ABSTRACT
The television series The Disguiser, an espionage thriller set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during WWII, was an unexpected hit in 2015. Through online fanfiction writing and sharing, young fans of the series celebrated the unspoken ‘love’ between two fictional communists: the triple-agents Ming Lou and Ming Cheng. This chapter analyzes the original text of The Disguiser and fans’ writings under the framework of ‘revolution-plus-love’, a popular formula in modern Chinese literature. The chapter argues that queering ‘love’ as a springboard, these fanfictions recuperate the forgotten history of global Leftism, and create a mirrored structure between homosexuality and communism, both subversive and marginalized.
