Kam Louie

Sexuality, Masculinity and Politics in Chinese Culture: The Case of the ‘Sanguo’ Hero Guan Yu

This paper examines the sexual composition of the hero ( yingxiong ) in traditional China and how this sexuality is projected onto the political plane. Existing scholarship on the Chinese hero has provided Sinology with excellent material on a number of issues, from those which link the hero with Chinese concepts of chivalry, to those which discuss the hero as ‘revolutionary’ and ‘mass-based’. One of the major lacunae in all of these studies, however, has been an analysis of the importance of sexuality to the successful construction of a ‘hero’. Before Chinese studies drew on more recent methodologies, such as those developed by feminist criticism, the yingxiongs sexuality was often casually dismissed. It was asserted that, in contrast to Western chivalric romances, where love is often the most important inspiration for heroic deeds, love (and by implication sex) in traditional Chinese chivalric tales ‘plays no such important part’.

Publications briefly noted

SHARON KINSELLA. Adult Manga: culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. xii, 228 pp. £12.99, paper. STEPHEN ESKILDSEN. Asceticism in Early Taoist Religion. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1998. vii, 229 pp. US

Censored by Confucius: Ghost Stories by Yuan Mei

19.85, paper. H. A. J. KLOOSTER. Bibliography of the Indonesian Revolution, Publications from 1942 to 1994. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1997. Bibliographical Series no. 21. 666 pp. J. E. HOARE (ed). Britain and Japan: biographical Portraits, Volume III. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1999. xviii, 397 pp. £45.00, hardcover. AYAKO HOTTA‐LISTER. The Japan‐British Exhibition of 1910: gateway to the Island Empire of the East. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1999. xvi, 256 pp. £45.00, hardcover. JACQUES GERNET. Buddhism in Chinese Society: an Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries (trans. by Franciscus Verellen). New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. xvii, 441 pp. US

Chinese for Dinkum Aussies

21.00, paper. GREGORY M. PFLUGFELDER. Cartographies of Desire: male‐male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600–1950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. xi, 399 pp. US

Bibliography of English translations and critiques of contemporary Chinese fiction, 1945-1992

45.00, hardcover. GAIL HERSHATTER. Dangerous Pleasures: prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth Century Shanghai. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. xii, 591 pp. 26 b/w illustrations, 6 tables. US

Curricula for background speakers of Chinese languages: Towards a new link between economics and culture

18.95, paper. TSERING SHAKYA. The Dragon in the Land of Snows: a History of Modern Tibet since 1947. No location given: Columbia University Press, 1999. xxix, 574 pp. US

Género y sexualidad en Asia

29.95, paper. J. E. HOARE. Embassies in the East: the Story of the British and their Embassies in China, Japan and Korea from 1859 to the Present. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999. xvi, 238 pp. £40.00, hardcover. PADMASIRI DE SILVA. Environmental Philosophy and Ethics in Buddhism. London: Macmillan Press, 1998. xv, 195 pp. A

Native and background speakers of Chinese: Australian tertiary educators’ perceptions of the problems and prospects

69.95, hardcover. ROB GOODFELLOW. The Green Iguana, and Other Short Stories (cartoons by Weldon Neville). Wollongong: Kang Djoko, 1999. 96 pp. A

Chinese masculinity: theorizing Wen and Wu [An earlier version of this paper was presented at a seminar at the University of Queensland (1994).]

20.00, paper. GAO MINGLU (ed). Inside Out: new Chinese Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 223 pp. US

Chinese studies association of Australia biennial conference report

29.95, paper. EVELYN S. RAWSKI. The Last Emperors: a Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xii, 481 pp. 10 b/w illustrations, 3 line figures, 3 maps, 18 tables. US