng explains with some approval, kept himself out of the limelight unless he wanted to seduce a movie star (32). 13. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to consider the overtly “masculine” sexual politics of these writers—including accusations of misogyny from critics and counter-accusations of misreadings from other scholars—it is interesting to note that Lawrence and Miller, and other oft-cited authors, such as Philip Roth, are associated with a macho-virile approach to literature (Masuga 2011; Schwenger 1984; Millett 1970). Moreover, their writing has been explicitly tied not just to virility, but also to phallic imagery. Lawrence referred to his own work as “phallic” (Balbert 1989, 187); Roth himself observed woefully that his novel Portnoy’s Complaint (which crops up

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Feng, as we have seen, cherishes Miller’s novels as emerging from a bohemian lifestyle, and echoes Norman Mailer’s observation that Miller’s work was based on “genius and desire” (Feng 2012d, 40.) He has also credited “banned books” for providing him with a much-needed “erotic education” as a child in an otherwise rather repressed world (Feng 2012k, 21).14 Within the Beijing Trilogy, Feng repeatedly connects writing, reading, and sexuality. The figure of the writer stands as the hero, oozing transgression and virility. In the opening scenes of the final novel, Beijing, Beijing, Qiu Shui announces his dream of becoming “a novelist who writes ten classic works . . . who talks shit . . . and who marries a beautiful girl with big tits, a narrow waist, and a tiny mouth” while, from a young age, he is criticized for writing “lascivious” poetry, which he takes as a great compliment (Feng 2012a, 1; Feng 2012b, 74). Throughout the trilogy, Qiu finds that his interest in literature has a direct effect on his love life, as women are attracted to him precisely because of his appetite for writing and reading, often inspiring an adulation that lifts Qiu to a position of dominance. One lover, knowing that he aspires to be a writer, promises that if he succeeds, she will “cook and clean for him for the rest of her days” (Feng 2012a, 204).15 Literature, moreover, appears to produce a distinctly physical result on the male body; at one point, thinking about why his first girlfriend might ever have been attracted to him, Qiu remembers that it was exactly at the time that he was reading one of the more “precisely detailed” sections in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, presumably of a sex scene. As such, Qiu reasons that his lips were probably forming a shape that had a highly “alluring” quality to them (82). Therefore, just as Feng explicitly praises the sexually liberated attitude of these authors in his essays, within the Beijing Trilogy men repeatedly become aroused as they read and write literature. The significance of this sexual awakening only becomes clear when we consider how Feng’s reform-era Beijing is painted in the trilogy as a place of sexual repression and hypocrisies. A major strand of the trilogy (as suggested especially by the title of the second novel, Everything Grows) is an exploration of the body, especially the male body; the theme is so vital to the novels that it is worthy of a separate study (Hunt 2015), but it is worth briefly discussing it here. The trilogy is marked throughout by Feng’s willingness to delve into the most grotesque elements of the body, and he in the early pages of Everything Grows) gave him the reputation as a “crazed penis” (Posnock 2008, 246). 14. As will be discussed in more detail below, these were not just foreign books. On reading the collected works of Li Yu as a child, Feng notes gleefully, “I learned over thirty different words for the penis,” while the sight of traditional form characters soon “made me hard” (22). 15. This declaration, moreover, is prompted by the lover recently finishing Frieda Lawrence’s memoir of life with D. H. Lawrence, Not I, But the Wind.

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employs this Bakhtinian discursive form to bring about the carnivalistic disruption of natural order, celebrating the profane, and reveling in the lower bodily stratum (Bakhtin 1984, 278). Throughout much of the trilogy, then, the male body appears as a source and site of agency in its most unruly sense, excessive and disruptive. This manifests itself, for example, in the phallic imagery that echoes throughout the trilogy (as one disgruntled girl complains to Qiu: “you see penises in everything” [Feng 2012a, 170]); and indeed in the relentless appearance of the penis itself, whether it appears—pickled in formaldehyde—in a practical anatomy exam, or when Qiu Shui decides, startlingly, to express his love for a classmate by exposing himself to her (Feng 2012c, 56; Feng 2012b, 205). In exploring the libidinal excess of the male teenage body, Feng is also able to explore the potential for excess in literature, using a “garrulous” tone (which was, as mentioned above, identified by Hu Jiujiu) that matches Bakhtin’s own concept of carnivalistic language that is “abundant, substantial, voluminous and rich in verbiage” (Vice 1997, 176). Feng’s “testosterone-fueled” writing means that his work can be seen as an extension of what Sheldon Lu (2007) refers to as the “libidinal excess and overflow” that first appeared in 1990s literature, and echoes the period of rapid, disordered, economic growth and change (67). However, this libidinal excess is constantly contrasted with continuing repressive social mores. Feng refers to this in the preface to Give Me a Girl at Eighteen, when he talks of “so-called society,” clamping down on the joyous experience of coming of age (iii). Within the trilogy itself, Feng shows how the body, even as a vessel for transgression, struggles to extricate itself from structures of power, and especially the controlling eye of the state. This is the case whether Feng is describing the enforced military training that Qiu undergoes in Beijing Beijing, or the woman brought into school to talk to the boys about how to deal with nocturnal emissions, which were beginning to embarrass them: [She said], You mustn’t allow it to continue. It’s capitalist, from the old society, feudalistic . . . if the methods she suggested [to curb it] weren’t any good, then we should talk to our class counsellor. He wouldn’t tell anyone else—only our parents, the school headmaster, the district committee and the city education department. (Feng 2012b, 27–28)

In another scene, Qiu finds that as he fools around with his girlfriend in front of her parents’ bed, there is something stopping them from enjoying themselves fully (Feng 2012c, 95). He realizes it is the bed itself: a large, wooden structure inscribed with the words “A helmsman is needed for sailing over the ocean / The sun is needed for all things to grow.” The quotation is drawn from a famous revolutionary folk song “Sailing the Sea Depends on the Helmsman,” and continues a few lines later with “Mao Zedong Thought is needed for the revolutionary

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cause.”16 The symbolism is clear: Maoist thought stands as an unnatural obstacle to one’s own physical self-expression, a repressive set of values that are a burden to the adolescent body. Thus it is possible to discern in the Beijing Trilogy the narrative of a sexually repressive state, still clinging on to Maoist values, contrasted with the literature of Western authors, who are shown as irrepressible, sexually charged beings. As such, it might be tempting to consider Feng’s direct intertextuality as a means of presenting a liberated West against a woefully old-fashioned, repressed, Chinese culture. This, however, would be a great oversimplification of the way literature—as product, and as process—appears in the work. While the virile, macho heterosexuality of Miller and others is clearly a part of their inspiration for Feng—as he has himself stated—it will not do to visualize this as part of a Western-liberated/Chinese-repressed binary. This is because Feng is also at great pains to establish a local, historical culture of sensuality within the trilogy. The Western body of virile, subversive writers is joined by a series of premodern Chinese literary references, all of which have the same effect on male bodies; it is not only Western literature that can produce a subversive kind of virility. In Give Me a Girl at Eighteen, for example, we are presented with a man who reads a Tang dynasty poem that “reaches through space and time” to make “his lower body as hard and as straight as an arrow” (Feng 2012c, 41). Frequent references, too, are made to erotic fiction, particularly The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rouputuan 肉蒲團), The Golden Vase (Jinpingmei 金瓶梅), and Canon of the Immaculate Girl (Sunüjing 素女 經) (Feng 2012b, 159; Feng 2012c, 104; Feng 2012a, 195). Of course, the link between masculinity and literature is by no means new within China. Rather, as has been well documented, the concept of wen 文 (literary attainment) as the main foundation of masculinity has existed for millennia, and was also associated closely with male sexual prowess (Louie 2002; Song 2004; Huang 2007). This was because “participation or success in the imperial examinations was a respected part of the masculine image and signified a desirability and sexual power” (Louie 2002, 19). This has clear parallels with the way in which Qiu Shui is portrayed in the Beijing Trilogy. Returning, for example, to his lover’s offer to “cook and clean for him for the rest of his days” if he managed to have a story published, this promise echoes a trope of the idealized wen man: “beautiful women are attracted to talented scholars . . . The women act as connoisseurs, cheerleaders, and sometimes sponsors of the budding male talents” (Louie 2002, 60). Most clearly, the image of the wen-imbued caizi 才子 echoes throughout the trilogy. The caizi was a male ideal which rose to prominence between the Yuan 元 (1271–1368 CE) and the Qing 清 (1644–1912 CE) dynasties, and was a term that

16. This translation is taken from Lu (2004, 29). “All things to grow” (wanwu shengzhang) can also be translated as Everything Grows—the title of this second novel in the trilogy.

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referred to the image of a talented, sexually appealing young male scholar who was somewhat “fragile,” but nevertheless was invariably able to attract women (Song 2004). While the ideal evolved over years, a number of studies have detailed how the image continues to resonate throughout contemporary Chinese notions of gender (Louie 2002; Louie 2014; Song 2010; Song and Hird 2014). It echoes throughout contemporary Chinese literature too; perhaps it is unsurprising that male writers continue to draw upon the idea of a man rendered irresistible by his literary talents.17 As well as echoing the talented scholar in connecting Qiu’s literary abilities with his sex appeal, Feng directly refers to the caizi figure in his trilogy. He appears in Peking University, for example, when Qiu blames the “lascivious” air of the campus on the fact that caizi have lived there for centuries (Feng 2012c, 174). Perhaps the most intriguing way in which Feng aligns traditional Chinese literature, contemporary writing, and male sexuality comes with his discussions of Sima Qian 司馬遷 (circa 145–90 BCE). The court historian of the Han dynasty, castrated as punishment by the Emperor, is another of Feng’s great heroes, alongside Miller and Lawrence (Feng 2012d). Feng has praised him in his inimitable way for the great contribution that he made to Chinese literature, not even hesitating, as Feng puts it, “when he lost his entire dick,” to chronicle the history of China (37). Sima Qian is an interesting reference point, given that he has been described as a figure who has “exerted considerable influence on various later discourses on masculinity” (Huang 2006, 13). Martin Huang (2006) has shown how after his castration Sima Qian went to considerable effort to equate masculinity not with physical attributes but with literary achievements, believing that “posthumous fame . . . could effectively help an emasculated man to regain his lost manhood” (24). It might appear somewhat contradictory for Feng to be so admiring of a writer who placed literary production far above sexual pleasure, given his response to Western literature. However, if we consider the way in which Qiu Shui explores the story of Sima Qian, we see an amusing reconfiguration of this figure—a repurposing, almost, of the Sima Qian legend. I always thought that a man’s beauty depended on his wisdom . . . Look at Sima Qian: even after he was castrated he was still attractive. He still had an astonishing beauty. (Feng 2012c, 170)

Qiu Shui’s musings in Everything Grows must give us pause for thought on several counts. It is perplexing that Qiu claims castration would be preferable to being unintelligent; as I have already noted, the trilogy is littered with references to, and images of the penis, and as such we would be forgiven for assuming 17. See, for example, Zhang Xianliang’s 張賢亮 (1936–2014) 1985 novella Half of Man Is Woman (Nanren de yiban shi nüren 男人的一半是女人), or Jia Pingwa’s 賈平凹 (born 1952) Ruined Capital (Feidu 廢都), whose protagonist indulges in “excessive sexual pleasure” made possible because of his status as a scholar (Wang 2006, 88).

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that this is a body part that is highly valuable to Feng’s protagonist. Moreover, Qiu appears to contradict his own statement here, referring to Sima Qian using phrases such as “astonishing beauty” (meili dong ren 美麗動人) that are commonly associated with femininity, suggesting that Sima Qian has in fact been emasculated by castration. Yet ultimately what stands out most in these statements is the way in which intelligence, and especially literary production, is linked to the sexually attractive male. It is really this relationship between literary production and male sexual influence that makes Sima Qian a figure of interest for Qiu Shui. In another part of the trilogy, Qiu comments upon a story he hears, of a friend who loses his girl to a bookish “pretty boy” with a “delicate waist.” Since the olden days it’s been those kinds of men that get the girls. That’s why Emperor Wu castrated Sima Qian. (Feng 2012b, 40)

Here, in Qiu’s glib analysis, Sima Qian’s literary skills take on an unusual significance. It is not simply the case that Sima Qian’s writing acts as a suitable substitute for his castrated masculinity. His literary skills, in this formulation, become the very reason why he was sexually attractive in the first place. Rather than writing being only a “substitute for the penis,” as Huang argues was the case for Sima Qian (Huang 2006, 24), writing is in fact a reflection of the penis in the Beijing Trilogy, the ultimate proof of heterosexual virility. As such, literature and sexuality are again tied together in Feng Tang’s work. In such a way, the caizi of premodern China reappears in Feng Tang’s own body of writing, resurrected for the post-Mao world. This new caizi lacks the “fragility” commonly associated with the classical talented scholar; instead, as is appropriate in an era of “libidinal excess and overflow,” and reflecting a cosmopolitan admiration for sexually liberated Western literature, this new caizi is more aggressively virile, celebrating the (male) lower body, explicitly linking it to the production of literature, and gleefully pushing at the margins of the literary field. The image of the contemporary caizi is not restricted to Feng’s fiction. Rather, the idea that erotic pleasure is inherently tied to the consumption and production of literature appears as a central tenant of Feng’s approach to all forms of reading and writing; extracts from Feng’s essays, discussed above, have already illustrated this. Moreover, in writing about literature and authors in this way, Feng begins to build up an image of himself as a modern day caizi. It is already evident that in referring repeatedly to foreign literature—especially that of “subversives”—as well as classical Chinese authors, he cultivates the persona of a well-read, cosmopolitan author, striving to become an intermediary between different spaces and times. In emphasizing the erotic education that literature can bring him, Feng has also highlighted his own status as an author who is cosmopolitan and sensual. There is another effect of this trope that cannot be overlooked: the profoundly male-centered approach to the imagining of a sexually liberated literary field.

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In one essay, for example, Feng asks, “What makes a book great?” He follows with a set of analogies, first comparing literature to food, and then to women. Language is like a beautiful woman with white skin; structure is like a woman’s figure; artistic talent is like a woman who has the ability to excite you, even if “she has a flat chest and no ass.” He sums up his point in this way: What really matters is whether a book can move you, just like the most important thing in a girl is if she makes you experience love, if she makes you hear the hormones fizzing through your blood, or your heart beating. (Feng 2012m, 4–5)

As Feng talks of literature as if it were a meal, or a beautiful woman, he adds to his self-projection as a connoisseur, a sophisticated man who appreciates the sensual pleasures in life; but it is also clear that the same analogy renders women as objects to be enjoyed, like fine food or a work of art; it also appears to assume a heterosexual male writer. He makes the point again, in reference to another idolized Chinese author, Li Yu 李漁 (1611–1680 CE), author of the erotic classic The Carnal Prayer Mat. Li Yu, Feng notes, “lived a life of eating, drinking, visiting prostitutes and gambling,” echoing his praise for Miller. “Like me,” Feng goes on, “he liked simple prose, white-skinned girls, and elegant buildings” (Feng 2012d, 36). These statements continue to build on the idea of a longstanding tradition of the sexually attractive, and sexually liberated, caizi from centuries past and which still exist today. Feng’s analogy between women and works of literature continues in another short essay “Women and Writing,” in which he announces that “words are like women.” Poems are “eyes meeting,” essays (sanwen 散文) are conversations with women. Novels, however, are the equivalent of “relations with a woman.” This extends into a metaphor that ultimately precludes women, or homosexual men, from ever becoming writers themselves: If you don’t have an impulse towards women, even if you have been cultivating your appreciation for many years, then you will only ever become a critic. (Feng 2012h, 53–54)

Feng goes on approvingly to cite Byron—yet another writer with a reputation as something of a libertine—who, he claims, once stated that all literature was written in order to attract a female. Whilst acknowledging that this is something of an exaggeration, Feng goes on to conclude that, “There is also a truth in what he says: if there are no women, there is no writing” (Feng 2012h, 54). We must, of course, read this in the playful tone with which Feng approaches most of his subjects, and Feng is clearly aware that women do also write literature, as well as acting as muses for male writers.18 However, the chosen metaphor is telling in 18. Although he is particularly critical of the 1990s-era “Beauty Writers,” including Mian Mian and Weihui. This is rather ironic, given that their taboo-busting inclinations, their “Banned in China” status, their tendency to write their own lives into their works, and

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terms of Feng’s approach to “real” literature, to masculinity and to his image as writer: women become a source of inspiration for writing, but never producers themselves, while the writer himself is by definition a virile heterosexual male. This approach has implications beyond the texts Feng produces, often spilling from the page into other media forms, used by Feng to promote his image and his works. Feng appears to style his own image as author on what one might call a postsocialist caizi. Let us take his online presence as an example. Feng has a Weibo following of over 8.9 million, according to his page, and on this platform he regularly interacts with his readers, revealing a knack for developing his public image. Reading his posts, one cannot fail to miss a trend on his page, wherein young women (and very occasionally, men), post pictures of themselves posing with one of more of his books. The photos are clearly intended to be cute or even provocative, with the occasional inclusion of pictures of partially nude women. They are frequently accompanied by emojis of hearts or kisses, and references to Feng Tang as their “Dream boy.” These pictures are then reposted by Feng with the suggestive phrase “Tonight we are really enjoying ourselves” (“Feng Tang de Weibo” 2014).19 This is all carried out with a playful air, accompanied by light-hearted flirting on both sides. We must remember that there are many reasons why a reader might partake in a form of public interaction such as this, besides being attracted to the author. Yet, regardless of how earnest these girls are, or Feng himself is, in this image of him as a playboy author, there is clear connection drawn between Feng Tang, his literary products, and his erotic appeal as a writer. Feng actively encourages this connection, as he reposts the messages himself. The fact that the vast majority of posters are female reveals this to be one between female readers/admirers, and an assertively male, virile writer, echoing the connection that Feng draws in his observations on literature elsewhere. Feng’s playful, flirtatious interactions with his female readers is interesting in that it reveals to us a tendency to move from fictional and non-fictional constructions of masculinity to extra-literary masculine performance, with the same connotations of phallic creativity. Works of literature, as we have seen in Feng’s writing, are again tied up closely to a particular construction of masculinity: transgressive, cultured, cosmopolitan, virile. Here Feng finds inspiration not just from other authors and works, but from his own writing, and his own production of literature, and suggests the blurring of masculinity discourse and practice (Song and Hird 2014, 14). It is also interesting because it exposes the uneven power relations that are inherent in this posturing. It could be argued that the women in these pictures are willingly engaging in an ironic, playful game; in this above all the provocative connection they draw between the sexualized body and the production of literature, might tempt a critic to draw parallels between Feng’s work and those of the Beauty Writers (Feng 2012e). 19. This is a phrase from one of Feng’s own poems.

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argument, we are witness to the agency of women in constructing and confirming masculine ideals. However, when we consider this trend, we are confronted repeatedly with the image of women who willingly place themselves in the role of passive reader/fan, to be placed under the gaze of Feng Tang, often pleading to be “reposted” and acknowledged by him. While the female reader—echoing the configurations Feng creates in his essays—is relatively silent, dependent on Feng to be “heard”, Feng himself is at the center of the trend as the embodiment of phallic creativity.

Conclusion This chapter has looked at the ways in which Feng Tang employs intertextuality in the form of direct references to other authors and their work, asking what it is that joins the writers that he claims to admire, who are otherwise spread across time and space, and how they might connect to Feng’s own “audacious” project. I have shown that Feng repeatedly refers to a set of authors who he characterizes as marginalized subversives that speak a direct truth about sex, literature and society. Drawing on this, he develops and celebrates a mode of masculinity within his own texts which engage in what I have referred to as “phallic creativity”: the insistent linking of the production of literature to masculinity, and in particular the heterosexual, virile, male body. By drawing on preexisting modes of manhood, Feng imagines a community of renegade writers: masculine, subversive, bohemian, and sensual. Just as studies demonstrate that Chinese-Western cultural interaction across centuries can be characterized by the practice of “co-authorship” (Liu 1995) or a “conversation” (Appiah 2007), Feng’s intertextual practice does not ape Western literary models or advocate the notion of “catching up” with Euro-American culture, markets or identity; rather, he appears to meld and adapt traditions of the renegade writer within China and without. We might see here, then, another example of what Lisa Rofel called “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics,” and which, as Song and Hird demonstrate, is evident in contemporary middle-class consumer patterns: this is the “self-conscious transcendence of locality and a domestication of cosmopolitanism” (Rofel 2007; Song and Hird 2014, 23). Phallic creativity, with its combination of an apparently elevated discourse of literature with a profane subject graphically described, appears at first as a clear example of Feng Tang’s audacious, innovative project. He is, after all, consciously “audacious to try new things .  .  . New methods .  .  . new way[s] of looking at things, a new way of expressing things” (Sinovision English 2014). Moreover, in his imagining of a global literary transgression, Feng Tang also appears at first to present a mode of masculinity wildly at odds with many of the masculine ideals that have currency in contemporary China. The main male figures in his writing are neither successful businessmen, nor bread-winning fathers or

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husbands, nor are they “tender” cosmopolitan romantics (Song and Hird 2014); rather, they appear to embrace and celebrate an exuberant, international, transgressive masculinity. While R. W. Connell (1998) has suggested that the figure of the international businessman might stand as a transnational hegemonic masculinity, the example of phallic creativity in Feng’s writing suggests that there are other modes of transnational masculinity that have a powerful hold on the Chinese imagination beyond the white-collar, neoliberal man. However, as I have argued, a consideration of historical and literary tropes quickly reveals that Feng Tang still draws on a series of longstanding modes of masculinity. These include the wen man, and especially the caizi, who has been a familiar figure in Chinese cultural production and who evidently continues to hold sway in contemporary China. Moreover, as Louie, Song, and Hird have all demonstrated, cosmopolitanism, in its implications of education and wealth, is an increasingly familiar elite male ideal. Thus Feng Tang’s project, and his construction of a transcultural phallic creativity, might be bold but it is apparent that it is neither entirely new, nor as “marginal” as his self-presentation of a taboo-busting outsider might first suggest. Once we consider the other implications of this phallic creativity—the repeated objectification of women, the way in which literary production is reserved only for (heterosexual) men as women become only fans or muses—then it appears that Feng’s construction of masculinity is also implicated with regressive gender politics. Moreover, it echoes a widespread, and historical tendency that grants male authors alone any form of cultural authority within the literary field (Larson 1998; Schaffer and Song 2013). Despite celebrating the “marginal” author, Feng’s image of the virile, macho, creative renegade ultimately reserves any attempt at subversion for men alone, and places the male author at the center of a global literary space.

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Thornber, Karen Laura. 2009. Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturation of Japanese Literature. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Asia Centre. Vice, Sue. 1997. Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Volland, Nicolai. 2017. “Clandestine Cosmopolitanism: Foreign Literature in the People’s Republic of China, 1957–1977.” The Journal of Asian Studies 76(1): 185–210. Wang, Yiyan. 2006. Narrating China: Jia Pingwa and His Fictional World. London and New York: Routledge. Worton, Michael, and Judith Still. 1991. Intertextuality: Theories and Practices. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Xue, Hong Yun 薛紅雲. 2014. “Bu tong xingbie shijiao xia de Beijing xushi” 不同性別 視角下的北京敘事 [Beijing narratives from the perspective of different genders]. Changcheng 1: 158–60. Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. 2003. “Mass Media and Transnational Subjectivity in Shanghai: Notes on (Re)Cosmopolitanism in a Chinese Metropolis.” In Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, edited by Aihwa Ong and Donald M. Nonini, 287–323. New York: Routledge. Zhang, Ning 張檸. 2014. “70 hou zuojia, chetui haishi qianxing?” 70後作家，撤退還是前 行？ [Post-1970 writers: Retreat or advance?]. Zhang Ning Boke 張檸博客 [Zhang Ning’s blog]. Accessed December 16, 2016. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5407388d0100 xbkv.html. Zhang, Yiwu 張頤武. 2005. “Baidang zai yuwang he chaofeng zhi jian” 擺蕩在欲望和嘲諷 之間 [Swaying between desire and scorn]. Shu zhai 8: 120–21. Zhong, Xueping. 2000. Masculinity Besieged? Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zichy, Francis. 2010. Disenchanted Modernity in Robert Kroetsch’s The Studhorse Man: Biology and Culture, Sex and Gender, Eugenics and Contraception, Writing and Reading. New York: Peter Lang.

Part II Enacting Transnational Chinese Masculinities

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Persona, Politics, and Chinese Masculinity in Japan The Case of Li Xiaomu Jamie Coates

Since the late 1990s, a vibrant body of scholarship on Chinese masculinities has explored cultural historical models of masculinity (Louie 2002; Song 2004), the diversity of masculinities in popular and literary Chinese culture (Zhong 2000; Song and Hird 2014), and the ways in which Chinese men who move overseas contend with conflicting models of masculinity (Louie, Kuehn, and Pomfret 2013; Khoo and Louie 2005). This final group of scholarship has predominantly explored how Chinese masculinity is renegotiated in English speaking contexts, providing useful critiques of hegemonic masculinity in non-Chinese contexts as well as the ways in which Chinese men deal with the heritage of emasculated images. In this chapter, I turn our attention to Chinese masculinities in Japan. While attention has recently been paid to the influences of other East Asian masculinities in China (Louie and Low 2005), there is relatively little written about how Chinese masculinities are negotiated in Japan. Chinese masculinities in Japan connect to these regional developments, but they also elicit different questions. Tensions exist between Chinese masculinities as they are performed by men, Japanese perceptions of Chinese men, Japanese perceptions of Chinese masculinity, Chinese perceptions of Japanese men, and the ways these varying perceptions and representations influence how Chinese and Japanese men contextualize their masculinity within a wider cultural milieu. Consequently, contending with hegemonic masculinities within East Asia, as well as in Japan, tells us much about regional forms of hegemonic masculinity as they are situated within a global context. In this chapter, I provide a single case study of the ways Chinese men negotiate the presentation of self in everyday life (Goffman 1959), as well as in media. Rather than providing an ethnographic or discursive analysis, I trace the gendered performances of a single person, Li Xiaomu 李小牧, who not only inverts wider discursive representations of Chinese men for his own purposes, but also reinscribes them through prolific engagement with the media. Based on everyday interactions and interviews with Li Xiaomu, as well as text and

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film analysis, this chapter explores a single example of how Chinese men translate masculinity in a transnational context in order to construct a cosmopolitan public persona. In using the term persona, I draw inspiration from Richard Dyer’s emphasis on the constructed nature of star persona within the Hollywood studio system: What is important about stars, especially in their particularity, is their typicality or representativeness. Stars, in other words, relate to the social types of a society. (Dyer and McDonald 1998, 49)

At the same time however, I put my own emphasis on the ways in which persona are constituted by change and mobility, rather than static types and “structures” (Coates 2014). The hybridity of Li’s persona tells us much about how masculinity is negotiated within a transnational context. His success plays upon imaginaries of what is typical about Chinese migrants in Japan, as well as inverting these imaginaries in certain ways. He has portrayed himself as a savvy Chinese businessman cum mafia boss, as well as a libertarian social commentator. More recently, his persona has metamorphosed into a respectable political figure intent on straddling the gap between Japan and the world. The effect of these performances is to create a complex masculine persona that bridges two cultural milieus. In recent years, Li has come to explicitly narrate his public persona as “cosmopolitan” using the Japanese pronunciation of the English term (kosumoporitan コスモポリタン) in both conversation and textual media. In practice, his fashion sense, discussions of sexual libertarianism, and general love of omnivorous cultural consumption, positions him as a “consumerist cosmopolitan” (Song and Lee 2010) in a “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics” (Rofel 2007, 111). Explorations of consumerist cosmopolitan masculinities in China have largely focused on how representations of consumerist and cosmopolitan lifestyles, embodied in television dramas and “lads” magazines, propagate masculinities imagined as elite, ideal and aspirational. Under this description “consumerist cosmopolitanism” can be interpreted as a form of hegemonic masculinity. The advent of the term “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell 1982; Kessler et al. 1982) allowed masculinities studies scholars to not only critique systems of patriarchy but also the unequal relationships between men. Originally theorized within the Australian context, discussions of hegemonic masculinity first focused on how young men can be perceived as being less or more of a “man” within a particular national context, before developing a pluralistic model of multiple “masculinities” (Connell 2005). As part of this pluralizing move, attempts to envision “masculinities on a world scale” (ibid., xxi) have produced analyses that view “transnational hegemonic masculinities” in pluralistic terms (Hearn, Blagojević, and Harrison 2013) as well as recognizing forms of masculinity, such as the businessman, which dominate global financial systems (Connell and Wood 2005).

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In this chapter I demonstrate how tracing a single persona across media and everyday practice is methodologically useful for theorizing how embodied persons relate to hegemonic masculinities. The relationship between embodied persons and discourse is less deterministic than is often described in textbased analysis. Establishing methodologies for teasing out the disjunctures between discourse and people will help us better theorize the role of gender in everyday life. Sustained critiques of the concept of “hegemonic masculinity” (cf. Donaldson 1993; Dimetriou 2001; Aboim 2010) have shown the conceptually slippery nature of defining either “masculinity” or “hegemony.” What are the distinctions between dominant men, as persons and groups, as opposed to dominant masculinities, as ideals and discourses? Beasley (2008) and Donaldson (1993) emphasize a narrow definition of “hegemonic masculinity” as the ideals and discourses that legitimate dominant perceptions of what it is to be a man. In particular, Beasley has developed a pluralistic model of legitimation, arguing that it is not merely dominant ideals that legitimate hegemonic discourses, but also politically subjugated hypermasculinities, such as those found in working class ideals. These “sub” hegemonic masculinities involve elements of “supra” hegemonic ideals that legitimate one another within vertically and horizontally integrated power structures (2013, 41). When thinking about how certain groups of “men” dominate others, such an approach bears much fruit. By embodying and reinscribing sub and supra hegemonic ideals as forms of “citational” practice in everyday life (Butler 1993) dominant groups of men are able to strategically maintain their advantageous social position. However, the question still remains how these forms of analysis relate to the evolving practices and persona of a singular man. Through the lens of hegemonic masculinity, the consumption practices that embody “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics” can be interpreted as forms of distinction (Bourdieu 1986) that differentiate Chinese men in terms of class and gender. However, analyzing these issues across both texts and practices within a transnational context also reveals points of slippage between a critical interpretation of cosmopolitanism as gendered performance and cosmopolitanism as it has been interpreted elsewhere. Geng Song and Derek Hird emphasize the inherently unstable and fluid nature of Chinese masculinities as “assemblages . . . composed of transnationally circulating images and practices, and locally situated identities, practices, and locales” (2013, 6–7). Taken as an assemblage, Li Xiaomu’s career can be interpreted as one where the political effects of his consumerist cosmopolitan persona have changed over time. While still clearly embedded within the hegemonic masculinities found in both China and Japan, his shifting persona also demonstrates the possible inversions and slippages that occur through gendered practice. At times these manifest as political projects that speak beyond gender and class, as I will demonstrate through an analysis of Li’s various gendered performances.

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Chinese Masculinity in Japan In order to understand the cultural forms that Li Xiaomu “poaches” in his construction of a public persona, it is important to understand the transnational context of Sino-Japanese masculinities. Due to a shared regional history, East Asia has historically shared similar cultural repertoires for “being a man.” This is particularly the case between China and Japan where approximate models of the scholarly wen 文 and martial wu 武 (Bun/Bu in Japanese) have influenced the idealized image of masculinity historically (Louie 2002; Louie and Low 2005). The proximity of this shared history however, has also meant that China and Japan have used representations of each other to reinscribe the sophistication or superiority of their own men. As Morris Low has shown, this was particularly the case in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, when Japan’s modernization drive used images and caricatures of East Asian Others, particularly Chinese men, to emphasize the physiological difference between the Japanese and their neighbors as a means to emphasizing the “European” and civilized qualities of Japan’s modern nation-state (Low 2005). Since the end of the Asia-Pacific war (1945) China and Chinese men have been used in Japanese literature and film to refer to a form of vibrancy that was lost during Japan’s accelerated modernization. The figure of the wandering cosmopolitan Chinese gourmand, not only inspired a generation of Japanese readers about food, but also provided audiences thoughts on cultural difference that often emphasized the masculine qualities of Chinese consumption culture (Aoyama 2003). Haruki Murakami’s short stories “About China,” position the gendered and sexed Chinese Other as a foil for thinking about the emasculation and disenchantment many Japanese men face (Lo 2004). Chineseness in Murakami’s work, according to Lo, represents a lost internal Other whose vibrancy is relegated to imagined East Asian Others. This kind of imaginary continued into Japan’s so-called “lost decades” (Fletcher and Staden 2014), albeit with greater emphasis on the East Asian Other within Japan. As Iwabuchi Koichi has argued, the commodification of the Asian Other living in Japan featured heavily in popular television and film from the mid-1990s onwards (Iwabuchi 2002). Iwabuchi has shown how visual media in Japan have created an image of “Asia” where Japanese consumers find their “lost purity, energy, and dreams” (2002, 550). Such representations oscillate between quasi-nostalgic admiration of the Chinese energetic spirit, such as in Shunji Iwai’s film Swallowtail where Chinese migrants show money-making savvy in a magic-realist setting called “yentown” (Swallowtail 1996); or Chinese energetic nationalism, such as a special episode on Takeshi Kitano’s talk show “This is what is strange about you Japanese” (koko ga hendayo nihonjin ここがへん だよ日本人) where fifty Chinese students were invited to debate their country’s shortcomings with other foreigners as Kitano sagely laughed at the heated conversations (Hambleton 2011).

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While Japanese imaginaries surrounding Chinese men emphasize vitality, this vitality takes on a more threatening shape when connected to accounts of actual embodied Chinese men in Japan. With continued concerns about Japan’s future in economic and demographic terms Chinese men have increasingly become a heated topic. From fears about Chinese criminal activity in Japan (Coates 2015) to panics around quasi-legal purchasing and reselling practices popular among Chinese tourists (Sankei News 2015), fears that Chinese in Japan will not “play by the rules” position Chinese men as both scapegoats and objects of admiration. Within Japan’s gay community, for example, racialized encounters with Chinese men are both fetishized and feared (Baudinette 2016). In relation to issues of heteronormative masculinity, Chinese men have been used to critique the rise of “soft masculinities,” such as the “herbivorous male” (sōshoku danshi 草食男 子) in Japan, where Chinese men are seen as outcompeting their Japanese male classmates in dating Japanese women because they are confident and persistent (Japan Times 2012). The English language ability of Chinese students has also fueled critiques of Japanese youths and spurred concerns about Japan’s role in global business markets (FNN News 2011). Indeed, Chinese graduates are increasingly being hired by Japanese companies to fill this occupational niche (Liu-Farrer 2011). Much like other countries, Japanese hegemonic masculinities have been historically tied to Japan’s national successes. In economic and demographic terms, the Japanese salaryman (sarariman サラリーマン) has served as the most famous embodiment of national success over the past sixty years (Dasgupta 2000; Dasgupta 2013; Hidaka 2010; Matanle et al. 2014; Taga 2006). More recent discourses around China’s economic success since the 1980s have similarly invoked masculine figures of business success (Song and Hird 2014; Louie, Kuehn, and Pomfret 2013). Considering the important role these masculinities have played, it is not surprising that Chinese and Japanese masculinities are increasingly posited against each other in relation to wider hegemonic ideals of what constitutes a transnational businessman. However, what are the consequences of these hegemonic forms for Chinese men in Japan? Discourses around the competitive vitality of Chinese men in Japan are often discriminatory. However, as in the case of Li Xiaomu, Chinese masculinity in the Japanese context also provides an opportunity for Chinese men to invert the image of Chinese vitality for their own purposes. This inversion occurs in a context where Chinese migrants are increasingly present in media as both authors and objects of discourse around Chinese migration to Japan. It also occurs in a context where the mostly highly valued forms of transnational Chinese masculinity are attached to entrepreneurial success, risk-taking and cosmopolitanism (Osburg 2013; Song and Hird 2014); and Japanese masculine icons such as the actor Takakura Ken served as models for, and critiques of, Chinese masculinity in the reform era (Zhong 2000). As a celebrity and author, Li Xiaomu has

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contributed to the image of Chinese male criminality in Japan; what might be seen as a form of sub-hegemonic masculinity within the Sino-Japanese context. At the same time, he also demonstrates the opportunities that arise from this image, demonstrating the tactics available in the construction of transnational Chinese masculinities today. Translated back to China, Li’s persona embodies dreams of going overseas to become rich, metrosexual, and fashionable. In shifting between China and Japan, the limits on his own authorship are laid bare however, as both the films he has participated in and his commentaries critical of Chinese politics and history are censored. His experiences of translating masculinities between these contexts means that for him, it is easier to be cosmopolitan in Japan than it is in China, as he told me over drinks one evening. And yet, part of the motivation he has for wanting to be this kind of man relies heavily on the cultural repertoires of classic discourses of Chinese masculinity, such as scholarly achievement. Having enacted and affirmed the image of the Chinese gangster in Japan, he now presents himself as a morally admirable person by emphasizing his wen masculinity, presenting himself as a respectable salaryman in a bodily sense, and appealing to a transnationally abstract notion of cosmopolitanism that has grown from the consumerist to the political.

