University of Hawai'i Press
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  • Cross-Gender China: Across Yin-Yang, Across Cultures, and Beyond Jingju by Huai Bao aka H. B. Dhawa
CROSS-GENDER CHINA: ACROSS YIN-YANG, ACROSS CULTURES, AND BEYOND JINGJU. By Huai Bao aka H. B. Dhawa. London: Routledge, 2018. xii, 170 pp. Hardcover, $150.00, ISBN 978-1-138-05790-6.

Utilizing nandan, or "male-to-female cross-gender performers" (p. 2) to impersonate female roles is a time-honored practice on the stage of xiqu (indigenous Chinese theatre). The prototype of nandan dates back to the use of fake women (nong jia furen) initiated by the late Tang actors;1 while nandan, as a considerable force in the theatre, was not full-fledged until the historic development of the chuanqi (literally "transforming of the marvellous", romance) style of xiqu during the Ming period (1368–1644). During the whole of the Qing period (1644–1912), nandan dominated the theatrical market as the Qing court forbade women from theatrical attendance. Despite the appearance of the earliest all-female troupes (mao'er ban) in the 1870s, males still maintained their dominance for a prolonged period of time. However, in the wake of the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, not only was the training of nandan prohibited at official institutions by means of political intervention, but also existing nandan were stigmatized and forbidden to perform due to the radicalized political campaigns that culminated in the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Fortunately, the tradition of nandan revived after the Reform and Opening set forth by the second leadership of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) by the end of the 1970s; but how would nandan performers fit themselves into the drastically changed society after their protracted absence?

There are a few current scholars dealing with the historical issue of nandan,2 while fewer efforts have been made to scrutinize the younger generation of nandan's status quo in contemporary Chinese society. As an outcome of his two-decade investigation, specifically follow-up interviews with over thirty informants, Huai Bao's book offers a new perspective delving into the lives of cross-dressing actors including, but not limited to, the nandan of xiqu. Through meticulous narrative analyses within the Jungian psychology, Bao's study actually transcends the theatrical level and concerns the "transgressive potential of performing out of one's biological sex" (p. x)—a desire that he believes to be ubiquitous for the whole of the humankind.

Huai Bao's Cross-Gender China: Across Yin-Yang, Across Cultures, and Beyond Jingju (Peking/Beijing opera) is divided into seven chapters. In the introduction, Bao sets the tone for the book by raising one page of rhetorical questions, querying the widely accepted social constructionist understanding that gender identity is not a preexistence from [End Page 281] the perspective of xiqu (p. 2). Bao finds in the perceived theatrical conventions (chengshi) of jingju an "original" that serves to distinguish fe/male genders. Besides consciously mimicking women on the façade, the nandan, more or less, combines into their performance a "sense of gendered [feminine] self" that lurks in their unconscious as an anima. In this way, cross-dressing practice "reflects a desire to seek transgressive pleasure" and "may serve as a way of self-justification." The nandan tradition of xiqu precisely creates "a safe space" for this kind of transgressive practice (pp. 3–4).

In chapters 2 and 3, Bao describes the rise and fall of nandan in the history that primarily spanned the period from the Republic (1912–1949) to the early People's Republic. During the Republican period, the leading dan actors brought jingju artistry to a new apogee through developing its performance and enriching its repertoire. Mei Lanfang (1894–1961), arguably the best nandan amongst his contemporaries, even won for nandan an international reputation through his overseas performance to Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union. However, the ensuing political intervention after the establishment of the People's Republic turned the theatre into an increasingly politicized venue (p.29). As nandan was recognized as a representative of China's "feudal" remnant, its training was firmly called off at the official level. During the Cultural Revolution, a group of "new women" were created as a new gender model of "female masculinity" out of Maoist feminist thought in the model plays (yangbanxi) (p. 8). The art of nandan, as an embodiment of "male femininity" that violated the masculine revolutionary virtue, was therefore "transformed from a cultural obsession to a cultural taboo" (p. 8). As a result, nandan were absolutely erased from the jingju stage, and a few renowned nandan performers such as Shang Xiaoyun (1900–1976) and Xun Huisheng (1900–1967) were even "physically and mentally tortured, verbally humiliated," and finally died in the course of the Cultural Revolution (p. 37). Besides the outrageous "male femininity" that nandan embody, the CCP's ban on nandan also had its parallels in Western homophobia, under the influence of which homosexuality has been for a prolonged period of time classified as a mental disease in China until 2001.

