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In this article, we read and analyse selected young adult novels by Chinese-German author Wei Cheng that address the dilemmas faced by young female Chinese immigrants in Western countries. The aim is to explore the ways in which the construction of femininity and gender are inextricably bound up with categories of race and ethnicity in China-West encounters, and to probe the dynamics of such encounters embedded in the larger socio-political power structures. Through a critical analysis of the representation of Chinese femininity vis-à-vis Western masculinity, the essay interrogates the workings of the “Orientalist gaze” in relation to patriarchy and gender politics. The portrayals of the cross-racial encounter in Shaonv de Hong Chenyi (The Girl’s Red T-Shirt), which reiterate received ideas about the Orient, may be read as a product of self-Orientalisation, where the intriguing position of the adolescent Chinese girl prompts a rethinking of postcolonial gendered subjectivities. While self-Orientalisation may work to legitimate the discourse of Orientalism, the reading of Shaonv de Hong Faqia (The Girl’s Red Hairpin) reveals the ways in which self-Orientalisation could function as strategic essentialism that allows the female “Oriental” Other to gaze back and stand Orientalism on its head. The marriage between gendered and postcolonial approaches to children’s and young adult texts promises to act as a crucial intervention in the global struggle against hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reads contemporary Chinese children's author Yin Jianling's novels The Paper Puppy (Zhiren) and Orange Fish (Juzi Yu) alongside her letter collection Fifteen Letters to Girls (Zhi Weilai de Ni) to explore the overarching themes of femininity, difference and female sexualities. The Paper Puppy weaves homoeroticism, heterosexuality, pre-marital sex and teenage pregnancy into one single novel. Homoeroticism, linked with the curiosity for the changing adolescent female body, marks the end of sexual innocence and the beginning of sexual awakening for protagonist Su, which is entwined intricately with the adolescent girl's physical, emotional and psychological maturation. In contrast, heterosexuality is portrayed in both novels as a deviant and potentially perilous site for adolescent girls. Fraught with the attendant risks of pregnancy, abortion and even suicide, adolescent heterosexual relationships are to be cautioned against. The analysis suggests that despite her self-proclaimed re-traditionalisation and anti-feminist stance in the letters, the sexual discourses in Yin's novels are much more subtle and complex, saturated with feminist and queer overtones. Significantly, in the development of adolescent female sexualities, whether homoerotic or heterosexual, the role of motherhood and adult mentorship is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the representation of the figure of the effeminate boy in two contemporary adolescent novels written in Chinese which break the silence in addressing alternative gender and sexual identities. In A Beautiful Heart, the transsexual and homosexual tendencies evinced by an effeminate boy are treated as forms of sexual perversion to be cured through professional psychotherapy. The narrative's tensions and contradictions, however, call into question the reductive discourse of pathology. Such questioning unsettles, but does not subvert, the text's explicit conservatism, nor does it attribute legitimacy to queer identities. The Dream of A Beautiful Lad, on the other hand, sets out expressly to interrogate and shatter the monopoly of received opinions about boyhood, gender, maturity and adulthood. In presenting cases of gender nonconformity, however, the text reveals its own complicity in binarism, carrying with it strong traces of androgynous humanism which, in its intention to validate queer existence, is inevitably coloured by heteronormative and heterosexist prejudices. It is concluded that the various forms of gender-crossing and trans-phenomena represented as accompanying queer boyhood do not necessarily entail transcendence or subversion. The figure of the effeminate boy is nonetheless a welcome presence in children's and adolescent literature, unleashing possibilities for resistance and intervention in a rigidly gender-defined society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School stories in contemporary China, which target a pre- and early-adolescent readership, frequently evoke representations of girlhood and boyhood in normative gender terms. The present article considers issues of femininity and gender in Tomboy Dai An (Jia Xiaozi Dai An), one among a series of commercially successful school stories by the popular female author Yang Hongying. Drawing on contemporary theories of gender and sexuality with a primary focus on Judith Butler's work, the article examines critically the text's representations of femininity, its construction of ideal womanhood, and the strenuous labour invested in correcting gender deviations. It is posited that, on the one hand, Yang's text, written with the overt intention to enhance children's gender awareness, serves to guide female children into traditional feminine roles, and as such, risks reaffirming gender stereotypes and perpetuating patriarchal values. On the other hand, by revealing the contingency associated with gendered identities, and by acknowledging that deliberate—and sometimes even violent—efforts need to be made to preempt and correct gender deviations, the text sets out to question, paradoxically and inadvertently, the very stability and authority of gender as a natural fact, calling attention instead to its improvisatory and performative nature. Despite its effort to shape the thinking of young readers, the text nonetheless presents the pre- and early-adolescent years as a potentially deviant site where different possibilities of gender play out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern children’s literature in China has largely been dominated by narratives of the nation and nationalism. The present article sets out to question the dominance of that nationalist stance as the country transitioned into the modern era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining poetic children’s literature, the author unravels distinct non-nationalist intellectual sentiments in competition with the mainstream nationalist discourse that point to an imaginative envisioning of modernity. The article starts with a discussion of children’s poems and school songs imbued with a strong patriotic zeal in the late Qing and early Republican periods, and then moves on to the May Fourth period when lyricism and romanticism drew the attention of children’s literature advocates. Romantic-minded translators and writers, such as Bing Xin, embraced love as a humanist cosmopolitan vision while others, such as Zhou Zuoren and Liu Bannong, turned to local literary heritage, giving rise to a form of children’s songs with strong local consciousness. The article concludes by addressing the relevance of the insights derived from the historical case studies for contemporary children’s literature in China and beyond. It highlights the possibilities of envisaging modernity in non-nationalist terms and stresses the importance of cultivating in children alternative sentiments in the age of rising nationalism, both past and present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the construction of gender in children’s literature by focusing on the phenomenon of tomboyism as a typical case of cross-genderism. It seeks to probe into different representations of tomboyism, and the various ways in which cross-gendered traits in children are regulated and policed. In particular, the article aims to call attention to a balanced approach to gender issues in children’s literature which highlights the dynamics of sociality and individuality in the construction of children’s gendered identities. To this end, two contemporary children’s stories (one American and one Chinese)—Tomboy trouble (Wyeth 1998) and Tomboy Dai An (Jia xiaozi Dai An, Yang 2005)—are selected for comparative analysis. Instead of setting up a simplistic dichotomy between the conservative and the progressive as suggested by the stories’ drastically different intentions and agendas, the article argues that Tomboy trouble and Tomboy Dai An, which represent respectively the idealist focus on individuals and the realist focus on gender’s social dimensions, can complement and reinforce each other when juxtaposed and read together. As examples, they highlight the possibility and importance of alerting children to the interrelationship between individual choice, agency and material social realities. It is proposed that an awareness of the ways in which individuality can be simultaneously enabled and constrained by sociality will hopefully serve as the basis for action, agency and resistance on both individual and collective levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]