Li Xiaomu as Underworld Figure Li Xiaomu has written twenty-two books—twenty in Japanese and two Chinese translations—has been involved in a NHK documentary series on the Kabukicho, was a script consultant for Jackie Chan’s film Shinjuku Incident (新宿事件), and regularly contributes to Japanese magazines such as Newsweek. He has a growing body of followers on China’s various social media, and in 2015 he entered Japanese politics for the first time. He originally branded himself as the kabukichō annaijin 歌舞伎町案内人, a guide to Tokyo’s largest adult entertainment district, the Kabukicho. He no longer works directly in the adult entertainment business, but manages connections and an image that still embodies his brand, albeit with greater emphasis on his success as a writer and social commentator. Born in 1960 in Changsha, Hunan province, Li was sent to a boarding school specializing in ballet at the age of 13, before going on to work as an intern at a performing arts magazine in Shanghai, and running a modeling agency in Shenzhen. In 1988 he moved to Japan as a self-funded student, studying for two years in a Japanese language school. While a student, Li Xiaomu was attracted to the Kabukicho due to his interests in fashion and modeling. In the opening ten minutes of a special about him on the Chinese television program Zhiri 知日, he connects his desire for the Kabukicho directly to his sense of self as a man: When I first came to Japan, I got off the bus in Shinjuku and headed straight to the Kabukicho, I walked down this road, there weren’t as many restaurants

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as there are now, mostly adult entertainment businesses. I was like “Waa, look at the lights, red ones, green ones, and all the pictures!” I said to myself, it was right that I came here, as a man. (Zhiri 2014)

Li Xiaomu worked as a cleaner in a “love hotel,” a dishwasher in a restaurant, a waiter in a gay bar, and a tissue advertiser for local businesses within the Kabukicho. As he explains it, after seeing the looks of bewilderment coming from Chinese visitors to the Kabukicho, Li approached local businesses to ask if he could work as a tout for foreigners looking for fun in the adult entertainment industry. Li’s business became a huge success, as flows of Chinese migrants on student visas, and the first wave of Chinese tourists, came to explore the bright consumption spaces of Tokyo. After meeting several Japanese writers who focused on the Kabukicho area, Li Xiaomu was encouraged to start writing about his own experiences in the early 2000s. As Li Xiaomu explained it to me, this shift in career was fortuitous. In 2003 Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintarō initiated a campaign to clean up the Kabukicho area. From 2003 to 2005 over 280 brothels had been closed, with over 400 arrests and 1,000 citations of foreign visa violations (Kwon 2013). At the same time, Li Xiaomu opened a Hunanese restaurant within the Kabukicho, and he continued writing memoirs and accounts of his experience as a tout within the district. I first met Li Xiaomu in 2009 when I was conducting fieldwork for my PhD on Chinese migrants living in Tokyo. I was invited to his restaurant by some friends, and was immediately struck by this husky-voiced shop owner with a twinkle in his eye and a shop plastered with copies of his articles, as well as photos of him working on a film set with Jackie Chan. On one wall of his restaurant, a giant mural of Mao Zedong magnanimously looked down upon the restaurant’s diners, and he spent most of his time entertaining guests and talking to customers. Li Xiaomu’s demeanor comes across as intentionally constructed and highly performative. The opening prologue of his first book Kabukicho annaijin, which was written in Japanese with the help of Naoki Nemoto, conveys the nature of his masculine performance clearly: As usual, I am standing in the place where I decided to conduct my business, in the tumultuous Kabukicho. I am wearing a green Versace suit made of light cloth for the summer weather. On the cuffs of my tailor-made shirt I have diamond links from Tiffany’s, and a thin Yves Saint Laurent tie. On my feet I wear size 10 Ferra shoes I bought on a trip to New York and on my wrist I wear a Fendi watch. My hair is styled like an English gentleman, and there isn’t a hint of stubble on my chin. I am 178 centimeters tall, 54 kilograms. My style is one of confidence! (Li 2002, 5)

After this meticulous description of his expensive fashion style, the story goes on to describe him rushing to the scene of a suicide in the area, where he recognizes the face of a young woman who worked in a hostess bar. The story carries on like this after the prologue, starting with his first arrival in the Kabukicho as

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a student fresh from China, and slowly telling the tale of how he came to riches while surrounded by violence and hedonism. His writing is filled with confident descriptions of his outfits, rife with brand names that demonstrate his knowledge of the fashion world and confidence as a global consumer. Li embodies the “consumerist cosmopolitanism” that Geng Song and Tracy Lee have analyzed in Chinese lad magazines (Song and Lee 2010). His intimate knowledge and sensational account of this Japanese locality suggests that his pathway to cosmopolitanism, was a self-conscious re-embedding in a nonChinese locality which allowed him to demonstrate his ability to transcend his Chineseness (Rofel 2007, 111). Li Xiaomu conveyed his cosmopolitan sensibility in an interview I conducted with him in 2014. When asked about the intentions behind his prolific writing, he stated: I’m not Chinese, nor am I Japanese, I am just me. I’m also not an artist or scholar, I am merely someone who has a particular kind of experience that lends itself to storytelling. I can tell a story others can’t. I view things from a particularly objective standpoint because I have no loyalties or major influences, and I have no ulterior political motives. I simply tell it as it is. I rely on my inherent nature (xing 性) to write, which is mostly hedonistic and curious . . . haha. (Li 2014)

Li Xiaomu’s first book catalyzed his position as a public persona. After the initial success of Kabukicho Annaijin, he was invited to publish a Chinese translation of the Japanese version, and also started working on a NHK series on the Kabukicho, published on DVD in 2004. While doing this, he continued to write several follow up memoirs to his original book, and worked as a columnist for local Chinese newspapers. His popularity attracted the attention of Chinese broadcasters too, with a short piece in the series Tangrenjie 唐人街 in 2005 and a part in the short online documentary series introducing various aspects of Japan called Zhiri. Li couples descriptions of his fashion sense with images of his body and portrayals of his physicality, emphasizing his capacity as a man. Within the promotional materials and covers of his earlier books, his stylish underworld image is reminiscent of the “stoic” gangster masculinities popularized in the films of Takakura Ken, East Asia’s “Clint Eastwood” (Standish 2013; Lo 2010), as well as the more playful gangster tropes of Chow Yun Fat. Descriptions of his physical prowess are also invoked to portray Li as a man of action. Often citing his physical prowess due to his background in dance, Li describes his ability to get to a particular place, get into fights, flee the scene and on one occasion receive a significant amount of punishment during a fight with Yakuza. Li’s physical prowess extends to his descriptions of his own sexuality. Although never explicitly detailing sexual encounters, he often hints at his ability to seduce women, and proudly recounts the fact that he has been married and divorced over four times.

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The complex persona that Li performs has been fictionalized in film. According to Li Xiaomu, and relatively evident from the pictures of him and Jackie Chan in his restaurant, one of the productions he is proudest of is his collaboration in the film Shinjuku Incident, directed by Derek Yee (2009). Officially he was listed as a script consultant in the film’s credits, but according to Li, the majority of the story was his own. Jackie Chan had read the Chinese translation of his first book and approached Derek Yee to produce a film based on it. The film takes a somewhat fictional take on Li’s story. Jackie Chan plays as the protagonist who, growing up as an earnest Northeastern man, follows his childhood sweetheart to Japan when he hasn’t heard from her in several years. In the opening sequence, Chan’s character, Tietou 鐵頭 (Steelhead) is introduced using tropes reminiscent of the Mao-era figure Lei Feng 雷鋒. Wearing the Russian-style Lei Feng Mao 雷 鋒帽 (Lei Feng hat) and driving a tractor, Steelhead is an innocent farmer who supports his fellow villagers. In some senses, the story comes across as a speculative tale about what would happen to Lei Feng if he moved to Japan in the 1990s. After discovering his childhood sweetheart has married a Japanese mafia boss (yakuza ヤクザ), and that economic deprivation leaves him and his fellow Chinese migrants vulnerable, Steelhead resolves to organize his “brothers” together to get rich quick. His brothers engage in a variety of illegal operations, signified by a scene where he and his closest friend visit prostitutes together. They eventually challenge the established Taiwanese mafia in the Kabukicho and before getting drawn into a Yakuza war. In the end, Tietou sacrifices himself to guarantee the safety of a Japanese policeman who befriended him, as well as his former sweetheart and the remaining brothers who had not yet been killed in the conflict. The image of Chinese criminality in Japan is one which plagues the everyday lives of many Chinese men (Coates 2015). The additional surveillance to which they are subject due to this image, alongside various cultural barriers they face, ensures that integration into Japan is a work of great labor. As Timothy Tsu has noted, areas affiliated with Chinese migrants in Japan are also associated with imaginaries of danger and deviance (Tsu 2011). As Tsu notes, Shinjuku Incident, alongside Li Xiaomu’s other earlier works, has in many senses contributed to the negative representation of Chinese in Japan. When I asked about this issue in an interview, Li Xiaomu was unapologetic about his contribution to the image of Chinese men as involved in criminal activity: I don’t think that because I’m Chinese I should protect the image of Chinese migrants . . . The criminal image of Chinese people committing crimes comes from the 1990s to the early 2000s. At that time, in truth, Chinese migrants did commit a lot of crimes. It’s because that generation of migrants grew up in a period where the education system was lacking, and a lot of people had no money. That’s after the opening reforms, right? So Chinese people of that generation, they just wanted money, but they also weren’t willing to earn it slowly. (Li Interview 2014)

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When I pressed Li Xiaomu about whether he sensationalized his tale, seeing that he did not die in the end, he responded with the following: Shinjuku Incident is all true, and it is basically my story. Moreover, Jackie Chan represents me, my story. The story of Jackie Chan’s character helping the police, and the story of his childhood sweetheart marrying a Japanese gangster, that is my story! Although, the woman was previously my wife not my childhood sweetheart . . . It’s mostly truths woven together to make a story, each event is based on truth, although it didn’t all happen to one group of people . . . it tells a truth that most Chinese people living in Japan would understand, I think. Among the Chinese community in Japan, no one criticized me. This is an open media society, and yet no one said that what we conveyed in that movie was untruthful. Of course, in China the film is banned. But it was generally welcomed in Japan. (Li Interview 2014)

Whether Li Xiaomu’s tale is true or not is a question that perhaps cannot be answered. However, what is interesting about his comment is the way he conveys the constructed nature of stories, and the ways in which his claim to authorship allows him to convey truths that are purportedly typical to the Chinese migrant experience. In light of the media image of Chinese migrants as being engaged in criminal activity, and a broader fear of the vitality of Chinese men, Li’s authorship provides a useful case study for thinking through the connection between textual forms of Chinese masculinity and the individuals who embody and enact these forms. Li’s admission to weaving truths to create a story is suggestive of Judith Butler’s argument that gendered performance is “citational” (Butler 1993). At the same time, the fact that his citational practice is not only enacted in everyday life, but is used to produce texts based on everyday experience, shows the entangled nature of textual forms of masculinity, the way they are enacted, and the way they are reproduced as texts. Finally, the popularity of Li’s texts and films, and his rise as a public persona, also suggests that his translation of self, as a Chinese man in Japan, is a successful cooptation of masculinities within the transnational context. Li Xiaomu’s written works were all initially produced for a Japanese audience, which is perhaps why the emphasis on Chinese criminality received little criticism. In this sense, Li’s constructed star persona can be seen as occupying a position that comfortably nestles within wider media impressions of Chinese migrants. In translating his original book into Chinese however, Li’s tale also affirms the aspirations attached to becoming a businessman overseas. As Kam Louie has noted in his analysis of the blog “Taming the Chinese Fire” displays of conspicuous wealth and rampant individualism have become typical in the imagery and performances of the international metrosexual “beautiful man” (Louie 2014). Although the men Louie discusses mostly do business in America, similar comparisons can be made between their own masculine performances and those of Li Xiaomu. As Louie notes, there are similar models of masculinity

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in China and Japan, which may help explain Li Xiaomu’s success in translating his masculine persona transnationally.

Cosmopolitan Critique Alongside his works as the Kabukicho Annaijin, Li Xiaomu started working as a columnist for the Japanese magazine Newsweek in 2005. These works signified a shift in Li’s interests and also a shift in the persona that he constructs for himself today. Now in his fifties, his works predominantly try to provide a critique of both China and Japan, which posits him less as “consumerist cosmopolitan” than a cosmopolitan public intellectual. At first I merely wrote my own story, relied on my own experience to tell a story, because at that time I didn’t really know how to write but I knew how to express myself in life. Later, I moved to write more about my perspectives on Japan. In particular, I wanted to tell Japanese people about the Japanese people I met in my line of work. I wanted to tell them how I felt about Japan, as a foreigner. (Li Interview 2014)

His collected works for Newsweek have now been compiled into a book titled Kabukicho yori ai wo komete 歌舞伎町より愛をこめて (From the Kabukicho with love, Li 2009). The cosmopolitan intention of his columns is made more explicit when produced as a body of work, and he states in the prologue that “the Kabukicho is a microcosm of Japanese society” where he has, as a “third eye/ perspective,” observed the changes and problems with society today. Li Xiaomu posits this “third eye” as neither being the perspective of Japan, nor the perspective of China, but rather the perspective of someone who through moving has transcended both. Within the various articles collated in the book, Li provides a wide range of commentary that signifies his views on masculinity and self. In the article “In order to be sexy for women, brains are sexier than appearances” (2009, 30), Li discusses the slang term for an attractive person moteru モテる, which refers to someone who attracts people around them, but Li also uses it to make a play on the phrase “to have lots of money” (okane wo motte iru お金を持てる), stating that those who know how to spend their money are the most attractive. Despite Li’s obvious allusions to being moteru in his earlier works, he explains in this article that as men grow older it is important to foster their intellects, as that will ensure that they remain sexy into their twilight years. Li stated much the same in my interviews with him: For the future, the most important thing for me is to study more. The one thing I regret is that I didn’t study enough when I was younger. The more I study the more I feel “aiya, I’m still not good enough. There are still so many things I don’t understand.” And so I spend time every day studying. Japanese, politics, literature, etc. I’m a very curious person. (Li interview 2014)

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Li’s move towards a more scholarly presentation of self echoes the privileging of wen masculinity common to the cultural history of East Asia (Louie 2002). Indeed, the fact that he turned to a more explicit emphasis on his scholarly ambitions in later life in some ways echoes Confucius’s classic phrase about the proper stages of a man’s life. The Master says: At 15, I set my heart on learning. At 30 I know where I stand (my character has been formed). At 40, I have no more doubts, at 50, I know the will of Heaven/ I know my fate and how things should be managed (zhi tian zhi ming 知天知命), at 60 my ears are attuned [i.e., my moral sense is well-developed] at 70, I follow my heart’s desire without crossing the line (without breaking moral principles). (Lunyu 論語 [Analects] 2.4 in Slingerland 2003, 9)

At the same time, rather than trying to embody a sagely and moral exterior, Li is an indulgent and hyper-sexualized scholar, who has also internalized the individualist ethos of the “consumerist cosmopolitan.” During one interview with Li Xiaomu he quoted Mencius’ phrase “food and sex is the nature of humanity” (shi se xing ye 食色性也), but rather than following Mencius’ implication that because it is nature it need not be talked about, Li Xiaomu argued that acknowledgement of these basic desires is the key to a happy and functioning society. From my observations in the Kabukicho, that is my own perspective, shiyu 食慾 [desire for food], wuyu 物慾 [desire for objects], xingyu 性慾 [desire for sex], these three things are the most basic of human desires. When you can’t satisfy these three desires, you can’t live with confidence. If you live unhappily, then you’ll probably live a shorter life and achieve nothing. To pursue these desires you need to be diligent, you can’t rely on tricks, and you need to think carefully about who around you is a good person. You should study from their example. In terms of sexuality, China understands very little, while Japan has a very human-centered approach (renxinghua 人性化). So long as a legal system supports the desires of people then they can flourish. China has none of this, so it is easier to be a man in Japan. As long as you obey the law, you won’t impinge on other people’s desires. (Li Interview 2014)

In this sense, we can see how the transnational milieu that Li Xiaomu occupies has enabled him to construct a hybrid masculinity that both embodies Chinese consumerist and scholarly visions of masculinity, while also providing a critique of China. Moreover, this masculine performance translates classic scripts of Chinese masculinity to become a hedonistic cosmopolitan ethos. Li Xiaomu’s commentaries have grown increasingly critical and cosmopolitan. Part of this manifests in the way he is critical of Chinese men in Japan, stating that they focus too much on making money and not enough on learning from Japanese society. As he states: I feel that a lot of Chinese men who come to Japan won’t change if they don’t study. They come here, and they’re still just a Chinese man. Most importantly, they need to study, learn Japanese, and understand Japan. Then, they can

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learn how to take control of their lives in a way that isn’t possible in China. Japan is generally an open and law oriented society where people have rights. If they don’t understand Japanese however, a lot of Chinese men won’t even understand the rights they have. This is a big problem for a lot of Chinese men who come to Japan. (Li Interview 2014)

Within migration studies, these kinds of comments, which distance the migrant self from his or her peers, are seen as a common strategy used to produce a sense of belonging or inclusion within the host nation context (Castles and Miller 2003). Having lived in Japan for over twenty-six years it is expected that Li would have critical reflections on Chinese migrants in Japan. In translating what it means to be a good Chinese man in Japan, Li Xiaomu cites issues such as study, morality and rule of law, which are part of various privileged forms of masculinity in Northeast Asia. At the same time, he conveys these opinions with a cheeky wit that targets both Chinese and Japanese alike, with gender and multiculturalism being two of his favorite topics. For example, Li wrote an article titled “There are still samurai in Japan. In truth they are foreigners!” (Mada samurai ha nihon ni iru. Tadashi, gaikokujin da! まだ侍は日本にいる。ただし外国人だ！) (Li 2009, 35). Within this article, he makes fun of the Japanese samurai image and the association between this classic form of masculinity and the modern salaryman. Arguing that, if one of the key features of the samurai ethos is “fatalism” (hisshi 必死), then foreigners who come to Japan and do anything to make money are the most fatalistic of them all. Further, according to Li, the greatest samurai are the women who work in the Kabukicho. In critiquing Japanese and Chinese society, Li takes advantage of the fact that he mostly publishes in Japanese. To a Japanese readership, his cheeky criticisms seem appropriate to his Chinese underworld image. Conversely, his political commentaries, mostly written in Japanese, only reach a particular readership, making him less of a target for Chinese government censors. More broadly, his work and public persona stemming from his Kabukicho annaijin days, has positioned him as someone who is expected to say outlandish things. Recently, his works have taken on an increasingly political flavor, where he has collaborated with Japanese authors to provide commentaries on Sino-Japanese relations, such as the book Jōshiki gai nichūron 常識外日中論 (An extraordinary commentary on China and Japan) (Li and Katō 2011) and the changing Chinese mediascape (Li and Cai 2012). In the past five years he has written commentaries on the 1989 Tiananmen protests, critical of their coverage in China; he has written on the history wars between China and Japan, stating that in some ways anti-Japan youth protests in China have been good for raising the level of political interest among young Japanese; and, he has praised the ability to learn more about the Cultural Revolution while living abroad. When I asked him about whether he is worried about publishing such criticisms as a Chinese person, he compared himself to another prominent Chinese

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figure in Japan, Professor Zhu Jianrong from Toyo Gakuen University. Professor Zhu is a political commentator on Sino-Japanese relations and was detained in China in 2013 during a visit to his hometown in Shanghai (Japan Times 2013). He was officially held due to espionage charges; however, according to Li Xiaomu he was really detained due to his diplomatic comments around the Senkaku/ Diaoyu island dispute. As Li frames it, the fact that Professor Zhu was a respected scholar made his comments seem a greater threat than Li’s, who is mostly tolerated by Chinese officials. Because I have lived here so long, and because of my work in Kabukicho, everyone knows I am going to say these things. The Chinese embassy doesn’t pay too much attention to me. I am not a real scholar like Zhu Jianrong and I’m careful about what I write in Chinese. (Li Interview 2014)

Despite Li’s claims that he is more tolerated than others, he is nonetheless careful when publishing in Chinese. For example, care is evident in the translation of his collected commentaries into Chinese: Riben Youbing 日本有病 (Japan has a problem/is sick) (Li 2011). Much shorter, and excluding the third section of the original Japanese version which discusses issues such as Tiananmen, this book is carefully constructed for Chinese audiences. Below the title on the front page it states: I’m not a spy and I’m not a traitor. I warmly love China, and care for Japan. I am a Chinese man who has written about Japan in the western media. Having lived in Japan over twenty years, I am a Chinese-made eye on Tokyo, exploring the humorous and terrifying aspects of Japan. (Li 2011)

And so, despite feeling confident in his ability to provide cosmopolitan critique in Japan, we can see the limitation of his cosmopolitan ethos when translated back to a Chinese language context.

Originally Chinese, Aiming to Become a Politician in Japan When one enters Li Xiaomu’s restaurant today, one is no longer greeted by Mao Zedong’s beaming gaze. Rather, a wider collection of Li’s recent activities hoard his walls: posters from a recent film he starred in called Ningen 人間 (Ningen 2015), various cultural activities he’s engaged in, as well as the promotional posters from his recent political campaign. All of these changes mirror changes in Li’s ambitions and outlook. When asked why he had removed the image of Mao, Li explained that his years in Japan changed his opinion about the famous figure from his home province (Hunan), making it difficult for him to respect his former hero. As he explains, his life in Japan has exposed him to critical voices that he doubts he would have met elsewhere, revealing details of China’s history he was unaware of, as well as providing him the distance he needed to reflect on his own experiences of China.

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It is for these reasons that Li Xiaomu has recently become an enthusiastic spokesperson for democracy. After having lived in Japan for over twenty-six years, Li started the procedures to change his nationality to Japanese in late 2014, finally becoming a citizen in February 2015. He did so in order to be able to run as a candidate for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in local elections for Shinjuku ward, where the Kabukicho is located. Although Japan is my second motherland, Chinese blood still flows in my veins. I would not throw away my first motherland. Or at least that was what I thought. My decision to change my nationality came from my thirst for a challenge. I am the kind of person who cannot be contented. If I don’t face new challenges I cannot relax . . . however, there was also another influence, my exchange with Chinese democracy activists. (Li 2015, 152)

According to Li, his writing had started to not only attract tourists and fans to his restaurant, but also public intellectuals. Consisting of both Chinese democracy activists and Japanese commentators on China, his restaurant, as he describes it became a “salon” for political commentary. Prior to changing his nationality, Li was approached by representatives of the DPJ to ask whether he would be interested in running in the local Shinjuku ward elections. However, as he narrates it, he only became aware of how special an opportunity it was through his exposure to political commentators and activists. In the months leading up to the elections in April 2015, Li’s face was plastered on posters throughout Shinjuku ward and if you went to a major intersection it was likely you would run into him, campaigning with a megaphone. Li’s demeanor has totally changed. Dressed in an understated suit and tie, he carefully bowed at passers-by, thanking them for their attention, and politely asking them to vote for him. His physical appearance and performance was more reminiscent of a Japanese salaryman than his previous image as an underworld figure. The salaryman image persists as the most legitimate form of hegemonic masculinity in Japan today (Dasgupta 2013). Ostensibly associated with suits and ties, the most valued salaryman is one who, despite long hours of work, maintains an invigorated and healthful (genki 元気) attitude. The promotional materials Li had for his campaign, while still portraying him as a highly active man, depicted his vitality through images of earnest and powerful athleticism and clean salaryman attire, rather than the previous impression of a fashionable person ready for a fight. Li’s efforts to embody the image of the salaryman can be interpreted as his attempt to legitimate his own political aspirations. Li is no ordinary salaryman however, portraying himself as an “international” cosmopolitan who will help Japan negotiate a globalizing world. His campaign focused on making Shinjuku the center of Tokyo’s efforts to internationalize, particularly in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games. Its slogan was “Inviting the world to Shinjuku!” with dynamic pictures of him in action poses. Despite his enthusiasm, Li received a very small portion of the vote, ranking as

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one of the lowest candidates in the ballot. Nonetheless, his experience in running for office has catalyzed his cosmopolitan project to new heights. Only five months after the election, Li Xiaomu has published another book retelling his experience of running for election, as well as explaining the reasons for why he decided to do so. Titled Originally Chinese, Aiming to Become a Politician in Japan Li’s account takes a more political tone than it ever has before (2015). According to his book, along with various public statements, Li had three reasons for running in the 2015 election. His first reason was to convey his experience of democracy to China. As he states: If I am able to convey the wonderful experience of having freedom of political expression, freedom of speech and the right to be elected, then I will be able to irritate the continued dictatorship of the Chinese Communist party and promote democratization. (2015, 1959)

Secondly, his goal was to improve the social status of those who work in the Kabukicho, as well as the impression of the Kabukicho altogether. Finally, he was filled with a desire like an “unquenchable spring” to promote Shinjuku as a welcoming space that “utilizes the idea of ‘cosmopolitanism’ to link closed-off Japan to the world” (2015, 1649). Even though Li Xiaomu has made great efforts to reconstruct his public persona as a cosmopolitan social commentator and political activist, the legacy of his previous masculine persona has still hindered his efforts. For example, when his film was screened at the Toronto film festival in 2014, he was detained at airport immigration for several hours, which in his own account was firstly because of his Chinese passport and finally because Li claimed a security official had found images of his mafia-esque publications online. More recently during his political campaign, social media discussions about his possible connection to mafia also proliferated. In the most extreme cases, such as on the anonymous posting board 2channel, statements were made that a vote for Li Xiaomu was a vote for greater gang influence within Tokyo (2Chan 2015). Similarly, right-wing groups created political videos against Li Xiaomu’s right to participate in the elections. For example, one video states: A Chinese spy operative has been running in Japanese elections! And he has the strong support of the DPJ, the DPJ’s leader Kaeda and the Asahi News? This is truly Xi Jinping’s dream to infiltrate the local Japanese assembly with naturalized citizens! (Nihon no Akarui Mirai Aikoku 2015)

Despite online protests against Li Xiaomu, he continues to receive support from his fans, and continues his prolific media activities. If anything his public persona has grown into a hybrid masculinity that straddles between China and Japan. In the recent citizen festival in Shinjuku, Li organized to lead a group of young Chinese students during their first mikoshi 神輿 festival, a boisterous activity where a palanquin bearing a god (kami 神) icon is carried around the local

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neighborhood. As Jennifer Robertson has argued, the popularization of mikoshi over the past thirty years stood as “a conscious effort on the part of municipal governments to reclaim from inexorable urbanisation, and more recently ‘internationalisation,’ the indigenous village within the city” (Robertson 1987, 124). As Robertson notes, innovations within these festivals, such as the inclusion of women and children, has signified new imaginings for the future of local areas in Japan. Today, it is increasingly common to see non-Japanese participating in the festival, however it is less common to see Chinese migrants participating. Li Xiaomu’s boisterous insistence has positioned him as a spokesperson for reimagining local Sino-Japanese relations. In a similar vein, Li’s efforts in Japan have reverberated back to China allowing him to perform masculinities he once thought impossible. For example, he was recently invited to give a lecture at Fudan University about his career and views on Sino-Japanese relations. Making a play on the homophonic nature of Japanese words Li presented a seminar titled “From Romance to Politics” (Seiji => Seiji 性事=>政治), where he traced his underworld past to his future political ambitions. After I congratulated Li about his lecture at Fudan through online correspondence, he replied, “I’ve finally realized my dream of lecturing at Fudan, haha,” suggesting the dreams of scholarly success in China die old, even if framed in a joking manner.

Conclusion A life history, and a gender project within a life history, does not unfold seamlessly. It involves a number of distinct moments, in which different gender commitments are made, different strategies are adopted, or different resolutions of gender issues are achieved. (Connell 2009, 102)

Li Xiaomu as a person is by no means representative of all Chinese men in Japan. However, his elaborate persona provides useful material to explore how hegemonic masculinities are translated, constructed, and performed in everyday discourse and practice. His experience as a Chinese migrant in Japan, coupled with his role as a media producer helps us think through how masculinities as embodied in texts relate to individuals’ gendered performance. This is particularly the case because he is an author. As John Hartley recently phrased it, an author is “one who channels system-level or institutional authority into text” (2013, 25 italics in original). From this perspective, an author is not the sole creator of his or her work, nor is the author “dead” (Barthes and Heath 1978). Rather, they act as conduits for wider meanings and practices, (re)creating these wider relations of power within text. At times they invert these relations. At times they contribute to them. And, at times they do both at the same time with unpredictable effects. What kinds of system-level authority does Li Xiaomu channel? His authorship and presentation of self “poaches” (De Certeau 1984) from perceptions about Chinese men in Japan, from images of the “consumerist cosmopolitan,” from the

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Japanese salaryman, as well as wider transnational images of successful entrepreneurial cosmopolitans. He contributes to these images, taking advantage of and re-producing these hegemonies of class and gender within his work. And yet, his most recent political activities suggest that “cosmopolitanism” as a form of hegemonic masculinity can be operationalized for differing political purposes. As Lisa Rofel has argued, consumerist “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics” can be interpreted as “a self-conscious transcendence of locality, posited as a universal transcendence, accomplished through the formation of a consumer identity; and a domestication of cosmopolitanism by way of renegotiating China’s place in the world” (Rofel 2007, 111). Li’s recent political activities are specifically targeted at “renegotiating China’s place in the world.” In recent years however, rather than attempting to reassert China’s image of power through consumption and hypermasculine performances, Li has taken to performing earnest criticisms of China’s lack of electoral democracy. He also posits criticisms against Japan as closed and parochial. He has become increasingly active in defending the rights of sex workers, and is involved in volunteer work within Tokyo’s Kabukicho. Further, he plays an active role in translating between local Japanese groups and local Chinese groups in Japan, as well as participating in wider transnational cultural activities. In this sense, Li’s embodiment of consumerist cosmopolitanism, as an elitist assemblage, suggests a wide array of political aspirations and possibilities. Cosmopolitanism has been envisioned in multiple ways: “(1) a socio-cultural condition; (2) a kind of philosophy or world view; (3) a political project toward building transnational institutions; (4) a political project for recognizing multiple identities; (5) an attitudinal or dispositional orientation; and (6) a mode of practice or competence” (Vertovec and Cohen 2002, 8–14). Rather than a definitive term, cosmopolitanism sits as an “empty signifier” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) that connects chains of signifiers and practices for differing political effects. In this sense, the meaning of cosmopolitanism and its effects cannot be fixed. In a similar way, assemblages of masculine “types” do not remain fixed, but rather, are influenced by the politics of their social location, as a form of “becoming” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). While consumerist cosmopolitanism increasingly acts as a form of hegemonic masculinity within China, translated into the Japanese context it also speaks from a different position. Li’s old persona as an underworld figure is consumerist cosmopolitan, but is affected by sub-hegemonic discourses that associate Chinese migrants with criminality. Li’s fame, and legitimation in the eyes of the Japanese media, allowed him to shift between subhegemonic and supra-hegemonic forms of Chinese masculinity in Japan. It also held transformative effects in how he understood his own cosmopolitan aspirations. This suggests that, in as much as masculinities are assemblages, so too are people, personae, and the potentially fluid politics that emerge from moving between cultural milieux.

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Critical masculinities studies have adopted a wide range of tools to theorize how it is that some men remain dominant, dominating both other men and women. Such criticisms have largely developed a critical politics of ethnicity, class, and gender, although these issues have also been connected to nation-level politics. While Chinese masculinities in Japan demonstrate how the hegemonic ideals that propagate this inequality take on local and regional forms they also speak to other politics. As the case of Li Xiaomu suggests, while hegemonic masculinities produce ideals that potentially reproduce inequalities, the way men channel these ideals is also highly consequential. Li Xiaomu has performed and contributed to the sub-hegemonic image of Chinese men as threatening in Japan. From this position however, he has developed a level of fame that has allowed him to change over time, engaging in an increasingly earnest form of cosmopolitan politics. His negotiation of masculinity across two cultural milieus suggests the possibilities afforded by successfully co-opting and adopting hegemonic masculinities. At the same time, it signifies the continued importance of ethical reflexivity and a commitment to political cosmopolitanism among men who have attained status.

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Osburg, John. 2013. Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China’s New Rich. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Robertson, Jennifer. 1987. “A Dialectic of Native and Newcomer: The Kodaira Citizens’ Festival in Suburban Tokyo.” Anthropological Quarterly 60(3): 124–36. Rofel, Lisa. 2007. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality and Public Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sankei News. 2015. “Baidu, hōnichi chūgokujin kankōkyaku no bakugai O shien. Bakugai no gen to naru rankingu saito o chūgokugo de teikyō kaishi” バイドゥ、訪日中國人 観光客の爆買を支援。爆買の元となるランキングサイトを中國語で提供開始 [Baidu supports the “explosive shopping” of Chinese tourists visiting Japan. Begins offering a Chinese ranking site based on “explosive shopping”]. Press release, October 7. 産経ニュース. Accessed October 5, 2015. http://www.sankei.com/economy/ news/150710/prl1507100183-n1.html. Shinjuku Incident. 2009. Directed by Derek Tung-Shing Yee. Slingerland, Edward, trans. 2003. Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Song, Geng. 2004. The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Song, Geng, and Derek Hird. 2014. Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China. Leiden: Brill. Song, Geng, and Tracy K. Lee. 2010. “Consumption, Class Formation and Sexuality: Reading Men’s Lifestyle Magazines in China.” The China Journal (64): 159–77. Standish, Isolde. 2013. Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: Towards a Political Reading of the Tragic Hero. London: Routledge. Swallowtail Butterfly. 1996. Directed by Shunji Iwai. Taga, Futoshi. 2006. “Book Review: Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa.” Men and Masculinities 9(1): 108–10. Tsu, Timothy Yun Hui. 2011. “Black Market, Chinatown, and Kabukichō: Postwar Japanese Constructs of ‘Overseas Chinese.’” positions: east asia cultures critique 19(1): 133–57. Vertovec, Steven, and Robin Cohen. 2002. Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Zhiri 知日. 2014. “Yizhang Gewujiding de mingpian” 一張歌舞伎町的名片 [A business card from Kabukicho]. Accessed October 4, 2014. http://v.youku.com/v_show/ id_XNjY3ODY4OTg0.html. Zhong, Xueping. 2000. Masculinity Besieged? Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Tasting Food, Tasting Nostalgia Cai Lan’s “Culinary Masculinity” Jin Feng

In this chapter, I use Cai Lan 蔡瀾 (also known as Chua Lam, born 1941), 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. In what follows, I first briefly survey the role of gender in the production of Chinese culinary literature. Next I examine a variety of Cai Lan’s works to describe and analyze his taste. Last but not least, I discuss what Cai Lan’s case means for our exploration of Chinese masculinities in a transnational context.

Culinary Masculinities in China Cooking is arguably a feminine art. In Yi Jing 易經 (The Book of Changes), for example, it states that “only by making food at home can women ensure the harmony and prosperity of the whole clan” (wu you sui, zai zhongkui, zhenji 無 攸遂，在中饋，貞吉).1 However, male elites have produced and are continuing to produce the majority of gastronomic writings in Chinese culture. The collecting, reading, and compiling of culinary literature were common activities for literati-scholars before the twentieth century. The recovery of three hundred fragmented bamboo strips bearing culinary recipes from the tomb of Wu Yang 吳陽 (d.162 BCE) at Huxishan 虎溪山 in Yuanling 沅陵, Hunan 湖南, provides ample documentary evidence that cookbooks started from the Western Han 漢 1. The diagram called jiaren 家人 (family) is often cited as dictating women’s domestic role in the kitchen in traditional Chinese culture. For other interpretations, see http:// baike.baidu.com/link?url=UElax9cmSORrBXw822pCXRzFpdWiKvoEy2g8I8FmPl5Z JrJC8wVlZkgTrJtMJD6C, accessed July 19, 2014.

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(202 BCE–9 CE) dynasty. They increased in number from the Sui 隋 (581–618 CE) period onward. Hsing-tsung Huang estimates that some seventy titles published before 1800 CE belong to the food canon and diet therapy traditions (2000, 126–32). Premodern Chinese culinary writings vary in style and content. They evolved from dishes listed in books on rituals and rites (e.g., Li ji 禮記 [The Book of Rites]), manuals on agricultural production (Qimin yaoshu 齊民要術 [Essential arts of providing for the people]), and collections of menus (Shanfu lu 膳夫錄 [Records of a chef]), to literati-authored cookbooks (e.g., Suiyuan shidan 隨園食單 [Recipes from the garden of Sui]) that not only provide tips on food preparation and consumption, but also outline etiquettes and transcendental values attached to various foods. As Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett remark: Beyond the practicalities of food preparation, the culinary arts, as part of a body of knowledge that enhanced the life of the elite, might, like painting and poetry, be enjoyed for nostalgic reasons to do with times and places, to embellish educated discourse, insinuating a wealth of travel and culture in the reader and collector, or to ensure the continuity of [literati] lineage and tradition. (2005, 403)

Similarly, K. C. Chang argues that one of the essential marks of a premodern Chinese gentleman lay in “his knowledge and skills pertaining to food and drink” (1977, 11). Indeed, literati displayed knowledge and expertise through writing about food, not only highlighting their connoisseurship, but also demarcating themselves from both the merchant class and the hereditary aristocracy. They often accrued moral credit as well. Echoing both Confucian and Daoist teachings, they used food to indicate their spiritual superiority by drawing attention to the simplicity and wholesomeness of their lifestyle; their freedom from the corruption and greed rampant in officialdom; their pursuit of the vital life force and universal truth; or their concern for the preservation of common people’s livelihood. For those steeped in classical Chinese traditions, eating all too easily transformed from a simple satiation of hunger or social activity into a practice of self-cultivation, while culinary writings generated cultural capital for them. For example, Li Shizhen 李時珍 (1518–1593 CE), a sixteenth-century doctor in the Ming 明 (1368–1644 CE) dynasty and author of Ben cao gangmu 本草綱目 (Systematic materia medica), “enhanced [his status] immeasurably by mastery of the culinary spheres” (Lo and Barrett 2005, 421). In comparison, many, though not all, twentieth-century male Chinese writers displayed a deep ambivalence about food. Xu Zhimo 徐志摩 (1897–1931) and Shi Zhecun 施蟄存 (1905–2003) wrote about hometown foods and childhood memories, while mourning the destruction of Chinese cultural traditions by Westernization. In contrast, Lu Xun 魯迅 and other radical intellectuals deployed food, especially cannibalism, as metaphor for the national spiritual crisis they attributed to Confucian traditions. Authors residing in mainland China after the

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Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ascended to national power in 1949, such as Ah Cheng 阿城 (born 1949) and Lu Wenfu 陸文夫 (1928–2005), have further struggled to circumvent CCP ideological restrictions while trying to revive literati aesthetic tastes. Yet, regardless of sociopolitical vicissitudes through Chinese history, the vast majority of both premodern and modern gastronomic literature has been authored by marginalized male elites denied access to formal power. Famous premodern “gourmet” writers included hermits like Chen Dasou 陳達叟 and Lin Hong 林洪, authors of vegetarian cookbooks in the Song 宋 dynasty (960–1279 CE), whereas the Qing 清 (1644–1911 CE) scholar Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716–1797 CE), author of Suiyuan shidan, resigned from his official post at forty; he lived the next forty years as an artist, tutor, and poet. Similarly, modern intellectuals of Xu Zhimo’s generation experienced personal and national crises after the civil service examination system was abolished in 1905, forcing them to explore alternative paths to livelihood and power. Radical modern intellectuals like Lu Xun therefore refrained from “frivolous” 無聊 (wuliao) writings on elegant living,2 and instead used the mission of nation-building as a way to construct masculine identity. Contrasted with the existing male-dominated tradition of gastronomic writings as countercultural or supplemental cultural products, Cai Lan seems to have mainstreamed culinary literature in an increasingly globalized consumer society in the twenty-first century. Of course, he has lived in very different times and locales than authors of earlier twentieth-century China. Moreover, in postsocialist China, intellectuals have arguable lost some prestige as cultural elites, and neither can they claim much independence and agency vis-à-vis dominant state ideologies. Cai Lan, in contrast to the two groups of male intellectuals above, has resided in parts of the world that have kept distance from the political and ideological center of Beijing, even though he insists on using Mandarin Chinese rather than Cantonese in all his writings in order to reach a wide audience in the Chinese-speaking world (Chen 2007). For geopolitical as well as cultural and personal reasons, he provides a complex and fascinating case for us to explore Chinese masculinities in the contemporary world.

2. For example, in his letter to Cao Juren 曹聚仁 (1900–1972), August 13, 1934, Lu Xun criticized Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895–1976) for writing for and publishing journals such as Lunyu 論語 and Renjian shi 人間世, which featured “apolitical” literary and humorous essays, as not progressive enough and of no benefit to China. See http:// www.xyshu8.com/Html/Book/17/17872/4717511.html, accessed November 24, 2014.

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Cai Lan’s Taste Cai Lan has many titles to his name: film producer, author, newspaper columnist, TV show host, restaurateur, businessman, and one of the “Four Talented Men of Hong Kong” (Xianggang si caizi 香港四才子), ranked alongside other Hong Kong–based cultural celebrities such as Huang Zhan 黃霑 (1941–2004), Ni Kuang 倪匡 (born 1935), and Jin Yong 金庸 (born 1924). Yet, since he left the world of film production about two decades ago,3 his achievements have all revolved around one central theme: food. He has written extensively on this topic for newspapers and in his books, hosted several travel and food shows such as Cai Lan Tastes (Cai Lan pin wei 蔡瀾品味, 2009–2010) on TVB, led international food tours, produced and marketed a series of sauces and snacks,4 owned restaurants in Hong Kong, and even run a restaurant with the name Cucai Guan (粗菜館, Coarse food), in Shanghai. Born in Singapore in 1941, Cai Lan lived in Tokyo, New York City, Paris, Seoul, Taipei, Barcelona, Bangkok, and settled in Hong Kong in 1963, though he frequently embarked on extended trips to scout and sample international foods. Contrasted with his cosmopolitan background, globe-trotting lifestyle, and varied life experience, his views on food have remained remarkably consistent over the years. When asked by his readers what is “good to eat,” his typical answer is: anything you eat together with your good friend or girlfriend. Prodded a little harder, he then states: “What you are used to eating is most tasty, especially the food cooked by your mother. That first impression would leave an indelible mark on your mind, unforgettable even over a lifetime” (2005d, 115–16). What he identifies as “tasty food” is supposedly associated with his hometown, daily life, childhood, and other life experience, and therefore intensely personal. As he claims, most times we are just eating “a habit, a homesickness” (yizhong xiguan, yizhong xiangchou 一種習慣，一種鄉愁). Thus, he loves traditional Cantonese dishes such as meatball (gongwan 貢丸), rice noodles (hefen 河粉), wonton noodles (yuntun mian 雲吞麵), Hainan-style chicken and rice (Hainan jifan 海南雞飯), salt-baked chicken (yanju ji 鹽焗雞), fermented tofu (rufu 乳腐), and one-thousand-year eggs (pidan 皮蛋). In contrast, he thinks little of expensive traditional Chinese delicacies such as bear’s paw and shark’s fin; he argues that for ordinary folks, the ingredients they use every day, and thus have more practice cooking, ultimately create the most tasty dishes (2002a, 1).

