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79
Chapter Four
“Chinese Top, British Bottom”
Becoming a Gay Male Internet Celebrity in China
Tianyang Zhou
In 2012, a viral online video titled The Josh & Eddie Show—Ep13—20 Days
to Go offered the world an intimate window into the wedding of a Chi-
nese–Caucasian gay male couple, Ye Fan and Josh Taylor (RMIUC and
J.T.). They soon became the most successful of China’s gay Internet celeb-
rities, with legions of fans both within and outside of China. In contrast to the
long-lasting “dominant White top versus submissive Chinese bottom” cultu-
ral stereotypes, the couple have been framed as zhongguo xiaogong—ying-
guo xiaoshou (“Chinese top, British bottom”) across social media platforms.
This study investigates the discursive construction of RMIUC and J.T. as a
“role-inverted” interracial gay male couple to answer the call for queer(y)ing
intercultural communication studies (e.g., Chávez, 2013; Eguchi, 2015; Egu-
chi & Asante, 2016; Yep, 2013).
Historically, the narratives of “masculine” gay White man versus “femi-
nine” gay Chinese (or other Asian) man were born out of the ideological
(re)production of orientalism, which, as Said (2003) argues, acts as “a politi-
cal vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the
familiar (Europe, the West, ‘us’) and the strange (the Orient, the East,
‘them’)” (p. 43). The orientalist project perpetuates the belief of a dominant
superior West and a subjugated inferior East. It operates to erase the diversity
that colonizers encountered and place it under the umbrella term of “the
oriental.” From a Western perspective, what it means to be Asian is con-
structed largely based on the “one-dimensional portrayal of Asians who are
nearly always presented as one in the same despite divergent histories, cultu-
ral backgrounds, and points of origin” (Han, 2015, p. 27). In this context,
Asian men, both gay and straight, have been represented in a particular
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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Chapter 480
stereotypical way, as being fundamentally foreign. They have been portrayed
as the feminine Others who have failed to achieve the White masculine
norms and therefore are inferior to White men.
The feminization of gay Asian men in contemporary Western gay male
culture has been the subject of considerable criticism (e.g., Ayres, 1999;
Chou, 2000; Eguchi, 2015; Fung, 1996; Han, 2015; Hoang, 2014; Kong
2011; Lee, 2005; Lim, 2014). Going back to the 1990s, Ayres (1999) fore-
grounds the discrimination against Asian men in the Australian gay scene,
where their existence has either been simply ignored or they have been
(mis)represented as feminine, passive, and subservient. These cultural stereo-
types have manifested vividly in Asian–Caucasian relationships: “The West-
ern man is older, the Asian man is younger. The Western man is wealthy, the
Asian man is poor. The Western man is sexually active, the Asian man is
sexually passive” (Ayres, 1999, p. 94). Similarly, Kong (2011) observes that
gay men from Hong Kong who migrated to Britain in the 1980s and 1990s,
as both a racial and sexual minority, tended to “suffer from various forms of
subordination from White and heterosexual society at large, as well as in the
sexualised gay community in particular” (p. 123). They lived under the dom-
inant, stereotypical “golden boy” imagery in the gay racial hierarchy: “A
young virgin boy who is innocent, infantile, feminized or even androgynous”
(Kong, 2011, p. 128). In his analysis of the representations of gay Asian men
in mainstream Western gay male publications, Han (2015) argues that the
portrayals of Asian men in these media largely serve to reinforce the domi-
nance of gay White male masculinity, and, at the same time, to relegate gay
Asian men to the margins of the Western gay male community. This is in line
with the way that the images of Asian men in popular Western imagination
have been used to support White male superiority.
The depictions of gay Asian men as feminine and submissive have been
more evident in sexually explicit materials, especially in gay video pornogra-
phy. In his groundbreaking essay “Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized
Asian in Gay Video Porn,” Richard Fung (1996), a video artist and cultural
critic, argues that due to the stereotypes of Asian men as deficient in mascu-
linity, Asian actors have always portrayed passivity in gay American video
pornography and have been treated as sexual objects for the pleasure of the
dominant White tops. Fung (1996) is careful to point out that “the problem is
not the representation of anal pleasure per se, but rather the narratives privi-
lege the (White) penis while always assigning the Asian the role of bottom”;
in other words, “Asian and anus are conflated” (p. 187). Likewise, Hoang
(2014) presents a picture of how men of color are excluded from contempo-
rary gay American video pornography: “Whereas Chicano/Latino characters
are coded as macho, hypersexual, straight tops, and thus not qualifying as
properly out and proud gay citizens, Asian characters are not conferred gay
membership due to their effeminacy, desexualization, and exclusive bottom
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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“Chinese Top, British Bottom” 81
role” (p. 42). Looking directly at sex acts, these sexual representations of
Asian men shape the understanding of what is normal and desirable regard-
ing sex, sexuality, gender, and race, and, more importantly, they parallel the
exclusion of gay Asian men from gay male membership in Western societies
in general, and in American society in particular, as a result of “their ra-
cial–ethnic foreignness, working-class professions, and tenuous immigration
status” (Hoang, 2014, p. 42).
