ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the Chinese literary tradition of scholar-beauty romance in an attempt to highlight the privileged position it accords “soft” masculinity. After examining a selection of literary texts of very different ideological orientations from the Ming dynasty to recent times, the discussion will focus on Defunct Capital, a controversial novel published in 1993 by mainland Chinese writer Jia Pingwa, and its anti-hero protagonist Zhuang Zhidie. It argues that Zhuang Zhidie's “soft” masculinity was problematic in the context of Chinese cultural nationalism in the 1990s and that Zhuang's characterisation as a “sexual” dissident contributed to its rejection by many literary critics and the subsequent official banning of Defunct Capital.
