Queer Representations in Chinese Language Film and The Cultural Landscape

Queer Representations in
Chinese-language Film and

the Cultural Landscape
Shi-Yan Chao
Amsterdam University Press

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2 Two Stage Sisters: Comrades, Almost a
Love Story
Abstract
Chinese opera is a prime focus of Chapter 2, which analyzes Two Stage
Sisters (Xie Jin, 1965), a film classic from socialist China based on the
evolution of Shaoxing opera. Paying special attention to the tension
between the film’s text as a political melodrama and its subtext, replete
with homoerotic overtones, my analysis invokes a queer intervention that
rewrites the historical “surplus” of homoeroticism back into the official
history of the socialist “seventeen years” (1949-1966). My integration
of the social history into the textual analysis represents an alternative
historiography intended to counter the ahistorical tendency underlying
certain queer reading practices.
Keywords: Yueju, Two Stage Sisters, political melodrama, qing, socialist

China
As noted in the Introduction, two salient patterns of Chinese queer repre-

sentation develop around the familial-kinship system and forms of Chinese
opera. Alongside the seemingly inextricable tension between tongzhi/
queer subjects and the familial-kinship system, Chapter 1 also considers
the tropes of Chinese opera as an important way of facilitating the Chinese
queer diasporic imaginary via the theatrical convention of cross-dressing,
as well as itinerant travel in an underworld society (analogous to the idea of
“jianghu”) – itself a kind of diaspora outside Confucian officialdom and the
familial system. This chapter develops these associations further, focusing
on Shanghai-based Shaoxing opera or Yueju (as opposed to Kun opera and
Taiwanese opera, discussed in Chapter 1, and Peking opera, to be discussed
in Chapter 6). In particular, I analyse Two Stage Sisters (a.k.a. Stage Sisters),
a 1965 film classic from Mainland China directed by veteran filmmaker Xie
Jin (1923-2008) that revisited the history of Shaoxing opera.
Chao, Shi-Yan, Queer Representations in Chinese-language Film and the Cultural Landscape.
Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020
doi: 10.5117/9789462988033_ch02
100 QUEER REPRESENTATIONS IN CHINESE-L ANGUAGE FILM & CULTUR AL L ANDSCAPE
Xie Jin made his directorial debut in 1951, although he truly announced his
presence to the Chinese film world with his breakthrough feature Woman
Basketball Player No. 5 (1957), followed by his highly acclaimed revolution-
ary epic The Red Detachment of Women (1960). While Woman Basketball
Player and Red Detachment marked the beginning of Xie’s interest in films
featuring women, which continued with Two Stage Sisters, by the mid-1980s
his expansive oeuvre had come to be identified by critics as a mode of film
production dubbed “Xie Jin’s model” (Xie Jin moshi),1 and at the time, a series
of heated debates raged over its artistic and political value.2 Whether or not
the notion of “Xie Jin’s model” directly referred to the term “melodrama,”
the critics generally agreed that Xie’s work demonstrated a strong appeal
to the audience’s emotions through a calculated format that is, in a word,
melodramatic.
In fact, in English-language scholarship Xie’s films have been assessed
predominantly through the melodramatic approach. For instance, Ma Ning
discusses Xie’s film melodrama of the 1980s in terms of diegetic spatiality
and the construction of a coherent social subject at a time of ideological
crisis,3 while Nick Browne, discussing Hibiscus Town (1986), speaks of
“political melodrama” when examining the political economy specific to
Chinese film melodrama. 4 Whereas both Ma and Browne situate their
analyses in post-Mao China, Paul Pickowicz focuses on the May Fourth
critical legacy of the 1920s and 1930s, expressing reservations about the
political progressiveness of Xie’s melodrama.5 Jerome Silbergeld, however,
counsels a closer look at specific deployments of melodrama in Chinese
cinema, and argues that Xie’s melodrama is “deeper in thought and richer
in expression” than usually recognized.6 Robert Chi’s revisionist look at
The Red Detachment of Women,7 meanwhile, resonates with scholarship
by Linda Williams, Christine Gledhill, Emilie Yeh, and Zhang Zhen. For
1 See for instance, Zhu Dake, “The Drawback of Xie Jin’s Model”; Li Jie, “Xie Jin’s Era Should
End”; Shao Mujun, “The Road of Innovation in Chinese Cinema.” Zhu’s essay originally appeared
in Wenhui Daily (July 18, 1986), Li’s in Wenhui Daily (August 1, 1986), and Shao’s in Dianying Yixu
(September 1986).
2 For an overview, see Semsel et al., Chinese Film Theory, pp. 141-143; Chiao Hsiung-ping, “Xie
Jin de shidai jieshu le?”.
3 Ma Ning, “Spatiality and Subjectivity in Xie Jin’s Film Melodrama of the New Period.”
4 Browne, “Society and Subjectivity.”
5 Pickowicz, “Melodramatic Representation,” p. 300.
6 Silbergeld, “The Force of Labels,” China into Film, pp. 188-233. Another notable essay is
Hayford, “Hibiscus Town: Revolution, Love and Bean Curd.”
7 Shuqin Cui also devotes a chapter to the film; see “Gender Politics and Socialist Discourse
in Xie Jin’s The Red Detachment of Women,” Women Through the Lens, pp. 79-95.
T WO STAGE SISTERS: COMR ADES, ALMOST A LOVE STORY 101
them, melodrama operates not so much as a particular genre,8 but “as a

mode of aesthetic articulation distilled from and adaptable across a range
of genres, across decades, and across national cultures,”9 as is also seen
in the wide-ranging appeal of a similar term wenyi (or “wenyi melodrama”)
in the Chinese context.10 For Chi, seeing melodrama as “neither strictly
gendered nor strictly a genre” helps explain why Red Detachment is able
“to fold women into a masculinist vision of women’s liberation,” while the
transformation of a female individual is tied to the production of “memory”
that is not only cognitively known but felt and inscribed in the bodies across
the viewers.11
Gina Marchetti’s article12 on Two Stage Sisters is the most important
English-language analysis of this picture to date.13 Reading the film as
the nexus of various theatrical, political and Hollywood industrial influ-
ences, Marchetti provides a number of illuminating insights into the film’s
aesthetic, although the melodramatic mode is not a primary concern. In
recognition of and in dialogue with the ongoing assessment of Xie’s work as
melodrama, I offer below a reading of Two Stage Sisters in these terms. On
the one hand, I borrow Browne’s idea of “political melodrama” to highlight
the synthesis of a melodramatic format and a socialist political agenda,
locating this conceptualization in Pickowicz’s historical context. On the
other hand, I emphasize the tension between the dominant address of
this political melodrama and the queer messages emerging from this very
text. As we will see, this foregrounds a continuum of homosexuality and
homosociality between women (as opposed to the comparatively “disrupted
continuum […] between sexual and nonsexual male bonds” that Eve K.
Sedgwick identifies).14 This continuum is simultaneously mediated by a
8 Gledhill, “The Melodramatic Field”; Linda Williams, “Melodrama Revised”; Gledhill, “Rethink-
ing Genre”; Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card; Gledhill and Williams (eds.), Melodrama
Unbound.
9 Gledhill, “Prologue: The Reach of Melodrama,” in Gledhill and Williams (eds.), Melodrama
Unbound, p. xiii.
10 Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, “Pitfalls of Cross-Cultural Analysis”; Zhang Zhen, “Translating Melo-
drama”; Emilie Yeh, “A Small History of Wenyi”; Zhang Zhen, “Transnational Melodrama, Wenyi,
and the Orphan Imagination.”
11 Robert Chi, “The Red Detachment of Women: Resenting, Regendering, Remembering.”
12 Marchetti, “Two Stage Sisters: The Blossoming of a Revolutionary Aesthetic.”
13 Two Stage Sisters has been discussed in English-language scholarship, albeit not at great
length. Chris Berry discusses the film at various in Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China; see
also Yingjin Zhang, Chinese National Cinema, pp. 212-216; Berry and Farquhar, China on Screen,
pp. 114-116; Wicks, “Two Stage Brothers,” in Transnational Representations, pp. 23-51, esp. pp. 25-28,
30-31.
14 Sedgwick, Between Men, p. 23.
sociopolitical impulse diverting women’s life-force (i.e. a kind of qing, or

what Audre Lorde terms “the erotic”) away from homoeroticism toward a
specific kind of homosociality known as “comradeship” – all in the name of
the socialist revolution. The title of this chapter, “Comrades, Almost a Love
Story” (originally the English title of a celebrated 1996 film melodrama from
Hong Kong), refers to precisely this libidinal transformation or the competing
definitions of comradeship, shifting between its original socialist usage and
its revisionist queer ramification, highlighting aspects of the individual and
sexuality traditionally downplayed by socialist politics.
Moreover, this chapter pays special attention to historicity on two levels.
First, it underscores the connections between Two Stage Sisters and the world
of the film, namely the development of Shaoxing opera or Yueju. Second, it
recasts the aforementioned impulse to regulate women’s energy against the
backdrop of Yueju’s development. In so doing, the transformative mechanism
operating between text (political melodrama) and subtext (queer messages)
is reassessed in a historically contextualized, historically grounded way.
Two Stage Sisters and Its Historical Connections
Yueju was a style of theater ( ju) that originated in China’s Yue region, which
corresponds approximately to the Zhejian province near the Shanghai
metropolis. In the early twentieth century, Yueju was created by small
theatrical troupes of peasant balladeers, who performed folksongs with
simple narratives. Accompanied by percussion instruments such as clap-
pers and drums, Yueju performances in their nascent form incorporated
basic role-playing, simple gestures, movements, makeup, and costumes.
The 1910s witnessed the transformation of Yueju from a fledgling “minor”
theater into an established “major” theater. In particular, Yueju perform-
ers adopted and adapted a wide range of stylistics and techniques from
Peking opera and Shaoju,15 including their more sophisticated movements
and makeup, stage setups, and music (both sung melodies and their
accompaniment). They also extended their repertoires and learned to
“serialize” their dramas (lian tai ben xi).16 With these reforms, by the early
1920s Yueju finally gained status in Shanghai’s performance scene. By this
15 Shaoju is a regional theater that, like Yueju, originated from Zhejiang province, though it
has a much longer history. Shaoju was originally aff iliated with religious activities and was
especially known for its treatment of the ghost narratives (gui xi).
16 Lu Shijung. “Xin Yueju de lishi gongxung,” p. 39.
time, Yueju was known as Shaoxing opera, after the district in which it
originated. Nowadays the terms “Yueju” and “Shaoxing opera” are used
almost interchangeably.
It is noteworthy that, like the vast majority of Chinese theater forms in
the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), early Yueju performers were exclusively
men. A Yueju training school was set up for girls in 1923, however, and the
first all-female Yueju troupe founded;17 Yueju actresses became popular
in Shanghai in the 1930s.18 For several years individual Yueju actresses
commonly shared a stage with their male counterparts.19 By the mid-1930s,
virtually all male performers in Shaoxing opera gave way to their female
counterparts.20 Interestingly, though the founding and maturation of Yueju
were in the hands of men, Yueju – growing in popularity in Shanghai –
was subsequently reshaped by its female performers. For instance, a score
consisting of principal Yueju tunes and melodies (such as the “Si gong”
melody) was actually tailored for actresses from the 1930s onward.21 Due
to Yueju’s gender demographic, romantic love stories also became a strong
point of Shaoxing opera, while military scenes and acrobatics were mostly
or entirely absent from Yueju performances.22
During the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), Yueju attained and maintained
immense popularity in the concessions of the Shanghai metropolis, which
(under international treaty) were largely spared from the battles and bomb-
ings. Though able to escape the immediate violence of the war, Yueju artists
in Shanghai were not exempted from involvement with political power. In
fact, various Yueju performers began to exhibit their political tendencies
after World War II, while certain Yueju performances were gradually wed-
ded to the “progressive” thinking commonly associated at that time with
socialism. With the change in government from the KMT Nationalist Party
17 The first Yueju school for girls was established in Zhejiang province by businessman Jingshui
Wang. Its students formed the first all-female Yueju company; it lasted about six years, and did
not succeed in Shanghai. See Gao Yilong, Yueju shihua, pp. 42-49.
18 According to Xia Lan, Yueju actresses entered Shanghai in the late 1920s. According to Qian
Fachung, however, it was not until the late 1930s. Gao Yilong provides more detail: an all-female
Yueju company first performed in Shanghai in 1931, but this and several other attempts were
commercial failures. According to Gao, all-female companies had little success until the breakout
of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, when they sought refuge in the concessions in Shanghai. See
Xia, “Yueju,” in Zhongguo xiqu wenhua, p. 37; Qian, Zhongguo yueju, p. 15; Gao Yilong, Yueju
shihua, pp. 58-67.
19 Gao Yilong, Yueju shihua, p. 50.
20 See Mackerras and Scott, “China,” p. 58.
21 On the evolution of Yueju scores, see Yuan Xuefen, “Xiqu liupei han changqiang yijia yan.”
22 Mackerras and Scott, “China,” p. 58.
to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, Yueju on the Mainland even
became a major state theater form.
It is precisely against the backdrop of Yueju’s entanglement with China’s
socio-political turmoil that Xie’s Two Stage Sisters unfolds. Although Two Stage
Sisters focuses on the intimate story of two actresses and the vicissitudes
of their relationship, Xie also gave the film an epic scope by drawing view-
ers’ attention to the women’s lives as affected by tremendous political and
social turbulence. Covering the period 1935 to 1950, the film follows the main
characters from rural Zhejiang to metropolitan Shanghai during the periods of
Japanese occupation, KMT rule, and eventually the “liberated” era of the CCP.
As “one of the best-remembered film stars from the pre-Cultural Revolu-
tion era,” 23 actress Xie Fang plays Chunhua, a child bride who runs away
from her arranged marriage in 1935. Taking refuge with an itinerant Yueju
company, Chunhua becomes an apprentice and befriends the master’s
daughter, Yuehong (Cao Yindi); onstage, Chunhua and Yuehong play duets
together. After the troupe master’s demise in 1940, however, Chunhua
and Yuehong find themselves sold to an opera theater in Shanghai, where
all-female Yueju is now enormously popular. Both rise to stardom in the
following years. However, Yuehong falls for manipulative stage manager
Tang (Li Wei). She squabbles with Chunhua and gradually recedes from
the performance scene. Chunhua, by contrast, is firmly dedicated to her
career, and is gradually drawn to left-wing politics under the tutelage of a
female journalist, Jiang Bo (Gao Yuansheng). Chunhua’s newly politicized
performances irritate those in power, namely the KMT Nationalists. A failed
attempt to blind and ruin Chunhua follows, which infuriates the public. To
alleviate public anger, Tang – under the guidance of the Nationalists – forces
Yuehong to bear responsibility for the attack by giving false testimony in
court. Yet the public does not fall for the ruse, and the courthouse descends
into chaos. Then the “Liberation” arrives. With profuse apologies and a sense
of humiliation, Yuehong disappears into the countryside, but Chunhua
manages to track her down. Yuehong realizes the errors of her past, and
the two sisters ultimately reconcile and reunite.
Crucially, the story of Two Stage Sisters is steeped in history; the fate of
the sisters parallels the development of Shaoxing opera. The film begins
in 1935, coinciding with the period when itinerant troupes performing in
rural areas were a major force in Yueju theater. Historically, Yueju actresses
gained a solid footing in Shanghai only in the second half of the 1930s: Two
23 Berry and Farquhar, China on Screen, p. 114.

