ABSTRACT
The ‘double’ is a recurring theme in Chinese young adult novels, where two protagonists represent each other’s alter ego. This chapter focuses on Chinese female writer Anni Baobei’s novella, Qiyue and Ansheng (2000), its cinematic adaptation Soul Mate (2016), and other similar narratives, to examine the double and its implications for sexuality for young female characters. These narratives both originate and depart from the paradigmatic framework of an angel/monster dichotomy (Gilbert and Gubar 2000), which usually involves the comparison of a docile and obedient girl with another who is wilder and unrestrained. In the texts under discussion here, the girls build a friendship, a sisterhood and a homosexual affinity. The implicit lesbianism in the narratives of both novella and film challenges Chinese society’s conservative attitudes around sexuality and gender. These stories employ the theme of the ‘double’ to depict the distorted and fluid identity of girls coming of age in post-socialist China, facing the chances and challenges brought by the neoliberal capitalist system and authoritarian political structure. On one hand, these post-80s girls are likely to enjoy a degree of economic power, sexual autonomy and intellectual capacity, but, on the other hand, the dominant patriarchal system represses newly awakening feminist impulses and reaffirms the traditional gender and sexual order through the institutional controls of school and family.