This study continues the critical inquiry into the intersection of race with
gay male sexuality, interrogating RMIUC and J.T.’s Internet celebrity prac-
tice, which involves “ongoing maintenance of a fan base, performed intima-
cy, authenticity and access, and construction of a consumable persona” (Mar-
wick & boyd, 2011, p. 140). Eguchi and Asante (2016) argue that “a main-
stream body of queer communication scholarship has mostly addressed the
needs of non-heteronormative knowing, being, and acting that are relevant to
White, U.S. American, and middle-class people,” and “the intersectional
modes of sexuality, sex/gender, and body across multiple sociopolitical, eco-
nomic, and historical positionings remain understudied” (p. 173). In this
light, this chapter explores the complexity of culture and communication,
focusing on China’s gay male Internet celebrities as products of the interac-
tions between past and present, local and global, where sexuality, race, gen-
der, nation operate simultaneously to create inclusion and exclusion.
In star studies, there has been “a reluctance to treat audiences seriously,”
which, as Yu (2012) argues, stems from “a deep-rooted bias which sees
audiences as a ‘manipulated mass,’ and a critical tradition of valuing theoret-
ical assumptions over audiences’ opinions” (p. 22). Zhang and Farquhar
(2010) argue that although the audience has long been proved to be important
to Chinese stardom, audience research has remained very underdeveloped in
the field of Chinese star/celebrity studies. As such, this study stresses the
importance of the audience in understanding gay male Internet celebrity in
China via a critical textual analysis of the online fan comments on RMIUC
and J.T.’s most well-known video, The Josh & Eddie Show—Ep13—20 Days
to Go. Responding to Yu’s (2012) call for the use of a “mixed methodology,”
this study counters “the idea of a text-constructed, abstract and passive spec-
tator” and simultaneously rejects “the notion of a ‘real’ audience and the idea
that empirical audience research offers a more authentic picture of audience”
(p. 25). Instead it is argued that RMIUC and J.T.’s images and gay male
masculinities are constructed and transformed in the process of audience
transmedia consumption across time and space.
This chapter consists of three parts: first, it provides a brief review of the
history of gay male Internet celebrities in China. Networked media is chang-
ing China’s celebrity culture and offering a public forum for marginalized
queer voices. In this context, the emergence of Duyao, the first “gay” Internet
celebrity in mainland China, is discussed, which provides a historical and
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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Chapter 482
technological background against which to understand China’s gay male
Internet celebrity practices. Second, the chapter goes on to scrutinize the rise
of RMIUC and J.T. It is argued that their story should be understood against
the background of expanding Chinese boys’ love (BL) fandom and the com-
mercialization of the pleasure of BL matchmaking of male celebrities in
Chinese media culture. Finally, building on a critical reading of online fan
discussion of RMIUC and J.T., the chapter explores how their Internet celeb-
rity practices serve to articulate normative discourses of race, gender, sexual-
ity, and nation, through the creation of “Chinese top, British bottom.” To
date, several studies have investigated the top/bottom sexual roles within
Chinese gay male communities (e.g., Zhou et al., 2013; Zheng & Zheng,
2017). From a public health perspective, they concentrate on the relevance of
top/bottom sex-role preference among Chinese gay men to HIV/AIDS pre-
vention, rather than on the ideology assigned to topness/bottomhood. Break-
ing from this approach, this chapter focuses on the discursive construction of
RMIUC and J.T. as “Chinese top, British bottom” and the racial-sexual pow-
er dynamics underlying it, aiming to contribute to a cultural understanding of
“topness/bottomhood” in the Chinese context. To understand the Internet
celebrity practices of RMIUC and J.T., first a brief review of the history of
gay male Internet celebrities in China is provided.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY MALE INTERNET
CELEBRITIES IN CHINA
As substantial social stigma has been attached to homosexuality in Chinese
society, almost no celebrities have publicly acknowledged their gay or les-
bian sexual orientation in mainland China. According to a 2015 report on
China.org.cn, an authorized government portal site to China, the well-known
stylist Ji Mi is the first and only mainland Chinese celebrity to have openly
announced that he is gay. The development of information and communica-
tion technologies, especially the popularization of online blogging, has
opened up a new space for celebrity practices in China, which has greatly
facilitated the rise of gay male Internet celebrities. Despite the fact that the
Chinese government has been implementing increasingly sophisticated ef-
forts to control the Internet, the new media, as Yu (2007) argues, “can be-
come a new venue for individuals to exercise citizenship, not through overt
resistance, but through a process of re-subjectification via mediated expres-
sion, social interaction, and circulation of their own media stories” (p. 424).
