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Theorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. By Kam Louie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 239. Hardcover U.S. $60.00.
In Theorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China Kam Louie offers us a very clear and concise analysis of the cultural models of Chinese masculinity from ancient imperial times to the present age of transnational contact. Although academic works on Chinese masculinity are not totally absent, systematic and thorough historical surveys of this topic are still rare. While gender studies of China are predominantly on femininity or other women-related issues, man as a gendered category has long escaped serious academic attention. Louie's book could be considered a pioneering effort to provide a rather comprehensive study of this subject. Besides describing in detail the historical development of the male image from premodern to contemporary times, Louie also focuses on the ways in which Chinese men have been represented under the Western gaze and how these representations have negotiated with the dominant Western culture.
The fundamental structure of masculinity in China, according to Louie, operates according to the two poles of wen (literary attainment, cultural knowledge, the mental) and wu (martial valor, martial arts, the physical), which are far more complementary than antagonistic, although the wen polarity has always been prioritized over wu in the conventional Chinese mindset. Wen maleness is exemplified by Confucius, the sage of the gentleman-scholar type, whereas Guan Yu, the God of War, represents the wu masculine ideal. These two archetypes of Chinese masculinity converge in the stern observance of moral demands, self-restraint, and a resistance or even a misogynistic attitude to...