Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera

Siu Leung Li

apr. 2003 · Hong Kong University Press

O tej e-knjigi

The enchantment of the figure of the "male dan" – female impersonator – remains a residual element in the cultural imagination of many contemporary Chinese societies. The various kinds of interpretive possibilities in the commanding tradition of cross-dressing Chinese opera have yet to be examined in-depth. In order to discuss "mistaken identity" and gender issues as they relate to cross-dressing on the Chinese operatic stage, this book examines a wide range of materials, including traditional dramatic texts, modern literary writings, critical writings (for example, quhua), opera paintings, and contemporary movies. The book explores gendering and gender differences that are constructed, reproduced, dismantled, and contested in this particularly rich site of Chinese culture.

O avtorju

Siu Leung Li is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He received his doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was Joukowsky postdoctoral fellow at Brown University. Returning to post-handover Hong Kong in 1998, he first joined the Humanities Division at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Crossing over from comparative literature to cultural studies via the interfacing of postmodern and postcolonial criticism, he has published on Hong Kong popular culture and film, Chinese drama and comparative literary studies. Siu Leung Li is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.