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Kung, Wing Sze Kaby (2014) From feminism to postfeminism : a feminist critique of the works of Hong Ying and Li Bihua. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/20346 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this PhD Thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This PhD Thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this PhD Thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the PhD Thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full PhD Thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD PhD Thesis, pagination. From Feminism to Postfeminism: A Feminist Critique of The Works of Hong Ying and Li Bihua Wing Sze Kaby Kung Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in 2014 Department of China and Inner Asia School of Oriental and African Studies University of London Table of Content Acknowledgements Abstract of Thesis Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Feminist Ideas in Hong Ying’s 35 and Li Bihua’s Earlier Literary Texts Chapter 2 The Postfeminist Ideologies in Hong Ying’s 85 and Li Bihua’s Later Literary Texts Chapter 3 The Differences between the Original Works 151 and the Adaptations of Li Bihua’s and Hong Ying’s Works Chapter 4 Discussion of Web Literature: Postfeminist Ideas 208 on Hong Ying’s and Li Bibua’s Blogs Conclusion 255 Bibliography 262 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and the help of several individuals who in one way or another contributed and extended their valuable assistance in the preparation and completion of this study. First and foremost, my immense gratitude goes to my supervisor, Professor Michel Hockx. I appreciate all his contributions of time, ideas, and guidance to make my PhD experience beneficial and stimulating. I am also thankful for the excellent example he has provided as a successful scholar and professor. I am indebted to Ms. Hong Ying, Professor Dai Jinhua from Beijing University, Professor Bonnie McDougall from The University of Sydney, Professor Leung Ping- kwan from Hong Kong Lingnan University and Professor Mei Jialing from National Taiwan University for generously giving me time to conduct interviews with them in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei respectively in 2008. Their personal opinions and advice have contributed massively to my analysis. I would like to thank the University of London (Central Research Fund) and the School of Oriental and African Studies for sponsoring me to carry out my fieldwork in Beijing, Taipei and Hong Kong. Their financial support provided me with precious opportunities to collect information from different university libraries. I am grateful to my teachers at the School of Oriental and African Studies as their courses provided me with inspiration. I also want to thank my peers at SOAS and my previous co-workers at the University of Manchester as their support and willingness to share widened my horizon. I also express a special note of thanks to Quincy Wong, Wendy Ho, Dr. Olivia Milburn and Dr. Jeesoon Hong for their advice at different stages of completing this thesis. Last but not least, to God, my family and my friends. Abstract of Thesis The aim of the thesis is to investigate the development of female consciousness under the impact of Western feminist ideologies in Chinese female writings by examining specific works of Hong Ying and Li Bihua using a feminist and a postfeminist approach. By analysing the earlier and later works of Hong Ying and Li Bihua, one is able to recognise the shifts from feminist to post- feminist ideas that are apparent in the works of the two authors. The thesis is divided into four main sections and will include; the feminist and post-feminist ideologies of the two aforementioned authors’ works, the different representations of women in the authors’ original texts with their sequential movie and TV adaptations, and finally the impact of internet weblogs on Chinese women writings. In the first two core chapters, I use both feminist and post-feminist approaches to scrutinize the earlier and later literary work of Hong Ying and Li Bihua. Despite the fact that the two authors have very different writing styles, their common interest is to rewrite Chinese historical women with a hint of feminist rationale. Therefore, through comparing and contrasting the feminist ideologies in both writers’ works, the development of feminism in and the impact of Western Feminism on China can be revealed. Apart from literary texts, owing to the widespread movie and TV adaptations of the two authors’ literary writings, I examine the ramifications caused by the difference between the original and the adapted forms of representation of feminist ideas in the works of the Hong Ying and Li Bihua in the third core chapter. Seeing that both authors also maintain Internet weblogs (blogs), which are accessed by numerous Internet users, especially in