In chapters 4 and 5, Huai Bao depicts the resurgence of the nandan after the end of the Cultural Revolution primarily on the foundation of his interviews. In comparison to the previous generation of nandan as exemplified by Wen Ruhua (b. 1947) who survived the Cultural Revolution, Bao is specifically focused on the younger generation of cross-dressing actors who were brought up after the Reform and Opening. The younger generation left the "relatively safer [End Page 282] arena for gender transgression" that provided by jingju, undertaking "other forms of gender transgressive aesthetic practices" (p. 68). Bao highlights their unconscious, which may serve as a latent motivation for their aspiration of transgression. Starting with the example of the famous cross-dressing singing-dancing actor Li Yugang (b. 1978), Bao analyzes his interviews with a whole cohort of younger "voluntary practitioners" of cross-dressing performance, exploring their "transgressive desires" conveyed through cross-dressing activities (pp. 8–9).

Huai Bao attempts to analyze the desire of transgression in the subsequent part of his book through the lens of his informants. Repeating his doubt that "if reiterated acting has an original to copy from, then where does the very original come from" (p. 138, cf. p. 2), Bao contests Judith Butler's formula of "gender performativity" (p. 135ff). From his Jungian point of view, Bao believes that everyone is born with "an innate contra-sexual complex in the collective unconscious," which are preexistent rather than acquired or developed through the construction of the society. Anyone who voluntarily engages in the career of nandan is motivated by his anima, or the feminine self in his unconscious lurking beneath the social construction at the surface/conscious level. With regard to his interviewee Li Yu who "was raised as a boy but resisted his enforced and constructed 'false gender'," Bao argues that "the social construction of gender has been a total failure and the chromosomal sex seems to have overwhelmed and destabilized the constructed gender" (p. 138).3 In this sense, he believes that "jingju is a particularly transgressive theatrical art," and "nandan in jingju displays sexual artifice in its construction of gender through its gendertransgressive desires" (p. 145).

Despite Huai Bao's informative study produced out of years-long investigations into Chinese cross-dressing performance, further consideration is needed before we can fully accept his argument. Bao blurs the notion of nandan in xiqu/jingju and cross-dressing actors in general. Except for rare exemptions, his informants amongst the younger generation are primarily amateur actors who never receive professional training of jingju artistry; some are even no different from drag queens in the Western sense. Bao refers to both groups as "nandan" in a misleading way, ergo the conclusion that "jingju is a transgressive art." In terms of professional nandan performers, the artistry gained through harsh training might outweigh the potential transgressive pleasure. However, Bao's list of interviewees is not inclusive in that many professional nandan actors of the younger generation are not interviewed.4 Although professional and amateur nandan are not definitively two poles of an either-or dimorphism, a reader cannot help wonder: if more comments from professional nandan performers are [End Page 283] taken into consideration, would the answer be possibly different? Of course, this flaw in Huai Bao's theoretical edifice in no way undercuts the value of his book. Whether it contests Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, Cross-Gender China affords a valuable lens for readers to glimpse gender issues from a different perspective that many people remain ignorant of.

Chao Guo
Sun Yat-sen University (Zhuhai)

NOTES

1. During the years of Xiantong (860–874). See Jiao Xun, "Jushuo," [Talks on Theatre] Jiao Xun lunqu sanzhong [Jiao Xun's Three Works on Theatre] (Yangzhou: Guangling shushe, 2008), 28.

2. For example, Siu-leung Li, Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003). In this book Li discusses the case of Wen Ruhua as "the last female impersonator."

3. In fact, Judith Butler notices genital and chromosomal sexes' function in deciding one's gender at the psychological level and analyses the case of David/Brenda in her 2004 book Undoing Gender. For more details, see Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (London: R & TF, 2004), 57–74.

4. For example, Hu Wenge (b. 1967), Yang Lei (b. 1978), Mou Yuandi (b. 1983), and Yin Jun (b. 1988), etc.

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