It was the summer of 2020 when xianxia webnovel Mo Dao Zu Shi (also known as The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation; henceforth MDZS) took over my life.

Like many others at the time, I had returned and was stuck in my childhood bedroom, all plans to return to normal life falling apart as the gravity of a life-threatening global pandemic dawned upon me. Time itself had disintegrated, and alongside it my ambitions for the future.

Yet when my childhood friend Kelsie suggested that I read MDZS to pass the time, I wasn’t particularly motivated. There were two main reasons for my hesitancy. The first reason was that MDZS presented seemingly insurmountable barriers to entry. The webnovel spanned over 120 chapters, plus live-action, animation, and audio drama adaptations that ‘could not be missed’ for a full experience of the work. Moreover, MDZS was deeply embedded in the lore, conventions, and terminology of the xianxia genre, which I had not encountered before and seemed incomprehensible to me as an outsider.

Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel) Vol. 1 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù

The second—and actual—reason for my hesitancy was that MDZS seemed to be yet another opportunity to detach from ‘reality’, a tendency I had spent much effort trying to overcome. For most of my conscious life, I had been hyperfixated on things that appeared to have no relation to my real life: a member of real-playing forums as soon as I was able to navigate a form; my teen years devoted to the worlds of tumblr, fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own. I worked through hyperfixations on an endless roster of content, including but not limited to TV shows, anime, works of fiction, bands, celebrities, and anything else with a substantial online community. Right before the pandemic started, it felt like I had finally burned through my tendencies to all my old hyperfixations, and was ready to commit myself to solely ‘real life’ things.

MDZS, with its high fantasy elements and idealised portrayals of homoerotic relationships, threatened this narrative of progress.

Kelsie was undeterred by my qualms. But it’s gay, she said. Besides, it’s not like you’re doing much else at the moment. This is literally the best time ever to get into something. I broke my resolve instantly. We settled on watching the animated adaptation as a trial run.

Then: the entire first season of the animation finished within two days, all 120 chapters of MDZS demolished within a week. I was entirely captured by the story of Wei Wuxian, a promising cultivator gone rogue, and his romance with fellow student and partner Lan Wangji. Shortly after, I followed up with the TV adaptation, read all the fanfiction I could get my hands on, and became intensely active in MDZS’s twitter community.

I was not the only one drawn to the enigmatic quality of MDZS. The webnovel and its adaptations have been hugely popular with domestic and international audiences since their release, with the TV adaptation The Untamed (also known as Chen Qing Ling, henceforth CQL) garnering over 7 billion views in 2019 on Chinese streaming platform Tencent,^[1] and official English-language translations of the work reaching the New York Times Best Sellers list on their first week of release in 2021.^[2] Created in the late 2010s, MDZS emerged in a period in which danmei, a genre exploring romantic relationships between men as a central plot, began to be adapted and popularised by mainstream media in mainland China. As a series that broke into the public consciousness, MDZS gestured towards a future in which danmei might be deemed permissible in mainland China. Such optimism was unfounded. Starting from 2021, state authorities began a ‘Internet Clean Up Campaign’ which cracked down on danmei and its representations of effeminate masculinities, citing them as ‘unhealthy’ distractions for the correct development of the state and its people. Danmei adaptations are now actively prohibited by the state, and the genre has once again been relegated to subcultural status.

As one of the last works of danmei permitted to attain such levels of mainstream popularity, MDZS now holds a unique position in contemporary Chinese culture. It prompts us to ask: through MDZS, can we understand the subversive potential embedded in danmei that resulted in the genre’s suppression by state authorities? Might the subversive potential of danmei help us to understand MDZS’s mass and fervent appeal?

To answer these questions, this article examines the cultural significance of MDZS through the genres it is constituted by, namely xianxia (via wuxia) and danmei. I use Rey Chow’s analysis of Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies fiction, a term used pejoratively to describe works of fiction deemed ‘overly sentimental’ and divorced from everyday realities, to whos how the formal features of wuxia and danmei critique the predominant culture of their respective contexts through their frank operations as a genre of ‘mere play’. Wuxia critiques the logics of modernist progression in early-twentieth century arguments for the formation of a Chinese nation-state, while danmei playfully undermines essentialist characterisations of gender and sexuality within the contemporary conditions of heteropatriarchal society. Contrary to my preconception of MDZS as a form of escapism, I have found the work to be richly engaged with the socio-political conditions of contemporary China, which serve as the potential basis for danmei’s appeal as well as the true justification for its suppression and prohibition by state authorities.