Although these seemingly apolitical new media practices are unlikely, being
tantamount to immediate and radical political change in China, they could
turn out to be political, as they have influenced the ways that people imagine
politics, culture, and society.
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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“Chinese Top, British Bottom” 83
In this context, online blogging offers a public forum for marginalized
queer voices, which enables the Chinese queer experience to be consumed
without being subjected to editorial control (Kang & Yang, 2009). Arguably
the first “gay” Internet celebrity in mainland China, Duyao (real name Chen
Zheng), rose to fame in 2006 through his exploitation of MSN Space, attract-
ing more than six million views, and each of his blog posts received thou-
sands of comments. In a report by Sina Entertainment (2016), Duyao, togeth-
er with other well-known Chinese bloggers, such as Furong Jiejie and Mu
Zimei, was touted as “the first generation of internet celebrity in China
(wanghong bizu).” The emergence of these Internet celebrities indicates “the
heterogeneous nature of China’s developing celebrity culture” resulting from
the rise of commercial media and rapid technological expansion (Jeffreys &
Edwards, 2010, p. 12). The situation is much like the phenomenon of micro-
celebrity in the West—“a mindset and set of practices in which audience is
viewed as a fan base; popularity is maintained through ongoing fan manage-
ment; and self-presentation is carefully constructed to be consumed by oth-
ers” (Marwick & boyd, 2011, p. 140)—that demonstrates the ever-changing
nature of celebrity culture in the age of social media.
The wanghong bizu are more available and accessible than traditional
celebrities and actively use social media to develop and maintain fans. They
began to strive to perform a kind of interactivity and authenticity. Guo (2012)
points out that Furong Jiejie, one of the earliest well-known Internet celeb-
rities in China, strategically appropriated her “grass-rootedness and ordinari-
ness” and simultaneously adjusted her stances of “official, commercial, and
subordinate positions” to maintain upward mobility and to perpetuate her
significant fame (p. 155). Her success story is considered a victory for ordi-
nary Chinese people. Similarly, Mu Zimei, another legendary female Chi-
nese Internet celebrity, unexpectedly found fame by blogging about her sexu-
al life as an urban professional woman. Although her blog was eventually
shut down, she became extremely famous through a strategy of “being real”
and maintaining a sense of openness, immediacy, and interactivity. Her suc-
cess was seen as a defiance of rigid media censorship and severe restrictions
on public discussion and expression of sexuality, and is considered “the
earliest prominent example of the Internet-based sexual revolution” (Farrer,
2015, p. 156).
In the same way, Duyao actively maintained a sense of realness and
ordinariness by sharing his everyday life in the United Kingdom with his
fans via photo blogging. His posts ranged from stories about his travels
around the world to his experiences at gay nightclubs in London, performing
the “exclusivity” of Internet celebrity—“the glamorization and celebration of
practices and possessions so elite in access or rare in occurrence that it would
be unusual for ordinary people to experience them without high ‘economic
capital’” (Abidin, 2018, p. 20). For his Chinese gay fans, especially those
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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Chapter 484
suffering from oppression and those to whom the international metropolitan
life was not accessible, Duyao portrayed a “gay” life that they could only
dream of. Moreover, Duyao’s appeal was greatly sustained by his artistic
talent and unique taste in fashion, which meant he was perceived as elite and
exceptional. While studying for a master’s degree in fine art at Central Saint
Martins College of Art and Design, an internationally renowned design
school, he gained a reputation in the Chinese gay world for his avant-garde
photography blogs, which typically highlighted gender bending, nudity, re-
belliousness, androgyny, and glamour, leading to him becoming a “gay”
style icon, though he denied being gay in his autobiographical novel pub-
lished in 2009.
Duyao’s success has greatly encouraged the rise of gay male Internet
celebrities in China. For example, in 2008, a Chinese gay couple, J. Law and
Kirio (also known as Xia He and Mai Luoluo) rose to fame posting photos on
Renren.com, a popular Chinese social media site. Like Duyao, they portrayed
an ordinary, everyday gay romance and established their online presence
using mediated self-presentation techniques. At the same time, they actively
demonstrated their talents, skills, and accomplishments—while J. Law
worked as a photographer, model, and entrepreneur, Kirio became a writer—
and treated their followers as a fan base to achieve greater fame. In 2012, a
Chinese–Caucasian interracial gay male couple, namely, RMIUC and J.T.,
aroused a new wave of Chinese BL fandom. The following section will
explore the rise of RMIUC and J.T., which demonstrates not only the ways
that networked media is changing China’s celebrity culture but also the gen-
dered and racialized construction of gay men in the Chinese popular imagina-
tion.
