Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002

Lan Dong explores in her paper, "Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002" the recent landscape of Chinese gay cinema through discussing the following three feature films: Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993), Zhang Yuan's East Palace, West Palace (1996), and Stanley Kwan's Lan Yu (2001). The grouping derives from the concern that they all set their stories in Beijing. Using the capital city as a cultural background, the films display how queer is perceived in China from the 1920s to the end of the 1990s. All three storylines portray the characters' struggle to recognize their particular identity as gay men. In Farewell My Concubine, Cheng Dieyi never comes out throughout the decades when China experienced a series of political events and ends up with a testimonial suicide for his queer identity. Policeman Xiao Shi's confusion about his sexual orientation leads East Palace, West Palace to an open ending. With the social circumstances fading into a supplemental backdrop, Lan Yu focuses specifically on two men's love. By way of tracing gay theme as it is reflected in these films, Dong maps a development process of representing gay relationship in Chinese cinema. Lan Dong, "Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002" page 2 of 8 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 7.2 (2005):