Reflections in Chinese Sexuality - Transcript

Intro [00:00:02]

This is the Nordic Asia podcast.

Joanne Kuai [00:00:07]

Welcome to the Nordic Asia Podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise in Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Joanne Kuai. I'm a PhD candidate at Karlstad University in Sweden and affiliated PhD student at NIAS, the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Joining me today is Dr. Weiyi Hu, a sessional facilitator at the University of Sydney. Her research interests centre around the sociology of everyday life, sexuality, feminism and familial relations in contemporary China. Today I have the pleasure of talking to Weiyi in person as she is visiting the Centre for Gender Studies at Karlstad University as a guest speaker for the Gender Talk series to speak about reflections on Chinese sexuality. This will also be the theme of our conversation today. We welcome to the Nordic Asia Podcast.

Weiyi Hu [00:00:58]

Thank you, Joanne, for having me. I'm very happy and very honoured to be here. My name is Weiyi. I am a recent PhD graduate from the University of Sydney. I am working at the University of Sydney at the moment as a sessional facilitator in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy.

Joanne Kuai [00:01:15]

Welcome. And to begin with. Would you please tell us what is sexuality?

Weiyi Hu [00:01:21]

That is a very good question. Thank you, Joanne. I would propose a working definition of sexuality. So I argue that sexuality is contingent bodily experiences that include but are not confined to the conventions of sexual intercourse or erotic desire. Sexuality encompasses a much broader range of experiences in everyday life, some of which are seemingly non sexual, such as familial codes of honour and shame. Sexuality in this wider sense simultaneously shapes and is shaped by social agents subjectivity of who they are.

Joanne Kuai [00:01:58]

And your research has this focus on China. Can you tell us how is sexuality experienced in China?

Weiyi Hu [00:02:05]

Yes. My doctoral thesis looks at contested experiences of sexuality in China. So the experiences of sexuality, as I would argue, are first and foremost contested in the contemporary Chinese society. And by that I mean sexuality in China is not a doxa. It is not something that goes without saying and comes without asking. Yes, we do have the government legitimized and official narratives of what it means of having a sexuality, of what the normative experience of sexuality would be, for instance, with an emphasis on heterosexual norms such as family, on reproduction, as well as on a sense of sexual morality, such as monogamy. However, there are also orthodoxy, unofficial narratives that is narrated by everyday agents in everyday life that challenges the official and government perception of what sexuality or what Chinese sexuality is.

Joanne Kuai [00:03:07]

And you've mentioned there's this connections and tensions between China and the West in producing the knowledges of sexuality. What are these connections and tensions.

Weiyi Hu [00:03:18]

The Chinese character xing (性), which is associated with sex and gender and sexuality in the contemporary context, only acquired this association in the early 1900s. In classic Chinese, the character xing meant human nature or heavenly endowed human nature. During the May 4th new culture period, which is approximately from 1915 to 1937, Chinese intellectuals translated and introduced psychological and sex education texts from Europe, America and Japan. This process, as historian Leon Antonio Rosha points out, re-conceptualized the Chinese character xing as sex and sex as the index to human character. The originary physical truth. It is from this process that xing became a new key word, a key word that sparks sexual politics in the Republic period, which saw xing, so sex, as well as human nature as significantly repressed by a hypocritical, futuristic, even cannibalistic, as Lu Xun has put it, sexual morality of the old China, the discourses of sexuality in the contemporary context, either in the everyday setting or in the academic setting. Singing this way are inescapable of such historicity. Chinese scholars and Western scholars are connected in producing knowledges of sexuality. In addition, my doctoral research found that the West is often deployed by everyday agents as well as various social institutions to narrate what it means to be Chinese or to define Chinese sexuality. Chinese occidental ism discourses. To say this differently is a discursive practice that. By constructing its Western other has allowed the Orient to participate actively with indigenous creativity in the process of self appropriation, even after being appropriated and constructed by the West and others. I think this is a very interesting point and an important concept. It is proposed by a Chinese literature scholar in 1995 as a counter-argument to the Orientalism described by FI in the 1970s.

Joanne Kuai [00:05:35]

And can you tell us a little bit more of your research? How did you come to the design? What methods have you used? Who have you interviewed? How was the experience of doing fieldwork in China?

Weiyi Hu [00:05:47]

Thank you. It's a very interesting experience. It's something completely new because for my undergraduate, as well as my master's degree, I did psychology. So I'm from a completely different background. I was very quantitative focused with my PhD thesis. I did semi-structured in-depth interview as well as occasional field observation for six months in Shanghai, China. My research approach is basically to immerse myself in the fieldwork and try to talk to everyday agents. Of course, the interview setting is quite limiting a lot of the times that you won't be able to get as much information as rich as the data would get. However, during my fieldwork, I was invited to numerous occasions of social gatherings by my participants, and I think it is during these occasions that I found more interesting stories behind what the participants were saying in a more official language in the interview setting.