Introducing MDZS through the genres of xianxia and danmei

To provide context for my analysis of MDZS, it may be helpful to give a brief overview of the genres that constitute it and the plot of the work itself.

MDZS can be broadly understood as emerging two seemingly disparate traditions of popular literature in China: xianxia and danmei. Xianxia, directly translating to “immortal heroes,” draws heavily on the Taoist mythology of xianren (‘immortals’) who cultivate spiritual energy through rigorous self-training, fierce rivalries, and strenuous fighting against monsters”.^[3]This process of cultivation is not only physical but also spiritual, requiring cultivators to uphold upright behaviour and to above all, defend injustice and protect the greater good. While xianxia can be thought of as native to Chinese popular culture, danmei–also known as Boys’ Love (BL)–first appeared in Japanese girls comics in the 1970s. The genre gained “tremendous popularity in East Asia and worldwide via the spread of Japanese ACG (anime, comics, and games) culture,” and was initially introduced to China in the 1990s with the growing availability of pirated Japanese manga. Danmei is a romance genre concerned with “male-male same-sex romance and homoeroticism between attractive pubescent boys and youthful men.”^[4] Key to danmei is the assumption that a vast majority of its fans and creators are adolescent girls and adult women, as well as the genre’s close associations with obscenity and transgressive behaviour.^[5]

As with many xianxia works, MDZS is set in a world which ambiguously resembles premodern China. At the beginning of the novel, the territories are peacefully controlled by five major sects, each with a distinct fighting style, teaching method, and set of core values. Cultivators are tasked with protecting each sect, with their abilities to harness spiritual energy primarily used to protect citizens from demonic spirits, and against other cultivators during periods of inter-sect conflict. They also occupy the highest class within each sect, leading all positions of power in political, legislative, religious, and military aspects of sect life. The lore surrounding cultivation in MDZS centers around the golden core, a ball of spiritual energy embedded within each cultivator’s body which grants cultivators their superhuman abilities.

MDZS’s plot unfolds through two timelines in tandem. The first timeline follows the coming-of-age of protagonist Wei Wuxian, an orphan adopted by the ruling family of the Yunmeng Jiang sect. A promising, carefree cultivator, Wei Wuxian’s unorthodox means of thinking put him at odds with fellow student Lan Wangji, a cultivator from the Gusu Lan Sect, known for its rigid and methodical values. Shortly after their studies, the Qishan Wen Sect wages war on the other four sects, and Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji become close compatriots at war. In a moment of need, Wei Wuxian gives away his golden core to his brother, before shortly being captured by the Wen Sect and cast into the Burial Mounds, an old battlefield which holds an immense amount of demonic energy. To survive, Wei Wuxian invents demonic cultivation, drawing power from resentful spirits instead of a golden core. While Wei Wuxian’s use of demonic cultivation is fundamental to helping the four sects secure victory, he finds himself in conflict with the sects in peacetime when defends the surviving members of the Wen sect, and dies an enemy of the cultivation world. The second timeline begins thirteen years later, when Wei Wuxian is resurrected in the body of Mo Xuanyu, a young man who has sacrificed his soul for Wei Wuxian’s in exchange for vengeance on his abusive family. Following an incident in which a demonic, dismembered arm kills Mo’s family, Wei Wuxian re-encounters Lan Wangji, who is trying to solve the mystery surrounding the cause of the dismembered arm. As they embark on a journey to restore and placate the original spirit of the arm, the duo discover that the circumstances surrounding the arm are related to the events of thirteen years ago, and the political maneuverings that resulted in Wei Wuxian’s death.

The two parallel timelines come together through the broader danmei narrative of MDZS, which details the romantic relationship between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. While they appear to hold opposing values upon first encountering each other during their school years, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji develop a deep and trusting connection with each other as comrades during the war against the Wen Sect. As Wei Wuxian finds himself in conflict with the cultivation world for his decision to protect the surviving members of the Wen Sect, Lan Wangji attempts to persuade Wei Wuxian to leave the Burial Mounds. This results in the deterioration of their relationship as Wei Wuxian believes Lan Wangji to be condemning his decision to protect the Wen Sect members. Thirteen years later, it gradually comes to light that Lan Wangji’s actions were motivated by his desire to protect Wei Wuxian, and that Lan Wangji has harboured feelings for Wei Wuxian that persisted after his first death. The mystery of the demonic hand develops alongside the romantic relationship between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, as it becomes clear that Lan Wangji is aware of Wei Wuxian’s identity despite his resurrection in another person’s body.