Stage Sisters dexterously situates the demise of the troupe master amid this
change, which in turn paves the way for the sisters’ fate in Shanghai in a
way that is fictional and yet historically grounded.
Furthermore, I believe the character Shang Shuihua (Shangguan Yunzhu)
is loosely based on Yueju star Xiao Dangui (1920-1947),24 who was hailed by
the press as the “Queen of Yueju” as early as 1935.25 The story arc for Shang’s
character, from her relationship with her exploitative manager-boyfriend
Tang to her suicide and lavish funeral, follow closely the autobiographical
details of Xiao’s life: Xiao, too, was considered a tragic figure, ruthlessly
exploited and controlled by her manager-boyfriend Zhang Chunfan, and
she committed suicide in October 1947.26 Interestingly, in Two Stage Sisters,
Tang is depicted as the main antagonist, affiliated with first the Japanese and
then the KMT regimes. In historian Gao Yilong’s account, Zhang Chunfan
was similarly associated with both the Japanese and the Nationalists, and
Zhang, with all his seedy behavior, was described by Gao as “the prototype
of the villain from a perverse society.”27 Here it seems that, through the
discourse of socialist revolution, Zhang has found his perfect reincarnation
in Tang: both embody “evil” in the socialist imaginary and revolutionary
melodrama.
Moreover, in her seminal article on Two Stage Sisters, Gina Marchetti
asserts that the life of famous Yueju actress Fan Ruijuan (1924-2017) informs
that of the fictitious Chunhua. Fan’s personal account of her life in Yueju
“reflects the same sense of desperation and determination evident in the
f ilm,” since Fan, like Chunhua, joined a Shaoxing opera troupe in 1935
to avoid what Fan describes as “the miserable life of a child bride” that
a girl born into an indigent family in 1930s Zhejian would endure.28 This
24 For Xiao’s biography, see Qian, Zhongguo yueju, pp. 64-65.

25 Gao Yilong, Yueju shihua, p. 58; Qian, Zhongguo yueju, p. 15. In the film, Shang Shuihua is
introduced to the audience as “Queen of Yueju,” literally in a newspaper report.
26 Not unlike Chunhua accusing Tang of “coercing [Shang Shuihua] into death,” the Shanghai
Yueju circle back then allegedly rallied against Zhang: “Xiao Danguei was coerced into death
by [Zhang]; we must seek her revenge” (see Gao Yilong, Yueju shihua, p. 190). Even the gossip
surrounding Xiao’s burial and money find their way into the film: Shang’s “luxurious burial”
is depicted as a trick by Tang’s clan to deflect public anger. In another sequence, Tang suggests
Chunhua for a new show, “Widow Ma Opening A Store” (Ma guafu kai dian). Without even
looking at the script, Chunhua refuses, saying she has heard “something” about this show from
Shang. Although what this might be is unclear, historically, Xiao was supposedly “forced” to star
in that play, widely denounced as “dissolute.” Gao Yilong, Yueju shihua, p. 185; Qian, Zhongguo
yueju, p. 64.
27 Gao Yilong, Yueju shihua, p. 186 (emphasis added).
28 Marchetti, “Two Stage Sisters: The Blossoming of a Revolutionary Aesthetic,” pp. 62-63.
comparison of the early years of Chunhua and Fan is indeed insightful. Yet
Marchetti seems to forget another Yueju actress, Yuan Xuefen (1922-2011).
Arguably the most influential and respected Yueju artist in China today,
Yuan has been credited with overseeing, instigating, and implementing
various reforms and innovations in Yueju since the 1940s. Among other
things, she has been credited with the 1943 invention of the “chi melody”
which, with its numerous variations, has become “the most fundamental
and important melody” in Yueju.29
In many ways, in the f ilm’s depiction of Chunhua’s political devel-
opment she bears a stronger resemblance to Yuan Xuefen than to Fan
Ruijuan. For instance, both Yuan and Chunhua take artistic inspiration
from historical patriot Wen Tianxiang (1236-1283). The transitional
montage sequence that indicates the arrival of Chunhua and Yuehong in
Shanghai notably includes a shot of a neon sign, showing slides of Chinese
characters that end with “Wen Tianxiang.” During the Sino-Japanese War,
a spoken drama (huaju, as opposed to opera) based on Wen was indeed
performed in Shanghai, affirming the steadfast Chinese patriotism. Yuan
undoubtedly established her principles of behavior and performance
(zuoren he zuoxi de yuanze) with Wen in mind.30 Likewise, Chunhua’s
motto, “Show integrity in life; be serious on stage” (qingqing baibai zuoren;
renren zhenzhen yanxi), literally echoes Yuan’s philosophy. In addition,
both Chunhua and Yuan perform the lead role in the stage adaptation
of Lu Xun’s novella, The New Year’s Sacrifice (a.k.a. Zhufu). The success
of this adaption proved a milestone in Yueju’s development, as it paved
the way for Yueju to deal with modern subject matter (as opposed to
themes set in ancient times). This change was made possible under the
leadership of Yuan Xuefen.31
In another parallel, both Yuan and Chunhua are attacked by Nationalists
and roundly defended by the public. In Two Stage Sisters, after her success
with The New Year’s Sacrifice, Chunhua has limestone powder thrown into
her eyes by a henchman of Tang and the Nationalists, who have failed to
compel Chunhua to “spontaneously” cancel the show. It was reported that
Yuan Xuefen was once attacked in broad daylight by someone who pitched
a bag of feces at her. Allegedly, the Nationalists were behind this assault,
intended to intimidate Yuan and the other Yueju performers into, among
29 Zhou Laida, Zhonguo yueju yinyue yanjiu, p. 2.

30 Wu Chen, “Yueju gaige yu Yuan Xuefen de yishu daolu,” p. 4.
31 On early Yueju reforms led by Yuan, see Lu Shijung. “Xin Yueju de lishi gongxun – sishi
niandai Yueju gaige.”
other things, canceling The New Year’s Sacrifice.32 In the summer of 1947, after
this incident, Yuan led various eminent Yueju actresses in a “coalescence
performance” staged to raise funds to build a theater for Yueju actresses;33
a similar scene is depicted in Two Stage Sisters. Encountering forms of
interference by those in power, the ultimate triumph of The New Year’s
Sacrifice has been interpreted by historians like Gao Yilong as a significant
“struggle” of the Yueju circle against the “reactionaries” ( fandong pai).34
A Queer Feeling in a Socialist Political Melodrama
These and other examples throughout the film illustrate the connections
between Yueju history and Two Stage Sisters, which is fictional by nature,
but deeply embedded in the pre-Liberation development of Yueju. While
I will return to the issue of historical context in the next section, in this
section I would like to focus on the text. My analysis will address first the
melodramatic dimension in Two Stage Sisters, followed by my queer reading
of the film. As will become clear, there is a tension between the political
melodrama of Two Stage Sisters and its queer subtext. And this tension, as
we will see, embodies specific ramifications in the development of Yueju
after the Liberation.
a) Two Stage Sisters as a Socialist Political Melodrama
Inherently neither progressive nor conservative, melodrama, in Thomas

Elsaesser’s view, is an ambivalent form open to a variety of political inflec-
tions.35 By tracing various embodiments of the “melodramatic imagina-
tion” in certain European countries and in different epochs, Elsaesser sees
melodrama as representing “the struggle of a morally and emotionally
emancipated bourgeois consciousness against the remnants of feudalism.”36
In his study on melodrama in European/French literature, Peter Brooks
likewise associates the formation of melodrama with the changing political
economy of “a post-sacred universe” in modern Europe.37 In other words,
both Elsaesser and Brooks conceive of melodrama as an artistic mode
32 Gao Yilong, Yueju shihua, pp. 159-160.

