I Watched That Movie Of Journey To The West! It Was Good. It Didn’t Register At The Time That I Was

It’s accurate.

Watching Guardian like:

I know. I already made one like that.

But it's funny.

Here is Part 3 of my annotations of First Edition MDZS, Volume 1, pages 148 - 209

Still trying to figure out why I like this look so much…

Would you be willing to talk about how standards of masculinity and femininity in Asia differ from those in Europe/North America? I know, it's a ridiculously broad question but I think you mentioned it in passing previously and I would be really interested in your answer especially in the context of the music industry and idols. I (European) sometimes see male Asian idols as quite feminine (in appearance, maybe?) even if they publicly talk about typically masculine hobbies of theirs.

Hi Anon,

Sorry that it took me over a month to get to this question, but the sheer volume of research that is necessary to actually answer this is significant, as there is an enormous body of work in gender studies. There are academics who have staked their entire careers in this field of research, much of which isn’t actually transnational, being that regional gender studies alone is already an incredibly enormous field.

As such, in no way can I say that I’ve been able to delve into even 1% of all the research that is out there to properly address this question. While I can talk about gender issues in the United States, and gender issues that deal with Asian American identity, I am not an expert in transnational gender studies between Asia and Europe. That being said, I’ll do my best to answer what I can. 

When we consider the concept of “masculinity” and “femininity,” we must first begin with the fundamental understanding that gender is both a construct and a performance. The myth of gender essentialism and of gender as a binary is a product of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality in each culture where it emerges.

What you must remember when you talk about gendered concepts such as “masculinity” and “femininity” is that there is no universal idea of “masculinity” or “femininity” that speaks across time and nation and culture. Even within specific regions, such as Asia, not only does each country have its own understanding of gender and national signifiers and norms that defines “femininity” or “masculinity,” but even within the borders of the nation-state itself, we can find significantly different discourses on femininity and masculinity that sometimes are in direct opposition with one another. 

If we talk about the United States, for example, can we really say that there is a universal American idea of “masculinity” or “femininity”? How do we define a man, if what we understand to be a man is just a body that performs gender? What kind of signifiers are needed for such a performance? Is it Chris Evan’s Captain America? Or is it Chris Hemsworth’s Thor? What about Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark? Do these characters form a single, cohesive idea of masculinity? 

What about Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen? Miller is nonbinary - does their superhero status make them more masculine? Or are they less “masculine” because they are nonbinary? 

Judith Butler tells us in Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993) that what we call gender is inherently a discursive performance of specific signifiers and behaviors that were assigned to the gender binary and enforced by compulsory heterosexuality. She writes:

Insofar as heterosexual gender norms produce inapproximate ideals, heterosexuality can be said to operate through the regulated production of hyperbolic versions of “man” and “woman.” These are for the most part compulsory performances, ones which none of us choose, but which each of us is forced to negotiate. (1993: 237)

Because gender norms vary regionally, there are no stable norms that coalesce into the idea of a single, universal American “masculinity.” What I mean by this is that your idea of what reads as “masculine” might not be what I personally consider to be “masculine,” as someone who grew up in a very left-leaning liberal cosmopolitan area of the United States. 

What I am saying is this: Anon, I think you should consider challenging your idea of gender, because it sounds to me like you have a very regionally locked conception of the gender binary that informs your understanding of “masculinity” and femininity” - an understanding that simply does not exist in Asia, where there is not one,  but many different forms of masculinity. 

China, Japan, and South Korea all have significant cultural differences and understandings of gender, which has a direct relationship with one’s national and cultural identity. 

Japan, for example, might consider an idol who has long, layered hair and a thin body to be the ideal for idol masculinity, but would not consider an idol to be representative of “real” Japanese masculinity, which is epitomized by the Japanese salaryman. 

South Korea, however, has a very specific idea of what idol masculinity must look like -  simultaneously hypermasculine (i.e. extremely muscular, chiseled body) and “feminine” (i.e. makeup and dyed hair, extravagant clothing with a soft, beautiful face.) But South Korea also presents us with a more “standardized” idea of masculinity that offers an alternative to the “flowerboy” masculinity performed by idols, when we consider actors such as Hyun Bin and Lee Min-ho. 

China is a little more complex. In order to understand Chinese masculinity, we must first understand that prior to the Hallyu wave, the idea of the perfect Chinese man was defined by three qualities: 高富帅 (gaofushuai) tall, moneyed, and handsome - largely due to the emergence of the Chinese metrosexual. 

