PART II | DECEPTIVELY TRADITIONAL: THE ILLUSORY RADICALISM OF FAN XIAOYAN’S CYBORGS
THE FEMALE BODY & THE MACHINE IN CHINA
Before I begin my analysis of Fan Xiaoyan’s sculpture series, it is necessary to give some historical background on the female-machine relationship in China. In socialist China, women and machines had been associated with each other from the early 1950s as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (hereafter CCP) official ideology of gender equality.[57] Rejecting the gendered division of labor in traditional Chinese society, which they saw as patriarchal and oppressive, the CCP promoted a state-sponsored feminism that encouraged women to participate in the socialist project by taking on jobs that were previously considered the domain of men. Many of these jobs involved operating heavy machinery, and part of the campaign to emancipate women from traditional roles was the proliferation of images and narratives of rural women doing manual labor with machines (often called ‘model women’ or nüjie diyi).[58] Inherent in these representations, and socialist state feminism more generally, was the masculinization and de-sexualization of the female body.[59] Because working women labored in harsh, industrialized factory settings, their bodies were masculinized in order to visually associate them with manual labor. Images of these women showed their robust and strong bodies clothed in masculine work outfits (figure 10). Propaganda narratives detailed the transformative, masculinizing process of a woman becoming a nüjie diyi, which began with physical strengthening and then moved to the formation of “a symbiotic relationship between body and machinery,” emphasizing that the liberated socialist woman embodied physical power, confidence, and “familiarity with new technology.”[60] These images and narratives of socialist women’s bodies melding with new technology were mobilized by the government to represent the progress brought by state socialism. In other words, “whereas the feminine, vulnerable, and foot bound women in the domestic sphere symbolized the feudal, backward, and weak China, these robust model women in the public sphere were icons of socialist New China rising on the global stage.”[61]
In the postsocialist period, a new stereotype of the female worker came into being: the dagongmei, or female migrant worker (figure 11). This Cantonese term, made up of dagong (working for the boss or selling labor) and mei (little sister), carries both gendered and commodified meanings; according to Pun Ngai, its use signifies a significant change in labor relations since the Mao period.[62] In contrast to the socialist period, when emphasis was on heavy industry, women working in factories in reform-era China participate in the production of electronics, which requires more detail-oriented work. This requires an association with more essentialist female characteristics, like thin fingers and attention to small details. As Hillary Crane summarizes, “Where Mao’s China downplayed or denied sex differences, as illustrated by the terms tongzhi (comrade) or gongren (worker), reform-era China emphasizes or requires sex difference.”[63] The use of the word mei (little sister) in the phrase dagongmei implies youthfulness, naivete, and vulnerability, reversing the masculinized portrayal of female factory workers in the socialist period. For those in power, traditionally masculine traits are favored and rewarded, while migrant women who work in factories are pressured to exhibit traditionally feminine traits, specifically submissiveness and obedience.[64] In this way, “the division of sex [in factories] seems natural, and is constantly being re-legitimized through masculinity’s association with other positions of status and power.”[65] These workers are still expected to endure long hours on assembly lines, but they are sexualized rather than de-sexualized and feminized rather than masculinized. These female migrant workers, who move to the city for work, parallel the women who go to the city to become prostitutes, and the term for their work is the same, “mai shen—to sell one’s body: to men for sex, or to the capitalists as labor.”[66] The treatment of the female laborer’s body in China, in the socialist and postsocialist period, forms the backdrop for Fan Xiaoyan’s sculpture series, which is part of this legacy.
Figure 10: Liang Jun, the first female tractor driver in China, and her assistant. From The People’s Pictorial, August 1950. Taken from Du, “Socialist Modernity in the Wasteland,” 63.
Figure 11: Photograph of a young factory worker in Dongguan, 2018. From “東莞打工妹的「廠花」，一個比一個漂亮有氣質 [The ‘flowers’ of factories in Dongguan are pretty and elegant],” KK News, https://kknews.cc/society/3ojvvoa.html.
Figure 10: Liang Jun, the first female tractor driver in China, and her assistant. From The People’s Pictorial, August 1950. Taken from Du, “Socialist Modernity in the Wasteland,” 63.