‘Mere play’ as critique: on wuxia as a form of Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies fiction

This article challenges the notion that MDZS, as a work of popular fiction, is desirable solely because of its escapist nature and rejection of reality. Instead, it argues that the histories of xianxia and danmei shed light on the socio-politically grounded reasons for the mass and fervent appeal of MDZS, as well as the threats it poses to the predominant culture of contemporary China. It prompts the question: where did the assumption that popular fiction is escapist and disconnected from reality come from in discourses of Chinese literature? It turns out that the answer may be found in the histories of xianxia, and namely in its historical predecessor, wuxia.

Wuxia is a genre of vernacular fiction featuring xia (or “knight-errant”), who are heroic figures often depicted as capable of superhuman feats of martial arts. It is the direct descendent of xianxia, which also explores similar themes but emphasises spiritual cultivation and weapon usage more than wuxia’s exploration of justice, loyalty, honour, chivalry and revenge. While stories featuring xia may be found across pre-modern Chinese literature, the genre was only formalised during the advent of the twentieth century along with the formation of the Chinese nation-state. A period characterised by “the advent of mechanized warfare, the demise of the dynastic system, and the disintegration of the Middle Kingdom’s heliocentrism,”^[6] this period of nation-building was accompanied by the May Fourth Movement, an anti-imperialist, political, and cultural movement in which narratives of modernist progression were extended across all aspects of society. Wuxia rose to prominence as a genre in opposition to the ideals of May Fourth reformers, who saw wuxia’s interest in Chinese antiquity, use of elevated prose and countercultural elements as an “old school, traditionalist” form of literature that failed to represent “society and true life”.^[7]In Stateless Subjects, Petrus Liu summarises the claims against made  by proponents of the May Fourth movement against wuxia:

“What is generally clear is that a class-vocabulary was attached to the content of martial arts novels because they appeared to be thematically unconcerned with national self-awakening, class struggle, and social productivity, and that this assignment of a social formation (feudal or bourgeois) to a category of literature was logically dependent on the presumed desirability of a rationally managed economy. Martial arts literature appeared to be a literary form that could not be harnessed to a productive national economy.”^[8]

The notion that wuxia was irrelevant to the population at large became the basis for the genre’s suppression  in the 1930s^[9] and is still present in discussions of its rise to popularity. Some scholars today still argue that the genre’s popularity was due to “an ideological distortion to a collective inferiority complex in the time of Western imperialism,”^[10] creating the psychological need for a “super-man-like deux ex machina” to “alleviate their feelings of despair and hopelessness.” ^[11]

Understanding the history of wuxia as a genre is crucial to understanding MDZS, as it highlights the tactics by state and cultural authorities to suppress genres deemed undesirable. The May Fourth reformers portrayed wuxia as a genre that was ‘void’ of productive content, which is to say that it was devoid of the values necessary for producing a nation-state. Part of the strategy used to dismiss the wuxia fiction was to label it as Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies (henceforth MDB) fiction. The term originates from the popular twentieth century novel Jade Pear Spirit by Xu Zhenya, which was known for its “sentimental poems in which lovers are compared to pairs of mandarin ducks and butterflies.” ^[12] Initially used as a pejorative label for sentimental love stories, it became an umbrella term in the twentieth century to “attack all types of old-style fiction that continued to enjoy popularity.” ^[13] A key rhetorical strategy used to dismiss wuxia in the early twentieth century was to conflate it with MDB fiction, suggesting that the pre-modern setting of both wuxia and popular romance novels not reflected an overly sentimental view of the past, but also promoted regressive ideas of social structures and relations.