33 Ibid., pp. 173-182.
34 Ibid., p. 160
35 Elsaesser, “Tales of Sound and Fury.”
36 Ibid., pp. 166, 168.
37 Brooks. The Melodramatic Imagination, p. 15.
favored by the rising European bourgeoisie for representing history and

establishing its own universe of values.
How, then, was this melodramatic mode related to early Chinese cinema?
What are the political and historical ramifications of that relationship? Paul
Pickowicz, in his historical investigation into melodramatic representa-
tion in Chinese cinema, first challenges the “myth that the Communist
Party brought the May Fourth movement to the film studios of Shanghai
in 1932.”38 Such a view is already questionable since it implies that “the
Party had a coherent policy toward filmmaking that was systematically
implemented by its operatives in the film world.” Moreover, a number of
leftist filmmakers – even if they had intentionally introduced May Fourth
thought into Chinese films after 1931-32 – virtually became “prisoners of
the film media,” as they drew on a melodramatic tradition characterized
by “moral polarization, excessive emotionalism, exaggerated expression,
unusual suffering, and extreme suspense.”39 Put another way, to make
melodrama serve revolutionary rather than conservative politics, those
early leftist filmmakers introduced “basic Marxist notions of class struggle,
capitalism, and imperialism to sharpen the vague images of good and evil
that abounded in classic melodramas.”40 However, relying as it does on
simplified concepts and polarized values, melodrama was incapable of
elucidating the intricacy of Marxist ideas, which were instead “reduced to
stereotypes and caricatures” and hence “swallowed up” by the very medium
of their expression. 41 Even so, those Marxist-inflected melodramas made
in the 1930s and 1940s, in Pickowicz’s opinion, still embodied a form of the
May Fourth tradition, insofar as they played a critical role in contempo-
rary politics and society. Chinese filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s, by
contrast, broke with this tradition, precisely because they no longer made
film melodramas that “[criticized] contemporary social conditions and
thus subverted state authority.”42 The most memorable film melodramas
of the time, including Xie Jin’s Two Stage Sisters and The Red Detachment of
Women, focused not on socialist society, but on the dark times before the

39 Ibid., pp. 300, 302.
40 Ibid. p. 312.
41 Ibid. Miriam Bratu Hansen, however, expresses reservations, arguing that Pickowicz’s view of
early Chinese film melodrama “assumes a monolithic and condescending notion of melodrama”
and “does not consider their visual, narrational, and performance style – cinematically specific
qualities that make them rank among the most sophisticated and vibrant works of silent cinema
worldwide.” Hansen, “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons,” p. 14.
“Liberation.” Aimed at legitimizing the new rule of the CCP, they belonged,
in short, to “a propagandistic victor’s cinema.”43
Corresponding to Pickowicz’s observations, I find it useful to approach a
significant percentage of the film melodrama made in the PRC through what
Nick Browne terms “political melodrama.” Writing around the same time as
Pickowicz, Browne questions the analogy of Chinese “family melodrama”
to its Western counterpart. In assessing Xie Jin’s more recent works from
the 1980s, Browne proposes the concept of “political melodrama,” which
he defines as “an expression of a mode of injustice whose mise-en-scène is
precisely the nexus between public and private life, a mode in which gender
as a mark of difference is a limited, mobile term activated by distinctive
social powers and historical circumstances.”44 Two points merit our special
attention. First, political melodrama in the PRC is a mode of representation
that addresses “the relation of the individual to the social as a fully public
matter.” Such a relation, according to Browne, is ineluctably mediated by both
“the expectations of an ethical system” constituted by Confucianism and “the
demands of a political system” dominated by socialism.45 Second, Browne’s
focus on Xie’s film melodramas from the 1980s allows him to emphasize the
changing dynamic between the ethical system and the political system in
the post-Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) era, wherein Maoist socialism has
lost its credibility by instilling a deep sense of disillusionment, and political
ferment has given way to a strong appeal to certain older ethical standards
and to humanism. 46 Significantly, the “propagandistic victor’s cinema”
characteristic of various film melodramas from the 1950s and 1960s has
been reconfigured in relation to this changed sociopolitical climate. The
causes of the “injustice” central to those political melodramas, for instance,
are finally portrayed not only from outside socialist society but sometimes,
as Hibiscus Town shows, from within. 47 What cannot be overstressed in
Browne’s approach to the Chinese film melodrama is thus his emphasis
on the political in relation to the historical specificity of the 1980s. For the
43 Ibid.
44 Browne, “Society and Subjectivity,” p. 43.
45 Ibid., pp. 46-47.
46 Humanism is more accurately known as “rehumanism” in Chinese, since the Cultural
Revolution “had distorted or ignored human nature and now it was time to restore it.” See Kuoshu
(ed.), Celluloid China, p. 26. Nick Browne also borrows the term “rehumanism” from Esther Yau.
See “Society and Subjectivity,” p. 53.
47 In Pickowicz’s words, “it was finally possible not only to talk about socialist society in terms
of darkness and light, but to identify the Party as the agent of darkness.” See “Melodramatic
Representation,” p. 325.
purposes of this chapter, though, I borrow the term “political melodrama”

to highlight precisely this marriage between melodramatic format and
blatant political agenda, particularly the socialist revolutionary ideology
that was barely (allowed to be) challenged in the PRC until the late 1970s.
China’s political melodrama also has recourse to “affect” in the audience.
Arousing sympathy and righteous indignation in the audience, political
melodrama – to borrow Pickowicz’s words – provides its viewers with “both
the depraved intrigues of villainy and the pathetic suffering of its innocent
and helpless victims.”48 As Peter Brooks notes, “[m]elodramatic good and
evil are highly personalized;”49 political melodrama likewise shows the
audience “the highly personalized human faces of virtue and evil,”50 while
the meaning of the self and the fate of the family are, importantly, articulated
through the public and the political. Regarding the significance of “gender”
in China’s political melodrama from the 1950s and 1960s, I will elaborate
on this in the second half of this section.
In Two Stage Sisters the antagonistic or “evil” forces are undoubtedly
affiliated with those who contradict the political-economic interests of
both the CCP and the “people” it represents. Such antagonistic forces include
the Japanese intruder (against the parameter of Chinese nationalism), the
KMT Nationalist (adversary of the “progressive” politics represented by the
CCP), rich people and landlords (versus the proletariat), and the USA (the
ultimate representative of capitalism and Western imperialist influence,
and a strong supporter of the KMT from the 1940s to the 1960s). Importantly,
such oppositional forces are highly personalized, vividly embodied by such
characters as Lord Ni, Manager Tang, and Auntie Shen. Lord Ni, a gentry-
landowner in the Zhejian countryside, appears early in the film. Watching
Yuehong and Chunhua performing on a public stage, Ni lusts after the two
sisters, and engages the troupe for an all-night small-scale performance at
his residence. However, they defy his demand that Yuehong remain after the
performance. Next day the local police interrupt their public performance,
arrest Chunhua, and punish her with “public exhibition,” in which she
is lashed to a pole in the public square. Lord Ni is portrayed as someone
who not only possesses land and wealth, but is also salacious, immoral,
and well-connected to the local police – who, unfortunately, are equally
venal and corrupt. These incidents involving Lord Ni also emphasize, in
melodramatic terms, the high dramatization of events, the suffering of

49 Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, p. 16.
the innocent, and an intense moral and emotional engagement with the
audience. Given that the police abuse their power in public, the suffering
of one individual thus goes beyond the personal, and is transmuted into a
public matter with political overtones.
Antagonistic forces in Two Stage Sisters are also personified in two op-
portunist characters: Manager Tang and Monk Ah-xing. As manager of the
opera troupe, Monk Ah-xing is to blame for involving the two sisters with
Lord Ni. Soon after Yuehong’s father dies, Ah-xing profits by “selling” the
two sisters to Manager Tang, in whose theater they must perform without
pay for three years. After Chunhua and Yuehong become stars in Shanghai,
it is Ah-xing who – backed by Tang and the Nationalists – carries out the
assault on Chunhua and then falsely blames it on Yuehong. Ah-xing is,
in short, an opportunist lacking any virtue or political conviction; as the
political environment changes, he backs anyone with money and power.
Manager Tang is also an opportunist, though he, unlike Ah-xing, possesses
wealth. Tang is affiliated with the Japanese and then with the Nationalists.
In a sequence from 1944 set in Manager Tang’s office, we see a doll in kimono
in a glass case. This decoration indicates Tang’s rapport with the Japanese,
and thus his treacherous character. After the Sino-Japanese War, however,
Tang’s liaisons with the Japanese are replaced by his relationships with the
Shanghai-based Nationalists, as he befriends both Commissioner Pan – a
KMT delegate in Shanghai – and a Nationalist agent who spies on political
activities in Shanghai. Evidently, in this political melodrama Manager Tang’s
pivotal function is to involve reactionary forces.
Though all the aforementioned antagonists are male, one female character
is also portrayed as negative and reactionary. A wealthy middle-aged woman,
Auntie Shen, first appears in the story sometime after 1944, when Chunhua
and Yuehong are both stars, and (their contract having expired) collecting
their pay. Shen tries to establish a quasi-maternal relationship with Chunhua,
but her complicity with reactionary influences is gradually revealed. For
example, after Shang Shuihua takes her own life, Shen becomes the self-
anointed mediator between Tang and the actresses. Shedding crocodile
tears, Shen softens the sisters’ attitude by exploiting “feminine” rhetoric, and
persuades Tang to arrange a sumptuous funeral. To Chunhua, in hindsight,
this deflects public attention away from avenging the wronged. When
Shen later joins Tang to deter Chunhua from performing “The New Year’s
Sacrifice,” she resolutely rejects her appeal to social networking (renqing).
Significantly, in attempting to dissuade Chunhua from performing a
drama that criticizes society, Shen plays on her image as an amicable woman
(not an option for Tang and Ah-xing, with their tough looks). Similarly,
her mediation between Tang and the actresses, resorting to the notion of
“woman,” supports an intrigue that suppresses social justice. Gender is thus
appropriated by the reactionary in order to perpetuate reactionary interests.
Two Stage Sisters strategically makes gender a secondary issue to class. The
point of Auntie Shen in this political melodrama is not so much gender itself
as class struggle in the guise of gender. Complicit with Tang in reactionary
behavior, Shen personifies the forces opposing the socialist revolution.
Amid the conflicts between the revolutionary and the reactionary,
between good and evil, Yuehong unfortunately chooses the “wrong” side.
In a sequence where Chunhua refuses Tang’s proposal to perform “Widow
Ma Opening a Store” (Ma guafu faidian, a “dissolute” play in public opinion),
Yuehong stays aside, preoccupied with practicing her autograph. When Tang
says Chunhua is missing out on the current trend, Yuehong unthinkingly
agrees. Although this scene is brief, it effectively casts the first symptom
of Yuehong’s “degeneration” as her strong desire for fame, combined with
her lack of awareness of the bad influences surrounding her. In the same
sequence, Tang then prepares to pay the two sisters. We see that Tang
inserts an extra bill into Yuehong’s pay. After the two sisters return to the
dormitory, as Chunhua attempts to lend some of her pay to the needy (i.e.
Shang Shuihua), Yuehong simply puts hers away, along with the additional
bill. Yuehong is thus portrayed as both morally weak and vulnerable to
material temptation. This is underscored by her inclination to vanity, as also
seen in her pursuit of extravagance in her costumes and offstage garments
alike.51 Eventually, Yuehong marries Tang and gives up her career. Though
she still preserves some feelings for Chunhua, Yuehong becomes a member
of the anti-revolutionary camp.
By contrast, journalist Jiang Bo personifies the positive and righteous
forces around Chunhua. While Yuehong is lured by promises of luxury and
becomes a reactionary, Chunhua dedicates herself to the pursuit of social
justice, and is drawn to progressive politics under Jiang Bo’s guidance. Before
Chunhua meets Jiang in person, she reads one of her articles, headlined:
“Yueju is at a crossroads/Allow me to ask my stage sisters/Do you prefer that it
heads toward progression/Or degeneration?” This occurs halfway through the
film, as the two sisters begin to disagree over Yuehong’s deepening interest in
fame and vanity. Though the author’s name may not register with Chunhua
51 As Harriet Evans notes, “Texts of the 1950s and mid-1970s repeatedly suggested that women
were ‘by nature’ drawn more to matters of sartorial interest and physical appearance than men.
Stories about women who had strayed from the socialist straight and narrow often started with
references to their materialist interest in fine clothes.” Evans, “‘Comrade Sisters’,” p. 73.
Figure 2.1 Still from Two Stage Sisters
Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio
at this point, the article clearly does. Jiang and Chunhua first meet during the
actresses’ confrontation with Tang over Shang’s death. Along with Xiaoxiang
(Chunhua’s longstanding actress friend), they form a special bond, vowing
“to redeem the suffering lives and avenge the unjustly dead” (in Chunhua’s
words) and swearing “to teach their living sisters right from wrong, black
from white” (as Jiang asserts). Jiang recommends that Chunhua see various
movies and dramas that supposedly represent a more “progressive” political
stance than that of traditional Chinese theater. Chunhua and Jiang also visit
the exhibition commemorating Lu Xun (1881-1936), signifying the influence
of left-wing politics on Chunhua’s performing art. When Chunhua performs
the lead in “The New Year’s Sacrifice,” Jiang is among the audience members
in the packed theater.
Interestingly, Jiang’s affiliation with the CCP is never made clear until
after the government-enforced cancellation of “The New Year’s Sacrifice.”
When Chunhua later brings her the written announcement of the “coalitional
performance,” Jiang is surely happy for Chunhua, but manages to look beyond
these feelings and warns Chunhua to be alert to her safety, because their
“enemies” must be desperate at a time when “we” – the CCP – are making
progress inland. With the actresses’ victory over theater ownership in sight,
Jiang further warns that behind Tang there exists a “big boss” (namely, the
KMT Nationalist Party), and “that big boss is backed up by the USA.” This
is the only moment that the US is clearly pointed out,52 even though its
existence in the diegesis, like its Japanese counterpart, is never personified.
However, the US is depicted as antagonistic to China’s revolution. This
ideology is played out on two levels: the late-1940s setting in diegetic terms
and, in extra-diegetic terms, the Cold War ambient of the early 1960s when
the film was made.
Throughout the film, Chunhua’s past suffering is gradually transformed
into the imperative for her current dedication to socialist revolution. Chun-
hua’s identification with Xianglin’s Wife (the protagonist of “The New Year’s
Sacrifice”), for example, is established by connecting the images of Xianglin’s
Wife, Chunhua’s public humiliation early on, and Little Chunhua – another
child bride who shares her name and sympathizes with Chunhua during
that humiliation. While Chunhua tells Little Chunhua that she will never
return to the village where she has been unjustly punished, towards the
end of the film she nevertheless revisits that very location. Notably, her visit
is made possible by the communist revolution, in which she has engaged
through her art. If, as noted above, Chunhua’s earlier humiliation was public
and political, her ensuing transformation and ultimate devotion to the
“public” likewise attest to the tenets of the Chinese political melodrama,
namely that the state’s political discourse must be translated through the
personal, and vice versa.
Furthermore, Chunhua’s visit designates that these wrongs are now
rectified through the repudiation of the class enemies represented by Lord
Ni. If the interaction between Chunhua and Auntie Shen is informed by the
ideology that privileges class over gender in China’s proletarian revolution,
this finale seems to reiterate the same idea from another angle. That is,
despite the fact that the revolution does not concentrate on gender issues,
women’s emancipation is assumed to automatically follow the victory over
class-based oppression.
Revisiting the place of her persecution, Chunhua is depicted on tour
performing “The White-Haired Girl” (Bai mao nü), arguably the most famous
52 In the “literary screenplay,” Chunhua’s limestone attack includes details like the coat
Chunhua grabs being “American-styled,” though this is unclear, if not completely missing in
the film. Also missing is a policeman described as “excitedly witness[ing] the attack happening
without taking any action,” as if “appreciating a murder or robbery scene from some American
movies.” Lin, Xu, and Xie (eds.), Wutai jiemei, p. 133.
revolutionary drama in the People’s Republic.53 “The White-Haired Girl”