THE RISE OF RMIUC AND J.T.
RMIUC (also known as Edison, or Eddie), whose real name is Ye Fan, is
arguably the most famous gay male Internet celebrity in China. His high
profile began with the moniker of “RMIUC,” short for “rape me if you can,”
which draws inspiration from the 2002 American biographical crime movie
Catch Me If You Can. Despite his own clarification that “RMIUC” refers to
the stand taken by unfearing minds against rape, his fans tend to read this
moniker in a more sexually suggestive way. They have developed a lan-
guage, R da (“Master R”), from the moniker, which creates a linguistic tie
both with each other and their favorite gay male Internet celebrity. RMIUC
first began to achieve Internet fame in 2012 as a vlogger on Tudou.com, a
leading online video network in China. He ran a video-cast channel named
Master R’s Channel, on which his short video series The Josh & Eddie Show
has been shown since November 2011. Within just two years of its establish-
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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“Chinese Top, British Bottom” 85
ment, RMIUC’s video-cast channel had attracted more than 1.5 million
views. Among all of the videos published on the site, The Josh & Eddie
Show—Ep13—20 Days to Go is the best known: It quickly went viral, and
has been viewed more than 538,000 times since it was posted in October
2012. Featuring a very candid question-and-answer-style self-interview, the
five-minute video resulted in a surge of public attention through tweets and
shares across various social media platforms. Shortly afterward, the exposure
of the high-profile wedding of RMIUC and his British husband, J.T., once
again captured the attention of the Chinese gay world and, immediately after
that, RMIUC published his first autobiographical novel, closely followed by
a romance novel in 2013. Although the marriage only lasted for approximate-
ly two years, his constant presence in the spotlight made RMIUC a new
favorite guest on reality television shows such as I, Supermodel (2015), Let’s
Talk (2015), and Pretty Girl (2015), as well as web dramas and movies such
as Mr. Pride vs Miss Prejudice (2017), Dating High (2017), and Really?
(2018).
An important factor contributing to the rising fame of RMIUC and J.T., as
well as their predecessors, is the expansion of the Chinese BL fandom from
2000, and the subsequent commercialization of the BL matchmaking of male
celebrities. Among the fans of RMIUC and J.T., there are many who identify
as funü (“rotten women”), a term originally from the Japanese fujoshi subcul-
ture, referring to Chinese young female BL fans. This group of fans cele-
brates the “pure love” in the story of RMIUC and J.T., one of greatest
attractions of BL cultural products to funü (Koetse, 2014). The emergence of
Chinese BL fan culture was closely connected with the popularization of the
Internet, which arguably plays a role in promoting openness to and tolerance
of homosexuality in Chinese society. Online communication has facilitated
BL activities in China by offering new opportunities for BL participants,
especially funü, who are actively engaging in celebrating, creating, and shar-
ing fictional homoerotic relationships between boys and/or men (Liu, 2009).
By homoeroticizing certain male celebrities, they are “disturbing the boun-
daries that separate male homo-social desire from male homosexual desire”
and “touching on the prohibition against homosexuality,” which “sometimes
even transcends the scope of BL fandom online and begins to influence, even
interfere with, the established heterosexual norms in the mainstream culture”
(Zhou, 2017, p. 96).
Since approximately 2006, there has been stigmatization of and moral
panic about the young female BL fan community in the Chinese media,
which expresses concerns that the homoeroticism and depictions of sex in the
BL subculture will endanger Chinese young people’s values and morality. In
2010, a large-scale censorship crackdown targeted Chinese BL websites and
fiction writers in response to what they perceived as their rebellious and
antimainstream practices. However, despite the increasingly negative image
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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Chapter 486
of BL fans in the Chinese media, BL fandom has gradually become diffused
into mainstream culture as a result of a decade-long development effort. As a
result, some media productions have begun to cater to the interests of the
young Chinese female BL fan community, deliberately exploiting the grow-
ing popularity of Chinese BL fandom (Yi, 2013). Furthermore, Chinese BL
fans’ male homosexual fantasies have slowly been (re)appropriated by main-
stream culture for commercial purposes, “with business seeking to capitalize
on the subversive pleasure of BL matchmaking of celebrities, which remains
valuable in selling the products of those celebrities” (Zhou, 2017, p. 105).
Participation in Chinese BL fandom and the growth of its consumption of
male homosexuality, therefore, run a risk of being drawn into a consumerist
trap.