According to Kam Louie:

[The] Chinese metrosexual, though urbanized, is quite different from his Western counterpart. There are several translations of the term in Chinese, two of the most common and standard being “bailing li'nan” 白领丽男 and “dushili'nan” 都市丽男，literally “white-collar beautiful man” and “city beautiful man.” The notion of “beautiful man” (li-nan) refers to one who looks after his appearance and has healthy habits and all of the qualities usually attributed to the metrosexual; these are also the attributes of the reconstituted “cool” salaryman in Japan, men who have abandoned the “salaryman warrior” image and imbibed recent transnational corporate ideologies and practices. 

[...]

In fact, the concept of the metrosexual by its very nature defines a masculinity ideal that can only be attained by the moneyed classes. While it can be said to be a “softer” image than the macho male, it nevertheless encompasses a very “hard” and competitive core, one that is more aligned with the traditional “wen” part of the wen-wu dyad that I put forward as a conventional Chinese ideal and the “salaryman warrior” icon in Japan. Unsurprisingly, both metrosexuality and wen-wu masculinity are created and embraced by men who are “winners” in the patriarchal framework. 

The wen-wu 文武 (cultural attainment – martial valor) dyad that Louie refers to is the idea that Chinese masculinity was traditionally shaped by “a dichotomy between cultural and martial accomplishments” and is not only an ideal that has defined Chinese masculinity throughout history, but is also a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

When the Hallyu wave swept through China, in an effort to capture and maximize success in the Chinese market, South Korean idol companies recruited Chinese idols and mixed them into their groups. Idols such as Kris Wu, Han Geng, Jackson Wang, and Wang Yibo are just a few such idols whose masculinities were redefined by the Kpop idol ideal. 

Once that crossover occurred, China’s idol image shifted towards the example South Korea set, with one caveat: such an example can only exist on stage, in music videos, and other “idol” products. Indeed, if we look at any brand campaigns featuring Wang Yibo, his image is decisively more metrosexual than idol; he is usually shot bare-faced and clean-cut, without the “idol” aesthetics that dominate his identity as Idol Wang Yibo. But, this meterosexual image, despite being the epitome of Chinese idealized masculinity, would still be viewed as more “feminine” when viewed by a North American gaze. (It is important to note that this gaze is uniquely North American, because meterosexual masculinity is actually also a European ideal!)

The North American gaze has been trained to view alternate forms of masculinity as non-masculine. We are inundated by countless images of hypermasculinity and hypersexual femininity in the media, which shapes our cultural consciousness and understanding of gender and sexuality and unattainable ideals. 

It is important to be aware that these ideals are culturally and regionally codified and are not universal. It is also important to challenge these ideals, as you must ask yourself: why is it an ideal? Why must masculinity be defined in such a way in North America? Why does the North American gaze view an Asian male idol and immediately read femininity in his bodily performance? What does that say about your North American cultural consciousness and understanding of gender? 

I encourage you to challenge these ideas, Anon.  

“Always already a cultural sign, the body sets limits to the imaginary meanings that it occasions, but is never free of imaginary construction.” - Judith Butler 

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York, NY, Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York, NY, Routledge, 1993. Flowerboys and the appeal of 'soft masculinity' in South Korea. BBC, 2018,  Louie, Kam. “Popular Culture and Masculinity Ideals in East Asia, with Special Reference to China.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 71, Issue 4, November 2012 , pp. 929 - 943 Louie, Kam. Chinese, Japanese, and Global Masculine Identities. New York, NY, Routledge, 2003. 

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼 Vol 1, Notes 7

By Priest, English translation by 7 Seas

Pages 415 - end. (Last 3 little notes!)

Last two under the cut.

殃及池鱼 is the idiom she’s building on. Priest is so funny.

皇叔 = 😁😍🥰。

王国舅 = …well, he’s not Gu Yun.

Stars of Chaos - All The Notes List

All The Seven Seas Books Masterlist

I'm linking some of MoonIvy's reddit posts, in case you'd like to read about their language learning journey. They are awesome! They're one of the authors of the Heavenly Path Reading Guide! That guide is super helpful, and I followed a lot of it's advice (and Heavenly Path's recommendations) once I was starting to read more. Heavenly Path also has a ton of recommendations of things you can read that are different difficulty levels, so I suggest browsing their suggestions if you have no idea what to read.