– like Two Stage Sisters – also narrates the fate of a peasant girl through
the sociopolitical vicissitudes of the Republican era and the Liberation. In
her study on the adaptations of this story, Meng Yue identifies two axes
along which the story has evolved. One is “a gradual strengthening of [the
protagonist’s] political instincts,” and the other is “a gradual erasure of [the
protagonist’s] body and her sexual situation.” With the female protagonist’s
body and sexuality fading from the story, the term “class,” as Meng observes,
gradually displaces “the sexual code” and becomes the most essential part
of the story.54
Writing about the representations of women in films from the PRC in
general, Dai Jinhua also comments on the images of women in the “classi-
cal revolutionary cinematic mode.” Given that classic Hollywood cinema
revolves around a male-centered mechanism (i.e. male audiences’ “active”
subjectivity is reinforced through their privileged positions onscreen,
emboldening them to look at women as passive objects for men’s desire, as
Laura Mulvey argues),55 Dai notes the decline of this desiring male “gaze” in
revolutionary narratives. Despite the absence of the objectifying male gaze,
however, women are still not represented as autonomous, for the gender
binary between the characters is simply “replaced by class antagonism and
political difference.”56 Within the proletariat, then, men and women alike
are the children of the same “spiritual father – the Communist Party, the
socialist system, and the project of communism.”57 In other words, women
are subjugated to a kind of gaze that is not strictly “male,” but which is
constituted by a rigid and confining political rhetoric.58 This look, in short,
is no less paternal and patriarchal.59
53 Pang, Fuzhi de yishu (The art of cloning), trans. by Li, pp. 166-167.
54 Meng, “Female Images and National Myth,” p. 121.
55 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”
56 Dai, “Kanbujian de nüxing,” p. 39.
57 Dai’s article “Kanbujian de nüxing” was translated by Mayfair Yang as “Invisible Women,”
although Yang notes this is a “slightly edited and condensed version” of the original. See Dai,
“Invisible Women,” pp. 262-263 (slightly modified from the original).
58 In “Sexual Difference and the Viewing Subject,” Chris Berry similarly analyzes the politics
of the gaze in Chinese cinema from the People’s Republic, identifying “an anti-individualistic
aesthetic” distinct from the Western paradigm of subject-object play mediated by a male-centered
gender politics.
59 Judith Stacey, in Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China, sees the Confucian tradition
and the socialist order as two mutually supportive patriarchal systems in the PRC. While the
former maintains the family as the basic socioeconomic unit of the society, the latter places
the family under the leadership of the CCP.
For Dai, images of the “New Women” are also significant in the classical
revolutionary canon. They represent either those who are saved and “turned
over” (fanshen) by the CCP, or those who mature into heroic women warriors.
Generally, women in revolutionary narratives are caught up in the political
struggle between the glorious Communist Party and the abysmal Nationalist
Party, fated to suffer until a male Communist saves them from Nationalist
domination. As Dai puts it:
Though determined to acquire their spiritual identity and enjoy the

freedom and rights of a liberated New Woman, the purpose of being
redeemed is to sacrifice themselves again to their savior. The liberated
new women will become sexless members of a large collective group
identity – women disguised as men, women who have to [put aside their
personal interests] and grow up in a large collectivity as “women heroes.”60
In many cases, the male Communist who saves the suffering woman is also
her spiritual mentor. In Two Stage Sisters, though, this Party authority figure
is embodied not by a man but by a woman: Jiang Bo. Aside from this variation
in gender dynamics,61 Two Stage Sisters generally fits within the larger
picture of Chinese revolutionary cinema that Dai addresses. Significantly,
those two kinds of “new women” that Dai highlights are vividly embodied by
Chunhua and Little Chunhua, respectively. With child marriage abolished
and the yoke of her enslavement shattered,62 Little Chunhua represents
60 Dai, “Kanbujian de nüxing,” pp. 39-40. Here I follow Yang’s translation (p. 263); however, I
have slightly modified “dissolve their female subjectivity” to “put aside their personal interests.”
I find Dai’s original sentence, incorporating the writer’s feminist stance, likewise presupposes an
essentialist notion (as if women were born into a specific kind of subjectivity, which is somehow
distorted by political power, and which could be restored and retrieved).
61 See Berry and Farquhar, China on Screen. p. 115.
62 This came with the introduction of the Marriage Law in 1950. As Leta Hong Fincher writes,
the Marriage Law “abolished exploitative practices such as arranged marriage, the purchase of
girl brides and the complicated rituals of betrothal gifts marking the transfer of the woman from
her father’s to her husband’s home. It set a minimum marriage age, allowed women to divorce,
gave the young generation the right to choose their own marriage partners without meddling
from their relatives, and gave women new rights to inherent family property.” This, according
to Rebecca Karl, fit in Maoist notion that saw women as imperative to a strong family: women
could be “happy and secure enough in their marriages to be productive members of society and
strong bulwarks for family unit.” However, several years after the law was introduced, party
officials, as Fincher notes, “backed away from efforts to enforce it after encountering resistance
from parents and parents-in-law.” See Fincher, Leftover Women, p. 125; Karl, Mao Zedong and
China in the Twentieth-Century World, p. 76. For further details about the Marriage Law and its
effects, see Hershatter, Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century, Chapter 1, esp. pp. 16-18.
the women redeemed by the CCP. Although Chunhua and Yuehong are
both caught up in the political struggle, and Yuehong joins the dark side,
Chunhua successfully transforms herself into a valiant heroine – a woman
warrior of the socialist state.
b) A Queer Feeling in Two Stage Sisters
Two Stage Sisters as “political melodrama” rests on a double operation.

On a narrative level, the film focuses on the gradually bifurcating fate of
two actresses, the imagery of female bonding perforated by a deepening
differentiation. Their differentiated femininities are then, on a political
level, recruited for a particular agenda. The polarized political and moral
valuations are in part shaped by the film’s melodramatic format, which
itself is informed by the rigid politics of Maoist socialism, culminating in
the Cultural Revolution.
Certainly, this combination animates the film’s dominant address to
its audiences. However, does this dominant address account for the whole
story of this work? To what extent does the film’s political message muffle
ideologically dissonant voices? Or, in line with Xiaomei Chen’s and Har-
riet Evans’s observations, can its “ambiguous space […] relating to gender
identity”63 and its “ambiguities of address”64 be amplified in its receptions
over time? I still remember my first viewing of Two Stage Sisters in the Taipei
Film Archive in 1996. I was rather surprised by the extent to which queer
undertones were, unconsciously or otherwise, allowed into this political
melodrama.65 In retrospect, my preliminary response was partly shaped by
my unfamiliarity with the political and historical circumstances of the PRC.
But that unfamiliarity allowed me to more easily sidestep the film’s political
message and concentrate on its queer traces. Looking beyond the intended
political ramifications, I paid special attention to the dynamic between the
two sisters, rendered through the visuals. I still find this strategy crucial to my
subsequent reading of Two Stage Sisters. However, instead of downplaying the
film’s overt political appeal as I used to, below I underline the tension between
this explicit appeal and the less explicit queer connotations in the same text.
This tension echoes Xie Jin’s own remarks on the f ilm while being
interviewed for Stanley Kwan’s noted documentary Yang ± Yin: Gender in
63 Chen Xiaomei, “Growing Up with Posters in the Maoist Era,” p. 110.