It is in this context that RMIUC and J.T. have continued to follow the
strategies of their predecessors, combining the display of ordinary everyday
gay romance with the performance of their individual talents in the realms of
media and fashion. RMIUC enthusiastically harnesses both social media and
traditional media platforms to maintain a vast legion of fans from both within
and outside of China. His Sina Weibo and Instagram accounts have attracted
more than 1,340,000 and 463,000 followers, respectively, at the time of
writing. Each of his tweets and pictures receives thousands of comments.
Although RMIUC is just one among other Chinese gay male Internet celeb-
rities, he is marked out as different from his contemporaries in several ways.
First, he is a Chinese New Zealander, who lived in New Zealand for 13 years
and graduated from the University of Auckland, a top international univer-
sity. He married his White British husband in a surreal gay wedding that
would be the envy of many Chinese gay men. He published two novels in
two years, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. He became a gay father
via surrogacy in 2017, welcoming his son Frederic, who himself is becoming
a “micro-microcelebrity” (Abidin, 2015). He transformed from an Internet
celebrity into a “real” star, with a career spanning television, movies, and
fashion—including modeling for Calvin Klein and Diesel and starting his
own clothing line, Ye De (“Stuff by Ye”). He is also a role model for other
particularly prolific Chinese gay male social media users on and across dif-
ferent social networking sites (wangluo mingyuan), striving to achieve their
dreams of celebrity.
The various factors related to race/ethnicity (Chinese), language (English
and Mandarin), age (youth), and size (very muscled), among others, together
contribute to RMIUC’s higher economic, social, and cultural status, which
perpetuates his success in competing with other gay male Internet celebrities
in China. The next section looks more closely at the ways in which the
Internet celebrity practices of RMIUC and J.T. serve to articulate normative
discourses of race, gender, sexuality, and nation. It will explain how the
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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“Chinese Top, British Bottom” 87
discursive construction of “Chinese top, British bottom” has transformed
RMIUC into a masculinist and nationalistic gay icon.
THE MAKING OF “CHINESE TOP, BRITISH BOTTOM”
The online fan discussions about RMIUC and J.T. have been dominated and
characterized by considerations of a racialized “top/bottom” dyad. In contrast
to the previously discussed “natural and normal” dominant White top versus
submissive Chinese bottom pattern, the couple have been discursively con-
structed as “Chinese top, British bottom” by their fans. For example, Ergou
Kong, a well-known Chinese writer and online opinion leader with approxi-
mately 2.87 million followers on Sina Weibo, praised RMIUC and J.T.,
tweeting, “The most handsome gay couple throughout history: RMIUC and
J.T., Chinese top and British bottom. Love is a grand subject. From ancient
times until now, only love can overcome social, economic, racial, and gen-
der-based constraints” (Kong, 2014).
First, it is necessary to examine the construction of the “Chinese top.” In
the online discussions of RMIUC, there are far more positive than negative
comments. RMIUC’s unique celebrity persona rests on his construction as a
“Chinese top” in an interracial relationship with a gay White male; more
specifically, it is his hypermasculine image that constitutes a prized visual
marker of difference from those effeminized Chinese gay men who are con-
strained by the White gay normativity that is “powerfully renegotiated across
national and cultural boundaries” (Eguchi, 2015, p. 31). Hoang (2014) argues
that “to replace Asian-as-anus with Asian-as-penis is to reinscribe the penis
and topness, that is dominant masculinity, as the desirable end point” (p. 19).
In this sense, the remasculinization that is embodied in RMIUC’s Internet
celebrity practice rewrites abject masculinity at the expense of scapegoating
femininity and the feminine. Overturning the stereotypical images of “effem-
inate” and “passive” gay men in the Chinese popular imagination, RMIUC’s
success has been achieved through collusion with misogynist heteromascu-
linity and the marginalization of male effeminacy. For example, he is differ-
entiated by his fans from other Chinese gay Internet celebrities in the fashion
and beauty industry because of his degree in civil engineering from the
University of Auckland, which one commenter describes as “a major of
which straight-masculinity spills out.” A dividing line has clearly been drawn
here, separating civil engineering as a “real” man’s job and fashion/beauty as
the stereotypical feminized “gay” occupation.
Furthermore, Zheng (2015, p. 149) observes that there has been a prefer-
ence for masculinity and a strong antieffeminate bias among the gay male
community in postsocialist China, similar to the hypermasculine gay clone
culture in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. In this context, a Chinese
Queer Intercultural Communication : The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, edited by Dr. Shinsuke
Eguchi, and Bernadette Calafell, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=5900308.