3. In 1957, Cai Lan was appointed general manager for the Japanese branch of Shaw’s Film Studio. After settling in Hong Kong in 1963, he worked for Shaw’s and the Jiahe Studio, and produced many action movies starring Jackie Chan, such as Chengshi lieren 城市獵人 (City Hunters). He quit film production in the early 1990s, citing his wish for artistic independence. 4. For example, He markets the popular “Baobao” series including Baobao tea, fish sauce, and hot sauce of his own creation.

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Cai Lan seems like a “traditionalist” when it comes to food. He passionately called out: “Long live lard!” (Zhuyou wansui 豬油萬歲) in one essay, owned a restaurant named Rice Mixed with Lard (Zhuyou Laofan 豬油撈飯) in Hong Kong, and designated rice mixed with lard as the signature dish in his Coarse Food restaurant in Shanghai. Asserting that the only dish that tastes good without lard is douya chao doubu 豆芽炒豆卜, or, bean sprouts stir-fried with deep-fried tofu, he scoffs at the notion that eating lard does serious damage to the health (2002b, 61–62). Rather, he asserts, good mood is the most essential ingredient to health; whatever makes you happy would ultimately help you maintain health (Gu 2012, 27). He also holds that the best cooking method is to “blanch” (baizhuo 白灼), a traditional Cantonese way of cooking that uses boiling water or stock to fast cook pre-marinated ingredients, which he thinks best preserves the original flavor of any foodstuff (2005a, 15–16). Other than providing recipes for ordinary dishes (such as fried egg) and tasting tips through his writings and TV shows, in his role as food critic Cai Lan also suggests that the best way to judge a restaurant is to see whether their dishes are traditional in color and shape. For instance, be warns that if wheat gluten protein (kaofu 烤麩) is chopped with a knife rather than hand shredded at a Ningbo 寧波 restaurant, then the eating establishment is probably going to be disappointing. The same goes for a Korean restaurant. If kimchi is not intensely red, it means that it has not been pickled for long enough, and thus reveals the dubious quality of a restaurant (2005c, 3–4). At the same time, Cai Lan often advises people to be curious and adventurous regarding food, and to experience new worlds through eating, using his own introduction to and eventual acceptance of cheese as example (2002a, 1). He has written knowledgably on different regional Chinese dishes as well as on German, French, Japanese, Italian, and Indian cuisines. He could conceivably claim Chaozhou 潮州, Guangdong 廣東, as his ancestral home, since his father immigrated to Singapore from there. His primary milieu seems to be Cantonese and Taiwanese cuisines. But he has described Shanghainese, northeastern Chinese (Dongbei 東北), and Qingdao 青島 dishes that he has encountered both in Hong Kong and during his travels. He has led many global food tours, sampling lychees in Guangdong, mushrooms in Kunming 昆明, and peaches in Japan. He has even hosted a TV show entitled Cai Lan tan shijie (蔡瀾嘆世界 Cai Lan appreciates the world, 1997–1999) that required a filming crew to follow his footsteps to various parts of the world in order to feature exotic foods for a Hong Kong audience.

The Dialectic of Local and Global Cai Lan often invokes family, childhood, hometown, and assorted personal experience to promote home-style cooking, reflecting a common trend among

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modern Chinese intellectuals who share intense cultural nostalgia while swept up in the maelstrom of modernization and globalization.5 Yet, he also integrates Confucian values, mercantile imperatives, and a form of cosmopolitanism that is, paradoxically, anchored in the local and personal. Through culinary literature and commerce, he fashions a dialectical relationship between the continuity of tradition and continuous changes in his presentations of “traditional” foods, by which the cosmopolitan and the local enrich and sharpen each other. Cai Lan’s varied views on food can partly be attributed to changing life circumstances. He divides his food experience into six stages. (1) In his childhood and teens, his mother’s and nanny’s cooking constituted his entire gustatory universe. (2) When studying abroad in Japan in his early 20s, he was forced by poverty to try cooking with the cheapest ingredients to imitate his memories of home-style cooking. (3) After graduation from college, he sampled different cuisines and learned cooking skills while traveling and working internationally. (4) After he more or less settled in Hong Kong in the 1960s, he ate out more and learned more about local culinary arts. (5) When he hosted The Iron Chef in Japan and traveled to Europe to produce TV documentaries, he ventured into even more international cuisines. And, (6) and last, starting in the mid-1990s he has been promoting traditional food by publishing essays, hosting TV shows, leading nostalgic gastronomic tours into mainland China, and opening restaurants in both Hong Kong and the mainland (Gu 2012, 28). Furthermore, Cai Lan adapts to his time and location to construct his own brand of culinary masculinity. A major tastemaker through various roles as restaurateur, food critic, TV show host, and author in Hong Kong, he has always drawn on diverse heritage, experience, and knowledge to generate authority. His contrasting strategies of aestheticizing “low” cuisine—or inexpensive, ordinary home-style food as opposed to high cuisine with exotic, expensive, or imported ingredients—while promoting cosmopolitan taste can be seen as a case of identity politics. In so doing, he can lay claim to authenticity while also performing open-mindedness, and thus construct a viable masculine identity in an ever-shifting and multifaceted Hong Kong society following the handover in the late 1990s. Cai Lan declares himself more “glutton” (chanren 饞人) than “gourmet” (meishijia 美食家) (2005b, 47–48). He claims that the only secret to food judgment lies in comparison and contrast: he, for one, likes to talk to food vendors and pays attention to what he eats. Moreover, he takes pride in his eclectic and adventurous personal taste, alleging that he eats anything flying in the sky except for airplanes, anything with four legs except for tables, anything hard except for stones, and anything soft except for cotton (Cai 2005e, 167–70). But he has also announced strong food preferences and dietary restrictions. He eschews 5. For a detailed discussion, see Huang (2003, 58–63).

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coffee, pineapple, and cat meat based on childhood experience and personal belief. While these habits seem instinctual and personal, he also professes several principles passionately. He dismisses baby bok choy (xiao tang cai 小唐菜), rice cake (niangao 年糕), potato, broccoli, konyaku (moyu 魔芋) as too bland and uninteresting. He finds the so-called “health foods” dubious in taste and in efficacy. He also categorically boycotts the following: vegetarian dishes masqueraded as meat; farm raised instead of wild caught poultry, fish, and shrimp; fast food chains; Eastern-Western fusion cuisines; and elaborately sculptured dishes. He denounces all of the above as “animal feed” (siliao 飼料), and calls for a return to the “natural” (tianran 天然) and “plain” (chunpu 純樸) (2005f, 191–94). What he considers “natural” and “plain” dishes must, first, use ingredients that have been gathered directly from nature rather than having been tampered with by humans. Next, they must be prepared in such a way that it not only preserves the original, even primitive, state of the foodstuff, but also highlights its flavor and texture. His pursuit of the local likewise reflects this ideal of the “natural” food. He favors local food because it would be freshly harvested at peak season, and can thus offer up its full-bodied, yet transient, flavor. Moreover, he promotes simple ways of preparation such as blanching in order to preserve the original flavor. Cai Lan actually self-consciously promotes traditional Chinese literati sentiments and values in his culinary writings. In an interview he admits that thanks to his father, the poet Cai Wenxuan 蔡文玄 (1905–1995), he was immersed in classical Chinese literature in his childhood and youth, and has been influenced most by short literary essays (xiaopin wen 小品文) authored by literati of the Ming dynasty. To this day he still reads those essays repeatedly and with great enjoyment. Following the examples of these literati-scholars, Cai unabashedly announces the meaning of life lies in “eating and drinking,” and his job is to “just enjoy life.” He also emulates their style by adopting short sentences and succinct but vivid descriptions in his own works (Chen 2007, 65). His privileging of “natural” and “interesting” foods in gastronomic writings likewise echoes not only modern intellectuals such as Zhou Zuoren 周作人 (1885–1967), who promotes “interest” (qingqu 情趣) in all forms of art (Zhou 2009, 753), but also premodern literati-scholars. For instance, Li Yu 李漁 (1611–1680 CE), playwright and author of Xianqing ouji 閒情偶記 (Random notes of leisure), considered vegetables freshly picked from the garden to be the most tasty of all foods, for they lock in the “true flavors” of the land and climate (weihan tugao, qibao shuanglu 味 含土膏，氣飽霜露). In Shanjia qinggong 山家清供 (Fresh offerings from a hermit’s home) Lin Hong recounts the story that Su Yijian 蘇易簡 recommended “frozen vegetable soup” (binghu zhen 冰壺珍) to the Taizong emperor 太宗 (598–649 CE) of the Tang 唐 dynasty (618–907 CE), and asserted that “whatever suits your taste at the time would be the most precious [tasty]” (shi wu dingwei, shikou zhe zhen 食無定味，適口者珍). In the same vein, Cai Lan argues that there is no “best

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food” thanks to individual tastes, but that the search for “better food” reflects a proper attitude: it demonstrates the value we put on our quality of life (2002a, 2). In appealing to personal taste and experience as the ultimate criterion while also viewing food as an essential part of happiness, Cai Lan echoes Yuan Mei and other literati in the late Ming and Qing, who promoted individualistic values such as xingling 性靈, or, “native sensitivity,” in contrast to conventional pursuits of fame, wealth, and power. Further, Cai Lan distances himself from the trendy group of LOHAS adherents: young, urban, and middle-class Chinese who promote “Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability .  .  . [advocating] the environment, personal development, sustainable living, and social justice.”6 He criticizes “health food” as not fitting for human consumption, and declares that rather than protecting endangered species, we might as well preserve endangered foods. He claims that since “many of our childhood foods have been disappearing all too fast, it would be an incomparable joy to sample traditional dishes. Who has the time to discuss what can or cannot be eaten?” (2005e, 170). Yet his advocacy for simply but individually prepared, light-flavored food using the best ingredients resonates with top French chefs as well as premodern Chinese literati.7 According to Bourdieu (1984), the tastes of luxury, involving the preference for smaller, bitter, lighter, and subtler flavors and portions, signal choice and restraint. Cai Lan thus symbolically gentrifies the everyday low cuisine by associating it with both Chinese gentry culture and Western gourmet tradition, while also aestheticizing it through a claim to moral high-mindedness and authenticity. Cai Lan reveals the constructedness of his masculine identity by elevating hometown food and home-style cooking to new aesthetic and moral heights in his pursuit for traditional foods. “Traditional” implies that food items are prepared using the same ingredients and processes as found in the homeland of the ethnic, national, or regional group, a principle that Cai Lan also subscribes to in his evaluation of Korean and Ningbo restaurants, among others. However, not only do different acceptable models exist for the same practice within a culture, the culture of any social group is in continual flux. Just as tradition is mutable and contingent (Fine 1989; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1984), so is authenticity. Authenticity arguably only lies in “its perception in the public mind” (Shelton 1990). It can be “staged,” for instance, by the tourism industry to cater to sightseers’ desire to see the life of natives as it is really lived, and share the lived experience behind performed scenes (MacCannell 1973). Not only do “authentic” objects often become a site of contention because of the dynamic nature of culture and tradition, authenticity also has a relational character. Just

6. http://www.lohas.com/, accessed September 22, 2014. 7. For example, see Gu (2012, 29), in which Cai Lan met a famous French chef and discussed what counted as “perfect food.”

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like other people, Cai Lan defines authenticity by associating it with his own social experience. In that authenticity only exists as a locally constructed folk idea or just registers personal experience, Cai Lan must cast wider for sources of authority, especially given his mixed heritages and “rootless” life trajectory. His evocation of premodern gentry taste links his gastronomic writings to Chinese cultural traditions. Similarly, his promotion of cosmopolitanism provides yet another anchor for individual identity. He has traveled far and wide for a taste of the local and traditional. He has also produced TV shows, run restaurants, and sold food to promote cosmopolitan taste. An entrepreneur as well as author, the whole world is on his plate for reasons more than cultural appreciation. Rather, he deploys cosmopolitanism as both a conceptual anchor and a business strategy. To the degree that culinary cosmopolitanism is a reflection of a general openmindedness toward new cultural experiences, Cai Lan performs the exemplary global citizen by creating a “global imaginary” through gastronomy (Phillips 2006). But more important, he has led food tours into Guangzhou 廣州 and elsewhere in mainland China (e.g., see Cai 2005g), and joined in the effort to assuage Hong Kong residents’ anxieties even as they tried to fashion modern consumerist lifestyles that simultaneously recalled a secure past. In his study of the revival of puhn choi 盤菜 (basin food), a form of “low cuisine” with roots in collective rural living in the New Territories, Sidney Cheung (2005) reveals that the identity crisis among city residents around the 1997 handover of Hong Kong materialized in various social activities including heritage tours and discovery voyages of local tradition. The search for a nostalgic past was especially well fulfilled through the consumption of “traditional” foodways such as puhn choi, which, in turn, prompted the food discovery voyages led by celebrities like Cai Lan. Cai Lan’s active promotion of locally based cosmopolitan gustatory taste through literature and business thus reinvents the traditional and repositions the local. Just as the commodification of traditional dishes such as puhn choi suggests, his strategy of combining the local and cosmopolitan succeeds because it can accommodate the multiethnic origins and diverse backgrounds of the people of Hong Kong, where, according to some, “consumerism and globalization converge,” “imitation is the norm,” and authenticity is of no major concern (Chan 2010, 223).

Chinese Masculinities in Transnational Contexts What does Cai Lan’s case tell us about Chinese masculinities in a global context? Above all, his way of constructing masculine identity integrates various strands of cultural influences, such as Confucian notions and modern individualistic values. Further, he also diverges from early twentieth-century radical Chinese intellectuals, who renounced Confucian cultural traditions in order to build a strong Chinese nation modeled after either a Western democracy or the Soviet

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Union. Most important of all, his example allows us to explore the construction of Chinese masculinities from a historical perspective, and to take note of both the continuity and remarkable shifts in sociocultural reality that have shaped and are continuing to shape expressions and representations of Chinese manhood. Kam Louie’s groundbreaking scholarship shows that Confucian traditions defined Chinese masculinity along class lines, allocating the literary, wen 文, rather than the martial, wu 武, quality, or brain rather than brawn, to the gentry class. A Confucian gentleman accrued moral and cultural authority, and constructed his masculine identity by producing gastronomic literature. Cai Lan similarly evokes literati sensibilities while emphasizing Confucian ethos such as filial piety and loyalty to friends in his writings (e.g., Chen 2007, 66). Yet he also integrates both premodern gentry taste and criteria of Western high cuisines, since his fondness of “natural,” “simple” food can be traced both to Chinese literati taste and French gourmet cooking. Both a literary figure and culinary entrepreneur, he effects an upward movement of traditional “low cuisine” by catering to prevalent cultural nostalgia and the Chinese middle-class’s desire to mark their distance from other social groups through the pursuit of the traditional and artisanal (Elfick 2011), and thus elevates himself from the role of male chef as a lower-class laborer in premodern Chinese culture to that of tastemaker and trendsetter in the contemporary Chinese-speaking world. Song Geng asserts that premodern Chinese masculinity was constructed mainly within a homosocial network rather than in opposition to women, and a yin-yang 陰陽 rather than female-male dichotomy was favored. In deriving moral and cultural authority from intertextual engagement, Cai Lan constructs his masculine identity by participating in the “homosocial network” of maledominated Chinese cultural traditions. Engaged in the nostalgia industry in Hong Kong through literary and media production and food service, he further rearranges the local and global, and the traditional and contemporary into a dialectical pair, and negotiates the local and global for self-representation and identity construction. Cai Lan’s masculine identity is therefore outside the lineage of radicalized modern Chinese masculinity. A radical male intellectual in early twentieth-century China rejected culinary literature in favor of patriotism and revolution, while often representing himself as the mentor and savior of oppressed, backward Chinese women. In contrast, Cai Lan has chosen a different path as a successful businessman. By turning his lifelong passion about food into consumable and marketable goods, he pursues monetary as well as cultural profit while also promoting modern individualistic values. As a result, Cai Lan’s food nostalgia is not locked into a particular national or ethnic group, but rather remains sensitive to the shifting sociopolitical trends in Hong Kong. He finds secure mooring in personal memories and multiple culinary traditions rather than in a single nation-building master narrative. He constructs his masculine identity by tapping into not only the male-dominated lineage of

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Chinese gastronomic literature but also the cosmopolitan image of Hong Kong as a vital global metropolis despite political and cultural fluctuations since its decolonization. Cai Lan takes issue with the media descriptor “Four Talented Man of Hong Kong” in an interview (Chen 2007, 66). He argues that the title “talented man” (caizi 才子) can only be bestowed on young men. In contrast, he regards himself a mature and learned man, who, like Jin Yong, illustrates the meaning of “talented” (fengliu 風流) by demonstrating a discriminatory taste and interest in culture rather than by indulging in promiscuous sexual relationships (ibid.). His masculine identity is thus premised on cultural capital rather than biological urges, reflecting both traditional Chinese designation of “high” and “low” masculinity and Western notions of class distinction. Ultimately, Cai Lan’s case offers us an opportunity to conceptualize Chinese masculinities in light of historical changes, allowing us to rethink, among other things, the prevailing Western gender theory of constructing masculinity against femininity. His example reveals that homely arts such as cooking can contribute to the construction of masculinities as well as or even better than “high” forms such as literature, music, or art.

References Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2002a. “Xu” 序 [Preface]. In Zhi chi banbao 只吃半飽 [Only eat to half-full], i–iii. Hangzhou: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2002b. “Zhuyou” 豬油 [Lard]. In Zhi chi banbao 只吃半飽 [Only eat to halffull], 61–62. Hangzhou: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2005a. “Baizhuo” 白灼 [Blanch]. In Cai Lan tan chi 蔡瀾談吃 [Cai Lan on eating], 15–16. Ji’nan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2005b. “Chan ren” 饞人 [Glutton]. In Cai Lan tan chi 蔡瀾談吃 [Cai Lan on eating], 47–48. Ji’nan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2005c. “Kanchu” 看出 [Can tell]. In Cai Lan tan chi 蔡瀾談吃 [Cai Lan on eating], 3–4. Ji’nan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2005d. “Ganxie” 感謝 [Thanks]. In Cai Lan tan chi 蔡瀾談吃 [Cai Lan on eating], 115–16. Ji’nan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2005e. “Shenme dongxi dou chi de ren” 什麽東西都吃的人 [A person who eats everything]. In Cai Lan tan chi 蔡瀾談吃 [Cai Lan on eating], 167–70. Ji’nan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2005f. “Siliao” 飼料 [Animal feed]. In Cai Lan tan chi 蔡瀾談吃 [Cai Lan on eating], 191–94. Ji’nan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Cai Lan 蔡瀾. 2005g. “Zengcheng lizhi” 增城荔枝 [Lychees of Zengcheng]. In Cai Lan tan chi 蔡瀾談吃 [Cai Lan on eating], 79–80. Ji’nan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Chan, Selina Ching. 2010. “Food, Memories, and Identities in Hong Kong.” Identities, 17(2–3): 204–27. Chang, K. C., ed. 1977. Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

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Chen Jing 陳靜. 2007. “Cai Lan: rensheng jiushi chichi hehe” 蔡瀾：人生就是吃吃喝喝 [Cai Lan: Life is just eating and drinking]. Southern People Weekly, April 11, 64–66. Cheung, Sidney C. H. 2005. “Consuming ‘Low’ Cuisine after Hong Kong’s Handover: Village Banquets and Private Kitchens.” Asian Studies Review 29: 259–73. Elfick, Jacqueline. 2011. “Class Formation and Consumption among Middle-Class Professionals in Shenzhen.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 40(1): 187–211. Fine, Gary Ian. 1989. “The Process of Tradition: Cultural Models of Change and Content.” Comparative Social Research 10: 263–77. Gu Wenhao 顧文豪. 2012. “Cai Lan: cong yinshi zhong kuijian women ziji” 蔡瀾：從飲 食中窺見我們自己 [Cai Lan: See ourselves in food and drinks]. Renwu, February 27, 27–29. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1984. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huang, Hsing-tsung. 2000. Fermentations and Food Science. In Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 6, Pt. 5, edited by Joseph Needham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huang Ziping 黃子平. 2003. “Guxiang de shiwu: xiandai wenren sanwen zhong de weijue jiyi” 故鄉的食物：現代文人散文中的味覺記憶 [Hometown food: Modern scholars’ nostalgia in their proses]. Hangzhou shifan xueyuan xuebao 4: 58–63. Lo, Vivienne, and Penelope Barrett. 2005. “Cooking Up Fine Remedies: On the Culinary Aesthetic in a Sixteenth-Century Chinese Materia Medica.” Medical History 49: 395–422. Louie, Kam. 2002. Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacCannell, Dean. 1973. “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings.” American Journal of Sociology 79: 589–603. Phillips, Lynne. 2006. “Food and Globalization.” Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 37–57. Shelton, Allen. 1990. “A Theater for Eating, Looking, and Thinking: The Restaurant as Symbolic Space.” Sociological Spectrum 10: 507–26. Song, Geng. 2004. The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Zhou Zuoren 周作人. 2009. “Liweng yu suiyuan” 笠翁與隨園 [Liweng and Suiyuan]. In Zhou Zuoren sanwen quanji 周作人散文全集 [The complete essays of Zhou Zuoren] Vol. 6, edited by Zhong Jingwen 鍾敬文, 752–55. Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe.

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Idealizing Masculinity through Representation of Fatherhood Negotiating Transcultural Masculinities in Dad, Where Are We Going? Lin Song

Introduction In October of 2013, Hunan Satellite TV (Hunan weishi 湖南衛視), one of the more popular networks in Mainland China, premiered its latest reality show, Dad, Where Are We Going?, or Baba qu na’r 爸爸去哪兒 in Chinese (henceforth, Dad) to spectacular effect: after the airing of just the second episode, the show became sensationally popular, topping ratings and attracting tens of millions of enthusiastic viewers both online and off. Practically overnight, Dad became the most talked-about topic in China, leading trending discussions on Weibo 微博, China’s localized Twitter, and generating countless commercial campaigns borrowing the “Dad” theme from the show. The triumph of Dad, which was based on a South Korean reality show, marks Hunan Satellite TV’s second successful attempt in adapting transcultural television formats, the first being the Chinese version of I Am Singer (Wo shi geshou 我是歌手), which was adapted from a show originally produced by Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation. Largely based on the format of the original Korean show, Dad features five pairs of celebrity fathers and their young children, ranging in age from four to six. In the show, the father-child pairs are required to travel to five different rural villages, spending seventy-two hours together at each destination. During their time together, they complete a series of missions—such as competing to win the best room to stay in where proper facilities are lacking, or being asked to search for cooking materials to prepare dinner with—during which heavy emphasis is given to the father-child relationships. At the time of writing (early 2017), Dad has wrapped up its fourth season and remains one of the most popular shows in China today. Its representation of fatherhood through childrearing, in particular, continues to shape people’s perceptions of masculinity and fatherhood in the Chinese society.

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This chapter provides a case study of the first season of the show, which functions as a basis not only for the show’s renderings of masculinity and fatherhood in contemporary China but also for its subsequent development and portrayal of men in the later seasons, which has continued to reverberate in Chinese society. Focusing on the show’s representation of masculinity in fatherhood, I identify a twofold, parallel construction, which I respectively call men as fathers and fathers as men. On the one hand, I suggest that through the heavy portrayal of loving fathers in childrearing, the show presents a new attractive and desirable masculinity ideal by means of hybridization of “pan-East Asian soft masculinity” (Jung 2009), which demonstrates the show’s efforts in reconfiguring conventional expressions of masculinity to create appealing male figures through the depiction of fatherhood. On the other hand, the show’s presupposed binary logic about gender roles also recapitulates the dominance of a bread-winning model of hegemonic masculinity and the gendered division of labor. Thus, even though the father images the show portrays appear relatively tender, articulate, and expressive in relation to the dominant scripts of masculinity, they are still based on a markedly traditional gender ideology. In other words, whereas the show expands on notions of Chinese masculinity, its portrayal of fatherhood as a whole remains ideologically conservative. Finally, I look at the show’s viewership to propose that its idealized and romanticized representation of manhood and fatherhood functions predominantly as compensation for the general absence of an active and desirable father figure in contemporary Chinese society.

Men as Fathers: Negotiating Masculinities from “Pure Man” to “Sunshine Boy” In her analysis, Ho (1987) describes Chinese fathers as “culturally conditioned to inhibit displaying affection toward [their children]” (232). As a result, “fatherchild relations tend to be marked by affectional distance, perhaps even tension and antagonism, in contrast to warm and close mother-child relations” (235). Dad’s initial dramatic tension is precisely based on such a stereotypical image of Chinese fathers. Early on in the first season, most of the fathers are depicted as awkward and helpless, and they are at a loss for how to act in their parental roles. However, as the show proceeds, it portrays a process of transformation for the fathers, in which certain characteristics of masculinity become softened and others negotiated and reconfigured through the representation of fathers striving to take care of and communicate with their children. I start out my chapter by investigating the show’s negotiations of fatherhood against the conventional scripts of Chinese masculinity with a close look at its portrayal of the three father-son pairs. By representing a softened and idealized version of masculinity, I suggest, the show signals a moving away from the traditional masculinity model through a transcultural reconfiguration of masculinity.

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Rethinking the “pure man”: Guo Tao and Shitou The actor Guo Tao 郭濤 (born 1969), who was 44 years old when the show was initially broadcast, was the eldest among the five fathers and was thusly referred to affectionately as “Brother Tao” by the show’s other fathers, who obligingly deferred to Guo’s leadership. Likewise, Guo’s 6-year-old son Shitou 石頭 was also the eldest among the children, and he became, in the eyes of the other children, their “little team leader,” generally taking up most of the responsibility during the tasks. Guo Tao and Shitou were regarded as the show’s “pure men” (Chun Yemen’er 純爺們兒) when the first season started, since they were believed to epitomize conventional masculinity. In addition to their seniority in age which contributed to their authority in the group of fathers and children, the “pure man” image is further based on an archetypical Chinese father-child relationship. In traditional Chinese conceptualizations of parenthood, the “strict father, loving mother” (yan fu ci mu 嚴父慈母) model exerts a dominating influence over people’s understandings of their respective parental roles. Guo’s “pure man” masculinity, likewise, is largely facilitated by his stern interactions with his son as an authoritative father. This is exemplified most aptly by an interaction in the first episode, when the crew travels to Ling Shui Village (Lingshui cun 靈水村) in suburban Beijing. Due to the limitation of bathroom facilities, Guo decides to shower Shitou in their yard with a hose. Throughout the shower, Shitou, in his underwear, keeps sneezing in the chilly weather. The scene is juxtaposed by another father’s comment: “It must be freezing to shower outdoors,” which clearly reflects disapproval towards Guo’s harsh approach to discipline. While other fathers appear more caring and concerned about their own children’s physical and emotional well-being, Guo establishes himself as a strict father preoccupied with his own conservative notions of behavioral training through hardship. Guo’s image as a strict father is reinforced by a more striking incident in the second episode. Shitou, because of pain in his fractured arm, meekly asks his father for help in feeding him during a group dinner. Infuriated by his son’s request, Guo forcefully pulls Shitou out of his chair and brings him outside to a nearby alley to reprimand him. With a stern look on his face, he warns his son that he resents such behavior because it is “utterly unmanly” (buxiang yige dalaoyemen’er 不像一個大老爺們兒). “Pain is normal,” he claims, “but because of insignificant amounts of pain you have turned into a baby. You are already a big boy. If you keep whining at me, I’ll take you out of this show right away.” Guo’s harsh tactics with his son stimulated heated discussions among viewers. While some felt that he was too strict with his son at that moment, many others saw Guo’s parenting style as typically Chinese, and as being effective in raising Shitou to be a “pure man.”

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Jankowiak (1992) observes in his study on father-child relations in urban China that “Chinese fathers .  .  . [believe] that their role should not encourage or tolerate emotional indulgence. They instead [assume] the ideal and expected role of a stern disciplinarian” (347). In Guo Tao’s embodiment of the stern father figure, fatherhood is conflated with a traditional sense of masculinity, since in his approach to childrearing attention is given almost exclusively to his son’s education and initiation of socially acceptable masculinity traits, which contributes to the maintenance and further reinforcement of hegemonic masculinity. The emotional aspect of the father-son relationship, conversely, is largely neglected, if not outright dismissed by Guo early on in the show. The “pure man” image, then, is associated with inarticulateness and emotional detachment, which is at odds with a loving, compassionate father figure. The discrepancies between Guo’s “pure man” masculinity and a desirable father image are more straightforwardly displayed in another scene in which Shitou laments his father’s stern discipline. During an interview between the host and Shitou about his father, Shitou is asked what he wants his father to change the most. Eventually Shitou reluctantly confesses: “Sometimes when he is angry, he gets really tough with me. I want him to change that.” As Shitou speaks, Guo’s real-time reactions are presented with a picture-in-picture video, which shows him nodding guiltily in agreement. The criticism of Guo’s way of childrearing becomes more obvious when the host continues with the question, “Do you think your father loves you?” This question leaves Shitou silent. After a few awkward seconds, finally he mumbles, “Perhaps sometimes.” And after another moment’s hesitation, Shitou concludes his answer: “When he overlooks me, he does not love me.” The shot transitions to a close-up of Guo, who is visibly shaken, crushed by his son’s comments. The unexpected power behind Shitou’s criticisms toward his father becomes a noteworthy moment of the show’s problematization of the traditional model of masculinity and fatherhood in Chinese society. Through Shitou’s direct call for a more tender and attentive father, the need to reconfigure the “pure man” masculinity is evidently highlighted. In the last episode of the show, when the fathers are asked to write a letter to their children, Guo affectionately reassures his son that “Dad loves you, cares about you, and wants to help you.” He admits that “I can be too impatient sometimes.” He notes emotionally that “I am happy to be able to share my thoughts over the last few months through this letter.” Guo’s final contrite, apologetic confession effectively confronts and contests his initial image of being the “pure man.” By way of juxtaposition with his earlier actions, it is made clear by the end of the show that the connotations of inarticulateness, emotional distance, and sternness associated with “pure man” masculinity hinder the formation of a loving and desirable father figure in the long run. In this sense, through the portrayal and subsequent problematization of Guo Tao’s “pure man” masculinity, the show rethinks the ideal of masculinity

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by stressing the ability to express one’s emotions and foster an affectionate fatherchild bond.

Negotiating metrosexual masculinity: Lin Zhiying and Kimi While the depiction of Guo Tao effects a rethinking of conventional masculinity, the portrayal of Lin Zhiying 林志穎 (born 1974), another father on the show, brings metrosexuality into negotiation with fatherhood. The Taiwanese pop idol and his adorable son Kimi were the show’s most popular characters after its premiere. By the time of the show, Lin was already in his late thirties and had been active in show business for over two decades. Throughout his career, he was known for successfully maintaining a “flower boy” (huayang shaonan 花樣 少男) charm. His boyish, innocent looks attracted many fans over the span of his career, earning him the affectionate title “never-aging legend” (bulao chuanqi 不老傳奇). Lin is obviously conscious about his young appearance, and actively promotes himself as a perfect example of “inverse aging” (ni shengzhang 逆生長). Lin’s androgynous appearance and narcissistic personality characterize him as a typical metrosexual man (cf. Song and Hird 2014). While the metrosexual traits in the show initially contribute to a loving father image, it is also revealed to be problematic and undergoes a process of negotiation to present a desirable image of masculinity and fatherhood. From the first episode of the show, Lin’s image as a father is that of a gentle and caring one. In sharp contrast to Guo’s parenting style, Lin looks after every detail for his son. When they get the worst room to stay in, for instance, Lin is quick in comforting Kimi; he even covers up the windows with used newspapers to shut out the brisk drafts. Such a tender image is enhanced further by Lin’s actions: In many episodes, he carefully makes Kimi hot milk and lovingly puts him to sleep with bedtime stories. After the first episode was broadcast, Lin’s childrearing way impressed a lot of viewers. On an online discussion forum, one netizen notably commented: “After watching Dad, I fell in love with Lin instantly. He is all I have ever wanted from a father. Kimi is so lucky to have him!” The post’s sentiments were echoed by another viewer, who confessed that she used to prefer stronger and tougher men, but was touched by Lin’s caring and thoughtfulness and began to like Lin’s image more (“Yiqian” 2013). Clearly, in the beginning of the show Lin introduces a softened image that is deemed positive by viewers. However, as the show proceeds, conflicts arise between Lin’s softness and his embodiment of the father role. When the missions start in the latter half of the first episode, it is soon revealed that Kimi is too dependent on his father to part with him and is therefore unable to participate in the child-exclusive missions. Lin, because of this, also has to give up his part in the father-only missions to accompany his son, who cries each time his father is not present. Kimi’s shyness and his overdependence on Lin sparked criticisms

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online regarding Lin’s way of childrearing, most of which were directed at Kimi’s lack of “masculine traits.” One post complained, for instance, “I genuinely think there is something wrong in Lin’s childrearing. Kimi is already four years old and he still appears so shy and spoiled. The four-year-old boy behaves like a little girl.” Another post agreed: “I also find it worrying to raise a boy like that. . . . Boys should be brave and outgoing. Shitou is a good example. I think Kimi would never be like this if he was raised by Guo Tao” (“Lin Zhiying” 2013). These comments underline concerns over Kimi’s androgynous traits. Moreover, they also suggest that his failure to raise a boy with masculine traits undermines Lin’s manhood. The viewers’ disappointment with Lin’s childrearing approach here is curiously linked to their judgment of his metrosexuality. Nonconformity with conventional ideologies of hegemonic masculinity, in other words, is believed to be detrimental to fatherhood. While Lin’s soft image presents a new face for fatherhood as caring and attentive, an ideal father figure imagined in the show nevertheless remains one with a conventionally masculine core, in which independence and moderation of emotional indulgence are highly valued. The tension between metrosexuality and conventional masculinity in fatherhood are further negotiated through Kimi’s independence toward the latter part of the show. For example, in episode six, halfway through a child-exclusive mission that Kimi refuses to participate in by himself, Lin decides to walk away to join the other fathers while Kimi is occupied, leaving him with the other children. Returning to find that Lin has disappeared, Kimi surprisingly does not cry or make a scene, but instead quietly goes back to working on the mission. This episode, featuring Kimi’s forced independence as the center of its narrative, marks a defining point in the change of Lin’s sense of masculinity, since it breaks the interdependence between Lin and Kimi, demonstrating Lin’s capability of carrying out the fatherly duties of educating and socializing his son. Additionally, it enables Lin to renew his homosocial tie with the other fathers by making it possible for him to join the tasks, such as fishing and home renovation, which are conjured up on the show to demonstrate a traditional sense of masculinity. Hence, Kimi’s moment of independence serves to negotiate and reconstruct Lin’s metrosexual “flower boy” image. Lin’s initial androgynous traits coupled with emotional indulgence are transformed to fulfill the expectations of a more conventional understanding of fatherhood. In short, Dad’s portrayal of Lin and Kimi showcases the negotiations between metrosexuality and hegemonic masculinity in the representation of fatherhood. While Lin’s softness has admittedly broadened the show’s outlook on fatherhood through the introduction of an affectionate and loving father image, it has nevertheless been characterized as problematic for its failure in establishing an unambiguous sense of masculinity, presumably one with a sterner character. Lin’s metrosexuality has therefore been negotiated and reconfigured to fit within a conventional understanding of fatherhood. The transformation of Lin

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demonstrates the show’s efforts in creating both a caring and masculine father image, which is ultimately embodied by another character on the show: Zhang Liang.

The “sunshine boy” and ideal fatherhood: Zhang Liang and Tiantian While Guo’s and Lin’s divergent approaches to childrearing and their portrayals of masculinity both arouse controversy among viewers, Zhang Liang 張亮 (born  1982) and his son Tiantian 天天 have received predominantly positive comments, making them the singularly most popular ideal father-son pair in the show. Loved for their sweet disposition and caring personality, Zhang Liang and Tiantian are affectionately called the “sunshine boys” (nuan nan 暖男) by viewers since they give a sunshine-like warm feeling to them. This “sunshine boy” image is mainly reflected in the pair’s outwardly expressive and intimately affectionate relationship. Their images are characterized most succinctly by one of Zhang’s comment in the first episode: “We two are good friends, and [we are] brothers for life.” Fashioning the father-son relationship as one of brotherly love, Zhang encourages more emotional communication between Tiantian and himself, whilst at the same time not compromising his role as the disciplinarian. This point is best illustrated by Tiantian’s reaction in a task wherein each child is asked to take care of an appointed egg alone, when someone else comes in to deliberately break it. The child’s own father, at this point, would return to confront the child about the broken egg to see how the child would react. When Zhang comes in, Tiantian, fearing that his father will be disappointed by the news of the broken egg, instinctively chooses to lie, saying that the appointed egg is okay and that it was another egg that was broken. However, when the knowing Zhang hints that the egg seems somewhat different, Tiantian relents, quickly admitting that he failed to take care of the egg and only lied so that his father would not be sad and disappointed. Then, remorsefully, Tiantian pleads with his father: “I know I did something wrong. You should punish me.” Tiantian’s reactions impressed many viewers, who praised him for being a good-natured and well-educated boy with a considerate heart. Tiantian’s behavior here epitomizes two key features of their father-and-son relationship. First, the action of lying to protect his father’s feelings shows Tiantian’s candid considerateness for his father, while the subsequent honest confession characterizes their relationship as loving and outspoken. Furthermore, Tiantian’s request for punishment from Zhang also reinforces the conventional role of a father as a discretionary disciplinarian. In other words, the relationship between Zhang Liang and Tiantian, while still based on a conventional father-son model, initiates changes in the perceptions of a desirable masculinity model. This is exemplified by one online post in particular, which stated: “I want a considerate child just like Tiantian. So I have

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to find a husband with a caring personality.” (“Kanle Baba qu na de Tiantian hu jidan” 2013) The emphasis on considerateness and caringness in the perception of an ideal man reflects changes in the understandings of masculinity. As the netizen-edited Baidu Baike 百度百科 (2014) entry to “sunshine boy” describes: “‘Sunshine’ means emotionally warm and psychologically understanding. The popularization of ‘sunshine boy’ signals that the society as a whole has new definitions for manhood. . . . Now, heavier emphasis is laid on men’s abilities to be empathetic and to communicate emotionally.” The term “sunshine boy,” brought to popularity by the portrayal of Zhang Liang and Tian Tian in the show, originates from the Korean term hun-nam 훈 남. The term was first introduced into Chinese in 2007 with the translation of a South Korean variety show, and it became more widely known after the protagonists in several hit South Korean TV dramas, such as The Heirs (2013) and Man from Star (2013) were tagged as “sunshine boys” (people.com.cn 2014). Much like the South Korean “sunshine boys,” Zhang Liang and Tiantian’s embodiment of the new masculinity ideal is based on their attention to emotional communication and their considerateness about others’ feelings. “Sunshine boy” showcases a reshaping of masculinity in the context of China, which is the outcome of both the show’s efforts in presenting an idealized father image through the negotiations between masculinity and fatherhood and a product of the “transculturation” of masculinity. Soft masculinity, as Jung (2010) observes, is itself “a hybrid product constructed through the transcultural amalgamation of South Korea’s traditional seonbi 선비 masculinity (which is heavily influenced by Chinese Confucian wen 文 masculinity), Japan’s bishōnen 美少年 (pretty boy) masculinity, and global metrosexual masculinity” (39).1 Likewise, it is discernible that Dad’s adaptation of a South Korean television format enables the show’s transcultural negotiation and (re)construction of masculinity. In particular, the show’s focus on father-child relationships inherent in its original format has necessitated an unprecedented emphasis on the emotional aspects of manhood and fatherhood, opening up space for reimagining masculinity. Combining the ideal of soft masculinity with the conventional understandings of fatherhood in the Chinese context, the show successfully constructs a hybridized version of masculinity that contributes to a desirable father image represented by the “sunshine boy” Zhang Liang. From the analysis of the three father-son pairs in Dad’s first season, it is evident that the show enacts active negotiations between fatherhood and various forms 1. Seonbi masculinity, much like wen masculinity, is a form of idealized masculinity in Korea that emphasizes scholastic achievement rather than physical virility (see Charlebois 2013). Bishōnen masculinity is a version of feminine masculinity popularized in East Asia by Japanese girl’s comics (see Jung 2009 and 2010). Metrosexual masculinity describes a domesticated, sensitive, and expressive masculinity that is believed to be in touch with a feminine side (see Pompper 2010).

