While one finds cross-dressing in traditional theater all across the world , I have never really had a very good explanation for why it was practiced with so much enthusiasm for so long in China, and that it continues to remain popular and respected even in today's more puritanical climate.

( Recently I started to branch out a bit in my opera viewing )

纵横 by 林错

I told J that I would talk about platonic forms in BL novels. However, I'm going to start out by talking about 纵横 , a Chinese GL novel I recently read. Set in a historical AU modeled loosely after the early Qing period (with the absence of the shaved foreheads, thankfully), this is the story of Lin Zong, daughter of emperor's younger ( Read more... )

I used to periodically whine to flemmings that the great Chinese collective unconscious is a bureaucracy. After all, other countries' quest stories are about great kings and knights. China's great quest story, the Journey to the West, is essentially about trying to get around the bureaucracy of Western Paradise. And even hell has all the accoutrement of a ( Read more... )