Rey Chow’s analysis of early twentieth-century MDB fiction as enacting “a feminization of the predominant Confucian culture”^[14] helps to reveal the subversive potential of works categorised under the term. Here, feminisation refers “not only to the questioning of female oppression… but also to the processes whereby the clean-cut empiricist dichotomy between oppression and emancipation, or between traditionalism and modernism as stable, definite perspectives, become impotent.”^[15] Chow agrees that the narratives of MDB fiction portray a world in which traditional Confucian values and social structures are set in stone, as the romantic relationships they portray are eternally doomed to failure due to “issues of morality, chastity, and social demands to resist personal passions.” However, it is the genre’s stylistic modes of excess which provide its subversive potential, not the content of MBD fiction themselves. These stylistic modes depict scenes of “utmost sentimental indulgence” and “extreme social entrapment” which do “not so much compel sympathy and identification in its readers as it produces feelings of excess and contradiction.”^[16] As the exaggerated style of MDB fiction undermines both the values of romantic love and traditional values of Confucian society its narrative espouses, it becomes apparent that neither the ‘public’ world of sociopolitical structures nor the ‘private’ world of emotions can be taken seriously within these works, despite being essential elements of the genre. Rather, MDB fiction is interested in the production of affect, thus operating frankly as a site of “mere play, entertainment and week-end past-time.”^[17] There is no essential message underlying works of MDB fiction; rather, its concern with producing affect “strips any single reality of its claim to full authenticity…[requiring] us to read Butterfly narratives the way they read history, as disjunct fragments rather than as a cohesive whole.”^[18] Chow argues that MDB fiction feminises the predominant culture by rejecting masculinist narratives of progress and singular truths, and instead offering a variety of interpretations for its readers.

Rey Chow’s analysis suggests that wuxia can also be seen as a genre that feminises the  predominant culture. It is not a traditionalist genre but rather a mock-traditionalist one, as the lore behind each fictional world draws from a patchwork of historical and mythological narratives in Chinese antiquity chosen at whim. Although the genre explores heroic morality, it not necessarily inspire sympathy and identification. Rather, it is intended to produce affective responses in their readers. Despite being a site of ‘mere play’, wuxia can challenge criticisms by May Fourth reformers who argued that it was detached from of ‘society and true life’.  The mock-traditionalist mode of wuxia may be seen as questioning the modernist logic of societal progression behind the establishment of a nation state, and thus deeply engaged with the context of the early twentieth-century Moreover, while Chow argues that the repressive societal values of MDB fiction are wholly undermined by its stylistic form, the values embedded in by wuxia narratives seem to be less rigid and less repressive, and thus perhaps less able to be undermined by stylistic register. The dominant ideology of wuxia narrative is that social and political structures must be undermined in the face of injustice, with the knowledge that new paradigms may someday too be subject to their own reckoning. This perspective would likely have been viewed as threatening to the rising paradigm of the Chinese nation-state. It seems, then, that the real problem of wuxia for twentieth-century Chinese culture was not that it ignored issues of contemporary life, but rather that its form and narratives addressed these issues in a manner that was incongruent with the logics of nationalisation. These are perhaps the true, although unspoken, reasons for wuxia’s suppression as a genre.

Feminising masculinity: on danmei’s subversions of hegemonic masculinity

MDZS exhibits the key features of ‘utmost sentimental indulgence’ and ‘extreme social entrapment’ that are fundamental to MDB fiction. However, I argue that what makes MDZS a work of MDB fiction are not the ways in which it references wuxia narrative traditions. This is partially due to the changing stance of state authorities towards the role of ‘traditional’ culture in imaginations of the Chinese nation-state. Since the 1980s, devotional and ritual practices have been re-legitimated by state authorities as part of the immaterial cultural of Chinese culture, sanctioned and promoted by the state.^[19]The incorporation of traditional beliefs as part of the Chinese national imagery, coupled with the enduring popularity of wuxia in the wider Sinophone world, have made it possible for wuxia to be embraced as a national genre since. Xianxia’s use of wuxia narrative traditions can no longer be positioned as taking an oppositional stance to the logics of predominant culture by itself. Rather, it is the presence of the queer romance in MDZS–that is to say, its operations as a work of danmei–that contains the discursive force of MDB fiction.

There is existing evidence to support the categorisation of danmei as MDB fiction. In examining the parallels between MDB and internet fiction (of which danmei is a key sub-genre), Shih-Chen Chao argues that MDB and internet fiction are both literary movements that have emerged in periods of large scale “literary populism and cultural capitalism.”^[20] For Chao, internet fiction and MDB fiction are part of the same lineage of popular fiction because they share three key features: they referencing prior narrative traditions,^[21] emergence with the advancement in new media forms^[22], and are produced in a wider context of dramatic socio-economic change and globalisation.^[23] Aiqing Wang further explores the similarities between MDB fiction and danmei through their narrative themes,^[24] arguing that both categories of fiction feature protagonists possessing “chasteness and ‘beautiful, powerful, and pitiful’ properties”, and frequently deploy “clichéd plots of ‘chasing the wife (uke) to the crematorium’.” ^[25] As with wuxia, we see that the contradiction between danmei’s mass popularity and seemingly regressive narrative elements form the basis for understanding the genre within the category of MDB fiction.