64 Evans, “Ambiguities of Address.”
65 Tze-lan Sang likewise notes that the intense bond between the two sisters “may have struck
some viewers as little different from love.” Sang, The Emerging Lesbian, p. 164.
Chinese Cinema (1998). As Xie, with hindsight,66 commented on the nature

of the two actresses’ relationship:
I wrote [the script] in 1961. At that time in China, we had to deal with
“issues” (state politics) all the time. There should have been sexual ele-
ments [between the main characters]. But we couldn’t bring them out.
The “issues” had to come first.
For Xie, the undercurrent of female homoeroticism in his film was plausible.
Several points inform my interpretation of Two Stage Sisters as a queer text,
for they appear to indicate that the relationship between Chunhua and
Yuehong is something beyond simply straight. At the beginning of the film,
for example, Chunhua’s escape from her parents-in-law is portrayed foremost
as the character’s resistance to the plight of the child-bride custom in old
China. Ingrained in the feudal system, the child-bride practice was certainly
about social inequality of both class and gender. However, I suggest it is no
less about a functioning marriage institution predicated on the interests
of heterosexuality, which oppresses any voluntaristic expressions of non-
normative desires. That is, the rejection of the unjust child-bride practices
should not be conflated with repudiation of a marriage system implicated
in class and gender inequalities. In fact, such a rejection would foreclose the
possible objection to marriage per se as being a heteronormative practice in
the first place. Chunhua’s escape thus does not detract from the possibility of
Chunhua being a woman who, with her awakening nonnormative sexuality,
rejects a compulsory heterosexual relationship.
Second, Chunhua ends up seeking refuge in the opera troupe, and hiding
in Yuehong’s costume case in particular. In terms of iconography, the image
of a costume case is – in the eyes of contemporary queer beholders – easily
enough associated with that of the “closet,” a widely used trope for gay
people concealing their sexual orientation from others. Like Chunhua’s
refusal to become a child bride, or even a bride, this “closet” iconography is
66 Xie Jin’s interview was given in the mid-1990s, in the context of the recent international
acclaim for Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, 1993), which Xie praised for its “delicate and
detailed treatment” of homosexuality. Xie’s interview also implied his knowledge of his own
son’s gay identity. Xie Yan (1949-2008), a NYU-trained filmmaker, was known for Maiden Rose
(1995) and My Rice Noodle Shop (1998), both of which feature women’s stories, as Xie Jin had
been famous for. (This somehow reveals the gay son’s inner pursuit of filiality/xiao by way of
its meaning of resemblance: ‘like father like son’; see Chapter 1.) Xie Jin was known to be very
proud of his eldest son Xie Yan, despite the son’s gay identity. Xie Yan’s death came as such a
blow that Xie Jin himself passed away barely two months later.
Figures 2.2.1-2.2.2 Stills from Two Stage Sisters
also doubly encoded. When Chunhua is found hiding in Yuehong’s costume

case, she is actually uncovered twice. She is first uncovered by Yuehong,
who immediately closes the case to keep Chunhua hidden. Chunhua is then
again uncovered by Monk Ah-xing, who has perceived Yuehong’s dismayed
countenance and pushed his way to the case. Ah-xing at first does not want
to be involved in Chunhua’s escape and refuses to take her in with the
company. Ah-xing’s “outing” of Chunhua in a sense represents the complicity
with the (straight) interests of society at large. Yuehong uncovering and
“closeting” Chunhua, by contrast, represents her involvement with Chunhua
on a personal level, which may go beyond the dictates of heteronormativity.
Yuehong then engages her father, Master Xing, to talk Ah-xing into keeping
Chunhua. Upon Chunhua being signed up by the company, Yuehong and
Chunhua hold each other’s hands tightly, rejoicing over this good news and
their potential relationship (Figures 2.2.1 and 2.2.2). Indeed, Chunhua’s
and Yuehong’s same-sex intimacy, if not lesbianism, quickly develops and
remains strong in the years to come.
Although onstage Yuehong generally plays the male role and Chunhua the
female, their offstage personae are reversed. Though appearing girlish with
her long hair, Chunhua has a stronger personality than Yuehong. Chunhua’s
willfulness first appears in her rejection of an arranged marriage, and
subsequently in her devotion to Yueju and socialist politics. Her resoluteness
is also shown in the early episode when the policemen interrupt the troupe’s
performance and attempt to abduct Yuehong for Lord Ni. Without hesitation,
Chunhua dashes out from backstage to protect Yuehong. Significantly,
Chunhua seems to be playing a martial female character. With her long
hair bound up, she is dressed to somewhat downplay her expressive features
(Figure 2.3.1). With the onstage/offstage boundary breached, Chunhua’s
gender-bending appearance unites her strong personality and valiant

physical defiance toward the policemen. The resulting image, I would posit,
echoes the kind of masculinity that pertains to a butch woman or tomboy
(known as “T” in contemporary Chinese lesbian culture: see Chapter 5). To a
certain degree, Chunhua’s tomboyish image supports my argument that she
defends her partner – a femme (known as “P,” the feminine partner of “T,” in
contemporary China) – against sexual assault by a man, as well as against
heterosexual domination. Through the lens of the butch-femme interplay
of the lesbian cultural imaginary,67 Chunhua’s unjust punishment in the
following sequence can also be understood as a butch lesbian’s suffering
for her girlfriend.
However, this queer interpretation encounters an off-screen twist. During
her punishment, Chunhua, with her long hair down and her androgynous
accoutrement stripped off, is portrayed as less butch than in her previous
image, and the queer overtones are simultaneously less visible (Figure 2.3.2).
What are the implications of this change in Chunhua’s image? I read the lack
67 The sociologist Li Yinhe records an interviewee who recounts her time on a state farm during
the Cultural Revolution, where two female sent-down youth (zhiqing) were in love. “One was
very delicate, like a girl,” while “the other very coarse, like a boy.” Other girls gossiped about
how “those two have mated,” how they insisted on sleeping under a single mosquito net and
blanket, and how they would watch each other bathe. See Li Yinhe, Nüxing de ganqing yu xing
(Love and sexuality of women), pp. 246-247. For an anthropological account of the butch-femme
(or T-P) role model in contemporary China (by way of Taiwan), see Engebretsen, Queer Women
in Urban China, pp. 43-55. For a historical account of the T identity in Taiwan’s context, see
Antonia Y. Chao, “Drink, Stories, Penis, and Breasts: Lesbian Tomboys in Taiwan from the 1960s
to the 1990s.” See also Chao’s “Lao T banjia” (Moving house). On the butch-femme imagery in
film and theater, see especially Straayer, “Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme”; Case, “Towards a
Butch-Femme Aesthetic.”
of visual continuity in Chunhua’s masculinity from the previous scene as

an effort to amend or “straighten up” the film’s bifurcated themes, lest the
continuity of Chunhua’s androgyny diffuse the film’s political message. As
political melodrama, the film ostensibly utilizes the suffering of the innocent
female protagonist as a rallying call for political action from the audience:
Chunhua is first and foremost a disenfranchised woman. Implicitly, such
a disenfranchised woman must also be straight; an androgynous-looking
woman may suggest something otherwise. The change in Chunhua’s image,
in other words, enables the film to streamline its address to the general
public, even though such a change unwittingly recognizes the very coexist-
ence of queerness and the film’s dominant address at the same time.
Moreover, the “intimate” relationship between Chunhua and Yuehong
seems to be acknowledged, not challenged, by some of those close to them.
Two sequences merit special attention. The first takes place in rural Zhe-
jiang in late 1940, when Yuehong’s father is on his deathbed, and Yuehong
and Chunhua are alone at his bedside. The master gives Chunhua some
textiles before turning to Yuehong and placing a book (supposedly on Yueju
pedagogy) in her hands. In a medium shot with the master at the center, he
tearfully bids the two girls farewell, saying, “Show integrity in life; be serious
on stage.” He then begins, “Never –” and pauses to hold Chunhua’s left hand
and Yuehong’s right, putting the former on top of the latter. The moment is
emphasized as the camera pulls back from a medium close-up, accompanied
by dramatic non-diegetic music. On the surface, this highlighted moment
simply indicates the last wish of the master, that the two in front of him will
take care of each other and never part. From a queer perspective, however,
this dramatic moment is not only sad, but also moving. There is something
that is beyond verbal expression – if not “unspeakable.” To some degree, the
father’s loving final gesture signifies his acknowledgment of his daughter’s
relationship with another girl (Figure 4.6). By placing his daughter’s hand
under Chunhua’s, Mr. Xing expresses his wish that Chunhua take care of
Yuehong, while his gift to Chunhua conveys his heartfelt gratitude.68
68 The dynamic at play here echoes that in a sequence featuring the father f igure in The
Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993). Toward the end of the film, the father has come to realize
that his son, Wei-tung, living in NYC, is gay. On the eve of his return to Taipei, the father in
private gives his son’s partner, Simon, a red envelope with money. This private, loving gesture
in effect indicates the father’s ultimate recognition of the son’s relationship with Simon, and
his gratitude to Simon for taking care of his son. Similarly, we find in Two Stage Sisters that the
father, in his final moment, gives Chunhua a meaningful present. Not unlike the father in The
Wedding Banquet, who thanks Simon for looking after his son, Master Xing here literally puts
his daughter’s hand under Chunhua’s, letting Chunhua take care of his daughter.
The second sequence takes place after the death of Master Xing and before
Monk Ah-xing takes Chunhua and Yuehong to Shanghai. In preparation for
the master’s burial, Ah-xing informs the troupe that theater managers in
Shanghai are only interested in the two actresses who play the romantic
couple onstage. That is, the whole troupe, bar Chunhua and Yuehong, will
be dismissed. On the eve of Chunhua’s and Yuehong’s departure, actress
Xiaoxiang and her musician husband come to bid them farewell in a desolate
small temple. “Have this bowl of sweet dumplings. We wish you two a smooth
journey,” says Xiaoxiang, who then backs away with her spouse. The straight
couple appears in a long shot, standing either side of the door, followed by a
medium shot of Yuehong and Chunhua standing shoulder-to-shoulder. The
cinematography captures the impending separation, while a non-diegetic
soundtrack incorporates lyrics of farewell. The next shot once more captures
all four characters in the same frame. In the center, Chunhua and Yuehong
– before a holy shrine – bow their heads in prayer, witnessed by Xiaoxiang
and her husband in the background. Ostensibly, Chunhua and Yuehong are
formalizing their sisterhood through this semi-religious ritual ( jiebai, a ritual
to strengthen the bonds between people of the same sex, more commonly
practiced in old China). From a queer perspective, however, the scene also
evokes a same-sex wedding. The two lit red candles in the front resembles
those of a wedding ceremony (baitang), which like any for an unapproved
couple would be privately held, with few attendees. Whereas the ritual
of jiebai requires only spiritual witnesses, the two attendees here seem
almost to be witnessing a baitang, which usually involves a third, secular
party. In many cases, the parents of same-sex couples do not approve and
remain absent from their children’s weddings. Given that Yuehong’s father
has “recognized” the couple’s relationship before his death, however, this
small-scale secluded wedding is not completely unblessed by their blood
families (Figure 2.5).
Furthermore, it would be almost impossible for viewers familiar with
contemporary Chinese queer culture to miss the significance of “Liang
Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai” (or “Liang Zhu”) in Two Stage Sisters. This well-
known folktale is important in various kinds of Chinese theater, and
numerous film and television adaptations have been broadcast throughout
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic. It has also been hailed as
one of the outstanding works in the Yueju repertoire: the 1954 film version,
starring the aforementioned Yuan Xuefen (as Zhu) and Fan Ruijuan (as
Liang), became a box office sensation in the PRC. Set in old China, “Liang
Zhu” tells the story of Zhu, who impersonates a man in order to attend
school and befriends her classmate, Liang, via jiebai. Upon completing her
schooling, Zhu reveals her gender identity to Liang, in hopes he will propose.
However, Zhu’s parents decline Liang’s proposal due to his inferior social
status. The story turns tragic, with a magical, somewhat consolatory twist. In
contemporary Chinese queer culture in particular, the story of “Liang Zhu”
has been widely interpreted as a queer fable owing to the ambivalent desires
at once triggered and disguised by Zhu’s cross-dressing. Such ambiguity in
diegesis is even amplified on a non-diegetic level by cross-gender casting,
as seen in several famous f ilm renditions. While the intricate cultural
phenomenon of “Liang Zhu” deserves attention far beyond this chapter’s
scope,69 here I stress that, for contemporary Chinese queer audiences, “Liang
Zhu” has become a text very much invested with queer connotations. In
Two Stage Sisters, it represents a trope of love (qing) that transcends not
only class but also gender.
In Two Stage Sisters, “Liang Zhu” is the play that Yuehong and Chunhua
perform together for the f irst time in rural Zhejian, and it remain an
important piece within the sisters’ repertoire even after they have moved
to Shanghai. In a montage sequence showing their f irst three years in
Shanghai, the title “The Tragic Romance of Liang Zhu” (Liang Zhu hen shi)
briefly emerges and dissolves, indicating that over the years the work has
continued to play a significant part in their careers. Offstage, “Liang Zhu”
may also have a broader influence on the sisters’ lives. Such an influence is
made clear during a backstage sequence where Yuehong, already running
late for the stage call, reveals to Chunhua that she has decided to marry
Manager Tang and forsake her career. Yuehong’s decision is strongly chal-
lenged by Chunhua, who begs, “Are you really drunk? […] Do you know
the real background of Tang?” Finally, she cries, “You can’t do that! Have
you forgotten the last words of the master?” What Yuehong sees in Tang’s
proposal, however, are the promises of “a formal and public marriage”
69 For an overview of the “Liang Zhu” phenomenon in theater and film, see Siu Leung Li’s article,
“Un/queering the Latently Queer and Transgender Performance,” in Cross-Dressing in Chinese
Opera, pp. 109-134. For a study of Li Han-Hsiang’s phenomenal huangmei-opera film Love Eterne
(1963), see Tan See-kam and Annette Aw, “The Love Eterne: Almost a (Heterosexual) Love Story”;
Peggy Chiao, “The Female Consciousness, the World of Signif ication and Safe Extramarital
Affairs”; Chun-chi Wang, “Xunzhao Taiwan dandai ku’er dianying zhong Liangshanbo yu
Zhuingtai ji ‘Ling Bo re’ lunshu zhi yixu.” On the two Cantonese-opera f ilms starring iconic
performer Ren Jianhui, see Michael Lam, “Cong Zhu Yingtai dao Liang Shanbo.”
(mingmei zhengqu) and “a normal family” (zhengdang de guisu); she disdains

