Re-visiting Chang’E by Surfacing China’s Queer History

Following from my not-too stellar review of Sue Lynn Tan’s Daughter of the Moon Goddess and also the upcoming release of its sequel, Heart of the Sun Warrior, I began to think more deeply about how the story (which really isn’t that bad) could be made more interesting and meaningful. Aside from needing a whole lot of streamlining, I’m going to take all sorts of creative liberty and go against all forms of authorial intent by stating that the novel would have been much more stronger if Xingyin was simply male.

Would it still be Daughter of the Moon Goddess? Not anymore but the title of the story could remain. An idea that I have is that as she struggles with isolation, Chang’E raises her only son as a girl since she doesn’t know how else she could bring up a child. Not only would this give Chang’E a lot more personality and depth, it would also touch upon a hugely popular trope in East Asian media being the cross-dressing pretty boy. From Japan to China, whether it is the Kabuki theatre, Visual Kei or your daily drama serials, male celebrities have often cross-dressed to boost their popularity. While it is most often done for laughs, engaging with this trope in the literary form and from the anglophile lens would have been a perfect opportunity to explore queer politics in a manner that is a lot more relevant and also cutting edge. Aside from confronting notions of masculinity, concerns like the emasculation and fetishisation of Asian men may also be addressed.

As Sue Lynn’s story was to me, the most interesting in its first section where Xingyin is chosen to be Liwei’s study partner, their meeting as such would have also engaged with the popularised version of Mulan’s legend in a much more meaningful manner. Strongly implied (albeit possibly accidentally) but never discussed canonically was the queer undertones underscoring the romance between Mulan and Li Shang. As the latter had been commonly read as (unintentionally) bisexual since he falls in love with Mulan while thinking that she is Ping, this would have been a perfect opportunity to broaden our understanding of how sexuality is understood in Ancient China. Mulan aside, this concern was also similarly raised in Liang Shan Po and Zhu Ying Tai, also known as The Butterfly Lovers and China’s answer to Romeo and Juliet except it hints at queer intimacy in a way that Shakespeare had never intended. Despite Zhu Ying Tai’s position as celebrated figure for gender fluidity and female empowerment, Liang Shan Po’s sexuality is an aspect of the tale that is under-explored. Since the lovers had also met while they were both presenting as male, Daughter of the Moon Goddess would have been able to explore how a gay relationship would work in such a context if Xingyin was male.

Yes, I am aware that my suggestions are nothing like what Sue Lynn had intended in her not-so-little pastiche of Ancient China but why am I pushing so hard for it? Aside from how adorable and affirming it would be to see a queer character thrive in the army’s hyper-masculine environment as Xingyin does in the second and third sections of the book, a huge reason is that this would have been a perfect opportunity to bring to light China’s queer history and the prevalence of bisexuality. Chinese Emperors had always had male lovers and the most well-known of them was the story behind the Chinese term “the passion of the cut sleeve” where an Emperor cut off the sleeves of his robes that his lover fell asleep upon as a gesture of love so that he wouldn’t have to wake him up from his slumber. Given the LGBT community’s struggle towards finding acceptance within China and the larger Chinese community, a story like this would have been a lot more progressive and meaningful as it can help encourage tolerance by looking deeper into the buried past so as to develop a more nuanced understanding of our present. From this angle, Sue Lynn’s exploration of how gender is a performance could be strengthened as the book looks further into how notions of masculinity are constructed while questioning to what extent do they arise from nurture or nature.