Before I begin my analysis of Fan Xiaoyan’s sculpture series, it is necessary to give some historical background on the female-machine relationship in China. In socialist China, women and machines had been associated with each other from the early 1950s as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (hereafter CCP) official ideology of gender equality.[57] Rejecting the gendered division of labor in traditional Chinese society, which they saw as patriarchal and oppressive, the CCP promoted a state-sponsored feminism that encouraged women to participate in the socialist project by taking on jobs that were previously considered the domain of men. Many of these jobs involved operating heavy machinery, and part of the campaign to emancipate women from traditional roles was the proliferation of images and narratives of rural women doing manual labor with machines (often called ‘model women’ or nüjie diyi).[58] Inherent in these representations, and socialist state feminism more generally, was the masculinization and de-sexualization of the female body.[59] Because working women labored in harsh, industrialized factory settings, their bodies were masculinized in order to visually associate them with manual labor. Images of these women showed their robust and strong bodies clothed in masculine work outfits (figure 10). Propaganda narratives detailed the transformative, masculinizing process of a woman becoming a nüjie diyi, which began with physical strengthening and then moved to the formation of “a symbiotic relationship between body and machinery,” emphasizing that the liberated socialist woman embodied physical power, confidence, and “familiarity with new technology.”[60] These images and narratives of socialist women’s bodies melding with new technology were mobilized by the government to represent the progress brought by state socialism. In other words, “whereas the feminine, vulnerable, and foot bound women in the domestic sphere symbolized the feudal, backward, and weak China, these robust model women in the public sphere were icons of socialist New China rising on the global stage.”[61]
Figure 11: Photograph of a young factory worker in Dongguan, 2018. From “東莞打工妹的「廠花」，一個比一個漂亮有氣質 [The ‘flowers’ of factories in Dongguan are pretty and elegant],” KK News, https://kknews.cc/society/3ojvvoa.html.
In the postsocialist period, a new stereotype of the female worker came into being: the dagongmei, or female migrant worker (figure 11). This Cantonese term, made up of dagong (working for the boss or selling labor) and mei (little sister), carries both gendered and commodified meanings; according to Pun Ngai, its use signifies a significant change in labor relations since the Mao period.[62] In contrast to the socialist period, when emphasis was on heavy industry, women working in factories in reform-era China participate in the production of electronics, which requires more detail-oriented work. This requires an association with more essentialist female characteristics, like thin fingers and attention to small details. As Hillary Crane summarizes, “Where Mao’s China downplayed or denied sex differences, as illustrated by the terms tongzhi (comrade) or gongren (worker), reform-era China emphasizes or requires sex difference.”[63] The use of the word mei (little sister) in the phrase dagongmei implies youthfulness, naivete, and vulnerability, reversing the masculinized portrayal of female factory workers in the socialist period. For those in power, traditionally masculine traits are favored and rewarded, while migrant women who work in factories are pressured to exhibit traditionally feminine traits, specifically submissiveness and obedience.[64] In this way, “the division of sex [in factories] seems natural, and is constantly being re-legitimized through masculinity’s association with other positions of status and power.”[65] These workers are still expected to endure long hours on assembly lines, but they are sexualized rather than de-sexualized and feminized rather than masculinized. These female migrant workers, who move to the city for work, parallel the women who go to the city to become prostitutes, and the term for their work is the same, “mai shen—to sell one’s body: to men for sex, or to the capitalists as labor.”[66] The treatment of the female laborer’s body in China, in the socialist and postsocialist period, forms the backdrop for Fan Xiaoyan’s sculpture series, which is part of this legacy.
[57] Tina Mai Chen, “Female Icons, Feminist Iconography? Socialist Rhetoric and Women’s Agency in 1950s China,” Gender & History 15, no. 2 (August 2003): 271.
[58] Nüjie diyi literally translates as ‘female-kind-first’ and was used to describe women (or groups of women) that were recognized as the first to take on certain jobs previously dominated by men (for example, the first female tractor driver, first train conductor, etc.). For more on the nüjie diyi in visual culture, see Chen, “Female Icons, Feminist Iconography?.”
[59] Chen, “Female Icons, Feminist Iconography?,” 275-76. While the socialist construction of the ideal woman was more complicated than a simple valorization of all things masculine, visually the ideal female body was presented in an almost identical way to the ideal male body.
[60] Chen, “Female Icons, Feminist Iconography?,” 274.
[61] Daisy Yan Du, “Socialist Modernity in the Wasteland: Changing Representations of the Female Tractor Driver in China, 1949–1964,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 29, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 66.
[62] Pun Ngai, “Becoming Dagongmei (Working Girls): The Politics of Identity and Difference in Reform China,” The China Journal, no. 42 (1999): 2.
[63] Hillary Crane, “Review of Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, by Pun Ngai,” Anthropological Quarterly 79, no. 2 (2006): 387-88. Translation in the brackets mine.
[64] Ngai, “Becoming Dagongmei,” 15.
[65] Crane, “Review of Made in China,” 388.
[66] Crane, “Review of Made in China,” 388.