Also, if you use Readibu app, the app can give you a rough estimate of the HSK level of the chapter you're reading (you'll just open the chapter you're reading, click the book icon in lower middle of screen, then click Stats. You'll see a Comprehension % by reader's HSK level). For beginners, I suggest you try to find novels that say 90% or more over the HSK 4 level, or at least 80% and up if you can't find anything easy at first. Once you've moved from graded readers to simpler kids novels like 秃秃大王, novels with a 90%+ comprehension at HSK 4 level above will be the next easiest for you to read. (Later on: if you're looking to extensively read and barely look words up, look for 95-98% comprehension at the HSK level you think you're roughly at). For example, I'm reading 盗墓笔记 and it's 93% comprehensible for HSK 5 level, 98% comprehensible at HSK 6 level, and my vocabulary range is between HSK 5-6 roughly so it makes sense I can read dmbj extensively if I want (without word lookups and still understand it), but still have several unknown words I could look up if desired.

From intermediate to native webnovels in 18 months (Some wonderful mentions of what MoonIvy read. I also read 秃秃大王, 大林和小林, and 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 and felt they were really good novels to read after graded readers but before novels like 盗墓笔记 and 撒野).

21 months of reading native books, and breaking into native platforms

Learn Mandarin Chinese to read danmei — it will be challenging but worth it

I can read novels without a dictionary after 3 years of reading danmei (Chinese boy love)

I reached 3,000 unique character knowledge by reading children's books and danmei (Chinese boy love) 

Some little notes of my own experience, I guess in relating to the journey others took. So: for me, I read stuff WAY harder than graded readers, when I initially tried to read webnovels. It was hard, and it probably made me feel more exhausted than I needed to feel. But it was motivating. So if you really enjoy X difficult novel, you can try to read it whenever, and keep reading it as long as you feel the desire to.

There was one person who shared their reading experience on the chineselanguage subreddit (I'm trying to find the post again) who read 撒野 after like 3 months of initial study. That's way faster than I would've tried! That's a huge spike in difficulty from knowing nothing to reading a novel with thousands of unique words in a few months! But some people just will find that they enjoy doing that, and it works for them, so don't be afraid to just TRY doing what you want to do and see how it goes. It might go awesome. And if it's so hard it's demotivating, you can always go look for something easier for a while.

I tried to read 镇魂 from pretty much my first month, and never got farther than a couple paragraphs until over a year of study. I'd take a glance at it once in a while, and see if it was easier to read, until one day it was 'doable' to actually try reading (while looking unknown words up). I tried reading 默读 from like month 5 onward, usually using a parallel mtl text and only picking up a few words, it was not doable to read until maybe 1.5-2 years into learning. I was already reading the mtl of 默读 because the english translation only had like 20 chapters back then, so I just would try to read the chinese original in small sentence pieces at times. Around 8-10 months I started trying to read 天涯客, and it kind of was doable in Pleco app's Reader as long as I looked up a lot of words. It used to take me 1.5-2 hours to get through a chapter, then over the next 6 months things got better and it'd take 1 hour then 40 minutes then finally 20-30 minutes per chapter. At the same time as reading 天涯客, I also read 小王子 around month 12 extensively (looking no words up) because I had the print book and wanted to practice reading extensively, I read 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 read in Pleco while looking up words (which was easier for me to read than 天涯客 and helped me build up reading stamina and basic vocabulary a bit), and I read a pingxie fanfic called 寒舍 by 夏灬安兰. I read around 60 chapters of that fanfic, and 30 chapters of 天涯客, over those 6 months. 寒舍 was harder to read than 笑猫日记, but easier than 天涯客, so I would switch between all 3 stories depending on how hard/easy I wanted my reading to be. Eventually 笑猫日记 felt readable without word lookups, so I used 寒舍 as my 'easier' read and 天涯客 (and added 镇魂) as my harder reads. Then 寒舍 became readable without word lookups if I wanted (still had unknown words but they no longer affected my ability to follow the plot and most important details), so 镇魂 became my harder novel to read.

