Genre Capital: The Streets of Nineteenth Century Beijing as Erotic Text

• In Event: Living Text: Theatre’s Localities in Pre-Twentieth Century China and Japan

Abstract

The flower-registers (huapu) of the nineteenth century Beijing theatre district—guides to the backgrounds and talents of the most attractive young actors of the city—were often replete with topographical references to street and lane. Not surprisingly, this geographical predisposition related to their dual purpose of keeping other interested men well-informed and attesting to the knowledgeability of their authors. While much attention has been given previously to the role of huapu in elite men’s mastery of taste while resident in the capital, in this paper I will attempt to analyse their topographical references to discover what they were doing at the same time in relation to their comportment to the city, as well as consider the place those city spaces had in relation to the homoerotic/homosocial bonds that formed around theatregoing. These questions also touch on another, which is the extent to which topography contributes to the formation of huapu as a recognisable genre, and, indeed, whether as a genre and a topography, huapu form together a single text much in that way nodes, flows and circulations exist in a single city? In working out these problems I will draw upon Andrea Goldman’s political reading of the huapu in Opera and the City, as well as upon the insights of Benjamin, de Certeau and Lefebvre.

Author

• Mark Stevenson, Victoria University