ABSTRACT
jingju's list included what was considered the quintessential "erotic" play Hudie meng (The Butterfly Dream), also known as Da piguan (Cleaving Open the Coffin). Without doubt, the plays brought the two young stars tremendous box-office success in Shanghai and heightened recognition back in Beijing. Actresses were absent in the early phase of jingju that emerged in the late 1700s, since they had been barred from the stage in the early Qing Dynasty. They re-emerged in the late nineteenth century in all-female troupes in the international concession area in Shanghai away from Chinese jurisdiction. In a way, what the so-called "Cleaving and Spinning" phenomenon reveals is the repeated attempts to suppress female bodies on jingju stages by accusing them of sexualizing their gestures. The phenomenon offers a revealing study of the entanglement between gender performance, audience democratization and political censorship in modern China.