her vocation as merely “xizi” (a dated term that labels stage performers in
a derogatory manner). This conversation is abruptly frozen as Chunhua
slaps Yuehong’s face. The state of shock that ensues is soon broken by a
message that Xiaoxiang and her husband have come to visit. Notably, all
of Chunhua’s challenges to Yuehong dodge the issue of how Chunhua feels.
Yet when Chunhua tries to tell Xiaoxiang what is going on, she likens the
scenario to “Liang Zhu”: “On stage, Liang Shangbo and Zhu Yingtai are not
separated by fate; off stage we are about to break up.” She adds, “We have
been sisters all these years. How can I just let go of her like this?” It seems
that Chunhua’s feelings for Yuehong and the nature of their relationship
are both filtered by something not easily put into words. Even so, they
find their expression through the story of “Liang Zhu.” While Chunhua
compares her own steadfastness to “Liang Zhu,” her love, after all, also
converges with “Liang Zhu” in homoeroticism in disguise. From a queer
perspective, Yuehong is now betraying Chunhua for a man, as well as for
what Chunhua – as a woman – cannot provide her: namely “a formal and
public marriage” and “a normal family.”
In another scene, Chunhua tells Xiaoxiang and her husband, “You are
a couple who, despite of all the difficulties, remain committed to each
other.” This is difficult to translate into English word for word; the exact
phrase Chunhua uses to describe the straight couple’s lasting commitment
translates literally as “authentic love and earnest feelings” (zhen qing shi
yi); the two key words here are “authentic” (zhen) and “earnest” (shi). In the
context of their usage, Chunhua is talking to the straight couple and has
her back to Yuehong; however, Chunhua’s remarks are actually directed
to Yuehong, who is only steps away. Chunhua’s line includes an irony that
virtually signifies the opposites of “authentic” and “earnest”: namely “fake”
( jia) and “pretentious” (xu). On the one hand, the relationship between the
two sisters seems to be contaminated by some “pretentious love and fake
feeling” (xu qing jia yi). On the other, “fake” and “pretentious” also impose
a heteronormative judgment on non-straight love affairs. An idiom like
“jia feng xu huang” (literally “fake female phoenix and pretentious male
phoenix”) can allude to queer couples and relationships, though it has also
been appropriated by local queer-informed writers to comment, with a sense
of self-parody, on queer representations in popular culture, including texts
such as “Liang Zhu.” In Two Stage Sisters, the expression “authentic love
and earnest feelings,” and the manner in which it is used (i.e. ironically)
thus open up a space for queer interpretation, where Chunhua’s comment,
I suggest, points to her own sense of disillusionment about her same-sex
love (as if, in Chunhua’s mind, “Our relationship turns out to be a play of
‘jia feng xu huang’ after all”).
Interestingly, Xiaoxiang and her consort had witnessed Chunhua and
Yuehong formalizing their sisterhood and, implicitly, “marrying” each other
right before the two sisters left for Shanghai. Now they witness Chunhua
and Yuehong break up. When drawing a parallel between those two couples,
the difference in their sexual orientations should not be neglected. The
failed same-sex relationship as a form of “jia feng xu huang” does not, after
all, endure without the “zhen qing shi yi” embodied by the heterosexual
couple. In further contrast with the earlier image, the straight couple returns,
significantly, accompanied by their newborn child. They have, in short,
become an archetypal heterosexual family (Figure 2.6).
The procreative function integral to this straight union, now made visible
in the film, lends the chord “zhen qing shi yi” yet another tone, where shi is
redefined as outcome or fruitfulness. From the standpoint of heterosexual
patriarchy, the continuity of family lines cannot be overemphasized: ho-
mosexuals have been ostracized in Chinese societies not least because of
their assumed sterility and unfruitfulness. What Chunhua says to Xiaoxiang
and her husband, therefore, implicitly yet inexorably hints at the “lack” of
procreativity in Chunhua’s and Yuehong’s same-sex relationship,70 along with
Chunhua’s inability to offer her partner a heterosexually-styled “normal”
family, something her partner strongly desires. Although Chunhua asks
Yuehong once again if she really loves Tang, when Yuehong divulges her
uncertainty about this, she nonetheless adds, “No need to discuss this
anymore. I already belong to him.” That is, Yuehong has already had sex with
Tang. To Chunhua, Yuehong’s revelation is “like a bolt out of the blue sky”
(qingtian pili), to quote Hong Kong gay critic Michael Lam (a.k.a. Mai Ke).71
In Lam’s words, Yuehong’s remarks are “perhaps the ultimate nightmare
for [Chunhua]. Not only has her lover fallen out of love with her. But her
lover has joined the heterosexual bloc. It is virtually a double betrayal.”72
With this, Chunhua and Yuehong formally break up, and the divergence
in their destinies widens.
Without Yuehong by her side, Chunhua then forges a special bond with
Jiang Bo and, to a degree, with Xiaoxiang. That is, without Yuehong as the ob-
ject of her affection, Chunhua channels all her energy into stage performance
and the greater cause of socialist revolution. A vitally important sequence
here sees Chunhua and Xiaoxiang, after Shang Shuihua’s funeral, meeting
up with Jiang at her rooftop abode. Thematically, this sequence indicates
the growing bond among the three. The mise-en-scène and the composition
of the imagery, however, also delicately define the particular nature of their
relationship. Take, for example, the second half of this sequence, in which
Jiang and Chunhua discuss what kind of attitude they should assume in
this bleak sociopolitical environment. As the primary speaker here, Jiang
constitutes the main focus of the scene. With all three characters in the same
frame, a long shot conspicuously portrays Jiang sitting by a desk and facing
front, while Xiaoxiang, also facing front, stands next to Jiang. Chunhua,
facing Jiang, is seated across the room in the foreground (Figure 2.7).
Although she is virtually silent, Xiaoxiang is crucial to the scene for
two reasons. First, she is the third member of Chunhua’s and Jiang’s
meeting. In Chinese, “three” is the magic number that, though relatively
small, potentially stands for a public. They say three is company: “three”
straddles the fine line between a group of individuals and the masses, and
Xiaoxiang animates this metaphor. Second, just as Jiang begins her speech,
70 Lee Edelman sees “reproductive futurism” as characterizing heteronormative societies. See

No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive.
71 Michael Lam/Mai Ke. “Wutai jiemei,” p. 157.
72 Ibid.
Xiaoxiang – as Figure 2.7 shows – stands between Chunhua and Jiang. During
her speech, Jiang moves closer to Chunhua, her main addressee, while
Xiaoxiang is left in the background. Following a slight camera movement,
however, Xiaoxiang also shifts a little so that, once again, Xiaoxiang stands
between Chunhua and Jiang in the composition (Figure 2.8).
What does this visual device reflect in relation to the configuration
of (homo)eroticism? To answer this, I compare these two images with
Figures 2.2.1 and 2.2.2, which represent a bonding between two women
that, from a heteronormative standpoint, is far too “close.” Such closeness is
symptomatically visualized through the tight framing of the shot, combined
with the couple’s intimate physical contact (with Yuehong lovingly touch-
ing Chunhua’s face). Eying each other at very close range, Yuehong and
Chunhua seem in a trance-like state, forgetting those around them. From
a heteronormative vantage point, they fail to maintain an “appropriate”
distance from each other, and have an overly emotional relationship (with
potentially homoerotic overtones). By contrast, Figures 2.7 and 2.8 show
scenes composed to repeatedly locate Xiaoxiang between Chunhua and
Jiang. Xiaoxiang’s “intervention” here, I contend, guarantees that Chunhua
and Jiang do not get too close to each other, as Chunhua and Yuehong had
done. Given this distance, Chunhua’s and Jiang’s relationship is largely
free from “unhealthy” erotic overtones, essentially unsullied and straight.
After all, this new sisterhood is forged for the cause of socialist revolution.
Further, if the triangular composition in Figure 2.1 is dominated by a dividing
force – money and Manager Tang – the triangular structure here (in Figures
2.7 and 2.8) is shaped by a rallying call for social justice.
Here Chunhua, Jiang and Xiaoxiang finally reach an agreement that they
will not only “redeem the suffering lives and the unjust dead,” but they will
also “teach their living sisters right from wrong, black from white.” With this
affirmation, the rain symbolically ceases, while the dark night begins to give
way to the dawn. This sequence ends with a stationary long shot, which faces
the doorway to the rooftop balcony. We see Chunhua alone in the doorway,
looking out meditatively. Then Jiang Bo walks up to Chunhua. Facing her,
she holds up Chunhua’s hands (Figure 2.9.1). Crucially, while Chunhua
and Jiang continue to hold hands, they soon divert their gazes from one
another. Shoulder to shoulder, they both look ruminatively into the distance
(Figure 2.9.2). Like a still photo, this last image freezes for a short moment
before it fades out. Notably, Xiaoxiang is absent from this last shot. The
emotional distance between Chunhua and Jiang seems thereby shortened.
Nevertheless, the alteration of their gazes bears witness to the mechanism
in play: the reorientation of women’s energy. If Figure 2.9.1 represents an
emotional condition underlining the libidinal interplay between the two
women, and that is for the most part “trapped” in a personal venue, then
Figure 2.9.2 highlights the “release” of that energy, which must at the same
time be channeled into a “higher” cause.
Richard Dyer’s insight into visual composition in relation to gender
politics is relevant here. In his study of the (male) pin-up, Dyer emphasizes
that the visual meaning of the pin-up depends not on “whether or not the
model looks at [the] spectator(s), but how [the model] does or does not.”73
The female model typically averts her eyes to express “modesty, patience
and a lack of interest in anything else.” When the male model averts his
eyes, however, he looks “either off or up.” In the case of the former, his look
suggests “an interest in something else that the viewer cannot see,” whereas
the latter “always suggests a spirituality.”74 If the pin-up returns the viewer’s
gaze, the female usually does so with “some kind of smile, inviting.” By
contrast, the gaze of the male, who “more often than not [does] not look at
the viewer,” seems to reach beyond the marked boundary, “as if he wants
to reach beyond and through and establish himself.” In other words, if the
female model’s gaze usually “stops at the boundary, the male’s looks right
through it.”75 Returning to Figure 2.9.2, we find that both Chunhua’s and
73 Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment, p. 104.