Joanne Kuai [00:06:47]

Are there any interesting stories that you can share with us?

Weiyi Hu [00:06:51]

Yes. So I think the most interesting experience, the most interesting story I would argue, in the fieldwork was an interview with a community committee cadre. So I don't know if you're familiar with the community committee system. They are gradually dying in a sense. They're transforming. The community committee is like a bridge between the everyday agents and the government. There is a community committee in almost every district in Shanghai, so they're not called the community committee anymore. Gradually, they're actually transforming themselves as social workers. During my interview with a community committee cadre, this person explained to me their everyday responsibilities, including from registering life and death matters to distributing contraceptives, to monitoring the movement of the demographic in the corresponding area. So they consider themselves, as I said, a bridge between the everyday peoples and the central government. So they help realize the social policies that we read in the newspaper that is reported in the Western media. What I found especially interesting is about how involved the community committee is in everyday people's lives. So, for instance, there are a lot of study, there has been a lot of study done on one child policy and how one child policy has been very abrasive to Chinese women, to Chinese women's body. However, very few studies actually went into details and trying to explain or showcase how one child policy is realized in the local level in the practicing everyday life. So an example from the interview is that the community committee cadre told me they were responsible during the one child policy error from the 1980s and 1990s and even early 2000. They were responsible for distributing condoms and they remain a very close relationship with each household. So they are heavily involved in the everyday life. If there is a child is born in the household, you have to go to the community committee in order to get a registration certificate for you to register yourself through the whole ecosystem. The permanent resident system, and then you can move on to talk to the police and everything will be legitimized and legalized. And also because of the seemingly demographic voting system, because all of the community committee cadres are elected by the people living in the area. So they are very familiar with every household. They would go and visit every household and get a sense of what's going on in the household, how the husband and wife doing, are they good? Is it a harmonious household? That would be the term that they use under the name of getting familiar with the residents in the area so that they can get a vote? I think she told me that they are voted in once every three years. So this sort of embedded them in the everyday life of Chinese peoples in Shanghai. I think this is really interesting. This is something that I have not paid attention to and often. And taken for granted.

Joanne Kuai [00:10:08]

How was the process of recruiting the participants for your research? Because sometimes my understanding talking about sex can still be regarded as a taboo. And how was the process? Was it easy or difficult to find interviewees?

Weiyi Hu [00:10:25]

I think initially it was a bit of a challenge to reach the participants. I did attend a couple of social events in the beginning of my fieldwork and that really helped. So the snowballing started when I interviewed a few people from the social event and then they introduced me to their friends and then their friends friends. This, of course, has its limitations because this snowballing process means that markers of the participants that I interviewed would be within a specific cluster in the society. So I think the most challenging part would be to recruit people from to recruit people that occupy different positions in the society. So to have a more inclusive sample rather than just all situated within one party point.

Joanne Kuai [00:11:26]

And are they easy to talk to? How are they behaving when you pose all these questions about sex?

Weiyi Hu [00:11:33]

I think it's really interesting that it's not about that. I ask them questions about sex. People are actually very open to talk about their experience on Tinder because we have VPNs. So a lot of people are on Tinder. They're also open to their experience of the hookup culture, going to pubs, meeting people, their dating life. I think the most challenging part is how you get the participants to talk within the interview setting because the interview setting itself is and it can be intimidating for participants because it's not like an everyday conversation they would put on somehow a facade and they would automatically put themselves into the interviewees position. I think it's really important to sort of make them feel comfortable and I always meet up with the participants before the interview and after the interview for a drinking session. They usually helps. So yes, I think I get more interesting and nuanced answers in the everyday setting in the drinking session. It's very interesting because I always carry a little notebook with me and I'll if I hear something that's really interesting, I'll ask them whether I can take notes. So sometimes they will say yes and I will just note it down. Yeah.

Joanne Kuai [00:12:50]

I personally find it a little bit difficult to even translate a word sexuality into Chinese. And when we talk about sexuality in Chinese, the language we say Xing Probably. But when you say Xing, it can be interpreted into many different stuff. And how do you deal with that or how are you dealing with it?

