Love Stories in China: The Politics of Intimacy in the Twenty-First Century

277 Pages·2019·4.723 MB·English

by  Wanning Sun, Ling Yang

Love Stories in China
This book explores how political, economic, social, cultural and technological
forces are (re)shaping the meanings of love and intimacy in China’s public
culture. It focuses on a range of cultural and media forms including literature,
film, television, music and new media, examines new cultural practices such as
online activism, virtual intimacy and relationship counselling, and discusses how
far love and romance have come to assume new shapes and forms in the twenty-
first century. Love Stories in China offers deep insights into how the huge trans-
formation in China over the last four decades has impacted the micro lives of
ordinary Chinese people.
Wanning Sun is Professor of Media and Communication at University of Tech-
nology Sydney
Ling Yang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese at Xiamen
University, China
Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia
Series Editor:
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald
Editorial Board:
Gregory N. Evon, University of New South Wales
Devleena Ghosh, University of Technology, Sydney
Peter Horsfield, RMIT University, Melbourne
Chris Hudson, RMIT University, Melbourne
Michael Keane, Curtin University
Tania Lewis, RMIT University, Melbourne
Vera Mackie, University of Wollongong
Kama Maclean, University of New South Wales
Laikwan Pang, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Gary Rawnsley, Aberystwyth University
Ming-y eh Rawnsley, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Jo Tacchi, Lancaster University
Adrian Vickers, University of Sydney
Jing Wang, MIT
Ying Zhu, City University of New York
The aim of this series is to publish original, high- quality work by both new and
established scholars in the West and the East, on all aspects of media, culture
and social change in Asia.
63 The Early Transnational Chinese Film Industry, 1897–1937
Yongchun Fu
64 Urban Culture in Pre-w ar Japan
Adam Thorin Croft
65 Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia
Edited by Markus Schleiter and Erik de Maaker
66 Love Stories in China
The Politics of Intimacy in the Twenty-F irst Century
Edited by Wanning Sun and Ling Yang
For a full list of available titles please visit: www.routledge.com/Media- Culture-
and- Social-Change-i n-Asia- Series/book- series/SE0797
Love Stories in China
The Politics of Intimacy in the Twenty-F irst
Century
Edited by Wanning Sun and Ling Yang
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Wanning Sun and Ling Yang;
individual chapters, the contributors.
The right of Wanning Sun and Ling Yang to be identified as the authors of
the editorial matter, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-i n-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-22469-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-27502-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
List of figures viii
Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction: love stories in contemporary China 1
WANNING SUN AND LING YANG
PArT I
Marriage in trouble 23
2 Is it better to cry in a BMW or laugh on a bicycle?
Television shows, marriage and the production of class in
urban China 25
ROBeRTA ZAVOReTTI
3 Successology for women: relationship experts and
sociobiological discourses 43
HAIPING LIU
4 Holding virtual hands: an ethical practice against male
infidelity in digital China 62
YI ZHOU
PArT II
rural–urban inequality 81
5 ‘Phoenix men’: changing representations of urban–rural
marriages in contemporary China 83
GUOqING ZHeNG
vi Contents
6 Negotiating class and the rural–urban divide in urban
homes: configuring the maid in literature and popular
culture 97
YANWEN LI
7 Wounded masculinities: the subaltern between online
longings and offline realities 113
TINGTING LIU
PArT III
Gender, race and class 131
8 Women in rural romantic love: gender politics in television
dramas 133
HUIKE WEN
9 Tiny Times, persistent love: gender, class and relationships
in post- 1980s bestsellers 151
LING YANG
10 The ‘social factory’ of China’s male ‘virtual lovers’ 168
CHRIS K. K. TAN AND ZHIWeI XU
11 International romance: changing discourses of
Chinese–foreign intimacy in the decades of economic
reforms 185
PAN WANG
PArT IV
Queer voices 203
12 The emerging ‘national husband’: queer female fantasy in
popular culture 205
JAMIe J. ZHAO
13 ‘revolution plus love?’ Online fandom of the television
drama series The Disguiser 226
XIqING ZHeNG
Contents vii
14 A love story: Li Yuchun’s fans and contemporary Chinese
singledom 244
MAUD LAVIN
Index 258
Figures
3.1 Love storm workshop, 17 January 2016 44
7.1 A post with picture on a Baidu Tieba forum themed ‘qingxi
Town in Dongguan’ 121
7.2 A picture promoting the game ‘Me Being an emperor in the
qing Dynasty’ 123
11.1 ‘Dangerous love’ poster 197
12.1 A screen capture from Go, Princess, Go!, showing the
princess flirting with a maidservant before (s)he accepts the
female body 216
12.2 A screen capture of the band Acrush performing at the concert
‘Husband exhibition’ in March 2017 220
12.3 A screen capture of Acrush’s fan-m ade Weibo page in June
2017 221
Contributors
Maud Lavin is Professor of Visual and Critical Studies and Art History, Theory
and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Yanwen Li is Associate Professor of Chinese at the International Communica-
tion School of Tianjin Foreign Studies University.
Haiping Liu is a PhD candidate in Gender Studies and Cultural Studies at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Tingting Liu is an Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Commu-
nication at Jinan University, Guangzhou, China and an Australian Research
Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society
at Western Sydney University, Australia.
Wanning Sun is Professor of Media and Communication at the University of
Technology Sydney (UTS).
Chris K. K. Tan is an Associate Professor in the School of Social and Behavi-
oral Sciences at Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China.
Pan Wang is Senior Lecturer in Chinese and Asian Studies, University of New
South Wales, Australia.
Huike Wen is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Williamette University,
Salem, Oregon.
Zhiwei Xu is a PhD candidate in the School of Journalism and Communication
at Renmin University of China.
Ling Yang is Assistant Professor of Chinese at Xiamen University, People’s
Republic of China.
roberta Zavoretti is a social anthropologist. She teaches social anthropology at
the University of Cologne, Germany.
Jamie J. Zhao is a Lecturer in Communication Studies in the School of Film
and Television Arts at Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University.