![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Lou Jing was born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and an African American father. She never met her father as he left China before she was born, and so was brought up by her mother in a single-parent family. In 2009, Lou Jing entered the Shanghai Dragon TV’s talent show Go Oriental Angel! Lou’s skin colour engendered heated debates among netizens, which became polarized between comments of support and racist slurs against Lou and her mother. This study reveals how mixed heritage subverts the overlapping boundaries of gender, race and Chinese ethnicity, and online debates demonstrate the persistent influences of historical discourses and contemporary context in a rapidly globalizing China. The blogosphere has provided a forum for heated discussions of biopolitics, in which Chinese ethnic identity is continuously contested.
Notes
1. The making of a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them (Oxford English Dictionary online).
2. Howells, “Is it Because I is Black?” 162.
3. Wang et al., “A Study of the Human Flesh Search Engine.”
4. Ibid., 53.
5. Hall, “The West,” 291.
6. Bertrand and Hughes, Media Research Methods, 94.
7. Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” 208, 212.
8. Blommaert and Bulcaen, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 448.
9. Fairclough et al., “Introduction,” 5.
10. Van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Studies,” 65–6.
11. Chinahush is an American website, with translations of posts from selected Chinese websites, blogs and BBS sites.
12. Shanghaiist, 3 September, 2009, http://shanghaiist.com/2009/09/03/videos_chocolate_girl_lou_jing_on_o_1.php.
13. Van Leeuwen, Introducing Social Semiotics, 104–5. Even a scholarly debate on Lou Jing’s claim to Chinese nationality describes her to have caramel complexion. Frazier and Zhang, “Ethnic Identity,” 1–2. However, the article presents a more detailed discussion on the influences of global, especially American, black popular culture in relation to this case, 12.
14. Villard, “‘Class’, ‘Race’ and Language,” 312.
15. Ibid.
16. Ma, “A New Perspective,” 201.
17. Ibid., 203–4. Robeson Taj Frazier and Lin Zhang’s recent article on Lou Jing views the case chiefly as an indication of Chinese cultural struggles over race and anti-black racism, while race is not clearly defined or distinguished from ethnicity.
18. Wang and Cao, “Lou Jing incident.”
19. Macey, “Rethinking Biopolitics,” 188–9.
20. Gilbert, “Interrogating Mixed Race,” 68.
21. Root, “A Bill of Rights”; “Multiracial Asians.”
22. Daniel, “Black and White Identity,” 122–3.
23. Root, “A Bill of Rights”; Daniel, “Black and White Identity,” 127.
24. See note 20 above.
25. Zack, “Life after Race,” 298.
26. The Lou Jing incident began in August 2009 and Obama visited China in November that year.
27. Examples of these comments include ‘Fucked by a black. How come a zebra wasn’t born…?’; ‘Chinese girls, please have a little more self-respect’; ‘those coming out of mixing yellow and black bloods are all truly ugly, a dirty feeling’. Cited in Parlour Magazine (a US based website), Accessed 30 January 2013, http://parlourmagazine.com/2009/09/a-new-kind-of-idol-lou-jing/.
28. Foucault, The History of Sexuality.
29. Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese; Ong, Flexible Citizenship.
30. There were many supporters of Lou Jing making precisely this point in response to her blog (Accessed 2 February 2013 in Chinese, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_614bc29b0100ektk.html). See also 11 August 2009, http://ent.joy.cn/video/673776.htm, in which she shows off her Shanghainese with a tongue twister.
31. Dikötter, The Discourse of Race, 58.
32. Lo, “Miscegenation,” 298.
33. Ibid., 300.
34. Macey, “Rethinking Biopolitics.”
35. Duara, “On Theories of Nationalism,” 134.
36. Gladney, Dislocating China, 117; Chow, “Imagining Boundaries.”
37. Root, “A Bill of Rights,” 5.
38. Ibid., 7.
39. Smith, “Protected Women,” 221–3.
40. Ibid., 223–4.
41. Beech, “Eurasian Invasion.”
42. Smith, “Protected Women,” 232–3.
43. Ewing, “Book Review”; Fung, “The Eurasian Nation.”
44. Zhou, “Seeing Red.”
45. Callahan, China, Chapter 1.
46. Ma, “A New perspective.”
47. Ibid., 214.
48. Pieke, “Immigrant China.”
49. Ibid., 56.
50. Vines, “‘China’s Black Pop Idol.” Ding claimed that the reason for his exit from the sport was that there was no future for the sport in China because of the low salaries and esteem.
51. Matthews, “Eurasian Persuasions.”
52. Ibid., 43.
53. Gilbert, “Interrogating Mixed Race.”
54. See note 41 above.
55. See Matthews, “Eurasian Persuasions,” 49–50.
56. Teng, “Eurasian Hybridity,” 158.
57. Ibid., 151, 156.
58. Cited in Liu, “The Eurasian Face.”
59. Heyes and Jones, Cosmetic Surgery.
60. See note 41 above.
61. Heyes and Jones, Cosmetic Surgery, 14.
62. Hapa is a term used in Hawaii to refer to someone of mixed heritage.
63. See for example, Youku, original programme broadcasted in 2009, Accessed 15 July 2013, http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzAyMzU0MDA = .html. Television programme for young adults, with Eurasian children paraded on the show with the tagline Xiao xiao hunxueer jianzhi keai si le! (Little mixed race children are so cute!).
64. Bhabha, The Location of Culture.
65. Lee et al., China in Africa.
66. Hood, “Distancing Disease.”
67. Callahan, China. Frazier and Zhang make a similar point about ‘the role of the Internet as a significant contemporary space for power struggles over Chinese racial and national identity by everyday people’, ‘Ethnicity Identity,’ 13.
68. Bo Yang argues that ‘Chinese people’s present state of ugliness is due to our own ignorance of the fact that we are ugly’. ‘The Ugly Chinaman’.
69. Wang, “Mixed Marriages.”
70. Anzaldúa, Borderlands.
71. Chilton, Analysing Political Discourse.
72. Van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Studies.”
73. Dikötter, The Discourse of Race.
74. Callahan, China.
75. Cited in Callahan, China, Chapter 1.
76. Ibid., 194.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Leung Wing-Fai
Leung Wing-Fai received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Studies and Acting Head of Asian Studies, University College Cork, Ireland. She is the author of Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong: Image, Performance and Identity (Routledge 2014), co-editor of East Asian Film Stars (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), and has published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Sociological Review and Canadian Journal of Film Studies. Her research focuses on Chinese language film, media (including new media) and popular culture; her current project examines digital entrepreneurship in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China, with a developing comparative perspective.
Author’s postal address: School of Asian Studies, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