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Chapter 488
top/bottom system has emerged: “On their entry into the community, they
[Chinese gay men] find themselves overwhelmed by the questions of wheth-
er they are 1s or 0s”—“1, symbolizing the penis, is identified within the
community as the male role, whereas 0, symbolizing the vagina, is associated
with the female role” (Zheng, 2015, p. 75). Chinese tops (also known as
gong, or 1s) are seen as being active, rational, aggressive, and dominant, and
as possessing “a controlling tendency, a desire to protect others, a strong
sense of security, a callous mind, and an interest in violence”; Chinese bot-
toms (also known as shou, or 0s), on the other hand, are considered passive,
submissive, obedient, and dependent, as those who “accept control, require
protection, lack a sense of security, submit to domination, reply on intuition,
and have an interest in music, art, and aesthetics” (Zheng, 2015, pp. 79–80).
It is important to note that bottomhood has been assigned an inferior
status among the Chinese gay male community, which is dominated by hege-
monic gender rules and expectations (Zheng, 2015). As a result, Chinese
bottoms tend to disguise themselves as tops in social settings, and simultane-
ously employ the strategy of remasculinization to gain acceptance from the
dominant heteronormative culture. Zheng (2015) draws a picture of a Chi-
nese bottom’s remasculinization in his everyday practice:
He first terminated what he considered feminine behaviors. . . . He then in-
creased his interactions with male friends and scrupulously corrected what he
thought were lapses in his behaviors. Despite his distaste for sports, he forced
himself to watch soccer games with his male friends. He also recorded his own
speech to identify what he believed were feminine tones (niangniang qiang)
and endeavored to obliterate them. (Zheng, 2015, p. 89)
The disavowal of bottomhood entails a strong denial of gay male effeminacy
in China, which should be understood as operating in a context where “gen-
der has become the pivotal point to reconstitute the triangulated power struc-
ture of class, gender, and state as China has transitioned from Maoism to
neoliberalism” (Zhang, 2014, p. 32). Achieving desirability via remasculin-
ization, both in Chinese gay men’s everyday practices and in RMIUC’s
construction as a “Chinese top,” suggests an urgent need for a reconsidera-
tion of the treatment of femininity in contemporary Chinese gay male cul-
ture. In this vein, the concept of “Chinese bottom” can provide a conceptual
fulcrum to question the oppressive gender and sexual norms in Chinese soci-
ety, which has considerable potential for cultivating social and political alli-
ances between Chinese gay men and other subjects struggling at the bottom
of social hierarchies.
Moreover, RMIUC serves as an exemplary case study of the complex
relationship between the conflicting national categories of Chinese and West-
ern and the discourses of masculinity in contemporary China as they are
performed in the creation of “Chinese top, British bottom.” RMIUC has been
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“Chinese Top, British Bottom” 89
mythologized by some of his fans as a “young hero” (shaonian yingxiong).
They explicitly express their patriotic admiration and respect, with one com-
ment: “This top finally brings honor and pride (zheng kou qi) for Chinese
men” (Liuwanqingsansuxiaoman, 2012). This celebratory construction of
RMIUC as a young Chinese hero who brings honor and pride to China and
Chinese men reflects a historically deep-rooted anxiety about Chinese mas-
culinity.
More specifically, this anxiety about the perceived quality of Chinese
men manifested as a “crisis of masculinity” in the post-Mao era and then
focused on “disappointment with Chinese men as compared with Western
and Japanese men, and anxiety over the virility of China as a nation in the
globalizing world” in the mid- and late 1980s, which “echoes both the mod-
ernist internalization of Western gender standards as the universal norm and
the rethinking of Communist gender ideology” (Song & Hird, 2014, pp.
8–10). In the 1990s, China’s national sentiment was officially expressed as
patriotism. Zhao (2005) points out that by “reinforcing China’s national con-
fidence and turning past humiliation and current weakness into a driving
force for China’s modernization, nationalism has become an effective instru-
ment for enhancing the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] legitimacy, al-
lowing for it to be redefined on the claim that the regime would provide
political stability and economic prosperity” (p. 135). In this context, patriotic
politics has become “a major venue for accomplishing masculinity” in the
mainstream culture, and a good Chinese man should be “a man who brings
honor to the motherland and safeguards national dignity on the international
stage” (Song & Hird, 2014, p. 12). In this regard, the making of a Chinese
gay male star has been accomplished by coding RMIUC as a patriotic young
hero who has brought pride to China and is defending Chinese masculinity
on the international and intercultural stage.