The Untamed, adaptation of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.

While Rey Chow’s analysis focuses on how the feminisation of predominant culture occurs in MDB fiction by undermining masculinist logics of modernity and its claims to a single reality, my analysis of danmei is interested in the ways it undermines gender as a stable category. What is danmei doing when it depicts male-male relationships in such particular, fantastical ways, with its “emphasis on “aestheticism” and hence “idealisation” in representation?” ^[26] Why does the genre’s representations of male-male relationships inspire such interest and fervour from its creators and readers, who are primarily women? Using MDZS as a point of reference, I work through contemporary discourse surrounding danmei in order to understand the genre’s subversive potential.

A common line of argument for the ways in which danmei subverts gender by means of identification, allowing producers and consumers “not only fantasise about ideal masculinity, but also to imagine themselves as empowered or at least as agents who are freer than allowed by their current situation [as women or non-men].”^[27] In MDZS, these representations of ideal masculinity play out through the characters of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Both Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are figures of ideal masculinity in themselves, combining “masculine power with female nurturance”^[28] in their behaviours and attitudes. As a protector of the Wen Sect survivors, Wei Wuxian embodies masculine power through his use of demonic cultivation to defend the survivors from political persecution. Yet Wei Wuxian’s daily life is embedded in the practices of female nurturance, as MDZS depicts scenes in which he takes responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the young and elderly Wen Sect survivors. Similarly, Lan Wangji holds both characteristics of masculine power and feminine nurturance; at once one of the best cultivators within the world of MDZS and a deeply devoted parent to Lan Sizhui, a child of the Wen Sect he adopts following the death of Wei Wuxian. Moreover, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are representations of ‘ideal masculinity’ in their romantic relationship with each other, as the queer relationship allows both the work “to sidestep the difficulties inherent in portraying heterosexual encounters in which the female partner is necessarily subordinated to the male.”^[29] Heterosexual relationships in MDZS are subject to the gendered expectations of behaviour in pre-modern China, as its female characters occupy a primarily domestic role in social and political life. The male-male relationship of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji side-steps issues of gender dynamics within the world of MDZS, allowing the characters to move freely within the cultivation world as they develop their romantic relationship. This reading of MDZS suggests that readers are compelled to identify with the romantic relationship of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, imagining themselves too in relation to an ‘ideal masculinity’ outside the bounds of heteropatriarchal society.

The argument that danmei subverts ideas of gender by creating a fantasy of ideal masculinity is problematic, as it ignores the fact that the dynamics in danmei relationships “[do] not depart from the heteronormative pattern of romance or violence” but are “still constructed by the latter.”^[30] While Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have equal status as men within the world of MDZS, their relationship nonetheless replicates heternormative patterns of romance. Lan Wangji occupies the masculine role of the gong (攻; the attacker; the ‘top’) as the driving force behind the romantic and sexual relationship between him and Wei Wuxian, while Wei Wuxian takes on the feminine role of the shou (受; the receiver; the ‘bottom’) as the subject of Lan Wangji’s desires. Counter to the idea of danmei as a site of ideal fantasy, Yue Yu argues that danmei performs “a reverse imitation of the asymmetrical power relation to achieve a toxic balance with the unequal social reality.”^[31] In doing so, danmei “reveals the problematics of the “original” version and disrupts the flow of existing gender norms”.^[32] As the shou figure, Wei Wuxian comes to understand and reciprocate Lan Wangji’s feelings throughout the course of MDZS. The inventor of demonic cultivator and holder of immense ‘masculine power’ in the world of sect politics, Wei Wuxian nonetheless chooses to prioritise his romantic relationship with Lan Wangji at the end of MDZS. He voluntarily takes on “the obligations of “loving a man” and “performing like a woman” which are normally imposed on females”.^[33] By narrating Wei Wuxian’s transformation from a heterosexual, masculine subject to that of a queer, feminine one, the genre conventions of danmei in MDZS “expose the fiction of gender itself.”^[34]

Turning our attention back to danmei as a work of MDB fiction, I argue that the genre enacts a feminisation of predominant culture by treating masculinity as a site of ‘mere play’. Danmei’s narrative progression is contingent on transformations of masculinity, as the romantic relationship can only be realised after the shou protagonist willingly becomes a queer, feminised subject. Gender thus becomes a fiction because of how transformations of masculinity are used to produce affect, dramatising the changing dynamics between the romantic duo. This playful attitude towards masculinity has significant implications when viewed in the context of wider gender politics in contemporary China.

