Western Queers in China

Western Queers in China PDF Author: D. E. Mungello
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442215585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
This unique work examines the role played by sexuality in the historical encounter between China and the West. Distinguished historian D. E. Mungello focuses especially on Western homosexuals who saw China as a place of escape from the homophobia of Europe and North America. His groundbreaking study traces the lives of two dozen men, many previously unknown to have same-sex desire, who fled to China and in the process influenced perceptions of Chinese culture to this day. Their individual stories encompass flight from homophobia in their home countries, the erotic attraction of Chinese boy-actors, friendships with Chinese men, intellectual connections with the Chinese, and the reorientation of Western aesthetics toward China. Mungello explores historical attitudes and the atmosphere of oppression toward men with same-sex desire as he recounts the intensification of repression of queers in Europe and North America in the late nineteenth-century. He shows how China became a place of escape, a homosexual “land of Oz” where men could flee from the closets of their minds. Some traveled to China and lived there; others immersed themselves in Chinese culture at a distance. Most established long-term friendships and acted as cultural intermediaries who opened the aesthetic range of Western culture to a new sense of beauty and a fresh source of inspiration for poets, artists, and dramatists. Their “boys”—Chinese males whose services were available at low cost as messengers, rickshaw pullers, guides, cooks, entertainers, escorts, and prostitutes—were transformed into a universal metaphor of Chinese culture that lingers to this day. Indeed, outside men’s range of relationships, intellectual and physical, have had a profound impact in shaping the modern Western conception of China.

Gay and Lesbian Subculture in Urban China

Gay and Lesbian Subculture in Urban China PDF Author: Loretta Wing Wah Ho
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113525656X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
This book contributes to a critical understanding of how Chinese same-sex identity in urban China is variously imagined; how it is transformed; and how it presents its resistances as China continues to open up to global power relations. Equally important, the book will 1) sharpen knowledge of China’s recent socio-economic change and political agenda, 2) build a greater awareness of Chinese cultural, sexual and ethical values and 3) offer new perspectives on ‘Chineseness’ and Chinese same-sex identity. Uniquely, it explores the emergence of Chinese same-sex identity through understanding the everyday, lived same-sex experience, amid China’s opening up to cultural, sexual and economic globalisation. This understanding is based on a culturally sensitive framework which accommodates the diverse and sometimes paradoxical articulation of same-sex identity in urban China. It come sto the conclusion that same–sex identity in china is articulated in a paradoxical way: open and decentred, but at the same time, nationalist and conforming to state control. This book will be of interest to scholar and students in Chinese studies, Gender Studies, sexuality and cultural studies.

Western Queers in China

Western Queers in China PDF Author: David Emil Mungello
Publisher:
ISBN: 9786613634955
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This unique work examines the role played by sexuality in the historical encounter between China and the West. Distinguished historian D.E. Mungello focuses especially on Western homosexuals who saw China as a place of escape from the homophobia of Europe and North America. His groundbreaking study traces the lives of two dozen men, many previously unknown to have same-sex desire, who fled to China and in the process influenced perceptions of Chinese culture to this day. This escapism engendered casual sexual encounters, serious friendships, and substantive intellectual rela.

The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800

The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800 PDF Author: D. E. Mungello
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Book Description
For the Chinese, the drive toward growing political and economic power is part of an ongoing effort to restore China's past greatness and remove the lingering memories of history's humiliations. This widely praised book explores the 1500–1800 period before China's decline, when the country was viewed as a leading world culture and power. Europe, by contrast, was in the early stages of emerging from provincial to international status while the United States was still an uncharted wilderness. D. E. Mungello argues that this earlier era, ironically, may contain more relevance for today than the more recent past. Building on the author's decades of research and teaching, this compelling book illustrates the vital importance of history to readers trying to understand China’s renewed rise.

Queer Marxism in Two Chinas

Queer Marxism in Two Chinas PDF Author: Petrus Liu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780822359722
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Petrus Liu demonstrates how queer Marxist critics in China use queer theory as a non-liberal alternative to Western models of queer emancipation, and in doing so, he revises current understandings of what queer theory is, does, and can be.

Queer China

Queer China PDF Author: Hongwei Bao
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000069028
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
This book analyses queer cultural production in contemporary China to map the broad social transformations in gender, sexuality and desire. It examines queer literature and visual cultures in China’s post-Mao and postsocialist era to show how these diverse cultural forms and practices not only function as context-specific and culturally sensitive forms of social activism but also produce distinct types of gender and sexual subjectivities unique to China’s postsocialist conditions. From poetry to papercutting art, from ‘comrade/gay literature’ to girls’ love fan fiction, from lesbian films to activist documentaries, and from a drag show in Shanghai to a public performance of a same-sex wedding in Beijing, the book reveals a queer China in all its ideological complexity and creative energy. Empirically rich and methodologically eclectic, Queer China skilfully weaves together historical and archival research, textual and discourse analysis, along with interviews and ethnography. Breaking new ground and bringing a non-Western perspective to the fore, this transdisciplinary work contributes to multiple academic fields including literary and cultural studies, media and communication studies, film and screen studies, contemporary art, theatre and performance studies, gender and sexuality studies, China/Asia and Global South studies, cultural history and cultural geography, political theory and the study of social movements.

