Masculinity and Chineseness in post-1950s Hong Kong Cantonese opera

This paper examines the dynamics between cultural ideals and political powers enacted in women’s cross-dressing performance in Cantonese opera, a regional operatic form that has been shared by Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong and Guangdong in mainland China since the early twentieth century. Despite their popularity in Hong Kong, cross-dressing actresses are sometimes viewed as “fake men” or only substitutes for male actors. Contextualizing this stigma within Hong Kong’s colonial history and the cultural inferiority complex deeply rooted among Hongkongers, I investigate how the discourse of gender authenticity intersects with that of the cultural authenticity of Chineseness. This paper shows that the female cross-dressing body in Cantonese opera is not an appropriation of privileged masculinity or Chineseness. Rather, it is a performative means for problematizing orthodox and peripheral Chineseness.