Weiyi Hu [00:13:13]

I think the fact that when we use the Chinese term, the Chinese character xing, there are so many things that would come to our mind and participants would xing the same. I think that is a really interesting and important point because in Western literature, sex, sexuality, gender, sexual desire, each word has its own meaning, whereas in the Chinese character xing itself is quite encompassing already. So I think this is an advantage and only through the research process. So in the fieldwork that I come to realize I actually didn't need to explain to the participants all I'm asking you a question about what is xing. When I asked them what is sexuality, they understand more than the question actually looks like. So they would give you answers around sex, around sexuality, around gender inequality in a more encompassing way, rather than just limiting it to. For instance, if I asked an English speaker what is sex or what is sexuality?

Joanne Kuai [00:14:19]

One thing that also stood out in your presentation or talk is of this like a governmental interference that some Western people probably are not very familiar with the crackdown on prostitution, the censorship of porn, and even the community committee contract they just mentioned that will get really involved in people's everyday life. And how does this layer of interference or involvement change Chinese people or impact Chinese people's experience of sexuality?

Weiyi Hu [00:14:56]

I think Chinese people are very good at euthanizing things, euthanizing things in everyday life. So yes, there is and there has been in the past few years a strong crackdown on prostitution, pornographic materials, on obscenity. The community committee or the social work unit are quite heavily involved in the household. Or they pay attention to the neighborhood, They make sure that there is no visible, explicit distribution of obscenity in the area. However, it doesn't mean that Chinese people do not consume pornography, although it does not mean that Chinese people do not consume prosecutions. Prosecutions and pornography are very much happening, and that is the reason the government wants to crack it down. And I think in the study what I found really interesting is that one of the reasons the government or one of the justifications the government use in legitimizing their actions to censor either pornography or prostitution, obscenity or violence even, is that they the government would narrate materials associated with prostitution or violence or pornography as poisonous materials that's traveling from the West. So there is always a a struggle in the narrative that signaling what the West is and through appropriating, imagining the West. The government proposed a unified Chinese identity or unified Chinese approach to what is considered good for the society.

Joanne Kuai [00:16:46]

Can you tell us a little bit of the backstory? How actual led you to your research interests into studying the Chinese sexuality?

Weiyi Hu [00:16:56]

I have actually always been interested in human relations, in how do we relate to one and another, How do we interact with one another as well as how our sense of self is shaped through our interactions with each other? But a rather funny and awkward but funny thing that happened to me a couple of years before I started my PhD journey with regards to a guy that I was seeing at the time. And one morning I woke up and I needed to use his laptop to check my email and I didn't have my laptop with me at the time. And when I opened his safari, I noticed and I saw that the most frequently visited website, all the websites were pornographic websites. I was very surprised, to be honest, and I was a little shocked. I think that in triggered a sense of wonder, a sense of curiosity of why this happened. Why is pornography such a huge part of a person's everyday life? And this person is your everyday person. This person is nothing special. Yes. So I think this sparked my curiosity in the way how people experience sexuality and initially how pornography played a role in our everyday life. Of course, when I met my PhD supervisor, I think my focus and my research interests shifted a little bit. That also changed with the literature that I was exposed to. So yeah, this led me to my PhD project.

Joanne Kuai [00:18:41]

And congratulations on completing the doctoral thesis recently. Right. And can you tell us a little bit of the ongoing research projects that you're working on?

Weiyi Hu [00:18:52]

Yes. So I am I'm very passionate about I'm invested in this concept of Chinese occidentalism discourses. For my PhD project, I focused largely on the participants narrative. So how the Occident is narrated by everyday agents. I do really want to put more effort to probe and to explore how the Occident is narrated in contemporary Chinese government publications. So for instance, our General Secretary's study volumes as well as the governance volumes. I am really fascinated by the way how the Occident is always subtly embedded in his narrative in describing China's past. And we can't address China's future or China's present without talking about China's past. So I think I remember in the governance our general Secretary actually mentioned, in order to rejuvenate the nation, we need to look beyond the dark period where China was in a semi colonial stage. And China has a very difficult, had a very difficult relationship with Western imperial bullies. I think that was the term that he used. So I think it's really interesting to see how how the West, how the Occident is narrated by government officials and how through such narration that a unified Chinese identity of what Chinese people should do, who Chinese people should be, what China should look like, is formed.

Joanne Kuai [00:20:34]

So you're moving beyond sexuality?

Weiyi Hu [00:20:35]

Yeah, I do. I do. I do want to, yes.

Joanne Kuai [00:20:38]

Thank you so much today for the recording and to our listeners, you can also connect with Weiyi on Twitter and with me at Joanne Kuai. Thank you for listening to the Nordic Asia podcast showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia.

Outro [00:20:57]

You have been listening to the Nordic Asia podcast