ABSTRACT

Luo Huaizhen, prominent Chinese opera script writer, highlighted the success of the Yue Girl Competition as femininity: it has brought out the essence of femininity, which makes yueju representative of yin culture, complementing the yang culture of Beijing opera. The yin-yang concept was developed as Neo-Confucian state ideology to create a complete and harmonious cosmological pattern, evolved between humans and heaven. This chapter argues that the rising yueju popularity demonstrates increasing gender repression in new millennium China. It also argues that as the female suffrage movement was a male oriented and directed movement from the beginning, gender repression had never been fundamentally removed from Chinese society. The chapter explores institutionalized domination, as this is an important aspect in both yueju's rise and its domination. Mao Weitao, the yueju artist eager to challenge the boundary of gender and sexuality in performativity, often infuriates some males.