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of masculinity. The hybridization and subsequent popularization of a caring and emotionally expressive soft masculinity in the show reflects that traditional scripts of masculinity have been updated and transformed through the show’s portrayal of fatherhood. In the meantime, however, it is also important to note that the show mobilizes and reinforces distinctly gendered dimensions of masculinity especially in its renderings of the father image. In the next part of this chapter, I probe into such gendered constructions of fatherhood by directing attention to the show’s representation of “fathers as men,” i.e., how the show’s portrayal of fatherhood encodes a power dynamic dominated by hegemonic masculinity. I will focus on the representation of the two father-daughter pairs, namely Wang Yuelun 王岳倫 (born 1973) and Angela, as well as Tian Liang 田亮 (born 1979) and Cindy.

Fathers as Men: Hegemonic Masculinity and Gendered Fatherhood While Dad has laid heavy emphasis on new forms of masculinity through its depiction of father-son relationships, the portrayal of the two father-daughter pairs in the show also plays a vital role in the overall representation of masculinity. For the father-daughter pairs, the fathers’ masculinity is notably dependent on the reinforcement of the authority of the father, which further perpetuates a conventional masculine/feminine hierarchy. I start my discussion of the father-daughter pairs with Wang Yuelun and his daughter Angela, who together invoke an archetypical image of a father/ daughter pair as well as expressions of masculinity/femininity. At the beginning of the show, Wang Yuelun is portrayed as a clumsy father without cooking skills or childcare experience, and appears completely at a loss in looking after his daughter. This clumsy image is further echoed by Wang’s poor performance in the tasks. Slow and non-athletic, he is almost always among the last to finish tasks and is seldom able to secure a first place. Overall, Wang’s style is emphasized by his nonaggressiveness and noncompetitiveness, which have been summarized by viewers as “dorky yet adorable” (chun meng 蠢萌). While such traits appear incompatible with a hegemonic model of masculinity, Wang’s role as a father and his relationship with his daughter Angela have served to negotiate and construct his sense of masculinity. Despite being the youngest among the children, Angela is cherubic, intelligent, and gentle. In one notable moment on the show, for instance, she impresses the audience by her active cooperation with the other kids in a mission where everyone went to villagers’ homes asking for groceries, during which she pats an elderly villager’s hand and says affectionately “you stay well at home!” The warm and gentle image of Angela is most importantly reflected in her relationship with her father. In spite of Wang Yuelun’s awkwardness in taking care

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of his daughter, Angela is always positive about her dad, complimenting the food he makes and showing considerable pride in his performance in tasks. In many ways, Angela’s image corresponds to the Chinese idiom that compares the daughter to a father’s “warm jacket” (xiao mian’ao 小棉襖), suggesting a daughter’s deep emotional connection with and worship of her father. As an online comment more explicitly put it: “Angela has fulfilled all my fantasies about what a daughter should be.” The sweet and loving daughter figure Angela embodies strengthens Wang’s status as a father through the reconfirmation of a father-daughter tie. More significantly, the father-daughter relationship also provides justification for Wang and Angela’s second-rank performance in the tasks by mobilizing the stereotype that girls are expected to be less assertive and competitive. As Lamb (1979) observes in his analysis of father-daughter relationships, “Traditional fathers . . . do not reward their daughters for achievementoriented behavior” (107). Since the discouragement of competitiveness for girls is regarded as an appropriate way of socialization, Wang’s weak achievements in the tasks become excusable and even acceptable. The consolidation of Wang’s masculinity and father image is more generally reflected in the show’s narrative structure for the father-daughter pair, which serves as a record of Wang’s efforts in becoming a good caretaker. From the start of the show when Wang is shown to be a completely amateur father to the end when he gradually learns to cook for and dress his daughter, the narrative of Wang and Angela is patterned as a story of maturation. In the last episode of the show’s first season, a montage of Wang and Angela’s earlier moments is shown in a clip along with an emotionally charged caption: “I give all I have in order to become someone you can depend on.” Obviously, Wang’s mastering of basic cooking skills and his accumulation of childrearing knowledge are depicted as progressive achievements that affirm Wang’s masculinity. Moreover, his eventual embodiment of a dependable caretaker image also reconfirms his fatherly role in the socialization of his daughter through the encouragement of conventional feminine traits. In other words, while independence is believed to be an indispensable element in the development of their masculinity for the boys in father-son pairs, for the girls, dependence is considered a virtue that contributes to fostering a submissive femininity. In this sense, it can be argued that the show installs a distinctly gendered perspective in its portrayal of Wang’s father image and the subsequent negotiation of Wang’s masculinity. Wang’s masculinity as a father is largely constructed and consolidated against his daughter’s dependent femininity. If Wang and Angela’s relationship can be regarded as more conventional, defined by an unskilled father and a dependent and devoted daughter, the representation of Tian Liang and Cindy involves more complex dynamic. Far from a traditionally sweet and delicate girl, Cindy is athletic and outgoing. She is always running fast, and is able to lift heavy groceries during the missions.

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Because of such characteristics, Cindy is nicknamed “wind-like girl” (feng yiyang de nüzi 風一樣的女子), “super-power loli” (guaili luoli 怪力蘿莉), and, literally, “man-like woman” (nü hanzi 女漢子), suggesting that many of her behaviors are not conventionally feminine, but rather consist of certain masculine traits. Therefore, unlike in the case of Wang and Angela, which evokes a traditional understanding of masculinity/femininity, for Tian Liang and Cindy, Cindy’s embodiment of female masculinity necessitates further negotiations for Tian’s father figure and masculinity. In the first episode of the show, Tian Liang admits that he is a young father. This comment is soon confirmed by his inadequacy in handling his relationship with Cindy. During the first episode, upon arriving in the rural village of Ling Shui, Cindy cries loudly due to her unpreparedness to part from the comfort of her home. Obviously embarrassed and overwhelmed by Cindy’s reactions, Tian appears completely clueless and helpless in trying to comfort his daughter. Eventually failing, the frustrated Tian complains: “Are you here to show how to cry?” In an interview following the scene, Tian admits that he thought about withdrawing from the show at that moment, believing that he would not be able to manage his daughter’s emotions. The moment of Cindy’s breakdown symbolizes Tian’s potential failure as a father, as he is incapable of providing a sense of security for his daughter or disciplining her when necessary. This crisis in Tian and Cindy’s father-daughter relationship is curiously resolved when Cindy joins in the child-only tasks and unexpectedly changes from a crying baby to a self-reliant and energetic girl who participates not only with high spirits but also actively offers help to the other children. On the one hand, Cindy’s transformation apparently helps to shake off Tian Liang’s negative image as a confused father. On the other hand, however, it also poses a challenge to Tian’s identity as a father figure: Cindy’s self-reliance questions Tian’s role as a father; he appears out of place by his daughter’s side. Throughout the show, however, Tian’s growth is presented as a journey in which he matures into a protector and a supervisor. In light of Cindy’s transformation into an independent agent, Tian claims that he has decided to “let her experience the ups and downs by herself.” Although Tian’s words seem to be a declaration of nonintervention, they do not imply his neglect of his fatherly duties. Instead, Tian adopts a different approach, in which he manifests a protective attitude toward his daughter. A clear example can be seen in the episode when the father-daughter pair goes sand skiing. When the adventurous Cindy eagerly asks to slide down the steepest slope, Tian allows her to do so despite his concern for her safety. As soon as Cindy starts sliding down, however, Tian follows her within a short distance, staying out of her daughter’s sight, in order to make sure that she will not be injured. Shedding his initial image as an incapable father, Tian becomes Cindy’s protector and supervisor, who takes up the decision-making responsibilities that serve as the ground for Cindy’s expressions

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of her personality. Cindy’s activity-oriented masculine traits, in other words, are only made possible by Tian’s consent and under his protection. Such authority and supervision are further asserted in an interview where Tian comments on his relationship with his daughter. Consciously posing himself as a disciplinarian, Tian reflects: “I am worried I spoil her too much. . . . I do not want to become her friend. After all, the father’s authority is most important.” He also discloses that he has changed his friendly tone when talking to his daughter, adopting more commanding phrases such as “you have to” instead of suggestive ones like “I think this or that would be better” (Li 2015). Tian’s deliberate stressing of his authority reflects his tactics of resorting to conventional conceptions of fatherly roles to (re)establish a hierarchical relationship with his daughter, thus asserting his masculinity as a father. A model of a hegemonic masculinity against a subordinated femininity is thus encoded. Therefore, although the portrayal of Cindy infuses more diversified gender expressions by way of presenting a nonconventional feminine image, it is still largely confined to a bifurcated dimension, in which archetypical understandings of gender roles are strengthened. While in its portrayal of three father-son relationships, Dad has incorporated new masculinities to produce a vision of transcultural and hybridized masculinity, through a close look at its depiction of masculinity in father-daughter relationships, it is discernible that in its negotiations of masculinity, the show perpetuates conventional notions of fatherhood that reassert a sense of hegemonic masculinity. In the last section, I will further discuss the cultural politics of the show by looking into two mechanisms underlying its representation: the installation of an urban/rural divide that is pivotal to show’s masculinity-affirming mission-accomplishing design, and the show’s idealized media representation of fatherhood as predominantly a compensation for the lack of desirable father figures in contemporary Chinese society.

Idealization as Compensation: Myth and Reality in Dad, Where Are We Going? In her discussion of reality TV as a genre, Feasey (2009) observes that reality TV programs “draw on documentary traditions, employ soap opera narratives .  .  . and engage with first person accounts” to “package particular aspects of everyday life as entertainment” (107). The primary selling point of reality TV, Feasey argues, lies in its “fixation with ‘authentic’ personalities, situations .  .  . and narratives” (107). From the previous analysis of Dad, it is not difficult to conclude that the show epitomizes many of reality TV’s chief characteristics and motives. Each father in the show, for instance, is represented as having a distinct personality and displaying a unique sense of masculinity. Moreover, the depiction of their relationships with their children is also skillfully edited to shape a progressive narrative in which both the fathers and the children experience

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growth symbolically. With Dad being a form of entertainment, in short, it is clear that the “reality” the show allegedly portrays is in fact fabricated. In the next part of the chapter, I will focus on the power relations underlying the show’s idealization through an investigation into the its reinforced and gendered urban/ rural binary as well as its viewership composition. A significant feature inherent in both the Korean and Chinese versions of the show is its design for the fathers and their children to travel from an urban space to a rural one. In the first season of the Chinese version of Dad, for instance, the fathers and children stay at five destinations, all of which are rural villages ranging from the suburbs of Beijing to snow-covered parts of Heilongjiang province (黑龍江省). Apart from the purpose of exploring less familiar places and environments, the urban/rural distinction also serves as the primary binary structure on which the show’s narrative is built. It not only reinforces the gendered dimensions of the internal/external arenas of home as feminine/masculine, but also displays the rural place as backward and primitive, thereby facilitating the show’s mission-accomplishing and masculinity-affirming structure. At the start of the show before the trips begin, a special lead-in interview is shown for each family. Set in the families’ urban homes, the interview typically portrays a cameraman greeted at the door by the mother, who then goes to wake up the father and the child, and who helps with their packing while giving last minute childrearing advice. The starting narrative of the show is clearly characterized by the distinction of two spaces: the urban space closely associated with home, which is maintained by the mother, and the rural space connected to the upcoming trips that are designed to be father-exclusive. The trip away from home, in other words, symbolizes at once an escape from the familiar urban environment and a diversion from the home space where mothers play a dominant role. In this sense, it can be argued that in its attempt to create a spectacle of fathers spending time alone with their children, the show perpetuates the gendered division of household labor. As an old Chinese saying says: “a husband should take charge of external matters while his wife should take care of domestic ones” (nan zhu wai, nü zhu nei 男主外女主內). Such dichotomization is reinforced by the show, which fashions the urban/rural distinction as first and foremost a distinction between the domestic and external arenas of home. The show’s narrative tension is further strengthened by the inconveniences and challenges posed by the poor conditions of the rural areas. The second stop of the show’s first season, for example, takes place in a desert where the fathers and children are asked to camp for the night, for which purpose the fathers are asked to pitch a tent. Since most of the fathers have never camped before, the tent set-up becomes a major task in the episode. In fact, most of the show’s missions are based on the specific circumstances of the rural place in which they find themselves, which are generally defined by a state of lack: the lack of well-equipped kitchens compels the fathers to work out how to cook, and the lack of prepared

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materials preludes the various tasks such as going fishing and competing for better ingredients. The representation of the rural space as poorly conditioned necessitates the show’s framing of a series of missions, which further contributes to the show’s design of predominantly outdoor and achievement-oriented activities. In their study of masculinity and childcare, Brandth and Kvande (1998) find that distinct from the mother’s face-to-face interactions with their children, the masculine way of intimacy is featured by “side-by-side activities,” in which the father stays and does things together with his children (301). The show’s rural settings evidently play an important role in its depiction of a “masculine care” specifically tailored for the fathers. Moreover, insufficient amenities in the rural places also effect the configuration of the fathers as the literal provider through their efforts of securing a place to live and preparing food for their children, thereby reflecting a clear model of bread-winning hegemonic masculinity. In her analysis of the show, Gui (2013) argues that the rural space is “[an] imagination constructed from an urban perspective” that serves merely as “a stage for the representation of father-child relationship” (102). While it is true that the representation of the rural in the show is marked by urban imagination, I would further contend that the depiction of the rural space is key to the show’s implicit gendered structure through its focus on outdoor activities and conquest over difficult conditions, casting a sharp contrast to the urban home that is portrayed as comfortable, yet confining and unchallenging. The dichotomy between the urban and the rural is closely associated with the opposition between mother/ father and femininity/masculinity, which reinforces the gendered conceptualizations of fatherhood. In short, the professed reality Dad portrays is notably controlled, manipulated, and artificial. By focusing on the show’s mobilization of the underlying urban/rural binary, I have suggested both that the distinctions between the two spaces symbolize and perpetuate the gendered division of labor, and that the constructed view of the rural space as primitive serves as a foundation for the show’s masculinity-affirming structure. In this sense, although Dad effects a reconfiguration of masculinities, it still maintains what Louie (2012) observes as a “very ‘hard’ and competitive core” (932) by reaffirming hegemonic masculinity through its mission-accomplishing design that reconsolidates the fathers’ bread-winning role. The seemingly perfect father image coupled with softened masculinity is predominantly a result of idealization. To unpack the underlying mechanisms behind the show’s representation and romanticization, I take a look at its viewership and argue that the ideal father images the show constructs are essentially a form of compensation for the absence of a desirable father figure in the Chinese society. According to a survey conducted by CSM (Figure 9.1), in the first season of Dad on both TV and the internet, the number of female viewers was significantly higher than that of male ones, with a majority falling into the age range

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Figure 9.1 Gender and age composition of the viewers of Dad

Source:  zhihu.com (2014).

Table 9.1 Internet viewer composition of Dad, October 2013 Properties Gender Marital Status Age

Percentage (%)

Target Group Index

Male

50.1

89

Female

49.9

112

Married

44.2

89

Single

55.8

110

Under 18

9.7

90

19–24

36.9

127

25–30

21.4

101

31–35

12.9

85

36–40

9.5

79

Above 40

9.7

79

Note:  Target Group Index for female viewers  =  percentage of female viewers watching the show/percentage of female viewers participated in the survey)  *  100, which means even though a larger number of male viewers have participated in the survey, female viewers are more likely to watch the show Source:  iresearch.com.cn (2013).

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of twenty-five to thirty-four. Another research by iVideoTracker (Table 9.1), a consulting firm specialized in online video viewership, reports similar results demonstrating higher concentration of female audiences, but with a slightly younger age range from nineteen to twenty-four. Based on the findings of the two surveys, it is possible to conclude that Dad is mostly enjoyed by young unmarried women and young mothers. As a comment on guokr.com (2013) remarks: “while married women may pay more attention to the interactions between the fathers and children, single women may probably focus more exclusively on the fathers, especially the fathers who know how to take care of their children.” In foregoing discussions, I have argued that a twofold construction is enacted in the show. On the one hand, it centers on “men as fathers,” in which it reconfigures conventional masculinity ideals through the heavy portrayal of affectionate and expressive fathers in childrearing that demonstrate hybridized soft masculinity; on the other hand, its simultaneous focus on “fathers as men” reconsolidates hegemonic masculinity as competitive and as bread-winning, thereby sustaining the gendered division of conjugal roles and domestic and social spaces. The twofold construction enables a dual idealization targeted at different viewers. For younger female viewers, the show actively draws on the appeal of Korean masculinities popularized by Korean TV dramas and K-pop that exert substantial influence on Chinese young women (Louie 2012), and has constructed a Chinese version of the soft masculinity ideal that proves more attractive than traditional modes of inarticulate and distant masculinity. Meanwhile, for young mothers, the show’s depiction of father-child relationships serves as compensation for the conspicuous inadequacy of fathers in Chinese society. In a five-year research project conducted by Peking Normal University and World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP), which involved more than one thousand Chinese families, it was pointed out that the absence of fathers is a common phenomenon in Chinese society. The survey observes that in more than 60 percent of the families, mothers play a leading role in childrearing, while the percentage recorded for fathers is less than 15 percent. These results are echoed in an internet survey organized by China Youth Daily (Zhongguo qingnian bao 中國青年 報) from 2009, which finds that among the 1988 participants, 60.7 percent agreed that fathers are lacking in their support for their child’s education in present day China (Wang 2013). In this sense, the show’s Chinese title “Baba Qu na’r?” bears the double meaning of “Dad, Where Are We Going?” and “Where Has Dad Gone?” which hints at this social reality. Despite the show’s claim to rethink the father’s role in childrearing, it is clear that the interactions between fathers and their children in the show have been highly idealized. As commentary on the show from xinhua.net (2013) says: It is easy for us to imagine such a scenario: During the night, a young mother, alone with her young child, is watching the fathers and children on TV at home, while her husband is working overtime in the company, or attending

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a social banquet, or maybe simply staying in the bedroom playing computer games—as the child continues to be without the father’s company. (“Baba qu na’r” 2013)

Indeed, a reexamination of the premises of the show would imply that most fathers would return to their packed work schedule after the show, leaving the children with their mothers once again. In many senses, the show’s representation is an artificially created illusion that capitalizes on idealized father figures for the entertainment and consumption of its viewers.

Conclusion Based on the adaptation of the South Korean format, Dad, Where Are We Going? reflects the extent to which masculinities are increasingly negotiated on a transcultural scale. The close attention to the emotional dimension of fatherhood encoded in the show’s format facilitates the audiovisual construction of an affectionate and caring father figure, which demonstrates a softened version of masculinity. The strong appeal of the “sunshine boy” image, which stresses emotional considerateness, in particular, signals the transformation of the ideal of masculinity in the Chinese context. Meanwhile, by probing into the show’s implicit logic in the representation of masculinity and fatherhood, I suggest that Dad is still based on a very conventional understanding of gender. Notably, all of the fathers on the show tended to assume traditional father roles in their negotiations of masculinity and fatherhood. Furthermore, their relationships with their children were also saturated by gendered ideologies of masculinization/feminization. I argue that the show’s gendered structure has been embedded in its configuration of the urban/rural binary as home/outside and ultimately as feminine/masculine, where trips with the fathers are designed in a mission-accomplishing and achievement-oriented structure that evokes a hard and competitive masculine core. Bai and Song (2015) point out in their analysis of Chinese TV that “televisual imaginations of reality” are often characterized by a “multilayered and fluid” ideological structure (6). Likewise, in my analysis, I have observed a doublelayered construction in the show’s representation. While the show’s portrayal of “men as fathers” has mobilized the popularity of Korean soft masculinity to create a new, transcultural masculinity ideal, its focus on “fathers as men” appears to perpetuate a conservative understanding of fatherhood that reinforces gendered dimensions of masculinity/femininity. Looking into the show’s viewership, I propose that the Dad’s overall purpose as a form of popular entertainment determined its romanticized representation, which casts a strong contrast to the dissatisfaction with men and fathers in Chinese society and thus serves as a visual compensation.

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While it remains difficult to predict how the idealized man and father figure in Dad would lead to actual social transformation in expressions of masculinity in general, it is clear that the show continues to exert important influence on people’s perceptions of manhood and fatherhood. Each episode of the show’s most recent third season in China, for instance, has ranked in the top three in viewership ratings. Moreover, from the second season on, the show’s efforts can be observed as becoming more transnational. While in the first season the five stops were all in mainland China, in the second season the crew travels to Taiwan and Australia, and, in the third season, a Taiwan-based American celebrity, Christopher Downs (Xia Keli 夏克立), is invited to be one of the fathers on the show. Although the scope of this chapter cannot cover the show’s later seasons, it is clear that the ongoing negotiations between conventional and new masculinities may well signify an evolving reshaping of masculinity and fatherhood in mainland China against a transnational and transcultural setting.

References “Baba qu na’r beihou de jiaoyu kunhuo” 《爸爸去哪兒》背後的教育困惑 [The education confusion behind Dad, Where Are We Going?]. 2013. xinhua.net. November 4. http:// news.xinhuanet.com/comments/2013-11/04/c_117989124.htm. Bai, Ruoyun, and Song Geng, eds. 2015. Chinese Television in the Twenty-First Century: Entertaining the Nation. London: Routledge. Baidu Baike 百度百科. “Nuan nan” 暖男 [Sunshine boy]. Accessed October 26, 2014. http://wapbaike.baidu.com/view/5077346.htm. Brandth, Berit, and Elin Kvande. 1998. “Masculinity and Child Care: The Reconstruction of Fathering.” Sociological Review 46(2): 293–313. doi:10.1111/1467-954x.00120. Charlebois, Justin. 2013. “Herbivore Masculinity as an Oppositional Form of Masculinity.” Culture, Society and Masculinities 5(1): 89–104. Feasey, Rebecca. 2009. Masculinity and Popular Television. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Geng, Song, and Derek Hird. 2014. Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China. Leiden: Brill. Gui, Xinxiang. 2013. “Dad, Where Are We Going? The Power Dynamics of Culture.” Creation and Criticism 179: 100–103. guokr.com. 2013. “Weishenme danshen nüxing ye ai kan Baba qu na’r?” 為什麼單身女 性也愛看《爸爸去哪兒》？ [Why do single women like Dad, Where Are We Going?]. December 27. http://www.guokr.com/article/437767/. Ho, David Y. F. 1987. “Fatherhood in Chinese Culture.” In The Father’s Role: Cross Cultural Perspectives, 1st ed., edited by Michael E. Lamb, 227–43. New York: Routledge. iresearch.com.cn. 2013. “iVideoTracker: shiyue Baba qu na’r qiangshi laixi nianqing weihun nüxing chengwei shoushi zhuli” iVideoTracker：10月《爸爸去哪兒》強勢來襲年輕 未婚女性成為收視主力 [iVideoTracker: Dad, Where Are We Going? Tops the chart in October, young unmarried women became the chief audience]. December 3. http:// iresearch.com.cn/view/221124.html. Jankowiak, William. 1992. “Father-Child Relations in Urban China.” In Father-Child Relations: Cultural and Biosocial Contexts, edited by Barry S. Hewlett, 345–63. New York: Aldine.

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Jung, Sun. 2009. “The Shared Imagination of Bishonen, Pan-East Asian Soft Masculinity.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 20. http://intersections.anu. edu.au/issue20/jung.htm. Jung, Sun. 2010. Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-Pop Idols. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. “Kanle Baba qu na de Tiantian hu jidan .  .  .” 看了《爸爸去哪》的天天護雞蛋 .  .  . [After watching Tiantian protecting the egg . . . ]. 2013. Tianya.cn. November 2. http://bbs. tianya.cn/post-funinfo-4732867-1.shtml. Lamb, Michael E., Margaret Tresch Owen, and Lindsay Chase-Lansdale. 1979. “The FatherDaughter Relationship: Past, Present and Future.” In Becoming Female: Perspectives on Development: Women in Context, 1st ed., edited by Claire B. Kopp, 89–112. New York: Kluwer Academic Plenum Publishers. Li, Chun. 2015. “Tian Liang: Learning to Be a Kind Father.” SWEEKLY, January 12. “Lin Zhiying he Kimi shi zui meiyou jiajiao de fuzilia” 林志穎和 Kimi 是最没有家教的 父子倆 [Lin Zhiying and Kimi are the most poorly educated father-son pair]. 2013. Tianya.cn. November 19. http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-funinfo-4783094-1.shtml. Louie, Kam. 2012. “Popular Culture and Masculinity Ideals in East Asia, with Special Reference to China.” Journal of Asian Studies 71(4): 929–43. doi:10.1017/S00219118 12001234. People.com.cn. 2014. “‘Nuan nan’ re ci yuan zi Hanguo” “暖男”熱詞源自韓國 [The popular phrase “sunshine boy” originates in South Korea]. August 13. http://world. people.com.cn/n/2014/0813/c1002-25460781.html. Pompper, Donnalyn. 2010. “Masculinities, the Metrosexual, and Media Images: Across Dimensions of Age and Ethnicity.” Sex Roles 63(9–10): 682–96. Project Papa. “Introduction to Celeb Papa.” Accessed August 26, 2014. http://project papaonline.blogspot.hk/search/label/Introduction%20to%20Celeb%20Papa. Wang, Yang 王楊. 2013. “Baba qu na’r: Zhongguo fuqin duo ‘shibai’?” 《爸爸去哪兒》： 中國父親多“失敗”？ [Dad, Where Are We Going? How inadequate are Chinese fathers?”]. New.qq.com. November 18. http://view.news.qq.com/original/intouchtoday/n2616.html. Xie, Dikui. 2013. Dad, Where Are We Going? Television. Hunan Satellite TV Hunan weishi 湖南衛視, October 18. “Xihuan Angela he xihuan Cindy de qubie” 喜歡Angela和喜歡Cindy的區別 [Differences between Angela and Cindy]. 2014. Tianya.cn. January 20. http://bbs.tianya.cn/postfuninfo-4963495-18.shtml. “Yiqian bu xihuan Lin Zhiying . . .” 以前不喜歡林志穎 . . . [I didn’t like Lin Zhiying before .  .  . ]. 2013. Tianya.cn. November 13. http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-funinfo-4766178-1. shtml. zhihu.com. 2014. “Weishenme bu zuo Mama qu na’r?” 為什麼不做《媽媽去哪兒》？ [Why Not Mom Where Are We Going?]. June 20. http://www.zhihu.com/question/21857926.

10

Just Fathers Negotiating Chinese Fatherhood from Afar Miriam Driessen

On the phone my wife used to say “please come back.” In fact my wife and my family are very poor. The life we enjoy now, she never would have thought we would come to enjoy. My salary abroad is quite high. . . . Initially my wife said to me: “Alright. Go. Maybe for one or two years, after that we have accumulated some savings and we don’t have to live in financial straits and poverty anymore.” She and I believed this at the time. I remember when I was in Ethiopia for two months, it was Chinese New Year. I received my salary of the first two, three months, which was what I would normally earn in one year. And so my wife called me, saying: “Come back quickly, we already have a lot of money. You don’t have to work abroad anymore!” In fact, my wife is easily satisfied with our situation. . . . She was already satisfied with our situation four years ago. I have been here for five years. Our life is not bad. Although our family is not rich, we can live a good life. If I quit my job and go back home, she would be very happy and supportive. She does not have a greedy heart. .  .  . She is not like: “Today I have fifty. Tomorrow I want to earn hundred.” She does not have this. .  .  . But I do have this. If I don’t think about the life of tomorrow, I might regret what I did today. She says that I am afraid what tomorrow will bring, or worried. Chinese men are all like this. If tomorrow something happens, and I cannot solve this [problem], that would be a very stupid and cowardly performance (wonang de biaoxian 窩囊的表現) [of me]. (Deng Chenghe, May 24, 2012)

Deng Chenghe1 moved to Ethiopia in December 2006, three months after the birth of his son. With the prospect of earning a salary three times higher than the one he received in China, he accepted, albeit reluctantly, an offer from his employer, a state-owned construction company, to transfer to Africa. After his departure he had in total spent less than a year together with his, now, six-yearold child. “Daddy, when are you going back to your Ethiopia?” his son had asked him when he just got back home during the holidays. 1. In order to protect the privacy of the men whose personal stories are told here, I have changed their names and occasionally altered certain distinguishing details about them, while retaining the inherent logic of their specificities.

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Deng Chenghe’s sense of guilt to be away from home, alongside his reluctance to reunite with his family, is shared by many Chinese migrant fathers I interviewed and spoke with in Ethiopia (2011–2012) and China (2013).2 His predicament reflects an internal struggle most (would-be) migrant parents encounter before and after migration, as they face (the consequences of) a crucial trade-off between different aspects of parenting, such as guaranteeing material well-being for the family and educational opportunities for their children or providing social and emotional care at home; as well as between different expressions of parental love (see, e.g., Zentgraf and Chichilla 2012; Coe 2011; Horton 2008; Silvey 2006; Parreñas 2005). Many parents across the globe, mothers and fathers alike, decide to forfeit domestic bliss by migrating overseas for a better, or in Deng Chenghe’s case more secure, family life in the future. Building on Susanna Fioratta’s (2015) observations, I argue, however, that Chinese migrant men’s decisions to move to Ethiopia are based on a complex constellation of self-awareness and individual aspirations as well as social expectations vis-à-vis the family and the community as a whole. Migration is both an individual and social endeavor. Surely, the betterment of family life and the advancement of future opportunities for offspring figure large in fathers’ motivations for migration to Africa, yet these motivations are not built on social (or family) duty alone. For many Chinese men in Africa—childless or with child, unmarried or married alike—migration is a way to achieve personhood and sustain masculinity in the face of economic developments at home and the fearful prospects of being regarded as lacking “ability” (nengli 能力). By temporarily migrating to Africa, young unmarried men are able to earn enough money to purchase a house, which, in China is considered an important step towards male adulthood (see Driessen 2015). Moving overseas for work allows married men with children, like Deng Chenghe, to present themselves as working towards being “able” men and responsible fathers of the families they leave behind. Patterns and practices of parenting from afar are context-specific (e.g., Zentgraf and Chichilla 2012). Nationality, class, education, and, particularly in China, rural or urban background, all factor into the ways in which migration, whether internal or international, is experienced by both migrants and their nonmigrant family members, as well as how challenges arising from family separation are 2. In this chapter I draw on narratives gathered during thirteen months of field research in Addis Ababa and northern Ethiopia from August 2011 to September 2012, where I lived with, and interviewed, Chinese employees of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private subcontracting companies from China mainland, and one month of follow-up interviews in China in 2013. Although they represent a broad cross-section of Chinese society, socially and geographically, the overwhelming majority of my interlocutors were men—unmarried or married, childless or with children—who came from various rural areas across China. Here, I predominantly refer to narratives of married men, who were commonly in their thirties, with children younger than ten years old.

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tackled. While taking issue with changing socioeconomic constituencies that drive Chinese men abroad in the first instance, I explore how perceptions of masculinity—a factor underestimated by migration scholars—play into the ways in which Chinese migrant fathers perceive and perform parental care from afar. Migration not only redefines institutional structures of the family, it also changes or challenges existing notions of (appropriate) parenthood and childhood (e.g., Horton 2008; Parreñas 2005; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991). 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 nonmigrant kin. “When you love your family, why do you choose to leave your family?” Deng Chenghe’s wife used to ask him in Skype conversations. Until recently. Now, if the question looms, they quickly change topics. Deng Chenghe’s inability to answer the question posed by his wife equally reflects changes in notions of fatherhood. He wished to be closer (socially and emotionally) to his son than his father had once been to him. In fact, the majority of fathers I spoke with yearned for proximity; their greatest fear being estrangement (moshenghua 陌生化) from their offspring. Nonetheless, they saw the provision of a sense of security and a safety net as a moral choice based on their masculine responsibility; even at the cost of physical separation. Co-residence in China was, however, held up high as the ideal to be realized in the future. Not now, though. While coping with socioeconomic challenges at home, Chinese migrant fathers, I show, hold flexible notions of fatherhood. These flexible and, by turns ambiguous and conflicting concepts of fatherhood, I argue, are tightly linked to fickle notions of masculinity in mainland China today, which sway between more manful, bold, brave and gallant to more feminine, gentle, tender and caring. In order to justify their absence from the everyday lives of their children, migrant fathers draw on more traditional notions of fatherhood, stressing their role of primary provider of the family. During periods of “intensive fathering” in the annual holidays or confronted with a child’s painting with “I love you!” on QQ,3 as one father illustrated, they yearned for intimacy and happily emphasized the importance of the emotionally involved co-parent, which, they regret, they failed to be.

Africa-Bound Chinese migration to Ethiopia took off in the end of the 1990s with the start of the first commercial road building project carried out by the Chinese state-owned 3. QQ is a popular Chinese chat medium.

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company China Road and Bridge Cooperation. Since, the influx of Chinese companies, both state- and privately owned, and migrants, predominantly men employed in positions ranging from engineers, technicians, contract managers, accountants to operators and cooks, has increased. The dynamics of this migration wave to Africa are, however, very different from the flow of professional and educational migration that started in the 1980s, and has continued in the 1990s and 2000s, to the West. Present-day labor migration to Africa is closely linked to shifts in China’s domestic economy, most notably a slowdown of the construction sector and the relocation of industries to other parts of Asia and Africa, and, as a result, a reduction of what traditionally count as (male) blue-collar jobs. The cutback of employment in the primary and secondary sectors, alongside the rise of the service sector, has led to the feminization of the workforce and shaken the once solid foundation of male worker identity. The growing informalization of the jobs that are left in the industrial sectors has, moreover, decreased employment security (Gallagher, Lee, and Kuruvilla 2011). In contrast to entrepreneurial migration to Africa, commonly organized through kin networks, following the “flying geese” pattern of migration (Bräutigam 2006; see also Dobler 2009 and others), as well as migration flows to the West, this type of temporary company-led labor migration is China-rooted and China-oriented (cf. Xiang 2014). Contrary to the “astronaut families” that developed out of a wave of relatively well-off migrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and later mainland China in the 1980s to countries such as Australia, Canada, and the US, families remain in China. Similarly, the futures envisioned by these labor migrants are situated in China. Much has been said and written about the (supposedly) patriarchs of “astronaut families” who, despite deriving masculine honor from their fidelity to the patrilineage, are known for eschewing domestic responsibilities (Waters 2010; see also Ong 1999). Irrespective of whether they fulfilled their family duties or not, these Westernized “cosmonaut fathers” boasted masculine pride and confidence and undoubtedly inspired generations of would-be migrant men in mainland China, who were struggling with their masculine identity. Belonging to a group of disadvantaged yet upwardly mobile and hardworking blue-collar workers, or recently graduated children of peasant or working-class parents, the migrant men I interviewed and spoke with in Ethiopia come from a very different background. Although starting from a relatively egalitarian basis, China’s market reforms have led to an unprecedented wealth gap and a rapid increase in social stratification, both in terms of income and security (Xiang 2014). In light of the idea that one’s position in society is a reflection of one’s ability and one’s ability alone, rather than unfortunate class origins, as was the case in the Mao era, or disadvantageous government policies, the fierce competition for (newly available) resources has left winners and losers who feel they have only themselves to blame. This assumption explains the hunger, or even basic need, for upward

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mobility that went hand in hand with the economic reforms. Yet, as many working-class Chinese are now facing the limits of upward social and economic mobility, feelings of frustration and injustice are growing. Owing to the lack of alternative avenues for upward mobility, migration to Africa is perceived as an alternative way to accumulate wealth, what is coined a “first barrel of gold,” to relieve the financial pressure at home and satisfy, albeit temporarily, a sense of security (Driessen 2016). The situation of Wang Taihe illustrates, however, that migration was also a way to achieve masculine respect in the face of a changing economy at home. Wang Taihe, a taciturn yet hardworking and bold 41-year-old mechanic from Shandong, was employed by a private Chinese company that produced asphalt on a road project in rural northern Ethiopia when I met him. With a sense of responsibility, Wang Taihe had taken up the “household chores” in his residential compound, which ranged from watering plants and removing weeds in the vegetable garden, feeding the dogs, kneading dough for mantou 饅頭 (steamed buns) and baozi 包子 (stuffed steamed buns), fetching water at the water station, and calling everybody for lunch and dinner. Due to his caring qualities, the asphalt plant team bestowed upon him the title of lao da 老大 (the eldest child, or the head of the group). Wang Taihe bemoaned, on more than one occasion, that his wife back in China earned more than three times his salary and had, consequently, become the principal breadwinner of the family, which created a situation that he felt rather uncomfortable with. His fear of being construed as a man who in some respects had lost out to the “weaker sex” reflects a certain gender anxiety that is pertinent in China. Wang Taihe’s gendered discomfort ultimately kept him in Ethiopia. He was not particularly attracted by his wife’s suggestion that he start working as a shipping agent for her company, an internet sales portal for cosmetics. His prospects for return, as his wife had painted for him, were, in his eyes, daunting. He would come to work for his wife in a company that chiefly served a female clientele. (The word for work he employed was dagong 打工, a slightly pejorative word, often translated into “working for a boss”.) A return to China would pose a threat, or a challenge at best, to Wang Taihe’s masculine honor. Moreover, his wife’s professional success painfully set off his lack of “ability” to “make it” in China. He was better off in Ethiopia, he grinned, with a sense of self-irony. A relatively high migrant salary helped him, at least partially, maintain what he perceived as the normal gender order and retain a certain sense of self-respect. Wang Taihe’s story not only reflects gendered anxieties, and the fear of losing masculinity, but also the quest for male identity or personhood as an integral part of migration projects. Masculine honor, in Wang Taihe’s case outweighs his desire to be with his wife and teenage daughter in China. Earning respectability as a blue-collar worker has become harder in present-day Chinese society. Migrants often contended that they would stay in China after the annual

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holidays. Everyone who told me this, however, returned to Ethiopia in the end. The Chinese engineers who left for Africa in the 1970s through 1990s as part of government-led aid missions commonly went for fixed terms of two, or at most three, years. Upon return to China they continued working for the same company in the same sector. Due to the saturation of China’s construction industry, the integration of Chinese engineers and workers in the construction sector has become harder, albeit not impossible. However, these migrants would have to compromise on a lower salary, or worse, risk (temporary) unemployment. Due to their limited education and work experience that would be deemed fit and employable in a deindustrializing economy, and in a climate of increasingly casual employment, these workers were neither guaranteed a decent, nor a stable job upon their return to China, something they hankered for. Returning to China could thus mean a loss of virility, or a sense thereof, and potentially put their masculinity at risk. Remaining in Ethiopia equally put strain on Wang Taihe’s relationship with his family. Once in a while Wang Taihe gave in to his sexual desires and went with colleagues to town to “look for women,” as they, somewhat euphemistically, referred to visits to local prostitutes. Apart from this occasional indulgence, he remained abstinent. Wang was however anxious about his wife’s fidelity, and feared, like other fathers, estrangement from his child. June Hee Kwon (2015) demonstrates how long-term transnational relationships are sustained through the continual flow of remittances, in which cash comes to symbolize spousal and parental love. The care of remittances on both ends of the remittance chain is a crucial part of this process of conversion, as it symbolizes the shared responsibility for the future of the family. An interruption of a remittance flow can implicate the loss of affect. Now that Wang Taihe’s salary no longer constitutes a significant part of the household income, his contribution to the future of the family has become minimal. His wife’s dependence on him has decreased, and so has, he fears, her love for him. The same holds true for the relationship with his daughter. These fears did however not weigh up against the fear of losing masculine respect or face. Rather than a trade-off between different aspects of parenting, Wang Taihe’s decision to stay in Ethiopia is the result of a balancing act between his own quest for respectable personhood and masculinity, and his desire to be closer to his family members.