In recent years, the “prevalence of soft masculinities in [Chinese] popular culture” has “been regarded as a symbol of waning national power”^[35], prompting Chinese state authorities to respond by perpetuating “hegemonic masculinity and hypermasculinity as the embodiment of the party state. ” Hegemonic masculinity, as an expression of heteropatriarchal society, has been naturalised as a vehicle for fueling nationalist sentiment and privileged as “the only authentic expression of gender that boys and men are supposed to follow.”^[36] A widely distributed 2018 opinion article published by Xinhua explicitly draws connections between masculinity and nationalism, arguing that “whether a country embraces or rejects (effeminate men) [is]... a grave matter that affects the nation’s future.”^[37] Against a cultural background in which hegemonic masculinity is seen as an essential feature to the nation’s future, the way in which danmei plays with masculinity for the sake of a romantic narrative deflates the seriousness with which masculinity is taken in state discourse. The genre’s depictions of ‘soft masculinities’ not only pose a counterpoint to ideals of hypermasculinity perpetuated by the state. Danmei is a threat to the state because of its indifference to essentialist structures of hegemonic masculinity, and is thus a genre which is indifferent to the ‘nation’s future’ as a whole.

The threat posed by danmei’s indifference to ‘the nation’s future’ is closely linked to the fact that its producers and consumers are primarily young women. This is evident in the ways that danmei has been regulated on the basis of being detrimental to ‘health’. Following the release and immense popularity of MDZS in 2019,^[38] the work and others by author Mo Xiang Tong Xiu were reported for content violations and locked from public consumption on the basis that it contained “content inducing minors to imitate acts violating social morals… or other such content that might impair the physical and health of minors.”^[39] Similar rhetorical strategies were seen in 2021 following new restrictions by the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) “against both male effeminacy and danmei simultaneously.”^[40] Hu et al. notes that “the most common terms employed [by state media and official documents] are the ‘healthy’ internet environment, the ‘healthy’ development of teenagers, the ‘healthy’ aesthetics, and ‘healthy’ gender expressions.”^[41] Implicit within these rhetorical strategies is a deep-seated anxiety that danmei provides a potent alternative to participating in existing heteropatriarchal society for its women producers and consumers, without requiring them to personally identify as queer. State criticisms of danmei ‘health’ are thus well-founded if we consider them to be concerned with the ‘health’ of the nation’s future, which depends on women’s participation in heterosexual relationships to reproduce a future generation. The genre’s indifference to the truth claims of hegemonic masculinity are unsettling enough, but the more pressing concern for state authorities is that danmei’s affective qualities might be so appealing that women no longer feel compelled to enter into actual heterosexual relationships and, as a result, to reproduce.

MDZS is an interesting case study for danmei and MDB fiction, because the release of the web novel and its adaptations coincided with a period of change in state attitudes towards the genre and its portrayals of male effeminacy. First released in 2018, MDZS came into popularity during a time at which danmei was reaching unprecedented levels of success, and seemed to be gaining acceptance within mainstream culture. Despite the fact that the webnovel version of MDZS was locked from public consumption, the further popularity of its TV adaptation in 2019 suggested that depictions of queer relationships in Chinese popular media might remain permissible within a framework of ‘eternal brotherhood’. Moreover, the release of CQL on Youtube and Netflix garnered a large overseas audience, creating international fan communities for the show as well as other works of danmei produced in the same period. For a moment in the late 2010s, it seemed as if danmei could become part of a key cultural product of contemporary China. This assumption would soon change from 2020 onwards, as seen in state responses to the ‘227 Incident’. The incident concerns fan conflicts over a work of real-person fanfiction featuring Xiao Zhan, the actor portraying Wei Wuxian in the TV adaptation of MDZS, as an underaged transgender sex worker. Criticised for its vulgarity and feminisation of Xiao Zhan, a subset of fans utilised reporting mechanisms of the state to censor the work; in response, Chinese state authorities blocked access to fanfiction website Archive of Our Own, on which the work was hosted. The ‘227 incident’ would be the first in many state interventions against the production of danmei and the continuation of its domestic fan communities. Since 2021, danmei has been actively criticised and deplatformed by the Chinese state: popular danmei webnovels have been deleted or made private ; productions of danmei TV adaptations have been put on hold or cancelled; popular fansites have been deleted or disallowed from continuing. Danmei communities in mainland China have been relegated to subcultural space once more as they find ever-creative strategies of circumventing online censorship^[42]. The significance of MDZS is thus in part because it was one of the last works of danmei to achieve such high levels of success before the genre was suppressed. Its mass popularity will serve as evidence of a cultural environment in contemporary China in which a broad audience wanted to richly examine, subvert, and imagine alternatives to the existing heteropatriarchal society.