China, therefore, in my last core chapter, I employ a cyberfeminist approach to read the blogs of the authors in order to show how feminism works different on the Internet. Kung 1 Introduction We now believe that the word feminism should be written feminisms, a word that better accounts for the variety of experiences and expressions that fall under the category.1 Women’s writing in contemporary China generates from different Chinese customs, literary traditions and the impact of globalised culture. It also incorporates the legacy and historical context of semi-colonialism, Chinese Marxism and the transformation of Chinese socialism in the twentieth century. Owing to the diversified historical and cultural context in contemporary Chinese women’s writings, different frameworks are required for reading and interpreting these texts. Also, they need to be read transculturally, with reference to Western and Chinese cultural contexts, so that they can be incorporated into a dialogic approach to literature.2 Investigating the narrative themes, literary styles and feminist concepts that engage with a transnational flow of ideas and theories in contemporary Chinese women’s writings will be beneficial for providing a better understanding of women’s lives and formations of gender in the Chinese context.3 This thesis will investigate the feminist concepts, in particular, the feminist and postfeminist4 themes in the works of two Chinese female authors: Hong Ying and Li Bihua (Lee Pik Wah/Lilian Lee).5 These two authors have been selected as there is significant evidence that second-wave (feminist) and third-wave feminist 1 This is a comment by Wendy Larson, and it has been quoted in Ya-chen Chen’s The Many Dimensions of Chinese Feminism, p. 1. 2 This comment is inspired by Kay Schaffer and Xianlin Song’s Women Writers in Postsocialist China, p. 5. 3 Ibid. 4 I shall follow Stephanie Genz’s idea of omitting the hyphen in ‘postfeminism’ in order to signify reliance and continuity, p. 19. 5 I shall use the Hanyu Pinyin form ‘Li Bihua’ throughout this thesis in order to balance with the presentation style of “Hong Ying” (who only has Hanyu Pinyin as the form for her name). Kung 2 (postfeminist) ideologies could be applicable as an approach to analysing different forms of Chinese female writers’ literary production: literary writings, the visual adaptations of literary works and online blogs. In my arguments, I focus on the discussion of diversified feminist ideologies in Chinese literature and film rather than investigating Chinese feminism as a social movement as a whole. Contemporary Chinese female writers include mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwanese and overseas Chinese writers; therefore, it is useful to study literary works by Chinese female writers from different Chinese communities, as their writings reveal different perceptions of Chinese feminism in literature. Partly because of their different geographical locations, these Chinese female writers use diverse subject matter to present their perspectives on life and demonstrate a more conscious resistance to the patriarchal preconceptions of Chinese society. Based on the above criteria, I intend to focus on the work of Hong Ying (mainland China/United Kingdom) and Li Bihua (Hong Kong) as the main subject of my thesis. Their works portray strong themes of opposition to female victimization and subordination that have been characteristic of Chinese society, traditional or modern. Born and raised in mainland China, on the one hand, Hong Ying had a wholly Chinese upbringing that has entitled her to write about her experience of being a Chinese woman in mainland China, while on the other hand, the fact that she lived in the United Kingdom for more than fifteen years has allowed her to become exposed to American and French feminist ideologies and female writings. Therefore, her feminist ideas were influenced greatly by her experience in the country. Li Bihua’s works are full of characteristic elements of local Hong Kong culture, and even though Li did not apparently intend to include any feminist ideologies such as the tactics of body writing or deconstructing the gender binaries in her writing, using a feminist lens to read her works is beneficial Kung 3 in terms of showing the development of (Chinese) feminism in Hong Kong as most of her female protagonists carry strong feminist characteristics. Another reason for choosing to concentrate on these two writers is their close relationship with popular culture. Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley observe that “most people become conscious of feminism through the way it is represented in popular culture” and “for many women of our generation, formative understandings of, and identification with, feminist ideas that have been almost exclusively within popular culture”,6 so in this light, using popular culture to illustrate feminist ideologies would be most appropriate.