The concerns about Chinese masculinity have continued into the new
millennium. In the context of the general “opening up” of sexual culture in
China, interracial dating and sexuality have proliferated, offering Chinese
women “a set of sexual possibilities and new sexual norms that could be
described as an alternative sexual subculture” (Farrer, 2010, p. 87). The fact
that “every year, tens of thousands of Chinese women—mostly young, good-
looking, and highly educated—have married foreigners since China opened
its doors to the outside world” has rearoused the deep-rooted male anxiety
described previously (Song & Hird, 2014, p. 11). As a result, nationalist
efforts to defend Chinese men in the media have increased, especially in the
interracial sexual field. This was evident in a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo
in 2015 titled “Sichuan Man Married a Beautiful British Songstress.” The
hashtag was linked to a news report within which a Chinese man from rural
Sichuan was heroized as “gaining face for Chinese men” after overcoming
various difficulties to marry a British singer (Zhou, 2015). Many commenta-
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Chapter 490
tors argued that these nationalist portrayals embodied a gendered hierarchy in
the Chinese popular imagination of interracial relationships that privileges
Chinese men, who have been seen as “displaying the prestige of a nation”
(yang wo guo wei), and simultaneously subordinates and denigrates their
female counterparts, who have been accused of “blind worship of everything
foreign” (chong yang mei wai) and of “humiliating the country” (sang quan
ru guo).
Similarly, in the case of RMIUC and J.T., RMIUC has built a strong
sense of manhood and recovered Chinese masculinity in the interracial sexu-
al field. In postsocialist China, homosexuality has been seen as “a peril to the
security of the nation” that reflects “powerlessness, inferiority, feminized
passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent of the colonial past when
China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the
Sick Man of East Asia” (Zheng, 2015, p. 72). The integration of Chineseness
and topness has indeed enabled RMIUC to become a “good” Chinese gay
male “hero” who conforms to the dominant male gender roles. However, the
strategy of remasculinization in constructing a Chinese gay male Internet
celebrity is of limited efficacy, because it subscribes to a nationalist and
misogynist agenda. In his critical reading of Xiang Liu, a sporting idol who
won China’s first male track-and-field Olympic gold medal, Zhang (2014)
foregrounds the masculinist manifestation of neoliberal hegemony in China,
arguing that as a homogenizing, masculinist, and nationalistic icon, Liu’s
hypermasculinity serves as a space in which “to rearticulate Chinese national
identity and mitigate widening social inequality” (p. 36). The mythologiza-
tion of a Chinese top may easily fall into the trap of patriarchal nationalism,
thus demeaning the feminine Other and further reinforcing antieffeminacy
prejudice among the Chinese gay male community.
Turning the focus toward J.T., two contrasting views emerge in the online
discussion. One is that J.T. has been portrayed and re-created as cute, inno-
cent, and adorably shy (jiaoxiu). As one fan put it: “Little J is acting inno-
cent, so cute!” (Leihu, 2012). On the other hand, J.T. has been condemned by
many Chinese netizens. For the most part, these attacks are focused on his
body as a gay White male—for example, “such a short and small laowai!”
and “aren’t all laowai deemed to be bulky and muscular?” The term laowai
(literally “old foreigner”), according to Farrer (2010), refers to White
foreigners in Chinese cities. Although some fans do not deny that J.T. is
handsome, they evidently still find it difficult to accept his body. As one
commenter expressed, “J is so cute, like a timid and lovable little bird. But I
still feel uncomfortable as I have got used to large-boned laowai” (Sumou-
lan, 2012). In the popular imagination of Chinese–Caucasian interracial gay
sexuality, the racial stereotypes have constructed the gay White male as
dominant, with a masculine body. White gay men who conform to these
racial stereotypes may experience their foreign masculinity as empowering;
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“Chinese Top, British Bottom” 91
by contrast, a discriminatory attitude has been shown toward those viewed as
not conforming to the racialized masculine norms.
In addition to the criticisms of his body, some Chinese netizens have
questioned and attacked J.T.’s bottomhood, expressing negative sentiments:
“Such a handsome laowai is a shou! I am so sick of it” and “the laowai ought
to be a gong!” The issue with a White man being a top only arises because
the discourse says he ought to be, which again demonstrates a racialized
convention within which White gay men are stereotypically consigned to the
top position. From a nationalist perspective, J.T. is disdainfully subordinated
because he has surrendered his White masculine and dominant power to a
Chinese top. While celebrating the fact that “China has finally topped,” J.T.
is condemned as “so bottom” (tai shou le). Here used as an adjective, the
“bottom” (shou) position constitutes an inferior social identity in contempo-
rary Chinese gay male culture.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has explored how digital media technologies are changing the
celebrity culture in China, and how this is affecting the (re)construction of
interracial gay male sexuality in the Chinese popular imagination. Building
on a critical analysis of the construction of “Chinese top, British bottom” that
articulates normative discourses of race, gender, sexuality, and nation, this
study has advanced the critical inquiry into the intersection of race with gay
male sexuality and developed a cultural understanding of topness/bottom-
hood in the Chinese context. It describes an attempt to respond to the need, as
highlighted by Yep (2017), “to start producing more historically and cultural-
ly specific bodies of knowledge about sexual meanings, practices, and ways
of inhabiting non-normativities in their own geopolitical systems” (p. 118).