And that's pretty much the strategy I continued to use: I would bounce between a 'easier' novel I could read extensively, a medium difficulty novel I could just look keywords up with (if I didn't feel like looking up a ton of words) to understand, and a 'harder' novel I had to look up words in order to read. Maybe 2 years in (I don't quite remember now), I picked some 'easier' novels from Heavenly Path's recommendations with only 1000-2000 unique words, and read some of them to fill in gaps in my basic vocabulary (so looking up unknown words) and practice extensive reading with some of them. I think that was a really helpful decision, and improved my reading comprehension and stamina a LOT. If I could go back, I would've read a lot more 'easier' 1000-2000 unique word novels before trying to push right into the novels I did. But then, on the other hand? I think pushing right into 'difficult' novels helped me learn vocabulary to read priest's writing in particular, much faster, which was rough going at the start but now pays off because I find that author's stories have more words/phrases/sentence structures I'm comfortable with, and also a decent murder mystery/investigative vocabulary base which is helpful since it's a genre I like reading. Without all the 镇魂 reading I did in the past, I think 破云 would be almost incomprehensible to me. But instead, since I did read those investigative words a lot early on, novels like 默读 and SCI are now 'medium' feeling novels to me, and 破云 is harder but readable if I look words up.

Chinese Fashion doesn’t always make sense to me, but I gotta admit that I think it’s Really Interesting.

niche absurd fashion post

OKAY in response to this rb of my post here from @cansada-contenta​, i’ve decided to compile a bunch of stupid fashion i’ve seen on chinese singer(s) and loved in recent years. :DDDDD

as for that horrific blue sweater on xiao zhan, YO THAT’S EXACTLY THE KIND OF SHIT I’M TALKING ABOUT. most of these photos are of my good boy 吴青峰 during his time on singer 2019 bc his stylist did GREAT (also i only watch one (1) chinese reality singing show lol)

if you’d like to see most of these outfits in person (plus others I didn’t manage to find good pics of! gosh that violet trenchcoat outfit he’s wearing when he’s singing with jolin tsai at 49:11??? so good. jolin looks classy and he just looks like a DISASTER)  you can check out this compilation of all his songs on the season here! :D highly recommend, i love his voice ;~;

anyways, first, the spiritual cousin to that horrendous blue sweater number on xz:

hideous!! what the fuck is that!! looks like you cut up two sweaters and stapled them to the front of a white t-shirt and then paired it with some white slacks!! what!! horrible!! i love it so fucking much!

rest is under a readmore bc i got really quite carried away:

Keep reading

I spent a fair potion of my formative years idolizing Frank Frazetta / his artwork. He gave hope to all those who didn’t look like modern-day wraith-thin models. Though you have to do a Lot of working out to look like His models. Time to go do some push-ups!

older lotr illustrations sometimes depict éowyn wearing ridiculously small armour. apart from the problem general sexualisation of the only female character (who really does anything), there’s another hilarious thought:

éowyn pretended to be dernhelm, a man. to fit in, she must have worn men’s armor. so the armor in the illustrations is normal for rohirrim.

therefore, all the rohirrim rode to war just like that:

Asking for directions

https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4812237040521729#&gid=1&pid=6

Zhou Shen’s new photo shoot from the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival performance. 😍🥰

Happy Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!

Super-Vocal 声入人心

I have been obsessed with listening, and occasionally watching, song clips from Super Vocal recently.

YouTube

声入人心 单曲纯享

声入人心 单曲纯享

Yes, yes - everyone who likes 周深 Zhou Shen had recommended to watch the whole thing multiple times, but I never had any desire to expand beyond Zhou Shen until recently.

Maybe it was seeing 刘宪华 Henry Lau's expressions as he watched other people sing.

Such a cutie. A polyglot polymath cutie with really nice abs (you all saw the movie Double World, yah?)

Or maybe it was Zheng Yunlong (I still don't think he's fair. Nothing about Zheng Yunlong is fair. Not his height, not his face, not his singing. It's just not fair. Especially when they put him in costume. Any costume. Or do his hair. Any hairstyle. ）

And it's all been incredibly wonderfully ... gay? Since they only have men on the show, all the duets have been between guys. They didn't even bother changing the lyrics to pretend they were singing about girls -- it's just "Oh, 哥 big brother, I miss you" etc. So awesome.

And the men are so wonderfully put together. And talented.

Anyway, I highly recommend it. Everyone was right - Super-Vocal is totally worth listening to / watching. (Maybe someday I'll get to watch the entire thing instead of just listening at work.)