The ‘Queer Woman’ between Shanghai and Nanyang, 1920s–1930s

Abstract

This article examines the actress Yang Naimei and a movie produced by her film company entitled Qi nüzi (A Queer Woman, dir. Shi Dongshan, 1928), based on the recent suicide of Yu Meiyan, a headline-making femme fatale. Premiered in Shanghai in October 1928, Yang took the film on tour in British and Dutch colonies across Nanyang (today’s Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia) between 1929 and 1931. This first film company founded by a woman in China and its sole film output have sunk into oblivion in Chinese film historiography. I argue that this disappearance reflects two acts of negligence: the negligence of the ‘queer woman’ (qi nüzi) vis-à-vis the canonical ‘new woman’ (xin nüxing), and that of diasporic/Sinophone film spectatorship outside China proper. Drawing on a miscellany of texts, this article excavates the forgotten ‘queer woman’ in Chinese film and inquires into the historical conditions that contributed to her omission. It also charts the cultural exchanges of films, performances, and discourses between Shanghai and Nanyang, illuminating the complexities and ambiguities of screening and performing in these interstitial spaces.