As noted in the Introduction, two salient patterns of Chinese queer representation develop around the familial-kinship system and forms of Chinese opera. Alongside the seemingly inextricable tension between tongzhi/queer subjects and the familial-kinship system, Chapter 1 also considers the tropes of Chinese opera as an important way of facilitating the Chinese queer diasporic imaginary via the theatrical convention of cross-dressing, as well as itinerant travel in an underworld society (analogous to the idea of “jianghu”) – itself a kind of diaspora outside Confucian officialdom and the familial system. This chapter develops these associations further, focusing on Shanghai-based Shaoxing opera or Yueju (as opposed to Kun opera and Taiwanese opera, discussed in Chapter 1, and Peking opera, to be discussed in Chapter 6). In particular, I analyse Two Stage Sisters (a.k.a. Stage Sisters), a 1965 film classic from Mainland China directed by veteran filmmaker Xie Jin (1923-2008) that revisited the history of Shaoxing opera.

Xie Jin made his directorial debut in 1951, although he truly announced his presence to the Chinese film world with his breakthrough feature Woman Basketball Player No. 5 (1957), followed by his highly acclaimed revolutionary epic The Red Detachment of Women (1960). While Woman Basketball Player and Red Detachment marked the beginning of Xie's interest in films featuring women, which continued with Two Stage Sisters, by the mid-1980s his expansive oeuvre had come to be identified by critics as a mode of film production dubbed “Xie Jin's model” (Xie Jin moshi), and at the time, a series of heated debates raged over its artistic and political value.