| In May 2005, Li Yuchun/Chris Lee, the winner of the Chinese singing competition, The Mongolian Sour Cow Yoghurt Super Girl Contest, became the catalyst for a national debate on issues ranging from democracy to standards of feminine beauty to the visibility of a queer national identity. Using critical discourse analysis of news reports and surveys with heads of local and diasporic fan clubs, I investigate the culturally performative aspects of Yuchun's image by interrogating the particular sociopolitical-virtual space that she occupies as both a new moral and cultural reflexion for the performance of an alternative Chinese temporality. I explore how her image connects with the dislocated and globalizing forces of gendered national identity by locating the role of Yuchun in the boundaries of the Chinese digital imaginary---an imaginary that is driven by new modes of consumption, desire, and fantasies of locales within Asia and beyond. |