MDZS beyond MDB fiction

I have argued that MDB fiction engages with existing societal structure rather than serving as mere escapism, through an analysis of the formal characteristics of wuxia and damei. MDZS, as a work of MDB fiction released in the late 2010s, is thus in dialogue with the essentialist logics of heteropatriarchy in contemporary China. Through Wei Wuxian’s voluntary feminisation to actualise his romantic relationship with Lan Wangji, MDZS demonstrates how danmei uses transformations of masculinity as a driving force for narrative progression, challenging the notion that current conceptions of gender and sexuality are fixed ideals.  This is perhaps one reason why fans of MDZS, composed mostly of women and non-men, are drawn to the work: its fictive expressions of gender play and sexuality offer a playful alternative to the conditions of heteropatriarchal society, while being richly constituted by it.

Reading MDZS through its formal interventions as a work of MDB fiction has its limitations. While MDZS and other works of danmei provide a platform for critical examinations of the dominant social order of heteropatriarchal life through the production of affect, I have only presented a negative argument that suggests fans desire to reject or change this social order. The positive desires embedded in MDZS remain inarticulable.

The inarticulability of desire in MDZS is not necessarily a methodological issue, but rather points to how the work–and danmei as a genre–remain active players within cultural discourse in contemporary China. Raymond Williams’ ‘structures of feeling’, which refers to “the different ways of thinking vying to emerge at any one time in history”,^[43] is relevant here. In emphasising feeling over thought, Williams signals that “what is at stake may not yet be articulated in a fully worked-out form, but rather has to be inferred by reading between the lines.”^[44] Crucially, structures of feeling may only be characterised in retrospect. To speak about structures of feeling in concrete terms suggests that “you are either observing a historical configuration that has lost its indeterminate dynamics, or your observation will be imprecise and provisional because structures of feeling actually precede articulation.”^[45]  My analysis of MDZS’s constituent genres certainly points to both possibilities. My reading of wuxia, and how it reveals conflicting discourses surrounding early twentieth-century Chinese nationalism, is only possible in a context in which Chinese nationalism had been firmly established. Wuxia’s subsumption into state narrative is proof that the genre has lost its original indeterminacy. By contrast, this article’s exploration of danmei and state responses to the genre show how questions of gender and sexuality remain a site of active contention. To articulate the desires of MDZS now would not only be premature, but would also wrongly suggest that the work and danmei as a whole has lost its potentiality.

For me, the limits in analysing MDZS are a source of hope for the continued possibility of resistance against essentialist attitudes towards gender and sexuality, in and beyond contemporary China. While MDZS is recognised as a work of speculative fiction due to its xianxia setting, I find that its speculative force resides in its subversions of hegemonic masculinity within conventions of danmei. The work and genre’s appeal lies in its portrayal of worlds in which gender dynamics a means of creating affect and producing desire, rather than a source of oppression and control. It is a speculative mode which is not detached from embodied experience, but rather deeply informed by it, as affect becomes the starting point from which we imagine alternate forms of existence.

^[1] Wang Yiming, “Top 5 Chinese Dramas That Became Popular Overseas in 2019”, China.org.cn, January 12, 2020.

^[2] “Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (MXTX) Becomes Triple New York Times Best Selling Author in One Week with Seven Seas Debut of Danmei Novels”, Seven Seas Entertainment, December 23, 2021, https://sevenseasentertainment.com/2021/12/23/mo-xiang-tong-xiu-mxtx-becomes-triple-new-york-times-best-selling-author-in-one-week-with-seven-seas-debut-of-danmei-novels/.

^[3] Ni Zhange. “Xiuzhen (Immortality Cultivation) Fantasy: Science, Religion, and the Novels of Magic/Superstition in Contemporary China”, Religions 11, no. 1 (2 January 2020), 1, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11010025.

^[4] Wang Aiqing. “Contemporary Danmei Fiction and Its Similitudes with Classical and Yanqing Literature”. JENTERA: Jurnal Kajian Sastra 10, no. 1 (30 June 2021): 128. https://doi.org/10.26499/jentera.v10i1.3397.

^[5] Wang, “Contemporary Danmei Fiction”, 129

^[6] Petrus Liu. “The Viscissitudes of Anticolonial Nationalism” in Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell East Asia Program, 2011), 43.

