(Trans)Culturally Transgendered: Reading Transgender Narratives in (Late) Imperial China by Wenjuan Xie A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature University of Alberta © Wenjuan Xie, 2015 Abstract This dissertation takes as its subject of study transcultural and historical investigations of the production and meanings of transgender in imperial China. I see this dissertation as part of the Chinese transgender studies scholarship pioneered by “beginning” works, such as Transgender China, that try to respond to this “transcultural turn” facing contemporary Anglophone-dominant transgender scholarship. My dissertation takes as its task not only to sketch out, for the first time in the English language, the largely understudied body of transgender existences in the Chinese texts of premodern China, but to systematically reexamine the lives of some transgendered individuals that survived its time via these texts and their significance in shaping a premodern Chinese transgender history, and to open up new approaches to world transgender experience of existences and formations as a whole. Throughout my analysis, I specify “transgender in imperial China” as an analytical term to describe people whose sex identity, gender identity or expression is perceived and/or interpreted to be ambiguous or transformable. For more effective discussion and for concerns of length, this dissertation will organize the discussion around three major types of transgender existences in imperial China, particularly in the later imperial Ming-Qing era: erxing (two-shaped), nü hua nan (FTM), and nan hua nü (MTF), as exemplifications of the historical Chineseness of transgender in global transgender history. Following my threefold organization of Chinese transgender phenomena, I structure the discussion into five parts. Chapter One, “Understanding erxing, nan hua nü, and nü hua nan: Competing Discourses,” provides a textual journey ii of erxing, nan hua nü, and nü hua nan records and accounts. Chapter Two, “The Threat of the Hidden Penis: The Criminalization of Erxing”, investigates a group of early Chinese transgender individuals: the two-shaped erxing (roughly equal to the modern term of intersex), who were, more often than not, portrayed as sex criminals who lived in one sex, yet possessed both female and male genitals at the same time. Chapter Three, “The Absence of the Penis: The Li Liangyu Cycle and the Homoerotic Turn of Nan hua nü”, turns to the reverse MTF accounts. In the last chapter, Chapter Four, “The Allure of the Penis: ‘Getting a Son’ and Nü hua nan”, looks into a prevalent formula demonstrated by many of the Ming-Qing accounts of FTM sex transformation, particularly their sudden discursive outburst in the Qing dynasty. My conclusion, “The Promise of the Strange: Transgender in Imperial China as Ethical Objects as Ethical Beings,” offers a holistic look at the three types of transgender existences discussed in this project and summarizes the major aspects of different modes of recognizing transgender in imperial China that these existences have collectively demonstrated. This study elaborates on the malleability, constructedness, and the historicity of sex that are inherent in transgender narratives in imperial China, particularly in late imperial China of the Ming and Qing discourses of the strange. The dissertation proposes that being constantly projected onto the discursive realm as the subject of “the strange” rather than the creator of discourses, being constantly projected onto the discursive realm as the subject of “the strange” rather than the creator of discourses, they constitute what I take to be “ethical objects.” As ethical objects, earlier Chinese transgenders, such as erxing, nan hua nü, and nü hua nan, are never subjects, but the objects, of “the morality iii of behaviors.” They are critical to the operation of morality only when they become the content that moral codes are exercised upon. To summarize, this dissertation marks an effort to locate both the dissonance and the alliance among earlier and late imperial Chinese transgender narratives, and different modes of moral behaviors that these ethical objects of strange reveal and rely on. Certainly, I am also well aware that my work has its own limitation and constraints. Yet, Chinese transgender studies, and transcultural transgender studies at large, can be greatly enriched if scholars can further explore the potential of the field. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ................................................................................................................ vi List of Figures .............................................................................................................. vii INTRODUCTION Erxing, Nan hua nü, and Nü hua nan: Recognizing Transgender in Imperial China ................................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE Understanding Erxing, Nan hua nü, and Nü hua nan: Competing Discourses ............................................................................................... 22 CHAPTER TWO The Threat of the Hidden Penis: The Criminalization of Erxing ................................................................................... 43 CHAPTER THREE The Absence of the Penis: The Li Liangyu Cycle and the Homoerotic Turn of Nan hua nü ............................... 88 CHAPTER FOUR The Allure of the Penis: “Getting A Son,” Morality, and Nü hua nan .......................................................... 146 CONCLUSION The Promise of the Strange: Transgender in Imperial China as Ethical Objects .................................................. 202 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................... 205 v List of Tables Table 2.1 Distribution of entries of erxing in historiography ............................................. 49 Table 2.2 Distribution of erxing in Ming-Qing personal narratives ............................ 49-50 Table 2.3 Statistics of jiefu lienü of all dynasties ..............................................................71 Table 2.4 historic and personal accounts of Sang Chong in Ming-Qing .......................... 78 Table 3.1 Distribution of historiographical entries of nan hua nü ............................... 89-90 Table 3.2 Distribution of nan hua nü in Ming-Qing personal narratives .................. 91-92 Table 4.1 Historiographical entries of nü hua nan ............................................................148-9 vi List of Figures Figure 2.1: Nugong (Women’s work): weaving and embroidering ................................. 68 Figure 2.2: Women embroidering and the boudoir ...........................................................69 Figure 2.3 Left: Guo chao xian zheng lu and Huang ming cong xin lu ...............................79 Figure 3.1 Original copy of Exemplary Words to the World .............................................. 103 Figure 3.2 Original copy of Faithful Record of Emperor Muzong of the Ming ..............115 Figure 3.3 Painting of “Ziyun chuyu tu” (Ziyun freshly after a bath) ..............................120 Figure 3.4 From Cap to Hairpin (1) ........................................................................................... 126 Figure 3.5 From Cap to Hairpin (2) ........................................................................................... 127 Figure 4.1 The Map of the Kneeling Ceremony for Public Lecturing in Cities and Villages .................................................................................................................................................. 167 Figure 4.2 Imperial Text of Shengyu guangxun ..................................................................... 169 Figure 4.3 Shengyu xiangjie ............................................................................................................ 169 Figure 4.4 Daily ledger (Left) and monthly tally ledger (Right) ..................................... 172 Figure 4.5 “The Divine Efficacy: Getting a Son” ..................................................................... 179 Figure 4.6 “Guanyin Who Bestows Sons” Dehua porcelain .............................................. 183 Figure 4.7 “Guanyin Bestows Sons” Large colored portrait ............................................. 183 Figure 4.8 “Bodhisattva’s Ingenuity” .......................................................................................... 190 vii Introduction Erxing, Nan hua nü, and Nü hua nan: Recognizing Transgender in Imperial China [To] persist in one’s own being is only possible on the condition that we are engaged in receiving and offering recognition. If we are not recognizable, then it is not possible to persist in one’s own being, and we are not possible beings; we have been foreclosed from possibility. (Butler Undoing Gender: 31) Recognition is a necessary condition of attaining culturally intelligible personhood, according to Judith Butler, one of the foundational scholars of the contemporary reexamination of gender categories and identities. This recognition might be an indulgence for “those who already know themselves to be possible;” yet, for “those who are still looking to become possible,” “possibility is a necessity” for existence (Undoing Gender 31). If this is the case, I would add, for those whose existences were scattered in the domain of the strange, often doubted, de-materialized, sometimes