Masculinity, Fatherhood, and Respect Deng Chenghe’s sense of paternal duty is captured by his fear of striking what he calls a wonang 窩囊 performance, would he be unable to provide for his family members in the event of adversity. Feeling wonang implies a loss of face, or social respectability in regard to the self, the family, and in his eyes, the larger community. Owing to the centrality of the (state-sanctioned and heteronormative)

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family in China today, masculinity, including masculine respect and honor are to a large extent formed in relationship with members of kin. Failing to fulfil the concomitant roles as son, husband and father would put Deng Chenghe’s masculine honor, and ultimately, his masculine worth, at risk. Overseas migration at once weakens and strengthens the (patriarchal) ideal of the male jiazhang 家長 (head of the family). While their absence from daily family life diminishes their position of power and hampers their role as educators imparting discipline on the children, Chinese migrant fathers are able to sustain the conventional gender division of the man as breadwinner and the woman as homemaker; a situation they were unlikely to sustain in China, where low salaries and informal employment have gotten the upper hand in the industrial sectors in which they were, or would come to be, employed. Note that Deng Chenghe juxtaposes his own ability to look ahead in the future and take control over the fate of the family, to the inability of his wife to do so. In his eyes his partner lives, rather naively, by the day. Instead of holding this against her, he refers to his own responsibility to “think about tomorrow.” In fact, the very reason for Deng Chenghe wanting to earn one hundred tomorrow, instead of the fifty he earned today, was to gain security, financial and emotional, rather than become rich and acquire social prestige. This fear of not being able to provide for the family is linked to a profound and pertinent sense of insecurity that is symptomatic for many Chinese blue- as well as white-collar workers today, and is linked to rapid economic growth and radical sociopolitical transformation. The sense of security my interlocutors felt they lacked was however hard to satisfy. Since Deng Chenghe left for Ethiopia, he had purchased two residential properties and commercial real estate in his hometown in Heilongjiang province, and was toying with the idea to buy a third house. Despite his relative wealth, he has been unable to assuage his anxiety described above. The lack of the immediate need to win bread, however, made the question “When you love your family, why do you choose to leave your family?” even harder to come to grips with. For one thing, the lack of a sense of security could not be satisfied at home. Having occupied respectable positions and earned decent salaries prior to migration, men like Deng Chenghe moved to Africa not because of a shortage of employment opportunities per se, but a lack of long-term security (see Xiang 2014). The gendered nature of family security in China today has come to weigh heavily on the shoulders of men; both fathers with families and single men who seek to provide for a family in the future. Men are being assigned the role (or assign themselves the role) of the providers of a feeling of security. On the other end, the women and children are construed as the receivers of a sense of security. This is what many Chinese men sigh is the “reality” (xianshi 現實) of presentday Chinese society. Migrating to Africa is therefore, in their eyes, a masculine price, or toll, to pay. This strong sense of masculine responsibility is linked to

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shifts in gender configurations and practices in post-reform China, including a reemphasis of masculine qualities like virility and toughness of men and fathers. Traditional ideals of “the man goes out to work, while the woman looks after the house” and the “good wife and caring mother,” which were denounced under Mao Zedong, as they were believed to promote the narrow interests of the home over the collective interests of the society, have regained credence. While Deng Chenghe’s decision to migrate for work is on par with the Confucian ideal of the father as breadwinner, it rests uneasily with the desire to perform the role of emotionally involved caregiver and co-parent at home; an ideal that is not only inspired by Western-influenced concepts of fatherhood, elaborated on below, but also harks back to Maoist ideas of gender equality and democracy in the domestic sphere (see Barlow 1991). Since the denouncement of absolutistic paternal authority, which started as early as the May Fourth period in the 1920s and 1930s, when Confucian values became the target of concerted attacks by intellectuals and, again, with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 and the promotion of equality between the sexes, the distance between fathers and their children has decreased significantly. Communist campaigns targeted the absolute power of the male head of the family and were aimed at liberating women from their inferior position in traditional patriarchal society and encourage their integration into the workforce. Party policies, which are said to have led to the emergence of the unisex ideal (Evans 1997; Honig and Hershatter 1988), implied a certain masculinization of women; not necessarily the feminization of men. At the wake of the economic reforms, starting in the end of the 1970s, existing gender conventions were, again, turned upside-down. Gender politics entered a period which has been coined yinsheng yangshuai 陰盛陽衰 (the flowering of femininity and the decline of masculinity) (Fan Yang cited in Louie 2002, 84). Supposed to eradicate the “unnatural gender politics” of the Mao era, the economic reforms, Lisa Rofel argues, bore an important sexual dimension. “Women are said to have become too masculine, while men were unable to find their true masculinity” (Rofel 2007, 13). The reform period marked a new interest in the display of the feminine. Women were to become gentler; more feminine (Croll 1995, 151). Men, on the other hand, were to recoup their masculinity. Their supposed failure to do so, in a period which saw an influx of representations of strong Western men and more assertive demands by (urban) Chinese women, culminated into a “crisis of masculinity” (e.g., Hird 2012; Louie 2002). The past decades have been characterized by waves of anxiety over the lack of virility and “ability” (nengli) (Farrer, 2002, 16) interspersed with periods of growing confidence for men. Chinese masculinities have become more hybrid, as Geng Song (2010) has suggested; representations of fatherhood seem to have too. By turns, Chinese talk about women who ought to return home to perform their role as

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housewives (Zhang and Sun 2014, 126), and fathers who ought to return home more often instead, and become more involved in daily child care. Although some spouses of migrant men, such as Wang Taihe’s wife, work, most partners stayed at home to look after the often single child and grandparents. The income of migrant fathers was usually enough to sustain a whole family. Patrilocal residence was still common among migrant men who had grown up in the countryside or in towns in rural regions. Spouses were sometimes reprimanded for working on the side. One migrant worker from Anhui told me about his wife who insisted working on a construction site nearby their home: “I won’t send her money anymore, if she keeps working! .  .  . But she doesn’t listen to me,” he muttered. Deng Chenghe understood why his wife held on to her part-time job as chemist in a hospital laboratory, although he told her to quit her job. By emphasizing their role as financial providers and downplaying their role as caregivers in the everyday lives of their children, migrant fathers assume a redefined notion of a more traditional, and arguably more masculine notion of fatherhood. This heightened version of male authority is reminiscent of what Parreñas coins the “parodic performance” (2005; 2008) of Filipino migrant fathers, who, in order to compensate for their absence, “portray themselves as exaggeratedly domineering authorities as their way of adjusting to being denied by geographical distance to perform their gender-ascribed duty as the disciplinarian of the family” (2005, 6). Rather than adjusting their performance of fathering to satisfy needs created by distance, Parreñas argues, migrant fathers insist on sustaining gender-normative views of parenting. Parreñas’ concept of the “parodic performance” however fails to account for the unsettling discrepancy between aspirations and actual conduct, and the ambiguity thereof in the case of Chinese migrant men. Also, I did not find evidence of heightened displays of authority, at least in the ways men talked about their families and the time spent with them in the holidays. Instead, migrant fathers showed considerable concern for their children’s emotional well-being and were affected and, at times distressed, by the process of separation. The majority wished to be involved in affective care. Employing flexible notions of “just” fatherhood, migrant men did however emphasize the importance of their part and contribution to the household income and future life, yet chiefly to justify their move abroad.

Compensation of Communality Migration can be a “guilt-inducing process” (Carling, drawing on Ghassan Hage 2008, 1457–58), as migrants continue to be embedded in the moral economy of the community they depart from or the family they leave behind. Repaying what Ghassan Hage terms the “gift of communality” (Hage, in Carling 2008, 1457) by

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active participation in communality and regular communication and exchange is a crucial part of social life and belonging. By the virtue of one’s membership of the community or the family, one remains in debt, repaying small instalments (social, material or symbolic) throughout one’s life, irrespective of whether one is physically present or absent. Upon departure to another country, transnational practices or “kin work” as di Leonardo (1992) has coined the active maintenance of kin relations through, for instance, phone calls, written or visual correspondence, remittances (money sent in payment or as gift) and visits, come to substitute for repaying the debt incurred by the moral economy of social belonging. In situations of long-term family separation the “gift of communality” can equally be understood as “compensation of communality,” as migrants feel they ought to compensate for the sorrow and distress they inflict on their nonmigrant kin, who are forced to be involved in the, at times cumbersome, act of waiting (cf. Kwon 2015). Plagued by a guilty conscience, Chinese migrant fathers in Ethiopia regretted being absent from the youth of their children, as they phrased it. The willingness, and occasionally, sense of urgency, to compensate for their move away from home testifies their recognition for the “loss” or “suffering” of family members they left behind. The loss and suffering were compounded by the lack of intimacy, moral support, and paternal guidance in the broadest sense of the word. The aspects of parenting migrant men sought to compensate from a distance or during the annual holidays, were typically those aspects associated with the emotionally involved father capable of co-parenting, taking up routine child care tasks commonly carried out by mothers and grandparents. Migrant fathers typically entered periods of “intensive fathering” during the annual break, which was usually spent at home. During previous holidays, Deng Chenghe attempted to take on a large part of his wife’s caring and household tasks, including cooking, grocery shopping, and bringing and fetching his son to and from school, only to find out that these tasks alone were terribly exhausting. “And my wife also works on the side!” he cried. However, “intensified fathering” during the holidays and the contact maintained through weekly Skype calls were unsatisfying. “On the phone he would say ‘Daddy, when are you coming home? I would like you to come home!’” Deng Chenghe explained. But when he returns home, he finds that his son has grown unaccustomed to his presence. “He is no longer used to this anymore. It is like there is a stranger in the house. I come across to him as new and odd (xinqi 新奇)” (May 24, 2012). The fear of “estrangement” from children—more so than from spouses—loomed large in migrant narratives. Grueling rumors went about one father who returned to China after having spent three years of work in Ethiopia to find that his young son did not recognize him as his father anymore. Many interlocutors expressed a longing for proximity and intimacy, or what they described as simply “being with” their children. Intimacy, as encompassing

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“feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness one experiences in loving relationships” (Sternberg 1986, 119), is traditionally seen as part of maternal care. Depicted as a man of superior self-cultivation and discipline, the traditional Chinese father is to refrain from becoming emotionally involved with his children. Migrant narratives indicate a clear shift away from this (patriarchal) type of father. Upon my question on what they felt they missed out on in particular, one interlocutor evoked the romantic image of the father who picks up his daughter from school: Many Chinese parents . . . it might be the same in Europe and North-America .  .  . On the child’s first day at school they wish to accompany the child to school. My daughter is still young. When she finished kindergarten and went to primary school, in the process of her growing up, it could be that her parents drag or pull her hand, and bring her to school. I have not participated in this process. One time, when I was back in China for holidays, I brought her to school and picked her up as well. My daughter was very excited. She was thrilled. “Dad has come. Dad has come!” She turned to her classmates and flaunted to them: “My father has come to pick me up! I have a father.” She said: “I have a father.” (June 11, 2012)

This episode had remained with him, as it painfully illustrates his absence from family life, at least as it was perceived by his daughter. Much like fathers are absent from their children’s lives, children are absent from their fathers’ lives. Photographs of sons and daughters were carried along to Africa, and proudly shown to colleagues and the foreign ethnographer. During the holidays one of my interlocutors took his wife and daughter on a trip to Guilin. These joyful moments were recorded, cherished, and saved on mobile devices. He showed me a short video of his daughter enjoying her meal at KFC, tucking chicken nuggets into her greasy mouth. All her attention was devoted to the snacks in front of her, instead of the questions her father was raising, which she answered with playful disinterest. One electrical engineer I interviewed in Addis Ababa carried with him in his see-through key fob a tiny photograph of his daughter taken in Beihai Park in Beijing on a winter day. Migrant fathers held they also fell short of acting as a (masculine) example for their child. One common fear was that, in their absence, children—especially sons—would develop a feminine personality. Chen Xiaoli, a 32-year-old draftsman from Sichuan, contended: “I fear it [my absence] will affect my son’s personality. If a child is raised by his mother alone, especially in the case of boys, . . . his character might turn soft [sic]. I take him swimming. I hope my son becomes more masculine, despite the fact that I am not very manly (nanzihan 男子漢) myself (laughs)” (May 16, 2012). Fears of this kind are not unique to Chinese migrant fathers. Typical, however, is that this draftsman hoped that his son would become more masculine than himself, which speaks to the still common

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wish of Chinese men to enhance their masculinity; if not their own masculinity then that of their son. Fathers I interviewed also felt sorry for the fact that they failed to show their children—again, especially sons—the outside world (waimian de shijie 外面的世 界). This idea is linked to the role of the father as educator and hinges on male child care, which is typically expressed in ways of “being together and doing something together” (Brandth and Kvande 1998, 301). The father, who conventionally has stronger ties to the world outside the home, takes his child into this world. An important part of masculine care is teaching offspring to be independent and protect themselves against the dangers of the outside world. During their annual break of one or, occasionally, two months, fathers frequently took their children out to undertake “manly” and often physical activities, such as swimming, hiking and travelling. Chen Xiaoli took his son on travels to Nanhai last time he was at home, to show him the sea. The sense of self-reproach for being absent expressed by migrant fathers testifies to the idea that fathers hoped to conform, at least to a certain extent, to the father role of involved caregiver in the everyday lives of their children. This, at times fervent, yearning is not only linked to fathers’ ideas about (proper) fatherhood, but equally draws on notions of childhood, inspired by Western representations mediated by Hollywood movies or domestic reproductions thereof, as much as changing concepts of childhood in China, partially in response to the national debates on “left-behind” children in rural regions. Indeed, it is hard to explore the construction of imaginaries, as these are often built unconsciously and are contingent on a plethora of influences. Here, I discuss in brief Western concepts of the “new father” and “commercial” childhoods as well as domestic fears of “lost” or “failed” childhoods of left-behind children in connection with the state’s concepts of family, which have potentially influenced migrants’ notions of fatherhood. The idea of the “new father” (Wall and Arnold 2007) was born in the West in the 1970s and 1980s, when more and more mothers entered the workforce and women’s emancipation movements enjoyed high tide. What was coined the “new father” was portrayed as a more emotionally involved and nurturing father who was capable of co-parenting and sharing “the joys and work of care giving with mothers” (ibid., 509). Although actual fathering conduct has failed to keep pace with this ideal (LaRossa 1988), these new representations have certainly left a trace in regard to the imagination and construction of modern fatherhood. Along with the growth of wealth in the West, notions of childhood have altered too. Bourgeois images of idyllic childhoods free from want, commonly inspired by the suburban American dream, proliferated by Western (mainly US) media, have been said to play an important role in sustaining transnational migration (Horton 2008). Chinese migrant fathers equally strived to materialize this type of ideal childhood (Horton 2008; see also Anagnost 1997, 124–25). Their decision to

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move to Africa for work was often, at least partially, based on the wish to attend to the material needs and future opportunities of the children and a desire to live up to and realize (or materialize) these very ideals of an idyllic childhood free from want. Yet these childhoods were attainable only at a price of having to forfeit domestic bliss, at least temporarily. Instead, the fear to have bereaved their child of a “proper” youth loomed large. Recent concerns about China’s left-behind children, in response to horrific accidents and suicides of children in the remote rural areas, have only added fuel to the anxiety surrounding childhoods that leave much to be desired. The number of left-behind children in China, which is estimated to have reached 58 million (Ye and Lu 2011, 358), is an outgrowth of more than three decades of rural-to-urban migration, in combination with administrative restrictions for rural residents on permanent settlement urban areas. The childhoods of these children, and many others who reside with their parents in the cities and are denied proper education, have been viewed as “lost” or “deviant.” Since family planning has been a concern of the Chinese partystate, long before the implementation of the one-child policy in 1980, the ideal of the family (jia 家) promoted by various government campaigns typically consists of the three-generation household (children, parents, and grandparents) who, ideally, reside in one place. Transnational practices enhance the commodification of intimate relations (Constable 2009), as love, for better or worse, is converted into remittances and digital expressions of affection. The recent wave of Chinese migration to Africa has paralleled major shifts in communication and information technologies. Chinese migrants have built the very communication infrastructure (internet and telephone), which allows them to stay in contact with their nonmigrant kin at home. These migrants, together with local elites have been the first ones to use this new infrastructure, especially in remote rural areas. At the time of research, migrants used QQ and Skype to chat and make free phone calls to their family members at home. Nowadays, the introduction of WeChat, the Chinese equivalent of Facebook, facilitates communication to an even greater extent. Skype and WeChat have fully replaced cheap telephone calls (cf. Vertovec 2004). Communication was, however, significantly hampered by a seven-day work week and a time difference of five hours. Apart from long-distance communication, “kin work” is also based on the exchange of remittances. Money in payments or gifts, remittances have been described as a misleading and “dubious medium of affection and support, forcing families to be separated for long periods of time” (Kwon 2015, 482). They make promises of a better life in the future which may never be materialized. Moreover, remittances such as gifts are only credible or effective when a certain base of affection already exists, as illustrated by Chen Xiaoli’s story:

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He [my son] will ask me to buy toys for him. He says: “Daddy, I have seen a remote control motorbike. You will buy it for me, alright?” I will say “alright.” When I went back home at that time in 2007, he had not seen me yet. When I came back he was ill, lying in the hospital. He was sleeping. My wife told me to wait until he woke up. When he woke up he called me “daddy.” I had sent photographs of me to my wife. She told him “this is your father.” At first my son used to call every man “father.” This situation might not happen in your country, it would be unimaginable. If a woman gives birth to a child, surely the father will be close to her. (May 16, 2012)

Chen Xiaoli’s son was born in May 2006. At the time he was working for a private construction enterprise on a road project in Tanzania, and his boss urged him to wait until the rainy season to return home. Consequently, and regretfully, Chen Xiaoli failed to witness the birth of his son. Chen Xiaoli’s wife lives back in his hometown Zhongjiang in Sichuan. She used to work as accountant when he met her, yet resigned when she became pregnant with their son. Apart from taking care of their son, she assists her parents-in-law with running a real estate agency. Chen Xiaoli’s situation was not uncommon. Migrant men were reluctant to ask for leave to witness the birth of a child, especially in the dry season, when the road works were running at full steam. Would he insist to go back to China to witness the birth of his child or express discontent, he would have to pay a financial penalty or risk promotion opportunities in the future, he explained. At the end of this epigraph Chen Xiaoli pits his own situation against what he perceives as the Western father who is, ostensibly, in proximity to his family members. His eagerness to fulfil his son’s desires, such as buying him the remote-control motorbike, is also on par with the commodification of intimacy in practices of parenting from afar. In situations like this gifts, such as toys, become the currency of love and hope that comes to replace parental affection, and create the idea (or illusion) of a better childhood in the future (see Horton 2008). Yet again, these material items can be very illusive, especially when children have not spent any quality time with their fathers yet, achieved by co-residence. Fathers were painfully aware of this. Fathers desire to participate in, arguably, more maternal tasks of child care, stood in sharp relief against their emphasis on their role as breadwinners, which can be interpreted as both a form of compensation for the roles they could not fulfil, and a way of legitimizing their absence from family life.

Justifications Children typically contest their fathers’ decision to migrate. Fathers, in turn, are acutely aware of this and try to justify their absence. The process of justification is hard work, as Chen Shenlin, a migrant father interviewed by Workers’ Daily (Liu 2015) discovered early in his stay in Angola. He says he is sick and tired of living in Angola, a country which has, as he put it, taken his youth from him. Nonetheless he returns there every year after his annual leave. When his

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previous holidays in China came to an end, his 6-year-old son had thrown his arms around his leg, sobbing and screaming, begging his father not to leave again. Every year Chen Shenlin tries to find an acceptable excuse for his son. “Daddy is going to Angola to make money in order to buy a car,” he had told his son last year, concluding sadly: “But when I bought a car this year, my son said that I didn’t have to go to Angola anymore” (ibid.). Concerns about whether their children truly understand their motivations for leaving were common. The failure to give a reasonable explication added to their fathers’ guilty conscience. Yet, if they are not sure about leaving themselves, how can they justify their absence to their children? After all, like Deng Chenghe, Chen Shenlin too was undoubtedly unable to answer the question “Why do you choose to leave your family, if you love your family?” himself. The promise of a more comfortable life in the future remained undefined, as did the time needed to achieve this goal. When have fathers accumulated enough money to feel secure (enough) in order to justify a return? If migration to Africa is a means of obtaining the resources to achieve a certain standard of respect, when have they achieved a feeling of self-respect? What Rachel Murphy has observed to be the case for rural-to-urban migration in China, equally holds true for overseas migration: “Once migrants have returned home and spent all of their savings, new sources of money are needed for attaining further goals, so migration becomes a way of life unless alternative sources of income become available within the home area” (2002, 111). Expectations fluctuate and increase once wealth is accumulated abroad, not least as the economic constituencies at home are subject to change. Increasingly more wealth is needed to catch up with development at home, as well as to accomplish a sense of personhood and masculinity. The process of justification is complicated by the fact that Chinese migration to Africa is not driven by an absolute or immediate need to win bread. “Although our family is not rich, we can live a good life,” Deng Chenghe contended. He had moreover earned a decent salary in a respectable position before his departure to Ethiopia. And yet he stayed on. As discussed above, migration to Africa for work is not about the purchase of a house or a car, but about achieving a sense of longterm security, socially and emotionally, which seems insatiable, at least in the short run. Despite the lack of direct need to win bread, fathers emphasize their role of family breadwinner in order to compensate, but more importantly, justify their move away from home. As Deng Chenghe points out, his masculine duty is to provide for a financial base and safety net, that is, stability and security. Some fathers told me that the very reason they migrated to Ethiopia was to be able to provide their offspring a better future. In this sense, migration to Africa became a masculine sacrifice. Apart from emphasizing their role as head of the family, migrant men were keen to point out the value and toughness of their work. By temporary migrating to Africa they not only improved family life, but

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also contributed (by sacrifice) to the higher cause of “helping Africa to develop.” The mentioned hardships endured in Africa—isolation, loneliness, physical endurance, monotony of daily life—were, respondents contended, self-inflicted; after all, it was their own choice to move to Africa. Chinese migrant men were aware of their own subject-making, and occasionally, proud of it. Migration to Africa was a sacrifice, if not for their next of kin, then for the higher cause of development. Caroline Melly describes how through the repetition of tales of failed migration attempts, Senegalese (would-be) migrant men are cast as “national adventurers, risk-taking entrepreneurs, and devoted family men who were willing to sacrifice themselves for others” (Melly 2011, 363) in the popular imagination. The reiteration of narratives of suffering inspired a similar imagination in regard to migrant men, that is, one of masculinity and national pride. Men I spoke with did not want to bring along partners, let alone children (although there are exceptions). “The reason for my eating bitterness in Africa is that my child, when he grows up, will not have to go to Africa!” one father, a mechanic from Shandong, asserted. The portrayal of Africa by respondents was reminiscent of what Charles Piot (1999, 2) has termed the “orientalization” of Africa in Western narratives, in which the continent is described as a place steeped in tradition, a place where drought and tropical disease run rampant, and political conflicts and war are the norm. It was therefore not surprising that Africa was considered unsafe for (Chinese) women and children. “Africa is not a place for women,” many responded to my question whether they had ever thought of bringing over their families. This view speaks to what Connell has coined “frontier masculinities” (1998, 13), illustrating that colonial conquest and frontier migration has traditionally been a masculine endeavor. When we look at history, the land unknown or unfamiliar has been explored by men, who possess manly qualities, such as courage, perseverance, and the ability to endure hardships. The “masculinization” of Africa as a place unsuitable for women was a way to suggest courage in those who did migrate and to attribute to them a sense of heroism. Despite the low status of Chinese labor migrants in Africa in collective imagination at home, my respondents at least prided themselves in being brave and manly. In this context, knowing how to eat bitterness carried a distinctly positive connotation. The masculinization of Africa was a way to justify—for themselves and for others—leaving their families behind in China. “Eating bitterness” also fits well in a discourse of national pride and prowess. As “harbingers of development” (Nyíri 2006, 86), migrants contended that they set an example for the Africans and helped them build—captured in the notion of yuanjian 援建, literally meaning “help build”—their countries; or as Liu Jing put it with a sense of patriotism: “Let the employees of Chinese enterprises demonstrate, with the honesty and intelligence, China’s technology and China’s standard. Let the world experience the energy of China and the power of China”

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(Liu 2015). The Jingjiu Evening Paper (Jiang 2014) reports on Li Xinjie, who worked himself up from carpenter to project manager in Angola in a matter of years. Before he boarded the airplane in Beijing for the first time, he had bought a Chinese national flag; “so that I won’t forget my roots.” Clearly, migrant men did not only have to justify migrating overseas to family members, friends and other relatives, but to themselves as well. If they did not believe in migration, how would their family accept their decision to migrate?

Conclusion In this chapter I have looked at the role of masculinity in the formation of migrant transnational households and the male experience of parenting from afar. Indeed, approaches to transnational childrearing vary. Here, I considered working-class men linked to Chinese construction enterprises involved in road building in Ethiopia. In contrast to entrepreneurial migration to Africa, this flow of company-led and state-supported migration is China-rooted. Migrants sign two- to three-year contracts with the intention to return to their families in China when their contracts end. Yet difficulties encountered with (re)integration into the domestic economy force them to stay longer than planned. (This trend might result in more long-term settlement and possibly chain-migration in the future. But these are still speculations.) As of yet, migrant fathers in Ethiopia were reluctant to bring along their family members, even when companies would facilitate this. “Africa is not a place for women,” they said. Wives and children stay at home, typically in patrilocal living arrangements. Chinese fathers’ decision to move to Africa, I have highlighted, is based on a constellation of personal considerations as well as social expectations. Indeed, the advancement of family life looms large in fathers’ motivations for migration. However, overseas migration is equally an avenue to achieve dignity and respect—in their various roles of men, husbands and fathers—in the face of economic developments at home and the widespread fear of being regarded as lacking “ability.” However, family separation puts existing notions of fatherhood to test and forces migrant fathers to renegotiate their role as fathers. Whereas migrant mothers are deemed to challenge existing gender divisions and even may cause a rupture of the gender order (Parreñas 2005), the migration of fathers has, in general, been more accepted as normative gender behavior, for men maintain the role of breadwinner. This does not mean that men are less affected by family separation. Most Chinese migrant fathers I interviewed and spoke with longed for intimacy with their families. During the annual holidays they are typically involved in what might be considered “maternal acts” to compensate for their absence. However, when they saw the need to justify their move away from home they emphasized their role as primary providers of the family.

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Chinese migrant fathers typically draw on those notions of fatherhood that they see fit in a particular context or do justice to a particular situation. Within the constraints of physical separation, they seek to act (or speak) out ways that reflect them as morally right parents and “just” fathers. Concepts of Chinese fatherhood (but also personhood in general) are thus constantly contested and negotiated in a transnational context, and appear to be extremely resilient. The flexibility of ideas about what makes a “proper” father is, I have shown, explained by fathers’ forced yet creative adaptation to the challenges of family separation, on the one hand, and their adjustment to the fickleness of notions of masculinity in mainland China today on the other.

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Driessen, Miriam. 2016. “Pushed to Africa: Emigration and Social Change in China.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42(15): 2491–507. Evans, Harriet. 1997. Women and Sexuality in China: Dominant Discourses of Female Sexuality and Gender since 1949. Cambridge: Polity. Farrer, James. 2002. Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Fioratta, Susanna. 2015. “Beyond Remittance: Evading Uselessness and Seeking Personhood in Fouta Djallon, Guinea.” American Ethnologist 42(2): 295–308. Gallagher, Mary E., Ching Kwan Lee, and Sarosh Kuruvilla. 2011. “Introduction and Argument.” In From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization: Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China, edited by Sarosh Kuruvilla, Ching Kwan Lee, and Mary Gallagher, 1–14. Ithaca and London: ILR Press. Grasmuck, Sherri, and Patricia R. Pessar. 1991. Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hibbins, Ray. 2005. “Migration and Gender Identity among Chinese Skilled Male Migrants to Australia.” Geoforum 36(2): 167–80. Hird, Derek. 2012. “The Paradox of Pluralisation: Masculinities, Androgyny and Male Anxiety in Contemporary China.” In Understanding Global Sexualities: New Frontiers, edited by Peter Aggleton, Paul Boyce, Henrietta L. Moore, and Richard Parker, 49–65. London: Routledge. Honig, Emily, and Gail Hershatter. 1988. Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Horton, Sarah. 2008. “Consuming Childhood: ‘Lost’ and ‘Ideal’ Childhoods as a Motivation for Migration.” Anthropological Quarterly 81(4): 925–43. Jiang, Yousheng 蔣友勝. 2014. “Cong Angela guilai de Shangqiu wugongzhe” 從安哥拉歸 來的商丘務工者 [The Shangqiu workers who have come back from Angola]. Jingjiu Wanbao 京九晚報, December 26. Kwon, June Hee. 2015. “The Work of Waiting: Love and Money in Korean Chinese Transnational Migration.” Cultural Anthropology 30(3): 477–500. LaRossa, R. 1988. “Fatherhood and Social Change.” Family Relations 37: 451–57. Liu, Jing 劉靜. 2015. “Zoujin Feizhou: Angela de Gushi (shang).” 走進非洲：安哥拉的故事 （上）. Gongren Ribao 工人日報, April 22, 5. Louie, Kam. 2002. Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melly, Caroline M. 2011. “Reconfigurations of National Identity and Gendered Presence in Dakar, Senegal.” American Ethnologist 38(2): 361–76. Murphy, Rachel. 2002. How Migrant Labor Is Changing Rural China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nyíri, Pál. 2006. “The Yellow Man’s Burden: Chinese Migrants on a Civilizing Mission.” The China Journal 56: 83–106. Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2005. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2008. “Transnational Fathering: Gendered Conflicts, Distant Disciplining and Emotional Gaps.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34(7): 1057–72. Piot, Charles. 1999. Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago. Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Rofel, Lisa. 2007. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press. Silvey, Rachel. 2006. “Consuming the Transnational Family: Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers to Saudi Arabia.’ Global Networks 6(1): 23–40. Song, Geng. 2010. “Chinese Masculinities Revisited: Male Images in Contemporary Television Drama Serials.” Modern China 36(4): 404–34. Sternberg, Robert. 1986. “A Triangular Theory of Love.” Psychological Review 93(2): 119–35. Vertovec, Steven. 2004. “Cheap Calls: The Social Glue of Migrant Transnationalism.’ Global Networks 4(2): 219–24. Wall, Glenda, and Stephanie Arnold. 2007. “How Involved Is Involved Fathering? An Exploration of the Contemporary Culture of Fatherhood.” Gender and Society 21(4): 508–27. Waters, Johanna L. 2010. “Becoming a Father, Missing a Wife: Chinese Transnational Families and the Male Experience of Lone Parenting in Canada.” Population, Space, Place 16: 63–74. Xiang, Biao. 2014. “The Would-Be Migrant: Post-Socialist Primitive Accumulation, Potential Transnational Mobility, and the Displacement of the Present in Northeast China.” TraNS: Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia 2(2): 183–99. Yang, Jie. 2010. “The Crisis of Masculinity: Class, Gender, and Kindly Power in Post-Mao China.” American Ethnologist 37(3): 550–26. Ye, Jingzhong, and Pan Lu. 2011. “Differentiated Childhoods: Impacts of Rural Labor Migration on Left-Behind Children in China.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (2): 355–77. Zentgraf, Kristine, and Norma Stoltz Chinchilla. 2012. “Transnational Family Separation: A Framework for Analysis.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38(2): 345–66. Zhang, Jun, and Sun Peidong. 2014. “When Are You Going to Get Married? Parental Matchmaking and Middle-Class Women in Contemporary Urban China.” In Wives, Husbands and Lovers: Marriage and Sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban China, edited by Deborah S. Davis and Sara L. Friedman, 118–44. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zhong, Xueping. 2000. Masculinity Besieged? Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Distant Husbands, Masculine Helpers Men, Masculinity, and Sexuality in the Family Strategy of Flexible Citizenship Tingyu Kang

Introduction This chapter examines the constitution of Chinese masculinities in the family strategy of flexible citizenship. Flexible citizenship has long been a popular arrangement among middle-to-upper-class Chinese families (Ong 1999). This family strategy seeks economic, cultural, and social connections with advanced economies by gaining citizenship of these countries. The residential arrangements associated with this strategy often involve some family members (usually wives and children) going abroad and other members (usually husbands) primarily based in the country of origin. There are many different routes to gaining flexible citizenship for transnational families. Previous studies have pointed to “study mothers” and “parachute kids.” The latter refers to a child obtaining a student visa to the destination country for their education, while the former involves the mother staying in that country as well, as an accompanying adult (Chee 2003; Waters 2002; Zhou 1998). In some families, the adults obtain visas and citizenship through the immigration route of investment (Wong 2005). Another popular route to gain flexible citizenship that is less often discussed is birth tourism. In this scenario, while the husbands stay in China to work and earn an income, the pregnant wives travel to a country with a jus soli system in order for their children to be born as a citizen of that country. Many of these families hire male helpers in the destination country to fulfill the domestic roles that were previously reserved for the husbands, including driving, moving help, and other jobs involving masculinized domestic labor. Some of the wives and children continue to stay in the destination country for the children’s education. This research examines the formation and destabilization of masculinities through these arrangements of domestic labor in birth tourism from mainland China to the United States. In the past decade, the main destinations for mainland Chinese birth tourism have been Hong Kong and the United States.

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While several authors have started to explore the history, causes, anxieties, and impacts of birth tourism to Hong Kong (see, for example, Huang et al. 2014), there has been little academic discussion of Chinese birth tourism to the United States. According to the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, all persons born on American soil will be bestowed birthright citizenship. This has attracted transmigrants from all over the world to travel to the United States to give birth to their offspring, with Chinese visitors being the most discussed in the US mass media (see, for example, Chang 2013; Davies and Boyle 2013; Johanson 2013; Shuman 2013). Adopting participant observation and interviews, this research is based in Los Angeles, California one of the most popular US destinations for the Chinese family strategy of flexible citizenship. This chapter examines the intersections of class, gender, and sexuality, and illustrates the ways in which the construction of masculinities in this context is largely classed and constantly caught in tension. On the one hand, the husbands based in China express a persistent need to reassert their dominant position over their wives and the male helpers in Los Angeles. This is because the spatial distance between the husbands and their families destabilizes their sense of masculinity with regard to their wives’ spatial mobility, infidelity, and power over household decision-making. On the other hand, the Chinese male helpers 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 labor in the home, which is largely feminized.

Flexible Citizenship and the Gendered Division of Labor The literature of transnational families is a continuingly growing research area. It focuses on families whose core members live in two or more countries but continue to share economic, emotional, and other resources (Huang and Yeoh 2005); living apart may be a temporary or permanent arrangement. Whilst being divided by borders, these families continue to maintain care and support for their members through monetary contributions, visits, and other communication methods (Baldassar 2007, 2008; Climo 1992; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997; Parreñas 2005a). Chinese transnational families are formed for many different reasons. One of them is particularly popular among the middle and upper class; that is, to obtain citizenship from another country with advanced economic and educational resources for some or all members of the family. This was first identified by Aihwa Ong (1999), who focuses on wealthy ethnic Chinese in the United States. Ong’s analysis examines households headed by entrepreneurs and professionals, mostly male, from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. These families are split across national borders in order for some family members to receive education,

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capital, and eventually citizenship of the destination country. Migration and citizenship here are not considered sources of national identity and sentiments of belonging, but are a strategy to maximize the economic, cultural, and social capital of the families (Ong 1999; Waters 2005). A popular arrangement among these families is termed “parachute children,” which refers to children studying in the United States or other destinations. In some families, one parent, often the mother, accompanies the children to the destination country while the other parent, often the father, stays mainly in the country of origin to serve as a breadwinner. Some of these families are called “astronaut families,” in that the parents are based mainly in the country of origin but constantly travel to take care of their children abroad. The differentiated transnational spatial mobility among these family members is tied to the gendered division of labor in the household. In Chinese families that adopt the strategy of flexible citizenship, it is usually the fathers who take up the role of breadwinners while the mothers serve as the main caretakers. Women’s increased spatial mobility is a by-product of the families’ desires to invest in their offspring, because the transnational experiences of the children are seen as central to family prosperity. As the main breadwinners in the households, many fathers are rather spatially fixed because moving to another country to work often means devalued human capital (Chee 2003; Ley 2010; Waters 2002). The distribution of transnational spatial mobility among family members is surrounded by the concept of reproductive labor. Reproductive labor includes taking care of children, giving birth, offering emotional support to children, and maintaining relationships with the local community and kinship (Lan 2008; Lorber 1994). Women’s migration in many different contexts is largely associated with reproductive labor. From domestic migrant workers, marital migration, to the mothers of “parachute children,” women from diverse class, cultural, and national backgrounds migrate to take up labor surrounding reproduction. While these women’s migration for reproductive labor is widely discussed in the growing literature of the feminization of international migration and the global care chain (Hochschild 2000; Yeates 2004), the role of men in this context is relatively less explored. There have been very few attempts to explore men’s roles in the context of global migration for reproductive labor. Waters (2010) has identified that some Taiwanese transnational families that adopt the strategy of flexible citizenship challenge the conventional gendered division of labor. Although rare, there are transnational families in which fathers accompany their children to North America to study, and mothers remain in the country of origin to earn. This situation brings about tensions for the men with regard to their breadwinner identity. Other studies have identified that in the context of mothers migrating to another country to work as domestic employees and fathers staying with their children in the country of origin, the care work in the households in the country of origin is not mainly assigned to the fathers. Rather, it is divided

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among female relatives and other female domestic workers (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997; Lan 2003). This chapter follows these studies that focus on men’s roles in families that are transnationally split for reproductive labor purposes, but explores it in a context that has not yet been studied; that of birth tourism. While the aforementioned studies identify the constitution of masculinities in astronaut families and families with emigrant domestic workers, the context of birth tourism is built upon different ideals regarding care and work in the household. Compared to taking care of school children, domestic labor in birth tourism involves care work surrounding the unborn, the newborn, and the pregnant woman. The expected role of husbands and fathers and associated ideas about manliness in the household are largely distinct from previously explored settings.