Passions of the Cut Sleeve

Passions of the Cut Sleeve PDF Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520912656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Book Description
The first detailed treatment of the Chinese homosexual tradition in any Western language, Passions of the Cut Sleeve shatters preconceptions and stereotypes. Gone is the image of the sternly puritanical Confucian as sole representative of Chinese sexual practices—and with it the justification for the modern Chinese insistence that homosexuality is a recent import from the decadent West. Rediscovering the male homosexual tradition in China provides a startling new perspective on Chinese society and adds richly to our understanding of homosexuality. Bret Hinsch's reconstruction of the Chinese homosexual past reveals unexpected scenes. An emperor on his deathbed turns over the seals of the empire to a male beloved; two men marry each other with elaborate wedding rituals; parents sell their son into prostitution. The tradition portrays men from all levels of society—emperors, transvestite actors, rapists, elegant scholars, licentious monks, and even the nameless poor. Drawing from dynastic histories, erotic novels, popular Buddhist tracts, love poetry, legal cases, and joke books, Passions of the Cut Sleeve evokes the complex and fascinating male homosexual tradition in China from the Bronze Age until its decline in recent times.

Beijing Comrades

Beijing Comrades PDF Author: Beitong
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781558619074
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Beijing Comrades is the story of a torrid love affair set against the socio-political unrest of late-eighties China. Due to its depiction of gay sexuality and its critique of the totalitarian government, it was originally published anonymously on an underground gay website within mainland China. This riveting and heart-breaking novel, circulated throughout China in 1998, quickly developed a cult following and remains a central work of queer literature from the People's Republic. This is the first English-language translation.

Drowning Girls in China

Drowning Girls in China PDF Author: D. E. Mungello
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742557324
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
This groundbreaking book offers the first full analysis of the long-neglected and controversial subject of female infanticide in China. Although infanticide and child abandonment were worldwide phenomena from antiquity down to the nineteenth century when massive numbers of children were still being abandoned in Europe, China was unique in targeting girls almost exclusively. Yet despite its persistence for two thousand years, little has been published on a practice that is deeply sensitive within China and little understood by outsiders. Drawing on little-known Chinese documents and illustrations, noted historian D. E. Mungello describes the causes and continuation of female infanticide since 1650 despite efforts by Confucian moralists, Buddhist teachings, government officials, and even imperial edicts to stop the practice. The arrival of Christian missionaries led to foreign involvement as well, with Catholic priests baptizing abandoned and dying infants in Nanjing and Beijing beginning in the early 1600s. Mission efforts peaked in the nineteenth century when the European-based Society of the Holy Childhood urged Catholic children to contribute their pennies to help neglected children in China. However, most of the infant victims were drowned at birth in the privacy of their homes, thereby escaping the scrutiny of the law and the public. Mungello brings this secretive practice to light with a nuanced and balanced analysis of the cultural, economic, and social causes of early infanticide and its contemporary manifestation in sex-selected abortion as a result of the government's one-child policy. Presenting female infanticide as a human rather than a distinctly Chinese problem, he estimates the tragic loss of girls in the millions.

This Suffering Is My Joy

This Suffering Is My Joy PDF Author: D. E. Mungello
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538150301
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
Tracing the little-known history of the first underground Catholic church in China, noted scholar D. E. Mungello illuminates the period between the imperial expulsion of foreign Christian missionaries in 1724 and their return with European colonialism in the 1800s. Few realize that this was the first time in which Chinese, rather than Europeans, came to control their own church as Chinese clergy and lay leaders maintained communities of clandestine Catholics. Mungello follows the church in a time of persecution, focusing in particular on the role of Chinese clergy and lay leaders in maintaining communities of clandestine Catholics during the eighteenth century. He highlights the parallels between the 1724 and 1951 expulsions of missionaries from China, the first driven by a Chinese imperial system and the second by a revolutionary Communist government. The two periods also reflected foreign bias against the Chinese priests and laity and questions about their spiritual depth and constancy. However, Mungello shows that the historical record of incarcerated and interrogated Christians reveals a spiritually inspired resistance to government oppression and a willingness to suffer, often to the point of martyrdom.