Chinese Femininities Chinese Masculinities

Chinese Literature: Lydia H. Liu

Chinese Literature: Lydia H. Liu

In Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China, Geng Song and Derek Hird offer an account of Chinese masculinities in media discourse and everyday life, covering masculinities on television, in lifestyle magazines, in cyberspace, at work, at leisure, and at home.

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Chinese masculinity. Kam Louie uses the concepts of wen (cultural attainment) and wu (martial valour) to explain attitudes to masculinity. This revises most Western analyses of Asian masculinity that rely on the yin-yang binary. Examining classical and contemporary Chinese literature and film, the book also looks at the Chinese diaspora to consider Chinese masculinity within and outside China.

It is now almost a cliché to claim that China and the Chinese people have changed. Yet inside the new clothing that is worn by the Chinese man today, Kam Louie contends, we still see much of the historical Chinese man. With contributions from a team of outstanding scholars, Changing Chinese Masculinitiesstudies a range of Chinese men in diverse and, most importantly, Chinese contexts. It explores the fundamental meaning of manhood in the Chinese setting and the very notion of an indigenous Chinese masculinity. In twelve chapters spanning the late imperial period to the present day, Changing Chinese Masculinitiesbrings a much needed historical dimension to the discussion. Key aspects defining the male identity such as family relationships and attitudes toward sex, class, and career are explored in depth. Familiar notions of Chinese manhood come in all shapes and sizes. Concubinage reemerges as the taking of “second wives” in recent decades. Male homoerotic love and male prostitution are shown to have long historical roots. The self-images of the literati and officials form an interesting contrast with those of the contemporary white-collar men. Masculinity and nationalism complement each other in troubling ways. China has indeed changed and is still changing, but most of these social transformations do not indicate a complete break with past beliefs or practices in gender relations. Changing Chinese Masculinities inaugurates the Hong Kong University Press book series “Transnational Asian Masculinities.” “Produced by a group of outstanding scholars, this volume offers important insights into little-known aspects of Chinese masculinity. An indispensable reference for those with an interest in Chinese sexuality, social history, and contemporary Chinese culture.” —Anne McLaren, professor of Chinese studies, University of Melbourne “In this book, scholars of late imperial and contemporary China gather to define and critique masculinity in both periods, explore its complexities, and map continuities and discontinuities. What are the traditional models and to what degree do they still maintain a grip today? Is there a ‘masculinity crisis’ in China, and what does it mean to be a Chinese man today? These are some of the daring topics the authors explore.” —Keith McMahon, professor of Chinese language and literature, University of Kansas

Focusing on the influence of Maoist ideology and masculinist power on the representations of women in revolutionary opera films made during the Cultural Revolution, this book considers the gendered hierarchy between masculinity and femininity in relation to the historic and cultural context in which they were made. Using feminist methodology and epistemology to locate women’s social identity, this book explores the sociological connections between the masculinisation of women and masculinist domination in the context of the Cultural Revolution. Through film analysis, the author examines whether women, rather than 'liberated', were in fact re-gendered and oppressed by masculinist power. By critically evaluating gender hierarchy during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the book provides hitherto neglected insights into gender within its social and cultural context. This an interdisciplinary book which should appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including gender studies, Asian studies, China studies, cultural studies and film studies.

Men and Women in Qing China is an analysis of Chinese prescriptions of gender as represented in Cao Xueqin's famous eighteenth century Chinese novel of manners, The Red Chamber Dream or The Story of the Stone. Drawing on feminist literary critical methods it examines Qing notions of masculinity and femininity, including themes such as bisexuality, motherhood, virginity and purity, and gender and power. Its central aim is to challenge the common assumption that the novel represents some form of early Chinese feminism by examining the text in conjunction with historical data. The book will be especially important to those interested in issues of gender in China, the history of Chinese literary criticism and the application of feminist theory to the Asian text.

The crisis of masculinity surfaced and converged with the crisis of the nation in the late Qing, after the doors of China were forced open by Opium Wars. The power of physical aggression increasingly overshadowed literary attainments and became a new imperative of male honor in the late Qing and early Republican China. Afflicted with anxiety and indignation about their increasingly effeminate image as perceived by Western colonial powers, Chinese intellectuals strategically distanced themselves from the old literati and reassessed their positions vis-à-vis violence. In Mastery of Words and Swords: Negotiating Intellectual Masculinities in Modern China, 1890s–1930s, Jun Lei explores the formation and evolution of modern Chinese intellectual masculinities as constituted in racial, gender, and class discourses mediated by the West and Japan. This book brings to light a new area of interest in the “Man Question” within gender studies in which women have typically been the focus. To fully reveal the evolving masculine models of a “scholar-warrior,” this book employs an innovative methodology that combines theoretical vigor, archival research, and analysis of literary texts and visuals. Situating the changing inter- and intra-gender relations in modern Chinese history and Chinese literary and cultural modernism, the book engages critically with male subjectivity in relation to other pivotal issues such as semi-coloniality, psychoanalysis, modern love, feminism, and urbanization. “Jun Lei’s brilliant book offers a wealth of information and insights on how intellectuals such as Liang Qichao and Lu Xun shaped notions of Chinese masculinity in the tumultuous late Qing and May Fourth periods. Its account of how China’s interactions with the West and Japan impacted ideas of masculinity in modern times is compelling reading.” —Kam Louie, author of Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China and Chinese Masculinities in a Globalizing World “What are political and cultural consequences when a Chinese man looks and behaves like a woman? Jun Lei probes the psychic, intellectual, and nationalist underpinnings of that question. This provocative book offers an engaging story and insightful analyses about how male writers grappled with the effeminate look and strove to revitalize manliness.” —Ban Wan