Masculinities in the Global Age Academic attention has increasingly focused on how contemporary ideals of manliness are transformed around the increasing international flows of people and capital. The rise of multinational corporations has been understood by some authors as leading to the constitution of “transnational business masculinities” (Connell and Wood 2005; see also Elias and Beasley 2009). Business elites who flexibly travel across borders to maximize capital gains are theorized as constructing new forms of masculinity that rearticulate the previously prevailing local bourgeois managerial masculinities. These forms of masculinity are generally characterized as financially autonomous and yet anxious, calculating, rational, and believing in free markets and competition, all of which echo neoliberal subjectivities. Many studies on migrant men have paid further attention to different local specificities in constituting and diversifying the ideas of being men. Gender identities are contingent upon geographical variations and masculinities are configured in places. The power dynamics of cultures, histories, and socioeconomic structures are inscribed in specific localities, thus leading to a continued interest within masculinity studies in understanding the geographical contingency of manhood (Connell 2005b, 2012; Hopkins and Noble 2009; Hoven and Horschelmann 2005; Pease and Pringle 2001 among others). This focus on local specificities and geo-cultural variations has been adopted in the discussion on migrant men. While there might be different ideals, fantasies, and desires with regard to masculinities across places, migrant men travel between places. They encounter different discourses and practices of masculinities across localities and form their everyday negotiations with them throughout their transnational movements. Globally mobile elites constantly encounter and renegotiate new sets of ideas of manliness in destination societies. Several authors identify the ways in which

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global elite men reconstruct the meanings of being men through their newly gained power over women and less privileged men brought about by new employment and capital relations in destination places. This line of discussion includes various cultural and historical contexts. Shen (2008) documents the construction of hypermasculinities among Taiwanese entrepreneurs in mainland China through the consumption of women’s bodies and sexual labor. Walsh (2011) examines white British expatriates in Dubai who conform to the more “traditional” division of domestic labor after migration as they are reshaped by local work cultures and gender norms. While the above studies largely focus on global elite men, increasing attention has been paid to other class settings that call for discussions on “transnationalism from below.” Migrant men’s gender identities are not only associated with ethnicity but are also closely tied to their class identities (Batnitzky et al. 2008). This necessitates the exploration of migrant men and masculinities outside the context of elite transnationals in order to obtain a fuller picture of men and transnationalism. This line of research takes issue with the literature on the feminization of international migration and the global care chain, which discusses transnationalism in a working-class setting by highlighting the growing flow of female labor from the developing world to advanced economies in the global care industries (Kilkey 2010; Sarti and Scrinzi 2010). When discussing the gendered formation of international migration, discussions on the global care chain and the feminization of migration have largely focused on female domestic workers with research interests ranging from transnational motherhood, the redistribution of domestic labor after migration, and the reproduction of gendered ideas of care work in policies and in everyday discourses (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997; Parreñas 2001, 2005a, 2005b; Hochschild 2000; Bettina Haidinger 2008). It is argued that this focus on the feminization of migration may leave out the global flows of men in working-class settings and in traditionally feminized employment (Kilkey 2010). In fact, migrant men have experienced many forms of “feminization” through employment in destination countries. For example, downward social mobility is common for many migrant men due to a lack of language proficiency and the devaluation of human capital across borders (Basran and Li 1998; Bauder 2003). This often leads to a perceived loss of masculinity among male migrants (Quayum and Ray 2010; Scrinzi 2010). Furthermore, many migrant men work in traditionally feminine industries, such as domestic work, care work, and hospitality. This constitutes a challenge for migrant masculinities, especially when combined with preexisting racialized discourses that desexualize men from certain regions (Mare 2010; Scrinzi 2010).

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Chinese Men and Transnationalism Several studies have explored the formation of masculine subjectivities among migrant Chinese men. These studies are often based in the context of professionals and business elites. Hibbins (2005) illuminates the constitution of masculinities among skilled Chinese migrants in Australia as based on educational qualifications, capital gains, well-paying jobs, and hardworking lifestyles. These skilled migrants also build their ethnic identities upon the differentiating gender norms across cultures by identifying that the basis of local non-Chinese masculinities as sexually open, physical, sporty and heavy consumers of alcohol. This finding somewhat echoes what Connell (2000) referred to as a Confucian variant of transnational business masculinities grounded in East Asian cultural environments. While the above studies examine migrant men in the elite context, the emigration of Chinese people has demonstrated polarization with regard to class backgrounds. In terms of mainland Chinese emigration, on the one hand, there is a growing population outflow from wealthy coastal areas where more and more households can afford to send their offspring to Western higher education establishments, most of whom then stay in the destination country to do whitecollar jobs upon completing their studies. On the other hand, emigrant Chinese men also continue to be concentrated in less skilled settings in several Western economies. Discussions on Chinese flexible citizenship have also largely portrayed manliness in this context as an elite thing as flexible citizenship is a predominantly middle-to-elite-class option. However, it is worth noting that flexible citizenship as a family arrangement is also shaped and sometimes constituted by co-ethnic domestic care workers, drivers, handymen, migration service providers, and other migrant Chinese workers in ethnic businesses surrounding the transnational building of a household. The formation of migrant elite masculinities in flexible citizenship is not isolated but, rather, constituted in relational interactions among actors with diverse class, gender, and ethnic identities. In the case of Chinese birth tourism, the masculine subjectivities of the husbands staying in mainland China are not only defined in relation to their wives staying in California. Ideas about what it means to be a professional Chinese man as a husband are also shaped through their interactions with the male helpers in their California homes. In the meantime, ideals surrounding manliness among the male workers in California are also challenged by the husbands’ reassertion of masculinities. It is through these dynamic interpersonal negotiations between the elite Chinese husbands and the working-class male migrant workers that coconstitute Chinese masculinities in the setting of flexible citizenship. Thus this research focuses on this relational aspect of the constitution of Chinese migrant

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masculinities and examines the dynamic and constant renegotiation of male gender identities in the family arena in Chinese transnationalism.

Methods The data are part of a larger, two-year study on Chinese birth tourism to Southern California. This research is based on interviews and participant observation. The research focuses on Los Angeles, which has long served as the main destination for Chinese transnationals adopting the family strategy of flexible citizenship. In particular, the spatiality of Chinese birth tourism in Los Angeles often involves the towns and cities in Los Angeles County where the Asian population is in a majority, such as Hacienda Heights, Monterey Park, Rowland Heights, San Gabriel, and Walnut. The study is based on nine “maternity B&Bs.” Maternity B&Bs are the houses or condominiums where the pregnant women and their families stay when they are in the United States. These accommodations are generally in the form of either a house or a flat in a residential area. They are usually run by Taiwanese or mainland Chinese hosts, who specifically target Mandarin-speaking pregnant women as their main customers. Depending on the scale of the accommodation, the domestic work offered by these residences include driving, housekeeping, cooking, and taking care of newborns. Larger maternity B&Bs hire several workers, including drivers, nannies, and cleaners, while smaller-scale residences hire only one worker to cover most of the above work. The participant observation took place in a range of public and private spaces, such as the maternity B&Bs and the streets where they are concentrated. It was also conducted in other key public spaces where the pregnant women, their families, and workers in the birth tourism economy meet and interact, including parks, supermarkets, and shopping malls. Interviews are composed of semi-structured in-depth interviews and informal talks with three types of informants. Firstly, they were conducted to understand the experiences of those working at the maternity B&Bs, including the drivers, housekeepers, nannies, cooks, and the hosts themselves. Secondly, interviews and talks were also conducted with the pregnant women staying at the B&Bs. Thirdly, the researcher also talked to the family members of the pregnant women, including their husbands, parents, and parent-in-laws. The pregnant women and their families were generally from middle-class to elite backgrounds. The majority of their occupations and those of their spouses were professionals in the public and private sectors and entrepreneurs. Two reasons for giving birth in the United States were mentioned most often. Firstly, the informants wished to have a second baby, which was, until recently, outlawed under China’s one child policy. Secondly, almost every informant mentioned the motivation of giving their children “a better life” outside China, although what

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they regarded as a better life varied. Nevertheless, it included educational and job opportunities, the quality of healthcare, food safety, air pollution, and other environmental issues. The employees at the maternity B&Bs included workers taking up a wide range of domestic work associated with taking care of pregnant and postpartum women and their babies. The division of domestic work was gendered in most cases. While the nannies were always female, the roles of drivers and handymen (for home repair and moving) were taken up by men. However, at smaller-scaled maternity B&Bs, housekeeping work such as cleaning and cooking was often covered by either the drivers/handymen or the nannies, as such B&Bs sought to cut costs. This then led to the blurring of gender norms in dividing domestic labor, which will be discussed further in later sections. All of the employees spoken to were first-generation migrants. There was a tendency for post-migration downward mobility in the labor market, as several employees had worked in white-collar jobs in China. When discussing this, the participants referred to reasons such as their lack of language skills and the social networks that are required to find an equivalent position in the United States. Another category of respondent was the hosts of the maternity B&Bs. Of the nine maternity B&Bs, two were run solely by female owners. The other seven maternity B&Bs were hosted by married couples. In these cases, the division of labor between the couples was also largely constructed around gender norms. While both the husbands and wives contributed to the businesses, the wives were portrayed as the main hosts. Some B&Bs do this by using the wives’ names as the brand names. Several B&Bs present the wives as the main host in their advertisements and in the discursive practices of their daily interactions with customers. These practices configure maternity B&Bs as a feminine industry. This type of business is understood as requiring experience and knowledge surrounding female reproductive bodies. As a result, female hosts serve as the “face” of the B&Bs key to this industry. The wives are assigned work that is associated with customer care and brand images, while their spouses’ responsibilities are mainly associated with business development.

The Temporal and Spatial Arrangements of Domesticity in Birth Tourism Most of the pregnant women arrived at least three months before their due date and stayed for approximately one month after the delivery of their children, for recovery and for the application process for their children’s identity documents to be completed. In most cases, they were accompanied by their spouses when they travelled to the United States. The husbands then went back to China to continue working while the women stayed in the United States. A few days before their due dates, most of the husbands travelled back to the United States

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to accompany the women during the delivery. For most of their stay in Los Angeles, these women were separated from their families in China and lived in maternity B&Bs with other pregnant women and those who worked there. This spatial and temporal arrangement is underpinned by the gendered division of labor in the family strategy of flexible citizenship. The husbands serve as the main breadwinners in the families, allowing for less transnational spatial mobility. While the women flexibly travel abroad to give birth and sometimes continue to stay on and raise their children, the men are rather fixed. The division of labor is closely tied to the division of spatial flexibility within the home. This is a common practice not only in Chinese birth tourism but also wider scenarios in flexible citizenship and elite Chinese transnationalism, such as “parachute” and “astronaut” families, which largely involve a breadwinning father being fixed in the country of origin to work and earn, and a spatially flexible wife whose transnational mobility arises from the family role of childrearing and caretaking. However, it is worth noting that birth tourism is configured as a setting where the ideal of being a husband and father involves not only breadwinning but also taking care of their pregnant wives. Men are expected to act as caretakers concerning several aspects of their wives’ pregnancy, which is understood not as a feminine task but as an important way of constituting masculinity in the family domain. The spatial and temporal arrangement of domesticity in birth tourism that involves the husbands accompanying their wives to the United States and later being present during childbirth is structured around the husbands’ caretaking responsibilities for their pregnant wives, which mainly focus on three aspects. Firstly, they assist the pregnant wives’ spatial navigation. Secondly, they arrange the home environment for their wives in the United States. Thirdly, the husbands’ physical presence during childbirth is also emphasized as central to husbandhood and fatherhood. Pregnancy is constructed as a time of women’s physical fragility and reduced mobility, thus highlighting the masculine role of the men. Lin explained why he needs to stay by his wife’s side when she first arrives in the United States: I don’t want her to clear customs by herself. She’s never been to the States . . . She is a pregnant woman alone in a place she is unfamiliar with. I arranged everything and made sure everything there was settled before I left.

Taking care of pregnant wives requires not only physical labor; these physical activities are underlined by emotional labor. He continues to explain: I want to be the first to see my child coming into the world. And it’s important to my wife, too. It’s not about what I do or help there. It’s about being there for the family. It’s a gesture that shows I am supportive and responsible.

Lin’s account illustrates how “being physically there” is understood not only as physical labor but more as a gesture of emotional support.

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The spatial and temporal arrangements of domesticity that involve a constantly absent husband working in China serve as a background where masculinities and femininities in Chinese transnationalism are constituted and negotiated. The family arrangement of flexible citizenship involves a distant husband and father. However, the expectations surrounding the domestic responsibilities of the husband still hold even when he returns to China after accompanying his wife to the United States and “everything there is settled.” This does not mean there is an absence of masculinity in the households in the United States after the husbands have returned to China. Rather, it is about supplementary masculinity where other male figures in the destination households substitute the roles of the husbands. The husbands’ domestic responsibilities, both physically and emotionally, are largely outsourced to the male helpers in the destination households. As taking care of the wives and children are considered essential to the building of manliness in the family domain, this supplementary masculinity brought by transnationality then challenges the preexisting gender norms in the families.

Contracting Fatherhood, Outsourcing Emotional Labor The husbands are caught in the tensions between the breadwinner masculinity that requires them to stay in China to earn money and the home-building masculinity that necessitates their accompanying their wives and children to take up domestic labor that is traditionally linked to the male role. This brings about a sense of being a failed husband for not “being there” to take care of the family throughout the pregnancy. This sentiment is foregrounded by the construction of pregnancy as a stage of hyperfemininity with reduced bodily capabilities, and of American public spaces as hostile and difficult to navigate around. Being away during their wives’ pregnancy primarily means failing as husbands and fathers. The husbands adopt various strategies to make up for their absence and reassert their role in the family. The first strategy is capital contribution. An informant, Huei, explained: My husband told me to buy whatever I like. Yes, I sometimes complain to him about being alone here . . . Jane’s [another birth tourist] husband is here. Everybody all gets really jealous . . . My husband is always like, fine, I am not there but my credit card is. That makes him feel like he really contributes something.

Capital contribution is used by the men to compensate for their violation of the ideals of being a man in the heterosexual household. The husbands reclaim the role of the good father and husband through highlighting their home-providing role. Capital contribution can also be in the form of the husbands buying better services for the wives. Another informant, Hung, told me:

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My husband insisted that I stay at this B&B [the more expensive one]. He said he would feel worried and guilty for not being here with us. He wanted us to receive the best care. Even though he is not here, he makes sure we receive the best services.

This linked to the second strategy adopted by the husbands. In addition to increasing capital contribution, the husbands manage their absence by outsourcing their responsibilities to other male figures in the US-based households. Phil arranged a Valentine’s Day surprise for his wife by outsourcing the emotional labor to the driver at his wife’s maternity B&B: Pregnant women are particularly emotional. It’s the hormones. I want her to have a proper Valentine’s Day even when we are apart. I booked the driver for the whole day so that my wife could go wherever she wanted. I also told the driver to buy flowers for her . . . It’s a bit weird that my wife spent her Valentine’s Day with the driver and that he had to sign the card for me, though.

Being emotionally attentive to pregnant wives is configured as essential to the ideal of manhood in the household. Yet, fulfilling the ideal role often means that the husband outsources the emotional labor to other workers around their wives in the destination countries. Outsourcing husbandhood to the male helpers is a strategy adopted by the husbands to manage the threat to their home-building masculinity brought about by their absence. However, contracting-out husbandhood then brings about further threats to their identity of being the man in the home. This is because male helpers doing the emotional labor in the household provokes concerns intersecting geographical distance, fidelity, and jealousy. The spatiality of Chinese birth tourism is underlined by gender politics. While both the husbands and the male drivers are assigned the role of leading spatial navigation, the wives’ spatial mobility and geographical distance from their husbands is linked to concerns about heterosexual encounters in spaces. This is not only evident in Phil’s account but can also be found in several pregnant women’s accounts of their interactions with their husbands in China. Shia explained: My husband and I are online 24/7. He is the jealous type. He wants to know where I am all the time. Sometimes I feel he is going crazy. I am pregnant and the only men I see in the five months are the driver and the cook. It should’ve been me who gets jealous considering everything .  .  . We’ve watched the film Finding Mr Right [Beijing yushang Xiyatu 北京遇上西雅圖, a film about a Chinese birth tourist falling in love with her caretaker/driver in Seattle]. I guess he’s got the idea from the film.

This film was a popular reference among the wives. It features a Chinese birth tourist’s romantic encounter with a male driver at the maternity B&B she stays when she is estranged from her partner in China. It is not only cited to account

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for the husbands’ anxieties over their wives’ potential romantic encounters; when the women explained to me their experiences of loneliness and helplessness as a result of the absence of the husbands, this film became the key text that was referenced. This film is further used by the informants to explain to me the role of the male helpers at maternity B&Bs. Pregnant bodies are viewed as subject to unexpected and uncontrollable events, which structure the temporality of the male helpers’ labor. Sherry, host of a maternity B&B, told me: Have you watched the film? It’s just like that. Emergencies during pregnancy are unexpected. We need to stand by all day every day, especially Ming [the driver]. You’ll never know when they’ll need an emergency visit to the hospital. They may also have sudden unexplained pains or bleeding that restricts them from going out grocery shopping, among other things. Ming is very kind. He basically has to be on standby all the time.

Spatial mobility is identified as the most significant aspect of migrant pregnant women’s needs to be taken care of, and is considered as men’s labor. These accounts point to the central role of the male helpers in the women’s daily lives in the destination country.

The Boundary Work of the Male Workers While the husbands’ masculine identity is threatened in the transnational arrangement of households, the identities of the male workers, including the male hosts and employees at maternity B&Bs, are also constantly challenged in several ways by the gendered and classed division of labor in birth tourism. Firstly, being a substitute for the husbands’ role causes tensions among the male helpers. The accounts from the male workers’ confirm that their job responsibilities are domestic tasks that are previously reserved for the husbands. Pete told me: We usually take up where the husbands left off. The moms here are pitiable. A client of mine introduced me to Wei. She has been here by herself. Her husband worked at a university in Beijing and can’t be here all the time. At that time, her son was little. A woman like her couldn’t go about carrying all the groceries while taking a baby. I helped her move to her new place, arrange all the furniture, and drove her around.

From buying flowers on behalf of the absent husband to driving the women around to moving furniture, workers fulfill the domestic role associated with husbands of a pregnant wife and a wife with young children, in terms of both physical and emotional labor. The workers identified the anxiety brought about by their work substituting the husbands’ labor. This then requires them to engage in various boundary drawings that restabilize the distinction between a professional hospitality or

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domestic worker in the household and a caring man in heterosexual interactions. The male host of a maternity B&B, San, explained: The moms might feel lonely but we try and make this place feel like home. We spend time talking to them and taking care of their emotional needs. It’s part of the business. We take care of them. We treat them like family. It’s not very convenient for me to do all that as I am a guy. Mostly I have my wife do that instead.

Not only the male employees at the maternity B&Bs but also the male hosts in the management positions adopted discursive practices that distinguish between their job responsibilities in professional care work and interpersonal attentiveness towards the women. Secondly, working in a “feminized” industry also requires boundary work. The respondents’ job responsibilities are associated with domesticity and emotional labor, which are closely linked to femininity. This work identity clashes with the gender identities of the workers, who then develop discursive boundaries to manage the crisis. Boundary work is exercised by the workers to alleviate the anxiety caused by their work. The most common strategy is to redefine the work. Ben works for several maternity B&Bs. His daily routine includes driving pregnant women to the hospital for prenatal appointments, housecleaning and maintenance, and grocery shopping. While his work involves both the roles of a driver and a housekeeper, he refers to his job title as driver. While I was in one of the maternity B&Bs where Ben worked, a lodger scolded him for not cleaning a duvet and causing her allergy to flare up. When talking about this incident with me, Ben explained to me about his priorities at work: I am a driver. I helped out with other things only because they couldn’t find other people to do it. It [housekeeping] isn’t much work so I agree to help. This is just not what I’d normally do.

Ben describes being a driver as his primary role whereas cleaning and other housekeeping activities are only temporary and supplementary, thus developing a work identity that is associated with traditionally masculine job responsibilities and discursively distancing himself from femininized tasks. While it is common for smaller maternity B&Bs to hire a man to cover work ranging from driving to housekeeping, it is also common for the male workers to identify their roles as drivers rather than housekeepers or cooks. Ben’s example illustrates how he copes with job responsibilities that are traditionally assigned to women, thus demonstrating how work identity is linked to gender identity. Another common discursive strategy that manages the anxieties brought by working in a “feminized” industry is to highlight female workers’ roles in the B&Bs and discursively undermine the role of the male informants themselves.

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This is particularly evident among the male hosts of maternity B&Bs. San’s account is an example: This B&B is my wife’s business, not mine. She is a woman. It’s her who knows about pregnancy and taking care of babies and post-natal ladies. My wife even has a certificate for childcare. I am only helping her when she is too busy. I had my business back in China. I had a chain of hotels in Hangzhou. Then I missed my wife and my child here and gave up all my businesses to come here. Now I am only helping my wife . . . Yes I was in the hospitality industry before. But this is different. This is more about childcare, prenatal care, and women’s industry. I only have experiences with regard to the management aspect of it.

San’s account highlights the labor processes that are traditionally associated with femininity, such as postnatal care, childcare, and childbearing. He then discursively distances himself from this labor by highlighting his role as being supplementary. This is further foregrounded when he links this discussion to his past work experiences as an entrepreneur and the associated work identity as highly skilled and management-level. While running a hotel was his job, running a maternity B&B is not because the latter is linked to feminized knowledge. Thirdly, several respondents saw their downward social mobility after migration as intertwined with their experiences in the feminized labor process, which serves as a threat to masculinity. Gender identity is structured around a classed subjectivity. Education and capital is configured as central to masculinity. As a result, the respondents adopt various discursive strategies to negotiate their work identities of taking care of women, which requires no qualifications. Some of the respondents pointed out how the gendered perception of domestic work is classed. Income and class distinctions were identified by some of the respondents as key to the constitution of manliness. When talking about his working conditions and salaries, Tim negotiates his work identity: This is not really my job. I am getting training for the dental technician certificate. Don’t view me as a driver. Helping Evelyn [a maternity B&B owner] is just what I do in my spare time. At first, I was just helping a friend who runs a maternity B&B and needs someone to drive the moms to the hospitals. One thing led to another. Friends of friends heard about me taking these jobs. They also wanted me to help. This is not what I do. I only take jobs when I can.

Tim’s account exemplifies the discursive strategy of constructing a middle-class professional identity by referring to other economic activities that are skilled.

Conclusion In summary, Chinese birth tourism involves a specific form of transnational division of labor. While the women travel across borders to take up reproductive

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roles, their husbands are mainly based in China due to their breadwinning responsibilities. This arrangement of transnational households serves as the background where masculine subjectivities are formed and intersect with classed experiences. The constitution of masculinities is relational. On the one hand, the husbands in birth tourism are trapped in the tensions between their breadwinning identity and their home-building responsibilities. They remain in China to fulfill the former. However, this leads to a perceived threat to their home-building identity because the traditionally “masculinized” domestic responsibilities are outsourced to male helpers in Los Angeles. On the other hand, the male workers in Los Angeles engage in a range of domestic labor. The job responsibilities of the male workers, including both the male hosts and the employees at the maternity B&Bs, challenge their masculinities for several reasons. The labor process involves emotional work, requires knowledge of women’s reproductive bodies, is subject to the distant husbands’ dominant power and surveillance, and is posited in the traditionally feminized space of the home. These male workers develop various boundary-drawing strategies to negotiate their gender and class identity in the primarily feminized labor process. These strategies include redefining their primary job responsibilities, highlighting the importance of female coworkers while undermining their own contributions, and referring to economic activities that they are engaged in that are more skilled. This chapter seeks to contribute to existing studies in several ways. Firstly, there has been little academic discussion on Chinese birth tourism to North America. This study explores birth tourism by linking it to the literature on the middle-class and elite Chinese transnational family strategy of flexible citizenship. Secondly, the literature on the division of domestic labor in international migration has largely focused on the role of women. This study points to the men participating in various domestic labor roles in transnational processes and examines how this destabilizes the constitution of masculinities in transnationalism and how men cope with it. This chapter examines men’s labor in transnational households not only as husbands but also as domestic workers, which co-constitute Chinese masculinities in middle to upper-class Chinese transnational families. This is then linked to the third contribution of this study. This chapter discusses the formation of Chinese masculinities in transnational domesticity from a relational perspective. As masculine subjectivities are grounded in a complex gendered and classed process, this chapter foregrounds the dynamic process through which masculinities of men in different class positions interact and inform each other. It illustrates how wealthy male breadwinners’ masculinities are defined, challenged, and reaffirmed through the everyday discursive practices of masculinities among the male domestic workers, and vice versa. This chapter discusses one popular scenario in the family strategy of flexible citizenship. Further research may be required to explore other contexts in flexible

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citizenship and wider Chinese transnational families. While most forms of Chinese families seeking flexible citizenship involve a period of time when the family members are split across borders, destabilizing the preexisting norms of division of labor, several aspects may vary across different contexts. The domestic labor associated with birth tourism is distinct from that surrounding study mothers, parachute children, and other forms of astronaut families, which also require discussions with regard to gender norms and masculinities.

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“North American Despicable Man” Race, Class, and the (Re)making of Chinese Diasporic Masculinities in the United States Xia Zhang

Introduction On October 14, 2010, a post on one of the major overseas Chinese social network websites MITBBS quickly gave rise to a flame war among its users.1 Titled “A few words to Chinese undergraduate women in the US,” the post writer, a self-identified Chinese male graduate student in the United States who had been recently rejected by a Chinese overseas undergraduate woman, verbally attacked the latter.2 By referring to Chinese overseas undergraduates as xiaoliu 小留, or literarily “little overseas students,” the post-writer bitterly accused female xiaoliu of preferring white American men to Chinese men and of being promiscuous. He also accused them of using their rich parents’ money to buy their entrance into prestigious US universities rather than relying on outstanding academic performance. Very quickly, a group of self-identified female xiaoliu fired back online. Referring to Chinese overseas male graduate students as laoliu 老留, or literarily “old overseas students” in English, they called male laoliu “North American Despicable Men” or beimei weisuonan 北美猥瑣男 (NAWSN for short) in Chinese.3 In a satiric tone, one of them explained why female xiaoliu turn away from the

1. MITBBS (http://www.mitbbs.com/) is a Chinese bulletin board system website. It was founded in 1997 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hence the “MIT” in its name. It is one of the major overseas Chinese websites in the United States that mainly serves recent and new Chinese immigrants from mainland China. Most MITBBS users are young Chinese who have at least a college degree and overseas education experiences. 2. Due to the nature of internet ethnographic fieldwork, it is extremely difficult to identify the real identity of online post writers, including their gender identities. To avoid unnecessary confusion, in this chapter, I use the self-identified gender identity of the post writers as their gender identities. 3. WSN is the popular abbreviation of the Chinese pinyin weisuonan, which can be roughly translated into “despicable man” in English. Here, I use “NA” to represent “North American” or beimei in Chinese.

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male laoliu: he is untidy, skinny, and physically unattractive; he is stingy, constantly searching for coupons and deals in order to save money; he has few social skills and does not know how to woo a woman because he is only good at school work; and worst of all, he is vain but incongruously pragmatic—when he finally graduates and finds a job, he shows off his achievements by buying a Honda Accord, the favorite car among male laoliu because it is highly cost efficient! In the words of the female xiaoliu, such men are “not masculine at all” (wanquan meiyou nanrenwei 完全沒有男人味).4 This flame war is one of many cases in which the epithet “NAWSN” is used to refer to recent Chinese immigrant men who enter the United States via postgraduate education. Although competing and conflicting discourses regarding this group of men are simultaneously circulated in the overseas Chinese online community, NAWSN stands out as a prominent social category that has attracted lots of Net users’ attention. An online search shows that it was used in 24,500 posts on MITBBS.com, where most users are self-identified men, and in 217,000 posts on huaren.us, another major overseas Chinese website in the United States, where most users are self-identified women. There are also numerous flame wars and online discussions about “NAWSN” on various overseas Chinese social websites, such as www.wenxuecity.com and www.6park.com. The prevalent NAWSN discussion on overseas Chinese social network websites is intriguing because Chinese men educated in the United States have generally been considered human talents and social elites in mainland China for decades. Since overseas education and American lifestyle are generally highly valued in Chinese society, people in China tend to think that these men are associated with success, wealth, power, and masculinity. Furthermore, Chinese overseas postgraduates, as important contributors to the American economy, have been highly valued in the academic, scientific, and industrial worlds. Chinese students currently comprise the largest international student body in the United States, numbering 328,547 in the 2015–2016 academic year, making up 31.5 percent of all foreign students in the United States.5 Over half of them are men.6 An SEVP (Student and Exchange Visitor Program) 2014 report finds that “more students studying in STEM fields originate from China than any other country” and that the number of male Chinese students studying in the STEM

4. The post was retrieved on October 21, 2014, from http://blog.renren.com/ share/228762083/3529192221. 5. This statistical data comes from Open Doors Data published in 2016, retrieved on April 30, 2017, from https://www.iie.org/Research-and-Insights/Open-Doors/Data/ International-Students/Leading-Places-of-Origin/2015-16. 6. According to an SEVP (Student and Exchange Visitor Program) 2014 report, there were 138,979 Chinese male students and 131,617 female students in the United States up to 2013.

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fields is about two times greater than their female compatriots.7 Research has also found that in 161 US chemistry departments, Chinese students’ scientific output during their thesis is significantly higher than other students. It is reported that they “perform about as well as the awardees of the NSF doctoral fellowship program—America’s best and brightest in science and engineering” (Gaulé and Piacentini 2010, 698). These talented young men should be the pride of the Chinese overseas community, yet in this community’s online culture, they are frequently referred to as despicable. How do we understand this phenomenon? Informed by critical theories of masculinity studies, this chapter examines overseas Chinese new media representations of well-educated Chinese immigrant men in the United States who originally came from mainland China to understand how such representations reinforce or challenge the dominant narratives on Asian American masculinity. It also explores the cultural assumptions grounded in the online discussion of the so called “North American Despicable Men,” especially how race, class, nationality and recent geopolitical shifts intersect in reproducing, contesting, and negotiating the cultural meaning of Chinese masculinity within overseas Chinese online communities. Furthermore, through ethnographic fieldwork among Chinese international students in the United States, I further investigate overseas Chinese students’ responses to such online representations in offline situations. My research argues that the emergence and prevalence of the social concept of “North American Despicable Man” should be understood as a social process of what I call “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 and negotiation 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. I further argue that Chinese immigrant men’s online attempts to compensate for their perceived lack or loss of masculine power in real life ironically reinforces social prejudice against Chinese men and helps perpetuate overall male dominance over Chinese women in the United States.

The Significance of Studying Overseas Chinese Men in the United States The critical study of Chinese men and masculinities has emerged in response to burgeoning men’s studies in the West, especially the “third wave” of masculinity 7. According to the SEVP 2014 report, the total number of male Chinese students in STEM fields in the United States is 67,169; the number of female Chinese students in STEM fields is 37,234. The total number of Chinese overseas students in STEM fields in the US has reached 104,403, about 38 percent of the total Chinese student population in the United States.

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studies which focuses on the gendered experience of men in a global context and in non-Western cultures (Song and Hird 2014). As Yiu Fai Chow (2008) indicates, there are two major trajectories of Chinese masculinity studies. The first emerged in response to the West’s ignorance of Asian masculinity studies in the 1990s. It conceptualizes Chinese masculinities as intrinsically different from the prevailing Eurocentric construct of masculinity, attempting to provide alternative paradigms of masculinity in non-Western cultural contexts. The pioneering works of Kam Louie (2002) and Geng Song (2004) are especially influential and groundbreaking. While these works break away from the hegemonic Western paradigm of masculinity studies and try to employ an indigenous approach to study Chinese men, critics contend that this framework often overemphasizes “the specificities of Chinese masculinity,” and thus risks essentializing, exoticizing, and homogenizing Chinese masculinities (Chow 2008, 5). The second trajectory, on the other hand, takes diasporic Chinese men as their primary focus of research. Within the framework of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1995), it studies how these men achieve masculinity against the negative stereotyping of Asian immigrant men in Western countries. Works by scholars such as Anthony Chen (1999) and Ray Hibbins (2011) highlight the agency of diasporic Chinese men and the gendered strategies that affirm their masculinities when they encounter the crisis of masculinity as immigrants. However, this trajectory often treats diasporic Chinese men in a host country as homogeneous, as if there were no internal differences or conflicts within this group, while in reality, diasporic Chinese men with different family backgrounds, immigration statuses and socioeconomic positions often lead vastly different lives. Bringing out the heterogeneity among Chinese immigrant men in the United States is not just important for a more nuanced and accurate understanding of these men’s lives, but is also important to avoid perpetuating and reproducing the stereotypes of Asian men in the US. Moreover, the literature on diasporic Chinese men in the West, according to Derek Hird and Geng Song, has focused on “non-mainland Sinophone cultures and earlier waves of migration from China” (Hird and Song, Introduction in this volume). However, China’s recent ascendency in the global economy has created ripples of change and influences in overseas communities, or as Julia Kuehn, Kam Louie, and David M. Pomfret so acutely summarized, “Chineseness has been refashioned in the wake of the rise of China” (Kuehn et al. 2013, 6). As Song and Hird argue, in China and abroad, Chinese men and the images of Chinese masculinity “are increasingly prominently situated in global context,” and are having a “transnational turn” (Song and Hird 2014; Hird and Song, Introduction in this volume). This changing reality calls upon the study of Chinese diasporic men to respond to it and “puts a spotlight on the wave of migration occasioned by the ‘rise’ of China” (Hird and Song, Introduction in this volume).

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It is also important to study the vernacular discourse about the educated diasporic Chinese men in connection with or in contrast to national and mainstream media portrayals of them.8 Michel Foucault (1978) argues that social norms, such as gender and sexuality norms, are constructed by the ways that they are spoken of or conceptualized in language. Masculinity, like gender and sexuality, is also configured in the discourse about the cultural understanding of “what it means to be a man.” Chinese masculinity is, as Geng Song points out (in his chapter in this volume), increasingly represented “in a cosmopolitan fashion” and linked with modernity in Chinese media, especially regarding educated young overseas Chinese men. The mainstream American media, on the other hand, have continued to produce and reproduce the racialized stereotypes of Asian American men, as “nerd” and “forever foreign” (Park 2015, 370; Zhang 2010). However, as Hauser points out, public opinion is formed not just by elite and mass media discourses, but also by the informal, “everyday deliberation” (2007, 336) that ordinary citizens use to seek out information, formulate arguments and respond to the arguments of others. This chapter attempts to investigate the process in which educated diasporic Chinese men are viewed, evaluated and discussed in everyday life in their own communities, and how the “vernacular rhetoric” (Hauser 2007) internalizes, articulates with, and even challenges the discourses at national and global levels.

Research Methods In order to conduct a more nuanced examination of the discursive construct of Chinese diasporic masculinity in the United States, I provide a close reading of the online posts regarding the discussion of NAWSN from overseas Chinese social websites and complement the online research with offline ethnographic fieldwork among Chinese international students in the United States. In his research on Dutch Chinese diasporic masculinity, Yiu Fai Chow argues for the necessity of examining overseas Chinese popular culture in order to investigate the experience of the Chinese diaspora in the West. One reason, he 8. Here I am following Gerard A. Hauser’s idea of vernacular discourse as “(T)he everyday exchanges among ordinary citizens .  .  . that forms and expresses public opinion. Collectively, these dialogues form a weblike structure of associations, what Habermas (2006) refers to as ‘clusters’ (417) of opinions, with respective weights of attitude drawn from various audiences” (Hauser 2007, 336). Hauser argues that vernacular discourse is different from opinion polls which are often dominated by social elites and journalistic discourse. Vernacular discourses are an “everyday form of deliberation among ordinary citizens who engage in a polyphonous conversation on issues that intersect with their lives. Their deliberations are based on desire and mirror the public sphere’s reticulate structure, in which multiple-issue public spheres touch one another and include members who belong to several, perhaps many, overlapping discursive arenas (Hauser, 1999)” (Hauser 2007, 336).

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argues, is because “[Chinese men] are seldom . . . active participants of pub, sport and beach cultures, the dominant construction sites of Western versions of masculinity. Instead, they may be preoccupied with their own cultural pursuits such as watching martial arts films” (Chow 2008, 9). Following Chow, I argue that overseas Chinese social websites are one of the cultural pursuits through which we can investigate the lives of diasporic Chinese men. These websites are significant but under-researched sources for the study of Chinese masculinity beyond China’s borders. Popular overseas Chinese social websites such as MITBBS attract an average of 20,000 to 30,000 registered users every day. The forum is dominated by overseas Chinese users with at least a college degree. Close to half of them have a postgraduate education. Here, Chinese men actively participate in discussions, interact with their peers and present individual experiences, emotions, and opinions on various platforms. NAWSN is one of the hottest topics among these internet users.9 This approach is to “take the virtual, online environment as the site of the research supplanting interviews and survey with existing information that is automatically archived in abundant online environments” (Hine, 2008; cited in Liu 2014, 34). The texts in the online environment, according to Christine Hine, should be viewed ethnographically as “culturally situated cultural artifacts,” instead of “distorted accounts” or “straightforward truths” (2000, 51). The second part of my fieldwork is ethnographic research that I have conducted among Chinese international students in the United States since 2014. The students participating in this research, five undergraduates and eight graduate students, had spent at least one year in the United States, studying in nine different academic disciplines.10 Most of them know of or use the major overseas Chinese social networking websites. I invited them to read the online posts, discuss them, and occasionally engage in debate about these posts. I also observed and participated in their social activities, and interviewed with them about their personal experience of migration and adaptation to American life. The perspectives that these students provided were invaluable, complementing the information collected from the online writings and posts.

Who Is a “North American Despicable Man?” The epithet NAWSN was adapted from the internet slang word “weisuonan” or “WSN” in short. “WSN” has a wide range of meanings in Chinese context; its 9. I became a registered member of websites such as MITBBS and huaren.us in 2008. I read these websites on a daily basis and actively participated in some of the online discussions and interactions. 10. The students came from a variety of academic fields, including economics, business administration, accounting, art history, computer science, urban studies, transportation, architecture, and sociology.

