Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China Women and Gender in China Studies
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Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China Women and Gender in China Studies Edited by Grace S. Fong McGill University Editorial Board Louise Edwards Robin D.S. Yates Harriet T. Zurndorfer VOLUME 6 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/wgcs Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China By Geng Song Derek Hird LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 Cover illustration: Yao Ming. Illustration by Yang Jidong (http://weibo.com/yangjidong). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Song, Geng. Men and masculinities in contemporary China / by Geng Song, Derek Hird. pages cm. -- (Women and gender in China studies, ISSN 1877-5772 ; volume 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26489-2 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-26491-5 (e-book) 1. Masculinity--China. 2. Masculinity in mass media. 3. Men--China--Identity. I. Hird, Derek. II. Title. HQ1090.7.C6S66 2014 305.31095--dc23 2013038360 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1877-5772 ISBN 978-90-04-26489-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26491-5 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. 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This book is printed on acid-free paper. <UN> <UN> CONTENTS List of Illustrations ....................................................................................................vii Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................ix Introduction: Chinese Masculinity: Is There Such a Thing? ............................1 1 Masculinities on Television ............................................................................... 29 2 Masculinities in Lifestyle Magazines .............................................................. 55 3 Masculinities in Cyberspace ............................................................................. 79 4 Masculinities at Work .......................................................................................121 5 Masculinities at Leisure ...................................................................................169 6 Masculinities at Home......................................................................................211 Epilogue: Performing Manhood in Contemporary China ...........................255 Glossary .....................................................................................................................265 Bibliography .............................................................................................................269 Index ...........................................................................................................................287 <UN> <UN> <UN> <UN> LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1 Chen Shouting and the evil Japanese businessman Fujii in The Big Dye House ........................................................................................... 40 2 Guan Jun and Hu Xiaoling in Halfway Couples ............................................ 42 3 Li Yunlong in Unsheathing the Sword ............................................................. 45 4 The cover of the November 2005 issue of Shishang xiansheng .............. 59 5 Dong Xuan holding a banknote while doing laundry (Shishang xiansheng, May 2011, p. 106) .................................................. 72 6 The cover of Good Morning, Zhainan Sir! ...................................................... 88 7 The zhainan protagonist (played by You-nam Wong) in the film The General Mobilization of Zhainan .......................................................114 <UN> <UN> <UN> <UN> ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the process of working on this collaborative project, we have accumu- lated a debt of gratitude to funding bodies, friends, and colleagues, both jointly and individually. First thanks are due to Grace Fong and other mem- bers of the editorial board of the “Women and Gender in China Studies” series at Brill for their acceptance, support, and patience. We owe special thanks to the two anonymous readers appointed by Brill for their insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of the book. We thank our editors (Thomas Begley and Qin Higley) for their professionalism and effi- ciency and Gene McGarry for his excellent copyediting work. We would like to acknowledge with gratitude the permission by Yang Jidong to use his artwork for the cover design. Geng Song would like to acknowledge two research grants that facili- tated his research on this project: a Research School of Asia and the Pacific Grant at the Australian National University, and a Hsu Long Sing Research Grant at the University of Hong Kong. His fieldwork in China was enabled by the ANU Vice Chancellor’s travel grants. He is also grateful to the ANU for a six-month sabbatical in 2009, during which the very first chapter of the book took shape. Geng is deeply indebted to his research assistant Xiaowen Zhou and to Darrell Dorrington of Menzies Library at the ANU. He would like to thank the editors of Esquire, FHM, and some other magazines in China for their willingness to be interviewed and for granting permission to reproduce the covers of previous issues. His gratitude goes to colleagues and friends who offered their consistent camaraderie, intellectual stimulation, and moral support over the years: Kent Anderson, Chris Berry, Duncan Campbell, Anita Chan, Hyaeweol Choi, Louise Edwards, Shun Ikeda, Tamara Jacka, Peter Jackson, Andrew Kipnis, Kam Louie, Roald Maliangkay, Mao Sihui, John Minford, Luigi Tomba, Jonathan Unger, Dan Vukovich, Wu Yongmei, and colleagues in the HKU School of Chinese, which he joined in fall 2012. An earlier and shorter version of Chapter 1 was published in Modern China 36 (2010): 404–34; some parts of Chapter 2 have appeared in “Consumption, Class Formation, and Sexuality: Reading Men’s Lifestyle Magazines in China,” The China Journal 64 (2010): 159–77; and “‘New Man’ and ‘New Lad’ with Chinese Characteristics? Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Hybridity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines in China,” Asian Studies Review 36, <UN> <UN> x acknowledgments no. 3 (2012): 345–67. The latter two articles were both coauthored by Geng and his wife, Tracy Lee. Her agreement to incorporate these parts in the book is appreciated. Derek Hird would like to thank his informants for their patience and tol- erance, and Geng Song for his good humor, much hard work, and for sug- gesting the idea of writing this book in the first place. He also thanks his colleagues and friends in the Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster: Harriet Evans, for her key role in his intellectual develop- ment, which included supervising his doctoral thesis, and for her continu- ing strong encouragement; Gerda Wielander for her scholarly support and her help negotiating teaching and research responsibilities; and Cangbai Wang for his sharing of ideas and collegial good-spiritedness. Paul Robertson and Maryse Bray have both been very encouraging of his research activities during their tenure as successive heads of the Department of Modern and Applied Languages at the University of Westminster; Helen Rowley has never been anything but an exemplary research development officer; and Elizabeth Waters has been a source of much support in the Area Studies program. He also thanks the British Academy for its research grant in spring 2011, and the Universities’ China Committee in London and the Carnegie Trust for grants during his earlier doctoral research, all of which enabled him to carry out interviews and ethnographic research for this book. Derek is especially grateful to Alessandra Aresu, Bao Hongwei, Elisabeth Engebretsen, He Xiaopei, Will Schroeder, Wang Qian, and Wei Xiaogang for their friendship, sharing of knowledge, and valued support over many years; he has learned much from them all (and much gratitude goes to Xiaopei, Qian, and Xiaogang for helping find informants for this book). He would like to thank Chris Berry, Stephan Feuchtwang, and Travis Kong for their encouragement and assistance in many ways, not least of which has been the provision of timely references. Paul Kendall helped find infor- mants and has shared keen insights. During Derek’s doctoral research days, Mark Harrison gave valuable guidance on cultural theory and Natalie Wong provided much welcome companionship. Our last and deepest thanks go to our families