^[7] Liu, “Viscissitudes of Anticolonial Nationalism”, 37.

^[8] Liu, “Viscissitudes of Anticolonial Nationalism”, 51.

^[9] Ni, “Xiuzhen Fantasy”, 7.

^[10] Liu, “Viscissitudes of Anticolonial Nationalism”, 24.

^[11] Liu, “Viscissitudes of Anticolonial Nationalism”, 23.

^[12] Rey Chow. “Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: A Response to the “Postmodern” Condition”, Cultural Critique, no. 5 (1986): 74. https://doi.org/10.2307/1354357.

^[13] Chow, “Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies”, 74.

^[14]  Chow, “Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies”, 76.

^[15] Chow, “Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies”, 76.

^[16] Chow, “Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies”, 79.

^[17] Chow, “Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies”, 80.

^[18] Chow, “Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies”, 79.

^[19] Ni, “Xiuzhen Fantasy”, 9.

^[20] Chao Shih-Chen, “Desire and Fantasy On-line: A Sociological and Psychoanalytical Approach to the Prosumption of Chinese Internet Fiction”, PhD diss., (University of Manchester, 2012), 62.

^[21] Chao, “Desire and Fantasy On-line”, 56.

^[22] Chao, “Desire and Fantasy On-line”, 57.

^[23] Chao, “Desire and Fantasy On-line”, 569.

^[24] Aiqing Wang specifically describes the similarities between danmei and yanqing romance, a genre of romance which came into popularity during the 1980s. However, her essay traces a direct lineage between MDB fiction and yanqing, and I suggest that the similarities between danmei and yanqing similarly apply to danmei and MDB fiction within the scope of her article.

^[25] Wang, “Contemporary Danmei Fiction”, 141.

^[26] Feng Jin. ‘“Addicted to Beauty”: Consuming and Producing Web-Based Chinese “Danmei” Fiction at Jinjiang’. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 21, no. 2 (2009): 5.

^[27] Feng, “Addicted to Beauty”, 24.

^[28] Feng, “Addicted to Beauty”, 24.

^[29] Feng, “Addicted to Beauty”, 5.

^[30] Yue Yu, “Reading the Rotten: A Textual Analysis of Chinese Danmei and Dan’gai”, Masters thesis, (Duke University, 2021), 45.

^[31] Yu, “Reading the Rotten”, 45.

^[32] Yu, “Reading the Rotten”, 45.

^[33] Yu, “Reading the Rotten”, 44.

^[34] Yu, “Reading the Rotten”, 45.

^[35] Hu Tingting et al., “‘Masculinity in Crisis? Reticent / Han-Xu Politics against Danmei and Male Effeminacy”, International Journal of Cultural Studies 26, no. 3 (May 2023): 4. https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231159424.

^[36] Hu et al., “Masculinity in Crisis?”, 14.

^[37] Aja Romano, “The Chinese government’s unlikeliest standoff is with… fandom”, Vox, Oct 17, 2022, https://www.vox.com/culture/23404571/china-vs-fandom-danmei-censorship-qinglang-social-media.

^[38] According to 2018 print publication by Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House, “Mo Dao Zu Shi has reached a score of 14 billion points on Jinjiang Literature City, has been bookmarked more than 1,090,000 times and has received in total more than 440,000 reviews. During the year, it has made the sales gold list, the thousand-word gold list, reigning supreme at the top of the charts and setting a new record! On Sina Weibo, the hot topic #MoDaoZuShi was the subject of nearly 6 million discussions and 6 billion reads!”

^[39] bigbadredpanda, Tumblr. “May I ask why MDZS is locked on the official site?”August 9, 2019.  https://bigbadredpanda.tumblr.com/post/187116793446/may-i-ask-why-mdzs-is-locked-on-the-official-site.

^[40] Hu et al., “Masculinity in Crisis?”, 11.

^[41] Hu et al., “Masculinity in Crisis?”, 14.

^[42] “S02 Episode 8: Jokerfied on Literary Porn”, Chaoyang Trap, March 24, 2022,  https://chaoyang.substack.com/p/jokerfied-fandom.

^[43] “structures of feeling”, Oxford Reference. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100538488.

^[44] “structures of feeling”, Oxford Reference.

^[45] Mitchum Huehls, “Structures of Feeling: Or, How to Do Things (or Not) with Books”, Contemporary Literature 51, no. 2 (2010): 419-428. muse.jhu.edu/article/403362.