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dominant heterosexual practices. As such, “Beijing Story” and “The Illusive Mind” present
same-sex romance narratives that blur boundaries between homo/heterosexual behavior and
identities. The literary portrayal of performative masculinity and femininity reinscribed within
male tongzhi relations simultaneously homologizes yet differentiates same-sex and opposite-sex
relations, etching a space for non-normative genders and sexualities to emerge.
[“Beijing Story”: Gender Performance to Reenact the Traditional Tragic Love Story]
“Beijing Story” uses fictional representations of homosexuality to challenge the
encroachment of public control into the private lives of Chinese (queer) citizens. On the one
hand, the story situates homosexual identity within heterosexual practices to blur the distinction
between homoerotic and heteroerotic desire. In this way, the narrative anecdotally assimilates
same-sex to opposite-sex relations, elucidating that they are comparable and compatible. On the
other hand, “Beijing Story” accentuates differences between same-sex and opposite-sex intimacy
to display the genuine nature of homosexual love and legitimacy of a discrete tongzhi identity.
Thus, the text represents male-male relations as animated by an incessant drifting between
homosexual and heterosexual subjectivities.
As the first publicly accessible gay love story when it was published and circulated
anonymously on the Chinese internet, “Beijing Story” (1996) spread rapidly through China’s
online community to become one of the most widely read “underground” texts (Kong 2004). 23
The novella, now with Beijing Comrade ( 北 京 同 志 ) 24 attributed as its author, pioneered illicit
publishing on the internet, setting a precedent that has since led to the overwhelming popularity
23 “Underground” here refers to how the text originated from the underground literary world of fiction published
online.
24 Most Comrade stories are published either anonymously or pseudonymously. Beijing Comrade, the author of
“Beijing Story,” and the authors of all Comrade texts discussed in this thesis also follow this practice. Chinese
netizens customarily use nicknames for all online interactions, but on Comrade websites pseudonyms also preserve
anonymity of authors writing about provocative matters, protecting them from legal and social ramifications.
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