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meaning varies from a man with an indecent appearance to a man with (often sexually) improper behavior that causes repugnant feelings in others. However, it is not an actual, static identity attached to a particular man. Instead, WSN operates on men in a way very much like the “fag” discourse in the United States. C. J. Pascoe argues that adolescent American boys use the word “fag” not just to express homophobia. Instead, it is a slur that is associated more with masculinity than with sexuality. Becoming a “fag” means “failing at the masculine tasks of competence, prowess and strength or in any way revealing . . . weakness or femininity” (Pasco 2005, 330). Thus, any man can temporarily become a fag in a given social context. Similarly, any Chinese man can become a WSN, depending on the context. WSN’s position, just like a “fag’s” position, is “an ‘abject’ position” (Pasco 2005, 333) that no Chinese man wants to be associated with. In addition, by engaging in “WSN” talk online and in real life, men police their own behaviors to avoid being viewed as not masculine. NAWSN literarily means “WSN in North America.” Just like WSN, it is an abject position that serves as a disciplinary mechanism in the making of Chinese diasporic masculinities. However, while WSN can be applied to all men, NAWSN does not apply to men of any other races or ethnicities in the United States, but only Chinese men; neither can it be applied to Chinese men with a low educational level. Instead, it is popularly associated with well-educated Chinese men who come to the United States via postgraduate education, while Chinese undergraduate men in the United States have barely been portrayed in the same derogatory way on the internet. Interestingly, no similar slurs are known for Chinese overseas postgraduates in other countries. So what exactly about the United States turns a male laoliu “despicable”? I argue that the term has to be understood against the changing landscape of Chinese overseas education and the shifting social value associated with well-educated Chinese immigrant men due to China’s ascendency as a global superpower. The profile of Chinese overseas students has changed dramatically in the last few decades. During the high socialist period, studying abroad was restricted to a very small group of people sponsored by the state; self-financed overseas education was not allowed. The Chinese government set strict rules to regulate overseas students and stipulated that those who studied abroad would be punished if they did not return to China after the due term. In the 1980s, the Chinese government gradually relaxed its control over studying abroad, giving rise to a surge of overseas students. The United States became the most desired destination country, attracting the largest number of Chinese students. Since most Chinese people hardly had enough money to support themselves while studying abroad at that time, students had to receive academic scholarships from foreign universities. The earlier generations of overseas Chinese students

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were predominantly men studying in STEM fields where scholarships were more abundant and the job market was stronger than in other disciplines.11 These men’s immigration experiences were often characterized by years of hard work and fierce competition in school. Since overseas scholarships were extremely limited, an undergraduate degree from a top Chinese university is a de facto requirement for entry into a US PhD program. However, the most prestigious Chinese universities are even more selective than the most exclusive US institutions. Thus, young Chinese men have to work extremely hard to compete for spots in the top Chinese universities, paving their way for studying abroad.12 In China, these men are considered the best of their generation. Excellent academic performance, especially in the disciplines that are widely considered “men’s fields” in China, such as mathematics and engineering, is an important source of masculine pride so much so that journalists have reported that in senior high school, boys who choose to study humanities (wen ke 文科) instead of science (li ke 理科) for their college entrance examinations are often treated with contempt. For young men with non-elite backgrounds, excellence academic performance in sciences could be their only source of pride. One post by a self-identified male postgraduate recalled: “In junior high school, we were not attractive to girls because we didn’t have any money to buy good clothes. But when we worked out a few extremely difficult math questions, when girls looked at us with admiration, we felt proud .  .  . Thus, we thought that good academic performance was the way to be a man.”13 Up until the early 2000s, Chinese men who made it to the United States were viewed with awe and admiration in their motherland. Due to the economic gap between China and the United States, these men generally lived materially more advanced lives than most Chinese people at that time. Those who went back to China after graduation, often referred to as haigui 海歸／海龜 or “sea turtles,” were well respected as social elites.14 Success stories of such sea turtle 11. The gender imbalance of international Chinese students in the United States was changed only very recently, largely due to the growth of Chinese overseas undergraduates, many of them young women. 12. In China, around ten million high school finishers take the national college entrance exam every year, but only three thousand are admitted into the two most prestigious schools, Peking University and Tsinghua University, which are thus more selective than the most exclusive US institutions. In fact, the majority of MIT undergraduates would not have had standardized test scores high enough to be admitted into the undergraduate programs of these two universities. 13. The post was retrieved on October 22, 2014, from http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/ Oregon/31213689.html. 14. In Chinese, overseas returnees are referred to as haigui. Hai means overseas, while gui means returnees, meaning people who have returned to mainland China after studying for years in foreign universities. The Chinese pronunciation of the English word “sea turtle” is the same as “overseas returnees,” thus “sea turtle” is a homophonic term that has been used in the local slang to refer to overseas returnees. Sea

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entrepreneurs as Zhang Chaoyang and Li Yanhong greatly contributed to the reputation of overseas education as an important pathway to success, fame, wealth, and for young Chinese men, masculine pride.15 However, the profile of Chinese overseas students changed radically after the 2000s. Chinese economic development has result in an expanding class of rich people who have enough economic resources to send their children to study abroad. The growth of Chinese undergraduates in the United States has been phenomenal, nearly 900 percent over the last decade. These young people are referred to as xiaoliu among overseas Chinese, but some of them are also known as fu’erdai 富二代, or the rich second generation, in China.16 Fu’erdai receive generous amounts of money, assets, and privilege from their well-off parents and often have powerful political connections. Numerous American mainstream media have reported the luxury lifestyle of fu’erdai in the United States and how these Chinese international students have brought important revenue for a cashstrapped higher education economy. China’s rise in the global economy and the influx of xiaoliu into the United States changed the playing field of overseas education on at least two fronts: first, as the economic gap between China and the United States is shrinking, the United States is losing its attraction for many Chinese students as an ideal permanent residence place. As David Zweig et al (2008; cf. Louie 2013) have sensitively observed, there has been a shift from “brain drain” to “brain circulation,” with more and more overseas-educated Chinese students choosing to return to China after graduation. According to the China Daily’s report, the number of Chinese returnees in 2013 alone reached 353,500, nearly 30 times the number of

turtle is also used as a metaphor of overseas returnees because it is said that sea turtles travel great distances overseas. 15. Zhang Chaoyang 張朝陽 (b.  1964), also Charles Zhang, is a Chinese businessman, investor and the founder, chairman and current CEO of Sohu Inc. Sohu Inc is listed to trade on NASDAQ and now has around 14,200 employees worldwide. Zhang is regarded as one of China’s internet pioneers and was named by Forbes Magazine as one of the richest men in China in 2010. Li Yanhong 李彥宏 (b. 1968), also Robin Li, is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He co-founded the Chinese search engine Baidu 百 度 and is ranked as the second richest man in mainland China (after Jack Ma 馬雲, b. 1964) with a net worth of US$12.231 billion as of December 2013. The Hurun Report Global Rich List 2014 ranked him as the 119th richest man in the world. 16. Besides fu’erdai, there are also other social categories that refer to specific groups within this generation of young overseas students with wealthy family background and powerful political connections, for example, guan’erdai 官二代, meaning “government official second generation”; xing’erdai 星二代, meaning “super-star second generation,” referring to the children of the super stars or celebrities in the booming entertainment industry; or hong’erdai, children whose families have strong roots in the Communist Party.

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returnees seen at the beginning of the century (Zhang 2014).17 It is believed that China may offer more money, business opportunities, and government support to these “sea turtles.” The Chinese government, for example, launched China’s National Talent Development Plan in 2010 to address its needs for well-educated talent to help maintain the Chinese economic growth engine, aiming to increase its talent pool to 180 million people by 2020 (Miao 2016). Second, a foreign degree is losing value in China’s domestic job market. Even worse, it can be a disadvantage. A survey by Zhaopin.com in 2012 found that 70 percent of employers in China would give no hiring preference to overseaseducated applicants;18 nearly 10 percent said they would prefer not to hire them (Fischer 2014). Returning students often find that they lack the connections needed to land a job. This can be devastating for non-elite men because in today’s China, a wealthy father can be more useful than a US doctorate degree in terms of securing a young person’s future prosperity, which has been summarized by a phrase, “pindie shidai” 拼爹時代 or “the era of fathers’ privilege competition.” With these radical changes, laoliu suddenly find that they are no longer the admirable “sea turtles”; instead, they have become “seaweed” (in Chinese, haidai 海帶／海待, meaning returnees waiting for employment).19 In my interviews with the Chinese graduate students in the United States, all of them expressed anxiety and a sense of uncertainty about the job market in China. Despite the Chinese government’s great effort to attract the overseas educated to return to China, these students are aware of the fact that many returnees fare poorly in the local labor market. A male graduate student described his feelings about the uncertainty of future employment as “fearful,” and that he “lost sleep at night about it.” 17. This information was retrieved on October 22, 2014, from http://usa.chinadaily.com. cn/2014-03/30/content_17390667.htm. 18. A report of this survey can be found at Beijing Morning Newspaper, August 7, 2012, accessed on April 30, 2017, http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2012-08/07/ c_123543216.htm. 19. There have been a series of neologisms originating from the overseas migration of Chinese students, including hai’ou 海鷗 (seagull), the overseas-educated who travel between China and foreign countries frequently; haicao 海草 (sea grass), overseas returnees who have great difficulties to find good jobs in China because of their academic or training backgrounds; haixian 海鮮 (sea food), freshly graduated overseas-educated people who land on important and decent jobs; haixing 海星 (star fish), the overseas-educated who are as outstanding as stars; haizao 海藻 (sargassum), the overseas-educated who keep looking for jobs but cannot find one; haishen 海參 (sea cucumber), the returnees (overseas-educated students) who do not have any overseas working experience; haipao 海泡 (sea foam), overseas students who have completed or are about to complete their studies but continue to live abroad, feeling uncertain about returning to China; haigen 海根 (the root of sea plants), overseas Chinese who have permanently moved to live in China; and haipai 海派, meaning expatriates sent by the Chinese government.

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The Despicable North American Men The discourse of NAWSN emerged exactly when these radical changes were taking place, and when laoliu began experiencing the loss of their social privileges and elite statuses. The insults against male laoliu as NAWSN focus on three overgeneralized characterizations: asexual appearance, thrifty lifestyle, and “losing” Chinese women to non-Chinese men.

Asexual appearance Mainstream American media have presented Asian American male bodies with an “abandonment of ‘authentic masculinity’” (Park 2015, 371). While Asian American female bodies have been viewed with awe and desire in mainstream American society, Asian American men are categorized as socially ‘‘undesirable’’ (Fong-Torres 1995). In film and television, Asian American men are conspicuously absent or relegated to very limited and stereotypical roles. While African American and Latinos young men are stereotyped as “hypermasculine” thugs or gangsters, Asian American men are often portrayed as smart but evil, intelligent but asexual, and even effeminate. One recent example that illustrates this point can be found in the popular Hollywood movie Hangover Part II which represents the Asian American male character, Mr. Chow, as effeminate and asexual. One critic notes: ‘‘His naked man-handle is mistaken for a Shiitake mushroom’’ (Yang 2011, cited from Park 2013, 13). Even Jeremy Lin, the sensational Asian American NBA star was made fun of as lacking masculinity.20 Alexander Lu and Y. Joel Wong’s research point out that “given media portrayals as short, smallpenised, hairless-bodied wimps (Wilson et al. 2009) and lacking Euro-centric aesthetics (Fong-Torres 1995), Asian American men receive minimal positive body imagery” (2013, 348). Numerous studies have pointed out that trendy hairstyles, fashionable outfits, muscular bodies, sports and physical prowess, important markers of the Anglo-Celtic construction of masculinity, do not necessarily have the same significance for diasporic Chinese men (Chen 1999; Chow 2007). However, many online posts within overseas Chinese social networking websites resonate with the mainstream white culture’s standards of masculinity, and attack male laoliu as asexual, physically unattractive, and effeminate. For example, a self-identified Chinese overseas woman complained in her post: “[male laoliu], please do not forget to take a bath every day! Please do not pretend that you don’t know your hair is filthy. Your bad body odor makes me puke, and your foul breath makes me want to kill myself . . . I am not interested in effeminate men like the Chinese 20. Some media reports attribute his quick rise and success to the “Confucian work ethic” of East Asia, saying that Lin’s culture makes him “a better passer and teammate” (Park 2015).

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who are tiny and slim, no muscles at all.” This accusation has been echoed by many similar online posts and some students that I interviewed.21 A few female students told me that in their list of men that are physically attractive, white men are at the top, or popularly held belief places them at the top, followed by African American men, with Asian men at the bottom; however, they admit that they would consider Chinese men for marriage purposes due to cultural similarity and the assumption that Chinese men are “family oriented” (gu jia 顧家).

Thrifty lifestyle Male laoliu’s thrifty lifestyle is also under attack in NAWSN discourse. For example, one online post argues that a “typical NAWSN” can be identified by ten money-saving behaviors.22 These behaviors include changing the engine oil for his car by himself; searching for deals and coupons before making any purchase; regularly searching cheap flight, hotel, and car rental deals; searching cheap goods on Craigslist; jailbreaking and repairing iPhones and iPads; using coupons in shopping; shopping for checking account and credit account bonuses; calling phone service companies to bargain small fees; scrounging around for free meals, especially from student fellowships in Chinese churches; fixing computers, reinstalling operating systems, cleaning computer viruses, spending huge amounts of time surfing online (at least three hours a day), watching pirated movies on Chinese websites; and sharing a family phone service plan with Chinese strangers in order to save monthly expenses. These insulting posts fails to take into consideration the disadvantaged socioeconomic status of young Chinese graduates in the United States. Since their families are too poor to financially support them and because, as student visa holders, they are not allowed to work off campus, they rely on meager university scholarships for a living and do whatever they can to save money. Some of them even need to send remittances to their financially stressed parents in China. Even after they graduate and find jobs, many choose to continue to live a thrifty life, because as new immigrants, they face financial uncertainty and have to save for emergencies. These poverty- and uncertainty-driven behaviors were valued in socialist China when poor people were ideologically recognized as heroes, but not in the present time when “Chinese masculinity is increasingly being defined in terms of money, bearing remarkable similarities with the discourse of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in the West” (Song and Hird 2014, 12). This 21. When I asked Chinese students in the United States to describe the images that popped into their minds when they heard the word NAWSN, a few of them told me that they thought about Chinese male graduate students, majoring in science and engineering (ligong ke 理工科), short, thin, wearing thick glasses, and having oily hair. 22. The post was retrieved on October 22, 2014, from http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/ Detective/120733.html.

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new standard of masculinity in contemporary China has obviously taken root in the overseas Chinese online community, especially after a large number of “rich second generation” students have flocked to the United States. The striking class differences, manifested as different consumption power between laoliu and xiaoliu, can be found on American campuses nationwide.23 When consumerism symbolizes masculinity, the male laoliu’s thrifty lifestyle is ridiculed as despicable and not manly. Some students were alert to the social stratification and severe polarization between the rich and the poor that the content of these posts indicated. One male graduate student quickly pointed out that the accusations aimed at NAWSN were “purely about them being economically poor.” Another male graduate student told me that a college friend of his, a male graduate student in Australia, earned most of his income by writing final papers and theses for fu’erdai undergraduate students in the United States. He commented, “I don’t know who is more despicable, me, my friend, or those rich clients?” Other students, however, disagreed. A group of female undergraduate students who came from wealthy families in China did not think that the attack against NAWSN was necessarily about them being poor. “Rich men can also be despicable. It is even worse when WSN is rich,” they said. They cited the behaviors of some rich male friends of theirs as despicable, such as binge drinking, drunk driving, extravagant spending, and misogynistic attitudes toward women. They also expressed respect for self-made young men from lower-class backgrounds. However, they also said that the social status of a man’s family mattered, especially in regards to issues of romance and marriage. They believe that a good marriage had to be a suitable match of the social and economic statuses of both families, what the Chinese call mendang hudui 門當戶 對, meaning literally that “the doors and families match equally.”24

23. One example is car purchases. While laoliu may have to save for years to purchase a new car, xiaoliu flock to BMWs, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, and other high-end auto companies to make purchases as soon as they land in the US. The phenomenon has been found in American campuses nationwide. However, it is also worth noting that xiaoliu should not be understood as a homogeneous group whose members come from similarly privileged familial background. The amount of wealth, the social status, and the political connections that individual xiaoliu have can vary widely. 24. One of the female undergraduates referred to her good friend, a young woman also from an exceptionally wealthy family in China, who divorced her husband, a young man from a lower class whom she met in college, after a marriage of only eight months. Citing this divorce as an example, she said, “Marriage is about family. My friend’s ex-husband was uncomfortable with her buying luxury brand clothes and wearing them when she went out. He didn’t understand that she was representing the wealth of her family; her outfit and consumption were one of the signs that important investors and clients were looking for before they would believe that their business was doing very well. She had to consume for the sake of the family business, even if

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This belief is not only held by rich undergraduates; in fact, most students I met agreed that a marriage between a “phoenix man” (fenghuang nan 鳳凰男), a man who has grown up in the countryside, made his way through school, landed a good job in the city and is expected to change the fate of his family, and a “peacock girl” (kongque nü 孔雀女), one who has been born and bred in a relatively wealthy urban family, will not work, because it is assumed that the lifestyles and values of the two parties will be incompatible. Most students, when asked about whether they would consider dating or marrying people with a rural origin, firmly stated that they would not consider it, or they would say that they were taught by their parents to think negatively about such a choice.

“Losing” Chinese women to non-Chinese men And lastly, it is said that male laoliu are to be blamed for “losing” Chinese women to non-Chinese men. Although this sounds like what Song and Hird (2014) have identified as the “Chinese men do not deserve Chinese women” discourse in contemporary China, the argument about NAWSN is different. In China, it is believed that Chinese men are effeminate because they were castrated by the Party’s Communist gender ideology and have an “inferiority complex” when facing hegemonic Western culture. But in the case of NAWSN, the online posts argue that male laoliu fail to “keep” Chinese women because their education is problematic. They complain that Chinese men spend too much time on school work, and thus lack social skills around women. Additionally, because these men firmly believe that further education will pay them back with everything they want, including women, they often overrate their educational achievements, and treat women (viewed as less intelligent and competitive in school) with no respect. The students I have met generally share such opinions. But most complaints point to the mismatch of male laoliu’s advanced education and their now endangered economic and career prosperity. One post explains why some women today are not attracted to Chinese male laoliu: “The young women are choosing good spouse[s], not PhD candidates. Would girls fall for you simply because of your outstanding academic record? Can you earn lots of money, raise your family and make your wife happy only because your academic performance is outstanding? Yes, you have excellent grades, you are well educated, and you are intelligent, but the person who will like you the most will be your employers—they are happy to find you, the one who is willing to do the most difficult and toilsome jobs that Americans would not do, with low pay, and yet you are still proud of yourself!”25 the family was losing money . . . He was not brought up in this kind of family, and he simply doesn’t fit in!” 25. This post was retrieved on October 22, 2014, from http://www.vjianke.com/Y8QLM. clip.

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Comments like this suggest the changing Chinese view about well-educated immigrant men in the United States. If in the past, young men with non-elite backgrounds could rely on their outstanding academic performance to claim their masculinity and to climb up the social ladder, today such pathways are severely challenged when China’s rise has brought about a growing middle class and new rich that have the resources and connections to send their children to privileged US schools for education. While international education remains valuable, especially to wealthy families in China, because it helps transfer monetary capital of these families into social capital (Xiang and Shen 2009), it can no longer guarantee the pathway to higher social positions and a better life for men from humble origins. In Biao Xiang and Wei Shen’s words, such changes in the overseas education indicates that China has moved from a time of “elite circulation” (members of lower strata move up to elite positions based on technological know-how) to a time of “elite reproduction” (the same group transforms themselves from one type of elite to another based on the manipulation of various types of capital that they possess) (2009, 521). John Osburg observed in China that a new form of masculinity, what he calls “elite masculinity,” embodied by the experiences and images of the new rich male entrepreneurs through their extravagant consumptions and entertainment life, “is gradually becoming institutionalized and codified by state and the market alike, and in this process, it is becoming the normative masculinity around which all urban men’s practices are oriented and measured” (Osburg 2013, 10). The emergence of NAWSN discourse shows that “elite masculinity” is not just institutionalized in contemporary China, but it has been translated into the Chinese online community in the United States as a powerful notion of masculinity.

Wai F nü: The “revenge” of the NAWSN The notion that male laoliu “lose” Chinese women to non-Chinese men can be especially infuriating to these men, since they are reported to have great difficulties in finding spouses in the United States. Tseen-Ling Khoo (2003) points out that in the United States, while Asian women may be viewed as victims of oriental patriarchal culture and thus are less problematic than men within Western society’s discourse, Asian men are generally represented as the Other, desiring and commodifying white women, and aggressively competing for social space. The feminization and marginalization of Asian men in US mainstream culture leaves Chinese immigrant men much fewer options than Chinese women in terms of spouse selection. Knowing that their chances of having a date or finding the spouse in the United States can be very low, some male graduate students rely on their families to engage in matchmaking to meet young women, even before they migrate to the United States.

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Instead of exploring how racial taboos and gender politics in mainstream US society set up obstacles for Chinese men seeking mates, the NAWSN discourse places all the blame on individual male laoliu, even calling them the new “sick men of East Asia.” Male laoliu are thus doubly emasculated, found to be insufficiently masculine when measured against both Western men and the rich second generation of Chinese immigrants. Some male laoliu try to fight back by engaging in online attacks of Chinese women who are in cross-racial relationships, calling the latter wai F nü 外 F 女 (WFN in short). The Chinese word wai means “foreign (man),” “F” is the acronym for the English word “fuck,” and nü means Chinese woman in this context. It is a misogynist phrase that maliciously reduces Chinese women to sex objects, and their romantic relationships to pure sex. In online interactions, the men verbally attack WFN as “gold diggers” and “traitors.” Yet the same group of men views Chinese men marrying non-Chinese women, especially white women, as unproblematic, even better, supermasculine. Scholars have observed the intimate relationship between Chinese masculinity and nationalism, the cultural assumption that a “good” man brings honor to the motherland on the international stage (Song and Hird 2014, 12). Chinese immigrant men who marry white women are considered masculine because the white woman “has represented a figure of ‘modernity,’ ‘beauty,’ and most of all a trope of ‘alterity’ in the Chinese public culture” (Lu 2000, 42) and such a marriage is perceived to be a Chinese man’s success in domesticating a Western woman, proof of heroic Chinese masculinity. However, this notion of Chinese masculinity sadly confirms and perpetuates the cultural view of women as commodities that can be earned and lost, and thus “affirms the reification of women and their circumscribed ‘femininity’ as icons of national values, or idealized custodians of tradition” (Khoo 2003, 123). It also perpetuates the stereotypical images of Chinese men as patriarchal oppressors and thus despicable.

Conclusion This chapter examines the emergence and popularity of the so-called “North American Despicable Man” (NAWSN) discourse within the overseas Chinese online community and the cultural assumptions that may be grounded in new media representations of well-educated Chinese immigrant men in the United States. I argue that the NAWSN discourse should not be dismissed as the trolling of some mischievous net users, as ephemeral internet culture, or as the irresponsible online venting of “angry Chinese youth.” Instead, it should be understood against the rapidly changing landscape of the overseas education of China’s youth, within the dominant ideological field (Park 2014, 383) which includes the intersection of unique gender and racial politics in the United States and in relation to China’s ascendency as the world’s second superpower, bringing

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about enormous wealth to a small group of privileged people but also causing and increasing gap between “the haves” and the “have-nots.” This research finds that the NAWSN discourse depicts well-educated, recent, Chinese male immigrants with non-elite backgrounds as physically unattractive, asexual, stingy, socially awkward, and lacking people skills; he is the Other that is rejected by not only mainstream American society, but also is not desired within the overseas Chinese community. Years of hard work and advanced overseas education that once led to success, wealth, higher social status, and masculinity no longer guarantee a promising future for men from humble origins. These men are further blamed for “losing” Chinese women to Western men, and thus bringing shame to their motherland. When “elite masculinity” has become the ideal and ideological standard in both China and the United States, well-educated non-elite men are doubly emasculated. Following Song and Hird’s (2014) argument that “notions and practices of masculinities” are constituted through “assemblages,” I argue that in order to understand the social construct of Chinese diasporic masculinity, we not only need to examine the racialized gender politics that feminize Asian men in their host countries, but we must also study the transnational flow of values and ideas such as “elite masculinity” and how notions and practices of masculinity are negotiated and contested within the overseas Chinese community in the wake of the rise of China.

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Contributors

Hongwei Bao is an assistant professor in media studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He holds a PhD in gender studies and cultural studies from the University of Sydney, Australia. His research interests include Asian media and cultural studies, gender studies and queer theory, and transnational and postcolonial studies. His current research focuses on gay identity and queer politics in contemporary China. He has published articles in Cultural Studies, Health, Culture and Society, Interventions: A Journal for Postcolonial Studies, and Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research. Jamie Coates focuses on perceptions of commonality, self, and political possibility in the Sino-Japanese context from a visual, ethnographic, and mobilities perspective. He completed his PhD at the Australian National University, and has since worked at the University of Sheffield and Waseda University. He is currently a visiting fellow at Sophia University. Miriam Driessen is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies and Jesus College, University of Oxford. She is trained as an anthropologist. Her research interests include Chinese overseas migration, mobility and stability, gender, urban development, and housing in contemporary China. She has published in the China Quarterly and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and is the author of the Dutch literary non-fiction work Het Verloren Dorp. Jin Feng received her PhD in Asian languages and cultures from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a professor of Chinese and the Orville and Mary Patterson Routt Professor of Literature at Grinnell College, United States. She is the author of The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction, The Making of a Family Saga: Ginling College (1915–1952), and Romancing the Internet. She has translated Chen Hengzhe’s Autobiography of a Chinese Young Girl (1935) into Chinese, and has published other scholarly publications in both Chinese and English.

238 Contributors

Derek Hird is a senior lecturer in Chinese studies at Lancaster University, UK. His research focuses on Chinese migrant men’s experiences in London and Chinese white-collar masculinities. His publications include Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China (with Geng Song), “Making Class and Gender: White-Collar Men in Postsocialist China,” in Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men, edited by Kam Louie, and “Moral Masculinities: Ethical Self-Fashionings of Professional Chinese Men in London.” Arnhilt Johanna Hoefle is a researcher at the Austrian National Library and a lecturer at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on Austrian literature and the cultural relations between the Chinese-speaking and the Germanspeaking world. She is the author of China’s Stefan Zweig: The Dynamics of Cross-Cultural Reception. Pamela Hunt is a Chiang Ching-Kuo postdoctoral research fellow, affiliated with the China Centre at the University of Oxford. Her most recent publication is “Drifting through the Capital: ‘Floating’ Migrants and Masculinity in Xu Zechen’s Fiction.” She is currently working on a monograph on masculinity and expressions of rebellion in post-1989 Chinese fiction. Tingyu Kang is an assistant professor in the College of Communication at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. She holds a DPhil in geography from the University of Oxford and an MSc in gender from the London School of Economics. Her research interests focus primarily on the role of communication technologies in transnationalism. Sheldon Lu is a professor and department chair of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis. His Chinese novel, Love Trilogy 愛情三部曲, is in part an exploration of Chinese masculinity in transnational settings. Geng Song is an associate professor in the School of Chinese, University of Hong Kong. Among his publications are The Fragile Scholar and Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China (co-authored with Derek Hird). He is currently working on a GRF-funded project on masculinities in Chinese television. Lin Song is a PhD candidate in gender studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the transformations of gender and sexuality particularly in relation to kinship ideologies in media representations in contemporary China. Lezhou Su is an associate professor in the School of English for Specific Purposes at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He received his PhD in culture studies from the University of Louisville. His major research interests are gender studies, Orientalism, and Occidentalism in immigration-themed movies and literature. He is also interested in the construction of masculinities in China’s sport

Contributors 239

communities. Apart from his research on masculinities, he teaches ESL courses at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. Xia Zhang is a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Portland State University. Her recent publications include “Labor, Masculinity, and History: Bangbang Men in Chongqing, China” in Cultural Politics of Sex and Gender in Contemporary Asia, edited by Tiantian Zheng, and “One Life for Sale: Youth Culture, Labor Politics and New Idealism in China.” She is currently working on a book about precarious labor and Chinese rural migrant men’s experiences of gender and informal work in Chongqing, China.

Index

Abbas, Ackbar, 72 activists, political, 17, 76–77, 88, 94, 141, 142 Africa, 1, 41, 180–99 African Americans, 228, 229 Ah Cheng, 151 Ai Jing, 64, 66 Ali Baba, 69 Altman, Dennis, 76 American Dreams in China (Zhongguo hehuoren; film), 11, 13, 20, 59, 60, 62–63, 67–71 Americanization, 90–93 Angola, 193–94, 196 “Angry Chinamen: Finding masculinity in Australia and China” (Louie), 92 Anime, Comics, and Games (ACG) culture, 36 Anti-Japanese War (1931–1945), 30 anxieties, male, 20–21; and birth tourism, 210–11, 212; of Chinese returnees, 227; and cosmopolitanism, 34, 36, 37–38; and economic insecurity, 186–87; and globalization, 7, 107; and migration, 184–85; in postsocialist China, 187–88; in Tatort, 44–45, 49, 50–52, 55 Asia, transnational, 1, 4, 75–76. See also particular countries Asian-American men, 70, 220, 222, 228, 232, 233 Asian men: feminization of, 12, 16, 19, 52, 89, 187, 204, 214, 220, 232–34; in Japan, 130; stereotyping of, 90, 221, 222, 228, 232; vs. Western men, 6, 233. See also

Chinese men; Japanese men; Korean men audience: for Chinese TV, 29, 30, 31, 36; for film, 7, 67, 68; mainland Chinese, 67, 71, 72; of reality show, 14–15, 174–77 Australia, 5, 6, 128, 178, 183, 205, 230 Austria, 10, 40, 41, 46, 48, 53, 54 authenticity: and Cai Lan, 17, 154, 156–57; in reality shows, 172–73 Bai, Ruoyun, 177 Baidu Baike (website), 168, 226n15 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 113 Bao Hongwei, 9, 11, 12, 16, 19, 73–85 Baranovitch, Nimrod, 95 Barmé, Geremie R., 93, 95, 96 Barrett, Penelope, 150 Beasley, Christine, 4, 129 Beauty Writers, 117n18 Bei Tong (Beijing Tongzhi), 73, 74 Beijing, Beijing (Feng Tang), 106, 112, 113 Beijing Comrades (trans., Beijing Story), 74, 80 Beijing Story (Beijing gushi; online novel; Beijing Tongzhi), 11–13, 19, 73–86; background of, 73–75; becoming gay in, 75–78; class in, 78–80, 83–85; historical gay identity in, 80–83 Beijing Trilogy (Beijing sanbu qu; Feng Tang), 106–20 Ben cao gangmu (Systematic materia medica; Li Shizhen), 150 Berry, Chris, 18–19 Biao Xiang, 232

Index 241

birth tourism, 200–217; boundary setting in, 211–13, 214; and class, 200, 205–6, 211–13, 214; and fatherhood, 209–11; and flexible citizenship, 200–203, 205–6, 208, 209, 214–15; male employees in, 5, 9, 15–16, 200, 205, 211–13; role of husband in, 15–16, 205, 206, 207–9; and transnational masculinity, 203–4; and working-class male migrants, 205–6 Bloch, Ernst, 80 Bourdieu, Pierre, 32, 156 Brandth, Berit, 174 Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The (Diaz), 6 Britain, 5, 8, 28, 60, 110, 204 Britain’s Got Talent (TV show), 28 businessmen, transnational: in China, 68–70, 78; Chinese, 27, 42–45, 49–50, 68–70, 128, 135; Chinese-American, 46–48; in Chinese TV dramas, 27, 31–34; and Confucianism, 4, 19, 205; Feng Tang on, 108, 119, 120; in film, 11, 12, 62, 68–70, 69, 70; in Hong Kong, 149–59; and intellectuals, 18–19, 21; in Japan, 128–48; masculinities of, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 18–19, 27, 31–34, 91, 203; in Tatort, 42–50; vs. traditional merchants (shang), 8, 18; and women, 4 Butler, Judith, 135 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 117 Cai Lan (Chua Lam), 2, 9, 14, 19, 149–60; and Chinese masculinities, 157–59; food tours of, 152, 153, 154, 157; and French cuisine, 153, 156, 158; and global vs. local, 154–57; on low vs. high cuisine, 154–56, 158; and nostalgia, 152, 154, 158; taste of, 152–53; vs. traditional intellectuals, 151 Cai Wenxuan, 155 Cai Xiang, 96 Cai Lan tan shijie (Cai Lan appreciates the world; TV show), 153 Cai Lan Tastes (Cai Lan pin wei; TV show), 152 caizi (talented, sexually attractive young male), 13, 17; Cai Lan on, 152, 159;

and Feng Tang, 114–15, 116, 117, 118, 120 California, 5, 71; birth tourism in, 15, 18, 201–17 Camus, Albert, 103 Canada, 42, 74, 183 Canon of the Immaulate Girl (Sunüjing), 114 Cao Juren, 151n2 capital contribution, 209–10. See also remittances capitalism, 81, 83–84. See also economy, global capitalist Carnal Prayer Mat (Rouputuan; Li Yu), 114, 117 Castro, Brian, 6 Catcher in the Rye (Salinger), 110n10 censorship: of Beauty Writers, 117n18; of Chinese TV, 28, 29; and Feng Tang, 105, 110–12; and Li Xiaomu, 132, 135, 139–40 Chan, Charlie, 40n1 Chan, Chike, 47 Chan, Fruit (Chen Guo), 66 Chan, Jackie, 6, 132, 133, 135, 136, 152n3 Chan, Peter, 11, 59, 63, 67–68, 71, 72 Chang, K. C., 150 Chen, Anthony, 221 Chen Dasou, 151 Chen Shenlin, 193–94 Chen Xiaoli, 190–91, 192–93 Chen Xiaoming, 105 Chen, Yun-chung, 67 Cheung, Esther, 60–61 Cheung, Maggie, 61 Cheung, Sidney, 157 childhood: changing concepts of, 191–92, 193; and food, 14, 150, 152, 153–56 children: and fathers, 8–9, 14, 15, 47, 161–97; left-behind, 191, 192; and marriage, 91; parachute, 18, 200, 202, 208, 215. See also youth, Chinese China, People’s Republic of (PRC): censorship in, 110–11; Chinese dream in, 59, 71–72; Chinese men’s success in, 67–70; education in, 93–94, 225; in A Free Life, 92, 99–100; Li Xiaomu on, 137–40, 140–41; one-child policy in, 192, 206; postsocialist era in, 8, 106, 107, 109; reform-era migration from, 2–3, 5, 11; rising global power of, 37,

242 Index

41, 46, 47, 54–55, 97. See also economy, Chinese; state, Chinese China Can Say No (Zhong et al.), 97 China Youth Daily (Zhongguo qingnian bao), 176 Chinese Americans, 46–48, 62, 70, 90, 107 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 78–79, 93–94, 95, 142, 151, 226n16, 231 Chinese Dream (Zhongguo meng), 59, 71–72 Chinese language: Feng Tang’s use of, 105, 106; in film, 60, 61, 67, 68; and Li Xiaomu, 140; Mandarin, 67, 68, 71, 151, 206; in Tatort, 47 Chinese men: absence of, 172–77, 200–217; anxieties of, 20–21, 187–88, 210–11, 212, 227; in Chinese economy, 67–70, 183–88; and crisis of masculinity, 55–56; culinary writings by, 149–59; emotional labor of, 208–11, 212, 214; feminization of, 12, 16, 52, 89, 187, 204, 214, 220; Feng Tang on, 102–24; in film, 59–72; “flower boy” (huayang shaonan) image of, 165, 166; and gay identities, 73–86, 89, 131; vs. German men, 47; and global capitalist economy, 1, 33, 78, 131, 221; Ha Jin on, 87–101; in Japan, 127–48; and Japanese men, 13, 131; marginalization of, 16, 55; as migrant workers, 180–99; as NAWSN, 20, 218–36; and non-Chinese men, 231–32; “pure man” (chun yemen’er) type of, 163–65; in reality shows, 161–79; and rising China, 54–55; study of diasporic, 220–22; as “sunshine boys” (nuan nan, hun-nam), 167–69, 177; superiority of, 37, 43; “tall, rich, and handsome” (gao fu shuai), 32; on television, 27–37, 41–58; transnational, 205–6; Westerneducated, 31, 32, 225–26; vs. Western men, 18, 19; Western stereotypes of, 10–11, 20, 53; and white women, 6, 69, 70, 233. See also businessmen, transnational Chinese migrants, 5, 8, 9, 87, 90, 207; in Africa, 180–99; and crime, 13, 42–45, 135–36, 144; in Japan, 128, 131, 133, 139, 142–43; in US, 11, 61–62, 63, 70, 71, 89, 183, 218–34

Chineseness, 5, 99, 100, 221; of Chinese men in Japan, 130, 134; and cosmopolitanism, 16–17, 35–37; and gay identies, 82, 83 Chow, Stephen, 71, 72 Chow, Yiu Fai, 222, 223 Chow Yun Fat, 134 Christianity, 4, 100 Chungking Express (Chongqing senlin; film), 71 citizenship: birthright, 200, 201; flexible, 60, 63, 200–203, 205–6, 208, 209, 214–15 class: in Beijing Story, 78–80, 83–85; and birth tourism, 200, 205–6, 211–13, 214; and cosmopolitanism, 7, 10, 14, 27, 35, 109–10, 144; and culinary writings, 150; and Feng Tang, 120; and gay identities, 11, 74, 75, 77, 78–80, 82–83; and Li Xiaomu, 144; and marriage, 230–31; and masculinities, 2, 4, 7, 13, 14, 17, 129, 145, 158, 159; and migration, 3, 5, 9, 181, 202, 204, 205, 213, 214; and NAWSN, 219, 220, 229–34; in PRC, 18, 79, 183–84, 233–34; and rural-urban dichotomy, 174–76, 177, 231; and sexuality, 74; on television, 29, 32, 52; and transnational families, 200, 201, 206, 214; and wealth, 79, 183, 205, 214, 219, 229–34. See also elites; middle class; working class Close Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), 67, 71 Coates, Jamie, 4–5, 9, 13, 17, 19, 127–48 commercialization, 28, 83–84; and intellectuals, 95–96; of relationships, 80, 97, 192–93 communality, compensation for, 188–93 comrade literature (tongzhi wenxue), 74 Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Tian mimi; film), 11, 12, 18, 59, 62–66, 68, 71 Confucianism, 1, 5, 8, 15, 99; and Asian masculinities, 4, 14, 19, 91, 205, 228n20; and Cai Lan, 150, 154, 157, 158; and gay identities, 12, 80–82; and gender roles, 187; and transnational businessmen, 4, 19, 205 Confucius, 138 Connell, Raewyn, 4, 33, 120, 195, 205 consumerism: and Chinese men in Japan, 130, 132, 133–34; and class, 79; and

Index 243

cosmopolitanism, 7–8, 14, 16, 17, 34, 35, 109, 119, 128, 134, 138, 143, 144; and fatherhood, 9, 209–10; in Feng Tang’s work, 108; and globalization, 94, 157; and masculinities, 7, 87, 93–99, 230, 232 corporations, transnational, 27, 31, 34, 203 cosmopolitanism: and anxiety vs. confidence, 34, 36, 37–38; of Cai Lan, 149, 152–53, 154, 157; with Chinese characteristics, 7, 10, 13, 17, 18, 27–39, 119, 128, 129, 144; of Chinese men in Japan, 130, 131, 132; and Chineseness, 16–17, 35–37; and class, 7, 10, 14, 27, 35, 109–10, 144; consumerist, 7–8, 14, 16, 17, 34, 35, 109, 119, 128, 134, 138, 143, 144; definitions of, 34, 35, 109; domestication of, 7, 8, 34, 119, 144; and English language, 27; Feng Tang on, 13, 107–10, 111, 116, 118, 120; in film, 11, 35, 70; and gay identities, 84; and gender hierarchy, 10, 17; of Hong Kong, 60–61, 159; of Li Xiaomu, 128, 132, 137–42, 144; and localization vs. globalization, 7–8, 10, 21; and modernity, 34, 222; and nationalism, 33, 34–35, 36, 37; and sexuality, 37, 128; state-sanctioned, 27, 28–30; and wealth, 16, 34, 35, 109, 120; and the West, 32, 34, 47, 70, 110 “Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture” (Hannerz), 109 Coupe, Eliza, 70 Crazed, The (Ha Jin), 87, 88, 98, 100 crime: and Chinese immigrants, 13, 42–45, 135–36, 144; and Chinese men in Japan, 131, 132–37; and detective genre, 43; gendered, 45n4; and Li Xiaomu, 142, 143, 144. See also Tatort Cristini, Remy, 74 cultural capital, 17–18, 19, 32; and culinary writings, 14, 150, 159 Cultural Revolution, 78, 139 culture, 3, 4; ACG, 36; and Chinese state, 29; of disappearance, 72; “high,” 74; and identity, 68–70, 71–72; K-pop, 36, 176; and nationalism, 17, 35; transnational Chinese, 53, 63; Western, 10–11 Dad! Where Are We Going (Baba qu na’r;

reality show), 20, 161–79; audience of, 14–15, 174–77; as compensation, 172–77; gendered fatherhood in, 169–72; negotiating masculinity in, 162–69; rural-urban dichotomy in, 172–77 Daoism, 150 Datta, Kavita, 3 Davies, Gloria, 36 Dearest (Qin’ai de; film), 67–68 Decameron (Boccaccio), 103, 110n10 Delanty, Gerard, 34 Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), 141 Deng Chenghe, 180, 182, 185, 186, 188, 189, 194 Derrida, Jacques, 73 detective genre, 42, 43–45, 55, 56 Diaz, Junot, 6 Dickens, Charles, 103 di Leonardo, Micaela, 189 Ding Mo, 31 Dominican immigrants, 6 Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk, 28 Donaldson, Mike, 129 Downs, Christopher (Xia Keli), 178 Dragon TV, 31 Driessen, Miriam, 9, 15, 18, 20, 180–99 Du Juan, 68 Du Mu, 103 Dubai, 204 Durian Durian (Liulian piaopiao; film), 66 Dyer, Richard, 128 Eastern Europe, 78 “East Is Red” (“Dongfang hong”; song), 63 Eco, Umberto, 44 economy, Chinese: and CCP, 78–79; Chinese men in, 67–70, 183–88; and Chinese men in Japan, 131; growth of, 11, 12, 16, 19, 21, 29, 60, 67, 70, 94, 113, 221, 224–25, 226, 232, 233–34; and Hong Kong, 67; and migration to Africa, 182–84, 196; and overseas students, 224–27, 232; privatization in, 78–79; and wen masculinity, 87 economy, global capitalist: and Chinese men, 1, 33, 78, 131, 221; and consumerism, 94, 157; and flexible identities, 63n2; and gay identities, 11–12, 75, 76, 77, 82; and Hong Kong film, 61,

