Dongfang Bubai, Online Fandom, and the Gender Politics of a Legendary Queer Icon in Post-Mao China

Abstract

This chapter studies the gender politics of a legendary queer icon, Dongfang Bubai, in post-Mao China. In Jin Yong’s original novel (1967–1969), this character is a self-castrated man who satirizes Mao Zedong and his Great Cultural Revolution, and then Tsui Hark’s film (1991) cast a female star into this role, invoking Hong Kong’s postcolonial experiences. In Yu Zheng’s television drama (2013), this character was changed to be a woman played by a female star. Yet, this seemly conservative change did not stifled fans’ queer reading tactics in cyberspaces. Using internet ethnography, the author found that at least three reading tactics had emerged: (1) gay readings which imagine Dongfang Bubai as a gay lover even though now a female role played by a female star; (2) heterosexual readings which understand Dongfang Bubai as a “leftover woman,” which is a newly coined term that stigmatizes those unmarried highly educated women with relatively high age and high professional status; (3) lesbian readings which celebrate transgressing both incest taboo and heterosexuality but at once reject gay readings. By studying the complicated case of Dongfang Bubai, this chapter contends that there are simultaneous symbiosis and conflicts of queer and nonqueer articulations in fan cultures.