The narrative of RMIUC and J.T. has precipitated a heated online discus-
sion, and the couple have received widespread attention from netizens both
within and outside of China, which has made a significant contribution to the
social visibility of gay men in light of their absence and stereotypical por-
trayal in Chinese mainstream media. Employing the strategy of remasculin-
ization, RMIUC has legitimized himself as a masculinist and nationalistic
gay icon and gained acceptance from the dominant heteronormative culture,
which has further transformed him into a television and fashion celebrity.
However, these methods of achieving social visibility and acceptance have
been maintained at the expense of subordinating and marginalizing feminin-
ity and feminine embodiment, particularly a “Chinese bottomhood.” As such,
“Chinese bottom” could be an ideal position from which to question multiple
normativities and to build political coalitions among marginal groups across
national boundaries.
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Chapter 492
This study has interrogated the inextricable relationship between digital
media technologies and sociocultural forces in the context of Chinese gay
male sexuality, contributing to the field of intercultural new media studies
(INMS) (Shuter, 2012) and increasing the understanding of queer intercultu-
ral communication in a new media age. Through a critical reading of the
online fan discussions of RMIUC and J.T. and their story, the importance of
audience in understanding China’s gay male Internet celebrity as a performa-
tive practice has been emphasized. The public images of RMIUC and J.T. are
not passively received by their fans as consumers; rather, the cultural mean-
ings of their stardom are actively created in the transmedia consumption of
their fans across time and space. This relates to another issue in understand-
ing celebrity culture in China and elsewhere, namely changing meanings.
The cultural meanings of RMIUC (and J.T.) change over time. When
RMIUC became a gay father via surrogacy in 2017, this marked another
significant year in his celebrity practice. On November 3, 2017, he posted a
photo on Instagram of himself holding his newborn son, Frederic, in the
hospital, which quickly went viral and became one of his most-liked posts.
Since then, he has used Instagram strategically to perform his gay fatherhood
to his fans. On the one hand, RMIUC’s “gay father” Instagram posts chal-
lenge the heteronormative imagination of family and kinship. He has present-
ed a new parent–child relationship without heterosexual marriage, perform-
ing a “queer” family setup that delinks marriage from childrearing/parenting
and simultaneously questions the social norms against nonmarital childbirth
in Chinese society (Zhou & Tao, 2018). On the other hand, RMIUC’s Inter-
net celebrity practices also construct commercial surrogacy as the most desir-
able strategy for Chinese gay men to have children, supporting the idea of
“blood relations” as the foundation of kinship. In this sense, gay kinship is
arguably reducible to biological fact, which might marginalize other “inau-
thentic” forms of kinship (Zhou & Tao, 2018). RMIUC’s gay fatherhood has
become an integral part of his Internet celebrity practice. He created an
Instagram account for Frederic to document their daily life, which is fol-
lowed by thousands of fans. Although Frederic’s digital presence has not yet
been commercialized and presented to the market, he is becoming a “micro-
microcelebrity” (Abidin, 2015), which warrants further, careful investigation
regarding issues of privacy and child labor.
RMIUC (and J.T.), as a complicated cultural construct, is a noteworthy
platform on which gay male identities are simultaneously (re)constructed,
maintained, and contested. Understanding the changing meanings of China’s
gay male Internet celebrities can help one to address the communicative
dimensions of culture and power, offering new insights into the conceptual-
ization of gay male sexuality in contemporary China. From Duyao on MSN
Space and J. Law–Kirio on Renren.com, to RMIUC on Sina Weibo and
Instagram, as well as other rising gay male social media stars in a digitized
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“Chinese Top, British Bottom” 93
China—for example, beauty blogger Benny and comedy vlogger Penoy
Zhang—the landscape of China’s gay male Internet celebrities is becoming
more complex, dynamic, evolved, and heterogeneous alongside the contem-
porary media culture in a rapidly changing Chinese society. It requires ongo-
ing and further reflection to continue to unpack and challenge the “glo-
bal–local circuits of White gay normativity” (Eguchi, 2015), and to “heal
from the violence of heteronormativity in communication studies” (Yep,
2017).
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What factors have led to the success of LGBTQ (Internet) celebrities?
2. How do LGBTQ (Internet) celebrities perform their queerness?
3. How do digital communication technologies change our understand-
ing of culture and communication?
4. What is the importance of sociocultural context to queer(y) intercultu-
ral communication?
KEY WORDS
• Interracial Gay Sexuality
• Internet Celebrity
• Online Fandom
• Boys’ Love
• Bottomhood
• China
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