244 Index

62; and neoliberalism, 19, 28, 30, 34, 77; and PRC, 1, 8, 21, 28, 37, 41, 46, 47, 54–55, 78, 97. See also businessmen, transnational; globalization economy, transnational libidinal, 107 economy, US, 219–20 education: anti-Western, 93–94; overseas, 9–10, 12, 16, 224–26, 227, 231–32, 233; and status, 7, 8, 18, 155–56, 157, 158, 219, 220, 225–26. See also intellectuals Elias, Juanita, 4 elites, Chinese: and birth tourism, 205, 206–7, 214; CCP cadres as, 78–79; cosmopolitan, 7, 10, 35, 109–10, 144; culinary writings by, 149–51; and Feng Tang, 120; and gay identities, 12, 75, 80–83; homoeroticism of, 82–83, 84; masculinities of, 1, 13, 139, 203–4, 205, 232, 234; and overseas education, 219, 220, 225–26, 232; traditional scholarofficial (shi), 1, 8, 18, 155–56, 157, 158; and TV, 27, 31; urban, 2, 17, 28, 70, 156, 173–74, 231, 232; white-collar, 2, 5, 11, 18, 27, 31, 70, 120, 186, 207. See also businessmen, transnational; entrepreneurs emasculation, double, 16, 20, 220, 233, 234 Eng, David, 74 English language, 27, 29, 32n3, 47, 131, 207 entrepreneurs (qiyejia): and birth tourism, 201, 204, 206, 213; Cai Lan as, 14, 157, 158; in film, 11, 12, 62, 69, 70; Li Xiaomu as, 13, 14, 19, 131, 144; migrant, 5, 183, 195, 196; in PRC, 69, 70, 78, 204, 232; returnee, 69, 225–26; Taiwanese, 204; transnational, 14, 34, 62, 70. See also businessmen, transnational Ethiopia, 9, 15, 18, 20, 180–99 Europe, 1, 9, 10–11, 41, 55–56. See also Britain; Germany; West, the Everything Grows (Wanwu shengzhang; Feng Tang), 102, 106, 112, 115 exile, 60, 61; literature of, 11, 12, 99 families: astronaut, 18, 183, 202, 203, 208, 215; ideal, 191–92; transnational, 180–99, 201–17 Farewell China (Ai zai bie xiang de jijie; film), 11, 12, 59, 61–62

fatherhood, 161–79; and birth tourism, 209–11; and compensation for absence, 188–93; “cosmonaut,” 183; in father-daughter relationships, 169–72; and Feng Tang, 119; ideal vs. real, 172–77; and migration, 15, 20, 180–99; negotiating masculinity in, 162–69, 177, 196–97; new styles of, 8–9, 21, 182, 187–92; on reality shows, 10, 14–15, 169–72; “strict father, loving mother” (yan fu ci mu) stereotype of, 163; in Tatort, 47, 51 Feasey, Rebecca, 172 femininity: of Asian men, 12, 16, 19, 52, 89, 187, 204, 214, 220, 232–34; conventional submissive, 170; and internal vs. external space, 173–74, 176, 177; and labor, 16, 201, 204, 212, 213, 214; vs. masculinities, 158, 159; and nationalism, 233; in postsocialist China, 187–88; unconventional masculine, 171 Feng Jin, 9, 14, 19, 149–60 Feng Tang (Zhang Haipeng), 9, 13, 17, 19, 102–24; career of, 105–7; on cosmopolitanism, 107–10, 111, 116, 118, 120; essays by, 107, 116, 117, 118; “non-mainstream” (feizhuliu) work of, 105–6; online blog of, 105, 118–19; on postsocialist China, 106, 107; transgressiveness of, 102, 104, 110–19, 120 Filipino migrant fathers, 188 film, 9–13, 59–72; American, 70, 228; Asian Other in Japanese, 130; audiences for, 7, 67, 68; businessmen in, 11, 12, 62–66, 68–70, 69, 70; and Cai Lan, 152; childhood in, 191; Chinese language in, 60, 61, 67, 68; cosmopolitanism in, 11, 35, 70; gay identities in, 11, 64; and globalization, 29, 61; on Hong Kong, 64–66, 71; and Li Xiaomu, 132, 134, 135, 140, 142; localization in, 71–72; masculinities in, 6, 9, 11, 59–61; New York in, 59, 61–62; stardom in, 7, 128; and television, 28, 29–30; Tiananmen Incident in, 60, 61–62. See also particular titles film industry, 31, 152n3; mainlandization of Hong Kong, 67–68, 71–72

Index 245

Finding Mr. Right (Beijing yushang Xiyatu; film), 210–11 Fioratta, Susanna, 181 Foucault, Michel, 4, 29, 222 “Four Talented Men of Hong Kong” (Xianggang si caizi), 152, 159 Free Life, A (Ha Jin), 12, 19, 87–101; Americanization in, 90–92; crisis of masculinity in, 88–90; nationalism in, 93–99 Fu Manchu, 40 fu’erdai (rich second generation), 10, 16, 226, 227, 230, 233 fujoshi (Japanese female fans), 36, 37 Fukuyama, Francis, 76 Full Moon in New York (Ren zai Niuyue; film), 62n1, 71 Gao Xing Jian, 93 Garciá Bernal, Gael, 6 gay identities, 2, 5, 73–86, 89; in Beijing Story, 13, 75–78, 80–83; and class, 11, 74, 75, 77, 78–80, 82–83; and Confucianism, 12, 80–82; development of, 75–78; vs. elite homoeroticism, 82–83, 84; in film, 11, 64; global, 76, 77–78; and global capitalist economy, 11–12, 75, 76, 77, 82; historical Chinese, 11–12, 75, 80–83, 84; in Japan, 36–37, 131; and male-male CP, 36–37; Marxist, 73, 84; and NAWSN, 224; utopian, 79–80, 81, 83, 84; and the West, 37, 75–76, 77 gender orders: and cosmopolitanism, 10, 17, 35; and fatherhood, 15, 162, 169–72, 177, 196; and globalization, 13, 18; global vs. local, 1, 4, 205; and language, 222 gender roles: in birth tourism, 16, 206–7, 214, 215; and division of labor, 162, 173, 174, 201–3, 207, 208, 211, 212–13, 215; equality in, 187; and fatherdaughter relationships, 169–72; and internal vs. external space, 173–74, 176, 177; and migration, 18, 186, 204 gender studies, 2, 41n2 German language, 47 German men, 10–11, 47 Germany, 41, 42, 46

Give Me a Girl at Eighteen (Shibasui gei wo yi ge guniang; Feng Tang), 106, 113, 114 global care chain, 202, 204 globalization: and Chinese TV, 28; and cosmopolitanism, 7–8, 10, 21; in Feng Tang’s work, 107–10; and film, 29, 61; and gay identities, 11–12, 77; and hauntology, 73; and identity, 14, 21, 35; and localization, 1, 4, 7–8, 10, 13, 21, 34, 153–57, 158, 205; and male anxiety, 7, 107; and masculinities, 1, 3–4, 21, 34, 203–4; and nationalism, 30, 35, 94. See also businessmen, transnational; economy, global capitalist Go Lala Go! (Du Lala shengzhi ji), 10, 29–30 Golden Vase (Jinpingmei), 103, 114 GQ China (magazine), 102, 105, 107 Gui, Xinxiang, 174 Guo Shitou, 163–65, 166 Guo Tao, 163–65, 166, 167 Guo, Yingjie, 35 guokr.com, 176 guowai (abroad), 75, 77 Habermas, Jürgen, 222n8 Hage, Ghassan, 188 Half of Man Is Woman (Nanren de yiban shi nüren; Zhang Xianliang), 115n17 Hangover Part II (film), 228 Hannerz, Ulf, 109 Happiness (Huanxi; Feng Tang), 105n3 Happy Together (Chunguang zhaxie; film), 63n1, 64 Hartley, John, 143 Haruki Murakami, 130 Harvey, David, 63n2 hauntology, 73 Hauser, Gerard A., 222 He, Baogang, 89 health food, 155, 156 Heirs, The (South Korean TV show), 168 Henney, Daniel, 70 Hero (film), 6 Hibbins, Ray, 5, 205, 221 “high culture fever,” 74 Hine, Christine, 223 Hird, Derek, 7, 8, 109, 119, 120, 129, 221, 231, 234 Ho, David Y.F., 162 Ho, Loretta, 74, 75

246 Index

Hoefle, Arnhilt Johanna, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19–20, 40–58 homosocial bonding, 12, 14, 36, 81, 83, 158, 166 Hong Kong: birth tourism in, 200–201; businessmen in, 149–59; Cai Lan in, 14, 149–60; Chinese attitudes towards, 64–66; Chinese TV on, 33; cosmopolitanism of, 60–61, 159; Feng Tang’s works in, 102; film in, 9, 11, 59–72; films on, 64–66, 71; handover to PRC of, 11, 60, 63, 64, 71, 72, 154, 157; identity in, 37, 68, 76, 154; immigrants in, 18, 61; mainlandization of, 67–68, 71–72; migration from, 2, 5, 183; nostalgia industry in, 157, 158; transnational families in, 201 Hong Kong Film Awards, 71 Hong Kong Hollywood (Xianggang youge Helihuo; film), 66 Hu Jiujiu, 106, 113 Huang, Hsing-tsung, 150 Huang, Martin, 115, 116 Huang, Stanley, 29 Huang Zhen, 152 huaren.us, 219 Hui, Ann, 71 Hunan Satellite TV, 161 Hunt, Pamela, 9, 13, 17, 19, 102–24 Huo, Wallace, 31 “I Am a Soldier” (“Wo shi yige bing”; song), 63 I Am Singer (Wo shi geshou; TV show), 161 I Ching, 103 identity: business, 8, 17; Chinese, 63, 68; and culture, 68–70, 71–72; and globalization, 14, 21, 35; in Hong Kong, 37, 68, 76, 154; national, 18, 35–36. See also gay identities individualism: and Americanization, 91, 93; and Cai Lan, 156, 157, 158; and Li Xiaomu, 135, 138 intellectuals (zhishi fenzi): and businessmen, 18–19, 21; and Chinese state, 88–89, 93; and Chinese TV, 28; and commercialization, 95–96; culinary writings by, 149–51, 155, 157; depoliticalization of, 95–96; flight option of, 89, 93; and Li Xiaomu, 137, 141,

143; marginalization of, 12, 89, 95; masculinities of, 18–19, 87, 88, 132, 137–38; in postsocialist period, 83, 151; and sexuality, 114–16, 137–38; and the West, 107. See also wen masculinity intertextuality, 103, 104, 108–10, 114, 119 Iron Chef, The (Japanese TV show), 154 Ishihara Shintarō, 133 “It’s Hard to be a Hooligan Your Whole Life” (Feng Tang), 102 Iwabuchi Koichi, 130 Jameson, Frederic, 80, 81 Jankowiak, William, 8, 164 Japan: Anime, Comics, and Games (ACG) culture in, 36; Cai Lan in, 153, 154; Chinese men in, 9, 13–14, 17, 127–48; consumerism in, 79, 130, 132, 133–34; crime in, 131, 132–37; economy of, 131; film in, 130; gay identities in, 36–37, 76, 131; Li Xiaomu’s criticism of, 137–40, 144; local festivals in, 142–43; masculinities in, 130–32, 168; modernization of, 130; TV in, 28, 30, 130, 132, 154; women in, 20, 131, 139, 143 Japanese language, 133, 138, 139–40 Japanese men, 6, 13, 30, 127, 131 Jia Pingwa, 115n17 Jia Zhangke, 66 Jin, Ha, 12, 19, 87–101 Jin Yong, 152, 159 Joint Sino-British Declaration (1984), 60 Jōshiki gai nichūron (An extraordinary commentary on China and Japan; Li Xiaomu and Katō Yoshikazu), 139 Jung, Sun, 168 Kabukicho (Tokyo adult entertainment district), 132–33, 138, 140–42, 144 Kabukicho Annaijin (Li Xiaomu), 133, 134 Kabukicho yori ai wo komete (From the Kabukicho with love; Li Xiaomu), 137 Kafai, Tony Leung, 62 Kang Tingyu, 9, 15–16, 20, 200–217 Keane, Michael, 28 Khoo, Tseen-Ling, 232 Knight, Sabina, 109 Kong, Belinda, 93 Konwiser, Kern, 70

Index 247

Korean-Americans, 70 Korean men, 6, 35, 168, 173, 176, 177. See also South Korea Kroetsch, Robert, 104n2 Kuehn, Julia, 221 Kvande, Elin, 174 Kwan, Stanley, 11, 62n1, 71, 73 Kwon, June Hee, 185 labor: and class, 211; domestic, 200–207, 209, 211–15; emotional, 15, 201, 208, 209–11, 212, 214; feminized, 16, 201, 204, 212, 213, 214; gendered division of, 162, 173, 174, 201–3, 207, 208, 211–13, 215; menial, 90–91, 208; and migration, 183, 195; reproductive, 202–3; sexual, 13, 132–33, 138, 140–42, 144, 204 “lads” magazines, 128, 134 Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Lawrence), 110–11, 112 Lady Dushi (Dushiniang), 80 Lady of the Camellias, The, 80 Lamb, Michael E., 170 Lan Yu (film), 11, 73, 74 laoliu (old overseas students), 218–19, 224, 227–31, 233 Larson, Wendy, 75 Latinos, 228 Law, Clara, 11, 59, 61 Lawrence, D. H., 13, 103, 110, 111, 115 Lawrence, Frieda, 112n15 Lee, Bruce, 6, 18, 19 Lee, Haiyan, 35, 37 Lee, Tracy K., 7, 109, 134 Lei Feng, 135 Li Chi, 93 Li Guangjie, 29 Li, Jet, 6 Li Ke, 29 Li Shizhen, 150 Li Xiaomu, 13–14, 17, 19, 20, 127–48; as author, 132, 133, 134, 137, 142, 143; criminal life of, 132–37; criticism of Japan by, 137–40, 144; and fashion, 132, 133–34, 141; hybridity of, 128, 138, 142; political activities of, 132, 139–43, 144; public persona of, 128, 129, 134, 135, 137, 142–44 Li Xinjie, 196

Li, Xuan, 8 Li Yanhong (Robin Li), 226 Li Yu, 103, 112n14, 117, 155 liberalism, 81, 100, 110. See also neoliberalism Li ji (The Book of Rites), 150 Lin Hong, 151, 155 Lin, Jeremy, 228 Lin Kimi, 165–67 Lin Yutang, 151n2 Lin Zhiying, 20, 165–67 “Li Sao” (poem; Qu Yuan), 99 literature: classical, 155–56; comrade (tongzhi wenxue), 74; culinary, 14, 149–51, 149–60; exile, 11, 12, 99; fiction, 7, 9, 28, 31; and male body, 112–19; online, 6, 9, 11–13, 19, 31, 73–86; of overseas Chinese, 99; sexuality in, 9, 114, 116, 119; traditional, 7, 149–51; and TV, 28, 31; Western, 103–4, 110, 111, 114, 116, 119; and women, 117–18. See also poetry; particular authors Liu Jing, 195 Liu, Petrus, 80, 84 Liu Xiaobo, 93 Lo, Kwai-Cheung, 130 Lo, Vivienne, 150 localization: and cosmopolitanism, 7–8, 10, 21; and globalization, 1, 4, 7–8, 10, 13, 21, 34, 153–57, 158, 205; in Hong Kong films, 71–72; of masculinities, 1, 6, 203; of Sino-Japanese relations, 142–43 London (UK), 5, 8 Los Angeles (California), 15, 18, 201–17 Louie, Kam, 6–7, 89, 91–93, 109, 120, 135, 158, 174, 221 Lovell, 107–8 Love Me, If You Dare (Ta lai le, qing biyan; TV series), 10, 17, 18–19, 31–32, 36, 37 Low, Morris, 130 Lu, Alexander, 228 Lu, Ouyang, 6 Lu, Sheldon H., 9, 11–13, 18, 42n3, 59–72, 97, 107, 113 Lu Xun, 150, 151 Lunyu (journal), 151n2 Ma, Jack, 226n15 Ma, Sheng-mei, 90, 99

248 Index

Ma Sichun, 31 Ma Yun, 69–70 magazines, 102, 105, 107, 132, 137, 151n2; “lads,” 128, 134; parenting, 8 Mailer, Norman, 104n2, 112 Malaysia, 2 male body, 7, 16, 19; aging, 48–51; Feng Tang on, 116, 119; and literature, 112–19; of Li Xiaomu, 133–34, 141; objectification of, 36; in Tatort, 47, 48–51, 52 male dominance, 13, 145, 220; on Chinese TV, 28, 32–33; in Feng Tang’s works, 116–18 male-male CP (coupling), 36–37 Man from Star (South Korean TV show), 168 Mao Zedong, 62, 113–14, 133, 140 Marchetti, Gina, 61 marginalization: of Chinese men, 16, 55; of culinary literature, 14; of Feng Tang, 13, 103, 110–11, 119, 120; of intellectuals, 12, 89, 95; of male elites, 151; of masculinities, 2, 4; of women, 13 Marx, Karl, 73 Marxism, 77; queer, 73, 84 masculinities: and Americanization, 90–92; Anglo-Celtic, 228; Arab, 5–6; of birth tourism helpers, 5, 9, 15–16, 200, 201, 205, 211–13; bishōnen (pretty boy), 168; and child-rearing, 190–91; Chinese vs. foreign, 6, 27, 33, 35, 221; crises of, 52–56, 88–90, 187, 221; culinary, 14, 149–60; depressed, 61–62; in detective genre, 45; diasporic, 16, 221–23, 224, 228, 234; elite, 1, 13, 139, 203–4, 205, 232, 234; and emotional labor, 208–9; female, 2, 171, 187; vs. femininities, 158, 159; Feng Tang’s ideals of, 119–20; flexibility of, 66, 197; frontier, 195; gangster, 134; global, 1, 3–4, 21, 34, 203–4; heteronormative, 119, 185; home-building, 209–10, 214; in Hong Kong films, 59–61; of husbands in birth tourism, 205, 206, 207–9; hybrid, 3, 138, 142, 162, 168, 169, 172, 176, 187; hyper, 20, 45, 47, 50, 129, 144, 204, 228; ideal, 107, 109–10; of intellectuals, 18–19, 87, 88, 137–38; and internal vs. external space, 173–74, 176, 177;

Korean, 168, 173, 176, 177; literary, 103, 110–19; local, 1, 6, 203; marginalized, 2, 4; metrosexual, 14, 20, 28, 35, 132, 135, 165–67, 168; and migration, 5, 180–97; Muslim, 5–6; nationalist, 3, 4, 8; negotiation of, 170, 177, 178, 182; neo-wu, 18, 19; of overseas Chinese graduate men, 218–36; radicalized Chinese, 158; reconstruction of, 70, 87–101; and remasculinization, 12, 90–93; and sacrifice, 53, 135, 194–95; and security, 185–88, 194; Sino-Japanese, 130–32, 136–37; soft, 9, 15, 131, 162–67, 168, 169, 174, 176, 177; state-sanctioned, 27, 28–30, 185; subversive, 104; supplementary, 209; textual forms of, 135; threatening vs. vulnerable, 54–55; traditional Chinese, 1, 4, 6–7, 8, 11–12, 14, 17, 21, 120, 162–65, 177; transculturation of, 168, 172, 177, 178; transnational Chinese, 1–24; Weiqi-playing, 7; Western, 48, 51, 52, 55, 159, 223; white, 5, 16, 19, 45, 204, 228, 229; working-class, 4, 17–18, 90, 129. See also fatherhood; gay identities; wen masculinity masculinities, hegemonic: of businessmen, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 18–19, 27, 31–34, 91, 120, 128, 203; and father-daughter relationships, 169–72; and Li Xiaomu, 127–29, 141, 143, 144; and overseas Chinese men, 127, 221, 229–30; in reality show, 162, 164, 166, 169; sub- vs. supra-, 4–5, 10, 14, 129, 132, 144–45; and television, 30, 33, 37–38, 55; transnational, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18–19; and urban vs. rural space, 174–76, 177 masculinity studies, 1–7, 127, 128, 220–21 maternity B&Bs, 20, 206–7, 208, 211–15 Maugham, Somerset, 103 media: American, 222, 233; Chinese, 8, 35, 36; Chinese migrants in, 131; collaborative, 40; Feng Tang in, 105, 118; and Li Xiaomu, 127–28, 142, 143; masculinities in, 37–38, 107, 129; Middle Eastern Islamic, 5–6; overseas Chinese, 220; transnationalization of, 3, 6. See also film; online media; television

Index 249

Melly, Caroline, 195 Mencius, 138 merchants (shang), 19, 91. See also businessmen, transnational Mermaid, The (Meirenyu; film), 71 Mian Mian, 117n18 middle class: and birth tourism, 206, 213, 214; and cosmopolitanism, 14, 27, 119; and cuisine, 14, 156; and education, 232; migrant, 5, 8, 18 Middle East, 5–6, 41 migration: company-led, 183, 185; of domestic workers, 202, 203, 204; entrepreneurial, 196; and fatherhood, 180–99; feminization of, 202, 204; justifications for, 193–96; and masculinities, 5, 87, 203, 221; and remasculinization, 12; and remittances, 185, 189, 192–93, 229; rural-tourban, 192, 194; from rural vs. urban backgrounds, 181; Sinophone, 2–3, 5, 221; studies of, 2, 3, 7; working-class, 7, 18, 180–99, 202, 203, 204 Miller, Henry, 13, 102, 103, 108, 110–15, 117 MITBBS.com (website), 218, 219, 223 modernity: and cosmopolitanism, 34, 222; and masculinity, 27, 55n6, 233; postsocialist, 75, 84; and wealth, 75, 77 Mok, Karen, 29 Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, 161 Murphy, Rachel, 194 “My 1997” (“Wo de 1997”; song), 64–65 My Love from the Star (TV series), 33 “My Motherland” (“Wo de zuguo”; song), 62 nationalism: of Chinese men in Japan, 130; on Chinese TV, 27, 30; and commercialism, 96; and cosmopolitanism, 33, 34–35, 36, 37; cultural, 17, 35; in A Free Life, 92, 100; and globalization, 30, 35, 94; and hauntology, 73; vs. humanism, 98, 99; and identity, 18, 35–36; and masculinity, 7, 93–99, 233; and migration, 3, 195–96 national learning (guo xue), 81–82, 93 National Talent Development Plan (PRC), 227 NAWSN. See North American Despicable Men

Nemoto Naoki, 133 neo-Confucianism, 80–82, 81 neoliberalism, 6, 81, 85, 120; and busines masculinities, 203; economic, 19, 28, 30, 34, 77; in film, 67; and gay identities, 76; and globalization, 30, 73 Newsweek (Japanese magazine), 132, 137 New York, 18, 68; in Chinese films, 59, 61–62; migration from and to, 5, 63, 70, 71; and transnational romance, 96–97 Ni Kuang, 152 Ningen (film), 140 North American Despicable Men (Bei Mei weisuonan; NAWSN), 9–10, 16, 218–36; background of, 223–27; characteristics of, 219, 228–32, 234 Northeast China (Dongbei), 64, 66, 135, 153 nostalgia, cultural, 99, 106, 130; and Cai Lan, 14, 150, 154, 157, 158; socialist, 84 Not I, But the Wind (Frieda Lawrence), 112n15 Olympic Games, 46, 94, 97, 141 Oneness (Bu er; Feng Tang), 102, 111 Ong, Aihwa, 63, 201 online media, 6, 9, 11–13, 19, 210; and gay identities, 73–86; and Li Xiaomu, 134, 143; and NAWSN, 218–33; and reality show, 161, 165–66, 167, 168, 170, 176; social, 40, 51n5, 105, 118, 132, 142, 161, 182, 192; and television, 28, 31, 36 Orientalism, 10–11, 52, 53 Originally Chinese, Aiming to Become a Politician in Japan (Li Xiaomu), 142 Osburg, John, 232 Other, the: Asian, 130, 232; Chinese, 47, 48, 51–55, 234; and cosmopolitanism, 29, 34; female, 53; and Hong Kong, 37; non-Chinese, 6, 35 overseas Chinese, 2; and Chinese economy, 224–27, 232; in Chinese TV, 31; and cosmopolitanism, 27, 37; and education, 9–10, 12, 16, 224–26, 227, 231–32, 233; and hegemonic masculinities, 127, 221, 229–30; literature of, 99; male graduate vs. female undergraduate, 218–36; nationalism of, 35, 98; popular culture of, 222–23; in postsocialist period, 229–30; prestige of, 225–26;

250 Index

rising numers of, 224–25; terms for, 226n16 Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar, 188 Pascoe, C. J., 224 Patell, Cyrus R., 109 Peru, 5 phallic creativity, 13, 103–4, 110–19, 120 Philippines, 188 Piot, Charles, 195 poetry: and Feng Tang, 102, 105, 106, 111, 112, 114, 117, 118n19; and Ha Jin, 88, 92–93, 100; reclusive ideal in, 93 politics: activists in, 17, 76–77, 88, 94, 141, 142; and intellectuals, 95–96; and Li Xiaomu, 132, 139–43, 144; and male dominance, 145 Pomfret, David M., 221 popular culture, 6, 13, 28, 43, 77; elite homoeroticism in, 83; Japanese, 36; nationalism in, 30, 97–98; overseas Chinese, 222–23; stardom in, 7, 128, 165 pornography (huangshu), 110, 111 Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth), 110n10, 111n13 private vs. public spheres, 45–46, 51, 173–74, 176, 177 Prostitution Trilogy (film), 66 Qian Zhongshu, 103 qilinghou (post-1970) generation, 105n5, 108 Qimin yaoshu (Essential arts of providing for the people), 150 QQ (chat site), 182, 192 Qu Yuan, 99 Quirk, Claire, 69 Rabinow, Paul, 8 racism, 11, 204, 220, 222, 233, 234 “Reading Banned Books” (Feng Tang), 111n11 reality TV shows, 9, 10, 14–15, 28, 35, 161–79; authenticity in, 172–73. See also Dad! Where Are We Going Reeser, Todd W., 36 relationships, intimate: with children, 189–90; on Chinese TV, 32–33; commodification of, 4, 192–93; with foreign women, 16, 19–20, 21, 47, 69, 97, 232–33; hierarchy of, 36;

maintenance of, 192–93; and migrant fathers, 185, 196; and remasculinization, 90–93; stereotypical, 32–33 remittances, 185, 189, 192–93, 229 Ren, David, 70 Renjian shi (journal), 151n2 returnees, Chinese (haigui): changing status of, 225–26; increasing numbers of, 226–27; success of, 69; in TV dramas, 27, 31–34 Riben Youbing (Japan is sick; Li Xiaomu), 140 Robertson, Jennifer, 143 Rofel, Lisa, 7, 34, 37, 75, 84, 119, 144, 187 Rohmer, Sax, 40 Roth, Philip, 103, 110n10, 111n13 Ruined Capital (Feidu; Jia Pingwa), 115n17 rural-urban dichotomy, 2, 4; and class, 174–76, 177, 231; and food, 157; and migration, 181, 192, 194; in reality show, 172–77 Russia, 78. See also Soviet Union Said, Edward, 53 “Sailing the Sea Depends on the Helmsman” (song), 113 salaryman (sarariman), 14, 131, 139, 141, 144. See also middle class Salinger, J. D., 103, 110n10, 111n12 Schneider, Florian, 28–29 Schwenger, Peter, 104n2 Senegalese migrant men, 195 Senkaku / Diaoyu island dispute, 140 sex industry, 13, 110, 111, 132–33, 138, 140–42, 144, 204 sexuality: and birth tourism, 210–11; on Chinese TV, 33; and class, 74, 78–80; cosmopolitan, 37, 128; and elite masculinities, 204; in Feng Tang’s work, 102–4, 105–6, 119; hetereosexual male, 111–20; and high vs. low masculinities, 159; homoerotic, 11–12, 75, 80–83, 84; and intellectuality, 114–16, 137–38; and language, 110, 222; and literature, 9, 114–16, 119; of Li Xiaomu, 134–35; and Mao Zedong, 113–14; of NAWSN, 224, 228–29; in postsocialist China, 75–78, 95; repression of, 109, 112–14; in Tatort, 50, 51, 53; traditional Chinese, 114–15; utopian gay, 79–80,

Index 251

81, 83, 84. See also gay identities; male body Shakespeare, William, 73 Shandong Film and TV Group, 31 Shanfu lu (Records of a chef), 150 Shanghai Baby (Shanghai baobei; Weihui), 109 Shanghai Calling (film), 70 Shanghai Kiss (film), 70 Shanjia qinggong (Fresh offerings from a hermit’s home; Lin Hong), 155 Shaw’s Film Studio, 152n3 Shen, Hsiu-hua, 204 Sheng Keyi, 103 Shi Zhecun, 150 Shinjuku Incident (film), 132, 135–36 Shunji Iwai, 130 Sigley, Gary, 35 Sima Qian, 103, 115–16 Simple Life, A (Tao jie; Sister Peach; film), 71–72 Singapore, 2, 5, 201 Sino-Japanese relations, 139–40, 142–43 Skype, 182, 189, 192 SMG Pictures, 31 “Soap Opera in China” (Sheldon Lu), 97 socialism, 10, 30, 83; and capitalism, 77, 81; and postsocialist China, 79, 84; “primary stage” of, 78 social mobility, 83, 108; and Chinese economy, 183–84; and migration, 18, 204, 207, 213; and overseas education, 225–26, 232 Sohu.com, 31 Song, Geng, 9, 19, 42n3, 158, 177, 187; on cosmopolitanism, 7, 10, 27–39, 129; and Feng Tang’s work, 13, 109, 119, 120; on “lads” magazines, 134; on nationalism, 16–17, 94; and NAWSN, 221, 222, 231, 234 Song, Lin, 9, 10, 14–15, 20, 161–79 South America, 6, 64 southern style (nanfeng), 82 South Korea: Korean Wave from, 6; pop culture (K-pop) from, 36, 176; TV from, 28, 33, 161, 168 Soviet Union (USSR), 3, 157–58 Specters of Marx (Derrida), 73 state, Chinese: and Chinese TV, 28, 29, 30; and class, 79; and commercialism, 96;

and cosmopolitanism, 27, 28–30, 38; and culinary writings, 151; declining loyalty to, 63; dependence on, 91; and desire, 75; emasculation by, 91, 100; and family, 191, 192; and Feng Tang, 109, 113; and global vs. local, 34; ideology of, 29, 30, 38; and intellectuals, 88–89, 93; and Li Xiaomu, 142, 144; and masculinities, 27, 28–30, 185; and nationalism, 35–36; and national learning, 81–82; and overseas students, 227. See also censorship; Tiananmen Incident Still, Judith, 104 Stockinger, Claudia, 41n2 study mothers, 200, 215 Su, Lezhou, 9, 12, 18, 87–101 Su Xiaoxiao, 103 Su Yijian, 155 Suiyuan shidan (Recipes from the garden of Sui; Yuan Mei), 150, 151 suzhi (personal quality), 9, 16, 35 Swallowtail (film), 130 Szeto, Mirana May, 67 Tagore, Rabindranath, 105 Taiwan: and Chinese reality shows, 178; entrepreneurs from, 204; migration from, 2, 135, 183, 206; popular stars from, 63, 165; transnational families in, 201, 202; unification with, 97–98 Takakura Ken, 131, 134 Tangrenjie (Chinese TV series), 134 Taowang (Escape; Gao Xing Jian), 93 Tatort (Crime Scene; TV series), 10–11, 40–58; awards won by, 43–44; crisis of masculinity in, 52–56; episode 251: “The Chinese Method,” 41, 42–45, 47, 48; episode 716: “The Dead Chinese,” 41, 46–48; episode 832: “Wrongly Packed,” 41, 48–50; episode 883: “The Chinese Princess,” 41, 50–52, 53; masculine anxiety in, 44–45, 49, 50–52, 55; private lives in, 45–48; restored masculinity in, 46–52, 55–56; women in, 19–20, 46–50, 53 television: Asian-American men on, 228; audiences for, 14–15, 29, 30, 31, 174–77; businessmen on, 27, 31–34; and Cai Lan, 152, 153, 154, 157;

252 Index

Chinese men on, 9, 10, 27–37, 41–56; class on, 29, 32, 52; and commercialism, 96; and cosmopolitanism, 27–37, 128; and cross-platform development, 31n2; detective genre on, 43, 44–45; Feng Tang on, 105; and film, 28, 29–30; in Japan, 28, 30, 130, 132, 154; and masculinities, 6, 9, 30, 33, 37–38, 55, 56; Middle Eastern Islamic, 5–6; and online media, 28, 31, 36; seriality on, 28, 42, 44–45, 55, 56; from South Korea, 28, 33, 161, 168. See also Dad! Where Are We Going; Tatort “telling bitterness” (suku), 74 Teng, Teresa (Deng Lijun), 63 Ten Years (Shi nian; film), 71, 72 Thailand, 29, 76 “There are still samurai in Japan. In truth they are foreigners!” (Mada samurai ha nihon ni iru. Tadashi, gaikokujin da!; Li Xiaomu), 139 36 Big Ones (Sanshiliu da; Feng Tang), 107 “This is what is strange about you Japanese” (koko ga hendayo nihonjin; TV show), 130 Tholen, Toni, 55n6 Tian, Cindy, 170–72 Tian Liang, 170–72 Tiananmen Incident (1989): in Beijing Story, 12, 74, 76–77, 79, 81; and Chinese in US, 89; and end of revolution, 76–77; in film, 11, 60, 61–62; in A Free Life, 93–94, 95, 97, 98; and gay identities, 12, 76, 81; Li Xiaomu on, 139, 140; suppression of, 12, 76, 95; and wen masculinity, 87, 88; and the West, 93–94, 97 “Tian Mimi” (“Sweet honey”; song), 63 “To Screw Foreigners Is Patriotic” (Barmé), 93 tourism, 27, 131, 133, 141, 156. See also birth tourism trafficking, human: in Germany, 42, 46, 47, 48; to Hong Kong, 66 Tropic of Cancer (Miller), 111 Tsu, Timothy, 135 Turkish immigrants, 41, 54 24 City (24 cheng ji; film), 66 United States (US): Asian stereotypes in,

90, 232; assimilation in, 90–92; birth tourism in, 200–217; Chinese businessmen in, 135; Chinese migrants in, 11, 61–62, 63, 70, 71, 89, 183; Chinese students in, 9, 16, 218–34; on Chinese TV, 31–32, 33; and cultural identity, 68–69; Dominican migrants in, 6; and Feng Tang, 106, 108; films from, 70; in A Free Life, 92, 99–100; and global gay identity, 76; in Hong Kong films, 59, 61–62; pro-democracy activists in, 94; and wen masculinity, 87, 88 universalism, 81, 82, 83, 98, 100, 106 Uyghurs, 50 Vasquez del Aguila, Ernesto, 5 wai F nü (Chinese women in cross-racial relationships; WFN), 232–33 Waiting (Ha Jin), 100 Walsh, Katie, 204 Wang, Angela, 169–70 Wang Bing, 66 Wang Shuo, 103 Wang Taihe, 184–85, 188 Wang Xiaobo, 103, 111n12 Wang, Xiaoying, 33 Wang Yuelun, 169–70 Water Margins, 103 Waters, Johanna L., 202 wealth: and class, 79, 183, 205, 214, 219, 229–34; and cosmopolitanism, 16, 34, 35, 109, 120; of fu’erdai, 10, 16, 226, 227, 230, 233; and masculinities, 7, 16, 19, 136, 229–30; and modernity, 75, 77; new, 7, 8, 79, 100, 183; redistribution of, 78–79; and security, 184, 186, 194; of transnational families, 18, 201 WeChat, 192 Wei Shen, 232 Weibo (social media site), 105, 118, 161 Weihui, 103, 109, 117n18 Weiss, Amanda, 29 wen masculinity, 87–101; and Americanization, 12, 90–93; and Feng Tang, 114–15, 120; and Li Xiaomu, 130, 132, 138; and menial labor, 90–91; and nationalism, 93–99; neo-, 18, 19, 92; and poetry, 92–93; South Korean (seonbi), 168; vs. wu, 14, 19, 158

Index 253

wen-wu (literary-martial) dyad, 6–7, 10, 12, 14, 19, 130, 158 West, the: Asian stereotypes in, 10–11, 20, 53; and Cai Lan, 150, 156, 157, 158; and Chinese TV, 28, 30; and cosmopolitanism, 32, 34, 47, 70, 110; education in, 31, 32, 225–26; fatherhood in, 187, 191; in Feng Tang’s work, 107–10; and gay identities, 37, 75–76, 77; literature of, 103–4, 110, 111, 114, 116, 119; masculinities in, 48, 51, 52, 55, 159, 223; post-Tiananmen attitudes towards, 93–94, 97. See also particular countries Western men: vs. Asian men, 6, 18, 19, 231–33; and Chinese masculinities, 6, 7, 12, 187; in Feng Tang’s work, 107, 108; on television, 30, 51 West of the Track (Tiexi qu; film), 66 women: Arab-American, 6; Asian, 53, 232; Asian-American, 228; and birth tourism, 15–16, 200–217; as breadwinners, 18, 184, 185, 202; and cosmopolitanism, 10, 13, 37; in detective genre, 45n4; domestication of white, 6, 20, 233; and domestic labor, 200–207, 209, 211–15; foreign, 16, 19–20, 21, 47, 69, 97, 232–33; in gender studies, 2, 41n2; in Hong Kong, 66; Japanese, 20, 131, 139, 143; and literature, 117–18; Li Xiaomu on, 139; and masculinities, 2, 4, 20, 33, 184–85; masculinization of, 45n4, 187; migration of, 202, 204; and nationalism, 17, 36, 69, 97; objectification of, 13, 17, 117–19, 120, 233; reproductive labor of, 202–3; spatial mobility of, 201, 202, 208, 210–11; on television, 19–20, 29, 33, 46–50, 53; white, 6, 16, 20, 69, 70, 233 women, Chinese: in Africa, 195, 196; exoticized, 11, 53; vs. foreign, 20, 69; on marriage, 229, 230–31; and non-Chinese men, 231–33; overseas undergraduate, 16, 218–36; postsocialist roles of, 187–88; as TV audience, 15, 29, 36, 37, 174–77; wealthy, 10, 16, 20, 226, 227, 230, 233 “Women and Writing” (Feng Tang), 117 Wong Kar-wai, 63n1, 64, 71 Wong, San-ling Cynthia, 90

Wong, Y. Joel, 228 working class: Chinese transnational, 205–6; in film, 66; masculinities of, 4, 17–18, 90, 129; migration of, 7, 15, 18, 20, 180–99, 202, 203, 204. See also labor Working Girl (film), 29 World Trade Organization, 97 Worton, Michael, 104 Wu, Guanjun, 36 Wu Yang tomb (Huxishan, Hunan), 149 www.6park.com, 219 www.wenxuecity.com, 219 Xi Jinping, 59, 142 Xia, Daniel, 70 Xianqing ouji (Random notes of leisure; Li Yu), 155 xiaoliu (little overseas students), 218, 226, 230 xinhua.net, 176 Xu Zhimo, 150, 151 Xue Hongjun, 108 yakuza (Japanese gangsters), 135 Yau, Esther, 61, 67 Yee, Derek, 135 Yi Chen, 110 Yi Jing (The Book of Changes), 149 Yin, Hong, 28, 96 Yin Zheng, 32 You Live and Live and then You’re Old (Huozhe huozhe jiu lao le; Feng Tang), 107 youth, Chinese, 28, 31, 33, 35, 139; angry (fenqing), 69, 233 Yu Hua, 103 Yuan Mei, 151, 156 Yugoslav War (1990s), 41 Zhan Haipeng. See Feng Tang Zhang Chaoyang (Charles Zhang), 226 Zhang, Everett, 8 Zhang Liang, 167–69 Zhang Luyi, 31 Zhang Tiantian, 167–69 Zhang Xia, 9, 16, 20, 218–36 Zhang Xianliang, 115n17 Zhang Xudong, 81 Zhang Yiwu, 106 Zhao, Suisheng, 97

254 Index

Zhao Wei, 68 Zhiri (Chinese TV program), 132, 134 Zhong Xueping, 91 Zhou Zuoren, 155 Zhu Jianrong, 140 Zichy, Francis, 104n2 Zweig, David, 226