74 Ibid.
75 Ibid., p. 109.
Jiang’s shared gaze does not stop with the viewer. Instead, it reaches beyond
that boundary, and is not meant to engage the audience in an intimate or
erotic manner. Importantly, both characters look up, evoking that sense
of “spirituality.” Presupposing the sacrifice of any personal interests, this
spirituality is associated with a “higher” political ideal.76 From the narrative’s
privileged agenda, the characters must not “waste” their energy on personal
concerns (including latent lesbianism); rather, they should sublimate that
energy, reinvesting it in socialist revolution. From Figure 2.9.1 to Figure 2.9.2,
if the unchanged gesture of Chunhua and Jiang holding each other’s hands
signifies their sisterhood, then the alteration of their gaze bespeaks the
transformation of that sisterly energy: from one with homoerotic overtones
into another for the good of the public.
Transformation of Qing through Two Stage Sisters and Yueju
To a large degree, the libido and transformative energy in Two Stage Sisters
can also be understood as what Audre Lorde terms “the erotic.” Lorde con-
nects “the erotic” to a multitude of senses and experience associated with
women, “whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem,” or
“moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.”77 In Lorde’s view,
the erotic is a “creative energy” in women, which – when released from “its
intense and constrained pellet” – lends a woman’s life “a kind of energy that
heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all [a woman’s] experience.”78 The
erotic is, in short, “an assertion of the life force of women.”79
Judith Zeitlin, meanwhile, writing on Chinese classical literature, makes
similar comments on the notion of “qing.” Abstract and polymorphous as it
is, qing is foremost a sentiment that finds expression in an array of emotional
or psychic processes, such as love, passion and obsession, sometimes through
the operation of dreams.80 Manifesting on the borders of life and death,
76 Here we may supplement Dai Jinhua’s and Chris Berry’s analysis of the (Western) “male”
gaze in a socialist Chinese context with Stephanie Donald’s remarks on the “socialist-realist”
gaze: “The gaze off screen is a f ixed stare out to a horizon, beyond the diegetic worlds, and
apparently also beyond the world of the audience. This gaze is quintessentially anti-individual.
It belongs to great leaders, and to representatives of collective action.” Donald, Public Secrets,
Public Spaces, p. 62.
77 Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” pp. 56-57, 58.
78 Ibid., pp. 55, 57.
79 Ibid., p. 55.
80 Zeitlin, Historian of the Strange.
qing, according to Zeitlin, also represents “an invisible force,” sometimes

“synonymous with life-force.”81 I refer to qing in a particular way that is
largely interchangeable with what Lorde names the erotic. Even though the
concept of qing does not presuppose a (lesbian) feminist stance or agency
(as “the erotic” does), my take on qing highlights the potential nexus of qing
and lesbianism. Though lesbian identity was mostly unavailable and lesbian
behavior was barely documented in socialist China,82 the absence of formal
documentation on lesbian subjects in a thoroughly nationalized public
culture should not, as Tze-lan Sang cautions, “lead one naively to presume
the absence of either homosexual desire or same-sex sexual behavior in
Maoist China.”83 To counter the straight and narrow socialist rationale, I
foreground this repressive sociopolitical practice in its historical context
(detailed below), so as to rewrite lesbian subjects (as instantiated by qing,
life-force and the erotic) back into history. In her groundbreaking study
on women in the seventeenth-century Jiangnan region (including today’s
Zhejiang province, home of Yueju), Dorothy Ko points out a “friendship-love
continuum” among women connected to each other through literature and
the cult of qing.84 Although Ko has reservations about the applicability of
“lesbianism” in imperial China,85 what I mean by the continuum of qing
between women is informed by Ko’s idea of the friendship-love continuum.
I take this a step further to emphasize (potential) lesbianism at one end of
this spectrum, and homosociality at the other.
Put another way, while Lorde opposes the usurpation of the erotic in the
“racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society” of 1970s America,86 what is at
stake here is rather the appropriation of qing in women for the proletarian
81 Zeitlin, The Phantom Heroine, pp. 13, 37.

82 A few notable exceptions exist in personal memoirs and individual testimonies: see Min,
Red Azalea; Nanchu, Red Sorrow; Fang, Tongxinglian zai Zhongguo (Homosexuality in China),
p. 276; Li Yinhe, Nüxing de ganqing yu xing (Love and sexuality of women), pp. 246-247.
83 Sang, The Emerging Lesbian, p. 164. Sang points out the term same-sex love (tongxingai) was
outlawed shortly after the founding of the PRC. Even in post-Mao China, the relative sparsity
of journalistic and sociological literature on lesbian subjects in comparison to gay men, Sang
speculates, may result from the fact that “close relationships are so common among Chinese
women that intimate behavior is simply taken for granted – by women themselves and by society.
No one knows whether it counts a homosexuality; hence, there is no special need to talk about
it” (p. 170).
84 Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, esp. pp. 81-88, 266-274.
85 Ibid., p. 266. In Ko’s own words, “In an age when the boundaries between various forms
of affection, or between ‘emotional’ and ‘physical’ love, were blurred, whether some of these
liaisons can be called ‘lesbianism’ is not an appropriate question.”
86 Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” p. 59.
revolution and socialist nation-building.87 I maintain that this exploitation

of qing in Chinese women – along with their ideological “interpellation”
as socialist subjects – suppresses those embodiments that are tinged with
homoeroticism, and which I map onto the continuum of qing (as above).
In Maoist socialism, while “any individual desire is taken as shameful,
dirty, and harmful to [the] absolute loyalty” to the Party-state,88 the qing
between women without kinship is primarily converted to comradeship:
homoeroticism supposedly plays no part in such “asexual comradely
associations.”89 Where the qing between women is indeed invested with
homoeroticism, lesbianism must then be either suppressed or transformed
into comradeship, a form of homosociality. The crux of Two Stage Sisters
is precisely this transfiguration of qing from lesbianism into comradeship,
from homosexuality into a form of homosociality.90
In fact, that transformation also corresponds to a particular historical
dimension of both the film’s production and Yueju’s development. Two Stage
Sisters, as noted, is a work conceived and produced in the early 1960s, while
its story spans the years 1935 to 1950 (one year after the founding of the
People’s Republic). The visualization of the story somehow “skips” the 1950s.
Yet Two Stage Sisters is a work that makes a strong appeal to the history of
Yueju’s development. What, then, may the absence of the 1950s conceal or
reveal in this respect? Coincidentally or not, a significant event in 1950s
Yueju is actually the state-sponsored effort to mix male and female players
onstage (nannü heyan). That is, even though Yueju actors had completely
lost their stage to actresses by the mid-1930s, and female cross-dressing had
become not only a norm in Yueju but a major attraction to the audience,
87 As exemplified by the heavily propagated slogans aimed at women in the Maoist China:
“Women can uphold half of the sky,” “The times have changed; men and women are the same.
Anything male comrades can do, female comrades can do too,” and “Women can outdo the
men.” For an analysis of the circulation and impact of these slogans during the 1960s and 1970s,
see Honig, “The Life of a Slogan.”
88 Dai, “Invisible Women,” trans. Yang, p. 263.
89 Honig, “Socialist Sex,” p. 146.
90 In his brilliant articulation of a Confucian film theory, Victor Fan perceives qing as a term
that designates a range of ideas, “including affection, emotion, desire, love, amorous feelings,
the sensible, human nature, or understanding.” Given that qing “informs all sensations – or in
fact, the relationships among all sensible things,” Fan proposes that “the scene as a world that
the spectators inhabit is made sensible by qing,” wherein “qing engenders all the actions […] and
all the relationships that the film image invites the spectators to negotiate. However, such qing
is always checked by li [rites or social behaviors] from being excessively expressed.” With some
stretch of Fan’s formulation, li, in respect to Two Stage Sisters, may be understood as the social
behaviors sanctioned by the dominant Chinese Communist Party, which effectively check and
regulate the configuration of qing. Victor Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, pp. 142-143.
the 1950s saw an endeavor to change or “rectify” this phenomenon. Gener-

ally, the founding of the PRC had subjugated all forms of theater to state
policies. With its predecessor established by the state in 1950, Shanghai
Yueju Theater has been the center of Yueju activities in China, from the
training of talent to stage performances. While its predecessor began to
openly recruit male performers in 1954, the Shanghai Yueju Theater further
institutionalized this policy when it was founded in 1955. Although actresses
continued to comprise the main force of Yueju performances, a separate
department – “The First Regiment” (Di yi tuan) – was launched to promote
mixed-gender performances. Around 1959 a “Mixed-Gender Experimental
Company” (nannü heyan shiyan jutuan) was established under the auspices
of the Theater.91 Interestingly enough, as the name indicates, the mixing
of male and female players on the Yueju stage was never easy, but rather
“experimental” for performers and audiences alike. Because the general
public had become so used to Yueju vocally and stylistically developed for
female performers, the process was subject to trial and error: according
to the famous Yueju actors Shi Jihua and Liu Jue, the audiences barely ac-
cepted mixed-gender performances before the 1960s. Some of their early
performances in the 1950s were even greeted by derisive laughter.92
But how did this policy arise? What was the rationale behind it? Although
I could not locate the official documents that directly addressed this issue,
I did find in the course of my research a discourse that advanced such a
policy. An article published in 1959, for instance, reads, “In my opinion,
the principle set up during the early years after the Liberation – namely,
men playing male characters while women play female characters – still
shows us the right direction. It is compatible with both science and human
nature. Males should act like men, while females like women. Isn’t it the
most basic requirement of realistic acting?”93 Despite this writer did not
specify how or by whom this “principle” was initiated, it was certainly
officially endorsed by Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), China’s former prime minister,
who was also deeply involved in the nation’s cultural activities and policies
(but in private, possibly a closeted gay man).94 Shi Jihua and Liu Jue both
credited their careers to Premier Zhou. As part of the first generation of
Yueju actors in the People’s Republic, they were, in Shi’s words, “cultivated
91 See the official website of Shanghai Yueju Theater: www.yueju.net.

92 Shi Jihua, “Yige Yueju nan xiaoshen de zuji”; Xue Yunhuang, “Jianku molian, buduan qianjing,”
p. 38.
93 Jiang Shuiping. “Tichang peiyang nan xiaosheng,” p. 5.
94 Tsoi, Zhou Enlai de mimi qinggan shijie.
under Premier Zhou’s instruction,”95 and the school they attended was,
in Liu’s account, “established due to Premier Zhou’s profuse concern for
training young Yueju performers for mixed-gender performances.”96 In
a 1963 article entitled “Striving to be a Revolutionary Worker in the Arts,”
Zhou himself remarked, “Ten years ago [around 1954] I already said that
Yueju had to first solve the problem of men and women performing together
onstage.”97 Notably, Zhou’s reiterating what he had “already said” implied
that the issue was not yet settled, but nonetheless worthwhile. Supporting
mixed-gender performances on the Yueju stage was meant to better reflect
the era (shidai xing) of the New China. As Zhou pointed out in the same
article, establishing representative arts and literature was as important as
issues regarding class ( jieji xing), combat (zhandou xing), and nationality
and popularization (minzu xing and dazhong hua).98 Arts and literature,
too, should be “revolutionary.”
What cannot be overstated here is the importance of Mao Zedong’s “Talks
at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art” (1942),99 which (as Rebecca
Karl notes) set out to redefine what constituted “culture.”100 Mao’s talks
in effect formed the fundamental guidelines for artistic creations and
performances in socialist China. Such guidelines underlined the significance
of workers, peasants, and soldiers. Not only should they and revolutionary
cadres comprise the audiences for works of literature and art, but “the
thoughts and feelings of [socialist] writers and artists should be fused
with those of the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers.”101 To a large
extent, Maoist socialists believed in a “realism” that was distinct from
mimetic reflections of quotidian reality, instead mediated by a “politics
of the masses.”102 Arts and literature with “realistic” appeal, advancing
socialist politics, ought to come “out of real life” (yuanyu shenghuo), yet be
simultaneously “on a higher plane […] than actual everyday life” (gaoyu
shenghuo).103 When Maoist socialists used the term “modern” (xiandai),
they likewise conferred upon it just such a socialist agenda. Thus “modern
subject matter” (xiandai ticai) was mostly “subject matter either about
95 Shi Jihua, “Yige Yueju nan xiaoshen de zuji,” p. 17.

