As Normal As Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland China and Hong Kong

Ching Yau

Feb 2010 · Queer Asia (酷兒亞洲) Book 4 · Hong Kong University Press

About this ebook

Drawing from the fields of ethnographic and sociological studies, cultural activism, public health and film studies, this volume poses new and exciting challenges to queer studies and demonstrates the study of Chinese sexuality as an emergent field currently emanating from multiple disciplines. The essays here showcase the work of emerging and established scholars working mostly outside Euro-America and focus on cities including Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. This book is one of the first sustained collections on Chinese non-normative sexual subjectivities and contemporary sexual politics published in English. It highlights the various ways in which different individuals and communities––including male sex workers, transsexual subjects, lesbians and Indonesian migrants––negotiate with notions of normativity and modernity, fine-tuned according to the different power structures of each context, and making new and different meanings.

About the author

Yau Ching teaches at the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Known locally as a writer, filmmaker and cultural activist, she has authored five books in Chinese including Sexing Shadows: a study of representation of gender andsexuality in Hong Kong Cinema (2005), The Impossible Home (2000) (Hong Kong Literary Biennial Award For Chinese Literature Runner-Up), a book in English Filming Margins: Tang Shu Shuen, a Forgotten Hong Kong Woman Director (HKUP, 2004), and has edited Sexual Politics (2006). Her first feature documentary Diasporama: Dead Air won Silver Prize at Hong Kong Independent Film and Video Awards in 1997 and her first feature narrative Ho Yuk (Let's Love Hong Kong) won Critics' Grand Prize at Figueira da Foz International Film Festival, Portugal in 2002.