96 Xue Yunhuan, “Jianku muonlian, boduan qianjing,” p. 38.
97 Zhou Enlai, “Yao zuo yige geming de wenyi gongzuozhe,” Zhou Enli lun wenyi, p. 170.
98 Ibid., pp. 166-173.
99 Mao Tse-tung, “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art.”
100 Karl. Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World, p. 62.
101 Ibid., pp. 206-207.
102 Ibid., p. 221.
103 Ibid., p. 117.
contemporary socialist revolution and nation-building or the history of

revolution […] basically within the confines of either the history of the
CCP or China’s contemporary history after 1949.”104 In other words, Maoist
socialism saw concepts of “modern,” “real,” and “history” as interrelated.
In revolution rhetoric, all these phrases should be understood in terms of
proletarian politics, while arts and literature were treated as quintessential
“weapons” to advance socialist revolution and history.
Within such a political infrastructure, Yueju – alongside other theater
forms – was supposed to meet “the people’s request” by “raising and expand-
ing the capability of the whole of theater’s artistic expressions” (to paraphrase
Yuan Xuefen),105 “particularly its ability to perform modern subject matter,
so that Yueju can better reflect the great struggles in reality, better serve
the masses, thus further the politics of socialism” (as an editor of Shanghai
Xiju magazine wrote).106 While various reforms of theatrical practices were
initiated nationwide in the 1950s,107 the most significant for Yueji was the
cultivation and integration of male performers. In 1960, two readers of
China’s major theater magazines shared their opinions of early mixed-gender
performances: one endorsed their continuation and encouraged Yueju talents
to create and perform modern operas,108 while the other, under the headline
“Worker Comrades Exalt Mixed-Gender Yueju Performances,” praised the
performances on behalf of the workers.109 Both considered that mixed-gender
performance enabled Yueju “to broaden the domain of its expressions, […]
to better serve the masses, and to better reflect real life.”110 Notably, in a
1963 conference on the “reform of Yueju” hosted by Shanghai Xiju, acclaimed
Yueju actresses Fan Ruijuan, Fu Quanxiang, Zhang Guifeng, and Wu Xiaolou
all commented on the issue, generally in relation to “performing modern
operas” and “reflecting modern life.” In Fu’s opinion, “male impersonation
is surely a problem, but it is not most decisive to whether or not Yueju can
put on modern dramas”; the key thing is, rather, whether the artists can
“truly appreciate the life of the workers, peasants, and soldiers.” Fan Ruijuan,
arguably the best-known male impersonator in Yueju history, also pointed
104 Fu Jin. Xin Zhongguo xiju shi, p. 102 (my translation).

105 Yuan, “Shinian sg [corruption?],” p. 18.
106 “The Editor’s Note,” in Shanghai Xiju 5 (1963), p. 11. Emphasis added.
107 For a historical review of the theatric reforms initiated between 1949 and 1962, see Fu Jin,
Xin Zhongguo xiju shi, pp. 1-104.
108 Yan, “Dui Yueju nannü heyan de qiwang,” p. 41.
109 Cao, “Gongren tongzhi chengzan Yueju nannü heyan,” p. 32.
110 Cao, “Gongren tongzhi chengzan Yueju nannü heyan,” and Yan, “Dui Yueju nannü heyan
de qiwang.”
to the actresses’ resolve and hard work in overcoming all the difficulties
they faced.111 In any case, they did not dispute the view that cross-dressing
was an impediment to Yueju’s handling of modern subject matter.
From another perspective, theater scholar Fu Jun also remarked on the
issue of gender. In a 1962 essay, Fu pointed first to the failure of mixed-
gender performances of the 1950s, before analyzing and praising more
recent successes.112 In another article, Fu in effect endorsed mixed-gender
performances by defending Yueju’s involvement with modern subject mat-
ter.113 Here, he noted that Yueju had traditionally been characterized by qing:
that is, expressing qing (shuqing) or being lyrical was the “original style” or
“personality” of Yueju. While some complained that the combination of Yueju
style and modern drama had attenuated Yueju’s ability to express qing and
thus weakened its personality, Fu took issues with this viewpoint. He wrote,
The key to this perhaps lies in how we understand a style as expressive of qing.
It seems that in many people’s impression […] the idea of expressing qing has
been substantially compressed and narrowed. It has been so narrowed that
expressing qing has almost become synonymous with expressing the love
between a man and a woman. It is as if only through love stories like Liang
Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai or Romance of the Western Chamber could Yueju
really exhibit its artistic merit of expressing qing. However, expressing qing
is very expansive a notion. Not only can it denote the healthy qing between
a man and a woman. It should all the more express the qing in revolution,
the qing in combat, as well as the qing in labor and the qing in class.114
In other words, “modern” Yueju – along with various Yueju reforms – also
bespeaks a transformation of qing: from one that was primarily personal
to one that showed a clear focus on class and socialist revolution. Notably,
Fu Jun’s account of personal expressions of qing foreclosed the possibility
of non-straight desires (which supposedly were not “healthy” in the first
place). From a queer perspective, however, it must be emphasized that the
Yueju reforms – particularly the integration of male and female players
onstage and the efforts to replace female cross-dressers with male ac-
tors – registered a sense of hetero-normalization. Or rather, the endeavor
to modernize Yueju enlisted the side effect of hetero-normalization, even
111 Editorial Committee, “Yueju Gaige Zuotanhui,” pp. 9-11.

112 Fu Jun, “Peilei chukai xinyi nong.”
113 Fu Jun, “Yueju yan xiandaiju de fungge yu ticai wenti.”
114 Ibid., p. 12 (my translation).
though the queerness or homoeroticism associated with cross-dressing was

never overtly acknowledged. If Two Stage Sisters’ revision of Yueju history
somehow skips the 1950s, the most essential years for the Yueju reforms,
then what is excluded from the film’s representation is simultaneously a
recognition of this hetero-normalization on a historical level.
Concluding Remarks
As a political melodrama, Two Stage Sisters reorients women’s life-forces and

power in service of socialist politics. Comparing the film’s narrative with the
history of Yueju, however, we must realize that the film also incorporates a
particular use of Yueju history. On the one hand, the film seems to suggest
that the decision to omit a decade so significant to modern Yueju may not
be entirely coincidental. The exclusion of the 1950s from the film, I suggest,
may be read as part of the persistent sociopolitical endeavor to regulate
qing, including female-female eroticism, in socialist China. This exclusion
speaks to a denial of queer existence in China’s modern history, echoing the
historical “cleansing” of queer elements in Yueju. On the other hand, I would
like to stress that the endeavor to redirect qing is integral to both the film and
Yueju. Since the latter is also the historical backdrop for the former, I contend
the film text and its historical context were meant to be ideologically sutured
by that sociopolitical enterprise: the doctrine of socialist revolution. Under
such a doctrine, anti-revolutionary influences, including lesbianism, must
be rendered unwanted, something “symptomatic”115 of socially sanctioned
subjects. To be sure, while in Two Stage Sisters Chunhua eventually grows
into a socialist heroine, the object of her same-sex desire, Yuehong (who
fraternizes with anti-revolutionaries), is discounted as surplus to Chunhua’s
socialist subjectivity.
As one critic notes, Two Stage Sisters is characterized by the filmmaker’s
earnest and delicate depiction of qing, wherein “the modest qing of [the
repressed] class embodied in the two stage sisters” is central.116 Historically,
however, the film was publicly denounced during the Cultural Revolution
(in part) due to its (mis)use of qing.117 To some leftist extremists at that time,
particularly the two sisters’ final reunion, which affirmed the politically
115 Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, p. 55.

116 Qiu Shi, “Wutai jiemei de yishu tese” (The artistic traits of Two Stage Sisters), p. 268.
117 This denunciation was allegedly due to the director’s close affiliation with Zhou Enlai and
Xia Yan. See Xie and Berry, “Xie Jin: Six Decades of Cinematic Innovation,” p. 33.
incorrect “reconciliation of social classes” ( jieji tiaohe)118 – Yuehong was

considered an adversary to the proletarian class and therefore culpable,
with the result that the film’s forgiving attitude was criticized as a bourgeois
expression of qing. To Xie’s persecutors, “Sympathy or understanding for
a strayed person was but a petty bourgeois sentiment, not to be tolerated
by a true revolutionary.”119 It further violated the party line that dictated
the characters in any type of melodramatic work to be portrayed as “either
good or evil.”120
On the surface, Two Stage Sisters came under attack for its political incor-
rectness, marked by a sense of compromised eclecticism and in-betweenness
(xiuzheng zhuyi or zhongjian luxian), along with an unhesitant personal
expression of qing. Indeed, from the perspective of socialist political melo-
drama, Yuehong, after proving the political correctness of her stage sister,
has accomplished her narrative function, and could have been dismissed
as merely a “surplus” of Chunhua’s socialist subjectivity. The film nonethe-
less violates “the politics of disposability,” which, for Athena Athanasiou,
indicates “a way of abjecting [and] a way of producing the human and its
inassimilable surplus […] that can be traced in various histories of human
liminality,”121 with the history of socialist revolution coming as no exception.
If the final reunion of the two stage sisters can be understood as “the
return of the repressed” that jeopardizes Chunhua as a socialist subject, “the
repressed” here should not be understood only as that which was publicly
denounced by the class-motivated socialist revolution. Through qing, the
unrecognized, repressed homoeroticism is also potentially reincarnated in
the guise of “sisterhood,” haunting and subverting the effort to deny and
cleanse queer existence in a “modern” Chinese history mediated by the
politics of socialist revolution.
118 Ibid., p. 34. Qiu Shi, “Wutai jiemei de yishu tese,” p. 268.
119 Tung, “The Work of Xie Jin,” p. 201.
120 Ibid.
121 Butler and Athanasiou, Dispossession, pp. 146-147.

Queer Representations in Chinese Language Film and The Cultural Landscape

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Queer Representations in Chinese Language Film and The Cultural Landscape

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Queer Representations in

Chinese-language Film and

Amsterdam University Press

Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden

isbn 978 94 6298 803 3

© Shi-Yan Chao / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020

Keywords: Yueju, Two Stage Sisters, political melodrama, qing, socialist

As noted in the Introduction, two salient patterns of Chinese queer repre-

them, melodrama operates not so much as a particular genre,8 but “as a

sociopolitical impulse diverting women’s life-force (i.e. a kind of qing, or

Two Stage Sisters and Its Historical Connections

23 Berry and Farquhar, China on Screen, p. 114.

24 For Xiao’s biography, see Qian, Zhongguo yueju, pp. 64-65.

29 Zhou Laida, Zhonguo yueju yinyue yanjiu, p. 2.

A Queer Feeling in a Socialist Political Melodrama

a) Two Stage Sisters as a Socialist Political Melodrama

Inherently neither progressive nor conservative, melodrama, in Thomas

32 Gao Yilong, Yueju shihua, pp. 159-160.

favored by the rising European bourgeoisie for representing history and

38 Pickowicz, “Melodramatic Representation,” p. 300.

purposes of this chapter, though, I borrow the term “political melodrama”

48 Pickowicz, “Melodramatic Representation,” p. 322.

Figure 2.1 Still from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

revolutionary drama in the People’s Republic.53 “The White-Haired Girl”

Though determined to acquire their spiritual identity and enjoy the

b) A Queer Feeling in Two Stage Sisters

Two Stage Sisters as “political melodrama” rests on a double operation.

63 Chen Xiaomei, “Growing Up with Posters in the Maoist Era,” p. 110.

Chinese Cinema (1998). As Xie, with hindsight,66 commented on the nature

Figures 2.2.1-2.2.2 Stills from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

also doubly encoded. When Chunhua is found hiding in Yuehong’s costume

Figures 2.3.1-2.3.2 Stills from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

gender-bending appearance unites her strong personality and valiant

of visual continuity in Chunhua’s masculinity from the previous scene as

Figure 2.4 Still from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

Figure 2.5 Still from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

(mingmei zhengqu) and “a normal family” (zhengdang de guisu); she disdains

Figure 2.6 Still from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

70 Lee Edelman sees “reproductive futurism” as characterizing heteronormative societies. See

Figure 2.7 Still from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

Figure 2.8 Still from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

Figures 2.9.1-2.9.2 Stills from Two Stage Sisters

Copyright: Shanghai Film Studio

73 Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment, p. 104.

Transformation of Qing through Two Stage Sisters and Yueju

qing, according to Zeitlin, also represents “an invisible force,” sometimes

81 Zeitlin, The Phantom Heroine, pp. 13, 37.

revolution and socialist nation-building.87 I maintain that this exploitation

the 1950s saw an endeavor to change or “rectify” this phenomenon. Gener-

91 See the official website of Shanghai Yueju Theater: www.yueju.net.

95 Shi Jihua, “Yige Yueju nan xiaoshen de zuji,” p. 17.

contemporary socialist revolution and nation-building or the history of

104 Fu Jin. Xin Zhongguo xiju shi, p. 102 (my translation).

111 Editorial Committee, “Yueju Gaige Zuotanhui,” pp. 9-11.

though the queerness or homoeroticism associated with cross-dressing was